Welcome to Secrets and Magic - taking you behind the scenes
to see how Merlin's made.
Today, we trot over to France to see some incredible four-legged filming.
When you're there, watching it, the speed of it is unbelievable.
Whoa! Ooh!
There's also some horsing around from assassin, Adrian Lesser.
Plus we look at what happened when Gwen got saddled with the ungrateful prince.
It's always funny doing kisses with your mates.
All on Merlin - Secrets and Magic.
751, take one, A Camera.
Today, it's a case of lights, camera, action
as the cast and crew of Merlin are making another belting episode.
It looked like so much fun.
Incredible horses and great horsemen.
They weren't pulling any punches!
They're incredible, like they're made of lead and don't get injured.
These guys are absolute nutters
but amazing at what they do. It's 100% real,
cos you're genuinely blown away by what's happening.
And when you see a guy fall off and get dragged by the stirrup,
they get up and they do it again.
It's unbelievable. They are fantastic.
It was just incredible to watch these French guys
who were absolutely crazy!
At the beginning of Merlin, the ambition was to make mini movies -
so each episode feels like an action adventure movie.
We wanted it to have some of the production values
and excitement of Hollywood movies.
I know that's very ambitious, but that's where we began.
In Series 1, we didn't think we'd pull it off,
but we thought, "Let's go," cos if we fail, we'll fail spectacularly.
And we did pull it off.
You told me I would not see you again!
Second series are the best to do.
I think you get a chance to do everything a little bit better
and a little bit bigger than you did before. So, in the first series,
when we did the tournament, we were originally going to do jousting
but we thought it was impossible to do - it's too expensive,
we don't have enough time, so let's just forget it.
This year we thought, "Let's do jousting."
And that bold decision brought them back to France
to film an episode that would see the jousting tournament
as the turning point for an otherwise arrogant Prince Arthur.
Arthur is quite misunderstood,
due to the fact that he seems to put on a front quite a lot of the time,
which makes him come across as an arrogant prat.
What is that smell? Whose clothes are these? Mine. I washed them specially.
'The part of Arthur just really appealed to me,'
cos he had so many flaws but you could see that there was a reason for those flaws.
And he's been through a lot, certainly since Merlin arrived.
Roll, please.
Why did you pull out? I was wide open, you could have unhorsed me.
I thought I might injure you, Sire. You had the advantage. You can't hesitate.
I wouldn't have, if I were facing a different opponent.
You are the future king, my lord.
You can almost describe Series 2 as a transitional stage for him,
cos clearly, he's changing, and he's not what he was.
It doesn't matter who I am.
I do not expect any special treatment from you or any of you!
This story is how Arthur learns a little more about life.
Is that understood?
He learns about how to be the sort of king who'll have a Round Table
rather than a rectangular one, who understands equality is important.
My lord. Guinevere.
It's good of you to let me stay in your home.
The episode's really about Arthur and Gwen.
Arthur goes on this quest
to try and prove himself on his own merits, not cos he's a prince.
I can't believe you talked me into this!
'She's kind of grown up seeing Arthur behaving'
in this really arrogant way
and how he seems to just love himself and have no consideration for anyone else.
Perhaps you could prepare me a bowl of hot water. I take it you have a bowl.
'This is her chance to say all that
'about how she's always felt about him.'
I'll just walk all the way down to the well and fetch some water, then. HE GROANS
Even though it's totally inappropriate cos she's a servant and he's a prince,
'all of a sudden, they're on her turf.'
Would it kill you to say please and thank you once in a while?!
My lord.
More than making him angry, where she kind of goes, "Oh, sorry,"
it actually kind of softens him and he has actually listened to her
and that's when you see that he does care about her a little bit.
It's quite interesting to see how that relationship develops
and how we get to know each other and what happens...
You're right.
I have behaved appallingly.
Arthur's becoming older and wiser
and less arrogant. You know, he was painted as a sort of arrogant prince
and slowly in Series 2, some of that goes.
One more match, tournament will be over.
You can go back to being Prince Arthur.
We begin the romance between Arthur and Gwen
early on in the series.
The first kiss had to be this spectacular moment.
'It's always funny doing kisses with your mates, cos we've known each other for ages now'
so it's very comfortable.
It's so fairytale.
It's exactly what you thought it should be - it's this beautiful,
slow, romantic, backlit fairytale kiss.
I think it's about time.
But not everyone in Camelot holds such affections for Arthur,
and once again, there is a princely price on his royal head. He's here.
As is a common occurrence in Camelot, someone wants Arthur dead.
This time it comes in the form of Myror, played by Adrian Lester.
You are the most feared assassin in all the known lands.
Tell me, are you as ruthless as they say you are?
Arthur doesn't seem to have much luck - people are trying to kill him all the time!
So Adrian tries to kill him.
Adrian Lester - he's completely genius! He's so gentle and sweet,
and then he can kill you with his little finger.
'He's fun to play - he's a man of few words,'
he's simply a cold-blooded assassin.
Wherever I seem to go, I seem to be followed...by some guy.
If you don't see me ever again, it was him.
Sneaking into rooms, down corridors,
jumping over walls, and I love doing that stuff.
When I read the script I thought this gives me an opportunity to actually mover around.
Adrian is formidable on camera. He's Ninjaesque.
He's great. He's very menacing in the role of Myror. I think we've seen him in a lot of things before
here he's a nice, friendly guy
and this is something where you'll see a different side of Mr Lester.
So how are you enjoying the filming?
Uh, yeah...just eating lunch on my own and enjoying it.
Bit of a loner, really, aren't you? Yeah,
sometimes I just like my own space
and just to like, um...
Whoa, where did he come from?
Thankfully, a brave Bradley survived lunch
and the epic jousting scenes could continue, and it was hugely exciting for everyone involved.
They filmed that all with stuntmen, so none of us were working.
It was a huge set up with a lot of cameras
and the four of us weren't working, but we came in to work,
sat down and spent the whole day watching it cos it's so amazing.
The jousting was like playing three-dimensional chess.
It was unbelievably complicated.
What you see was actually done. None of it was computer generated.
The guys actually do flip off the back of horses
and the lances shatter when they get hit in the face.
It was hugely exciting to watch the French horse guys.
It was absolutely astonishing. They are so fearless
that I was sitting there having kittens.
They literally throw themselves off horses, they bounce on their necks,
nothing seems to faze them.
Today you will fight for glory and for honour. For this is the ultimate test of courage.
We got to sit on the horse and pull the mask down
and then the stunt man does the crazy stuff and then I lift up
and look a little tired. And great that it will look like it was me doing some of these crazy things.
They seem like they're made of iron - lances bouncing off them.
That has got to hurt. The stunt guys that are on the show are absolutely fantastic.
The stuff they were doing - falling off horses, getting hit by lances,
splintering wood and getting dragged on the stirrups by the horses,
at ridiculous speed.
I think whenever you see it on screen, you don't see how fast it is,
but when you're watching it, the speed of it is unbelievable.
Whoa! Oh!
Boom!
BRADLEY: The excitement was there for everyone else,
and I was just sat there going... I have to contain this frustration that I'm not doing that.
You have to do the stunts for real.
When a guy comes off a horse cos somebody's slammed a lance into him,
it really is very, very dangerous.
Obviously, the first thing with the jousting was safety.
The stunts were very carefully controlled.
These guys have been throwing themselves off horses for years,
so you can say to them, "On this shot, I need you to throw yourself off, land on your head
"with a lance splintering all over the place," and they go, "No problem."
The horsemen were so amazing at what they could do and so professional,
that it added such a level of realism to the joust
that was fantastic.
One of them did crack a rib while they were doing it.
The ends of the jousts are balsa wood, so they shatter,
but this didn't shatter right and a piece of wood knocked him.
Everyone was going, "This guy's such a good actor. He looks like he's really in pain."
Oh my God, he's broken his rib!
I think he's feeling that one. The armour's plastic,
and he'd actually his rib but carried on and we found out after that he'd broken his rib
and you're like...
All the stunt guys come over and start laughing at him,
and we're all going, "No, he's going to die."
And they get up and they don't want to tell each other that they've hurt themselves!
He was French and I said to him the day after, "Are you all right, mate?
"You took a bit of a hit there."
"Some real method acting there," tried to lighten it up with a joke.
And he went, "Don't laugh."
And I went...
"OK, yeah, no problem."
It wasn't just the stunt men that had a rough ride.
For the production team, bringing a big tournament to the small screen was also a battle.
To make these medieval Merlin pictures took some modern post-production.
From last year creating a small stadium,
we thought if we could create that, why not create a massive stadium
that looks like Gladiator, the movie?
That's difficult, cos we can't, on TV money, begin to build that.
We basically shot the jousting on a football pitch,
and we just had one small block of seating.
It took us 12 hours to shoot all the elements, just to build the crowd,
so we spent a day doing that. Then we put in, in post, everything else,
the castle was put in, the crowds put in,
all the seating's put in. It added such a level
of realism to the joust that was fantastic.