I recently watched Labyrinth on TV because CW purchased the rights to broadcast it in the US. I originally heard about the series over a year ago because Tom Felton was in it and he promoted it through twitter and facebook. I only knew it was based off a novel by Kate Mosse of the same name and I never got my hands on the book. Time passed and I forgot about it until the season finale of Supernatural (what an ending!). The commercials went on and I saw a glimpse of Tom Felton in armor and I was like "What? Is that Labyrinth!" Unfortunately when I was watching Labyrinth, I missed one hour of part one and I couldn't watch part two at all because CW had bought the time slot for baseball. Luckily, CW has a lot of their shows online.
Labyrinth has a very good idea behind the story in the first place. It's using the familiar Holy Grail, but puts a twist on it. The Crusades become the historical background for part of the story and it uses the story of the Cathars which I had no knowledge of at all. A lot of details were pretty straightforward. Cathars were among the many Christan groups that were persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church and many had been sent to death during the Inquisition. Labyrinth had a small group of Cathars that were being protected in Carcassonne, France in 1209 by Viscount Trencavel played by Tom Felton. He was a secondary character in the story and Tom Felton did very well for this role. He didn't stand out in particular, but he didn't deter the story. Labyrinth at times will jump towards the present, 2012, in the timeline to tell the story of Alice Tanner.
Alais and Alice being the protagonists received more screen time and their relationship in the story unfolded very nicely. I really like the parallels between the past and the present characters and how the cinematography blends the two together so that you would never distinguish the two too starkly from one another. Alais and Alice are parallels to each other as they both carried an important task due to their bloodline, but Alais is much more outspoken whereas Alice was more timid and in search of answers. Oriane and Marie-Cecile are the antagonists of the past and present carrying treacherous ambition except that Marie-Cecile succeeded in her goal and Oriane did not. Both were very dangerous women to be around. Guilhem and Will are the "knights" of the past and present that contributed to protecting the secret of the grail. Just by looking at their names, Guilhem and Will and Alais and Alice, the descendants were meant to succeed the predecessors.
Part one of the mini-series served as exposition and setting up the story. Things got bloodier in part two with all the deaths that happened. The deaths of many characters from the past timeline was really heart wrenching. I will not spoil who died. The deaths of the characters represented the sacrifices made to protect the secret of the grail and the duty they all followed. Promises that were kept in the distant past carried out hundreds of years later. Character development in both parts were not too prominent. Most characters remained fairly the same except for Alais, Guilhem, and Sadje. It was fairly easy to predict what each character was going to do so it wasn't much of a mystery to me. Even though Alice was one of the protagonists, all she did throughout the story was trying to find the connection between her and the grail by asking questions and escaping her pursuers. Oriane and Marie-Cecile became very single sided antagonists, villains pursuing the grail simply for longevity and killing people while at it. It was nice to watch Labyrinth, but it's not something that had too much of an impact on me.
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