With a voice like coagulated honey and inflection like the dames of old (RIP Patricia Routledge), John Hurt told stories. Not just stories, but Stories enunciated like Salieri said Music. Muooscik. 

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My first introduction to John Hurt was also in my first private introduction into television. Walking into my childhood bedroom tucked in base foothills of Highway 32, you would see my pink bespeckled sheets and a red ikea Lack upon which a thick old television sat. On that Tv I put in the dvd of Merlin (2008 ) and I laid enraptured. Colin Morgan plays coy and clumsy Merlin as a young man/boy and Bradley James as the handsome Arthur, but what strikes you first is in the introduction. The deep British drawl of Sir John Hurt cuts through "In a time of magic, the destiny of a great kingdom lies in the hands of a young boy, his name... Merlin". His voice is of the Dragon and his voice will make your hair stand on end.

 

Hurt and his voice stand out in equal fortitude in Jim  Henson's The Storyteller, an  anthology series where, in a prosthetic nose, he tells some good old fashioned fairy tales by the fire to a puppet dog (Not puppy dog).

 

While in my favorite acted position in Oxford Murders, an academic murder mystery as the name describes, he plays Arthur Seldom to Elijah Wood's Martin. It has a potent atmosphere and sultry scenes that reminds one of Uncovered (1994) starring Kate Beckinsale.