Robin Hood (TV Series)

On April 29, 2008, I saw the BBC's Robin Hood show and was less than impressed.

 

The BBC has a show, now in its second season, about Robin Hood. I saw ads for it online and was intrigued. I like historical fiction and thought this might be entertaining. Well, I have now seen the premiere episode to the second season and am aghast at what the British have done to Robin Hood. This is Robin Hood meets Xena. There is entirely too much kicking, jumping, spinning, flipping, and martial arts. In the few battles we see, though all are armed with swords or bows, no one is wounded. To make matters even worse, Maid Marian is now the Nightwatcher (or something like that) who stalks about in a mask and subdues guards with her unarmed fighting skills; one might describer her as a Ninja. Though it is incredibly obvious from the fit of her costume that the Nightwatcher is a woman, everyone refers to the Nightwatcher as `him.' Toward the end of the show, Robin has an arrow aimed at the Sheriff who is only a few feet away, a sure kill. However, he learns that King John has made a deal with the Sheriff to utterly destroy Nottingham (slaying every man, woman, and child) if the Sheriff should die an unnatural death. Oh, how convenient. Robin cannot kill the Sheriff in the series, only his lackeys. Talk about lazy writers. Another annoying thing was when one character told another to `Jigger off!' That was such a popular expression in the 12th Century. Much of the dialogue was no different than it might be if the show were set in modern times. Painful to watch, best avoided.

 

Despite my own warning, I watched another episode some weeks later where Robin swears off killing (not that he had killed anyone in anything I had yet seen), announcing that he can't stomach it anymore: Robin Hood the Pacifist.  He needed to abandon the freedom fighting and just become a hunter.  The show managed to go one more season, running from 2006 to 2009, and is well-rated (7.6) on IMDb.  Maybe I encountered a rare bad episode.  None of the actors have become famous yet.