My Christmas present to myself last year was “Robin of Sherwood”. They were on special at the mall, and though I’ve only got the first two seasons (thirteen episodes in all, which totals up to one season of our own show) I had a good time watching what the back of the DVD box calls “one of the landmark television series of the 1980s and, for many, the definitive treatment of the Robin Hood legend.”
It’s going to be tricky reviewing this show because I’m inevitably going to be comparing it to our own version, and honestly, despite the fact that I can objectively see that RoS is “better” than RH, I still prefer our show; not because of the difference in quality, but because of the general way in which the story is told and the characters are portrayed.
In a nutshell, our show had overarching stories that progressed as the season went on. Now, I must say that I didn’t always like our season-arcs and that they were often aborted in rather frustrating ways, but I still appreciated the fact that they were there. Events happened, things changed, people grew. The situation at the end of the show wasn’t the same as it was at the beginning, (it was much worse, but at least it wasn’t the same) and one of the biggest advantages of television shows over films is that they can ultimately tell a much longer, more complex and detailed story.
On the other hand, RoS is made up of episodes (in the first two seasons at least) that could be watched completely out of order with no real confusion to the viewer or harm done to the show’s continuity. Essentially, there is no overarching story; just a series of episodes in which the outlaws go about their daily business. It’s not a bad thing by any means, but I prefer to have a longer, evolving story. Essentially, there is no “bigger picture” at work here.
Another interesting aspect is that dialogue is deliberately kept to a minimum, and characters are revealed through their actions, body language and fighting techniques. In terms of its characters, they are more like archetypes than three-dimensional people. Again, this is not a bad thing, and it works well in a straightforward retelling when the good guys are completely good, and the bad guys are completely bad. When it comes to this legend, I've always felt that the fact that the outlaws are in fact outside the law is all the moral ambiguity that it needs. But oddly enough, despite my complaining about how I would have preferred it had they not tried to “darken” certain characters in RH 2006, there’s also something to be said against the blandness of characters. Here the characters are likable and sympathetic; but there’s no way one could ever have an in depth discussion about the finer nuances of their personalities!
The idea behind this particular Robin Hood is that the name (“the Hooded Man”) is a destiny that you inherit. Now, this worked to the show’s advantage given that Michael Praed left the show and was replaced by Sean Connery’s son at the end of the second season, but this was by all accounts a very last minute decision, and so I was surprised at how well the situation was accidentally set-up in the first episodes with the name of “Robin Hood” being more of an idea and a symbol than an actual person.
According to Richard Carpenter, his desire was to create the “mythology” of Robin Hood, and basically the Hooded Man is chosen by Herne (who Carpenter describes as “the Merlin character”) to defend the people when he deems that there is injustice in the land. The major difference between this Robin and our Robin is their backgrounds. Ours was a noble, and this one is a serf. As for Loxley, there’s no such place. It gets destroyed in the very first episode. So wow, there goes most of our Robin’s motivation! These two things actually change a surprising number of things about the basic characterization.
As a nobleman, our Robin had something that was worth fighting for that made his efforts personal and not just for “the principle of it”. Being a nobleman also gave him an innate sense of authority. You can understand why people went to him for help, as they would have been doing the same thing even if he wasn’t an outlaw. Here, Robin is more of a “superhero” in regards to the fact that he’s doing something he wouldn’t normally be doing in his ordinary life, with some vaguely supernatural publicity to go with his new calling.
Furthermore, for this reason, outlawry is just a way of life for this Robin. Our Robin was doing it with the thought in the back of his mind that it was all just temporary and one day he’d get to go back to being lord of the manor (in fact, it’s what Allan points out to him) whereas here, what Robin does is what he plans to do for the rest of his life. There is no “higher purpose” or “reward at the end”. His motivation and what he does are one and the same thing.
There are other differences in manner and temperament. I suppose this Robin is less “larger than life” in terms of his personality, he’s less quick to rush into dangerous situations and he knows when he’s lost a particular battle. He’s less mischievous, less assertive and less forceful, and he seems older somehow and more easy-going. The interesting thing is in comparing their “rousing speeches.” Jonas Armstrong was excellent at delivering these with fire and passion, but Michael Praed is slightly more subdued about it: he relies on reasoning rather than righteousness and at times almost sounds as though he’s coaxing people into his way of thinking. He certainly never does things just for the fun of it and he’s not at all reckless. You’d probably live longer serving this Robin.
This Robin also leaves a man behind during his escape from a dungeon cell. Now granted, the man was crazy and wanted to remain in prison, but I still can’t imagine our Robin doing this. He would carry him out on his back (even though the door to the prison is in the ceiling) and then given him therapy until he was ready to embrace the world again. Or at least get Much to do it.
Also, watching this show made me realise just how little our Robin wore disguises. A hood doesn’t count, and I don’t think the show ever really made the most of the legendary Robin Hood wandering around Nottingham dressed as an old man, a monk, a beggar, a nobleman and so on, because this one gets to do it all the time.
In any case, I liked Michael Praed’s Robin Hood. Like the writer/director on the commentary says, he’s the right blend of the romantic and the realistic, as well as embodying the spirit of the anarchist that knows how to stick it to the Man.
One thing I always look forward to in any adaptation of “Robin Hood” is how they handle the Robin/Marian relationship. Will it be love at first sight? Will they get off on the wrong foot? Do they already know each other before the show starts, or will they meet for the first time on screen? There’s something unique about these two legendary lovers in that you know that they’re going to end up together but (unlike Romeo or Juliet, for example) the way that they get there is completely up to the writers themselves. I think Robin and Marian’s meeting here is one of my favourites.
He’s on the loose in the castle, trying to find somewhere to hide, and he ducks into Marion’s room. She’s asleep in bed and wakes up when he enters, and for just a second it looks like she’s going to scream…but of course, after Robin locks them both inside, Marion covers for him and calls to the guards to keep moving. But the way the actors play the scene, it almost looks as the two of them are recognising each other, like they know that they’re Robin and Marion and therefore belong together.
The amazing thing about this particular show is that it completely jettisons Marion’s use as a spy in the castle and the courtship period between Robin and Marion. There is no love triangle whatsoever, and the two of them marry at the end of the two-part first episode. Wow. Can you image our show doing that? It would have destroyed half the plots! Here, Marion joins the gang straight away and the two of them are husband and wife for the duration of the show. It was possibly quite a risky move, having the couple potentially “jump the shark” by ending any romantic tension between them early on, but I guess that sort of thing simply wasn’t what the show’s writers were interested in.
Instead we see them as a married couple, and it’s such an unexpected move that it’s difficult to really describe. It’s not bad by any means, but because it’s love at first sight, it’s hard to really get a grip on what exactly they mean to each other and how they relate to one another (even the Errol Flynn version had Marian only gradually warming up to him, giving us a sense of development and a change of heart). Here the relationship sways constantly between a true love fairytale and an old married couple; at times these two didn’t quite seem to fit together, though at other times they made a great team.
So, apart from their first meeting, this isn’t what I’d consider the best Robin/Marian relationship on screen, though I found it rather fascinating in regards to the fact that we get to see them function not only as a couple who commit to each other very early on, (foregoing the whole “falling in love” process) but as a husband and wife team. At least they got some years of happiness before tragedy strikes.
As for Marion herself…HAIR! Okay, now that that’s out of the way, Marion (spelt with an O) is a noblewoman as usual, and is the ward of the Sheriff and even younger than ours: about seventeen or eighteen. In a nice nod to the legend, she’s the daughter of Sir Richard of the Lee (a character who was in one of the first ballads concerning Robin Hood) who was killed in the Crusades…or was he?
We first see her when she’s tending her bees, and there’s a lovely reveal when she takes off her beekeeper’s mask and hood. She’s the typical damsel in distress in the first episode in which she’s a pawn to the men around her, and eventually rescued by Robin to come and live with him in the forest. Many discussions of our show have been about whether and to what extent Robin represented freedom to Marian; here there is no question that that’s what he is to her. She hates living in the castle, and takes to the forest like a fish into water (in fact, there’s a lovely moment when Marion is leaving Castle Nottingham for the Abbey of Kirklees in which she smiles blissfully to herself, knowing that she’s free, even if it’s just for a little while).
The best thing about this Marion is that she’s an essential part of the gang, and yet the writers don’t try to turn her into some super-ninja-warrior. She would be fairly useless in a straight fight, and so she never engages in any. She’s swift and agile and knows how to handle a bow and arrow, but her job is backup the men and watch their backs - not charge into the fray yelling “girl power!” and nearly get herself killed.
To be honest, the idea of the Night Watchman always bugged me, as did the rather unbelievable physical prowess that was accorded to Marian and Kate (I’ll never, ever get over her taking down that armed guard by poking him with her bare hands). Here, they take a much more realistic view of what Marion is capable of, and as such she’s much more relatable in regards to what a woman could do in any given situation. It’s a perfect balance of realistic femininity and practical usefulness: Marion doesn’t just hang out at camp, and she’s isn’t just Robin’s love interest. She never becomes a liability; instead she acts sensibly within the boundaries of what a woman would actually be capable of in that time and place.
Personality wise, she’s feisty but not obnoxiously so, and I’m not sure whether this was a deliberate move on the actress’s part, but she always seems so wonderfully bored with everything. That doesn’t really sound like a compliment, and it’s rather hard to describe, but this is a very a calm and languorous Marion despite her youth, and it works in the character’s favour.
(But seriously, her hair could be its own character. It’s enormous!)
Team Castle is made up of the Sheriff of Nottingham (who sounds and looks almost exactly like Tim Curry) and Guy of Gisborne, who are very easily described as the prototypes of our Sheriff and Guy - that is, you can tell that the writers watched RoS and based their characterisation of Vaizey and Guy on these two portrayals of the bad guys. Their relationship is very similar as well in that Guy works for the Sheriff, but really doesn’t enjoy his job. However, it doesn’t go quite as deep as ours did, in that the Sheriff has no psychological hold over Guy (I don’t think this Guy has enough of a brain for the Sheriff to have power over) but the slightly squicky homoerotic subtext is still there…
Gisborne has to dry the Sheriff after he has a bath: “Rub me dry. Harder Gisborne.” That’ s an actual line. Later they have a bath together: “Rub my back. Lower.” For real. Odd how homosexuality is less of a big deal these days, and yet we’re more conscious about it, for even though it is historically correct that people had shared baths in those days, I don’t think that our show, even with all its Ho Yay, would have ever done anything like this.
So Guy and the Sheriff here are basically more subtle (in terms of performance) predecessors of our Guy and Sheriff, yet they’re also much less complicated. I actually came into this show (I’m not sure why) thinking that this Guy was the first time in which the character was a more three-dimensional villain who was given some degree of sympathy. As it turned out, there was far less than I anticipated, but at times there were moments when you felt sorry for him, despite his blatant arrogance and cruelty - mainly due to the fact that he’s still firmly under the Sheriff’s thumb, and because he tries a lot harder than our Guy to get rid of the outlaws.
In this version, I guess he’s meant to be a Norman due to his blonde hair and big blue eyes (although the writers don’t really go into the Norman/Saxon conflict all that much which is probably just as well considering they were fairly well integrated by King Richard’s time) and he also has the background of a dispossessed noble who is in a job he hates in order to get back some degree of power. He’s definitely a bad guy though, and the writers give him his kick the dog moment when he kills Robin’s foster parents and burns down the mill.
Robert Addie is probably quite jealous of Richard Armitage’s Guy, as he says in one of the interviews that he tried to garner some sympathy for Guy and not just have him be one of the baddies - though admits that this was difficult considering that the scripts simply didn’t call for it, and that each story ends with him defeated and Robin triumphant. However, it was an interesting insight, and I wonder if it had anything to do with the way our Guy was written. We also have the actors here to thank for the Sheriff/Guy dynamic, in which Nickolas Grace says that he decided the relationship would play out like a private school’s prefect/bullied kid. Guy has to do his dirty work, and when it goes wrong it's his fault, when it goes right, it's because of the Sheriff.
Likewise, Guy also has about the same amount of success with the ladies that ours does. There is one episode, “The Children of Israel” that had me in stitches, though it’s only funny if you’re knowledgeable of Richard Armitage’s Gisborne. Basically, Guy rather fancies a young Jewish girl that comes to the castle with her father, and when the Sheriff instigates a riot against Jews in Nottingham, Guy makes sure that she and her family are warned so that they can make their escape. Sounds rather sweet, doesn’t it?
Except that Guy catches up to the girl and her family and kidnaps her, informing her that they’re going to get married, isn’t she pleased? Obviously she isn’t pleased, and when she points out that he was the leader of the riot that has terrorised her people, he’s like: “Huh? What’s that got to do with you? I saved you, didn’t I?” She actually gives him a “you suck” speech, in which she says: “Everything about you disgusts me, your cruelty and your arrogance and your ignorance and your conceit. How did you think that I could marry you?” And yet he’s completely baffled at her anger, and not particularly bothered by it either, telling her that she’ll come around in time. Kidnapping her is the only solution!
Actual quotes from Guy in this instance: “You’re hysterical!” “You need a man to take care of you.” “What’s the matter with you?”
I mean, wow. It’s like the entirety of our Guy and Marian in a single episode.
Sheriff Robert of Nottingham (Nickolas Grace) is not quite as entertaining as ours in that he isn’t as funny; he is, however, rather more menacing. He gets the same long, angry rants as ours does, but the way in which they are delivered mean that he poses a considerable threat to Robin and the outlaws, as well as everyone else in general. I think the difference is that our Sheriff was “affably evil” and more of a pantomime villain than anything else. He was certainly capable of cruelty, but it was usually by ordering other people to do it for him.
This Sheriff is less comical and yet still incredibly slimy and nasty. There is no looking forward to seeing what he would say or do next, no grotesque fascination at his complete lack of boundaries. Instead, this Sheriff is a thinker and a plotter who uses brain-power to try and defeat the outlaws and at times often comes out better off (or at least gets a minor consolation prize; as in one episode the outlaws save the girl who is being forced to marry the Sheriff, but the Sheriff manages to hang on to her dowry). He also manages to be the first Sheriff - that I’m aware of - that actually succeeds in killing Robin.
* Update: as of the end of "Robin Hood, 2006", we can also count Sheriff Isabella as a Sheriff who has successfully killed Robin Hood.
In terms of personality, both Sheriffs have a very bad temper (though ours ran more hot and cold; this one is perpetually surly) and I think this Sheriff coined the “Gis-BORNE!” yell. It is a bit of a one-note character though. Every single line is spoken with a sneer and at times he’s too unbelievably nasty (of course, so was ours, though the very fact that Keith Allen deliberately played him as so unbelievably larger than life is what made the character work in the first place). For example, this Sheriff really is a woman hater, and the worst thing that’s ever happened to him is when he’s told he has to marry a sixteen year old virgin. He actually says to the distraught girl that she has to: “dream of tomorrow’s consummation.” Geez! Not even our sheriff was this much of a sleeze! Essentially, Allen’s Sheriff is one you love to hate; this one, you just really, really dislike.
There’s also less of a “bond” between Robin and the Sheriff. In our one, Robin was constantly sneaking into the Sheriff’s room and having personal conversations with him and so on. The subtext in that the Sheriff rather fancies Robin and lines like the Sheriff sighing: “he doesn’t know me at all,” and so on are completely absent here. The two of them are virtually strangers who only come into contact a couple of times, and as such the “personal” element to their fight is missing. Therefore the Sheriff is mainly bouncing off of Guy and Abbott Hugo, his brother. Hugo is the character that embodies the corruption of the church at the time; not innately cruel, just sort of nonchalant about everything and certainly not a “spiritual” man.
Much is very different from our Much, though in many ways quite similar, mainly in regards to his relationship with Robin. Like ours, he’s closer to Robin than any other character save Marion. For us, it was because he was his loyal servant; here it’s because he’s his little brother. This means that they’re close, and there’s a nice aspect to one episode in which all the outlaws abandon Robin except for Marion and Much (and Tuck, though one gets the sense he’s staying more for Marion than Robin).
However, the downside to this is that Much is kept around even when he really shouldn’t be. Basically, he’s the Kate: whiny, useless and definitely more trouble than he’s worth. His favourite words are: “I can’t!” and “Robin, help me!” and that about sums it up. Little did he know that in another life he’d be yelling: “KATE! KATE!”
In his defence, he is in fact an outlaw (and not just a faux-outlaw who decides to tagalong because he wants to hang out with Robin) and there’s the sense that the outlaws don’t really know what else to do with him. He is tolerable because the outlaws know that he’s fairly useless, and so make him do menial chores and often tell him off when he does something stupid. It’s this self-awareness to the character’s shortcomings that makes all the difference; no one is idiotically pretending that they absolutely have to keep him around.
He also has quite a cute relationship with Marion, and the two of them often hang out. There’s one scene where she’s cutting his hair, and another when she’s tending his wounds, or when he’s just fallen asleep on her shoulder, and there’s the indication that they have a lot in common in regards to their feelings for Robin and the fact that they’re not “manly men” like everyone else.
So yeah, anyway - he’s the tagalong kid that gets in trouble and needs to be rescued, and he fills in the role of the poacher at the beginning of the show that kick-starts the whole adventure (so in this regard, he’s the same as Much in the Errol Flynn version; though as you’ll recall, it was Allan in our version).
Also, he plays a flute.
Will Scarlett is a complete psycho, and it’s awesome. Basically, this is what our Will would be if something ever happened to Djaq, and in fact this Will is still smarting over the fact that his wife was killed by soldiers. The revenge he took is the reason why he’s in jail the first time we meet him. We’ve seen our Will crack a couple of times, but there’s no going back for this one. In another nice nod to the tradition, Will says that his last name was once “Scathlock” but now he’s going by “Scarlett” to match the anger inside him.
I’ve heard it said that Ray Winstone’s Scarlett is the best one they’ve ever had, and though I dearly love our intense little carpenter, I can definitely see what they mean. He’s the outlaw that you’d be afraid of if you came across them in Sherwood, and there’s a real element of danger in him. At times he’s very still and you can see that he’s thinking some dark thoughts, and then when he fights you can tell that he’s quite enjoying the bloodshed.
He’s also the character who acts as the second-in-command to Robin who thinks that everyone would be better off if he was in charge. He’s the one that rushes into trouble, who insists that he can do things without Robin’s presence, who looses his temper and marches off into the forest by himself, who gets into a couple of fights with their beloved leader. It’s a stock character really - the one that always rebels against immediate authority and is a little bit resentful of the hero who’s in charge of things (so I guess there’s a little of our Allan-a-Dale in him), but it’s always good to have this type of character on board so that there’s a voice of disagreement. No one wants to let Robin have it all his way, even if Scarlett was pretty much always in the wrong (but not always!) whenever he has one of his minor mutinies.
Little John is possibly the biggest John I’ve seen in terms of physicality, and whereas our one was sort of the team dad who looks after everyone without them ever realising it, this one is considerably more wild whilst still performing the same function. He wears a big shaggy coat which makes it look as though he’s skinned an Ewok, and there’s not much of the “gentle giant” about him…he’s more like a fierce dog that they’ve managed to tame.
I’ve realised that Little John is a very difficult character to write and to play, usually because he’s played by an older man whose job almost always comes down to “the tough guy.” He’s an essential part of the legend, but quite often he’s not given anything particularly interesting to do, particularly in later years in which the job of Robin’s best friend and confidant is usually given to Much or Will. The fact that he’s also an older man means that he’s usually given a family instead of a love interest, and you know how much the process of “falling in love” trumps “already in love” when it comes to writing.
In short, Little John is always short-changed in character development, usually because he’s already a grown man and thus has no more learning or growing up to do. So like most Little Johns, this one is likeable, but not necessarily interesting. Here they give him a bit of love interest called (believe it or not) Meg, who he visits at Wickham and who he seems to have a rather casual relationship with - though she’s always hinting at an imminent marriage. Likewise, they also make him slightly vulnerable in certain scenes when one of the gang isn’t doing what they should: he’s the most likely to be upset when they’re not a strong team, and is definitely the “backbone” of the gang that keeps them all together.
Nasir the Saracen is awesome. It’s like there’s a rule that all the Saracen characters must be made of awesome, and yet they never once (IMO) cross the line into being Gary Stus/Mary Sues. Or, perhaps they do, but they are the most charismatic, kick-ass ones you can imagine, and so you can’t help but like them.
RoS is famous for quite a few things, and one of them is definitely the idea of a Saracen outlaw. The funniest thing was that he was originally meant to be a minor character who died at the end of the first episode, as a henchman of one of the villains; however, the guy that they hired to play him was apparently so charismatic and talented that the producers ended up telling the writer to keep him on. That means of course, that a last minute decision by a producer called Paul Knight is the reason why we have Djaq. So in the first few episodes, Nasir has absolutely no lines due to the fact that he wasn’t even in the script and only action sequences to work with. However, this ends up working incredibly well, since you get really invested in the hope that one day he’ll actually say something (and there’s always something about the quiet ones, isn’t there…)
After shooting in the arrow tournament and then fighting Robin to a stand still, he eventually seems to catch on to the idea that he’s been working for one of the bad guys, and ends up joining the team in the coolest way possible: after the outlaws shoot fiery arrows into the lake in remembrance of those that have died, he steps in behind them and shoots another over their heads before smiling at them, all “hey, I’m on the team now.” Only he never speaks, and he says it all with his eyes.
The interesting thing about the Saracen character is that they’re all so different, perhaps due to the fact that they aren’t really part of the original canon. As such, the writers have more room to do what they like - such as Azeem in “Prince of Thieves” who was honour-bond to stick with Robin until he saved her life, or Djaq who was introduced as a prisoner of war. In Nasir’s case, he’s a bit of a mystery to the point where I’m not even sure why or how he’s in England. They give him more back-story as he goes on, writing him as an assassin who has deliberately abandoned his own people, but it all remains quite mysterious (at least in the first two seasons; maybe that changed in the third). He’s seemingly there, simply because he wants to be and he’s definitely the most kick-ass of all the outlaws: dual swords, tracking skills, agility, stealth, knife-throwing - he’s a one-man army. In case you can’t tell, I have a total crush on him.
At one stage he says his full name and it’s about twenty syllables long. I’m totally stealing that gag for Djaq in my rewrite.
Tuck is relatively low-key, though obviously more present that in our version! He’s the typical gentle soul, with a love of food (though not gluttonous) and very quietly tolerant with all the paganism going on around him. Honestly, there’s not a heck of a lot to say about this Tuck: he’s not quite as bad tempered as other Tucks (my favourite are the ones that give Robin a little trouble, as in the Errol Flynn and Kevin Costner versions), whereas here he’s very gentle and quiet - so quiet that I can’t really recall him making any sort religious speech or moralising, rather he just crosses himself a couple of times and is clearly meant to be the good side of the church. Within the group himself, his role is definitely the Thinker, and its noted a couple of times that he’s the only one besides Marion who can read or write.
There’s a cute line in which he is asked: “Why are you with them, brother?” to which he answers: “I like them.” You get the feeling that he’s more of a tag-a-long than the others, (though he’s useful in a fight; and he’s definitely not a healthy amount of guile when it comes to besting people in combat) and is around in order to look after the outlaws rather than actually be an outlaw and help people - because he could do that just as easily without living in the forest.
I think that in this case, in a large ensemble cast, some characters didn’t get quite the same amount of attention and Tuck was more of a background character. I can’t recall that there was ever a Tuck-centric episode (in the first two seasons at least). In was nice to have him present though, especially after two Tuck-free seasons on our show, and it was interesting that they followed historical correctness by calling him “brother” Tuck instead of “friar” (although they do slip in later episodes and start using “friar”).
Alan appears for one episode, and he has the traditional story given to him from the ballads (which in our show was given to John of York and Beatrice) and things play out as you’d expect. He’s a lute player and a drama queen as per the legends, so he has very little in common with our Allan, but at least one Alan got the girl and his happy ending.
There’s also a reoccurring character called Edward who is basically the town spokesperson and village elder of Wickham (which is the village that takes the place of Loxley as the village in which most of the bad things happen). He’s wise and protective, and it’s the right mix of standing up to the Man without needlessly antagonising anyone.
As in most portrayals of “Robin Hood”, the gang dynamic is one of the most interesting and best parts of the legend. In this show, there are plenty of scenes which are solely devoted to the outlaws just hanging out in the forest: playing games, practicing archery, all that sort of thing. It’s a bit like watching a documentary: life as an outlaw.
It’s really lovely really, the way it all plays out, and it’s fascinating to watch the actors perform as they are still in character all throughout, whether they’re mucking around or in an actual swordfight. This is particularly obvious with Scarlett: he fights brutally and he often cheats during their games. Nasir is an assassin so he has the most fluid fighting style and isn’t above slitting throats or stabbing people in the back. Tuck on the other hand, in one scene when he’s tipping people into the river with his stave from atop a log, uses trickery in order to get the upper hand - and in another scene he blesses a soldier, forcing him to put his head down, before head butting him.
The heart of the gang is obviously Marion, and they keep up a nice balance of looking after her without coddling her. It’s actually very sweet at times; Tuck always calls her “little flower,” Much often leans on her or teams up with her in fights, and even Scarlett calms down in her presence and comforts her when she’s upset. Often Marion and Nasir watch the goings-on of the boys rough housing with an air like “we are so above all this,” and Nasir especially seems quietly watchful of her.
On the other end of the scale is Scarlett, who often mutinies against Robin’s decisions and goes off on his own (ala Allan-a-Dale) to make money by mugging various travellers that may or may not deserve it! Most - if not all - of the quarrels in the gang come from Scarlett head-butting other characters and acting without reason.
It’s really in the gang scenes where you learn the most about the characters, simply through their body language and the way they talk to each other. On the whole, the acting is pretty good, although it did seem at times that they were more like stage actors than television ones: it’s hard to explain, but there’s something more formal about the way the roles are played.
The major difference in shows (and where RoS is undoubtedly superior to ours) is in the atmosphere and scope. It always seemed to me that our show, even when the scenes were set outside, was incredibly cramped. Places like the interior of Nottingham Castle were clearly sets, and other areas like Locksley and Nottingham were built for the sake of the show. There was a certain amount of artificiality about the setting, and it wasn’t really until season three that directors actually began to realise the beauty of Hungary and give us some decent establishing shots of Sherwood. There was no sense of space, of the immensity of either Sherwood or Nottingham, or even England itself. You could never imagine anyone ever getting lost.
In RoS the directors utilize their locations to the fullest extent. This show actually takes place in real castles that have been standing for hundreds of years and there are scenes in which characters have to cross vast tracts of land. Getting somewhere actually took time, there was enough room to have several rather dangerous-looking stunts with horses, there was a place for hundreds of extras, and the actors actually moved in the immense space around them. They scramble up castle walls and jump down into haystacks and race across hills - and I know you’re thinking that the same things happened on our show, but it’s honestly not the same. Here Sherwood feels more like an actual character, and the outlaws feel like a part of nature. They live in the forest, not in camps. We see rivers, caves, hillsides, valleys, crags, and throughout it all there is changing weather (though never snow; come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a Robin Hood who has to put up with snow).
Anyway, it's not just the same location over and over again and there’s just a much larger scope going on here, which makes the show feel more epic and more realistic at the same time. Also, everyone looks smelly and dirty, which sort of takes away modernist feel that our show had - but at least there are no yellow cardigans!
Another big thing is the mysticism inherent in the stories, but it’s actually not as prominent as I thought it would be. According to Richard Carpenter, he wanted to “mythologize” the Robin Hood legends, and it’s rather interesting how he manages it, by making several obvious connections between the Robin Hood legends and the mythology of the time concerning natural worship and so on. The main aspect I guess is the presence of Herne the Hunter, who I’m sure most of you will know is one of the old pagan gods, but it’s actually not the god himself who is present: it’s a shamanistic old man who claims to speak on his behalf and who walks around with a stag’s antlers on his head.
Therefore the audience is given a choice: whether to believe that it’s real magic or not. Herne could be a god, or he could be the conduit to the god, or it could just be a superstitious man who’s high on superstition and mushrooms. At other points there are things like devil-worship and spells, but it’s not only in keeping with the religious ideas of the time but its deliberately kept opaque. Because there are no “rules” to magic (that is, no one says a magic word and has something happen), rather it’s all much more mysterious and illusive, and when people are put under spells or enchantments, there’s again the sense that it has less to do with supernatural powers than it does with human influence, mind-control or drugs. No polyester demons make an appearance, and for the most part everything is kept relatively subtle. You’re more or less given the choice as to whether to believe all the magical elements are true or not, and to what extent they may be real.
Ultimately, the only thing that really matters is that the characters believe that it's real. Robin himself is always on the verge of mysticism, and as "the Hooded Man" he's rather a fey character himself, who has prophetic dreams and is very much connected to the natural cycles and the Green Man, although Robin himself doesn't quite understand his role.
There is one moment that does go overboard, in which Marion is shot by Gisborne but then magically revived when Robin takes her to a ring of standing stones. It’s a bit too over-the-top, (though again, it’s still kept relatively mysterious as to what exactly happens) but I actually watched the DVD commentary on this episode (actually, I’m watching it even as I type this) and the writer is right in the midst of agreeing with me! Other times, the mysticism doesn't quite seem to fit in with the more prosaic plots of the castle, although sometimes they collide - as when Guy goes out into Sherwood during a holy day and ends up getting his ass kicked by the trees like he's on some bad acid trip. I can't wait to do something similar to our Guy in my rewrite.
So if you’re put off RoS by the idea of the mysticism, I’d say not to be: it’s certainly nowhere near the levels of “Hercules” or “Xena”, it’s only once used as a deux ex machina, and it’s definitely not the defining aspect of this particular retelling. And I’ve seen versions of Robin Hood that come complete with forest elves!
However, the mysticism does have a bearing on the good/evil aspect of the story, and which is not always just the chaotic good of the outlaws versus the lawful evil of the castle, but rather there is the definite sense sometimes that the outlaws are pitted against the forces of Satanic evil and that they themselves represent the “natural” good of the forest and freedom (as opposed to Christianity). The oulaws themselves have no real "higher purpose" to what they do; unlike our outlaws, they don't go out looking for trouble, and they certainly don't have regular food drop-offs or planned-out techniques of robbing the rich. These outlaws are lovers of freedom more than anything, and their top priority is not to fight evil or feed the poor, but to simply remain free. They do not try to defend England or make it a better place by remaining loyal to King Richard: they just want to live each day as it comes and they are less "heroic" really, considering survival is their first instinct, not some noble cause.
The new twist on the basic good/evil dynamic means that some of the legends get a very interesting twist to them. The bridge-fight between Robin and Little John happens because John has been brainwashed by a sorcerer into hunting down Robin, and the silver arrow is an occult object for Herne (which was why it was changed for the first time from a golden arrow; to connect it to the moon). I guess this was part of Carpenter’s “mythologizing” process, and I felt it worked really well in giving certain aspects of the legends more depth and background. So Robin’s not just in the archery tournament for the sake of it; he’s actually there to deliberately try and get the arrow.
There’s the usual basics of the Robin Hood legend that always have to be present: Robin’s many disguises, the outlaws shrouding themselves in foliage (which is hilarious - they look like giant leaf monsters and twice as conspicuous as if they were simply standing still),
Likewise, the characters tend to avoid the “why don’t you just kill him” merry-go-round, simply by keeping the two sides separate. The outlaws stick to the forest and the bad guys to the castle, and there’s no leaping in and out of the Sheriff’s bed every night. Of course, there are still the usual liberties taken: Robin and his men kill off dozens of castle guards every episode, and there are usually a few anonymous outlaws tagging along with Robin that make up cannon fodder for their side. But at one stage Robin does state that it’s best not to kill Guy because they need him alive as a comparison to themselves, stating that he’s more use to them alive to keep themselves more sympathetic. As for the Sheriff, I don’t believe he ever gets close enough to kill him.
Out of everything, the timeline that this show uses is the most interesting. Our entire series was formed around waiting for King Richard to come back from the Crusades, but here, King Richard (played by John Rhys Davis) returns at the end of the first season. In the first episode of the second season he dies in Normandy and Prince John becomes King. I mean, wow. After all Robin’s devotion and the “bring the King home” stuff that happened in our show, it was quite a shock to see the royal politics happen so swiftly and with so little fanfare - our show never even got as far as bringing Richard home, and here he’s killed off-screen after one episode!
Even more interesting is the story with King Richard: Robin initially impresses Richard after he saves his life, who excuses him from outlawry and wants to take him fighting in Normandy. Robin has his ego inflated a bit and ends up being “the King’s fool” when he forgets his true calling and ends up having most of the outlaws abandon him. Again, you can’t really imagine this story ever taking place in our series - though I do wish there had been an episode in which Robin becomes disillusioned with Richard, particularly since RoS eventually plays Richard (in accordance with his real personality) as loosing his temper with Robin and quietly ordering his execution. Of course, the same thing happened on our show, though it didn’t work quite as well since Richard was played as confused and misled, and Robin forgives him instantly. Obviously, I much prefer this version.
But here, the politics really aren’t that important in RoS; it’s more about the outlaws themselves and their battles against the two extremes of mundane poverty and devil-worshippers. Oddly, the good/evil theme is both on a higher and lower level than it was on our show: feeding the poor was never the most important objective of our Robin (it was part and parcel of the bigger picture), and yet it was never taken so far that he was fighting the supernatural forces of darkness either.
Mostly the writing is extremely good, but there are some banal lines that deserve to be shared:
“What must I do?” “Act without thinking.” Sound advice.
“Why risk your life for an arrow?” “Because I must.” Um, okay.
Robin’s assessment of mercenaries: “Land pirates. The worst kind.” Buh?
The greatest strength of the show is probably its historical correctness. Richard Carpenter obviously know this period of history back to front, and practically everything is an accurate portrayal of the 11th century - in fact, listening to the commentary there was a brief discussion on one woman in a scene who was writing a letter. The actress was left-handed, and she was told to write with her right because no one would have ever used their left hand in those days. (Though strangely enough, they use the term “crusades” which is probably the most glaring anachronism). Everything else though, is an amazingly well researched and detailed look at how people of these times would have acted, dressed, thought and believed.
However if there is a great weakness to the show, I would have to say it’s the sluggish pacing. The important scenes whiz past, and the ones in which the outlaws are just walking from one location to another last forever. For instance, in the first episode we get a long pan over the archers lined up for the archery competition, and yet the story glosses over the character of the sorcerer, to the point where I barely figured out who he was.
Likewise, in the episode “Seven Poor Knights from Acre”…nothing really happens. I’m being a bit unfair considering this is probably the weakest episode of them all, but it really highlights the tediousness of certain scenes. Forty-five minutes of running time is taken up with a fairly simplistic story: a thief steals a McGuffin from the Knights Templar; they think it’s Robin Hood so they kidnap Much, Robin retrieves the McGuffin from the original thief and that’s the end. Therefore there’s a lot of padding to the episode, including outlaws running back and forth, Robin fighting a Knight for no reason, the thief going through every single key on a ring in order to open a locked chest, and a Knight’s cremation ceremony - the whole thing.
There are only so many plots in a Robin Hood series. Let’s see: there’s the one where a spy is blackmailed by the Sheriff into betraying the outlaws, the one where Robin is accused of a crime he didn’t commit, the one where someone is about to be hung and who needs to be saved, a political prisoner who needs to be released, a maiden that is being married against her will, and of course, lots and lots of money that needs stealing. Again, I don’t mean this to be a bad thing, but when watching I did begin to think “oh, it’s that episode.” There are few surprises in regard to the stories that you’re watching. Plus, you can also see where our show swiped certain ideas from RoS: believe it or not these guys use a zip-line, bad CGI bees and dressing up as monsters well before our group does.
There is no soundtrack, but Clannad start chanting in the oddest moments. Just when you think they can’t sing “Roooooobin….theHoodedMan!” one more time, they do it about twenty. Sadly, the sound track has dated, mostly due to some unfortunate eighties synthesisers sounds, and there are some very bizarre special effects, such as loud DUN,DUN,DUUNs whenever something onimous happens. Also, when Marion and Tuck enter the forest for the first time, there is onimous clucking sounds. Yeah, it sounds like a devil chicken is about to attack them: it really has to be heard to be believed.
So that was "Robin of Sherwood". On the whole, I enjoyed it very much and I can see why it's become a cult classic. Whilst watching it I was constantly scribbling away ideas that I can use in my own rewrite (in fact, there was a rather eerie similarity in which the outlaws are having target practice that was also present in my latest episode - I'll take that as a good sign!)