by Sarah and Mark
Hmmm, we were not too impressed by the first two episodes of Robin Hood. Let us count the ways…
- Robin looks like a cross between that Hobbit in Lost and over-acting Chelski midfielder Joe Cole. Also he is a bit smug and lacking in charisma. And a razor.
- His non comedy sidekick is very tiresome and has many non comedy schticks (ie going on about food and comfortableness, doing something wrong and then saying “I knew that was wrong actually”. This will not get tiresome over the course of the series – oh no of course not) At one point he has a bath and inexplicably starts crying – no doubt aware that he will never get the gay lovin’ off Robin Hood that he so clearly craves.
- Alan A Dale has apparently invented hair styling wax – not bad for the 12th century. He could almost be a young Alun A Armstrong. Oh, he's his son.
- There is a really stupid bit that is just thrown in as an excuse for a lame fight. Robin and Sidekick meet a cloth maker and his buxotic daughter – who is clearly as old as her so-called dad and who apparently has full access to the Boots No 7 make up counter. Daughter takes a shine to Robin and he is all “Oh no Goodwife Cleavagely, thine father will surely kick mine arse if we doth canoodle” but then he does it anyway and the father tries to kick his arse (ie they stand there waving swords at each other like majorettes until Robin does a backwards somersault off a roof – something that is apparently so awesome that we get to see it three times from different angles like a 1980s Jackie Chan film.
- Maid Marian is not um conventionally attractive - despite the best efforts of Monsieur L'Oreal and his suffering rabbits - and is predictably feisty/moxiesome etc. She makes fun of Robin a bit as it is not at all a cliché to have two people who end up together starting off hating each other. PS Marian, Zhang Zi Yi called flrom the set of “Crouching Hero, Flying Daggers” asking for you to return her decorative stabby hairpin things.
- In the end Robin decides to save a load of peasants from execution – a task that is made easier by the fact that the baddy soldiers all politely stand around for five minutes while Robin beats them up and does all his heroic things. Later on, they fail to shoot him and his pals with arrows, even though Robin etc are all on horseback and right next to them – they must go to the same “failing to hit a cows arse with a banjo” classes that Joe Cole’s Chelski team mate Frank Lampard has been attending lately. I keep expecting Monty Python dialogue to issue forth from a guard's lips at any moment. Or at least an argument about swallows.
- Keith Allen's Sheriff of Nottingham is dastardly enough, I suppose, but no Basil Rathbone (or Alan Rickman). Guy of Gisbourne is a black leather clad hottie who appears to have invented the Drizabone.
- They've kept all the "in the name of King Richard" nonsense. Honestly producers, King Richard did not give a monkey's fart about the plight of Nottingham's peasantry. He was much more interested in rogering his courtiers and raising taxes to go on another killing spree in Palestine.
- Episode two introduced the rest of the Merry Men - bit of a miserable bunch, if truth be told. They rescue Robin (again) from the Sheriff's castle. This is pretty formulaic - every Robin Hood story ends up with Robin or some other Merry Person getting incarcerated and the others having to set them free. A departure may be if Little John or Alan A Armstrong said: "Oh sod it. I'm fed up with schlepping up to the castle every other night, getting my hose soaked in blood and ripping my doublet on some stupid guard's chain mail. And it's quiz night at the Tavern..."
- Robert Webb has a straight-ish part in the Christian Slater role. I expect he'll have a 'dilemna' and betray Robin in some way or other, and then we'll find out that Robin is his secret half-brother. He nearly did get the chance to kill Robin this week by sneaking off and dressing up as a Sheriff guard and taking a swipe at the boy while he and the Sheriff were engaged in another Law and Order vs Freedom to dress like a hippy and live up a tree debate. Robin shoots him, but he's wearing a particularly hard breastplate or something and survives to trade insults ("Lavender boy"??) in the inevitable finale fight.
