Ridiculous or Ridiculously Awesome moments from Mahabharat: The Kurukshetra War

Occupying the final 20 episodes of the Mahabharat TV series is the Kurukshetra war - the mythical 18-day long battle between the Pandava army and the Kaurava army to decide the fate of the empire of Hastinapur and the dynasty of Bharat.

While the production does everything in its power to make the battle as epic as possible, with warriors riding chariots and elephants as well as cavalry and infantry, it inevitably fails to fall short of the grandeur described in the original poem. Hundreds of extras playing soldiers cannot quite pass for the millions of mannys who supposedly fought on each side, and when watching through all the episodes that make up the battle we will see the same stuntmannys live and die and live and die over and over again - this is not us seeing reincarnation in action, it is merely the limited footage being reused multiple times.

But the story itself pays little attention to the ordinary soldiers, except to note that thousands of them tragically die or are horribly wounded every day as the battle continues on. The real focus is always on the main characters, and it is here that we see their many intertwined plotlines from across the series reach their climax in a variety of ridiculous or ridiculously awesome ways.

1. The bed of arrows [Episodes 75-79]

The first task for the Pandava heroes is how to defeat their invincible grandsire Bhishma, who since the earliest episodes of the series has been immortal thanks to the "boon of wishful death" given to him that means Bhishma can only die when he chooses to.

Bhishma isn't just a warrior on the Kauravas' side, he is made the commander of their entire army because, being the eldest and wisest of them, even foolish Duryodhan agrees that Bhishma is the only possible choice for the role.

After nine fruitless days of their battling with Bhishma, with defeat now looming for the Pandavas if they cannot remove him from the war, Krishna tells Yudhisthir the secret - Bishma is so honourable that if Yudhisthir respectfully asks Bhishma how to defeat him, then Bhishma will be bound to tell him.

Yudhisthir and Arjun meet with Bhishma during a truce, and Bhishma does indeed tell them how to defeat him: he will not fight back against Prince Shikhandi, the reincarnation of the princess Amba who vowed her revenge against Bhishma all the way back in episode 5.

The next day, Arjun and Shikhandi together ride out to fight Bhishma upon Arjun's chariot, driven by Krishna. When they find him and begin exchanging arrowfire, as soon as Bhishma recognises Shikhandi he stops returning fire, and so Arjun's arrows start to hit him.

Even as he is being shot full of arrows, Bhishma continues to bless Arjun. He is shot so full of arrows that when he falls from his chariot he is suspended above the ground and supported by the arrows. This is the "bed of arrows", which Bhishma will lie upon from now until the end of the series.

Every other named character who is on the battlefield stops fighting and gathers around Bhishma. Arjun makes a support for Bhishma's head out of two more arrows, and shoots one arrow directly in the ground, which causes water to spring out and summons Bhishma's mother, the goddess Ganges.

I think the boon of wishful death may be more common than we were previously told since this soldier also seems to have it, judging by the way he moves around in the background while Bhishma and his mother are trying to have a conversation about how, even now, his oaths mean he will not choose to die.

Aside - The title sequence battle scenes

By about episode 80 it becomes extremely clear that the short clips from battle scenes shown at the very start of every episode, and which are quite obviously attempting to depict the clash of armies at Kurukshetra (since it is such a vital part of the story), were not filmed at the same time as the actual battle scenes depicted in the episodes, since they are not filmed remotely in the same style and the look of the armies is completely different.

The press of mannys fighting in the title sequence is much thicker than we ever see in the series proper, conveying an impression of much more impressive battle scenes that the series budget obviously couldn't sustain over the 20 episodes covering the Kurukshetra war, where the soldiers spread out as much as possible in their attempt at conveying a huge army.

2. The Wheel Trap and the death of Abhimanyu [Episode 82]

With Bhishma out of the battle, command of the Kaurava army falls to Sage Drona, who may have no boon of wishful death or other form of immortality that makes him unbeatable, he is simply unbeatable because he is better at fighting than any of the other characters. Drona was the teacher of the Pandava and Kaurava princes, as we saw back when he made Eklavya cut off his own thumb.

Like Bhishma, Drona does not fight for evil prince Duryodhan because he is evil, it is because he is obligated to the throne of Hastinapur, as represented by Duryodhan's father. This means that Drona does not want to kill Yudhisthir, so he makes a plan to capture him, which in proper Chess fashion will immediately cause the opposing army to lose the game.

Drona's strategy is called "the Wheel Trap" and, although we never find out exactly what it consists of, the important thing is that it is very hard to counter, and in the Pandava army only Arjun and Krishna know the full counter stratagem. Therefore, on the day when Drona attempts this strategy, Arjun and Krishna must be lured away so that they cannot be present and foil Drona and Duryodhan's plan.

Duryodhan selects some brave warriors to lure Arjun away, knowing that they will almost certainly die in the process, but this part of the plan succeeds as intended. A spy warns Yudhisthir that Drona is attempting the Wheel Trap, too late to call Arjun and Krishna back to help them. Then Arjun's son Abhimanyu reveals that he knows half of the counter strategy, or "how to enter the Wheel Trap" as he puts it, though not how to "leave" it. Yudhisthir thinks this will be sufficient, as he and his other brothers can then support Abhimanyu to prevent the trap from closing upon him.

Unfortunately, when the time came to come to Abhimanyu's rescue, they had reckoned without the enemy warrior Jaidrath, an old enemy of the Pandavas from their wilderness years. He had since been given a boon by the god Shiva that at a crucial point in the battle he would be able to hold four of the five Pandava brothers to a standstill (even Shiva could not give the boon that Jaidrath would actually defeat them). Jaidrath single-handedly prevented Yudhisthir and his brothers from supporting Abhimanyu, leaving the young warrior to face the rest of the Kaurava army's greatest fighters all on his own.

Trapped and surrounded, Abhimanyu had no choice but to fight Drona, Shalya, Kripa, Karna, Ashwathama, Shakuni, Dushasan and Duryodhan, and he defeats every single one of them in turn, wounding each of them although not killing any of them. But then Duryodhan orders them all to attack Abhimanyu at the same time, in defiance of the rules of war agreed before the commencement of the battle.

Even supposedly noble characters such as Drona and Kripa take part in this cowardly ganging up on Abhimanyu, and so he has no chance at defending himself against multiple attacks from all directions.

Proving his bravery in the face of certain death, Abhimanyu's concern is not for his own safety, but for his opponents' reputations:

"If you are not cowards, duel with me. 

Sage, I, too, am Lord Krishna's disciple. 

Don't think I can't fight you together.

I will fight. I will surely fight. 

I don't want history to know you as cowards, because one of you is my father's teacher. Another a brother and a friend!"

This doesn't stop them. None of them seem to even think twice. Karna destroys Abhimanyu's chariot, while the others shoot him full of arrows. Then they draw their swords and ride down upon him. Abhimanyu defends himself using a chariot wheel as a shield, but he is slaughtered by them.

Only Drona. Kripa and Shalya seem to show guilt for their actions as Abhimanyu makes a dying speech, calling to his father for vengeance. The others celebrate as though they had won a great victory.

3. Sheer melodrama [Episode 83]

Mahabharat is already an extremely melodramatic series, but the peak of the melodrama comes in the aftermath of Abhimanyu's death. Arjun returns victorious from his own battle to find the Pandava camp curiously subdued, and ordinary soldiers look away from him and refuse to meet his eye. Nobody will tell him and Krishna what has happened (Krishna, being omniscient, presumably already knows). He enters the tent to find his brothers weeping and his son's chair empty, and he begins to guess. Even then he has to drag the truth out of them.

Another melodramatic scene that follows is Abhimanyu's (pregnant) wife Uttara, weeping over his body, goes a bit insane and claims he is only sleeping, trying to wake him as his father and uncles come to visit.

Krishna tries to claim that since Abhimanyu was a warrior who died a warrior's death, they should not be sad for him, saying things like

"Every warrior in the world would gladly change places with Abhimanyu."

but he doesn't sound very convincing, and the actor Nitish Bharadwaj conveys with his facial expresions that even Krishna isn't convinced of what he is saying.

There's a superbly melodramatic moment as the killers arrive at the Pandava camp, under the flag of truce, to attend Abhimanyu's funeral. They each pay their respects to the body, and there is a clear difference visible between those who really mean it (Drona, Shalya, and - to the surprise of the Pandavas - Karna), and those who are only going through the motions of propriety (Duryodhan, Shakuni and Dushasan). But when Jaidrath approaches the corpse, Arjun stops him in his tracks.

Of all those who had a paw in Abhimanyu's death, Arjun reserves his particular ire for Jaidrath, who prevented his brothers coming to Abhimanyu's rescue and so sealed his fate, even more than those who actually killed him. To be fair to Arjun, he already hated most of the killers (Duryodhan, Dushasan, Shakuni and Karna) from their actions earlier in the story against him, his brothers and their wife.

Arjun swears that he will kill Jaidrath the next day, or else he will kill himself - another unbreakable oath to bind a character's actions.

4. Kill Jaidrath [Episodes 83-85]

Shakuni laughs when he hears of Arjun's oath, saying it means that Arjun is doomed either way. If he fails to kill Jaidrath then he will have to carry out his promise to kill himself, but if he does kill Jaidrath then he will be cursed and die. This is because Jaidrath's father Hotashetra gave his son a boon that

"The one who drops your head on the ground will find his own head blown to pieces. That will cause his death."

That's an oddly specific way of phrasing the boon. There's surely no way that can backfire!

Arjun fights his way through the entire Kaurava army to reach Jaidrath, defeating all of their best warriors by wounding or disarming them, or else by disabling their chariots. He beats Drona, Dushasan, Kripa, Shalya, Ashwathama, Karna and Duryodhan in this way.

Krishna also knows of the boon protecting Jaidrath (because of course he does), and he warns Arjun

"Remember, Arjun! Don't allow Jaidrath's head to fall on the ground. Whoever drops his head to the ground will find his own head blown to a hundred pieces."

He then advises Arjun how to kill Jaidrath without having the curse fall upon him. The series gives this method away at this point, when it would clearly have been more dramatic for it to have been kept from the viewer until Arjun enacted Krishna's plan.

Arjun is archery duelling with Jaidrath when Krishna makes a sign with his paw, and the sun appears to set. Jaidrath and all the baddys start loling because they think this means that Jaidrath has won, although when Duryodhan starts demanding that Arjun kill himself, Kripa looks at him with a proper 'don't be such a dick' look - it's a bit late for that now, Kripa!

If they were paying attention, the baddys woiuld know that something was up from the way Krishna kept on smiling throughout. He makes another sign and the sun comes back out from behind a big cloud. Jaidrath then makes one of the best 'oh shit' faces ever captured on film.

What happens next is probably the best ridiculous or ridiculously awesome moment of the entire series, managing to be both simultaneously. Here it is:

Arjun shoots the head off of Jaidrath, so that it flies all the way to his father Hotashetra's lap, who then goes 'fucking hell!' and drops it, causing him to explode. LOL!

5. Karna uses his one-shot weapon too early [Episode 86]

Bhim's son Ghatotkacha joins the battle on the side of his father, and with his many magical powers, not the least of which is his ability to become a gigantic manny, he seems invincible. Although his ability to breathe fire also helps. The arrows of Duryodhan, Drona and Kripa have no effect on him, and he throws Karna's arrows back at the Kaurava army, turning them against their own side.

Drona and Duryodhan agree that the only way to defeat Ghatotkacha is with a divine weapon, and the only one on their side to have a divine weapon (now that Bhishma has been taken out of the fighting) is Karna. Karna was gifted a one-use "Shakti" weapon by Indra as a boon for impressing him with his generosity, and Karna had been saving this for use against his arch-enemy Arjun. But he is compelled by Duryodhan's emotional blackmail into using it against Ghatotkacha instead.

This weapon deals a killing blow to Ghatotkacha, which we can tell from the SFX used on it. Even as he dies, Ghatotkacha falls upon the Kaurava army while in giant size, killing as many of them as he can in the process of dying himself.

While the Pandava brothers are sad at the loss of another of their sons, Bhim sees Krishna is smiling, and asks him

"Why are you smiling at my son's death?"

Krishna replies:

"I am not smiling at his death, Bhim. I was smiling because Arjun is safe now."

6. Yudhisthir almost tells a lie [Episode 87]

Drona duels with his old frenemy Drupad (father to Draupadi, Dhrishtadyumna and Shikhandi), and Drupad is killed. Krishna suggests to Arjun that they will have to break the rules of war if they are to defeat Drona, or as he puts it:

"None can defeat Sage Drona if all the rules of war are strictly followed. There's no harm in doing evil to protect truth."

Krishna goes on to suggest a plan to Arjun:

"If he [Drona] is made to believe Ashwathama is dead, he will give up his arms in mourning."

It turns out that there is a war elephant being used by the opposing side in the war that (very conveniently, one might say) shares a name with Drona's son Ashwathama. Bhim kills this elephant and shouts out

"I have killed Ashwathama!"

loudly enough for Drona to hear him. Drona doesn't believe Bhim, but knowing (or rather believing) that Yudhisthir never lies, he asks Yudhisthir to confirm it. Yudhithir says

"Ashwathama was killed..."

and then whispers

"...but it was an elephant called Ashwathama."

too quietly for Drona to hear the last bit. Sadly the English subtitles on the episode don't do this cunning bit of subterfuge justice:

Just as Krishna predicted, Drona does indeed lay down his weapons in despair, now that he thinks his son is dead. He descends from his chariot and sits on the ground, defenceless. The Pandavas all see this, but none of them can bring themselves to strike the killing blow against their teacher. However Dhrishtadyumna is also there, and he takes up his sword and cuts off Drona's head, avenging his father's death from earlier on in the episode and also fulfilling the fated purpose for which he was born.

7. Some just desserts [Episode 88]

As we approach the end of the series, the deaths of main characters come thick and fast from this point on. In episode 88, Bhim and Dushasan fight to the death (Dushasan's), so that Bhim can complete his oath sworn after Draupadi's humiliation in episode 47.

Bhim uses some proper two-handed punches in this fight. I know he was supposed to have been taught fighting by Sage Drona, but perhaps he learned that technique from Captain Kirk?

Their fight is one of many that uses a different camera for some of its shots, one that is only ever used in fight scenes, and which runs at a slightly speeded up speed - which might not have been so noticeable except that it also has different colour tones, making it extremely obvious when a scene is cutting between it and the normal cameras.

The sight of Bhim, covered in Dushasan's bright red blood, offering a pawful of blood to Draupadi to "wash" her hair with so she can fulfil her own oath of vengeance, is such that for a moment you could forget that these are supposed to be the goodys.

8. Karna comes a cropper [Episodes 88-90]

With Drona dead, the next commander of the Kaurava army is Karna. Over the course of the series his complicated backstory has attracted many oaths and curses to him, which all now fall due. He swore to Kunti, his birth mother, that he would only kill Arjun out of the Pandavas, so he goes straight for Arjun to attack him. He disarms Arjun of his magic bow and is about to finish him when the sun sets. Because Karna is the son of the sun god, he respects the rule of war that fighting must cease at sunset, even if many others on both sides are prepared to cheat, so Arjun is spared and escapes.

Their duel resumes the following day, after a night in which Karna dreams of the two brahmin characters who cursed him - his teacher who cursed him that at a crucial moment he should forget what he had been taught, and a second brahmin who cursed Karna that at a crucial moment his chariot should fail him. These dreams also serve to remind viewers of these curses upon Karna.

As the duel begins, Arjun and Karna seem evenly matched, with them shooting each other's arrows out of the sky and other cool things like that - although this would perhaps seem a lot cooler if it wasn't for the fact that every named character has been pulling off stunts like that, and often multiple times per episode, since the beginning of the battle.

It gets more impressive when they both start breaking out the magic, multi-pronged arrows, which isn't something we have seen in every one of the last 15 episodes, so we know this is them really going all-out. Then, at Krishna's urging, Arjun escalates further to the use of "divine weapons" - presumably similar to what Karna used against Ghatotkacha.

It is then that Karna's curses strike. His chariot wheel becomes "stuck in the mud" and then, when he tries to summon a divine weapon to counter Arjun's, he forgets how. When Karna gets off his chariot to free the stuck wheel, Arjun holds his fire and sportingly waits for him to do this. Krishna reminds Arjun of Karna's crimes - his humiliation of Draupadi, and his part in the killing of Abhimanyu - and this provokes Arjun into shooting the unarmed Karna's head off.

Duryodhan is more saddened by the death of his friend Karna than by the deaths of anyone else on his side, including his 99 brothers. If one was so inclined, one could read a certain big gay subtext into how close Duryodhan and Karna were.

Another scene with implicit subtext is when Yudhisthir, Arjun and Krishna find Kunti weeping over Karna's dead body. Of the three, only Krishna knows that this is because Kunti is Kanrna's real mother. Do Yudhisthir and Arjun suspect that Kunti and Karna were secretly lovers? It doesn't really matter, since the truth soon comes out, and Arjun is now aware that he has killed his older brother, turning his triumph into a tragedy.

9. Duryodhan's Achilles Groin [Episodes 90-91]

In episode 90 the Pandavas who aren't Arjun and Bhim get a chance to show that they are no slouches at fighting either. Sahadev, the youngest Pandava brother, kills evil uncle Shakuni in a swordfight, and Yudhisthir kills their not-so evil uncle Shalya using his favoured weapon, the spear. The number of named characters on the side of the baddys is getting seriously depleted by this point.

Duryodhan's mother Gandhari does not want him to be next, so decides to give him a blessing that will make him "unconquerable." This involves a ritual where Duryodhan bathes in the river Ganges and then returns to his mother with no clothes on. Krishna interrupts this part of the ritual and shames Duryodhan into wearing pants for the next bit.

When Duryodhan returns to his mother, she removes her blindfold (which is technically the only time in the whole story when somebody violates an oath, though since this is never referred to, and no consequences arise from it for Gandhari, it could be that Bhishma spent the entire series worrying about nothing - silly manny), and she pewpewpews Duryodhan from her eyes to make the parts of him she sees indestructible. But because he is wearing pants, his groin remains destructible.

The next day he waits for the Pandavas to come and fight him, as it turns out his army only has four mannys left in it by now: Duryodhan himself, Kripa, Ashwathama, and a manny called Kritavarma who, although he is a named character, has never done anything important in the series up until now - I suppose this makes him the Wedge of Mahabharat, mew.

Yudhisthir offers Duryodhan a duel to the death against Bhim, with the winner's side winning the war. You might wonder why he didn't do that at the start and save all the millions of mannys from dying in the battle, but it is clear that evil Duryodhan is only even considering taking Yudhisthir up on this offer because Dushasan, Karna and Shakuni are already dead.

Bhim and Duryodhan duel with the giant komedy melon hammers (or "maces" as they are referred to throughout the series) which are the preferred weapons of both warriors. Well it makes a change from all the many archery duels we have witnesses over the past 15 episodes, mew.

The duel goes on for about seven minutes of screentime, which is only fair since it is the climactic fight of the whole series. Bhim discovers that Duryodhan has been made indestructible above the waist, but is too honourable to strike a low blow until Krishna reminds him of his oath ("Which one?" asks Arjun, as well he might) to break Duryodhan's thigh for his insult to Draupadi. Fortunately, his thighs are one of the few places Duryodhan is still vulnerable since they were covered by his pants.

Ouch!

You know, I think "thigh" might be a euphemism for "testicles." What a way to win a war!

10. Ashwathama does a load of war crimes [Episode 92]

After Bhim wins the fight, the Pandavas and Krishna don't even bother to make sure Duryodhan is dead, they just go off and leave him lying on the ground. Ashwathama finds that Duryodhan is dying but still alive, which means that technically the war is not over yet.

Duryodhan orders Ashwathama to kill the Pandavas, and he decides to attack at once, even though it is the middle of the night. Ashwathama cares nothing for the rules of war. However, as soon as Ashwathama leaves, Duryodhan goes

which I suppose means that the war is over so Bhishma's rules no longer apply. Therefore Ashwathama's war crimes that he is about to do are therefore really only plain ordinary crimes.

Ashwathama sneaks into the Pandava camp and murders Dhrishtadyumna in his sleep. Given that Dhrishtadyumna killed Ashwathama's father Drona while he was unarmed, this could be seen as fair revenge on Ashwathama's part, but then he goes on to murder the five children of the Pandavas and Draupadi, also while they are asleep.

Arjun recognises the arrows used to kill their sons as belonging to Ashwathama, so the Pandavas (with Krishna) set out to find him and bring him to justice. Krishna says they cannot kill him, because he has "the boon of immortality" without any caveats or loopholes - this might explain why Drona took such a lot of persuading that his son had been killed back in episode 87.

When they catch up to Ashwathama, he attempts to use the divine "Weapon of Brahma" to destroy the Pandavas. But Arjun also has a "Brahma's Weapon" of his own, and tries to use it to counter Ashwathama's.

Sage Vyasa, who hasn't been seen in the series since he gave Sanjay divine sight back in episode 68, uses his own powers to halt both weapons in mid-air. He says

"Arjun! Ashwathama! This weapon can destroy the universe. Withdraw the weapon! Didn't Sage Drona tell you that such weapons are not to be used in a war?"

It seems a bit silly to me to have weapons that will destroy the entire universe when they are used, but this is probably an allegory for nuclear weapons or something, mew.

Arjun calls his weapon back at Vyasa's request, but Ashwathama claims he does not know how to call his back. Instead he changes its direction to kill the unborn child of Abhimanyu and Uttara, the last descendant of the Pandavas that he hasn't murdered yet.

Krishna steps in and uses his divine power to save the baby. While he is at it, he curses Ashwathama:

"I condemn you to eternal wandering all over the world till the end of time! Alone, weighed down by your grave sin! Craving for empathy and love, Ashwathama! The jewel on your forehead will become a wound which will pain you forever!"

And so we see Ashwathama's immortality turned against him, like Borusa in The Five Doctors.

11. Dhritarashtra hugs a statue to death [Episodes 93-94]

The war is over and Krishna and the Pandavas return to Hastinapur victorious. They are met by the blind king Dhritarashtra, father to Duryodhan and his 99 brothers, who are all ded by now. Obviously he holds Bhim responsible for killing Duryodhan with the low blow, and so he plots to murder Bhim in turn by hugging him to death when Bhim comes to pay his respects to him, both as king and as their "elder father" i.e. uncle.

Krishna is, of course, wise to Dhritarashtra's plan, so he gets Bhim to put a lifesize iron statue between himself and Dhritarashtra when the time comes. While one might suggest that there being a lifesize iron statue that just happened to be standing nearby was extremely convenient for them, but this weas actually foreshadowed in the series dozens of episodes earlier, when Duryodhan was shown practising his mace fighting by repeatedly striking a lifesize iron statue of Bhim.

This means Dhritarashtra hugs the statue instead of the real Bhim, and he hus it so hard he crushes it to pieces. He then realizes what a bad thing he has done, and this triggers him into regretting all the evil and selfish deeds he has either done himself of condoned in his sons across the series. Krishna then reveals that the real Bhim is still alive, and Dhritarashtra is happy that he didn't actually do a murder of his own nephew.

In the final episode of the series, Dhritarashtra abdicates as king in favour of Yudhisthir, and then he, Gandhari, Kunti and Vidur - the four Kuru elders that survived the battle (not counting Kripa, who disappeared from the series after he helped Ashwathama do a massacre) - leave Hastinapur to go into "the forest," a form of voluntary exile. This represents the older generation passing the reins of power to the next generation when their time is past - something we could do with a lot more of in the real world, when we look at all the old mannys who are still in charge of everything!

Bhishma is also still alive - technically - still lying on his bed of arrows from episode 79. Krishna and the Pandavas visit him one last time, to let him know his oath is fulfilled and so he can now let himself die. Before he does so, he gives the new king Yudhisthir some advice about ruling - mostly to not make the mistaiks that he and Dhritirashtra made, but also including such things as

"If the past has given you a weak economic and social infrastructure then improve and change it! The past can never compete with the present."

That seems like good advice to me, but then I'm only a cat, not a manny in charge of running a country, mew. Bhishma finally dies, his death signalling the end of the series, just as the very earliest episodes concerned the circumstances of his birth, so this seems a fitting place to end things.

In conclusion, I think this series was 94 episodes well spent, since for all that there were some moments that were ridiculous, there were more that were ridiculously awesome. May your long series be long!

Also, there's a second season of 45 more episodes that I have still to watch, mew.

Civilisations: Rise And Fall

1. Rome

It's not immediately obvious if this has any connection to the 1969 BBC Civilisation series (or the 2018 Simon Schama-presented Civilisations that was an attempt to be a modern updating of the '60s series) beyond the name. But I can't see it being entirely a coincidence seeing as this is a series about history as viewed through the art of the time.

However the resemblances in production style are slight. Schama and his co-presenters were obviously following in the footsteps of Kenneth Clark (not that one), but this series eschews on-screen presenters entirely, opting for a mix of voiceover narration (provided by Sophie "Scream of the Shalka" Okonedo) and 'talking head' experts. This, combined with the way the artworks being talked about are presented to viewers - essentially in their own distinct, cordoned off sections of the programmes - makes the series more closely resemble 2022's Art That Made Us than either of the preceding Civilisation series.

The first episode in the four-part series focuses on the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 410AD. The narration and the experts both take great pains to point out every similarity between that period of history and the present, with talk about the mega-wealthy bleeding their society dry and a refugee crisis leading to mass immigration. No names are named for the modern equivalents, giving the series the vaguest fig leaf* that it isn't referring to anybody specific, while the historic equivalents are the Emperor Honorius, General Stilicho and Alaric the Goth. These three characters give viewers identification figures upon which the episode can hang its narrative.

Rome is a frequent subject of historical documentaries, but this period is not one that I have seen concentrated upon much, so there was a good deal that was of interest here, with or without the parallels to modern times, which were clearly being laboured upon for the benefit of viewers less able to draw their own conclusions than us cats. My biggest issue was how it just feels weirdly distracting to have the word "Civilisations" in the title, which seems to promise something the programme then doesn't deliver. It lacks that "personal view" identity that having a single central presenter gave the real Civilisation.

* Don't touch the figs.

2. Egypt

Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way first - Alastair Campbell appears in this as one of the talking head experts, for no readily explained reason. Why did the makers pick this cunt over any other expert who would surely have been at least as well qualified as him, with the added bonus of not being involved in lying to the British public in order to start a pointless war? I can only conclude that this was yet another BBC 'jobs for the boys' stitch up, probably Campbell was at school with the Producer or something. After all, I hardly think he qualifies as a 'big name' to draw in the viewers - he's far more likely to put them off, mew!

Anyway, his odious presence aside, this episode covers the fall of Ptolemaic Egypt in 30BC, which (for me at least) is more familiar territory than the fall of Rome, being as it was the subject of the BBC historical drama series The Cleopatras, as well as the famous Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton epic Cleopatra.

Cleopatra is very much the main character here, with the other big names of that period of history - Mark Antony, Julius Caesar and Octavian - playing secondary fiddles to her struggle to gain the throne and retain control of Egypt over the course of her reign.

Being a documentary not a drama, this goes beyond the stories of the major players involved to tell us some stuff I didn't already know, such as the fact that a volcanic eruption in Alaska can be blamed for the 10 years of unexpected (and hitherto unexplained) droughts that afflicted Egypt during Cleopatra's reign, depleting her treasury and significantly weakening her personal power as well as Egypt's influence, to the benefit of the rising Roman Empire.

This additional context for the events more than makes this documentary a worthwhile use of your time, presence of Alastair "we could just do what the Americans want us to like we always do but first let's drive a manny to his death for the lols" Campbell notwithstanding.

3. Aztecs

Weirdly I thought this was a bit of a slow one for much of the middle of the programme, almost like they had to pad out the episode to fill the hour. Then the last 15 minutes (or so) packed in a lot of activity as the various events that it had been building up to all hit at once. In a way I suppose this does help convey the sudden and rapid collapse of the Aztec Zone Empire, which fell in only two years (1519-1521) after the Spaniards arrived.

Even in the last forty years the way this period of history is taught has become less Eurocentric - a Marshall Cavendish partwork magazine called Discovery, which came out in the late 1980s, had issues focused on Columbus and Cortes which would never be done the same way today. This episode seemed to be going to the other extreme to begin with - I wondered if the Aztec's sacrifice of mannys was going to get a mention at all. Eventually it did, and not as downplayed as I first feared it was going to be.

But the real emphasis was on how Cortes was "a nobody" (this was one of the first lines of the programme) as if it would have been A-OK if the Aztecs had been conquered by officially authorised representatives of a European power, no doubt led by a prince or an artistocrat or two. As if they wouldn't have had the same motivation as Cortes had - pure greed, mew.

The attempt to draw parallels between the smallpox epidemic that decimated the Aztecs and the Covid pandemic was somewhat undermined by their own talking head expert saying that smallpox killed 33% of its victims while Covid killed only 1-2%. An example of the reach of the episode exceeding its grasp, if this was the best way they could think to illustrate this point.

Still worth watching for the overall story of this period, even if there are bits of the episode that were weak on their own.

4. Japan

Better paced than the Aztecs programme and about as interesting, this tells of events from the 19th century when the Americans forced Japan to trade with them and then fucked their economy. Plus ça change. This then led to the downfall of the traditional Japanse way of life and the beginning of Westernisation, as examplified by the destruction of the samurai class and their archetypal katana swords.

Oddly there's a decision to present the entire 'fall' from the point of view of the samurais, and barely any mention is made of the other roughly 93% of the population of Japan, who might have perhaps been glad of the removal of the right of the other 6-7% to openly carry fuck-off razor sharp swords everywhere and get bowed to in the streets under the unspoken threat of violence.

The real villains of the piece are the Americans under Matthew "Friends" Perry, who come out of it looking like right dicks. The colonial mindset of the mid-19th century is hinted at but not dwelled upon, which for a British-made programme is a bit rich. I wonder how many other 19th century civilisations that fell were considered for this fourth programme, only to be rejected because of who it was that caused them to fall?

The message here is that isolationism is bad, which I think we can all get behind, though unlike in earlier episodes there's no direct and unambiguous parallels drawn with modern states or kingdoms (united or otherwise, mew). Another minor flaw of this episode is that one of the talking heads is an author whose overly enthusiastic style of delivery clashes with the more serious statements of the actual experts. Still, considering the Egypt episode had Alastair fucking Campbell in it, it could have been a lot worse.

Overall, this was a good but flawed series, which probably benefitted from putting its best programme out first. It wasn't a patch on earlier documentary series with the word "Civilisation" in the title, and any comparions with them can only see this one come out looking poorly. And at only four parts, such small portions!

Series ranking:

Rome

(Egypt if you excluded Alastair Campbell's bits)

Japan

Aztecs

Egypt

Doctor Who Night 2025: Three from the End

In 2019 we began a sequence of Doctor Who Nights starting with stories from the William Hartnell era, moving through the Doctors consecutively each year until this year, when we reached the Sylvester McCoy era.

I have already watched and reviewed the whole of the McCoy era before, in 2017-18, so for more in-depth reviews from a yonger, more innocent (lol) version of me, you can click the links - or get your thumbs to do it for you if you are a cat.

The Happiness Patrol

I last reviewed The Happiness Patrol in 2017, when Theresam A was the Prime Minister of the mannys of the UK. Now it is Keir S, which shows that not much has changed in eight years.

The Kandyman remains one of the least likely Doctor Who baddys to ever return to the TV series, although unlike the others at the top of the list that is because we live in a much more litigious world nowadays than in the carfefree 1980s of myth and legend, and not because of the use of outdated racial stereotyping and/or blackface or yellowface that would get you cancelled right away.

As good as The Happiness Patrol is, it is easy to see why viewers in 1988 did not rate it as highly as it deserves - those watching at the time didn't know that they wanted an allegorical attack on the politics of Mrs Thatcher, because they were mostly either young mannys or kittens who didn't understand the allegory, or else die-hard fans pining for the era of Talons of Weng-Chiang, who didn't appreciate it.

Any casual viewers might have thought that an entirely studio-based TV drama that did little to hide the fact that it was a TV studio, or that everything in the colony took place in about four locations, all a 30-second stroll from one another, was the sign of a dying show with a miniscule budget. Well, I mean, it was those things, but that is missing the point that as an allegorical TV play it manages to turn those crippling limitations into positive virtues.

If you view it in that spirit, I think you'll find that happiness prevails.

Silver Nemesis

Silver Nemesis, as I found when I reviewed it in 2018, is harder to defend. Despite being only three parts long, its first part is padded with the Doctor and Ace running away from security mannys at Windsor Castle simply so that the Cybermannys can turn up in time for the cliffhanger, while the second and third parts see characters wander into scenes when they are required for some plot or dialogue reasons, and then wander out again until the next time they are needed.

The story is partially saved by the brilliantly intriguing and mysterious baddy Lady Peinforte, and her henchmanny Richard, who are by far the most successful component of the story, largely thanks to the actors playing them who transcend the limitations of their scripted dialogue.

Richard, for example, is convincingly disturbed by the sights of what is, to him, 350 years in the future, until he is confronted by a problem he can recognise and deal with - being threatened by two thugs. His line

"Money. say you?"

is followed by a cut to another scene, and when we next see the thugs they have been overpowered (off-screen) and hung upside down from a tree. Viewers are left to infer exactly what it was Richard did to them.

Lady Peinforte, on the other paw, manages to convey the unseen backstory between her and the Doctor, as well as her own non-existent past, through subtle expressions and hinted at turns of phrase. The scene in the car with Mrs Remington is pure padding, an unnecessary but enjoyable way for Lady Peinforte and Richard to get from one plot-relevant scene to another, but gives us lines like this that raise the overall quality of the episode and provide insight into Lady Peinforte's character:

Lady Peinforte: "Dorothea Remington did bribe away my cook."

Mrs Remington: "Oh, now, let me see. Yes, there was a Dorothea. She died in sixteen..."

Lady Peinforte: "...twenty-one. It was a slow poison."

Survival

My review from 2018 already explained why Survival is the greatest Doctor Who story of all time (in a word: cats!) so I don't have much more to add, except to say that it is still the best, but now that it is available on blu-ray it is even more obvious that it is the Master in part one, which is supposed to be a surprise for the cliffhanger but really, really isn't.

Robin of Sherwood, season three (part two)

The Betrayal

Come back Anthony Horowitz, all is forgiven. The series finally resorts to the worst cliché of all, that of baddys impersonating Robin and the Merry Mannys in order to discredit them. It was shit when The Legend of Robin Hood did it, and it's shit here. The only series ever to have gotten away with this plot is Monkey, and even that is only because the monsters who impersonated the pilgrims looked so utterly ridiculous in their true forms.

This is the only episode of Robin of Sherwood to be written by Andrew McCulloch and John Flanagan, better known - as a writing partnership - to us cats for writing Meglos. Or Mew-glos as we call it. Yes, that's right, we are plumbing those sorts of depths here.

John Flanagan is better known to us as an actor for his role as regular barrister John Lloyd (not that one) in Crown Court. Let's just say he should have stuck to acting.

Andrew McCulloch was also an actor. I don't particularly know him from anything, but I think it is safe to say that he should have stuck to acting too.

The villain-of-the-week is King John, played again by Phil Davis, returning after having been last seen at the start of season two. His henchmanny-of-the-week is played by Matt "Max Headroom" Frewer, in between the film and the TV series that made him famous but which I must admit I have never seen. He's the one that impersonates Robin himself, so is the only impersonator to be given any significant screentime or personality, before Robin kills him in single combat.

The presence of the king in the episode relegates the Sheriff of Nottingham to henchmanny status, and he is on the receiving end of the king's bullying just as Sir Guy of Gisburne is normally on the end of his. At times the Sheriff is reduced to comic relief as the naughty king demands he be provided with women to entertain him. Then when Marion appears (as part of the Merry Mannys' plans to turn the tables on the baddys) the king acts quite rapey towards her, though the uncomfortableness of these scenes is paid off when Marion turns the tables on him and humiliates the king in front of the Sheriff, whose warning not to trust her proves to be entirely accurate.

I'm worried that paragraph might make the episode sound better than it is. Trust me, it is shit, and the lowest point of the series so far.

Adam Bell

This one is barely a step up from the previous episode's low point. Anthony Horowitz asks us 'what if there were an evil band of outlaws, with an evil version of Robin as their leader?' and the placement of this episode immediately after another episode with its own take on the same question is unfortunate.

Unlike in The Betrayal, this group of outlaws aren't impostors, just a different band, led by the Adam Bell of the title. He is presented as being like an older Robin Hood, but jaded and with what morality he may once have had eroded by years of surviving as an outlaw. It isn't helped by his not-so-merry mannys consisting entirely of immoral cutthroats, each of whom is after his leadership role - like an entire band of Will Scarlets.

Speaking of Will Scarlet, the only one of this band to have a personality other than Adam Bell is Moth, who is someone Will knew in his backstory from his time as a soldier, before he became an outlaw, and we see a flashback of Moth betraying him because of course he did. It has only been three episodes since Horowtiz used the same trope where the baddy-of-the-week's henchmanny had a history with one of the Merry Mannys, only that time with Nasir.

The plot sees Adam Bell kidnap the Sheriff's young nephew Martin - presumably not named after the Merry Manny Martin from season one? - and the Sheriff needs to get him back, both to avoid the wrath of his sister-in-law (wasn't this exact plot point later parodied by the series Maid Marian and her Merry Mannys?) and so he can keep hold of the lands he holds in trust for the boy.

The Sheriff, who very conveniently since the pre-titles sequence has a captured Much in his dungeon, offers to trade Much to Robin if Robin can recover Martin from Adam Bell. Obviously the Sheriff plans to betray Robin after the exchange has taken place but, oh look, what a twist, Adam Bell sacrifices himself to help Robin and Much escape from the trap.

It's a very clumsily plotted episode, full of clichéd plot points, and multiple scenes see Robin and other characters having to act stupid in order to get the plot where it needs to be, a trope I always hate. Connery's non-acting style means he just can't paper over the cracks the way a better actor might have been able to.

For instance, the only character coming out well from this episode is the Sheriff of Nottingham, who gets a larger role than he's had for a while. Scenes with him and Sir Guy see them explaining things to each other that they should know, but Nickolas Grace and Robert Addie just about get away with this by almost (but not quite) winking at the camera as they do so.

Grace can save his scenes, but he can't save this episode from being another stinker.

The Pretender

There's a terrific set of guest actors in this episode - you've got Patricia "Portia of Chambers" Hodge, Reece "Threads" Dinsdale, and Bill "Ploppy, son of Ploppy" Wallis. And if that's not enough for you, there's also William "Ian Chesterton" Russell as the Duke of Gloucester.

The Merry Mannys get involved in a conspiracy to set a "pretender" (hence the episode name) on the throne instead of King John. This is led by the king's former queen Hadwisa (Hodge) and her kinsmanny the Duke of Glouctester, with a manny called Arthur (Dinsdale! Dinsdale!) as their puppet. He's obviously a con artist, as is shown to us when we see him trying the old shell game trick on the Merry Mannys. Sir Guy ends up joining the conspiracy, against the advice of the Sheriff.

Speaking of the Sheriff, this episode is instantly elevated to classic status by a subplot in which the Sheriff has been bitten by a doggy. After treatment by his barber-surgeon (Wallis), the Sheriff has a fever dream that might just be the greatest single scene in the whole series, and even gives the dream sequences in Twin Peaks a run for their money in terms of hilarious weirdness, as the Sheriff hallucinates grinning, giggling Sir Guys and Ploppys loling at him while lit by eerie red and green lights. If you've not seen this episode, the screenshots below may give you some idea of what it is like, but you'll just have to trust me that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

So now there are two factions of baddys - Sir Guy siding with the conspiracy against the king, and the Sheriff sticking with the mad cunt he knows. The conspiracy plans to assassinate the new queen, Isabella, and blame it on Robin Hood. Arthur's job is to lead the Merry Mannys into the right place at the right time so that the blame can be put on them. Robin smells a mouse and he ends up teaming up with the Sheriff (I love it when that happens), so that the conspirators get killed or arrested, except for Sir Guy who manages to bluff that he was against the conspiracy all along.

The plot fills the episode's run time nicely and there's just the right amount of twists and turns with the various factions. Even without the dream sequence it would have been a good one, but with that added on top it becomes a series highlight.

Let me just check who wrote this one... Fucking hell, it was Anthony Horowitz. It's a miracle.

Rutterkin

Sounds a bit like something from Ghost Light with that title, doesn't it?

Richard Carpenter is back for the last three episodes, and for the third-last part he's revisiting a trope he used in the third episode of the series The Witch of Elsdon, namely anachronistic witchcraft.

King John is also back, last seen by us in The Betrayal, and this'll be the last time we see him in the series. There's a guest-villain-of-the-week instead of the Sheriff of Nottingham, and he's Robert/Robin's wicked uncle Lord Edgar, played by Ian "Drusus" Ogilvy - hope he doesn't turn out to be the brother of Marion's father in this as well, that would make things awkward.

Evil Lord Edgar wants to get his hands on his older brother's lands and titles, so he frames the Earl of Huntingdon for trying to get a witch to curse the king, in spite of that not being a thing in that time period. Michael "whoever's been dumped in there has been pulverised into fragments and sent floating into space and in my book that's murder" Craig returns from the season opener as the Earl.

Edgar then bites off more than he can chew by trying a second plan at the same time, that of capturing the Merry Mannys to get into King John's good books. He succeeds in capturing them all except for Robin and Nasir. Robin then has the dual tasks of clearing his father's name and rescuing his friends at the same time, which of course he does.

The twist at the end is - look, you can stop reading this sentence any time you like if you want to avoid the spoiler from 1986 - that the woman Edgar forced to confess to witchcraft in order to frame the Earl is - have a guess, go on, before you read the end of the sentence, just have one guess - actually a real witch. She curses Lord Edgar so that he dies while trying to get away.

This is a pretty good episode, but it has the issue that it follows after a really good one, so maybe doesn't shine out as much as it deserves. But Carpenter can always be relied upon to deliver on the set piece for the episode, which in this case is the last-minute rescue - it's similar to stuff we've seen before in the series, yet with enough differences to still feel fresh and interesting.

The Time of the Wolf - Part 1

So here we are at the first half of the series finale, and Richard Carpenter has decided to pack a lot in to make the series go out with a bang.

Richard O'Brien returns again as Gulnar who, having been defeated twice this season (in the opening two-parter and then at the midpoint episode), now has a plan to destroy Herne. This involves teaming up with some Welsh Vikings (where do I start?) called the Sons of Fenric Fenris to take over a fortified abbey.

The Sheriff and Sir Guy, meanwhile, have been ordered to send food to the king's army, and when the Merry Mannys nick off with it - as usual - the Sheriff's attempt to pin the blame on Gisburne is the last straw for poor Guy, and he goes renegade. He then runs straight into the Sons of Fenris and is forced to join them or die. On the grounds that even they are probably better employers than the Sheriff was, he signs up with Gulnar and is given a snazzy new wolf-themed uniform.

The Robin and Marion romance, which has been kept on a low simmer throughout much of the season, largely due to Jason Connery's inability to convey any subtle nuances of its progress, finally comes back to the fore as they decide to get married. But they postpone the wedding until after their current mission, which is a sure sign that something is bound to go wrong before then.

The episode ends on a clifhanger, as Robin and most of the Merry Mannys get captured by the Sons of Fenris and Sir Guy, which must make him feel like he has finally sided with a competent outfit for the very first time.

The Time of the Wolf - Part 2

The second half of the story introduces a plot element that was wholly absent from the first part - having captured Robin, Gulnar creates a kind of homunculus copy of him out of clay. Was this Richard Carpenter taking the piss out of Anthony Horowitz, Andrew McCulloch and John Flanagan by showing them how to write a much more original take on an Evil Robin? Once it is animated, it is also played by Jason Connery, with the only difference in appearance being the bestial fangs the duplicate has in its mouth, preventing it from speaking. This is a positive boon to Connery's performance, and he is far better as the copy than as the real Robin. Yes, he plays the one made out of clay better than the one made out of wood, lol.

The evil Robin then turns upon its creator, and Gulnar gets the last line

"I am your master!"

before he gets strangled to death. It's not quite 'Stop! No! I created you!' but it's the next best thing. The copy then tries to kill Herne, but Herne sees through the deception and holds it off long enough for the real Robin to arive and kill it.

This seems like the Merry Mannys have won, but there's still quite a bit of the episode still to go, as the dead body of Robin's duplicate left lying in the middle of a stone circle then sets off a chain of events that leads to the real climax. Marion finds the body and, by not checking Robin's teeth, thinks this is the real Robin lying ded.

The Sons of Fenris ended up getting defeated pretty easily, but they did manage to capture the Sheriff of Notingham first. He then once again proves how he is easily the best character in the series as he refuses to join them even when threatened with death (his standing up to Gulnar is also the first time we have seen him hint at his own occult knowledge since at least season two), and then spends his time in captivity insulting Guy of Gisburne before they end up teaming up to escape together.

They also find the dead Robin copy and take it for the real thing, believing they will get pardoned if they bring back his body to the king. The last we see of them is as they ride off along with a luckless peasant carrying the body on a cart, with us viewers being made aware that the body is starting to return to clay, but the Sheriff and Sir Guy don't notice it. Thus it is left ambiguous whether or not they will ever receive their pardons or not.

The series ends upon the anticlimactic cliffhanger of Marion, believing Robin dead, going to the abbey and becoming a nun, and refusing to leave when the real Robin turns out to be still alive after all. Er, well, I mean when the second Robin turns out to be still alive after all.

I understand there were plans to make a fourth season, so this wasn't intended to be the final end of the series, but it was. As either a cliffhanger or as an ending it's pretty poor, because it feels very contrived that Marion would suddenly act this way. The final scene before the end credits helps a little to redeem it, which sees the rest of the Merry Mannys (sans Marion) rallying round Robin for manly handshakes, back in Sherwood where they belong: all boys together, no girls allowed.

The third season is, as I'm sure you can tell by now, a big step down from the first two in pretty much every respect, with only the Sheriff and Sir Guy remaining at the same high level in terms of how entertaining they are to watch. For everything else, the ideas don't seem as fresh, the writing isn't as polished, and the acting has a gaping hole at the centre of the series where Jason Connery stands as the supposed lead.

The series as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The Robin Hood myth is told across multiple hours of televsion instead of being crammed into a single film's duration, which helps a lot. If you only watched a single episode, you might think the supporting characters such as the Merry Mannys don't get much development or much to do, but when they have even a little to do in every instalment across 26 parts it does add up, and so we are left with a strong impression of who Little John, Tuck, Much, Will Scarlet, and even Nasir (who, as a new addition to the mythos, suffered the most from his backstory and personality being made up as they went along) are as characters and how they relate to each other.

The show will always be best remembered for its unique* replacement of the lead halfway through, and it really does divide the show neatly into two halves with a distinctive feel to each. It was a shame that Connery was such a letdown after the amazingly well-cast Praed, who helped the show capture the zeitgeist of the mid-80s, but the problems of season three cannot be entirely put down to him. Just... mostly down to him.

* in terms of Robin Hood retellings, mew.

Robin... The Wooden Manny

Robin of Sherwood, season three (part one)

Herne's Son (Part 1)

The series returns with a stunning opener, so seamlessly following on from the events of The Greatest Enemy that you'd swear writer Richard Carpenter must have planned it this way all along. Footage taken from the end of season two is skilfully interwoven with brief bits of new footage to retroactively reveal that the myterious hooded manny that rescued the Merry Mannys after Robin's death is the son of the Earl of Huntingdon, Robert, as played by Jason "shun of Sean" Connery.

Historically, the Earl of Huntingdon between 1184 and 1219 (when this series must have been set due to King John, who reigned between 1199 and 1216) was David of Scotland, so it is appropriate that Robert is played by a proud Scot such as Connery. Although the earl himself is played by Michael "whoever's been dumped in there has been pulverised into fragments and sent floating into space and in my book that's murder" Craig, whose level of Scottishness is unknown.

Having done this one favour to Herne, Robert then rejects Herne's offer of permanently becoming the new Herne's Son (definitely Herne's fault for raising the matter at this time, when the fate of the previous Son would have been foremost in Robert's mind) and returns to his life as a noblemanny. That is until a year later, when his destiny catches up with him.

Alone of the Merry Mannys, Marion has been pardoned and has returned to live with her father (George "Tiberius" Baker, returning from The Prophecy), who is visiting the Earl of Huntingdon's castle. The Sheriff of Nottingham, his brother Hugo and Sir Guy of Gisburne are also visiting, and we get some lovely scenes of courtly intrigue that have scarcely been possible in the series until now due to so many of the main characters being outlaws. The Sheriff is shown to be a skilful politician when he wants to be - namely when he isn't only surrounded by social inferiors whom he can bully and boss around.

Into this mix comes Lord Owen of Clun, a fairly forgettable villain but with a very memorable sidekick - Gulnar, played by Richard O'Brien (to be fair, aside from being immediately recognisable as Richard O'Brien, he doesn't actually do that much in part 1 of this story, but I know he will make more of an impact in later episodes). Owen is a horrible cunt, but the nobles all have to be nice to him because he controls strategically important lands and a castle. He's an even bigger cunt than the Sheriff, who is reduced to a secondary antagonist (in a not dissimilar way to when Baron de Belleme was the villain-of-the-week). Lusting over Marion, he promptly gets into a fight with the gallant Robert, giving our new hero a chance to show he is no slouch at swordfighting.

Owen kidnaps Marion and takes her back to his castle, also capturing Nasir along the way when Nasir just happens to show up in time to rescue Marion's father from also being captured. This episode is so pacy and full of incident that I can completely forgive it for this contrivance.

The rest of the Merry Mannys are scattered, and have been since after Robin's death. With Herne's blessing Robert sets out to find them to get them to help him rescue Marion - as good a pretext as any for getting the band back together. By the end of this first part he has only found and recruited Tuck.

After spotting Robert and Tuck together, one of the Sheriff's spies reports this to him and Sir Guy, and we see that Sir Guy is for once ahead of the Sheriff - perhaps Carpenter allowing Sir Guy a little bit of character development to take him away from his brutish, Travis-like role of the first two seasons - when it is him that puts the clues together to find out the identity of "the hooded man."

I do love all the ways that Carpenter makes Robert different from Robin, and how he isn't just immediately slotted into the Robin Hood leader role. A pity then, that the weak link in this otherwise fantastic episode is Connery himself, who can handle the action scenes fine (the swordfight with Owen is a highlight) but falls down whenever he is required to show emotion. This would have been hard enough on him had this been a brand new series, but he also has to follow in the footsteps of Michael Praed who, even though he may not have been the best actor in the world himself, was miles better than Connery, especially when it came to the instant chemistry he had with Judi Trott as Marion.

Herne's Son (Part 2)

The first half of this has to follow through with where part 1 left off, with Robert needing to put the Merry Mannys together again. It does its best to not become too repetitive, by mostly avoiding copying the ways in which the first Robin assembled them back in Robin Hood and the Sorcerer, but the scene where Robert has to fight Little John to a standstill to prove his worth has to live in the shadow of the original fight over a river.

This is followed not long after by a scene where Robert has to fight Will Scarlet to a standstill to prove his worth. All the stops are pulled out to make this as different as possible to the earlier fight with Little John and disguise that the fundamental narrative effect is identical. This one is played for lols, with Will being drunk the whole time, and then when Guy of Gisburne shows up he has a terrible time trying to convince the local watch (led by Comic Strip Presents regular Daniel Peacock as their sergeant) to help him arrest the outlaws.

It's all passable stuff, that first half - flawed, but hiding its flaws well, yet with nothing to make it outstanding. This all changes once the the rescue attempt gets underway. From that point on it's all action for the rest of the episode, with the highpoint being when Robert has to fight Nasir in Owen of Clun's pit-fighting ring. Nasir doesn't know who Robert is, but as soon as he sees Little John and Will, he immediately susses out what's going on and teams up with Robert to fight against Owen. Fantastic stuff.

Richard O'Brien as Gulnar, Owen's pet magician, comes into his own here with his eccentric mutterings (I could well believe O'Brien made up his own dialogue) as he hypno-eyeses Marion. If I have a complaint about this plot, it would be that Carpenter does like leaning on the 'one or more of the heroes gets hypno-eyesed' trope, which he already used twice (in consecutive stories) in season two, so it would be nice to see evil wizards doing something other than this.

We have to presume that as soon as Owen of Clun gets killed - a great and fitting death scene for the character - the spell wears off, since the next time we see Marion she is free of Gulnar's influence. Gulnar himself is still alive, to return later in the series - this is good, since we really didn't see enough of him in this.

The episode ends with Marion returning to her father, rather than going with Robert and the rest of the Merry Mannys. This suggests the status quo for this season won't be a carbon copy of the first two seasons'. Robert takes Robin's old position as their leader and Herne's Son. There's practically a jump scare into the end credits when we see Herne suddenly standing among them.

"Robin of Sherwood" now being a bloke called Robert is an odd situation to engineer. I suppose it would have stretched credulity too far if the new lead had been named Robin as well? I can see why they felt they needed a new Robin Hood for their Robin Hood series, rather than have the now-leaderless Merry Mannys having adventures on their own for 13 episodes. On the other hand, it worked for Blakes 7, mew.

The Power of Albion

Richard Carenter is obviously having fun with the shake-up of the format, since here we see something that was never possible with the first Robin Hood - Robert of Huntingdon living a double life as earl's son (and the nearest thing the 12th century has to a millionaire playboy) by day, Robin Hood by alternate day.

What a shame then that Jason Connery is particularly wooden in this episode, worse I'd say than in the opening two-parter. His line delivery is flat and he has zero chemistry with Judi Trott. At one point Robert gets taken out of action by an arrow and remains off screen for several minutes while the Merry Mannys fetch Marion to cure him. While an important plot point when his injury gives away that he is the new Robin, I wonder if this served a dual purpose in giving Connery time off filming to go and take some acting lessons?

He is better (a low bar) in scenes where he is bluffing the Sheriff and Gisburne that he is not Robin, and these wind up being the most fun parts of the episode. The dynamic between Robert, the Sheriff and Sir Guy is great, as we see the Sheriff siding with Robert against his suspicious minion, with us (and Robert) knowing that Guy is right all along.

The Inheritance

Mew, the moment I've been dreading even more than the arrival of Jason Connery as the second Robin has now arrived - the point at which writers other than Richard Carpenter were allowed to have a go. The first of these is Anthony "I've done no research" Horowitz, a writer who never met a cliché he didn't like.

Here we can immediately see why I called him Anthony "I've done no research" Horowitz - this episode begins with a Tarot reading (150 years before their earliest recorded appearance in Europe) and ends with Robin Hood meeting King Arthur. Now, to be fair, I don't know if that was part of Horowitz's brief, to include the King Arthur and Round Table elements, or if he just thought "ah, sod it, Robin Hood, King Arthur, what's the difference, it's all the same English medieval mythology, isn't it?"

To make matters worse there's no appearance by either the Sheriff or Sir Guy in this story, and their usual place is taken by a disposable villain-of-the-week, played by Derrick O'Connor as a Sahf London thug straight out of some gangster series. He might have gotten away with it if he had only shared scenes with Ray Winstone, but alas...

The one part of the episode I will praise is the climax, when Robin and the gang discover the actual Round Table of the Arthurian legends, and then King Arthur and his knights appear to them in a mystical vision. The SFX for this bit are quite Excalibur-y (appropriately enough) or, given the silver armour and the tall shape of the knights' helmets, one might even say quite Dark Towers-y. Anyway, this mystical bit is quite good and helps the otherwise out of place Arthurian mythos fit in more with the previously established magic of the setting.

The Cross of St Ciricus

Richard Carpenter takes the writing duties back, but this is one of his more workmannylike scripts where you can see the mechanism of the plot as it turns. Having decided that New Robin/Robert and Sir Guy should turn out to be half-brothers, and that Robert should find out about it, he just needs to move the pieces into place so that the revelation can come out.

It is quite clever that only Robert and Tuck discover the secret out of the regular characters, and there are other things to like in the episode - most obviously the lengthy section when Much and Will Scarlet think they have caught leprosy from a group of lepers they encountered. Ray Winstone does his best to act his socks off to convey the terror this held for medieval people, but the episode itself wants to play it for rofls, with us not supposed to take the threat seriously - they're main characters, after all, and aren't about to get removed from the series that way.

The twist is that they weren't real lepers, but Sir Guy and some henchmannys in disguise, on their way to rob an abbey that... is a bit too nice to the poor for the Sheriff's liking (the Sheriff doesn't actually appear in this episode). It's not the best excuse for it to be Sir Guy in this role in the plot, but as mentioned he has to be involved so that he and the Merry Mannys can meet his mother at the abbey, from whence Robert and Tuck get to learn about how Robert's father, the Earl of Huntingdon, is Sir Guy's real father as well as Robert's.

Sir Guy treats his mother about as poorly as you'd expect for such a horrible character, but unfortunately the way Robert Addie says

"Mother!"

is a bit too close to the way his Mordred said "Mother!" to Morgana in Excalibur. There are times when this series just can't get away from the influence of that film.

The Sheriff of Nottingham

Anyone reading this who thought I was perhaps too harsh on Anthony Horowitz's first scripted episode The Inheritance should give his second episode a try. It contains easily the second* worst cliché of the entire series, when the Sheriff of Nottingham is sacked for his repeated failure to kill Robin Hood, and replaced with somebody even worse.

This is Philip Mark, the "Butcher of Lincoln," played by Lewis "Bodie" Collins, who immediately tries the old 'hang villagers until Robin Hood surrenders' plan, itself not exactly a sign of originality (though if you're going to steal a plan from another series' villain-of-the-week, stealing from Blakes 7's Raiker might be the way to go). Mark even comes with his own henchmanny, a Saracen who - of course - knows Nasir, and they have a backstory together that means they are deadly enemies. The slow-motion flashback showing their last fight is a highlight of the episode. Perhaps that is because in it Horowitz spares us from any dialogue, mew.

Collins plays Philip Mark as an evil homosexual (yet another overused cliché), who takes a fancy to Sir Guy of Gisburne, which Sir Guy seems to like, either because Mark's Saturday teatime innuendos are going over his head, or else because it means he gets treated a lot better than the previous Sheriff treated him.

Our usual Sheriff, meanwhile, gets captured by Robin and co, and offers to show them the secret passage in to Notingham Castle, which is yet another cliched contrivance, not to mention something used in the BBC's '70s Legend of Robin Hood.

While Robin and the rest of the Merry Mannys are getting captured by the new Sheriff, Nasir and his enemy - played by an English actor with a merciful lack of blackface - have their rematch, which for some reason involves them duelling with samurai swords (developed over a century after Robin of Sherwood is set, historical research fans). Highlander only released in cinemas the same year as this was made, so there probably wasn't enough time for it to be an influence, but clearly innapropriate katanas was just a theme of 1986.

The second highlight of the episode is Nasir's rescue of the others at the end of the story - you can see the twist coming a mile away, but it's still a great action set-piece, so some credit to Horowitz there... though more to the director, actors, etc. There's even a Terry Walsh trademark soldier falling off a high wall stunt.

* Two episodes to go until the worst and, yes, it is a cliché that was also used in The Legend of Robin Hood, among many others.

Cromm Cruac

Annoyingly, I have to give Anthony Horowitz some credit for this one, easily his best episode up to this point by a considerable margin (although that is quite like giving Jason Connery credit for his best acting). This magic-heavy tale actually sees Christianity come to the rescue for once - perhaps the biggest clue that Richard Carpenter didn't write it?

Richard O'Brien returns as Gulnar, out for revenge on Robin and the Merry Mannys for their defeat of Owen of Clun in the season's opening two-parter. The other main guest actor of note is John "Doc Morrisey" Horsley as a grumpy but friendly abbot.

Most of the Merry Mannys end up in the titular village of Cromm Cruac, which is a magic village not dissimilar to Brigadoon. Only Tuck and Marion avoid it, and end up going to Tuck's old abbot for help with rescuing their friends, plus getting some exposition and some holy water from him - this will obviously come in handy later on in accordance with the law of conservation of narrative detail.

The village begins manifesting the dreams or nighmares of each of the Merry Mannys until they lose their memories and personalities and act like they have always belonged in the village. Much, Will and Nasir succumb, until only Robin and Little John are still themselves.

Gulnar and some quite effectively realised demonic henchmannys then attempt to feed Robin to the demon (also called Cromm Cruac) that has given Gulnar the power to do all this magic, and this is another example of this series having a demonic entity that they keep off screen as much as possible to make it more effective. Because otherwise the temptation to shout

would be overwhelming.

Richard O'Brien overacts throughout the episode, and his evil laughter in the demon summoning scene would give Mordred from Battlefield a run for his money.

Other weak spots in the episode include some wooden acting by some of the evil villagers, and the quite frankly baffling directorial decison to have the fight between Robin, Tuck and Nasir with the demonic henchmannys take place in slow motion that gives away just how fake the fighting is (even Jason Connery, who is normally at his best in his action scenes, looks rubbish here). They might have gotten away with it if only they hadn't intercut this fight with Little John, Will and Much in a separate fight scene against the evil villagers, which was filmed at normal speed, so the contrast makes the slow-mo fight seem ten times slower worse slower and worse.

On the whole, though, this is one of season three's better episodes so far.