Ridiculous or Ridiculously Awesome moments from Mahabharat: The Wilderness Years

1. Bhim's wife and son turn out to be Monkeyesque baddys [Episode 53]

At one point during the Pandavas' 13 years of exile, Bhim is wandering alone when he sees a giant menacing a family and demanding that one of them come with him to be a human sacrifice - this has a strong resemblance to a typical plot you might expect to see in an episode of Monkey, even down to every member of the family offering up reasons why they should be the one to self-sacrifice. Bhim steps in and demands that he be taken, and the giant agrees to this since he is obviously a much finer specimen of a manny and so more suitable for sacrifice than any of the family would have been.

The giant takes Bhim home to where his mother lives, and it turns out that the giant's mother is Hidimbi, a demoness who Bhim married the last time he was in exile, after the incident with the House of Wax. This means that the giant is actually Bhim's son, called Ghatotkacha, and as a half-manny-half-demon he has many magical powers.

Upon seeing that her son has brought her husband and his own father for sacrifice, Hidimbi immediately sees the error of her ways and decides not to sacrifice any more mannys. Ghatotkacha pays his respects to Bhim and receives his blessing, in the traditional way for characters in this series, and then they embrace as father and son.

2. Arjun goes to heaven and gets more than he came for [Episodes 53-54]

Arjun goes to heaven, which looks all cloud-like in a very similar way to the Western Heaven we saw in Monkey. I'm not saying they reused the same sets, but they may as well have done. There he obtains divine weapons from the gods, and is then ordered by Indra, king of the gods (and also sort of Arjun's father by way of Kunti's magic spell), to learn music and dance from Indra's own musician. This was because Indra knew that such skills would be useful to Arjun in the future.

The goddess Urvashi decides to seduce Arjun, but he rejects her by comparing her to a mother - a dire insult, judging by her reaction. Urvashi responds to this rejection by cursing Arjun with impotence, or possibly (the subtitled translation seems unable to make up its mind which) to become a eunuch.

Indra is unhappy about this, and not just because of his paternal fondness for Arjun - he rules that this was not a justifiable use for divine cursing. But it is too late for Urvashi to take back the curse completely (that seems to be completely against the rules), so instead Indra makes her modify it so that Arjun is only a eunuch for one year, and at a time of Arjun's choosing. Once again Indra has peered into the future and seen that this will aid Arjun at a time when he needs it the most - a blessing disguised as a curse.

3. A drink of water kills four Pandavas [Episode 55]

Wandering the forest looking for water to drink, Nakul finds a likely looking lake and stops to take a drink. A bodiless voice (which in this series is a sure sign that a god is involved) challenges him to answer its questions before he drinks, but Nakul ignores this and drinks anyway. He promptly falls down ded. His twin brother Sahadev then finds the body but considers it more important to have a drink from the lake before doing anything about this. He too is challenged by the voice to answer questions before drinking, and he too ignores it. He drinks, with the same result as before.

Arjun is sent to look for the twins, and he finds their bodies lying by the lake (only noticing them when they are visible in the same shot as he is). A yaksha spirit with a big moustache appears floating in the air and tells Arjun what has happened, and that the same thing will happen to him if he drinks the water without answering the questions first. Arjun is angry at the death of his brothers and so drinks some water just to defy the spirit, but he then dies in the same way as they did. Next Bhim arrives on the scene, and exactly the same thing happens with him - only with even more overacting as he dies.

Soon Yudhishthir finds the four bodies and, because he is the wisest of them (except when it comes to gambling), he goes along with the spirit's demand that he answer questions before drinking the water. The spirit seems to be trying to trick Yudhishthir by asking nonsensical questions or questions that have no answer, but Yudhishthir is equal to this game and may even be trolling the spirit with his answers. Judge for yourselves:

Q. "What is heavier than Earth?"

A. "Mother"

Q. "What is higher than the sky?"

A. "Father"

Q. "What is faster than the wind?"

A. "The mind"

Q. "What is more in number than twigs?"

A. "Worry"

Q. "Who is the friend of a person close to death?"

A. "Charity"

Q. "Where does religion, success, heaven and happiness reside?"

A. "Religion resides in Awareness. Success in Charity. Heaven in Truth. Happiness in chastity."

Q. "What is a man's soul?"

A. "His son"

Q. "What has covered the Earth?"

A. "Ignorance"

Q. "What is laziness?"

A. "Ignorance of Religion is laziness"

Q. "Who is truly happy?"

A. "The one free of debt"

Q. "What is true cleansing?"

A. "The cleansing of the mind"

Q. "What is darker than eye black?"

A. "Disrepute"

Q. "Which is the best religion?"

A. "Piety!"

Q. "What can prevent mourning?"

A. "Keeping the mind in control"

Q. "What is shame?"

A. "Keeping away from unworthy things"

Q. "What is Piety?"

A. "Wishing happiness for all"

Q. "What kills the nation?"

A. "Slavery"

Q. "What is the true test of Brahminhood? Dynasty, Character, Teaching or Knowledge?"

A. "Dynasty, Teaching or Knowledge do not prove Brahminhood. Character is the true test. A Shudra with Character is better than a born Brahmin who has only Knowledge but no Character"

Q. "Is Religion in Logic?"

A. "No!"

Q. "Is it found in the philosophy of Sages?"

A. "No! Because each Sage differs from the others. None has the complete Truth"

Q. "Where is the complete truth?"

A. "In the heart of the believer"

Q. "What is the greatest wonder?"

A. "The greatest wonder is that each individual knows that Death is the ultimate Truth and yet believes that maybe he is immortal."

For answering all of his questions "correctly" the spirit brings Yudhishthir's brothers back to life. Yudhishthir recognises that this is not really a Yaksha but a god. In fact it is Yama, who is Yudhishthir's divine father in much the same way Indra is to Arjun, and this was all a test to prove Yudhishthir's wisdom and worthiness.

4. Pandavas in disguise [Episodes 56-58]

After 12 years of exile, the final part of the forfeit for losing the dice game with Shakuni was that the Pandavas had to play hide and seek, remaining undiscovered anywhere in the world for a whole year - or else if they were found out in this time then they would have to spend another 12 years in exile. In the independent kingdom of Matsya, not too far from Hastinapur, they hid under a variety of cunning (read: wafer thin, but still surprisingly effective for that) disguises. It was here that Arjun's divine curse came to his assistance - as the most famous and recognisable of the brothers, he was the hardest to disguise, but nobody would think to look for the ace archer and proud warrior among the eunuchs of the women's quarters.

I think Arjun's disguise is so particularly effective because he doesn't have his distinctive moustache.

The king of Matsya's brother-in-law, who is also their army's general, makes improper advances towards Draupadi, so Bhim and Arjun have a big fight with him and kill him - although all Arjun does is play suitable incidental music for the fight scene, and it is Bhim who actually does all the killing, Arjun plays the drum so dramatically that his paws end up covered in his blood.

5. Arjun gives himself away... or does he? [Episodes 59-62]

With the rest of Matsya's army lured away in the wrong direction thanks to a diversionary attack, the young prince Uttar is left to defend the kingdom on his own. Well... not quite on his own, as he takes with him Arjun, still in the guise of the eunuch Brihannala, to act as his charioteer. When faced with all the mighty warriors of Hastinapur, the prince has second thoughts and tries to run away, so Arjun makes him be the charioteer and let Arjun do the fighting in his place.

Arjun may still be in disguise, but he will not fight without first observing the proper ceremonies of the warrior, so he blows his conch horn to announce himself. Duryodhan hears this and believes he has pierced the "veil of anonymity" around the Pandavas, thus meaning they have lost the game of international hide and seek.

Arjun goes on to defeat in turn Karna, Kripa, Drona, Ashwathama, Dushasan, Karna (again), Bhishma and Duryodhan, but does not kill any of them even when they are at his mercy. Duryodhan insists that the Pandavas must forefeit and undertake another 12 years of exile, but the Kuru elders disagree and say that the year of anonymity was over before the invasion of Matsya began.

This ambiguity is necessary in order to drive the conflict in the next part of the story - with both sides believing they are in the right and so unwilling to back down to the other side's counterclaim - but there is one piece of evidence that the year was not yet over that seems to be overlooked: why was Arjun's year-long curse of impotence still in effect, instead of ending at the same time as the year of exile?

Big Gay Longcat reviews The Legend of Robin Hood: Part Six

Robin challenges Guy of Gisbourne to a duel. Guy tries to say "I do not duel with vagrants" but Marion says

"You may tell him that Sir Guy is afraid."

and this convinces Guy to accept the challenge.

Litle John worries that Guy won't fight fair, and he wonders why Robin is so confident. This prompts Robin to tell him of the prophecy from back in part one that he can only die by a woman's paw. This also reminds the viewers at home about this, because otherwise we might not remember it because it hasn't been mentioned since then. John asks

"Did she say by a woman's hand, or for a woman's hand?"

since he knows Robin is fighting for Marion's sake more than just to avenge the death of her uncle Sir Kenneth.

Robin and Guy have a big fight in a wood while the Merry Mannys and some soldiers look on. As one would hope for a big climactic fight in the final episode of the series, this is the best choreographed fight so far, so even though it goes on for a while it does not get boring. Eventually Robin wins, and Guy lies down as though to have some sleeps.

Robin rescues Marion and takes her to her uncle's house, which is now her house.

Meanwhile, Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham have been off in their own plot, which involves having noms with a bishop. The bishop bores them senseless by going on and on about how good King Richard is, which is a shortpaw way of letting us viewers know that he is a goody bishop and not a baddy bishop, so he refuses to team up with them.

It is the law that any series about heroic outlaws has to have a plot where the baddys pretend to be the outlaws in order to discredit them - a typical (though hardly good) example of this can be seen in The Water Margin episode 13 When Liang Shan Po Robbed the Poor. Since we haven't had that plot in this series yet, and this is the last episode, we get that now. Some fake Merry Mannys ambush the bishop and murder him, but let his friends escape thinking this was done by Robin Hood. Previously friendly villagers start turning against the Merry Mannys and helping the soldiers to capture them. Zzzzz.

With the bishop ded, Prince John now has enough power to take over as regent, so he has the current regent arrested. He just has time to sit on the throne and try on the crown before his mother and King Richard arrive to take it away from him.

Some scenes of Friar Tuck walking around while being ill go on for waaaaay too long, and seem calculated to undo the goodwill for the episode we got from the high standard of the earlier fight scene. Between this and the fake Merry Mannys plot this episode has really nosedived in quality.

Fortunately the fake Merry Manny who robbed and killed the bishop is caught when using the items he stole to pay for his drinks, and he admits to Robin that the Sheriff made him do it, so at least this plot is being dispensed with. But I am disappointed in the Sheriff for resorting to such a dreadfully clichéd scheme, mew. Maybe he was just doing it to troll us?

King Richard rounds up all of Prince John's supporters, until only the Sheriff and his henchmanny-of-the-week Sir Brian are left. The Sheriff decides to escape from the castle using the secret passage from part five.

At the same time Robin tells the king about the secret passage, so that when the Sheriff comes out he is immediately captured. The king says the Sheriff has done so many crimes that "the pity is you can only die once" - yet another reason why mannys (even ones played by Paul Darrow) are rubbish and cats are best.

This is the last we see of the Sheriff of Nottingham, but at least we know Paul Darrow will be back the next time the BBC decide to make a series about outlaws. The king pardons Robin, and there is a happy ending if you turn the DVD off at this point.

Robin goes to his house at Huntingdon now that he has been made the earl again, but then he gets ill with the same sickness as we saw Friar Tuck had earlier on. Guy of Gisbourne's sister comes in and gives him poison instead of medicine.

This is followed by another tedious scene of Robin staggering around, which clearly seems to be the director's preferred method of padding out an episode to reach the required length. Eventually Robin goes

This series is very variable in quality. Every scene with Paul Darrow in it is great (as you would expect), and the bits where he has his top off even more so, but you have to sit through a lot of padding and questionable story choices to get to the good parts.

Made in the mid-70s, this series was clearly a reaction against earlier versions of the legend of Robin Hood (clang!), most obviously the superb Disney animated movie made only a couple of years before this. Generally these earlier film and TV adaptations featured larger-than-life characters and swashbuckling adventures, so perhaps this was an attempt to make a down-to-earth, realistic version by way of contrast.

Unfortunately, I think they went way too far in that direction, and the decision to kill off many of the main characters - starting with Will Scarlet and finishing with Robin himself - was a mistaik because it made the series much less fun to watch. Not to mention greatly reducing any chances of there being a second series with further adventures of the Sheriff of Nottingham Merry Mannys, possibly with them getting in a new manny to be Robin Hood.

What was really needed was a middle ground between the OTT heroics of the earlier Robin Hoods and this all too grim and gritty interpretation of the 12th century. Perhaps ITV would have more success with their retelling of the legend of Robin Hood when it was their turn to have a go in the 1980s...

Big Gay Longcat reviews The Legend of Robin Hood: Part Five

The news from the crusade is that King Richard has been captured by Leopold of Austria, who is demanding 150,000 moneys as ransom. This sounds like quite a lot, if only there was a well-known idiom to describe it, mew.

The Merry Mannys find out that Prince John has been keeping the taxes for himself instead of sending them on to the Chancellor.

Prince John tells the Sheriff of Nottingham his latest scheme is to pay Leopold even more moneys to keep the king prisoner forever. The Sheriff says

"Such skill. Such a simple plan. And so watertight.

The future begins to look very bright."

He's a poet and he know it.

Sir Kenneth has finally realised what a baddy Sir Guy of Gisbourne is, and regrets getting Marion engaged to him. He summons Robin to meet him, and swears Robin to secrecy before bringing in Queen Mother Eleanor (last seen by us in part two). She asks Robin to help her raise the ransom moneys for Richard, and he tells her about the moneys that Prince John has been keeping. Eleanor makes Robin her deniable agent and gives him an mission to steal the money for her, if he chooses to accept it.

One of Sir Guy's spies tells him about Eleanor and Robin's meeting, and Sir Guy tells the Sheriff, who quickly deduces what the meeting was about, making Robin's mission even more impossible. When the Merry Mannys find out about the increased security that Sir Guy puts on the moneys, Friar Tuck deduces that they know that they know about it.

Little John knows about a secret passage into Nottingham Castle, so the Merry Mannys sneak in. Robin captures the Sheriff and Sir Guy, and the Sheriff makes an "oh noes!" face, lol.

The Merry Mannys escape with the moneys in sacks, and leave the Sheriff and Sir Guy tied up. As soon as they are gone, one of the henchmannys frees the Sheriff and he shouts

"Guards! Guards!"

The guards, guards chase the Merry Mannys and have a fight with them, but we don't see much of the fight because it is dark outside.

Most of the Merry Mannys escape, but Little John gets captured. The Sheriff tries to seduce Little John into betraying Robin and the others, and I use the word "seduce" advisedly...

"You're a big, strong, healthy fellow, well able to enjoy the pleaseures of life, I'll wager. They will be yours, in abundance, when you tell me what I want to know."

Purr. Well I'd be convinced, but somehow Little John resists the temptation.

Sir Guy has a different plan to find out where the Merry Mannys are headed with the moneys. He kidnaps Marion to try to force Sir Kenneth to tell him, but all this results in is Sir Kenneth having a swordfight with him. This ends with Sir Guy stabbing Sir Kenneth, who goes

The rescue attempt for Little John involves the Merry Mannys infiltrating the castle grounds in a variety of disguises, including a couple as women for some good old-fashioned komedy hijinks when one of the guards takes a fancy to them.

Before sending him to be hanged, the Sheriff asks Little John one last time if he will tell him where the rest of the Merry Mannys have gone, and it seems as though Little John has finally succumbed to the Sheriff's charms (well... he's only a cat manny) because he says he will tell him.

Sheriff: "Excellent! Where have they taken the money?"

Little John: "Next time you see a rainbow, run as fast as you can. They're going to bury the money at the end of it."

Lol, he totally pwned you there, Sheriff! This makes the Sheriff very angry, and so he demands that the hangmanny make Little John dance.

The hangmanny is revealed to be Robin in disguise, and he rescues John instead of making him dance (or hanging him, mew). When they get back to their base, they find out about what happened to Sir Kenneth and that Marion is still Sir Guy's prisoner.

This is a proper cliffhanger, what with it even ending on a sudden cut to Robin's mildly concerned-looking face.

This instalment feels like a proper Robin Hood story, and on top of that it has loads of good scenes for the Sheriff in it, so this is comfortably the best episode since part two.

Big Gay Longcat reviews The Legend of Robin Hood: Part Four

Here's a promising start to the episode, as the first scene features the Sheriff of Nottingham (purr) who was badly underused in part three. He meets with a messenger (played by Roy "Sandbaggers" Marsden - alas he has no scenes in common with Diane "Sandbaggers" Keen) acting on behalf of a mysterious "superior." It seems there is another secret plan being hatched. Sir Guy of Gisbourne is worried that Robin Hood will interfere, what with him being the hero, so the Sheriff tells his henchmannys to try and catch Robin.

Robin and his Merry Manny Ralph are not so merry when they find a village has had all of its noms taken by Sir Guy and the Sheriff's soldiers as taxes. The village head manny is played by William "Crown Court barrister Martin O'Connor" Simons, but even his extensive legal experience can't help him here when the laws are whatever the Sheriff says they are.

Robin and Ralph get into a fight with the Sheriff's henchmannys at the same river where Robin first met Little John (well you can't blame them, really... location scouting is a tricky business, mew), and things look bad for them until the other Merry Mannys arrive to help. This victory makes Robin bold, so they decide to go on the offensive against any baddys who enter Sherwood Forest, robbing from them to give to the poor.

The first manny we see them rob tells them "[the Sheriff] shall hear of this!" to which Robin replies

"I hope he will. And be sure to tell him that you have also paid Robin Hood's taxes."

The Sheriff doesn't take this news well, and again threatens his henchmanny with punishment if he doesn't catch Robin. He also takes it out on the villagers Robin helped, increasing their taxes "by half." I think that means he has just reduced their taxes to half of what they were, which is nice of him.

When he sends out henchmannys to tell the villagers this, the Merry Mannys capture them and hang them up in just their underwear, lol.

The Merry Mannys capture a knight called Sir Richard of the Lea, and we can immediately tell he must be a significant character because he's played by Bernard "Marcus Scarman" Archard - and you don't waste him on a small part unless you're Krull.

Sir Richard says he knew Robin's father, and then tells his tale of how he owes the "Abbot of St Marys" 400 moneys and was on his way to tell the abbot he could not pay it. Robin gives him 400 of the moneys they had robbed as a present before he sends Sir Richard on his way.

This evil abbot isn't the one who got stabbed back in part two - he is a different, other evil abbot, played by Kevin Stoney. Roy Marsden's character turns out to be his Brother Prior, and presumably one of the other ones is an equally dickish Brother Jerome. Sir Richard comes in and begs the abbot for more time, but then when the abbot says no he throws down the moneys and insults him, calling him "a shame to his office" in front of all his monks. This is a serious diss.

Sir Richard thanks Robin for his help by telling him that the abbot will be meeting with the Sheriff and Sir Guy to discuss their latest plan to team up and help Prince John become king.

Several long, slow scenes of Sir Guy leading the baddys - both monks and soldiers - through the forest do their best to build suspense send us cats to sleep, before the Merry Mannys finally spring their ambush. There is a big fight and Will Scarlet goes

but the goodys win in the end, and this convinces the evil abbot not to team up with the Sheriff and Sir Guy. The story ends with the Sheriff making a 'whyioughtta...' face at Sir Guy for his failure, lol.

This is a better episode than part three, with a lot more Sheriff of Nottingham in it, but it is still quite ponderous and surprisingly unexciting - even in the action scenes.

Big Gay Longcat reviews The Legend of Robin Hood: Part Three

With Robin outlawed and the abbot who used to live in it ded, Sir Guy of Gisbourne has been given his house to live in. Robin and his Merry Mannys have a new house - a secret studio set which Friar Tuck found hidden under Sherwood Forest.

One of the Sheriff of Nottingham's henchmannys reports having seen Robin in the forest, causing the Sheriff to make an 'oh noes' face because he thought Robin was still captured by the monks from part two.

Prince John wants the Sheriff to capture Robin alive so that he can talk to him "privately" - which I suspect is code for something naughty, based on the way this series has gone so far. He says he admires Robin for defying the king, something he has so far only been prepared to do secretly.

Robin hears about another outlaw, John Little, who already has the nickname "Little John" because, having spent a full third of its duration on Robin's backstory, the series has no time to waste on anybody else's. Robin makes friends with him in the traditional manner - by having a fight with him until they both fall in the river and get wet.

While they probably didn't enjoy getting wet, they certainly enjoyed the next bit where they got to dry off together while topless. This really is something of a theme for this series, isn't it?

One of the new Merry Mannys that joined along with Little John is a fake, and he betrays Robin to Sir Guy so that Robin gets captured (again). From the tower where he is imprisoned, Robin sees Marion and she sees him. She sneaks in to see him disguised as a servant, and smuggles a knife in for Robin and a message out for Will Scarlet.

With help from the knife and from the real servant, Robin escapes from the tower. Thanks to the message, the Merry Mannys are waiting outside the castle for him and he is able to leap to freedom.

The Sheriff's henchmanny chases them, but he gets covered in noms while they get away. While this is an amusing bit, it gets even funnier in the next scene when the henchmanny is still covered in the noms while Sir Guy does the traditional angrily-calling-him-a-fool-then-saying-he-wants-Robin-found bit, lol.

Robin knows he was betrayed, but not by whom. Little John tells him that one of their mannys was found ded that morning, and from this he deduced that this was how the manny was rewarded by Sir Guy for his treachery.

Little John also tells Robin about a madwoman who lives in a cave, and from this Robin and Tuck deduce where the next bit of plot is. Tuck persuades the madwoman to tell them her story, about how every other manny from her village was captured by the Sheriff's henchmannys and taken to do W-word in a silver mine. Oh noes!

Of course they all have to be topless while they do it, like Blake and Vila in Horizon. I can't imagine why Prince John (who turns out to be in charge of the mine) would insist on that, mew...

The Merry Mannys rescue the prisoners, and Robin confronts Prince John. This is so that Prince John knows who did the rescuing. As one John (Little) helps Robin steal the silver, the other John (Prince) shouts threats at Robin about what he will do to him when he catches him. These are along the lines that he wants Robin to be well hung. Mew.

When Robin doesn't hang around (so to speak) to listen to him, the prince has to resort to addressing his threats directly to the camera - an oddly effective way of demonstrating his impotence in the present situation. It is upon this moment that the episode ends.

While part two was always going to be a hard act to follow, this is definitely a big letdown, with a minimal appearance by the Sheriff and a plot that wouldn't have been out of place if used as filler 4 episodes into a 13-part serason - suffice to say this seems much worse when it forms part three of an only six-part series.

Big Gay Longcat reviews The Legend of Robin Hood: Part Two

Part two is written by Robert Banks Stewart so good luck seeing this on the BBC iPlayer any time soon.

The bandits have a fight with Robin and knock him out, but decide not to kill him when their leader, Will Scarlet, recognises the ring he wears. Will tells Robin about the evil abbot who has been living in Robin's house, and then they go to the house where they find the abbot has gone, but he has also stolen all of the furniture - including the DVD player. Oh noes!

All that has been left behind is Friar Tuck, as played by Tony "Ensor" Caunter. Tuck leads them to where the abbot has stashed the stolen items in a barn, and Robin and Will set it on fire. This is only a distraction so that they can ambush the guards and then steal back Robin's things.

Tuck tricks the abbot into going back to Robin's house for some treasure that had been "left behind" but instead finds that Robin has got there first, just like Blake getting there ahead of Travis in Seek-Locate-Destroy. The abbot is sent away with only the things that actually belong to him.

There is a rather dull and historically dubious subplot about King Richard's mother Eleanor of Aquitaine trying to persuade him to make Prince John regent while Richard is away on crusade. Dubious because Richard was Eleanor's favourite son, while John was the favourite of their father King Henry, so she would have been unlikely to side with John over Richard. If the writer had watched The Devil's Crown then he would have known this, but we have to let him off since that wasn't made until three years after this, mew.

All things considered, so far this has been a bit of a dull episode in general, but don't worry, because it is about to get really very good indeed...

Purr purr purr!

Prince John and the Sheriff are having a sauna together. This is completely gratuitous and absolutely wonderful, purr. I think some plot happens as well but you can hardly expect me to concentrate on a thing like that when Paul Darrow has got his moobs out.

Did nobody tell Terry Nation that they were allowed to have scenes like this on Blakes 7? Countdown could have looked very different if they had. Or maybe they just didn't have the budget to have a space sauna on the Liberator? Mew.

Robin finally meets the Sheriff after he hears about the previous scene Sheriff hanging a manny from his estate.

Robin suspects the Sheriff of being economical with the actualité after he describes the hanged manny despite claiming to not have met him. When challenged on this the Sheriff says he saw him when he was hanged - you're going to have to go to bed earlier than that if you want to catch the Sheriff in it, Robin!

When Robin leaves, the Sheriff is convinced he knows nothing that can hinder his secret plan, which he tells to the abbot... er, that Robin knows nothing, I mean. The abbot already knows their secret plan, presumably. However, by the time Sir Guy arrives to do some more plotting with them, the Sheriff is having doubts about what Robin might know.

Robin has kiffs with Marion, but the king finds out about it and he doesn't like Robin having kiffs with anybody else. And in case you think that's me making a little John joke, here is his line of dialogue:

"Do you think I don't know about mutual affection? I didn't ask to take a liking to you, but you appear and I made you my squire, and now in a sense you betray me."

The abbot gets stabbed off-screen and confesses the secret plan, but the priest he is confessing to is more concerned with stealing all of his jewellery. This means Robin is the only one who finds out about the plan to kill the king once he is sailing away to go on crusade. Unfortunately, he then gets captured by Servalan's randomly Scottish henchmanny from Gambit.

The manny who stabbed the abbot turns out to have been one of the Sheriff's henchmannys all along, and he tells the Sheriff that Robin heard the confession. To prove that he is really a competent henchmanny, he then gives the Sheriff Robin's ring to let him know they have captured him, which makes the Sheriff do an Avonesque smile and a Cybermannyesque

"Excellent."

"What's to be done with him?"

"Oh... kill him."

The Sheriff gives the ring to the king as evidence that Robin has run away, and the king is so enraged by this that he outlaws Robin on the spot. And about time too, it took Blake half the time it took Robin to become a convicted criminal, and that in a much longer series. I was beginning to think this whole series was going to be one long origin story for Robin Hood, like one of those Marvel movies we hear so much about.

Will Scarlet rescues Robin from the randomly Scottish henchmanny, and Robin rushes to warn the king about the secret plan to murder him. The king takes his advice about the plot on board, but he also tells Robin to go away and that he is still outlawed. And that's the end of the episode.

A practically purrfect piece of television. Shame about the Robin Hood stuff.

Big Gay Longcat reviews The Legend of Robin Hood: Part One

Sadly nothing to do with Legend from Gladiators, this is a little-known BBC adaptation of the legend of Robin Hood (clang!) from 1975.

It lives in the shadow of other film and television versions of the Robin Hood story, both before (such as 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood film, starring Errol Flynn, or the 1955 TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, with its famous theme song) and since (for example 1984's Robin of Sherwood series, or the 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) this was made.

But this version has one thing that none of the others have, that sets it clearly above them in the eyes of all cats. Only Maid Marian and her Merry Mannys or Disney's animated Robin Hood can even come close... and there's not enough Cats in the latter.

It begins with a pre-titles scene in which we see Robin Hood as a little baby, who is to be hidden away so that his father's enemies can't kill him.

The first thing we see after the low-key titles is the grown up Robin is good at archery. He has an argument with a couple of Norman soldiers, which establishes that he doesn't like Normans.

Later, Robin is told who his real father is - the noble Earl of Huntingdon. Robin takes this news a bit better than Luke Skywalker did, but maybe that was because he hadn't just had his paw cut off? He is told to go to see King Richard to claim his inheritance, and given a ring and a letter as evidence since all the mannys who the king might believe are ded. The only trouble is that he has to do this quickly, because the king is expected to soon be off abroad on his holiday crusade.

The next scene introduces us to the main character - the Sheriff of Nottingham, as played by...

Paul Darrow! Purr.

The Sheriff is meeting with Prince John, who is played by David "not from Guildford after all" Dixon. They are plotting what to do once King Richard has left the country, and John has the expectation that he will be left in charge as regent. The Sheriff is shown playing chess so that we know he is intelligent, and the fact that he is playing against himself suggests that he hasn't yet met anybody whom he considers a worthy opponent.

Robin is travelling to London when he meets Sir Kenneth Neston (John "moral duty" Abineri), Lady Marion (Diane "Sandbaggers" Keen) and their entourage. Their cart has broken down and Robin helps them to mend it. After they have gone, Robin meets an old woman who prophesies that he

"will never die, save by a woman's hand, heh heh heh."

In accordance with the law of conservation of narrative detail, this is now certain to come true in some way by the end of the series. And given it involves the title character's death, likely to be at the end of the series. Robin tries to follow the old woman, but finds she has vanished... mysteriously.

Robin meets Sir Kenneth and Marion again at an inn, and now Robin finds out that Marion is supposed to soon be marrying Sir Guy of Gisbourne, who is a Norman. This prompts a cut to another scene where we see Sir Guy for the first time - he is being played by William "bargain basement Oliver Reed" Marlowe, last seen by me in Doctor Who's The Mind of Evil where he played second fiddle to another great acting baddy - so it looks as though there has been no change in his fortunes since then, lol.

Sir Guy is sat having noms with an abbot and the Sheriff of Nottingham, and he talks about how he might reject Lady Marion while staring right at the Sheriff. You can't marry him instead, Sir Guy! Although I can understand why you might want to. Again we see that the Sheriff is the level-headed, clever one out of the baddys when he is forced to explain the advantages of the marriage to Sir Guy in terms of inheriting her uncle's land.

The next day Robin again saves Sir Kenneth, Marion and their mannys, this time from an attack by some bandits. Then Sir Guy arrives and takes over, sending Robin on his way.

A scene at the royal court introduces us to King Richard, here played by Michael-John Jackson - not to be confused with anyone with a similar name that you may have heard of. He has no intention of making Prince John regent so John has a temper tantrum and, strangely, this doesn't get him his way.

King Richard meets with Robin to prove his identity. He tells Robin to take off his tunic and shirt and turn around, at which Robin hesitates - he must have been hoping this would happen when he met the Sheriff, not the king, lol! The king sees Robin's birthmark and agrees that he is the Earl of Huntingdon. For an Earl of Huntingdon, Robin doesn't sound nearly as Scottish as the real Earl was around this time in history.

The Sheriff's abbot friend has been living in the Earl of Huntingdon's house, and now the king commands that he move out so that Robin can move in. He goes straight to the Sheriff to complain, but the Sheriff coolly describes it as only "a temporary setback."

The abbot says it is worse than that, because he is in debt and now the moneylender wants his moneys back. This makes the Sheriff's eyes go wide and he says

"You're a fool!"

The abbot nearly gives away a secret plot of theirs, but the Sheriff interrupts him in time by grabbing the abbot by the collar.

"We're alone! No one can hear us!"

insists the abbot, but he has forgotten that we the audience can still hear them. The cunning Sheriff hasn't, though, so we don't get to find out what their secret plot is... yet. The Sheriff then holds a knife to the abbot's throat and makes him swear to "be as silent as the grave, my dear abbot."

This is a great scene, with Paul Darrow getting a chance to be properly villainous. It's just a shame he hasn't actually met Robin Hood yet.

Speaking of Robin, he is out riding on a horse when some outlaws see him and get ready to ambush him. Robin rides on unawares, into the end credits. It's sort of a cliffhanger, but there's no crash zoom to his face.

This is quite a slow first episode - it is very talky, with only one short action scene (when Robin rescued Marion and Sir Kenneth) - but it does have to introduce us to quite a lot of characters. In that regard it is pretty effective, since by the end we are left quite clear on who the main players are and what their key traits are. The Sheriff of Nottingham, for instance, seems to be a manny of reason, not action.

On the other paw, there is such a thing as being too leisurely in your pacing - we haven't even met the Merry Mannys yet! Blakes 7 may have taken multiple parts to introduce its main characters, but there were 52 episodes of that - here there are only six.

On the third paw, we can clearly see that the Sheriff has claws when he needs to...

The Bill: All Fall Down

Broadcast from the 17th to 31st October 2000, this was a run of five consecutive episodes telling a single extended narrative that could have been the final end of The Bill, since it is a truly climactic storyline that brings to an end plotlines that had been literally years in the making, as well as containing the final apperances of serveral main characters.

DS Claire Stanton had been getting increasingly close to exposing the corruption of Don Beech, and now in desperation he turns to DS John Boulton, trying to get him to join Beech in corruption so that together they can cover up his involvement in taking bribes from and doing favours for a drug smuggler. After Boulton turns out to be a lot more incorruptible than Beech anticipated, they have a fight in which Boulton is accidentally killed - making him the first regular to depart over the course of this story.

The subsequent murder investigation starts to unravel Beech's years of double-dealing. Two parallel plotlines ensue - in the first Stanton hunts for Beech as he tries to get out of the country under a false identity, after double-crossing his drug-dealing mates to steal their money to help him live abroad (they were, of course, trying to double-cross him at the same time). This is exceptionally well plotted, as intricate as the best TV dramas, and is carried by actor Billy Murray's charisma that sees you rooting for Beech even as his list of despicable crimes mounts up.

The second is the internal investigation of the rest of the CID team, led by guest actor Paul Joe Mark McGann, to see if any of them were also corrupt. This ensures that the regulars are excluded from the other plot since they are all locked down in the Sun Hill station, and we get to see how each of them reacts (there is a notable exception in that Bob Cryer is absent from these episodes, and his presence is much missed when we see how the uniformed PCs and sergeants react to events). Nobody else is guilty, but the fact that Beech got away with it for so long means that they want to get rid of those who should have known better, so DS Daly and DI Chris Deakin get transferred.

Brownlow's nemesis Borough Commander Guy Mannion - a panto baddy who has wandered into The Bill by mistaik - finally has his chance and demands Brownlow's resignation for letting this happen under his nose - let's not forget that Brownlow has been the Chief Superintendent of Sun Hill, and therefore the boss of The Bill, since the very first season. This would therefore be the end of an era for this reason if no other.

But the story of The Bill is in many ways the story of PACE (i.e. the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984) which came in around the time of The Bill's first season, in the wake of the police corruption scandals that we know by proxy from all the violent policemannys of sketch shows and drama serials of the 1970s and '80s. With tighter recording of procedures, taped interviews, legal rights for suspects, etc. the police suddenly had to try a lot harder to catch and obtain convictions against criminals, thanks to the actions of their corrupt brethren before them.

Gradually some officers learned how to W-word around these restrictions and where and when they could cut corners, and over the course of The Bill through the '80s and '90s we saw this happen in basically real time. From old-school coppers such as Ted Roach who resented these new ways to the likes of young Jim Carver (not so young by 2000) who lived their whole careers with PACE as the status quo, and finally to the likes of Don Beech and Sgt Boyden who knew exactly how to manipulate the system to their advantage. The crucial difference between Beech and Boyden was that Boyden only bent the rules to make his job a bit easier and to keep the Act from proving too much of a hindrance to getting the right result - so-called 'noble cause corruption.'

Beech started off that way too, but then he found he was on a slippery slope. First he bent the rules to help out some mates. Then he bent them to get himself out of a fix or two. Then it was to make himself a bit of extra money. Then the criminals he helped out wanted him to help them again - and how could he say no? Then he was having to break the rules just to cover up his previous rule-breaking, and so on.

In the real world, by the late 1990s the police were once again having trouble with corruption (assuming that it ever really went away, which I somehow doubt, mew) and this led to the formation of an undercover 'Ghost Squad' which spied on the police from the inside. DS Claire Stanton is revealed (to viewers long before any of her colleagues) to be such a mole planted inside Sun Hill CID over a year before this story (Stanton had been a regular since September 1999), and who is ultimately responsible for outing Beech, but at the cost of dealing enormous collateral damage to the rest of the Sun Hill team - not merely the loss of seven regular characters (including Stanton herself) in the space of five episodes, but also the loss of trust between CID oficers, between the uniformed and CID teams, between the frontline officers and senior management, between Sun Hill and other stations, and - it is implied - further loss of trust from the public... though that can't have been high to begin with given the number of scandals in Sun Hill since Richard Handford took over as producer at the start of 1998.

That brings me to the biggest weakness of this story, which is that in an earlier era of The Bill it would have been nothing short of astonishing. The seeds for Beech's gradual corruption and eventual downfall were planted over two years before (the turning point being his taking bribes from a gangster played by Leslie "Dirty Den" Grantham, in episodes broadcast in March '98), and this amount of setup and payoff should have been outstanding.

But by the year 2000 it was barely visible above the noise (to mix my metaphors) because in the Handford era, every other new regular was dodgy or bent in some way - such as PC Eddie Santini, who started off gaslighting and bullying his female colleagues before escalating to murdering a woman - and every other story saw regulars at each other's throats over their love lives (the Garfield/Quinnan/Nurse Jenny love triangle being one such unwelcome arc across much of 1999), being held hostage at gunpoint, knocked out and kidnapped, stabbed followed by a race against time for their colleagues to save their lives, or being framed for committing the crimes they were supposed to be investigating.

In such an environment of outrageous sensationalism, this storyline loses a lot of its power. It is sensational because it has earned it through careful setup over a long period of time, not just because it is yet another station fire or bomb exploding, killing off a few regulars to grab some headlines and the cover of a TV listings magazine. The unique position of The Bill as an ongoing police drama means it has the chance to examine the subsequent implications of the events and the meaningful consequences to the characters, but this is lessened by the production team's need to move on to a new story the next week. And the way that the real-world issue of police corruption and internal investigations, and the eternal dilemma of quis custodiet ipsos custodes, has been brilliantly conveyed in a stunning piece of TV drama is lost in a landscape where every week's storyline has to top the one before it... which inevitably results in only diminishing returns.

In conclusion - there was no way back for The Bill after this. If it had ended here it could have gone out on a high note. These five episodes are amazing, but they are surrounded by rubbish.

Ladyhawke (1985)

A pseudo-historical fantasy film set in that strangely nonspecific period of European medieval history so beloved by American filmmakers - other movies of this type include The Court Jester (1956), The Princess Bride (1987) and The 13th Warrior (1999).

At the beginning of the film it appears that Matthew "Ferris Bueller" Broderick is the star, playing thief-on-the-run Phillipe Gaston, but after he meets up with Rutger "tears in the rain" Hauer's former-captain-of-the-guard-now-on-the-run Etienne Navarre it becomes clear that Hauer is the hero and Broderick merely the sidekick. A bit like when Blake meets Avon in Space Fall.

At two hours long the film is annoyingly paced - when there's action it is good, but it could hardly be described as being tightly edited since it felt to me like nearly every scene goes on for just a bit longer than it needed to, with the result that the middle hour drags.

Leo McKern (taking time off from being Rumpole in between seasons three and four) turns up partway through as a disgraced priest/monk who knows Navarre's backstory, and McKern has hefty chunks of the purest exposition to deliver to Gaston, and via him to us viewers.

The film has by this point cleverly shown Gaston (and us) enough of what is going on to get partially ahead of the explanation - that Navarre is cursed to be a manny by day and a wolf by night, while his lover Isabeau is a hawk by day and Michelle Pfeiffer by night - so the exposition is just filling in any blank spaces (or allowing anyone having missed bits due to important cat sleeps to catch up), as well as giving the backstory of how they got cursed.

The rest of the film is just Navarre getting his revenge and lifting the curse, and the final half hour is some genuinely good '80s action. The ending sees the blonde, blue-eyed couple reunited - a proper Hollywood happy ending of the old school.

The soundtrack is a mix of vaguely period-appropriate musical cues and properly mid-80s synthesizer prog rock cheese. Somehow it succeeds in spite of that combination.

Verdict: It's better than Hawk the Slayer, but not as good as Krull.

Quo Vadis (1951)

A Roman epic that tends to get shown on BBC2 every few years, which is where I must have first encountered it. It is principally of interest for Peter Ustinov's magnificently OTT performance as Emperor Nero, prefiguring John Hurt's Caligula by 25 years.

It tells the story of Nero's burning of Rome, blaming the nascent Christian sect for it, his martyring of many Christians in the arena, and then the uprising which brings his reign of terror to an end. All seen from the point of view of a Roman general (played by Robert "I can't believe it's not Tony Curtis" Taylor) who falls in love with a Christian (Deborah Kerr) and has to choose between his conflicting loyalties.

The Christian message in the film is so heavy-pawed that it becomes quite unobjectionable, with St Paul and St Peter both making appearances, and St Peter's crucifixion forms part of the plot.

Other actors we reognised include Rosalie "Checkmate" Crutchley in a small but significant role as Acte, the manny who helps the cowardly Nero to kill himself at the end (sorry if that's a spoiler). There's also an actor called Peter Miles in it playing Peter's young assistant Nazarius, but Wikipedia says it's not the same Peter Miles as famously played a certain other character beginning with N.

The technicolour helps the film not feel as old as it is, and could easily have come from the 1960s and not the very early '50s. It doesn't contain as much outright spectacle as later epics such as Ben Hur or Cleopatra, though it does contain some massive sets and enormous crowd scenes, that would only look small if you had recently had your expectations distorted by watching the Soviet Union's War and Peace. Mew.

The burning of Rome scenes are possibly the most epic set piece, although let down somewhat by some dodgy back projection, or perhaps an early attempt at CSO, for scenes trying to convince us that the main characters are in amongst it. Only Barry Letts would have been impressed by that.

Me and my friends enjoyed the climactic scenes with lions in them, noming some of the Christians, and then our heroes are faced with a mad bull (giving them a bit more of a sporting chance than against the lions). I was also impressed by the continual ingenuity in the direction, never showing anything more than a hint of gore in these scenes while, at the same time, conveying the horror of the arena through reaction shots and sound effects, in accordance with the standards of the times.

A Prisoner for All Seasons

The second and final season of the BBC's Wolf Hall was the best thing I saw on television last year - yes, even better than the new Gladiators - and it reminded me that the novel Wolf Hall (the first book of the trilogy that the TV series was based upon) was written as a counterpoint to the play A Manny for All Seasons.

The play and the novel cover the same events, which lead up to the execution of Thomas More (all the books in the Wolf Hall trilogy end upon an execution). Where they differ is in the perspective - the play is written from More's point of view; it very much takes his side, and his main opponent Thomas Cromwell is the play's antagonist. Wolf Hall reverses this, and while it is not written as though Cromwell is speaking to the reader in the first person, it does everything short of this to show us events entirely from his point of view - this explains why, in the TV adaptation, Mark Rylance appears in virtually every scene.

In 1966 the play A Manny for All Seasons was turned into a film starring Phillip Paul Scofield as Thomas More and Robert "red wine with fish" Shaw as king Henry viii, and it featured Orson "Unicron" Welles as Cardinal Wolsey in a couple of scenes, and was a very early role for John "Caligula" Hurt as Richard Rich.

But the actor who most interests me in this is Leo McKern as Thomas Cromwell, particularly given that a certain TV series was also in production in 1966, although it would not be broadcast until the following year - by which time the film would have become immensely successful in both the UK and USA, winning six Oscars* at the awards in early 1967.

Now I'm not suggesting that McKern was cast as a Number Two on the basis of his portrayal of Cromwell in the film, since he would presumably have already been cast and may even have filmed some or even all of his scenes for The Chimes of Big Ben by the time of the film's release. However he had previosuly played the same part in the play, as early as 1961, so the makers of The Prisoner could easily have seen his interpretation of Cromwell on stage.

The Thomas Cromwell of A Manny for All Seasons is not at all like the Thomas Cromwell of Wolf Hall. As the antagonist we are not privy to his private moments and motivations, and we view him only through his interactions with Thomas More. Scenes in which we see Cromwell without More are scenes in which he plots against More with other characters, such as Richard Rich or the Duke of Norfolk.

McKern plays Cromwell as cloaking his deviousness behind a facade of friendliness and superficial joviality, right up until the moment comes to strike at his opponent. I don't think it is a coincidence that McKern's Number Two possessed these traits as well - particularly in his first appearance, but there are moments of it in Once Upon A Time and Fall Out as well (though in the latter his opponent is not Number Six). One could even detect shades of his lawyerly manner from the trial scenes in the way McKern would later play Rumpole - at least in the early years before he became cuddly Rumpole, when the character was still ruthless in his cross-examinations.

From the casting of McKern as the most memorable of the Number Twos and the parallel we can draw between how he played him and how he played Cromwell, we can perhaps infer that Patrick McGoohan saw something of Thomas More in Number Six. Both mannys firm for what they believed in, and stood alone, against the pressure from authority to confirm. And both expressed their defiance by keeping silent: More by refusing to take an oath of loyalty to Henry viii; the Prisoner by refusing to explain why he resigned.

* I know that Oscar success is not a guarantee of quality - for instance, Braveheart won five Oscars in 1996, including Best Picture, and is shit - but it does indicate a certain level of popularity and cultural penetration at a moment in time.