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...
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