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
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.
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