![]() You can understand why people went to him for help, as they would have been doing the same thing even if he wasn’t an outlaw. Being a nobleman also gave him an innate sense of authority. ![]() So wow, there goes most of our Robin’s motivation! These two things actually change a surprising number of things about the basic characterization.Īs a nobleman, our Robin had something that was worth fighting for that made his efforts personal and not just for “the principle of it”. It gets destroyed in the very first episode. Ours was a noble, and this one is a serf. The major difference between this Robin and our Robin is their backgrounds. Now, this worked to the show’s advantage given that Michael Praed left the show and was replaced by Sean Connery’s son at the end of the second season, but this was by all accounts a very last minute decision, and so I was surprised at how well the situation was accidentally set-up in the first episodes with the name of “Robin Hood” being more of an idea and a symbol than an actual person.Īccording to Richard Carpenter, his desire was to create the “mythology” of Robin Hood, and basically the Hooded Man is chosen by Herne (who Carpenter describes as “the Merlin character”) to defend the people when he deems that there is injustice in the land. The idea behind this particular Robin Hood is that the name (“the Hooded Man”) is a destiny that you inherit. Here the characters are likable and sympathetic but there’s no way one could ever have an in depth discussion about the finer nuances of their personalities! But oddly enough, despite my complaining about how I would have preferred it had they not tried to “darken” certain characters in RH 2006, there’s also something to be said against the blandness of characters. When it comes to this legend, I've always felt that the fact that the outlaws are in fact outside the law is all the moral ambiguity that it needs. Again, this is not a bad thing, and it works well in a straightforward retelling when the good guys are completely good, and the bad guys are completely bad. I n terms of its characters, they are more like archetypes than three-dimensional people. Essentially, there is no “bigger picture” at work here.Īnother interesting aspect is that dialogue is deliberately kept to a minimum, and characters are revealed through their actions, body language and fighting techniques. It’s not a bad thing by any means, but I prefer to have a longer, evolving story. Essentially, there is no overarching story just a series of episodes in which the outlaws go about their daily business. On the other hand, RoS is made up of episodes (in the first two seasons at least) that could be watched completely out of order with no real confusion to the viewer or harm done to the show’s continuity. The situation at the end of the show wasn’t the same as it was at the beginning, (it was much worse, but at least it wasn’t the same) and one of the biggest advantages of television shows over films is that they can ultimately tell a much longer, more complex and detailed story. Events happened, things changed, people grew. Now, I must say that I didn’t always like our season-arcs and that they were often aborted in rather frustrating ways, but I still appreciated the fact that they were there. In a nutshell, our show had overarching stories that progressed as the season went on. It’s going to be tricky reviewing this show because I’m inevitably going to be comparing it to our own version, and honestly, despite the fact that I can objectively see that RoS is “better” than RH, I still prefer our show not because of the difference in quality, but because of the general way in which the story is told and the characters are portrayed. They were on special at the mall, and though I’ve only got the first two seasons (thirteen episodes in all, which totals up to one season of our own show) I had a good time watching what the back of the DVD box calls “one of the landmark television series of the 1980s and, for many, the definitive treatment of the Robin Hood legend.” My Christmas present to myself last year was “Robin of Sherwood”. ![]()
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