So, without going into specifics, what were your impressions of the new series?
Allen
Allen
Non-Spoiler Impressions of Episode 1
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 Allen W Wright |
Non-Spoiler Impressions of Episode 1 |
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Posts: 241 (10/07/06 09:43:59) |
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Graham P Kirkby |
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Posts: 654 (10/07/06 11:11:11) |
I have just seen the first episode. Robin Hood and his men have "hang dog" expressions and are not the "He" men I would associate with heroic figures. They act more like peasants than anything else, anyway that's my feeling. More upsetting for me is that it is based on the Warwickshire Loxley and Robert Odo who went to the Crusades.
Regards Graham. |
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Allen W Wright |
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Posts: 241 (10/07/06 11:23:33) |
Weird. Did they actually say "Warwickshire" / "Fitz Odo" or do you mean just by having the Crusade background (which is pretty common in the last 150 years, borrowing from Wilfred of Ivanhoe)?
I figured it would probably be a made-up Nottinghamshire "Locksley" like most movies and TV shows. Allen |
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Graham P Kirkby |
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Posts: 654 (10/07/06 13:34:42) |
No, you are right, they didn't say Warwickshire, or FitzOdo they spoke of Loxley Manor which is the Warwickshire Loxley and Robin Hood had just got back from the Crusades which fits FitzOdo so I made the connection. Nottingham was mentioned and Robin Hood's companion kept making silly mistakes, when he had a bath there was a dish of rose petals to put into the water and he started to eat them, thinking they were some sort of delicacy till the girl told him what they were for, then he spat them out. He kept putting his foot in it and saying the wrong thing. To say they had just got back from the Crusades I would have expected hard men but I was disappointed. Perhaps it will improve in the next episode?
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mikehenfron |
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Posts: 8 (10/08/06 04:25:32) |
Hi Allen
I think I must have been watching a different programme. However, ignoring any thoughts as to whether Sherwood Forest is in Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire or Wales, for entertainment value I thought it was terrific stuff, with action, good acting and humour. Well done the BBC certainly on this showing better than Robin of Sherwood only time will tell if it betters The Adventures of Robin Hood (with Richard Greene). Can't wait for next week, in the meantime will have to make do with the documentary later this afternoon. Mike |
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Clement of the Glen |
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Posts: 80 (10/08/06 10:44:58) |
Yes thoroughly enjoyed the new BBC series.
If I have any criticisms it is that they have played safe with the basic well worn story of Robin returning from the Crusades, at the time of Richard the Lionheart to find his estate mismanaged with cruelty. It would have been refreshing to perhaps try a different angle. The costumes, hmm! Robin in some scenes looks like hes wearing a 1960s Pac-A-Mac. Lucy Griffiths is gorgeous as Marian but Im not sure about her Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon slow motion action shots and why do the girls have to wear such obvious make-up? The music sounds like it belongs in Star Wars and Sherwood looks thoroughly grim and depressing. Some of the fight scenes look like part of a Play-Station game, but I guess thats what kids enjoy these days. Oh, yes and Robin didnt agree with the Crusades! Very PC! O.K. thats my criticisms over, I did enjoy most of it, honest! The script was bright and witty and I enjoyed Keith Allens portrayel as the Sheriff. I look forward to the following twelve episodes to see how Guy of Gisborne develops. I will definately get the DVD. |
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Dave Evans |
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Posts: 35 (10/09/06 02:12:42) |
It's safe to say that I wasn't entirely blown away by the first episode but all the elements for an honest to goodness action adventure version of the legend are in place and I look forward to the rest of the series with some anticipation.
The user comments on the programme's IMDb page are pretty damning (unfairly in my opinion) but I seem to remember a similar critical reaction when Robin of Sherwood first aired and the pace of RoS is positively glacial compared to this version and look at the following that RoS achieved. On another note I finally got round to watching the BBC's earlier version with Martin Potter last week and it's a little hard to imagine something as bleak being transmitted as teatime drama these days. They'd probably have to broadcast it post watershed if they ever chose to repeat it. |
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Allen W Wright |
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Posts: 241 (10/09/06 04:15:21) |
The ending to the Martin Potter one was positively Blake's 7-ish, wasn't it? I just got an el cheapo DVD player that could handle European imports -- mainly to get the Potter Robin Hood.
Actually, much of the cast was pretty good in that. Darrow's Sheriff was a good camp baddie, and I particularly liked their Richard and John. The major nit I have with Potter's RH is how inactive Marian was. I mean, I know that in press releases for the new series, there's this kind of cultural amnesia on many things (as if there had never been a Marian that fought before, or never had Robin on the Crusades or no other show has abandoned the green tights -- in other words, ignoring that their "new" changes were true of most Robin Hood stories in the last 40 years). But Marian has been portrayed as a lot stronger in the past. I'm not just talking about the Judi Trott, deadly archer version. Olivia De Havilland and the two Marians of the Richard Greene series may not have been fighters, but they did take an active role by working as a spy, passing vital information, setting up plans. Diane Keen's Marian did none of that. Allen |
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Dave Evans |
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Posts: 35 (10/09/06 05:13:32) |
Allen, I agree with you entirely on the passivity of Diane Keene's Marian, strange considering the way strong female characters were becoming de rigeur at the time. If you were a teenager in the 70s in the UK she was a bit of a hearthrob, did you ever get 'The Feathered Serpent' in Canada? If so you'll know what I'm talking about.
Paul Darrow was a model of restraint as the sheriff (compared to his work in 'Blake's Seven'), David Dixon as Prince John was the stand out performance for me. I knew I'd seen an effete oedipal Prince John somewhere, I always thought he was in the third season of RoS, got a bit of a shock when I saw that again recently and he wasn't in it, funny thing memory. Finally, if you haven't already seen it, a link to an article The Guardian ran at the weekend about the background to the Richard Greene series. Reds under the Greenwood and all that books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1888594,00.html |
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Allen W Wright |
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Posts: 241 (10/09/06 08:18:09) |
I know Diane Keen as the ill-fated Laura Dickens in The Sandbaggers. (A superb spy series with Roy Marsden). I thought Darrow had one truly Avon-like moment in the final episode when he sneers "I do not need *loyalty*."
Aside from Claude Rains -- who has a tendency to be the best thing in films like Casablanca which have a lot of good things besides --, Dixon is my favourite Prince John. I also like the exchange in the first episode about his failures in Ireland. The Robin of Sherwood King John from Series 2-3 is fine, but he's more the garden variety shouty King John. I liked seeing a different take. Allen |
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HesterNic |
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Posts: 198 (11/20/06 12:45:22) |
Clement wrote:
--- The music sounds like it belongs in Star Wars --- Well, yes, it is sort of generic orchestral swashbuckling dreck. However, listening to the Robin of Sherwood soundtrack now, Clannad sounds awfully twee (yet that "Celtic" New Age sound of the 80s did fit with some of the mystic/"magical realism" aspects of the show, even if both seem dated now). I'd like to see an RH film or TV series that actually uses traditional folk tunes. Wouldn't it be brilliant to hear Eliza Carthy, Nancy Kerr, Kate Rusby, Tim Van Eyken, James Yorkston and Bill Jones taking a post-punk 21st century "trad" approach to the original RH ballad tunes? Here, listen to James Yorkston's demo of the trad. Irish lament "I Know My Love", and imagine what he could do with the RH ballads as a soundtrack: www.myspace.com/jamesyorkston I did like the short Alan-a-Dale song snippets that introduced each of the 1950's Richard Greene episodes, although I believe they were all sung to the pretty but eventually tedious tune of "Greensleeves". Cheers, Hester |
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Unregistered(d) |
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Posts: 0 (06/18/07 11:29:07) |
"I'd like to see an RH film or TV series that actually uses traditional folk tunes."
The 1950s "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (the Richard Greene series) used a lot of traditional music, although most of it was later than the period depicted. Each episode opened with a quatrain set to the tune of "Early One Morning," and "Greensleeves," "Sumer is Icumen In," "Man Is for the Woman Made," and numerous other pieces made their way into the score. In addition, most of the background music had a "folk feel" to it, and the iconic theme song could almost be mistaken for a antique ballad tune. |
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Unregistered(d) |
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Posts: 0 (07/02/07 10:35:01) |
Quote: The tune of the opening quatrains was "Early One Morning," a traditional folksong, but from a later period than Robin Hood. The original words are: Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,
I heard a maid sing in the valley below "Oh, don't deceive me; Oh, never leave me. How could you use a poor maiden so?" |
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Allen W Wright |
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Posts: 241 (08/09/07 10:41:44) |
Known to Canadians as the theme to the Friendly Giant children's TV series, and to fans of Buffy as the music that turned Spike into misogynistic killer.
Is it the exact same tune? I guess played differently on the Greene series, but I can "hear" the similarities in my head. Allen |
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Grammar Hammer |
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Posts: 97 (08/09/07 10:47:50) |
The tune in the Greene series is identical but only goes as far as the first two lines from the original.
"I'd like to be a pessimist, but that is a luxury I cannot afford."
Mother Hubbard Queen of the Grammar Hammers |
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Grammar Hammer |
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Posts: 97 (11/05/07 08:34:30) |
BBC America has started rerunning the first series of the new Robin Hood, and I don't know how I missed it the first hundred times, but I spotted another plot point the new series stole from The Adventures. To wit: Robin's first time going against the law involves him rescuing a poacher whose hand is about to be cut off by the Sheriff's soldiers. And he scares the soldiers off by demonstrating his archery skills.
Sound familiar? It's the same first encounter with the law as Richard Greene's Robin, except that Greene is on his own, while the current Robin has Much helping him. "I'd like to be a pessimist, but that is a luxury I cannot afford."
Mother Hubbard Queen of the Grammar Hammers |
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Allen W Wright |
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Posts: 241 (11/05/07 14:06:52) |
In one form or another, I think that story has been around since Leigh Hunt in the 1800s. The Errol Flynn film popularized it. And it's been used in the Adventures TV series, the 1975 Legend of Robin Hood, Robin of Sherwood, the Patrick Bergin 1991 film, Prince of Thieves and so on. (Sometimes he demonstrates archery tricks, sometimes not, and in Robin of Sherwood, they are both arrested. But it's still the same idea.)
When I was interviewed for that documentary promoting the series, I was asked about the influence of the Errol Flynn, and I talked about how much the structure of the Flynn film has been copied. I used that scene as an example -- an occasional feature of the legend before Flynn, but now nearly universal. The interviewer shifted uncomfortably and muttered "The new show begins that way." And I thought, "well, I guess they won't be using that quote." And they didn't. Allen |
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WoodsyLadyM |
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Posts: 173 (11/07/07 13:07:28) |
It's funny how the producers of the this new show make it sound like they've reinvented Robin Hood for the MTV or Playstation or whatever generation we're up to now but they keep going back to the same old plots and scenes. How can they not? If they really wanted to be original somebody should do their homework, read the old ballads and plays and come up with something different than a rehash of Errol Flynn's version. At least that's what I would do.
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Grammar Hammer |
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Posts: 97 (11/07/07 14:09:55) |
There are certain classic elements that should be in every version of Robin Hood, but the producers of the current version seem to have selected the more obscure traditions while ignoring what real devotees want to see: Robin and Little John cudgeling on the footbridge; Friar Tuck carrying Robin across the water; Robin splitting another archer's arrow in half.
In fact, they took away the arrow split from the archery competition and had what looked like a weird, modern Plexiglas target. "I'd like to be a pessimist, but that is a luxury I cannot afford."
Mother Hubbard Queen of the Grammar Hammers |
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Allen W Wright |
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Posts: 241 (11/07/07 14:43:42) |
That target was just plain weird. I guess they thought it looked cooler or "kewler" as I'm sure their Robin would write on his blog.
It fascinating me how much has stayed in the legend right from the earliest days. The Gest continues to be a template for Robin Hood. But while the incidents are the same, what's driving them has changed. For example, Robin's pardoning by the king. It's still a feature of the films but it's different. Now Robin is the outlawed earl of Huntingdon (or knight of Locksley, it makes little practical difference as the earldom rarely has the power that the historical one did). His outlawed state is a temporary condition while a bad prince/king is ruling things. When the proper order is restored, Robin fits back in with society. End of picture. No need for Robin Hood anymore. It's very safe -- which is the point. But in the Gest, Robin can't function in "normal society". He is a total failure and has to go back to the greenwood. Even in modern versions where Robin turns his back on the pardon (Robin and Marian or Robin of Sherwood), it's because the king is evil and bad. Allen |
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