BBC America's Robin Hood is a Timeless Classic with a Shocking Contemporary Edge
This is not a tale from your father's or grandfather's or great-grandfather's Sherwood Forest. This Robin rocks.
Anyone who is not convinced that the new version of Robin Hood on BBC America is the edgiest adaptation
yet of the legendary classic should not miss Saturday's episode, which ends with one of the most shocking scenes in any television series so far this year.
It's more shocking than anything in last week's installment, a nerve fryer in which a number of innocent people -- including a child -- were suddenly struck down with arrows and died in mid-step, the targets
of both a sniper and a disgruntled citizen seeking revenge against the sinister Sheriff of Nottingham.
It's even worse than anything in episode two, when the Sheriff was having the terrified townspeople's tongues cut out one
at a time until somebody told him whereabouts of his new nemesis Robin.
Okay, maybe the shocker in this Saturday's show isn't worse than tongue-cuttings, but it's just as startling and totally unexpected, and it makes clear that this is not a tale from your father's or grandfather's
or great-grandfather's Sherwood Forest. When the good people at BBC America described this series as a Robin Hood for a new generation, they weren't kidding around.
Nothing in the series' three previous episodes to date will prepare you for the big surprise. The warm up alone, which places an infant and the kindly old mum of one of Robin's men in dire peril, will grab
you by the throat. (Never before on screen has a baby been tossed around with such giddy abandon.) But the stunner to come is a jaw-dropper of the kind people have come to expect on Fox' 24.
Jonas Armstrong & Lucy Griffiths
You don't need to be familiar with the dramatic details of the legend of Robin Hood to appreciate this well-produced,
imaginative show. Nor do you need to have seen the first three episodes to start watching now. You'll figure out who's who in no time.
Robin is the young hero who has returned from fighting in the Crusades to find the people of England crushed under cruel
rulers who have taxed the working classes into abject poverty. The cheeky, somewhat cocksure Robin is determined to fight for and take care of the poor, in part because it's the right thing to do, but also because he craves the love and adoration of the masses. (In last week's episode, the nasty Sheriff
convinced the citizenry that Robin was a killer and they turned on him. Not being on the receiving end of their affection was as upsetting to Robin as the fact people were dying.)
Handsome Robin is hot for beautiful Marian, a member of the Council of Nobles who also does what she can to help those less fortunate, sometimes by surprising means, as seen when she was revealed to be the heroic Night Watchman. The sinister Sheriff of Nottingham is the malevolent
ruler of the territory and dashing Guy of Gisborne is his sadistic lieutenant. Robin and Guy are both interested in Marian, but she's already been hurt by the former and is wary of the latter. Robin's posse includes Will Scarlett, Little John and Allan-a-Dale.
As portrayed by scruffy Jonas Armstrong, Robin is both selfless and self-centered, a hero who can exasperate as easily as he endears those around him. After experiencing the horrors of battle and gaining a
renewed respect for life while at war, he can't bring himself to actually kill others, including the Sheriff, a villain as deserving of death as any other you can name. (Robin also knows that, if he slays the Sheriff, the king will send an equally terrible replacement to fill his shoes.) Lucy Griffiths is a strong, sexy and smart Marian who can kick ass with the best of Robin's men (hence her other life as cloaked crusader the Night Watchman). Richard Armitage's Guy of Gisborne is a
handsome monster viewers will love to hate and hate to love.
Robin Hood is in its own humble way the most entertaining period drama on television at the moment, even if it sits in the shadow of HBO's big-budget Rome and Showtime's upcoming
sensation The Tudors. How did executive producers Dominic Minghella and Foz Allan transform a timeless classic into a sexy, shocking and violent adventure with a fresh contemporary feel?
"We made a shrine to Robin Hood," Minghella told members of the Television Critics Association at their winter tour in January. "We bought every book, film [and] Victorian cartoon. Foz went on eBay and
bought everything he could. We made an office with nothing
but Robin Hood [stuff] in it, and we immersed ourselves in that world. And then, we went into a completely new office
with a clean white board. We said, 'Okay, that
was that. What do we do for 2006, 2007?'"
"The first written Robin Hood is in 1423, Geste of Robin Hood," Allan added. "What we've done is taken lots of things you know -- adventure, action, horse-riding, love, romance -- and peppered it
with a sensibility for now." Allan said that "every generation" tinkers with the story and makes it their own, sometimes playing fast and loose with the facts. "Is it real? Is it true? The stone castle in the center of Nottingham didn't exist until
1427. We've set it in 1191. Would you really like Robin Hood without a stone castle?"
Fair enough. All liberties that Minghella and Allan have taken with their source material are forgiven. The end result is a fun,
thoroughly engaging take on a story that would seem to be thoroughly worn out and overplayed by now. In short, this Robin rocks.
