It is truly execrable in fact. Marianne still loves it. Robin is continuing with his refusal to hurt anyone; nearly all the legend has been dumped for no particularly good reason (why didn't Robin meet Little John on a bridge? Damned if I know.); Marian remains lumpen and charmless; the Sheriff is in full-on 'before I kill you, Mr Bond' mode; and characters have taken to bursting into tuneless song. Plus there are huge wodges of exposition, sufficient to bore my younger child out of watching, and Much is unbelievably irritating, a Notts County Jar Jar Binks. The only thing I like at all is Guy of Gisborne, cos he has that sort of evil and shaggy look.
And I am really irritated with the BBC. Torchwood is the 'grown-up', post-Watershed spinoff from Doctor Who. First episode apparently has a brutal unsolved murder and a sex-addicted alien. So, on the whole, I don't think my small children will be watching. After the scheduled start time of Robin Hood, they show two trailers. One for the wild excitement of CBeebies, the digital channel for under-5s, and one for Torchwood. Because it's so responsible to show trailers for post-watershed programmes at a time when they know a lot of children who like Doctor Who will be watching. What on earth am I supposed to tell them, beyond 'you're not watching it and that's final'?
Anyway, I've got the first series of Robin of Sherwood. Michael Praed! Clannad! And I have never actually seen it. But it can't be worse than this.
They haven't got the courage in their anachronism to go all the way (a la Casanova and A Knights Tale) so t-shirts and leather duster coats and pj's come over half hearted and wrong. And everyone looks, sounds and acts too 2006 to make it work.
Robin of Sherwood is not as good as I remember (I'd sort of blanked out the mullets and tinted lenses on the cameras for a start...) but it's still better than this, besides, it has heart. Oh, and Michael Praed in skin tight leggings.
But I'm glad Marianne is enjoying it.
FF
I don't see anything new or worthwhile being added to by the new series, if they had done a Casanova, then maybe, but nothing yet.
FF