RobEmoWatch 1: alalalalalala sheeeyah!

i liked robin! and i didn’t mind the dialogue either (but it was a noisy partyroom so i was maybe just merry and indulgent myself — or unable to hear)

the sam raimi approach they seem to be trying for = using semi-camp irony as a cloak to get at the energy of the form (which hercules didn’t really but xena totally did): ladling on the anachronism as thick as raimi does for some reason re-energises the function of myths and legends as moral dramas of the immediate present, or something (bcz it frames their social use-value rather than their atrophied aesthetic value?)

(the robin hood story has never not existed in anachronistic form — it’s always been a then-tale resurrected to map out the shape of now — so i want to see how they tackle this as the story gets into its richer reaches — this first set-up ep in this story is always a thankless task, everyone being boringly shuffled into roles we know too well in advance; the legend always works better when you plunge into it in medias res (as in ivanhoe, or the robin-of-the-wood section in sword in the stone) — and the key to it will be the ensemble work of the merry men, which can’t start yet, and prob won’t till abt ep 3 (ep2 being more tiresome gathering of the band: little john and tuck anyway)

(i’ve got a sam raimi proposal in the pipeline so i want to think some of this through properly: ie what is goin on in xena’s refusal to take historical or cultural proprieties remotely seriously — it goes way beyond what gets filed, rather contentlessly, as “post-modern playfulness”) (i’m not saying robin will get anywhere close to xena obv — but i’m totally up for seein if the bbc CAN do a “dr who” with the raimi style, esp. in regard to creating and sustaining momentum etc)

non-canonic robin type (ie small and broody)*; VERY non-canonic maid marion-type; hyper-canonic sherriff type (for some reason i’d taken in that KA was tuck, which i liked better); i liked much also — tho he’s a carbon-copy of hercules’s sidekick (was he called autolycus?)

*he’s a more interesting IDEA for a robin than i tht ecclestone was a who

i agree w.martin abt the clumsy action sequence at the end — but i still think we’re in “thankless” territory, so i’m prepared to be forgiving — this is the “moment he becomes robin hood”, not run-of-the-mill norman-bashing; the fact that it’s exactly what we SO know is going to happen pushes it into “make it an impossible ask” territory, which they won’t have to so much later (i hope)

much is played by a SON of dr who 2! (or three if you include nigel who)

much the timelord’s grandson!

it is TOO SOON to argue that this is not raimi-esque — the “setting out the stall” of xena = THREE ENTIRE RUBBISH SERIES of hercules

which one was “New Adventures” (i ph34r that cop-out title)