Yet Another Blog Post About Robin Hood

Since the final episode of Robin Hood has just aired, it seems an appropriate time for a final post about the things that irritate me.

(Prior to that, though, I need to ask an important question: am I the only person who thinks the Children’s Nurofen advertisement with the winged babies is intensely creepy? I really hope not.)

But back to Robin Hood, and yet another list of improbabilities.

1. Kudos, Robin Hood, to bringing Alan a-Dale back into the fold. But wasn’t that storyline a little improbable? Come on, you know it was. I’ve never seen anyone change their core beliefs so rapidly in my life.

(Whoops, the Max-Walker-cons-the-Third-World advertisement is back on. It’s even creepier this time around.)

2. Speaking of Alan a-Dale, do you remember, Robin Hood creators, when I suggested that he was actually a really important person in the Robin Hood mythos?

Well, that goes double for Maid Marian.

Maybe triple.

I mean, I’m not an expert on the subject, but I don’t actually remember the source that you must be using here, the one where Marian exits the narrative in a shallow grave in the Holy Land. I’d be interested in reading that one, actually.

3. As a slightly connected point, I realise that I’ve been enthusiastic in a couple of posts about my strong desire for characters with whom I sympathise to get married, live happily ever after, and produce lovely babies.

But that desire for weddings? It’s somewhat ameliorated when the characters are hanging by their arm in the middle of a desert, and there isn’t a clergyman in sight.

4. Oh, and on that note? If you’d thought to add Friar Tuck to the cast earlier—as Nick and I have been complaining for two years—perhaps that wedding would have been legal.

Nick and I have been debating this issue since the episode aired, but we’re not sure whether Richard’s presence would have made the wedding legal—I know nothing about the religious climate of England in this period, but I assume it was Catholic, so would the king have had any ecclesiastical standing?

It doesn’t matter, because the show isn’t known for its historical accuracy and Richard didn’t take a role in the second ineffectual wedding, anyway—but it’s been intriguing us.

5. Almost all these points have related to the movement of characters, so here’s another one: Harry Lloyd is one of the shining lights of that programme, and if he isn’t in season three, I’ll be very irritated.

6. Taking my lack of knowledge about the period into account, I’m not a big fan of Richard the Lionheart—he seems, even for the times, as an overly masculine warmonger who paid little attention to his civic responsibilities.

But I never imagined he was as big a prat as this episode made him out to be. Perhaps he was rather too prone to taking long walks in the desert in the middle of the day? Mad dogs and Englishmen, they say.

Nick was also deeply annoyed by the “King Richard as a man of peace” angle.

7. I might be doing a disservice here to Richard’s equal-opportunity employment practices, but I’m also strongly suspicious that his right-hand man is called “Carter.” I realise that they introduced the character so that they could have an episode called “Get Carter,” but it just seems that “Carter” is too working class a name for the period.

8. I’ve just asked Nick what else annoyed us about the episode, and he reminded me of the fact that the Sheriff got away scot-free at the end, giving the entire episode an “I’ll get that wascally wabbit” vibe.

9. I strongly suspect that King Richard saying “We are Robin Hood” would actually represent a radical alteration to the English constitution.

But, really, it’s starting to feel like shooting fish in a barrel, if I can be excused the odd cliche. There is fun to be had out of the programme, if you can suspend your disbelief: maybe I should pour my energy into that from now on.