Robin Hood Review – Sean Bean brings us the most badass TV show of the year | television

AAutumn enters the house directly. Winter is coming. So, we’re so overdue, a hilarious piece of fantasy/folklore set in the bygone days – which goes back even further than last year and is therefore more forgiving than ever – filled with young actors trying out their talents, and older actors keeping their next pocket money/passion project funded. Welcome, my friends, to the most amazing show of the year: Robin Hood.

I really just need to tell you two things about this. The first is that it stars Sean Bean as the Mayor of Nottingham. I know. I know. We all wanted to live that long and we did! And secondly, there are no bad wigs in it! Because – no wig at all! A benevolent hand must have reached down and gently moved the wardrobe away from the “long, stringy hair” box that usually curses these adventures, and instead commanded our hero and his men – and the occasional woman – to have fun without them.

That’s enough to earn my undying devotion in itself, but there are more delights to come. In fact, it starts with the opening commentary. Who doesn’t enjoy a good opening commentary? Ideally, a book that tells us that the filmmakers worked on the basis of no assumed knowledge at all, establishes exactly where we are and what’s happening without needing a lot of dialogue and showing rather than telling?

Robin Hood is the best example of the model I’ve seen so far: “Many years have passed since the Norman Conquest. England is ruled by Henry II. Norman and Christian laws have been imposed on the Saxon people who must pay taxes and respect their new masters.” Before you have time to wonder whether people are “showing” respect (aren’t they usually “showing”?), and whether this is a sign of a slightly ramshackle atmosphere that will infuse every aspect of what is shaping up to be a brilliantly bad show, there’s more: “As time goes on, more and more Saxon lands and estates are seized by the Norman laws as England submits to its new rulers.” You might wonder in passing if there’s something wrong with the “submissive” part as well, but there’s another paragraph to come about forest law and outlaws, and then we get into the matter itself, so there’s no time to worry.

The width ticks all the boxes. Norman soldiers were killed in chains by honest Saxon arrows! Fairy tits! Hugh of Loxley (Tom Mison) teaches his young son Robin to shoot! (“You have talent, my boy.”) Discourses follow about Saxon perseverance, the Locksley lands stolen by the Earl of Huntingdon (Stephen Waddington) and Lady Locksley’s (Anastasia Griffith) dreams of Robin proving himself at court. A prepubescent Robin meets Marianne, Huntingdon’s daughter, and feels a spiritual connection. Then the duo (played by Jack Batten and Lauren McQueen) grows older and begins to feel other connections. The production gets around the fact that Robin is an innately unheroic name by calling him Rob. Hurray!

Hugh is now a royal forester – a prestigious but humiliating job for a Saxon – and soon gets into trouble, thanks to Huntingdon and his treacherous Saxon colleague, for failing to cut off the hands of every poacher he catches. The ruthless Sheriff of Nottingham is being tough and soon there has to be some emotional acting, which I’m sure everyone will get better at in time.

There’s also Sheriff Shawn’s daughter, Priscilla (Lydia Peckham), a medieval nymphomaniac – frankly, she feels a bit drudgery when you think about all the layers and laces it contains. But when she’s not seducing the guards, she’s listening at doorways, and keeping track of her father’s and Huntingdon’s whole alliance, which I think will come in handy later. There’s also the spirit of Greenwood (as well as the breasted fairies) in a small part, who is called upon by his mother to protect Robin on her deathbed. I bet that will come in handy later too.

The drama doesn’t quite move at the brisk pace you might expect from this genre (although it does give us more time to enjoy the CGI castle, the country house, the surrounding outbuildings and the village’s many dwellings, and I have to say that’s where wig money is better spent), so by the end of the first two episodes, Robin – sorry, Rob – is still just beginning to consider going completely outlaw. We still have Connie Nielsen as Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the introductions of Little John, Guy of Gisborne, Friar Tuck, and King John as well. What larks.

Look, by any objective measure, Robin Hood is terrible. Self? I couldn’t have more fun and I suspect it would be the same for anyone who goes into this with the right attitude. If it’s not for you, that’s okay. You can look forward to whatever great thing Sean Bean does next that pays for him.

In the meantime – no wigs! Rejoice!