The Cutprice Guignol

Now, first and foremost, I want you to know that I come to this article from a place of love.

The mid-noughties BBC adaptation of the legend of Robin Hood holds a very special place in my heart. Not because it’s good, of course. Because it isn’t, but we’ll get to that. But because it became a stalwart of my favourite kind of viewing as a young teenager: rolling around the floor cackling at stupid shit with my older brother. I can’t count how many evenings me and my big brother spent watching these three enormously dodgy seasons in near-stupefied shock at how hilariously bad it was, and I treasure those memories, I really do.

But all that said: it’s time to lovingly roast Robin Hood. This show captures such a specific point in pop culture, where the reboot of Doctor Who had been a surprisingly promising hit, and a bunch of other shows were trying to jump in on the same family-friendly turf (most successfully, to my mind, being my beloved Primeval). Robin Hood feels like a take on that idea by committee: we have men jumping around in five different camera angles of the same stunt for the boys, floppy-haired twenty-somethings for the teen girls, Richard Armitage in leather for the mums, and Keith Allen sneering camply for the…well, myself, I suppose. It tries to tick all the boxes and, in the process, the hodge-podge it ends up at is sort of brilliant.

First off, and I will not mince my words here, Robin himself is fucking awful. Jonas Armstrong may well be a better actor than this role let him be, but my God, he’s so dreadful here. He seems to be reaching for a sort of boyish, rogueish charm, but instead of Han Solo he ends up at Son, Hell No (does that scan?). His boyband haircut is truly the most memorable thing about his personality, and that’s a bad place to start. The rest of the Merry Men are a little more promising, though nobody is ascending to astonishing heights here. I just happen to like Harry Lloyd and Sam Troughton in other things, and I can see what they’re trying to do here as Much and Will Scarlett, respectively. The less said about Marian, the better: Lucy Griffiths is actually not a bad actor, but this Marian is just so impossibly, soppingly, pathetically wet even as the show tries to drape her in the cloak of girlbossery. This woman would dissolve in the rain, and you can’t tell me otherwise.

As for the villainous performances, Richard Armitage as Guy of Gisbourne is hot, and that’s truly all I, or the show, have to say about it (though, honestly, go watch him in Hannibal. He’s outrageously good). Keith Allen as the Sheriff of Nottingham, though, is giving panto villain gleeful evil to a level I can’t help but somewhat enjoy. Yes, this is really just six minutes every episode of him stomping around and yelling “I want him dead!” while stabbing his finger in the air, but I still like it more than everything Alfie Allen did in Game of Thrones combined.

My favourite aspect of the show, though, is probably the hilarious anachronisms. Now, I’m not claiming that this show needs to be gruellingly historically accurate, but the level Robin Hood takes it, it’s basically a science fiction show. From small details like cupcake liners to people just strolling around wearing trilbies and, my personal favourite, a plotline that revolves around a hologram, there’s no effort at all to pretend this even set in anything other than the current Mission Impossible timeline in terms of technology, and it makes me howl every time. But hey, look, the location changes are announced by an arrow whipping on to screen like a video game loading screen! Whizz!

Robin Hood is a special kind of awful – a mess of tones and performances that bellow over each other into a single indistinct mess. But I will always have a giant soft spot for it, and I still think those sets were re-purposed for Robot of Sherwood. Did you watch this show when it was out? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments!

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(header image via BBC)