MAID MARIAN AND HER MERRY MEN: (1989-1984)THE POPULAR BBC TV SERIES FROM THE 'EIGHTIES REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
WRITTEN BY TONY ROBINSON. DIRECTED
BY DAVID BELL.
STARRING: YE GOODIES: KATE LONERGAN,
WAYNE MORRIS, DANNY JOHN JULES, HOWARD LEW LEWIS, MIKE EDMONDS.
YE BADDIES: FORBES COLLINS, TONY
ROBINSON, MARK BILLINGHAM AND DAVID LLOYD.
YE PEASANTS: ROBIN CHANDLER, HILARY
MASON AND KELLIE BRIGHT.
My kids and I pretty much fell about
laughing at this wonderful historical farce, which believe it or not
only came to my royal attention recently, haha. Still, better late
than never, I always say. We sat down over the course of a weekend
and just binge-watched as many episodes as we could fit in before
Monday morning, that perpetual buzzkill, rolled inexorably around
again.
According to the blurb, it's the true
story of what happened in
Sherwood Forest in the time of Robin Hood. Remember Robin Hood? You
know, the guy in the green tights who hung around the trees and lurked in the bushes with a view to robbing
the rich and giving to the poor? He sure had a great look. Those
green tights left very little to the imagination.
Errol Flynn
played him with swashbuckling gusto back in the day and my big
'Eighties crush, Michael Praed, of whom more later, played him in the
hit TV series from, well, I just said it, the 'Eighties. Remember him in ROBIN OF SHERWOOD? Phwoar. 'Course ya do.
I'm
sure that other actors have played Robin Hood as well, but has anyone ever
played him as well (excuse
the pun) as Wayne Morris, the guy portraying the mega-fab,
ultra-bouffant fashion-conscious scaredy-cat that is the Robin Hood
of this excellent childrens' TV series? Dear readers, I would say
it's highly-unlikely...!
Well,
chums, it's the year 1195. This hilarious HORRIBLE
HISTORIES-type comedy
in easily digestible episodes is
the story of what really happened
when King Richard buggered off on that jolly medieval jaunt known as
the Crusades and left his brother John in charge of his precious
England.
John,
in fact, was a right meanie and, with his right-hand man, the evil
Sheriff of Nottingham and just two Norman
soldiers called Gary and Graeme, he sets out to make the lives of the
ten or twelve peasants under his control a right royal misery.
That's
right, it's a pretty small village he's in charge of and the handful
of peasants all live in mud, eat mud because they've nothing else to
chow down on and they're also covered in mud, just to press home the
point. That they're muddy, that is. The opening song (yes,
there's music and singing in this...!) is
actually all about the stinking mud too. It's t'riffic, haha. Loads of
mud...
Anyway,
a feisty and resourceful blonde female girl-type named Maid Marian sort of
accidentally puts together a team of 'guerrilla fighters,'
as she a little too
optimistically terms them, to stand up to the terrible injustices
perpetrated by King John and his, um, three meanie
underlings. Well, it's about quality really, isn't it, and not
quantity...?
Let's have a
look at the raggle-taggle crew Maid Marian cobbles together, shall
we?
Well, Wayne
Morris as Robin Hood is a total Michael Praed lookalike with his
luxuriant dark hair and... Well, that's the only resemblance, really,
but it's the main one, see, because Michael Praed was all about his
lovely long dark swishing locks. If I may say so again, phwoar...!
Robin is a
big posh cowardly twit but his heart's totally in the right place,
bless 'im, and his frequent power struggles with the bossy Marian are
obviously caused by unrelieved sexual tension, haha. An
ex-tailor initially commissioned to design the King's underpants, he loves nothing
more than throwing an eye-catching outfit together and setting it off
with a lovely scarf or brooch, snigger. The big pansy, haha.
My son
said that the costumes reminded him of that brilliant 'MEN
WITHOUT HATS' video for their
song 'The Safety Dance'
from- you guessed it- the 'Eighties...! He's right too, the little dickens.
Barrington
is the super-cool black dude with the dreadlocks who does a lot of the
singing. Little Ron is sort of like a shorter version of Friar Tuck,
dress-wise anyway. He's a 'little person' who
loves to scrap, if only he can manage to keep facing the right way, that is.
Rabies is the
muscle of the operation which is good, seeing as he'd never manage to
be the brains. He's as far from being the brains as it's possible to
get, in fact, and if brains were goldfish, he'd.... I can't think of
a way to finish that analogy, so can we please move on...?
Anyway,
Maid Marian and her motley crew spend their days thinking up ways to
foil the fiendishly evil and devilishly clever Sheriff of Nottingham,
brilliantly played by Tony Robinson. You might know him better as the
less-than-fragrant Baldrick from superbly funny comedy, BLACKADDER,
in which he co-starred with Mr.
Bean himself, Rowan Atkinson.
In
fact, the comedy here is very much in the style of BLACKADDER,
but without the naughty sexual
innuendoes, obviously, because it's for kids. It's the kind of witty,
sparkling writing, though, that appeals to grown-ups as well as
little 'uns, and it's full of references to popular culture in the
way that, say, THE SIMPSONS would
be.
One of
the funniest things that Baldrick, sorry, the Sheriff of Nottingham
manages to do is single-handedly and unwittingly inventing the game
of snooker and giving away the patent to a peasant he thinks is
called 'Stinker.'
Okay,
so that mightn't sound too funny when you're just reading about it in a review but my son made me
play that episode back a whopping six times.
If that doesn't convince you that it's funny, what will...?
Along
with the 'snooker' episode,
the other episode we laughed ourselves hoarse at was one concerning
'The White-ish Knight,' with
some hysterically funny accompanying music which was an obvious
piss-take of the haunting theme tune ('Robin, The Hooded Man') by Irish band Clannad to ROBIN OF SHERWOOD.
As we mentioned earlier, this of course starred my lovely
swishy-haired 'Eighties boyfriend, Michael Praed. Well, in my dreams
he was my boyfriend. That gives
me a kind of claim on
him, doesn't it...?
This
marvellous series (MAID MARIAN, that is, not ROBIN OF SHERWOOD...!) which also has a rather shit raffle in it and a
chance to see Robin Hood the Brave and Wise dressed as an enormous
chicken while competing in an archery contest, is out now on DVD
courtesy of Eureka Entertainment.
Extra
features include a Christmas special (the
two sweetest words in the English language!) and
a compendium booklet by the artist Paul Cemmic, who did the wonderful
graphics for the original series. Mega-fab...!
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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