Golublog: An Anthropology Blog

The “modern sensibility” of this Robin Hood is actually one of the least interesting things about it. Admittedly, thin-hipped Jonas Armstrong looks pretty good in his narrow-legged emo-boy leather trousers, and I’d even go so far as saying that he works the forest green hoodie successfully. But that is about it — the piping on the shoulders of Guy of Gisbourne’s bizarre pleather get-up is closer to the Thriller video than our ‘modern sensibilities’, much less the thirteenth century. Maid Marion’s impromptu tai-chi sessions and poorly-done girl-fu (all cartwheels and high kicks) is almost as bizarre as the small number of incredibly anachronistic black people who crop up inexplicably and without comment throughout the film. I would rather have had race-blind casting and said to hell with historical realism than the bizarre tokenism the show exhibits. Which is not to say that Robin Hood is lilly-white — the now-mandatory Saracen member of Robin’s band is quite good, although I think it is a little unfair for the BBC to use her presence to send the multicultural message that “we are all English now” as opposed to the more accurate “we have been invading their homes and slaughtering them without cause for a thousand years, literally”.

There are lots of good things about the show. The supporting cast is strong: Guy of Gisbourne scowls darkly, and he is just the start of it. Keith Allen’s vaugely-swish Sherrif (“would you chose a woman over all this… this… POWER?!?”) is a great baddie. It is Lucy Shelton Griffiths, however, who steals the show. Refreshingly Rubenesque, agentive, and non-blond, Shelton’s Griffith’s Marion is a marvelously strong — and, frankly, extremely beautiful — woman. In fact the best pasts of the show are the scene work between her and Jonas Armstrong, which shows off how complex and torn their relationship is: he trying to win her heart by protecting her, even as she searches for a lover who realizes that she does not need protecting, but seeks to protect others. In fact, the show has a lot of scenes like this which are far better than they have any right to be. The plot centers around the destruction of happy families by oppressive forces, and a surprising amount of their plight is genuinely touching, walking a fine line between melodrama on the one hand and emotionally empty move-the-plot-alongism on the other. This, along with the fact that the first season has an actual arc, raises Robin Hood above your average Hollywood fare.

Which is good, because these days LA sets high standards for action which Robin Hood does not meet. This is one of the weaknesses of the show: despite their attempts, the British simply lack the sensibility — so exemplified in Xena, for instance — requires to take a warehouse full of costumes and a bunch of stuntmen-turned-actors and produce genuine Cheap Action. The fight scenes are only so-so, and not enough is done with the conceit of Robin as the master archer. Even the opening theme-song was preformed with full brass fanfare played by trained musicians and not turned out by a guy with a synthesizer living in Santa Monica who uses his bedroom for his office, which is the way cheap actions shows should have their fanfares made.

Ultimately, however, the greatest weakness of the show is Robin Hood himself. Is he a rollicking adventurer whose effortless competence means he has never lost and never learned to grieve? Is his pure good-heartedness untouched by a sense of moral complexity? Or is he, as the show suggests, a deeply religious patriot, a nobleman accustomed to leading and being obeyed whose benevolent paternalism is challenged by Marion’s feminist demands for parity? Is he driven by vanity, or by a desperate need for affirmation fulfilled only by the adulation of the crowd? Is he the scarred war vet whose experiences of combat have given him hidden emotional depth or a man of integrity who emerged from the Crusades unscarred only by clinging to his values? Armstrong’s Robin Hood promises to be a complex mix of all of these things, but ultimately comes across as incoherent rather than nuanced: haunted one minute, happy the next, but never realizing that tantalizing goal of becoming a truly compelling and multifaceted character. Its hard to tell whether it is the writers’ fault or Armstrong’s or both, but it is a failure that turns a potentially great show into a merely good one.