robin of sherwood
PAUL COCKBURN REMEMBERS THE SHOW THAT REINVENTED ROBIN HOOD WITH A FANTASY TWIST
We take a look back at the ’ 80s series that turned the Robin Hood legend into fully fledged fantasy.
Las Vegas, 1983. A British television writer called Richard Carpenter is in a hotel room with a group of American television producers, hoping to secure funding for his proposed new take on the legend of Robin Hood. Unfortunately, the cigar- smoking executives have no idea who Robin Hood is, so Carpenter is forced to come up with an “elevator pitch” to excite them: “The Dukes Of Hazzard with bows and arrows.”
None of those particular executives would end up involved with what became Robin Of
Sherwood; nevertheless, Carpenter’s eight- word summation was an apt encapsulation of an action- packed series full of young, rebellious characters, sprinkled with both humour and… well, hazard!
There would be significant differences, of course; shot in lush — often heavily rained upon — locations in north- east and south- west England, Carpenter’s new take on “Robin o’ the Hood” proved to be an audience- friendly mix of authentic history and pre- Christian English mythology, bringing a new sense of gritty realism to the familiar characters of Robin, Marion and the “Merry Men”.
THE HOODED MAN
Norfolk- born Richard “Kip” Carpenter began his career as an actor, appearing in numerous television shows and films during the 1950s and early 1960s. As he later put it, however, acting “gave him up”; by the late 1960s he was chiefly earning a living as a scriptwriter. One of his earliest successes was Former ballet dancer Judi Trott brought class to the role of “Maid” Marion.
Catweazle, a children’s drama for London Weekend Television about an 11th century wizard transported into the present day.
Following Catweazle Carpenter was invited by LWT producers Paul Knight and Sidney Cole to contribute a few scripts to The
Adventures Of Black Beauty, a series inspired by Anna Sewell’s famous novel. Carpenter would eventually write around two dozen scripts for the show and — with Knight and Cole — found the production company Gatetarn.
Knight had been fascinated since childhood by medieval history and Robin Hood. When, in the early 1980s, he heard that Lord Lew Grade — whose ITC had funded hit series from The Prisoner to Gerry Anderson’s Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons — was considering making a new Robin Hood series, he pitched that Gatetarn should make it for him, not least because of its experience in making historical adventure show Dick Turpin, starring Richard O’Sullivan as the titular highwayman.
When, for numerous business reasons, Grade was unable to progress with the idea, Knight took the project to Goldcrest, with whom he’d worked previously. The company, famous for films such as Chariots Of Fire ( 1981) and Gandhi ( 1982), liked the idea sufficiently to pay Carpenter to write the scripts and also secured half of the necessary funding for six episodes from US cable channel Showtime. Knight, meantime, found the other half of the budget from the Bristol and Cardiff- based ITV broadcaster HTV. With memories of the 1950s’ The Adventures Of Robin
Hood strong in their minds, both Carpenter and Knight were determined to create a new Robin Hood relevant to the times, and needed “a fit, attractive leading man who wasn’t well known”.
It was casting director — and, later, series three producer — Esta Charkham who first suggested Michael Praed as Robin. The then 23- year- old was, at the time, playing the Pirate Captain in The Pirates Of Penzance in London’s West End, and immediately impressed Carpenter, not least because he had the “woodland quality” Carpenter was seeking.
Selecting the rest of the main cast proved a hectic process; Knight auditioned hundreds of actresses before finally selecting the classically trained dancer Judi Trott as Lady Marion of Leaford. Nevertheless, a little magic was created in the process. Clive Mantle, who played the gentle giant Little John, looks back on the making of the series as halcyon days. “We bonded very quickly, the ‘ Merry Men’; it took about five minutes, I think, for us to realise that we were going to be life- long friends.”
Even the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham, in the person of actor Nickolas Grace, looks back on the show as “three of the happiest summers of my life”, while Ray Winstone, who played Will Scarlet, felt Robin Of Sherwood “spoilt” him for other productions: “I’ve never worked on a job that has come that close as a group of people.”
In an interview that formed part of the making- of documentary on the DVD release of the series, Carpenter appeared particularly pleased by the camaraderie which has survived long past the making of the series. “If I was in any way responsible for people having a friendship that has lasted, then I’m very proud of that,” he said.
HERNE'S SON
Carpenter’s most obvious spin on the Robin Hood myth was to incorporate elements of mysticism, magic, and sword and sorcery throughout the series, personified by the shamanic Herne the Hunter ( John Abineri). In an 1998 interview with Robin Hood enthusiast Allen W Wright, Carpenter explained his reasoning: “The Middle Ages were extremely superstitious and much remained of the old pre- Christian fertility and tree worship religions. You must remember that the country was largely based on agriculture, and the crops and the turning year were extremely important to everyone.”
Yet an equally influential addition by Carpenter has proved to be the Saracen swordsman Nasir, played by Mark Ryan. Originally intended only to appear in the first two episodes, the production team were so impressed by Ryan’s performance that they didn’t want to lose him. Subsequent scripts were tweaked to add the largely silent fighter to the Merry Men; and, while invariably changing the name, successive film and television Robin Hoods have been joined by a Saracen from the Holy Land.
Arguably, Robin Of Sherwood also influenced subsequent portrayals of the Sheriff of Nottingham. While Nickolas Grace originally thought the Sheriff should be “very sophisticated… urbane and ultra- cool”, he was convinced by first series director Ian Sharp to go “up the wall and shout and scream and hit the nearest person”. Mad, out- of- control Sheriffs have tended to be the norm ever since.
ROBIN REBORN
Quite early on, Knight and Carpenter decided to give all six episodes of the first series to a single director. Sharp, who had previously worked on Minder and The Professionals, was effectively given carte blanche; as a result, he had a major role in defining the look and feel of the entire series. As Knight later explained: “He got the best, I think, out of cameramen Bob Edwards and Brian Morgan, allowing them to do things they wouldn’t normally be doing. Ian used a lot of different lenses, he used a lot of filters; he made the woods magical and he gave us brilliant performances from the actors.”
While the second set of seven episodes built on the success of the first run, the production team suddenly faced the challenge
of losing their leading man. Praed quit to star as D’Artagnan in a musical production of The Three
Musketeers in New York — a show that, while it closed after just nine performances, proved to be a sufficiently effective audition for a role in glamorous US soap Dynasty.
While this gave Carpenter the relatively rare dramatic opportunity of “killing ” his hero, the challenge remained of continuing the series with a new lead. “I revived the sixteenth century idea that Robin Hood was the son of the Earl of Huntingdon,” he explained to Wright in 1998. “And created the idea that Robin Hood was a kind of title — which it probably was anyway.”
Actors screentested for the new “Robin” included Neil Morrissey ( of Men Behaving Badly fame) and future Eighth Doctor Paul McGann — both of whom were ultimately considered too physically similar to Praed. The role was eventually given to the blond, more muscular Jason Connery. According to Knight, not only was Connery’s approach and personality different from Praed, he also came with guaranteed publicity attached — being, after all, the son of the original James Bond.
Strong ratings in Britain not withstanding, the third series of Robin Of Sherwood proved to be the last, despite Carpenter and his team clearly intending to make a fourth. Years later, Carpenter dismissed the reasons for this as “television politics”, but fundamentally Robin Of
Sherwood was the victim of events beyond its control. A change of management at US cable company Showtime meant that the company was no longer prepared to finance the show to the extent they had done in the past. HTV, being one of the smallest ITV companies, could not afford to do it alone. Goldcrest, hard- hit by the cinematic losses from feature films such as Revolution and Absolute Beginners, was in no position to cover such a financial shortfall.
“There were elements in the third series that presupposed a fourth,” Carpenter admitted in 1998. “Gisburne would have discovered that he was Robert’s half brother; there’d have been more dissension in the band. It is possible the Sheriff would have been replaced and Much murdered. Who knows?”
Clearly disappointed, the cast and production team necessarily moved on to other things; Carpenter, for instance, would later adapt The
Borrowers ( 1992) and The Scarlet Pimpernel ( 1999- 2000) for the BBC. While sometimes expressing a determination to move on from Robin
Of Sherwood, it appears he did work on some kind of “reunion” script that was submitted to ITV around 2010. This would have reunited the original cast — including Connery and Praed — but to the surprise and disappointment of many in the cast, not least Clive Mantle, ITV turned it down.
To the end of his life Carpenter remained “amazed” by the continued interest in the series. “Because so many ends were left untied when the series was cancelled, it provided the fans with a ‘ what happened next’ element which is always intriguing,” he said in 1998. “I welcome the fans and have made many of them my friends. The Robin Of Sherwood fandom is generally intelligent and imaginative.”