New Obsession

Well, it's not really new; it just has a new form.

Those acquainted with me for longer lengths of time will remember my obsession with all things Robin Hood. Oh, admittedly it was at its height when I was about nine, back when I owned my own quiver full of arrows and unstrung longbow, back when I took archery classes, back when I'd read everything the public library had on the subject, back when he was only my second-ever book crush.

But I never entirely got over it; when I did my "Book Tour" of England with Elfcat, we stopped at Sherwood Forest (which IS a real place, just like Ithaca is a real place, which I've known since I was a little kid and which may explain a lot about my persistent inability to entirely separate truth and fiction). I've calmed down some, but I still have my favorite variations of the legend, and my own opinions, and I still sort of am drawn to any new ones I haven't run across yet.

Which is why I was so thrilled when I found out the BBC made a television series of Robin Hood, called, wait for it, Robin Hood. I found this out last spring, read some very good reviews of it, wanted it, and was traveling and forgot about it. But now! Now I have remembered, I put it on Netflix (God bless Netflix!) and I am on episode five.

And it's... kind of hilarious. It's absolutely impossible to take it seriously, at any rate. Netflix describes it as having a "modern sensibility" which I think translates to "a total and complete lack of subtlety and a willingness to disregard the rules of historical accuracy whenever they become inconvenient." The Sheriff of Nottingham -- who is this delightfully fey, scenery chomping type and whom I adore -- talks about "winning hearts and minds" away from Robin Hood. A delightfully non-anorexic Maid Marian tells our friend Guy of Gisbourne, who is all broody and square-jawed, that it's barbaric to suspend rights at home simply because there is a war going on in the Holy Land. She also seems to attend the meeting of nobles (where Sir Guy and the Sheriff browbeat the other men into helping with their evil plots) regularly, although in a nod to the complete improbability of this, she is not allowed to sit down and must strike her verbal blows for justice standing behind her father's chair.

And yet... I am loving it. I used to be so picky about my Robin Hood that I couldn't even stomach Men In Tights as a child, and was known to reject whole novels based on Robin not meeting Little John in the proper context. But I seem to have mellowed, because this show is cracking me up and keeping me completely entertained. It makes no logical sense at all (Robin seems to waste arrows as often as breathing, for example) and yet I cannot look away. He and his men are like the Cute and Stupid Brigade. They are always in the throes of cute schemes which they execute stupidly, or stupid schemes which they execute cutely, and the overall effect is adorable, like a child smashing toy trains together. It helps, I guess, that Robin is played by the toothsome Jonas Armstrong, but that's not all of it.

It's one of the TV shows I don't really want to share with my family. Which is odd for me, because normally my sister and I trade TV shows like -- I don't know, what do kids trade nowadays? Pokemon cards? When I was little, it was Pogs, but I think that's only good for telling you exactly how old I am -- anyway, we normally trade all the time, and spend all our time recommending them back and forth, and she's less discriminating than I am. (Short Stuff made it all the way through Angel, for example.) But in this case, it's kind of just dorky and mine. And I am having so much fun with it.