“OH, YIPPEE!” says Keith Allen, rolling his eyes under his ermine hat. Yippee indeed. Robin Hood is back and he’s more exuberantly heroic than ever. After the runaway success of Doctor Who, BBC One began its follow-up foray into retro family entertainment last night with a glitzy Mayfair screening of another show designed to excite children and bring a nostalgic frisson to parents.
“Someone’s stolen the tape!” shouted a wag when there was a delay in starting, a reference to the theft of mastertapes in Hungary that delayed the production schedule. They’re still filming out there.
Every era reinvents folk legends in its own image. In the 1930s Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood was a larger-than-life matinee idol. Baby-boomers had ITV’s clean-cut 1950s Boy Scout version with Richard Greene. The 1990s brought the political correctness of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the postmodern irreverence of Robin Hood — Men in Tights.
This mid-Noughties spin on the family favourite has a touch of street grit, a spray of knowing jokes for the grown-ups (a trick picked up from Doctor Who), more snogging than Richard Greene ever got on screen and some special effects straight out of Chinese martial arts films.
But how does Jonas Armstrong match up against Flynn, Greene or Kevin Costner? Can Keith Allen as the Sheriff of Nottingham out-sneer Basil Rathbone and Alan Rickman? Is the quarterstaff action hot enough for contemporary children? Well the production looks great. It may have been shot in Hungary but the scenery looks as authentic as you could hope. Keith Allen’s witticisms are spliced with phrases such as “Oh, do grow up!” while some of writer Dominic Minghella’s other dialogue explains the parallels between late 20th-century England and Blair’s Britain just a bit too obviously. But this hardly interferes with the sprightly pace of the action and is counter-balanced by the wit.
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Armstrong as the rather understated Robin Hood should still be moodily cheeky enough to find his way on to the bedroom walls of a few hundred thousand pubertal girls, and Lucy Griffiths as Marian is inevitably feisty. But the villains steal the show, with Richard Armitage’s Guy of Gisborne off-setting Keith Allen’s gags as the mocking, heavily sarcastic Sheriff.
The audience including cast, crew and their friends cheered at the end but this remake should go down well with families at home, too.