Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		2.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.5

Robin Hood: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

A flashy television revamp that strips its hero of his wiles...

Even though there isn't a shred of solid historical evidence that a selfless savior ever bounded across England snagging gold from barons and tossing bread to peasants, the legend of Robin Hood has endured for more than six centuries. The rise of television has given the iconic hero of the people an even richer stomping ground. The BBC produced a serialized version of the tale in 1953, the late '50s found Richard Greene bounding his way through 143 episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood, and ITV revisited the legend in the ‘80s with the critically acclaimed Robin of Sherwood. More recently, the BBC debuted a younger, leaner Hood in the aptly titled Robin Hood.

Series creators Dominic Minghella and Foz Allan change too much and offer too little...

The BBC's latest adaptation of the Hood legend recasts Robin as a young heartthrob (Jonas Armstrong) who returns home from the Crusades to find his homeland trapped beneath the boots of a villainous Sheriff (Keith Allen). After several heated confrontations seal his fate, Robin befriends a band of rebels -- a former gang-leader called Little John (Gordon Kennedy), a servant with the unfortunate moniker of Much (Sam Troughton), a pair of outlaws named Will Scarlet (Harry Lloyd) and Allan Dale (Joe Armstrong), and a warrior girl called Djaq (Anjali Jay) -- who share his desire to undermine the Sheriff's authority. He also meets the lovely Lady Marian (Lucy Griffiths), a woman whose sole purpose seems to revolve around injecting the series with sexual tension. While the indomitable Friar Tuck is nowhere to be found, Robin and his makeshift battalion battle the Sheriff and his skilled knights, fight to preserve the throne of King Richard, and begin to redistribute the blessings of England's elite to its poorest citizens.

Even though it split both British and American audiences when it first aired, Robin Hood: Season One soars when reveling in its own bloated sense of big-dumb-fun. With so many modern trappings on hand to transform Robin and his band into 12th century rock stars, the series hurtles along at a great pace every time arrows fly and horses thunder into view. Sure, the action is undeniably limp and quite anticlimactic at times, but it at least makes each episode mildly entertaining. Of course, that would all be well and good if the writers' stiff plotting and mind-numbing dialogue didn't overtake the production handle their individual parts well, but it's nearly impossible for the actors to break free of their clumsily-scripted roles and cookie-cutter reactions. It’s particularly damning for the long-term tale since the episodes become more and more tedious as the bad guys get badder and the good guys have little more to deal with than in-house melodrama (the sort I’d expect to encounter on a show like Degrassi: The Next Generation... not Robin Hood).

Loftier episodes are also undone by even more critical problems. The Sheriff is a decidedly sinister force, but offers all the complexity of a one-note serial villain. Armstrong is effective enough to make his wiles more charming, but he lacks the gravitas required to sell more tragic aspects of his character. Worse still, Griffiths gives Robin an attractive female-trinket to fight for, but the character itself is little more than a superficial MacGuffin; a contrived cog in an oversimplified machine. As you might expect, the hero and would-be heroin slap together a paper-thin relationship that takes its sweet time to get or go anywhere. While none of these problems ruin the season, they do hinder the tale’s potential. I grew increasingly tired of my time in Sherwood, rarely had the urge to leap head first into the next episode, and didn't find the writers’ reinterpretations of several classic characters to be very intelligent or appealing. TV fans who love to kick back with lighter fare like Xena and Hercules may find something worth watching in the BBC's colorful medieval romp, but I found Robin Hood to be a shallow, underwhelming, and poorly conceived mess.

The 4-disc Blu-ray edition of Robin Hood: Season One features all thirteen first season episodes including:

• Will You Tolerate This?: Upon returning from the Crusades, Robin discovers his people are being brutalized under the tyrannical rule of a new Sheriff. Seeking advice from the former sheriff and his daughter Marian, Robin is delighted to find his childhood sweetheart has never married. After embarrassing the Sheriff and freeing a group of outlaws, the new hero escapes into the forest and encounters a man named Little John.
• Sheriff Got Your Tongue?: A humiliated Sheriff storms into Locksley village offering a reward for Robin's whereabouts. But when no-one speaks up, he vows to rip out their tongues until somebody comes forward. In Sherwood Forest, Robin, Much and Will have been captured by Little John's gang. When news of the Sheriff's reward reaches them, Little John drags Robin to Locksley to claim it.
• Who Shot the Sheriff?: When a mysterious sniper murders innocent people, the finger's pointed at Robin. The Sheriff is nearly killed, and uses this as an opportunity to incriminate Robin. He enlists his Master of Arms, De Fourtnoy, to carry out more assassinations. Desperate to stop the killings, Robin's forced to form an unholy alliance with the Sheriff.
• Parent Hood: Roy is kidnapped by the Sheriff's men and instructed to kill Robin or watch his mother hang at sunrise. Elsewhere, Marian's publicly humiliated and punished after feeding starving villagers. Roy takes his first opportunity to strike when Robin is injured and isolated, but Marian is on hand to intervene.
• Turk Flu: The Nottingham Fair arrives, bringing with it the lure of the silver arrow competition. However, Robin is distracted by the Sheriff's attempts to buy Saracen slave labor for his lethal mine. The slaves have been drafted in as a solution to striking miners. Amongst those on strike is young Rowan Dunne and his father.
• The Tax Man Cometh: The outlaws stop a tax inspector named Flaxton who's on his way to count the mountain of silver currently housed in the castle. Robin devises a plan to steal the money and give it back to the villagers. Meanwhile, a nun claiming to be the victim of Robin Hood collapses at the castle and demands use of the chapel.
• Brothers in Arms: Robin saves a gang of outlaws from a horsewhipping. Meanwhile, Guy of Gisborne claims a necklace from a bride-to-be and presents it to Marian. But when Robin recognizes it and persuades her to return it, Gisbourne is outraged and discovers Marian is a traitor.
• Tattoo? What Tattoo?: The outlaws raid Gisborne's feast and witness him announcing his engagement to Marian. Robin humiliates Gisborne and steals Marian's betrothal ring. Unwittingly tearing off Gisborne's sleeve mid-fight, Robin uncovers a distinctive tattoo marking him as the King's assassin in Acre. As the gang drag Robin away, Djaq is captured.
• A Thing or Two About Loyalty: When a castle scientist invents explosive powder, he realizes it could become a lethal weapon in the wrong hands and hides the only ledger that details his secret formula. In order to discover the ledger's whereabouts, Much allows himself to be arrested.
• Peace? Off!: Robin stops an arsonist from burning Locksley Church and brings him back to the forest. While there, he discovers the man is a Crusader and his attack a symptom of Crusader's Sickness. Elsewhere, the gang stumbles upon a mysterious Saracen carriage and a sinister rusty mask. They fear witchcraft at play.
• Dead Man Walking: A routine trip to Locksley to collect new weaponry descends into chaos when Robin and Little John witness a brutal tax collection, the capture of their bow maker, and the arrest of Little John's son. Little John tries to save his boy, but it's a futile gesture as he too is carted off to the castle dungeons.
• The Return of the King: The joyous news of King Richard's return reaches the gang. But for Robin and Marian it means her impending marriage to Gisborne. Desperate to find evidence convicting Gisborne of his crimes, Robin visits Pitt, the physician who attended Gisborne during his sickness.
• A Clue? No: Robin's shattered following Marian's death. Enraged and grieving, he leads his gang into what could be their final battle. Following their victory, Robin and the gang return to the cave. to mourn Marian. However, she miraculously awakens. Robin's absolutely delighted, but remembers he no longer has the evidence to convict Gisborne of his crimes.

Robin Hood: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Robin Hood: Season One arrives on Blu-ray with a nauseating 1080i/VC-1 transfer that renders the lively forests of Sherwood with rather haphazard care. First, the good. The series' lush palette looks far more lifelike in high definition than it did on the first season's flat and murky DVD release. Skintones are more natural, primaries are more vibrant, and blacks are substantially deeper. That's not to say the darkest scenes are flawless -- source noise and crushing are frequent issues, fine detail is occasionally blotted out by overzealous contrast, and delineation isn't nearly as revealing as I would have liked. Even so, the image has clearly reaped the inherent rewards of the BD upgrade.

Unfortunately, it's just not enough. While fine textures and background details are sharper, too many hazy shots, soft edges, and clarity inconsistencies litter the proceedings. Worse still, artifacting pops up on more than one occasion, faint banding affects bright skies and candlelit interiors, and bouts of crush are a distraction during nighttime scenes. Moreover, faces are often texture-free, resolution is faulty, and I suspect some heavy-handed DNR was even slathered on the transfer (for what reason I can't imagine). I even caught regular instances of motion smearing, ghosting, aliasing, and mosquito noise. I wouldn't go so far as to call the transfer a complete waste of space, but it's definitely one of the worst BD television presentations I've reviewed.

All things considered, diehard series regulars might appreciate the slight visual improvements, but newcomers and casual fans will be far too annoyed with the crumbling image to care.

Robin Hood: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The back cover of Robin Hood: Season One only lists a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix, but the discs themselves also offer a fuller Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track for each episode (the only catch being that you have to access the audio menu to select this more appealing option). Alas, even the upgrade to a proper 5.1 track isn't enough to save this release from the series' uninspired sound design. Dialogue may be crisp and well-prioritized, but the rear speakers provide little more than stagey ambience and weak acoustic support. Likewise, a few action scenes offer a handful of hearty bass thooms but, for the most part, the LFE channel is painfully weak and surprisingly inconsistent. As it stands, the track doesn't exhibit the sort of immersive qualities high-def enthusiasts have come to expect from more recent lossless presentations. Pans are stocky, directionality is imprecise, and most of effects are relegated to the front soundstage.

Granted, the sonics aren't a complete wash since dynamics are fairly impressive for a standard DD track, but it's still quite disappointing (especially when you consider the fervor of the on-screen action). There just isn't a lot to enjoy other than the track's lack of glaring technical mishaps or compression deficiencies. Fans of the series probably won't care about Robin Hood's lackluster audio, but I thought it sounded too much like its standard DVD counterpart to get excited by what I was hearing.

Robin Hood: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Blu-ray edition of Robin Hood: Season One includes all of the special features that appeared on the standard DVD release. While the video content is still presented in 480p, BBC Video has developed a generous supplemental package that gives fans quite a nice collection of material to dig through.

• Cast and Crew Audio Commentaries: Executive producer Foz Allen, co-creator Dominic Minghella, composer Andy Price, and actors Gordon Kennedy and Lucy Griffiths discuss Sherriff Got Your Tongue; actor Richard Armitage steps in for Price, joining the already chatty group to talk about Parent Hood; Tattoo? What Tattoo? is the best of the bunch, allowing Armitage, Jonas Armstrong, Anjali Jay, Sam Troughton, and Price to have some fun; and A Clue? No tosses Allen into the mix with Armstrong, Jay, and Troughton for the driest commentary on the discs.
• Character Profiles (49 minutes): A collection of profiles comprised of lengthy interviews. The shorts cover a variety of characters including Robin, Marian, the Sheriff, Gisborne, Much, Little John, Will, Djaq, and more.
• Making of Robin Hood (29 minutes): An even-handed documentary that looks at casting, sets design, location scouting, stunts, costumes, and the creators' inspirations and visions for the series' first season.
• Dressing Hood (16 minutes): Like me, anyone who despises the series distinctly modern costumes will loathe the incessant justification this featurette provides, but fans will most likely enjoy this additional glimpse behind the scenes.
• Hood Academy (16 minutes): This dry EPK documents the time the cast spent learning how to sword fight, ride horses, and leap about the countryside.
• Designing the Hood (11 minutes): A secondary afterthought of sorts that explores the sets and locations used to bring each episode to life. It's better than the costuming special, but not by much.

Robin Hood: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Since the series is still going strong, Robin Hood has obviously mounted a respectable army of fans... but it simply isn't the sort of show that will ever appeal to my tastes. Cheesy, clumsy, and bland, this first season struck me as little more than a limp retelling of a legend that deserves smarter scripts than what it's been given. This new Blu-ray release isn't much better. While it does feature an improved video presentation, the transfer is far from perfect, its Dolby Digital audio track is underwhelming, and its admittedly healthy supplemental package will only appeal to those who are already in love with the series. If you've never watched the show, be sure to rent Robin Hood: Season One long before you consider a purchase.