Robin Hood (Porretta) and his gang of merry men do battle with witches, dragons and sundry other supernatural foes…

Executive Producers Tom Kuhn and Fred and Sandra Weintraub developed this fantasy-oriented variation on the Robin Hood legend. Plainly influenced by the success of Hercules: The Legendary Journies and Xena: Warrior Princess, this mixes action, fantasy and failed attempts at comedy to little discernible effect.

Matthew Porretta graduated from playing Will Scarlet O’Hara in Mel Brooks’ failed spoof Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) to essay the lead role. Looking distractingly like the bastard son of Skeet Ulrich and Colin Farrell - and decked out in a series of outfits best described as period t-shirts - Porretta tries his best to inject some savoir faire into the proceedings - but Errol Flynn he ain’t, and the show simply doesn’t do him any real favors. He’s supported by a mostly forgettable group of actors, including brawny Richard Ashton as a thick-skulled Little John and photogenic Anna Galvin as an emancipated, Xena-esque version of Maid Marion. The only real bright spot is the great Christopher Lee, who still needed to take jobs in drivel such as this before his late-period career renaissance thanks to the films of Tim Burton, Peter Jackson and George Lucas. Lee plays the sorcerer Olwyn; it’s not an especially well developed role and it certainly doesn’t require him to stretch any, but he effortlessly steals every scene he appears in. Alas, he is only in four of the thirteen episodes of the first season.

On the one hand, it’s easy to see what the producers were hoping to achieve. That being said, the filmmakers simply lack the flair and imagination to pull it off. The show is littered with glaring anachronisms, yet it seems churlish to carp about this - it’s all done rather knowingly, with a wink and a smirk, so it clearly wasn’t aiming for any sense of verisimilitude. Though clearly aimed at children, there’s a strain of smutty humor and cleavage-accentuating costumes on display. The end impression is that the filmmakers couldn’t make up their minds about just who they were trying to play to. The show apes the Hercules/Xena style for all its worth, but when one is working from such a strained template, it’s not exactly the best starting point for any franchise.

Worse still, there’s a singular lack of wit running throughout the writing. One could easily imagine this being saddled with a laugh track had Aaron Spelling gotten around to producing something like it in the ‘70s; as it stands, the absence of such a track is one of the few blessings the viewer can be grateful for. Jokes abound, but they’re never very funny. Actors break the fourth wall to wink at the audience, but it comes off as forced and strained.

Matters aren’t helped any by the threadbare production values. This is one of those shows where peasants walk about in costumes that look like they came right off the rack at JC Penny’s. Granted, many a Hammer film pushed credulity with their cockney accented peasants and over-lit village sets, but at least it typically came together in some kind of a coherent style. The same can’t be said of this. The show looks cheap, and it actually looks to be a much older show than it really is. Special effects are laughable - be they of the string and glue variety, or the more “sophisticated” computer effects utilized for bigger moments. One could argue that the effects were deliberately crude to evoke a cartoony vibe, but it’s more likely that it’s simply an outgrowth of a cash-strapped production. All this being said, if it had simply been done with a little more wit and finesse, one could conceivably overlook these technical shortcomings; on top of the deficiencies in every other facet of the production, however, it’s the final nail in the coffin.

Amazingly, the show proved popular enough to spawn three more seasons. Porretta would play the role for the first two seasons, after which he was replaced by John Bradley. Galvin would not reprise her role as Marion in subsequent series - Barbara Griffin filled her boots for the subsequent installments. Christopher Lee would return as Olwyn for the next two seasons, albeit for only one episode each season.