TVSquad

(S01E10) If there's one identifiable theme that has weaved its way subtly through this first series of Robin Hood, it's The Crusades.

Even the untrained eye wouldn't fail to notice the repeated references to the war in the Holy Land and the odd nightmare suffered by Robin and his sidekick Mutch as a result of their experiences at war.

The omnipresent spectre of at-war King Richard as a yet-to-be-seen plot device, combined with the modern-day parallels of trouble-at-home being blamed on a futile war in the Middle East serve the audience's sub-conscious as this adventure series trundles towards its end-of-year finale.

This week, the presence of a troubled Crusader and a Turkish Prince seeking a truce placed Robin, Marian, Guy and the Sheriff on the back-burner as a tale of skewed ethics occupied centre stage.

It's all the more surprising to find a pseudo-Middle Eastern political theme in Robin Hood when you learn that the producers deliberately left out the Friar Tuck character for fear of introducing an unhealthy religious aspect to the series.

However, the way in which The Crusades is often casually mentioned without explanation tends to nod a wink at our own ignorance over events in Iraq and Afghanistan and easily provides the writers with a safe path through the murky waters where such topics tend to lead.

So, when Robin's men discovered a Crusade veteran being persecuted by the local villagers, they took the risk of caring for him and seeking a cure to his nightmarish ills, and introduced the possibility that the audience might be in for a little more than the usual grab-and-chase fare of recent weeks.

All the while, a guest in Nottingham Castle awaited the arrival of Prince John to broker a peace treaty, unaware that the Sheriff was actually holding him hostage. Unfortunately for the Sheriff, the Prince's father had no intentions of paying the ransom for his son, and had sent a suicide squad to seek him out and kill him.

And I'm afraid this is where the plot slightly derailed itself, both in terms of the distasteful notion of suicide attackers from the Middle East descending upon an English stronghold, and in the quite ridiculous transformation of the Crusader veteran from a bug-eyed PTSD sufferer into some kind of sabre-wielding ninja.

If I didn't have something invested in this show in respect of providing the TV Squad readers with some form of analysis on its progress, I would probably have switched off and played solitaire on my PC.

I've enjoyed recent episodes of Robin Hood much more than the earlier openers, but the cracks are starting to widen in the overall plotting of this show, with a severe lack of detail in any kind of over-arching theme and the constantly stifling locations of Sherwood Forrest and Nottingham Castle providing the only vehicles upon which the repetitive plots ride off.

This week's episode topped it off, with a sound enough premise, topped off with a stupid excuse for entertainment when Robin and his gang put aside their differences with the Sheriff to defeat a gang of female swashbucklers.

News of a second series being commissioned by the BBC really doesn't give me any hope that we might see more continuity in the storyline when this show returns next year, since the producers clearly haven't even bothered plotting the current series with an end game in sight.

I hope I'm wrong, and I hope the next three episodes can provide some sort of rounding-off to this otherwise B- action adventure.