Poor quality fantasy TV risks a return to the 90’s
July 2, 2009 by Martin Hoscik · 5 Comments
Robin Hood has been axed, a mild cause for celebration in many ways given the ongoing refusal of producers to acknowledge and fix the show’s glaring failings.
A weak main character, a near-schizophrenic leaping between high camp and poorly realised ‘drama’, wafer thin plots and those annoying whooshing caption slides whenever the locale changed to the other side of the Hungarian forest clearing, all ensured the show looked and felt like a refugee from CBBC.
But as much as I loathed the show, a small part of me is perturbed by its demise. When taken with the utter failure and inevitable demise of Bonekickers and the probability that no-one will bother to address the holes in Merlin’s premise, it feels very much like the late 1980’s when Doctor Who was allowed to wither and die rather be given the resources it needed to succeed.
What followed was more than a decade of TV executives claiming no-one was interested in sci-fi and fantasy shows, rather than being honest enough to accept that the show, much as many of us loved it, just wasn’t as good as it could have been.
It’s not just the BBC of course, the increasingly skint ITV has pulled Primeval and (thankfully) the dreadful Demons, another show which could have been excellent but ended up as excrement.
Considering how little trailing the BBC gave the excellent Apparitions when it aired earlier this year I can’t help but fearl we’re witnessing British TV’s retreat from any form of home-produced fantasy programming.
You’ve hit the nail on the head there Martin. The TV companies seem to have scrambled about knocking these TV shows together without putting a great deal of thought into it, just trying to ape the superior American shows and getting it wrong.
You can blame Doctor Who, Russell T Davies manages to crack it and the rest flounder around making bad rivals for the show and ultimately start killing off British Sci Fi. But to be fair, it looks like even being a successful Sci Fi show isn’t good enough for the TV execs. Primeval may have had it’s faults, but it was drawing in the viewers so why did they scrap it? And Torchwood is now on for just one week a year? Who’s brilliant idea was that?
Some one needs a good “kick up the bollocks” as a wise man once told me.
Peter, I don’t really watch SJA but my fear is that Torchwood’s almost 2/3 cut down is the start of its demise too. We’ll be back to just panel shows and quizzes in prime time before too long, intercut with the occasional film repeat/import.
The days of BBC One Saturday’s being dominated by Lois & Clark and Due South will soon be back!
Hey, don’t knock Due South!
I’m with Peter… you can’t knock the brilliance of Due South!
Joking aside this is bad news, despite how awful I thought Robin Hood was too. With only a few changes it could have been so much better and the same could have been said for Demons, Bonekickers and Merlin too.
Having recently watched (and enjoyed Krod Mandoon) I do wonder if it’s the “Red Dwarf” of the 00’s… the Beeb can’t make decent fantasy drama so end up making comedy instead… enjoyable but not a replacement!
Maybe I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind when I saw the first episode but I couldn’t get into Krod Mandoon at all.