So, the second episode of Robin Hood lost 1.5 million viewers in the Sherwood Forest undergrowth - almost one in five of the original audience. No surprise there, then.
After I laid into the first episode last week, I got an email from Andrew Zein of Tiger Aspect productions, which made the show for the BBC, saying that first episodes were always "difficult" and urging me to watch the second.
So I did. And that's another 45 minutes of my life that I won't get back.
Where to begin? After ladling on the political references in the first episode, there was another one in the second. ("I do not know why Englishmen travel 2,000 miles to fight evil when the cancer is right here," in case you missed it.) Why, when confronted with the opportunity to finish off the Sheriff of Nottingham, Robin failed to take it? Because he has "lost his taste for blood"? I don't think so. And why does England not look like England? Ah, because it's Hungary.
Almost everything about this adaptation is wrong. The casting is ill-advised, the characterisation is poor, the script is laughable. Nothing is believable - there's no spark between Marian and Robin, there's no depth to the "evil" of the Sheriff and you don't really care when one of his henchmen yanks out a villager's tongue. I didn't even wince. The only decent moment was when Allan a Dale (Joe Armstrong) got his shirt off.
Co-incidentally I read in the same MediaGuardian story that Prime Suspect beat Jane Eyre. No surprise there, either, given that almost everything about that production was right. ITV revival, anyone?
