Robin Hood Week: Television Series

Yesterday I briefly discussed Robin Hood on film, specifically feature length films.  There are plenty of television series and mini-series about Robin Hood to merit their own posts.  Of them all, Robin of Sherwood is the one I've seen the most often praised and preferred by fans.  For many years it seemed to have taken on a cult classic status.  I was too young to see it when it aired and finally have copies to watch, so I don't have an opinion on it myself yet.  Do any of you readers know and love or hate this one?

Most recently, I did watch the series starring Jonas Armstrong and Richard Armitage.  I was a reluctant viewer at first, but once I accepted it for what it was, I rather enjoyed watching a new episode each weekend with John who really enjoyed it.  Well, I should say we enjoyed the first two seasons.  We try to forget the third ever happened although we couldn't even stand to watch most of the episodes.  It did pretty much everything necessary to kill a series, including killing off Marian at the end of the season 2.  You don't kill off Marian!

Of course, there have been other series, too.  In the 1950s, there was The Adventures of Robin Hood. That one has an interesting history as seen on its Wikipedia page.

Then there was Maid Marian and her Merry Men, a children's series of 25 episodes in the late 1980s. You can read more about it on Wikipedia, too.  It is available on DVD and I had never heard of it before today.  I am a very casual Robin Hood fan.

There was also The New Adventures of Robin Hood in the late 1990s, but that isn't on DVD that I can see, although it has been released to VHS. Even Japan has had a series titled, Robin Hood no daibôken.

Really, when one considers the flexibility of the story and characters as well as the enduring popularity of the mythos, it's not surprising there have been so many series centered around Robin Hood. For a complete list--missing recent years--see the bottom of the Robin Hood Films page at University of Rochester's Robin Hood Project.

So have you seen any of these series and are you a fan of any of them?