Underplayed Gems

Robin Hood (1953)

Robin Hood poster
Genre
drama television series, adventure television series
Country
United Kingdom
Length
1 season, 6 episodes
Rating
8.0 of 10 from 1 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

This is a live 1953 BBC series of short episodes about Robin Hood. Patrick Troughton plays the outlaw hero who steals from the rich with help from Friar Tuck. It was the first television version of the story.

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What happens

Robin Hood is a 1953 six-episode British television series starring Patrick Troughton as Robin Hood and Wensley Pithey as Friar Tuck. It was written by Max Kester, and produced and directed by Joy Harington for the BBC. The 1953 series was the first TV production of Robin Hood, although the 1955 series, The Adventures of Robin Hood, remains better known. A still photograph from the series showing Troughton as Robin Hood is seen in a 2014 episode of Doctor Who, the episode being titled Robot of Sherwood. The 30-minute episodes were transmitted live, and only eight minutes from the second episode, The Abbot of St. Mary's, the earliest surviving footage of Troughton's television career, is believed to exist (as a 16mm telerecording). Troughton's son Michael mistakenly claimed in his father's biography that the full episode survived. Short clips of this material appeared in 2007 documentary, presented by Jonathan Ross, covering Robin Hood from its beginnings to the more recent BBC production (2006), and were also shown as an example of television production in the BBC documentary series Children's T.V. On Trial The 1950s. The surviving footage was also included on the 2020 DVD and Blu-Ray release of an animated reconstruction of the Doctor Who serial The Power of the Daleks, which also starred Patrick Troughton. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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