BBC's Robin Hood: The Bechdel Test

It’s the twentieth anniversary of the BBC’s Robin Hood, which aired its first episode on the 26th April, 2006. In the leadup to this date, I’ve been trying to think up ways of commemorating the occasion, and along with linking last year’s ranking of the show’s thirty-nine episodes on Tumblr, I’ve edited together all the scenes of the show passing the Bechdel Test:

And because I’m anal retentive about this sort of thing, here’s a second video of female characters on the show not passing the Bechdel Test:

As I’m sure you know, the Bechdel-Wallace Test is a metric designed to measure the role of women and their interactions within any give media. For a work of fiction to pass the test, it requires a) two women who b) have a conversation about c) something other than a man.

It’s obviously not a fail-proof method of ensuring that your story will be a feminist triumph, as plenty of awful films can throw in a couple of superfluous lines between two women discussing local news, while superior films can fail the test by dint of having only a single female character. It is not a way to judge the quality of stories themselves, and was never designed to be in the first place. It’s no more or less than an interesting thought experiment, and a baseline gauge of how female characters are written.

I found it quite fascinating to parse Robin Hood through the requirements of the Bechdel Test, though you won’t be surprised to learn it wasn’t a sterling example of the test in action (it clocked in at seven minutes and ten seconds of women talking to each other in a show that ran for approximately 1,755 minutes altogether). Still, sometimes you have to be realistic about what a story is trying to offer. This was always skewed towards a young male demographic, and you could probably say the same for most Robin Hood adaptations.

Still, that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in the role of women in this show, which is why I put together this edit in the first place. And I have by necessity been very generous with the conditions of the test…

BBC Robin Hood: 39 Episodes Ranked

Ages ago I mentioned doing a comprehensive write-up of the BBC’s Robin Hood, a show that ran from 2006 to 2009, was comprised of thirty-nine episodes in total, and which continues to be something of an albatross around my neck. It was the basis of my very first fandom experience, which involved watching the series unfold on a weekly basis before discussing each episode with others in chatrooms and on LiveJournal, and contributing a few stories to the pool of fanfiction. I made friends in that fandom who I am still in contact with to this day, and it inspired a lot of my own writing, whether it be fanfiction or original work.

That’s not to say it was objectively good. Along with messy storylines, inconsistent characterization and a tiny budget, it also contains one of the most inexplicably terrible creative decisions I’ve ever seen in my life (if you’re familiar with the show, you’ll know what I’m talking about).

That promised write-up is still forthcoming, as it’s very difficult to discuss something dispassionately when you have such strong feelings about it. In the meantime, I’ve recently concluded a rewatch of the show in its entirety with my friend, a first-time viewer. It was fun watching it through a pair of fresh eyes over the course of a year or so, and it inspired me – in lieu of a proper, in-depth review of the show – to rank all thirty-nine episodes.

This was slightly more complicated than it sounds. Sometimes episodes are bad or good not just in themselves, but regarding context – where they’re placed in the show and how positively I feel about what comes before and after them. For instance, many singular episodes are solidly put together but belong in series three, which I dislike on principle. I’d rather watch a weak series one episode (“Dead Man Walking”) that contains my favourite characters than one of the stronger season three episodes (“Do You Love Me?”) in which they’re dead or absent.

Some episodes showcase strong characterization or important plot-points in stories that are narratively all over the place, so what do we rank higher: well-constructed filler episodes (“The Angel of Death”) or tentpole episodes that are complete gibberish (“Let the Games Commence”)? There’s also personal bias when it comes to my favourite characters – I’m naturally going to enjoy the Will/Djaq/Allan-centric episodes more than anything that spotlights Tuck or Kate.

(Then there are those that contain genuinely offensive material like “A Dangerous Deal,” the most misogynistic forty-five minutes of television you’ve ever seen!)

What’s more important: coherent plots or narrative significance or entertainment value? Everyone’s going to have a different opinion, and I can’t pretend I’ve been in any way consistent with how I’ve chosen to rank these episodes. Some are higher because they’re crucial to the overarching storylines, some because they’re fun to watch, some because they’re well-written. Some rank lower despite being all these things because I don’t like the way the characters are treated, or because it’s time-wasting filler, or because they take place in series three.

In other words, I won’t pretend this list isn’t subjective, but it’s my list so I can do whatever I want with it.

The method with which I sorted these episodes was to divide them into five groups of seven, roughly ranging from the best to the worst, and then ranking the entries of each category with more accuracy. As it happens, some of the grading surprised me, certain episodes being higher or lower than I initially assumed they’d be.

So below the cut you’ll find the thirty-nine episodes of the BBC’s Robin Hood, divided into five categories ranked from the absolute worst to the very best, so we can get the negativity out of the way quickly (though just to wrap things up, there’s a bonus category of episodes which are so terrible they defy the ranking system).