[SPOILERS] Bravo, Toby Stephens. Bravo. As Prince John, Stephens dominates this excellent episode as the deliciously fruity, compulsively despicable spoilt royal. "Do You Love Me?" wasn't perfect, but it was the most fun I've had watching Robin Hood for quite some time...Prince John rolls into Nottingham and causes nothing but trouble for everyone; ostensibly for a laugh, he instructs Guy (Richard Armitage) to assassinate the Sheriff (Keith Allen), and vice-versa the Sheriff; then it's off to Locksley village to bless a peasant's funeral before locking the wedding guests in a church and raizing it to the ground! Stephens plays the Prince as an egotistical evil child, out-hamming Keith Allen but with an added slither of playful malice. Even the Sheriff looked a little stupefied when the Prince dares to burn dozens of people alive in a church -– although the show doesn't quite go that far as a family show, with the villagers narrowly escaping their fiery graves and trying in vain to extinguish the blaze with water from a local pond.
Isabella (Lara Pulver) appears to have been given the Marian role, in so far as being Robin's (Jonas Armstrong) contact with the inner sanctum of Nottingham Castle, where she spends the episode appeasing Prince John while helping plot his downfall. In this effort, she plans to give Kate (Joanne Froggatt) a fake illness that myth says can only be cured by a King's touch, then embarrass Prince John's notions of God-given nobility by having him fail to heal her in public, as Robin's gang steal the gold he's travelled with to buy the support of local nobles.Throughout the episode, the only thing that didn't quite work was the almost Tom & Jerry black comedy of the Sheriff and Guy trying to literally stab each other in the back without the other noticing. This led to repetitive scenes of Guy drawing a dagger, only to sheath it when the Sheriff spun around, or people generally interrupting each man's sinister game. A moment at the burning church, with Guy causing the collapse of a roof to kill the Sheriff, only for the Sheriff to survive and immediately fire an arrow at Guy in retaliation (hitting an unfortunate peasant), was particularly goofy.
Still, what sold this episode was a better sense of scale (the flaming church sequence was especially good, and filmed from every angle possible!), a story that wasn't too complex but carried the audience along well, an excellent performance from Stephens (so psyched to see he's back next week), and a bit of development for the ongoing story – as Robin smooches with Isabella (can he trust her, though?), and Guy surprisingly managed to kill the Sheriff after an extended fight on the castle battlements. Only, well, the Sheriff hasn't quite left this mortal coil, as we catch a glimpse of his hand twitching as his body's sent away.Overall, "Do You Love Me?" was very entertaining and certainly the best episode of this third season, and perhaps one of the five best in Robin Hood's history. None of that was down to the barebones story or the main actors, but instead rested on the shoulders of Stephens, Pulver and even Elliot Levey (who was really rather amusing as the Prince's downtrodden, kindly physician Benjamin Palmer.) It looks like we're finally seeing the show take shape in its third year – with Prince John now the resident bad guy, Guy promoted to Sheriff, his predecessor lurking in the shadows for a surprise return, and Robin finding someone to replace Marian at last. Let's hope they can keep this upswing in quality going for the rest of the run.
2 May 2009
BBC1, 6.20pm
Writer: Timothy Prager
Director: Patrick Lau
Cast: Jonas Armstrong (Robin), Richard Armitage (Guy), David Harewood (Tuck), Keith Allen (The Sheriff), Gordon Kennedy (Little John), Sam Troughton (Much), Joe Armstrong (Allan), Lara Pulver (Isabella), Joanne Froggatt (Kate), Toby Stephens (Prince John) & Elliot Levey (Benjamin Palmer)
