* * * * * "Ivanhoe" 8 p.m. EDT/9 p.m. PDT 9 p.m. EDT/10 p.m. PDT A&E * * * * * |
A&E's lusty "IVANHOE" takes us back to anyone who doubts the influence of "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" and "Xena: Warrior Princess" on TV's historical action dramas should tune into "Ivanhoe," the rousing six-hour joint production of A&E and the BBC airing on A&E Sunday through Tuesday. "Ivanhoe" has a muscular, shaggy blond hero who's a ringer for Kevin "Hercules" Sorbo. Like "Hercules," it has handsome outdoor settings, lively, accessible dialogue (although "Ivanhoe" is more careful to avoid glaring anachronisms) and brisk pacing. And in his first big fight scene, Herc -- I mean Ivanhoe -- single-handedly takes down half a dozen men with some whirling kung-fu kicks and a few smacks from a long wooden pole. "Ivanhoe" is "Hercules" with a degree from British theater school. And like its American cousin, "Ivanhoe" is a good-natured pocket epic, perfectly scaled for TV. Good pulpy fun, it's a boy's adventure you don't have to be a boy to enjoy. That's partly because Sir Walter Scott's classic, set in 12th century England, contained two unusually outspoken and strong-willed heroines, Saxon noblewoman Lady Rowena and Jewish healer Rebecca of York. And it's partly because "Ivanhoe" is as attractively cast and smartly adapted as the last great A&E/BBC production, "Pride and Prejudice." Although I don't remember anybody in "Pride and Prejudice" getting their eye gouged out with a broadsword. True, "Ivanhoe" is bloody and muddy and there's an awful lot of jousting, and it's hard to watch any of this medieval stuff without thinking about "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and giggling. But "Ivanhoe" screenwriter Deborah Cook and director Stuart Orme don't try to put an elephant in the room and expect us to ignore it. This "Ivanhoe" pays subtle visual tribute to Monty Python's warped tale in the scenes where Saxon warriors storm a desolate castle with wooden battering rams on wheels while the French knights throw rocks at them from atop the turrets. There's no vicious taunting of the Python variety from the French here ("Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries"), but the low, hand-held camera angles are the equivalent of a white flag of surrender waved Python's way. "Ivanhoe" ought to win an award for good sportsmanship. Cook's salty screenplay does a fine job of sorting out the many characters and plot strands of Scott's busy classic. The expository dialogue is fleetly written and the characterizations are so vivid you won't have trouble telling one hirsute knight from another. For those who never encountered "Ivanhoe" in middle school, the story is set in England during the Third Crusade. King Richard the Lionhearted is imprisoned in Austria, while his treacherous brother, Prince John, has made himself comfortable atop the throne of England. Europe is a mess of ethnic strife (what else is new); in England, the Anglo-Saxons bitterly resent their Norman conquerors. Throw in a fanatically anti-Semitic and misogynistic order of fundamentalist Christian warrior monks (the Knights of the Holy Temple) and a lot of talk about holy war in Palestine, and Scott's tale remains eerily contemporary. Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe (played in the miniseries by Steven Waddington) is a Saxon knight who rode with Richard in the Palestine Crusade and is wrongly thought to have betrayed the king. His father, Sir Cedric of Rotherwood (James Cosmo), has disowned Ivanhoe and betrothed his childhood sweetheart, Lady Rowena (Victoria Smurfit), who is also Cedric's ward (see, I told you this was a busy plot), to Lord Athelstane (Chris Walker), heir to the Saxon throne. In his quest to clear his name and win back Rowena, Ivanhoe becomes entangled with a Jewish banker named Isaac of York (David Horovitch) and his beautiful, spiritual daughter Rebecca (Susan Lynch). She eventually runs afoul of the sinister Grand Templar (Christopher Lee, of course) and is sentenced to burn as a witch. Oh, yeah, and Robin Hood (Aden Gillett) and his band of outlaws get into the action, too. Actually, the title of the miniseries is misleading -- Ivanhoe is absent or wounded for a good third of the production, which is a relief because he may be a brave and studly punching bag but he's also a bit of a bore. Much more interesting are the bad boys of the piece, Prince John and the Knight Templar Sir Brian De Bois-Guilbert, and Cook slyly beefs up their roles. Ralph Brown's Prince John is a snarling, effete creature in a pageboy and a soul patch; he's insanely jealous of his big brother the king, who, it seems, mom always liked best. Brown plays John with his lips permanently puckered in either self-satisfaction or distaste; he's a droll villain who keeps you wondering if he's as soft as he seems. As the debauched, haunted Sir Brian, the commanding Ciaran Hinds waltzes away with every scene he's in, except for the ones he shares with Susan Lynch's Rebecca -- those are a tango. Ivanhoe and Rowena are the golden couple of the story, destined to be together. But Hinds' and Lynch's crackling, soulful performances make Sir Brian and Rebecca the couple you root for. Cook's script lingers over Sir Brian's forbidden attraction to the unattainable Rebecca, who is herself nursing a forbidden attraction to Ivanhoe. Indeed, Cook departs from Scott's portrait of the imprisoned Rebecca as a pillar of pious indignation; here she's more enigmatic. In the miniseries' most passionate and poignant segment (Tuesday's first hour, for those keeping score), Sir Brian woos Rebecca, engages her in philosophical debates and finally begs her to let him save her from the stake, and she refuses because she can't betray her faith; they're reluctant soul mates in combat. Cable's deep-pocketed A&E, unconstrained by the political realities of public broadcasting, has eclipsed PBS as the home of sexy, literary-minded British costume epics. And through savvy marketing, the A&E brand name is ubiquitous in bookstores (with tie-in hardcover editions of "Pride and Prejudice," "Emma" and "Ivanhoe") and video stores -- like the dizzyingly popular "Pride and Prejudice" before it, "Ivanhoe" will be available on A&E Home Video in a six-volume boxed set. For sheer Anglophilic kicks nowadays, A&E pretty much rules. Indeed, A&E's success has apparently put stars in the eyes of one of its British partners. The BBC recently announced that it would not renew its deal with A&E when it expires next year and instead will develop an American cable network to be called BBC America. But since A&E has been putting up half the budget (or more) for its joint productions, there's no shortage of British TV production outfits eager to take the BBC's place. A&E is currently teaming with London Weekend Television for a no-expense spared version of "Jane Eyre" (starring Ciaran Hinds as Mr. Rochester) to air later this year. BBC or no BBC, A&E will carry on, secure in the knowledge that, where the literary-adaptation tastes of American viewers are concerned, there'll always be an England. P R E V I O U S T V F E A T U R E SDead Air By Joyce Millman (04/11/97) "Rebecca" without the ghosts By Joyce Millman (04/11/97) Food Fairyland By Joyce Millman (03/26/97) "Daria" vs. "Jenny McCarthy" By Joyce Millman (03/10/97) Tomorrow's sitcom classics By Joyce Millman (03/05/97) BROWSE THE TELEVISION ARCHIVES |