The Roar.
First series now showing on U.S. TV (MGM)

It must be considered rather fitting for a TV series called the Roar to have launched with the kind of big budgets and deafening marketing campaign that means that by November, the only U.S citizens to be unaware of its presence will be two fishermen called Bob living in Alaska and the Amish.

This particular piece of expensively produced hokum concerns the adventures of a young Robin Hood-like youth, but rather than the green and pleasant depths of Sherwood Forest, young chappie and his cohorts are battling away in Ireland just before the dawn of the dark ages.

Poor Irish Prince (hereafter to be referred to as IP) is fighting to unite his land against the forces of oppression as represented by the crumbling Roman Empire.

These come in the form of a glamorous Dallas toga-pads lassie who is in control of the Roman legions invading Ireland and her immortal vampire-like advisor, a dark sorcerer who can see into the future and keeps on inventing weapons from the future to be used in the present.

In the first episode the Roman invaders invent the canon and gunpowder, the feisty Irish tribesman steal their own arms then copy it, and a great big battle ensues in which the two sides attack each other throwing coconut grenades and the like. The Irish are aided by a shipwrecked Sinbad-like character who started all this trouble anyway by visiting China a couple of centuries before Marco Polo.

Now then, let's tot up some of the more interesting points for this series:

• Rome never invaded Ireland
• Ireland doesn't resemble obviously tropical Californian forest-land
• Roman legions weren't led by women wearing toga-pads
• The Irish didn't have gun powder, canons and grenades
• If the Irish did have the above, they - and indeed no society - would agree to uninvent it, forget they made them, and go back to good old honorable swords
• Moors weren't trading with Ireland in this era
• Celt warriors of this era didn't sound like they came from Brooklyn
• The Moors, Romans and Irish all had different languages: they didn't have Federation translator technology

Guess what we thought of this marvelous piece of over-priced cinematic genius? Well, the camera work was quite good. Oh, and the vampire sorcerer was the only one that didn't walk away from the whole thing looking like his theatrical tutor must have been a piece of 5X5 plywood.


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