"If she wanted to bewitch me, I'd be inclined to let her."
Given the intensity of the first two-parter, it's fascinating to see an "episode of the week". The plot is simple enough, and quite appalling... poor Jennet is accused of witchcraft for not submitting to rape by a Norman piece of ****, has to make impossible compromises because of her husband being in the Sheriff's power and being under threat of death by torture... but she's a good woman.
One small problem: it wasn't until much later in mediaeval England that beliefvin witchcraft was a thing amongst the educated, which in those days meant the Church. Witchcraft was superstition. St Augustine said so. But anyway...
I like the very '80s opening, the dream, very New Age, with Gisburne featuring prominently. It feels at once of its time and very 11th century, that semi-pagan age of Norman apartheid and English distress of a kind we would one day inflict on others.
It's instructive to see how tax collectors were viewed in the age of feaudalism. No welfare state here, monasteries aside. Just Norman racist greed. The English, subject to such racism, resolved never again to be so, um...
I like the character stuff between Robin and Marian, echoed by Ennet's experiences: Marian is nit a precious jewel. She has agency. She is a person. The Sheriff, meanwhile, expels all Jews from Nottingham as he twirls his moustache.
This is, I suppose, our first "normal" episode. But it succeeds, being both fun and disturbing.
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