Robyn and The Hood.
"We be Robyn"
"Theme Song"
Robyn Hood is a 2023 Canadian action series. It is a reimagining of the folk tale of Robin Hood, set in the modern day Canadian city of New Nottingham.
The show follows Robyn Loxley (Jessye Romeo) and her anti-authoritarian masked rap band turned heroic thieves called "The Hood". After an incident involving the Sheriff and her pay-master "John Prince", the band turns to thievery to help their community and get some of their own back.
It is not an adaptation of the comic book Robyn Hood.
This show contains examples of:
- Adaptational Backstory Change:
- In the original myth Sir Guy of Gisborne was the cousin of the Sheriff. Here he's just Guy Gisborne, petty criminal and gang boss with no familial ties to the Sheriff whatsoever. Though they do team up part way through season 1.
- King Richard the "Lion Heart" is a deceased community leader just called "Lionheart" who kept Sherwood's low income status from attracting crime and similar elements of typical poorer society.
- Adaptational Diversity: The series features Robyn as female and bisexual, on top of a great deal of the cast being black rather than everyone being white.
- Adaptational Sexuality: Robyn is bisexual and Marian is a lesbian.
- Artistic License – Law Enforcement:
- Besides the various dirty cops, the Sheriff poisoning a fellow orphan was somehow written off as "an act of God", even though an unexplained and mysterious death like that would be investigated and the coroner would have easily realized the girl was poisoned.
- After arresting the Hood, the Sheriff handles Robyn's bow with her bare hands, thereby contaminating evidence, then breaks it over her knee, destroying the evidence.
- Association Fallacy: Robyn insists using lockpicks to pick a lock will get her and Marian caught because the client who taught Marian how to pick locks got caught and therefore they should use a credit card instead.
- Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: The sheriffs are ridiculously incompetent and at times seem to be going out of their way to not find out the identities of the Hood gang, such as not taking a smashed drone back to review its footage or assuming that the woman who strangled and tied up a police officer had nothing to do with the gang but was instead rescued by them. Any time they're not completely failing at basic detective work, they're gleefully talking about shooting people or arresting teenagers for walking down the street.
- Bat Deduction:
- Robyn figures out that an alleged social worker is really an undercover cop because "her people don't turn on each other", aka a black person shouldn't be supporting the police. She also determines that a rabbit costume means that said woman is the "monster" who tortured Tuck, even though there was no mention of a rabbit by anyone.
- Marian determines that John Prince has a far bigger and more sinister plot than simply buying Sherwood Towers and evicting the residents based on the fact that he, a land developer, owns a lot of land in the city. While she's correct, it's literally his job to own land.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Alan tries to insist the Hood isn't a gang, but vigilantes... who repeatedly rob the rich people of New Nottingham.
- Character Shilling: Almost no one can talk about the Hood without saying how incredible and amazing they are. This is especially notable with the Sheriff who will insist Robyn is smart, cunning, and has incredible loyalty of her people. In reality, it's the fact that Police Are Useless which has kept the Hood out of prison, especially as they upload music videos containing footage of their crimes and telling everyone where they live.
- Contrived Coincidence: Robyn's alibi for her first break-in of John Prince's penthouse (that she was crying in the park) works because another black woman of roughly the same age and build was doing exactly that at the right time and happened to get caught on camera. The unlikelihood of this isn't even commented on.
- Didn't Think This Through: When Chet spots the crew robbing him, Little John chokes him out and, because he'll only be unconscious for a few minutes, their solution is to kidnap him rather than just tie him up and gag him so they can get back to work.
- Double Entendre: At least Once per Episode, usually to comedic effect.
- Easily Forgiven: Chet immediately forgives the Hood for robbing, kidnapping, and assaulting him because they let him impress his friends by starring in a music video with them (where they rob him and his friends).
- Eating the Eye Candy: Used by Robyn and Marian in episode 5 to distract the crowd at a party.
- Eat the Rich: The Hood and the narrative are very much anti-wealthy. Even when they've solved the problem they robbed John Prince for (posting Tressie's bail), they almost immediately decide they should just keep robbing people. When John Prince is outraged at being assaulted and his car stolen, the sheriff blows off his concerns by pointing out he's getting a new Rolls Royce delivered soon.
- Enfant Terrible: The Sheriff was this when she was young. She put rat poison in the food her childhood bully used to steal from her. She was never suspected when the kid died.
- Failed a Spot Check:
- No one ever notices the Hood sneaking around in masks that have bright LED lights on them.
- The Sheriff doesn't hear Much loudly shout Robyn's name half a second after stepping out of Much's apartment.
- Robyn evades the police in Sherwood apartments by wearing her hood up, but still looks straight ahead and more than one officer looks directly at her face.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: Alan immediately takes off his staff uniform once he gets to Chet's party. Despite this, he manages to leave the building with a giant box and security doesn't question him when he says he's replacing Chet's throne.
- Historical Gender Flip: Robyn and the Sheriff are both women in this adaptation.
- I Shall Taunt You: Guy Gisborne's second appearance sees him attempting to draw out the Hood by performing a mumble rap insulting Lionheart on Lionheart Day. He succeeds and the Hood is swiftly arrested by the Sheriff.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: Tuck claims that "his body is a temple" immediately before showing he has an implant that injects him with dopamine whenever his heart rate gets too high, not to mention he's already shown to drink hard liquor.
- Improvised Lockpick: A bizarre example. Robyn uses a credit card to jimmy a lock at John Prince's penthouse even though Marian both knows how to pick locks and has lockpicks with her, using the justification that "The people who taught her got caught".
- Insane Troll Logic:
- Robyn accuses Marian of working against Tressie and of John Prince being her "sugar daddy" because she's getting paid by the man and she found a photo of her, John, and another man when Marian was a little girl. Besides the fact that Marian has gotten Prince to drop the charges against Tressie, it's an incredible leap to assume John Prince is Marian's sugar daddy due to a family photo from when Marian was a small child.
- A social worker assumes that one of Tressie's friends is the Hood because "she's close to Robyn's mom and that her being shot must have pushed her over the edge". At no point does she consider, that Robyn has that exact same motivation and is closer to her mother than a casual acquaintance. Even after said social worker is revealed to be a Torture Technician and gets strangled by Robyn, she doesn't consider the young woman might be the Hood.
- Insistent Terminology: One of the women arrested by the Sheriff claims they're being held in an illegal and off the books black site that no one knows about. She makes this claim to the social worker the mayor sent to the site, knowing that's where the sheriff was holding them. Said social worker turns out to be a Torture Technician working for the Sheriff.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: After arresting the Hood and several others, the Sheriff resorts to Cold-Blooded Torture to make them name who the Hood is.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Prince spends the majority of the first season being a mild Jerkass who's scummy at worst but is notably opposing a gang of criminals who repeatedly target him and almost constantly tries to find a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict. Then the Season Finale reveals his Kill the Poor plan that he's apparently been cooking up for decades.
- Kill the Poor: Prince's mindset. He actually believes a general uprising of the "Lower Class" is coming and his interest in Sherwood is to destroy it and kill everyone who lives between it and the lake so he can build an "Impregnable City" for the wealthy.
- Love Triangle: Between Robyn, Little John and Marian.
- Machine Worship: This version of Friar Tuck is a hacker whose faith is tied to The All, a realm of perfect logic he wishes to ascend to, and believes it's his responsibility to use his skills to shame the powerful.
- Mythology Gag: Several references were made to Disney's Robin Hood, including Robyn wearing a fox mask and Little John wearing a bear one.
- Once per Episode: The end of every episode includes a Hood music video featuring footage of their latest crimes.
- Police Are Useless: When they aren't being portrayed as dirty cops (and often when they are), the sheriffs are considered completely incompetent and no one ever considers going to them, such as to report Guy Gisborne's crimes. Or when the Sheriff does such a poor job searching Much's apartment, that she doesn't even peek her head into other rooms, where Robyn is hiding just on the other side of the door frame.
- Race Lift: The vast majority of the main cast are modern day black Canadian men and women, while the source material is about white men in medieval England.
- Really Gets Around: Robyn has apparently had enough partners that when she comes home late, her sister suggests roughly half a dozen people she could have been sleeping with and their mother cavalierly asks if she needs more condoms.
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: After John Prince offers to give everyone in Sherwood new homes, Tressie tries to demand if he'd let her have his penthouse if she offered to buy it. He immediately answers he would for the right price.
- Rich Kid Turned Social Activist: Marian, who comes from money but works as a Public Defender.
- Setting Update: The myth of Robin Hood retold in a fictional city in modern day Canada.
- Skewed Priorities:
- After Chet breaks a man's guitar and throws his promised payment in the air, the Hood's solution is to rob Chet (then later kidnap and assault him) to "teach him a lesson" rather than buy the man a new guitar with the money they've already stolen.
- The guests at Chet's birthday party are more interested in starring in a Hood music video than the fact that they were robbed during said video.
- Torture Technician: The Sheriff has one pretending to be a social worker when she arrests the Hood gang and several others.
- TV Genius: Much can tell exactly what's wrong with a car by the smell, stating the smell of maple syrup means a blown head gasket. Apparently, she's so good that she doesn't even have to visually inspect the car (or look at it at all) to check for any other problems it might have.
- Urban Segregation: How New Nottingham is portrayed.
