Legend of the Seeker
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At first, I wasn’t really impressed with “Legend of the Seeker“. I heard pretty bad stuff about Terry Goodkind‘s “Sword of Trurth” novels it’s based on – and that was from the guy who actually liked them. On the other hand, executive producer of the “Seeker” is Sam Raimi who – in that dark era after “Evil Dead” and before “Spiderman” – produced “Hercules” and “Xena”: two shows placed in a Disneyland version of ancient Greece where Hippocrates, Caesar, Zeus and Lucifer all shared the same neighborhood.
I watched the pilot and, although it wasn’t as bad as I feared, it was unremarkable. Story follows Richard, young farmer boy who, after saving a beautiful lady in white from evil stromtroopers learns that he’s a Chosen One whose Destiny is to fulfill the Prophecy. His true parents are unknown, weird old guy next door is supposed to be his mentor and – before you can say “What a nice “Star Wars” rip-off!” – Richard’s foster parent get murdered by the Evil Empire.
I gave up on the series after the pilot waiting for the series to develop a little and see what kind of buzz it creates among the net crowd on the local forum. They seemed mildly interested so, after month or so, I decided to check out the second episode of the “Seeker”. This time, I was pleasantly surprised.
First of all, there was Ted Raimi’s character (I don’t remember seeing Raimi in anything where his brother wasn’t involved – no, wait, he played a corrupted policeman in “Miller’s Crossing”). Then there were couple of D&D references to the old 1st Edition adventures. But what definitely helped where were actors Bruce Spence and Bridget Regan. Spence – whom I remember most by his role of mad aviator in second and third “Mad Max” movies – plays old wizard Zed whose pass-times include hurling fireballs and talking to the chickens while standing naked on the moonlight. Bridget Regan – aside of having lovely eyes and freckles – plays Kahlan Amnell, some sort of mind-controlling priestess-martial artist… Anyway, she’s also cool.
So, here I was going through all the episodes of the “Legend of the Seeker”. I find it generic, but fairly enjoyable TV fantasy fare. It has wizards, monsters, swords and sorceries and makes for a far better screen adaptation of D&D then that horrible movie ever was. In it’s tone, “Seeker” is somewhere between campiness of “Hercules” and annoying angst of “Xena”. If the writers manage to keep this middle ground, I’d be quite satisfied with this show.
Oliver out.
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Arrright. cool. heh.