Robin is warned that soon the man in green must face a man in red. And even as he’s told this, the Sheriff cements an alliance with a dangerous new foe in blood red armour…

Paul Kane is one of those authors who simply doesn’t do bad work. His dedication to his craft and instinctive understanding, and honouring, of established universes he writes in, means his work fits in effortlessly. That of course means a vast amount of effort went into fitting it in place as is the case here.

Kane manages two almost entirely contradictory, vital tasks here. The first is to tell a story with real stakes. The second is to do so in the middle of an established timeline. He succeeds completely at both, and in doing so actually deepens the mythos and tone of the Robin of Sherwood universe. The Red Lord’s abilities, and the price he pays for them, are the exact sort of English High Strangeness the show always excelled at. Crucially too, Kane uses them to cleverly ensure there are no victimless crimes here. Everyone swept up in the Red Lord’s path is an innocent and that only puts puts more pressure on Robin and his soldiers to be the heroes we know they are. That cleverly becomes personal two different ways in the second half and, even better, Kane gives Will Scarlet plenty of room to be supremely grumpy about the whole thing which is always good value.

The story’s success within an established timeline is subtler but no less impressive. The Red Lord’s threat is very real and the resolution of it is definitive, cheerily brutal and upends your expectations in the smartest possible way. In doing so, it fits like a glove into the evolution of the series, and the various action genres’ attitude towards female characters, so well it could have been written at the time.

Verdict: The reading, by the great Ian Ogilvy, is warm, measured and expressive. The script is smart a dozen different ways and the whole thing feels like exactly what it should be; both a unique story and a lost chapter of a much loved TV show, Massively recommended. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

Robin of Sherwood: The Red Lord can be ordered here from Spiteful Puppet