When Things Were Rotten [TV Series] (1975) Reviews

In the '90s and 2000s, Mel Brooks enjoyed tremendous success resurrecting old ideas in new venues -- just witness his hit stage musicals The Producers and Young Frankenstein. So it might intrigue casual fans to learn that his broad cinematic farce Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) also found its origins in an older project: a failed sitcom from the mid-'70s entitled When Things Were Rotten. The original series, like the movie, took place in the 12th century, with Robin Hood (Dick Gautier) presented as neither heroic nor impressive, but a complete buffoon. With his accomplices behind him, he only triumphed from episode to episode because his enemies -- led by Prince John and The Sheriff of Nottingham -- were twice as moronic as he was. Brooks packed the series with off-the-wall gags and gleeful anachronisms that had become trademarks of the creator/producer's big screen films by the mid-'70s. The series, which co-starred Bernie Kopell as Alan-a-Dale, Dick Van Patten as Friar Tuck, Henry Polic II as the Sheriff, and Misty Rowe as Maid Marian, drew high praise from critics who championed it as witty and inventive; unfortunately, audiences did not share the same level of admiration, and the series aired for the last time on Christmas Eve, 1975, three-and-a-half months after it premiered. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi