Maid Marion, usually made out to be a simpering sideline-sitter who keeps the hero dangling until the last reel, marries Robin at the first episode's end and becomes a full-fledged outlaw, as likely to stage a rescue as require one. "It seemed to me that if a woman is going to live in a forest with six blokes, she must have something a little bit special about her. It would be much safer for Robin and the others to treat her as an equal - and as a pseudo-man. We didn't really pull that off because Judi [Trott, who plays Marion] is such an obviously pretty feminine woman. I wanted her to look a little bit more sexless, because if you think about it realistically, it could be an awkward situation. These guys are living a very male life in the forest, and there aren't any women about and here suddenly there is one, and their leader has her to himself exclusively. It could cause trouble."
   Probably the most unusual character is Herne the Hunter, Lord of the Trees, worshipped by both villagers and Robin's band. How did Carpenter come to select Herne as Robin's mentor and guide? "Well, obviously, we couldn't use Merlin, because Merlin was part of the King Arthur legends. I cast around for a suitable mythological figure that was Celtic and of the earth, and it seemed to me that the old pre-Christian horned god - 'Cernunnos,' the Romans called him, 'Herne' we call him - was the ideal figure. 'Herne' as a place name crops up all over England. It's quite likely that in those days, he was very much revered as a spirit of the forest by local people because everybody always paid their dues to the Church and at the same time threw salt over their left shoulder and [did] all the superstitious things which actually date back to pre-Christian times. I wanted to show that the folk beliefs could go on alongside the existing religion."
   When Carpenter, Knight and their since-retired partner Sidney Cole first set about seeking financing, describing Robin of Sherwood to potential backers took a dash of imagination. "It took a long time to sell because we went to a TV junket in Las Vegas in which I told [American financiers] that Robin Hood was really The Dukes of Hazzard in medieval costumes with bows and arrows," Carpenter laughs.
   Fortunately, that comparison proved unfounded; it also failed to generate funding. A year later, Knight hat aligned himself with the British company Goldcrest, then branching into TV after succeeding with theatrical ventures like Ghandi. Goldcrest agreed to put up the bulk of the money for Robin, forming a co-production deal with Carpenter and Knight's company Catetarn and America's Showtime. Filming began in 1983. In early 1984, Robin of Sherwood premiered its broadcast run in the U.K. and on Showtime in the U.S.
   Carpenter, wrote all 13 episodes of Robin's first two seasons. A third series was in preparation when a problem cropped up. Michael Praed, the actor who played Robin, had been offered the lead in the Broadway production The Three Musketeers and after some soul-searching, accepted the part. This meant he had to leave England and Robin of Sherwood.
   After reviewing their options - ending the series, replacing Praed - Carpenter and Knight opted to kill off Robin of Loxley in the final episode of series two, while an enigmatic hooded man shows up to save the other outlaws. In series three, the stranger is revealed as Robert of Huntingdon, an earl's son played by Jason Connery (son of Sean). Connery's first few episodes dealt largely with Robert coming to terms with the wary men and a grieving Marion. Otherwise, Carpenter reveals that if Praed had stayed, "at the end of series two, we would have provided a hood forward into series three, and we would have done all the episodes in series three as is, really, except that it would have been Michael Praed."
   One plot development that would not have occurred is the new Robin's appalled discovery that he's related to the Sheriff's vicious deputy, Sir Guy of Gisburne. "That idea came to me at a party where Jason and Robert [Addie, who plays Guy] were standing next to each other and I said, 'There are only two blonds in this room. They look quite alike, don't they?' I think I even said, 'They could be brothers, those two.' And it hit me then, like a bolt from the blue."
   And so Guy became Robin's bastard half-brother, although Guy is unaware of their kinship. "Finding out that the man he hates most in the world is his brother would have a severely bad effect on [Guy], and he would probably find himself a shrink and spend about two years under heavy Freudian analysis."
   At the time Robin of Sherwood was gearing up for its third go-round, Carpenter was writing Artos, an as-yet unproduced series "which is basically a retelling of the Arthurian legend set in the Bronze Age of Britain, about this guy who surrounds himself with a bunch of warriors who then become the Knights of the Round Table - the Round Table being Stonehenge." This project prevented Carpenter from being as closely involved with Robin as he had in the past. Several episodes were scripted by other writers, mostly Crossbow creator Anthony Horowitz. Producer Knight was also working on other series and consequently had less direct input as well. These factors, combined with the change of lead actor, couldn't help but alter the program's tone.
   "In retrospect, I think I should have stayed much closer to the show than I did. But that's water under the bridge. I personally felt happiest with the first two series. Jason is splendid as Robin and brought a sort of lightness into the role and a humor which wasn't there in the first series, but it also lost a little bit of the reality of living in the forest and living off the land. It became a bit too comfortable in Sherwood Forest. To be fair, we also showed in [third] series what it was like in the winter, when in fact it was pretty unpleasant. Jason's very blondness and the fact that he was supposed to be the son of the Earl of Huntingdon rather than a peasant like the others automatically changed the series' feel - not necessarily for the worse, just different. We used many different directors that we hadn't used before and we had a new producer, so obviously all these elements affect the show. Also, we did 13 on the trot instead of breaking it into two lots, which we did with the first 13. Everybody got a bit tired towards the end 'cause it was a very heavy shoot."
   The last episode of the third series fades out with Marion becoming a novice nun rather than marrying Robin and risking widowhood a second time. "Judi Trott said she didn't want to be in more than a few episodes of the fourth series, so I said, 'OK, we'll put you on ice. If you'll be in the first one, and one in the middle, and the last one where you marry Robin, we'll shove you in a convent because the idea of the unattainable lady love is very medieval. You'll only have to be in three episodes, but everybody will talk about you for 13.' She said yes, that would be great. Then, they cancelled the fourth series for no apparent reason. Which left [Marion] in a convent, Guy not knowing that he was Robin's brother - all sorts of things were left up in the air. That was terribly unsatisfactory, because had I known a month earlier, we could have tied the whole thing up. Which is why the last episode is so full of untied, unresolved elements. As the patron saint of the film industry, San Andreas, would say, it is not my fault."