The BEST episodes of Maid Marian and Her Merry Men season 4
Every episode of Maid Marian and Her Merry Men season 4, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Maid Marian and Her Merry Men season 4!
Maid Marian and her Merry Men is a UK children's television series created and written by Tony Robinson and directed by David Bell. It began in 1989 on BBC One and ran for four series, with the last episode shown in 1994. The show was a partially-musical comic retelling of the legend of Robin Hood, placing Maid Marian in the role of leader of the Merry Men, and reducing Robin to an incompetent ex-tailor. The programme was much appreciated by children and adults alike, and has been likened to Blackadder, not only for its historical setting and the presence of Tony Robinson, but also for its comic style. It is far more surreal than Blackadder, however, and drops even more (deliberate) anachronisms. Like many British children's programmes, there is a lot of social commentary sneakily inserted, as well as witty asides about the Royal family, buses running on time, etc. Many of the plots featured, included or revolved around spoofing particular things, including films such as Jurassic Park and It Came From Outer Space, and television programmes, including The Crystal Maze and the long-running televised fundraiser Comic Relief. There were also frequent references to other Robin Hood incarnations, most notably ITV's Robin of Sherwood (and in particular a parody of that series' Clannad soundtrack is lampooned in the episode "The Whitish Knight") and the contemporary film adaptation Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The latter actually features Howard Lew Lewis (Rabies) among its cast - hence his doubly-witty line in the episode "The Came from Outer Space", which episode also passingly satirises the film for casting the lead with an American accent (Kevin Costner). The show was such a success, there was an adaptation produced for the stage, a cartoon strip by Paul Cemmick which was serialised in the Daily Telegraph's children's paper "The Young Telegraph" (also available as a series of collections) and the programme was repeated on BBC One in 2001. Series 1 was release
#1 - Tunnel Vision
Season 4 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/5/1994
Marian ambushes the Sheriff again, and in a discussion, the King and Sheriff decide to dig a tunnel from Worksop to Scunthorpe; it seems, however, that the people of Worksop hate Scunthorpians, who it seems have two heads, and picket the tunnel. Guy of Gisborne is meanwhile extremely bored, and Rose is in need of extra cash, so together they pretend Marian has kidnapped Guy. Marian, driven out of the hideout by her Dungeons and Dragons obsessed colleagues, stumbles upon Guy and Rose, and the choreographed altercation which ensues leaves Marian and Rose tied securely together, while Guy wanders off and finds the hideout, where he is keen to join in the Dungeons and Dragons game, as the Giver of Gifts. Rose and Marian hop into town, still tied together, but mistaking them for a two-headed Scunthorpian, the peasants pelt them with mud, before eventually realising and untying them. The King organises a ceremonial groundbreaking ceremony featuring Guy's mother, and the Sheriff and guards re
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#2 - Bouncy Sheriff
Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/12/1994
Marian is frustrated that the gang has become sexist, and quits. She meets up with Rose in Worksop, who offers her a job selling house renovations. However, Marian still hasn't learned her lesson, and Rose works with the Sheriff to have Marian ambushed and captured. By the King's orders, however, the Sheriff also buys an extension to the castle from Rose, in order to have somewhere to store all of Guy's rubbish. Rose then approaches the remaining Merry Men and lure them to the castle to build the extension, with the intention of having them captured afterwards. The plans are foiled, however, when Marian escapes from the torture chamber by tunnels that a number of prisoners have dug, and her arrival in the extension leads to its collapse, and everyone escapes. The Men apologise, and Marian returns to the gang, and Rose left in the torture chamber, choosing this fate as preference to becoming the gang's au pair.
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#3 - Raining Forks
Season 4 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/19/1994
With the King and Worksop in the grip of a common cold epidemic, the Sheriff constructs a plan to take everybody in a seaside vacation; then, once there, the Sheriff forces the peasants to work for him, and build a holiday camp for the King to stay in. Coincindentally, the Merry Men are holidaying in the same place, and upon entering the camp, see the preparation for High Forks Night, an annual celebration of an assassination attempt on the royal family, the explosion of which sent dinner forks into the air. Out of money, the Merry Men need a way into the camp to save the peasants, which takes the form of the Food Inspector – an irritating man who empties out all of Barrington's chips because he measured one 3mm too long - who they beat up, and Marian impersonates. They infiltrate the camp, and Marian gets the escape plan to Snooker. The Sheriff becomes suspicious, and so when the peasants storm into the room infested with Multi-Coloured Pimple Plague, which a disguised Marian uses as
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#4 - The Wise Woman of Worksop
Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/26/1994
The gang are sleep deprived, and need to be rested for their ambushes; in desparation, Barrington goes to Gladys and is given her father's recipe, Sleepy-Cake, but the boys ignore the instructions and are left with some embarrassing side effects - Barrington loses his hair, Rabies looks like Paul McCartney, and Robin's nose gets much bigger, the antidote for which is known only to Gladys' father, who is not present. Meanwhile at the castle, King John is fed up with his prisoners, and orders their release, but accustomed to their cells, the prisoners refuse to leave. The Sheriff decides to trick the Merry Men into rescuing the prisoners by getting Guy to pretend he is lacksadasiacal with the location of the castle key; when they enter the castle, they leave with the prisoners, while Marian and Robin are captured. The prisoners are horrified to get back to Worksop, and a brawl ensues, when Barrington discovers that one of the men they have rescued is in fact Gladys' father. He promises t
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#5 - Robin the Bad
Season 4 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/2/1994
Robin sweeps through Worksop and roughs up the locals - when the angry peasants approach Marian about it, she kicks Robin out of the gang. But, it seems, they have been duped: King John has hired a Robin Impersonator, and the Sheriff uses Robin's dip in popularity as a chance to increase his own standing by means of free promotional giveaways. The Merry Men, believing Robin innocent, go to Worksop to find him. Meanwhile, Marian ambushes the fake Robin in the forest, and is suspicious when he carries the money King John gave him. Both Robins end up at the hideout, and after Marian almost has a heart-attack, the ruse is revealed, and the Merry Men set about getting things right. The two Robins combine efforts in the village to re-elevate his status to superhero, and the Sheriff - or more accurately a Sheriff impersonator they hired - concedes defeat. Then, to pay back the Sheriff, the Sheriff impersonator goes to the castle and attacks King John, leaving the real Sheriff in an extreme sp
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#6 - The Nice Sumatran
Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/9/1994
A scary attack by the Merry Men on the castle is the last straw for King John, and he abdicates, leaving Guy to take the throne. Reduced to nothing, the King wanders around Sherwood, and ends up at the hideout, where Robin decides to invite him into their home, in the hopes of a rich inheritance when he died. These new arrangements are working out fairly poorly for everyone: Guy is mad with power, and is using this power essentially to do extremely useless, messy and counter-productive things with the Sheriff and the guards; the ex-King, however, is eating the Merry Men out of house and home, and is extremely impolite. So, Marian and the Sheriff work together in a plan to scare Guy into abdicating and led John retake the throne - a fairly silly plan devised by none other than Robin, involving large puppet dinosaurs. It works, nonetheless, and Guy abdicates, but the Merry Men are less than impressed when King John decides to stay with them.
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#7 - Voyage to the Bottom of the Forest
Season 4 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/16/1994
The Merry Men miss a potentially very rich payout when Rabies falls asleep for the ambush; they each complain about each other's shortcomings - Rabies' laziness, Robin's cowardice, Ron's violence, Barrington's coolness and Marian's bossiness - when Rabies spies a boat sailing through the forest - bought by the King at a boat show. When the Sheriff and guards go to find rollers to make their job easier, the Merry Men steal it, but accidentally push it over Skegness cliffs and end up in a parallel universe. In this universe, Engyland, once controlled by Princesses Rose and Guya, is now under the reign of terror of a witch and an ogre, who bear resemblance to Gladys and Snooker - however, it seems that it has been foretold that a man named Rabies would free them. With the Merry Men slowly taking on parallel identities (relating to those vices listed above), Rabies devises a plan to steal the witch' wand. He succeeds, and turns the witch into a box of tissues and the ogre into a set of pla
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