andygates

In the last couple of days I've caught two of the BBC's flagship series, Robin Hood and Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. Rome works, Robin doesn't, despite both having a fairly verité style and modern dialogue. Why?

When you have wool mail - that fake silvery knitted stuff that Robin Hood uses throughout - the actors aren't pinned to the floor. There's no need for padding. They can flounce and sashay and mince, and by crikey they do. Goons are just Julian Clary's muscle Marys in burkhas. It's all dress-up and pretend, and so it carries no weight, literally. And if the heaviest, most demanding garments are that flimsy and fake, everything else follows.

In Rome by comparison, they've raided the re-enactors' cupboards for real mail. Heavy, saggy, solid chain padded and belted like it has to be. Suddenly the infantry and goons are solid and implacable, the Decurions have gravitas, the whole thing feels like an army that's going to do some proper killing and dying pretty soon. The extra weight means the actors heft and grunt and body-check, and generals remove it with genuine relief and real weariness. Real mail even excuses cheesily bad fibreglass cuirboilli and the weird casting of some bloke from Eastenders as one of the Four Emperors.

And so Rome has battles and Robin has art-project wank. It's all about the chainmail.