Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Adrian Sweeney John Woodvine (the doctor out of American Werewolf) is great as the Cromwellian dictator of a dystopian future Britain. Julian Fellowes (yes, that Julian Fellowes, writer of Downton) is excellent as his scheming second-in-command, one of the snidiest connivers in TV history. He manipulates, sneers, looks great in kinky leather, and does action-adventure things I won't spoiler but which will make me look at him in a new light the next time I see him in a chintzy sitting-room talking about 1920s country houses. Gareth Thomas and Patrick Troughton are resistance leaders. For a kids' show and for its era it was ambitious in scope and production values and presumably budget (the look is medieval knights with motorbikes, helicopters, computers and machine-guns). I never saw it as a kid, which is a shame as I would have thought it the greatest thing ever, but even as a grown-up I had fun. It meanders at times, after a brisk opening getting mired down in certain sub-plots for slightly too long, but it all builds to a climax of jaw-dropping mayhem. Points of interest include that despite his scariness the dictator Prior Mordrin isn't a 2-dimensional villain but believes he's doing the best for the country; and that despite their name and crusader-monk aesthetic his organisation the Knights of God are pretty frankly Nietzschean and contemptuous of real religion.

Michael Stone I encountered a few episodes of this back in 1987. Never saw it again but never totally forgot it either. Finally discovered a DVD (somewhat amateurish and picture quality less than ideal but still viewable) while googling for something else altogether.I was delighted. There's room for a few gripes. In particular, rather too much time seemed to be spent on the hero being pursued, John Buchan style, over moors and other "wild and loonley places", making it an episode or two longer than perhaps it really needed to be; but overall it was better than many things I've watched. One of the episodes already seen had given away the Big Secret, but I found that didn't spoil my enjoyment in a major way. And it was a little hard to get really excited about the young hero, who at times seemed a trifle dull in both senses of the word. But given what his heredity is supposed to be, making him a genius or a scintillating personality could be deemed implausible.The serial might be described as "King Arthur in modern dress" or perhaps a WW2 "resistance" one, like "Secret Army" with strong Arthurian overtones. Both sides have modern weapons, the Bad Guys even using black helicopters (another sign of the time it was made), yet at one point they even manage to get a sword fight in, while their leader, played wonderfully by John Woodvine, is called Prior Mordrin (= Mordred?), and a character on the other side is named Arthur. The resisters are disproportionately Welsh, with support (mostly offstage) in the North of England, fighting a kind of Neo-Pagan "religious order" based in Winchester. These got into power some 20 years before, in a civil war between north and south. The Iron Lady is never mentioned, but it sounds as if the "North-South divide", much discussed in Her day, had got really out of hand. But the opposition is very disunited, and the hero is quickly drawn into a search for "the King", sole survivor of the Knights' massacre of the Royal Family, as an essential rallying point.(Small nitpick here. The House of Windsor is enormous, with hundreds of members, many living outside the UK, so it would be impossible for the Knights to wipe them all out. However, a distant and maybe foreign cousin might lack the appeal of a close relative of the immediate Family, so let it pass)To cut a long story short, they find him, but only after Our Boy has gone through a Concentration Camp, been subjected to a rigorous training programme, brainwashed, pursued hither and thither both by the Knights and by their enemies and generally given a hard time. In short, a classical Arthurian Quest, and it all turns out to be for a Purpose. All in all, well worth a view, and undeservedly neglected.

milkhead I remember this on TV, is it available on Video or DVD? John Woodvine is an impressive actor. I'm also interested in finding a film version of Arturo Ui, Le Petomane, Mr Axelford's Angel, and many other great films / TV from this era. Remember Diana Dors in Queenie's Castle? Anyone recall the Space Adventures of Don Quick? How about White Rock, commentary by James Coburn, music by Rick Wakeman? Back to Knights of God, not only was John a good actor, the storyline was impressive, one of those that sticks in my memory, like Fatherland, Bedford Incident, A Very British Coup, Defence of the Realm and more recently the Day Britain Stood still, there was also a sci-fi about a post apocalyptic England, No Blade of Grass or something like that.

Pete Norman Recently watched this again from a copy made at the time from TV in 1987 and was pleasantly surprised how gripping the story is. If you enjoy spotting the durable British character actors who seem to appear in everything made back in the 70's & 80's,Knights of God will keep you watching. Would love to see it released on DVD,I don't know whether TVS still exists or was swallowed up by ITV at some point. However I fear it had limited appeal when first broadcast ,over looked on Sunday afternoons,which is a shame, because its definetely worth a second sight as they say!