What's Robin Hood Without Robin Hood? *Spoilers*

There are some spoilers over here about season three of Robin Hood. I'm going to talk about them in the next paragraph so if, for some reason, you don't want Robin Hood season three spoiled then consider yourself warned.

Obviously this is one of my favourite shows to recap but is it going to be worth recapping if the main character doesn't bother to turn up? Actually, that would probably make it even more worthy of snark... The absence of the main character in season four will surely be the deathknell for the show. The 80s ITV show, Robin of Sherwood, managed to replace Robin but that led to Jason Connery. No one should have to endure another Jason Connery. If the rumours are correct and Richard Armitage leaves too, then not only have we lost the best Sean Bean impression from our screens but the show loses Guy of Gisburne. I also read a rumour a few months ago that Keith Allen was going to be leaving at the end of season three too. I've enjoyed Keith's pantomime performance as the Sheriff as he seemed to be the only actor that looked at the script and thought, "This is quite clearly crap. Sod it, I'm going to have a laugh with this and ham it up!"

So, we'll have a show called Robin Hood that won't feature Robin Hood, Guy of Gisburne, Maid Marian, or the Sheriff. They may as well rename it Generic Medieval Fantasy Adventure Show (and I believe that was the working title for Merlin until they decided to use the Merlin brand name *shudder*). At what point do the BBC decide to pretend that the first three seasons didn't happen and start again from scratch? If you remove the four main characters from the Robin Hood legend, you haven't really got much of a story, or at least not a Robin Hood story and that's kind of the point of a show titled Robin Hood.

Of course the other option is that the show just merely recasts everyone and give the viewers new actors in the iconic roles. This is always jarring for any show that's not Doctor Who but it could be a way of relaunching the show and jettisoning some of the baggage. The problem would be that the actors would still be inhabiting a series that has always been hamstrung by poor writing, costume and those Hungarian extras that don't react to anything.

Despite the article mentioning the appointment of a showrunner, I would be very surprised if Robin Hood was commissioned for a fourth season if it lost half its cast. A new start would probably be for the best, perhaps a couple of years hiatus whilst all the parts are recast and the filming relocated and the sets rebuilt? Obviously this would be an expensive option in these times of financial apocalypse. Plus, we may not even be watching TV in a couple of years, we'll probably be forming tribes and fighting each other over supplies of Sunny D and Extra Value beans in the burning ruins of Tesco.

Before the apocalypse occurs we will have season three and that should at least threaten to be interesting towards the end as we all wait for the farewell/death scenes of certain characters...