Robin Hood: Mischief in Sherwood transforms the legendary outlaw, his Merry Men, and Maid Marian, into teenagers in this overseas-produced CGI series currently airing on Discovery Family. The series was originally produced in 2014 with 26 half hour episodes.
Following is a sample episode:
I get that the idea is to introduce Robin, Marian, et al to a new generation of viewers who probably have never read the original story or had seen adaptations thereof. However, ever since the change-over from The Hub to Discovery Family, the network has become an afterthought to cartoon fans, aside from anyone that follows any of Hasbro's properties with, ahem, religious fervor (i.e. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Transformers), dropping the network's stock even further.
Rating: B.
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Discovery Family is also airing overseas animated adaptations of Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" and JM Barrie's "Peter Pan". From the looks of it, the same studio produces all three series.
In addition to turning the story's main characters (including Prince John) into kids, Mischief in Sherwood also transformed the character of Will Scarlet into a girl, Scarlet. (Perhaps the producers didn't want Maid Marian to suffer from Smurfette Syndrome). Also, in this series Marian is gifted in magic. So magic exists in this world, OK. That's different.
Hadn't notice the gender flip with Will, per the episode I'd sampled on air. The New Adventures of Peter Pan is due up, and so is Jungle Book.
So basically, this overseas studio just takes characters from works of popular children's literature (all public domain so they don't have to pay anybody) and makes animated TV shows based off of them.
I find it to be a tad lazy how Discovery isn't producing any original cartoons for it's family channel. All DiscFam has besides the remaining Hasbro shows leftover from The Hub are 3rd party acquisitions. With Littlest Pet Shop now canceled and DiscFam's night time lineup being in the sorry state that it's in, it seems that DiscFam is destined to live out the rest of it's run as The My Little Pony Channel.
All that says is that DisCom (Discovery Communications) and/or Hasbro are being cheap when it comes to in-house product.
Hasbro of late has been using the internet, specifically Netflix, as their go-to location for most of their cartoons. One reason The Hub failed (aside from the obvious over-reliance on Ponies, Pets and nostalgia over developing and nurturing new shows and properties) is because they had a hard time lining up sponsors for the channel; other toy companies avoided The Hub like the Plague because they considered running ads on a rival company's network to be Working with the Enemy. Just goes to show that a toy company running a kids' TV network might sound like a great idea on paper, but it's not so great in execution.
As for Discovery, I just don't think they care. If Discovery Kids hadn't faltered in the first place, they wouldn't have needed Hasbro to make them over and bail them out in the second place. Honestly, even recycling the old Discovery Kids shows via reruns would be better than what constitutes for Discovery Family's schedule. It's truly sad what DiscFam has become.
Aye, shows like Kenny the Shark and Grossology sit in DisCom's vaults, unused, all while Ponymania continues to run wild.
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