Legend of the Seeker
A simple lad unaware of his destiny lives out his life in the middle of nowhere. While he’s popped out his family are killed by an evil ruler’s henchmen. He is led by destiny and a hot chick in white to flee to safety. He meets an old wizard guy who gives him a magic sword and informs him that his family weren’t actually his family and that he has special powers and a role in life where he’s destined to fight for good.
Oh hang on, that’s the plot of Star Wars – let me consult my notes. Nope, my mistake, it’s also Legend of the Seeker’s plot.
Actually I’m being unfair here. It’s also the plot of a million things.
Legend of the Seeker is an epic fantasy series that incongruously appears on the Sci Fi channel. (It isn’t Sci Fi!) That doesn’t really matter. While watching the pilot I spent the whole time thinking “Wow, it’s like everything I’ve seen before”. Being a fair-minded chap, however, I thought I’d give it a chance and more episodes. And I have to say, it got pretty good. It even gets quite dark at times. If you are into fantasy (and in this post LOTR world, that’s a lot of people) you will like this.
The series is based on a series of books called The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. This obviously means some saddoes are lamenting the slightest change from the worshipped text but as the author has been heavily involved in the script, it has shut a lot of them up. It also means some of the narrative is pretty compelling.
The cast, (as all good TV casts are,) are all pretty attractive. Except for the wizard fellow. The lead character, Richard Cypher, looks permanently baffled and angry but is pretty watchable. The lead lady, who’s a kind of magic nun called Kahlan, is very watchable in her tight white dress. The wizard fellow is played by a guy I have always liked and seen in a million movies and shows but always remember as the mental guy with the flying machine in the Mad Max movies.
The bad guy sounds vaguely English and the whole thing is filmed in New Zealand, so it really has all the necessary elements for success. New Zealand’s countryside must be riddled with attractive fantasy actors wandering around in the same way the Canada’s woods are full of rubberized humanoids.
The action isn’t quite up to Lord of the Rings standards but is watchable and fairly exciting. A little too much of the theatrical sword-clearly-missing the-body-and-sticking-out-the-other-side fighting style but there are some enjoyable enough sequences. He can even split arrows with his lightsaber. I mean sword.
In all, stick through the hackneyed plot of the pilot and you are in for an enjoyable series. If you like fantasy, I really can’t think of anything better on TV. I actually find myself looking forward to the next episode, which for someone whose job consists of watching TV for 12 hour stints, means it’s pretty damn watchable.
Sounds good, must give it a try. The books were pretty good in a sort of grungy not-too-serious low fantasy kind of way. I had planned to avoid the TV series as these things are usually shit. Glad to hear it’s not the case here!
The show isn’t too serious but it is surprisingly good fun. Better than, say, the Conan the Barbarian TV show, which was awful. And I love Conan!
The problem is that most fntsaay novels are pretty hefty things with lots of story in them, far more than can be reasonably crammed in an 90-120 minute movie at any rate. That’s why episodic TV is a much better format for this sort of thing. I’m really looking forward to this – I just hope they don’t screw it up or it may be the last time something like this gets made!
“In terms of shooting scdleuhe vs. writing scdleuhe, if the show is a huge hit, it will surpass the series before the next book (after Dragons) comes out.”Apparently they’re talking about STORM being two seasons because of the length of the book. That likely means DRAGONS will be as well (given that the book is apparently the same size as SWORDS, never mind it having to be integrated with the events of CROWS as well), giving us potentially seven seasons before they get to WINDS OF WINTER. Personally I think it’s more likely that HBO will get cold feet and cancel it before then. I just hope they get to the end of SWORDS.
Man I can’t wait to see this series, it looks azmniag. It seems like theres tons of azmniag fantasy novels out there but for some reason all the movies and shows in the genre aren’t well done at all (with the exception of lotr). It’s a shame, really
It’s a little late for this one isn’t it? It’s adelary been gone for a season.But I will say this. I loved that series of books and the TV series was pretty good too. I was sorry to see it go.I can’t say I was surprised with this one though. They didn’t even have it on a network.