Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire Review

Just six 30-minute episodes comprise the British-American series, which echoes Monty Python and The Princess Bride, developed by Peter Knight (a co-creator of Big Wolf on Campus, an awesome show cut down in its prime, and who has a brief cameo in episode 2 of KMatFSoF). After the pilot aired on Comedy Central in April of last year, it began running in the UK in June, and by August it had been cancelled. BBC reported that the funders had pulled out, but then just a few days later retracted the statement.

Unfortunately, because of the brevity of both each episode and the series as a whole, you really only get a few wacky adventures (the best of which involves a bisexual cyclops — yep, the biclops). A TV show like this would do well to have less plot overlapping into each new episode, so that they can stand on their own. Then again, it offers the sort of humor (witty and ridiculous one-liners and physical gags) that can distract an audience from thinking, "Wait, what's supposed to be going on here?"

People may also have had a problem with the fact that the only female lead is a, for lack of a better word, slut, who chalks up her desire for sex with random guys to her Paganism (which decrees that she must lay with 300 men) or that Bruce is just one big demeaning stereotype (this one actually did stir up some commotion among the gay community). Aneka, trying to rustle up a hair of feminist girl power when she tells Kröd that sex is just another weapon in her arsenal, ultimately fails — we ladies don't want our menfolk thinking we use sex as a weapon, or a bargaining chip of any kind. And Bruce would certainly be hilarious were the actor playing him actually gay himself (Matt Lucas is an openly gay comedian — surely he would have something to say were he offended). But hey, isn't that the joke? Maybe, though the humor of Kröd Mändoon is usually blunt and often racy, it's also just a bit too tongue in cheek for the overly-sensitive.

Overall, it's not a bad program. The premise is fine, the writing is fine, the performances are fine — but perhaps that was the problem: everything was just fine, rarely less, but more importantly, rarely more. It's the sort of thing people would probably be more apt to watch online, late at night while they're supposed to be sleeping or studying, something that appears in short increments (a la Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog.) There's also a cartoony feel to the show, and one has to wonder if it would have done well as an animated series. The characters have a caricaturesque feel about them, and the writers could have taken the plot to places live action just won't go (at least not on a small budget). Plus Maguire wouldn't have had to spend two hours a day working out to get in shape for the role.

DVD Bonus Features

Behind the Scenes, Cast interviews, Outtakes, An alternate opening sequence, Deleted and extended scenes, "Hunt the Hungarian"