Hooten and the Lady - Episode 1 Review

Let's be honest here: Hooten and the Lady isn't the most original series to come out on Sky 1, and nor is it the sort of thing TV channels seem to want to commission anymore. It seems to be an almost out of time piece of TV that feels more at home several years ago in the Saturday evening family drama faze of Doctor Who, Primeval, Merlin and numerous others. Perhaps this means that it'll have greater appeal, but given Sky 1's limited audience - and the terrible choice of a Friday post-watershed slot - it just seems a bit bizarre for Hooten and the Lady.
So the plot follows British Museum expert Alex (the titular lady, played by Elementary's Ophelia Lovibond) joining forces with American adventurer Hooten (played by some guy I've never heard of) to make basically a TV-budget Indiana Jones homage. Mix it in with a modern setting and an even more forgettable antagonist than you ever thought possible, Hooten and the Lady probably sounds very familiar, and if the two leads get together at the end of the series...well, that sounds very familiar as well.
There's a City of Gold, a treasure map and a dead explorer all in an Amazonian jungle that is surprisingly well-realized for an original Sky 1 production. I was expecting shoddy green screen and lots of set-dressing in some random British forest but it looks like they actually went out there to film the location scenes. Of course, set dressing and rather knaff green screen aren't entirely absent, but they're not nearly as frequent as the location set-pieces. The action sequences are pretty good, although brief and the episode never really gets boring.
The problem is, Hooten and the Lady pretty much forgets to subvert its tropes and clichés, meaning that what you think is going to happen actually does happen exactly how you'd imagined it. While that's not bad, the mediocrity of the show is in full view, so it's probably best to put your brain to one side and enjoy it for a fun adventure with two bickering individuals who are two halves of Indiana Jones separated into two different characters. It has a rather dull plot thread about the British Museum losing touch with Alex, but by the end you'll probably be quite happy to set the rest of the series to record whilst all the truly great TV shows are on break. All in all: it's fine. Nothing special, but fun enough for a family audience. 6/10

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