The Record
August 25, 1992; TUESDAY; ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: LIFESTYLE / ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. B08
LENGTH: 776 words
HEADLINE: A MAN'S HOME REALLY IS HIS CASTLE
BYLINE: VIRGINIA MANN, Record Television Critic
BODY:
TELEVISION REVIEW
COVINGTON CROSS: Previews at 10 tonight on Channel 7. Executive
Producer-creator: Gil Grant. Preview directed by William Dear and
written by Grant. (Note: This pilot airs again at 9 p.m. Sept. 4; the
series bows in its regular slot at 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19.)
Thomas Gray is a widower with rambunctious kids.
Teenage daughter Eleanor sneaks her boyfriend into her room when
Dad's not looking. Son Cedric goes to hilarious lengths to avoid
schoolwork. The other two boys at home have a bad case of sibling
rivalry. And they all have deplorable table manners.
As if these weren't problems enough, this poor guy has crazy
neighbors and a feisty, thrice-widowed girlfriend.
Here we go again, you say? Is this yet another motherless clan,
with elements of "Roseanne" and a lot of other shows tossed in for
good
measure?
There is one distinctive and delicious twist here. This Poor TV Dad
happens to be a medieval knight. And when he descends the stairs to
find
the kids swinging not baseball bats but swords, in what appears to be
a
duel of death and certainly destruction, he booms, "How many times
have I told you? Not in the castle."
Welcome to ABC's delightful new "Covington Cross," an unusual TV
project in many ways. Besides its time frame, the hour-long series is
filmed on location in England: The exteriors are shot at Allington
Castle in Kent; the interiors, on two huge London sound stages. ("It
would have been preposterous to try to shoot it in Los Angeles,"
executive producer Gil Grant notes.). Though primarily developed for
an American audience, "Covington
Cross" is co-produced by the U.S.-based Reeves Entertainment and its
British parent corporation, Thames International, and will air
simultaneously in both countries.
"Covington Cross" also defies traditional genres. It is, at once,
adventure, comedy, drama, and period piece, yet it doesn't pretend to
be terribly accurate. The network is even hazy about the precise era,
described in a tongue-in-cheek press release as "somewhere around the
14th century, give or take a hundred years."
Producer Grant, whose credits include the short-lived "Hull High,"
is not apologetic. "We're not doing history here. We're doing an
entertainment piece. And we wanted to do stories and themes that were
relatable to people in the Nineties," says Grant, who describes
"Covington Cross" as "a family show."
And what an entertaining family it is. Young Eleanor, played by
Ione Skye ("Say Anything"), is the kind of girl Pat Buchanan might
call
a radical feminist. She prefers the crossbow to the harp.
Eleanor, who has fallen in love with a servant-boy of her dad's
rich new girlfriend, Lady Elizabeth (Cherie Lunghi), flatly rejects
the
idea of arranged marriage. That poses problems for Sir Thomas when
the
king orders him to mend fences with his longtime neighbor and
nemesis,
Sir John Mullens (James Faulkner), by betrothing Eleanor to Mullen's
despicable son, Henry of Gault (Greg Wise). Gray berates himself for
allowing Eleanor to grow up with "whimsical notions that have nothing
to
do with the world."
Eleanor's brother Cedric (Glenn Quinn) isn't thrilled about the
future mapped out for him, either. Dying to be a knight, like his
elder
brothers, he endures preparation for the monastic life, a career his
late mother selected for him. At every opportunity, Cedric chooses
young
ladies over Latin and locks his roly-poly tutor, the Friar (Paul
Brooke), in the privvy. However, Cedric does absorb enough about the
Trojan Horse to help plan the pilot's climactic battle scene.
The other two boys, who mainly just roughhouse, are a little hard to
tell apart, which is why, after the pilot was shot, the producer
decided
to send one of them off to battle and bring back a fifth son who's
supposedly been off fighting in the Crusades. (He is not alluded to
in
the original pilot.). The most amusing roles belong to Sir Thomas,
rendered as a
conflicted but noble soul by Nigel Terry, who played Prince John in
the
film version of "The Lion in Winter." Unlike many other beleaguered
TV
dads, he is not a buffoon but a strong and ultimately victorious
character. Also memorable is James Faulkner, who aptly describes his
villainous Mullens as "a cross between Vlad the Impaler and Wile E.
Coyote."
The pilot, which also has a subplot about hooded nightriders who
pillage and burn the countryside, is witty and action-packed.
Unlike many of the other new fall shows, "Covington Cross" makes
for a rollicking good time.