This weekend, SyFy gave us all Beyond Sherwood Forest. As I said over at Tor.com, it was the first good SyFy original production I’ve ever seen. (No, Tin Man does not count. It will never count. All it did was turn me away from Neal McDonough forever. Now, when I watch Band of Brothers, all I think is, “Shit, dude, you have no idea what’s going to happen to your career, do you?” and then I’m sad.)

You have to admit they’re trying for quality, though! They even have moody promo stills. (Well, one moody promo still. So they’re trying…barely.)

1. Robin Dunne. He isn’t British, and he doesn’t try. He frowns manfully, he wears tunics, he shoots arrows, and we’re done. (Extra points for not taking the dragon CGI seriously at all, but making more of an effort to take Volturi Druids seriously because they were real actors and you wanted to pretend they were important. Manners!)

2. The dual plots. One of them is: guerilla response to government tyranny sometimes backfires on the populace, and the outlaws who have the populace’s best interests at heart must come to terms with the idea that their actions have consequences for others and deal with those consequences accordingly.

The other one is: illegitimate Volturi Druid turns into a dragon in the sunshine and fights a magic portal.

These plots are utterly separate, except once or twice when the Robin Hood crew halfheartedly waves some sticks in the direction of what was probably some stunt guy in a scuba suit. The dragon stuff was clearly added to sell this script to SyFy, and that’s fine with me.

3. The production values. Sure, Marian’s peasant-blouse-and-corset ensemble is ridiculous and her cloak looks like it was appliquéd by Mrs. Hanover’s sixth-grade class, but Robin looks GREAT for a SyFy movie!

It’s all earth-toned and vaguely worn and it’s just several layers of stuff sort of tacked together with belts and laces instead of big buckles and rivets and random studded bands! I’m not saying it’s period-accurate, I’m just saying:

Let he who is without rivets cast the first stone.

4. That bit illustrated in the Tor.com review when Robin aims his flaming arrow. I laughed out loud, and I am not even ashamed. Peter DeLuise, you have a sense of humor.

5. Julian Sands. Julian Sands actually believes there is a dragon. Julian Sands probably actually stabbed that poor girl once or twice for “realism.” Julian Sands is going to commit to this movie the way he committed to all the other movies: stoned out of his gourd.

As for the dragon, which looks suspiciously Aztec Rex-y in the face and moves like a Tonka Toy, I couldn’t find a picture. It looks like this:

…yeah. There’s just no help for it. Let it go, Jake. It’s SyFyTown.