I encountered a few episodes of this back in 1987. Never saw it again but never totally forgot it either. Finally discovered a DVD (somewhat amateurish and picture quality less than ideal but still viewable) while googling for something else altogether.
I was delighted. There's room for a few gripes. In particular, rather too much time seemed to be spent on the hero being pursued, John Buchan style, over moors and other "wild and loonley places", making it an episode or two longer than perhaps it really needed to be; but overall it was better than many things I've watched. One of the episodes already seen had given away the Big Secret, but I found that didn't spoil my enjoyment in a major way. And it was a little hard to get really excited about the young hero, who at times seemed a trifle dull in both senses of the word. But given what his heredity is supposed to be, making him a genius or a scintillating personality could be deemed implausible.
The serial might be described as "King Arthur in modern dress" or perhaps a WW2 "resistance" one, like "Secret Army" with strong Arthurian overtones. Both sides have modern weapons, the Bad Guys even using black helicopters (another sign of the time it was made), yet at one point they even manage to get a sword fight in, while their leader, played wonderfully by John Woodvine, is called Prior Mordrin (= Mordred?), and a character on the other side is named Arthur. The resisters are disproportionately Welsh, with support (mostly offstage) in the North of England, fighting a kind of Neo-Pagan "religious order" based in Winchester. These got into power some 20 years before, in a civil war between north and south. The Iron Lady is never mentioned, but it sounds as if the "North-South divide", much discussed in Her day, had got really out of hand. But the opposition is very disunited, and the hero is quickly drawn into a search for "the King", sole survivor of the Knights' massacre of the Royal Family, as an essential rallying point.
(Small nitpick here. The House of Windsor is enormous, with hundreds of members, many living outside the UK, so it would be impossible for the Knights to wipe them all out. However, a distant and maybe foreign cousin might lack the appeal of a close relative of the immediate Family, so let it pass)
To cut a long story short, they find him, but only after Our Boy has gone through a Concentration Camp, been subjected to a rigorous training programme, brainwashed, pursued hither and thither both by the Knights and by their enemies and generally given a hard time. In short, a classical Arthurian Quest, and it all turns out to be for a Purpose. All in all, well worth a view, and undeservedly neglected.
I was delighted. There's room for a few gripes. In particular, rather too much time seemed to be spent on the hero being pursued, John Buchan style, over moors and other "wild and loonley places", making it an episode or two longer than perhaps it really needed to be; but overall it was better than many things I've watched. One of the episodes already seen had given away the Big Secret, but I found that didn't spoil my enjoyment in a major way. And it was a little hard to get really excited about the young hero, who at times seemed a trifle dull in both senses of the word. But given what his heredity is supposed to be, making him a genius or a scintillating personality could be deemed implausible.
The serial might be described as "King Arthur in modern dress" or perhaps a WW2 "resistance" one, like "Secret Army" with strong Arthurian overtones. Both sides have modern weapons, the Bad Guys even using black helicopters (another sign of the time it was made), yet at one point they even manage to get a sword fight in, while their leader, played wonderfully by John Woodvine, is called Prior Mordrin (= Mordred?), and a character on the other side is named Arthur. The resisters are disproportionately Welsh, with support (mostly offstage) in the North of England, fighting a kind of Neo-Pagan "religious order" based in Winchester. These got into power some 20 years before, in a civil war between north and south. The Iron Lady is never mentioned, but it sounds as if the "North-South divide", much discussed in Her day, had got really out of hand. But the opposition is very disunited, and the hero is quickly drawn into a search for "the King", sole survivor of the Knights' massacre of the Royal Family, as an essential rallying point.
(Small nitpick here. The House of Windsor is enormous, with hundreds of members, many living outside the UK, so it would be impossible for the Knights to wipe them all out. However, a distant and maybe foreign cousin might lack the appeal of a close relative of the immediate Family, so let it pass)
To cut a long story short, they find him, but only after Our Boy has gone through a Concentration Camp, been subjected to a rigorous training programme, brainwashed, pursued hither and thither both by the Knights and by their enemies and generally given a hard time. In short, a classical Arthurian Quest, and it all turns out to be for a Purpose. All in all, well worth a view, and undeservedly neglected.