Review: Krod Mandoon

I loved this show. It's imperfect, but I'll get to that. On the whole, it really worked for me. It's a pleasure to see a sword and sorcery comedy with reasonable production value on television. Comedy Central deserves endless credit for putting this on.

The lead character, Krod Mandoon, is a nice hero type with humorous touches about him. To describe them in text would be to strip them of the intangibles that make them work on screen, but suffice it to say that he and the other characters work in execution.

I really enjoyed Mandoon's romantic interest, Aneka, and not strictly because her main characteristics are great beauty and sexual promiscuity. I happened to like the idea of making her a Pagan, and the British thing works. It also tends to work when the beautiful woman's competence is overlooked because of her looks and gender. In this case, she specifically seems to be the best fighter in Mandoon's band of rebels.

Those rebels fight against a tyrannical empire, represented chiefly by another good character, Chancellor Dongalor. He has the usual traits of the villain. Vain, cowardly, overly quick to violence, and all that. As I said, the goodness of it is in the execution and the actor's performance.

Among the characters, I see just one missfire. The pilot episode depicts the imprisoned leader of the resistance turning to a homosexual relationship after being thrown into a dungeon. All well and good. Unfortunately, the character with whom he consumates his newfound homosexuality is a terrible gay stereotype. Sadly, it appears that this latter character is with the series for good. I hope he takes a turn for the more nuanced and subtle.

I do also wonder how long the series will last. It's good enough to last a long while, but will it be popular enough to overcome a probable larger-than-normal budget for a series of this kind? Will the premise sustain a long run in any case? I hope the answers are yes, because this one looks like a winner to me.