Simon Hoggart

Fantastical joke

‘Hi, my name is Kröd Mändoon, and I’ll be your liberator this evening!’ says the hero of Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire (BBC2, Thursday) as he bursts into a dungeon.

issue 13 June 2009

‘Hi, my name is Kröd Mändoon, and I’ll be your liberator this evening!’ says the hero of Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire (BBC2, Thursday) as he bursts into a dungeon.

‘Hi, my name is Kröd Mändoon, and I’ll be your liberator this evening!’ says the hero of Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire (BBC2, Thursday) as he bursts into a dungeon. It’s a funny line, imposing the formulaic talk of an American waiter on to a medieval, fantastical, witches and warlocks ersatz epic of the type dreamed up by lonely schoolboys in their bedrooms. I laughed, or chuckled inwardly. But it didn’t quite work. The line is light and assured, whereas Krod (and we’re going to drop those annoying umlauts, only there to create a spray-on impression of mittel-Germanic, Middle Ages vowels) is a shy and diffident hero who would never come up with such a confident, savvy line.

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