Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire

After sitting through the 1 hour premiere that aired earlier this evening I wasn't going to admit ever knowing this existed, much less watching it. It's that lame. But what's infuriating is it shouldn't be. This has potential to be a BLACK ADDER quality dark comedy or a tits out in-your-face adult spoof. Alas it's one dull Jr. High School cliché after another. Even the basic plot is standard Fantasy 101. You have the wouldbe hero fighing the evil power, ala Robin Hood, that's also the prophesied "Golden Boy" (or whatever) and his band of merry men plus one woman. Krod is sort of Roar meets South Park in a Mirror, Mirror D&D setting.

However in reading comments over at the IMDB forum one stuck out: "The girl was pretty sexy, but that's about it."

Amen, brother!

The "hot chick" is pretty much the only reason to tune in, even if she is called Aneka (played by relative newcomer India de Beaufort) in blatant satire/nod to the Anakin character from the prequel Star Wars trilogy. Alas, this being the post politically correct era, and a non-premium commercial cable television station, her main attributes are never really on display to distract us from the tedium and the less than salubrious semi-puns.

So what reeled me in to watch the pilot initially? The fact the promos made it look like a medieval comedy with touches of sword-and-sorcery, that and recognizing a few comedy faces from BBC America promos from a few years back. For instance the villain, Chancellor Dongalor (Matt Lucas), is a British star known for doing a comedy show called Little Britain. His evil minion sidekick Barnabus (Alex MacQueen), while not immediately known to me, appears to be another star of British comedy series. Then there is Zezelryck- the "token black" sorcerer whose character is also an bumbling "comedy side kick"- played by Kevin Hart; an American comedian whose talents seem wasted here.

Considering how much comedic talent I've identified so far the level of un-funny on display is bewildering. Worse, the actor playing Krod (the dork hero of the piece) is Sean Maguire, the English actor who played Leonidas in the OFT maligned spoof of 300, MEET THE SPARTANS. So far I've somehow managed to not see that movie but I've heard a lot about how bad it's supposed to be. And, yes, all the "jokes" in Krod are as elementary and transparent as the title suggests.

Is it utterly lame? Well there weren't any real laughs for the first half hour. For a comedy show that was pretty astonishing. Then again the one or two laughs I experienced were, for the most part, not with the show but at it. I really hope this gets better. The promo for next week's episode show's John Rhys-Davies, so I may tune in, but if Dork, sorry, Krod doesn't give us something remarkable and entertaining next week's episode will likely be my last. So unless someone gets their kit off or does something truly amazing I wont be wasting a DVDR or review space on it.

So, I guess, take this more as a warning than a review. Even though this could have potential it's off to a pretty bad start and Comedy Central will have a uphill battle to make this work. And considering the decline in quality of the Adult Swim programming on Cartoon Network and the general trend for mediocre elementary school humor on what few non "reality" series remain I just don't know that this show is going anywhere worth following on a weekly basis. Considering I'd recommend the Deathstalker and Ator movies, which aren't exactly Shakespeare, that makes Krod pretty bad. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

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