Exhibit A: Forbes Collins as Henry von Falkenberg in the 1988 film Just Ask for Diamond, a spoof of the hard-boiled detective genre for children adapted from the 1986 novel The Falcon's Malteser, often specifically spoofing The Maltese Falcon.
Exhibit B: Forbes Collins as King John in the 1989-94 CBBC series Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, a spoof of the Robin Hood legends for children, often specifically spoofing the 1984-86 series Robin of Sherwood.
Exhibit C: Nickolas Grace as one of Henry von Falkenberg's lieutenants, Himmell, in Just Ask for Diamond.
Exhibit D: Nickolas Grace as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin of Sherwood.
Exhibit E: Anthony Horowitz, the author of The Falcon's Malteser, which he adapted himself for the big screen, wrote five episodes of the final series of Robin of Sherwood, which were broadcast the same year The Falcon's Malteser was originally published; his scripts for Sherwood are his first television work, and the book is his biggest early success. (There is one other link between Just Ask for Diamond and Robin of Sherwood: Patricia Hodge portrays Brenda von Falkenberg in the former and Queen Hadwisa in the episode "The Pretender" of the latter, which was one of the episodes written by Horowitz.)
I'm not sure I have any wider point here, I just don't think I'd ever happened to connect all those dots before now?
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