By Gordon's Beard

Recently, I have written a few things about editing on the BBC's 2006-09 version of Robin Hood. These posts feel a bit like they've come from a fansite in a parallel universe where the show survived the departure of nearly all of its original leads, ran for a few more series and left a bigger cultural footprint than it actually did, so I've been quite pleased with the audience they've found.

One of the most famous stories about the series, though, concerns the August 2006 theft of some master tapes. Although the majority of the material was apparently recovered later on, there is some reshot material in the broadcast episodes. But nowhere tells us exactly what.

Here is Little John, as played by Gordon Kennedy, when he makes his first appearance in the final moments of the first episode, "Will You Tolerate This?" (original TX 07/10/06):

Here he is in his first scene of the second episode, "Sheriff Got Your Tongue?" (TX 14/10/06), sporting a beard which looks much the same for most of the episode:

(Episodes 1 & 2 were filmed in the same block, and on the DVD commentary for episode 2 showrunner Dominic Minghella identifies the scene where Marian tries to rescue Robin from the dungeons, half an hour into episode 2, as the very first to be filmed.)

But when we get to the castle scenes later on, Kennedy is visibly close to clean-shaven in the scene where the other outlaws arrive to help Much with his rescue attempt (apart from this shot, he's only seen in wide shots for the rest of this scene, and the lighting also suddenly changes at the point the others arrive, as if it's been put together from two different takes):

Frustrating moments in research of our time #1: On the DVD commentary, Dominic Minghella specifically mentions this shot as it's coming up so he can explain why Kennedy is shaven, but at the moment it appears everyone (including Kennedy himself) talks at the same time and the conversation moves on without the explanation! 

A scene or two later, he seems a bit beardier:

Later still, he seems somewhere inbetween those last two shots:

(On the DVD commentary, Kennedy attributes some shots where he looks less beardy to the fact that he was only cast with a few days' notice, and didn't have time to grow it out properly.)

Note that the BBC News article above about the recovery of the tapes states: "At [the series'] launch in London, the show's stars revealed they had been re-shooting scenes on location." So it seems likely that Kennedy shaved his beard off at close of production, only to then be recalled to reshoot the affected material. At minimum, I think we can say that scene where he's visibly shaved (which starts at 29:03 on the iPlayer version) is definitely from the reshoot.

The scene takes place in the very early morning, so it's possible the lighting is covering up things which make it more obvious, but that scene features William Beck, who played Roy for the first four episodes, as well as Josh Cole and Mark Bagnall, who played two members of Little John's original gang for the first two episodes. It's a scene which is pretty vital to the episode and couldn't just be cut, and production probably couldn't be too choosy and had to include some obviously reshot material because they couldn't wait for Kennedy to grow his beard out again and also reshoot with three non-regular actors.

It's quite possible there's other, less obvious material from the reshoots in this and other episodes, but the series was rushed into production a bit and there are other editing issues that seem to arise from production having not yet gotten a handle on how to make the show (staying with "Sheriff Got Your Tongue?", at 16:52 there's some weird jump-cuts which look like a mistake nobody ever caught). This can make it hard to tell what might be reshoot material, and what might have been like that in the first place...