Richard Greene's "Adventures of Robin Hood" was in its 3rd successful year, and NBC was headed for a wrap on "Adventures of Sir Lancelot", when Columbia Screen-Gems decided (December, 1956) to produce this 39 episode series with Sydney Box Productions in England. Actually, the schedule to get the pilot before ABC (which didn't purchase the show) required that the first episode and the head-title/tail-credit sequences be filmed at the Columbia Ranch outside LA in February 1957. Only this episode was shot in color (only released for broadcast in B&W). The show then returned to post-winter England. The pilot-episode features Roger Moore with a much tighter haircut and an open-throat camail of armor. The backgrounds are also quite Southern California. The show was more lavish than "Robin Hood", and generally more engaging than "Sir Lancelot". Moore and Brown had good chemistry and became close life-long friends. The half-dozen best episodes would be, "Freeing the Serfs" (pilot), "The Witness", "The German Knight", "Rinaldo", "Brothers in Arms", and "Freelance". The most dramatically balanced of these (with better than average production) is "Freelance". The largest action scene is the closing ambush-and-battle, involving 25 mounted riders, in the higher budgeted pilot, "Freeing the Serfs". The best staged and scored sequence is the joust and duel between Moore and Christopher Lee in, "The German Knight". A lot of Baby Boomers have fond memories of seeing this series in syndication as kids.
