In a Time of Ancient Gods... a Land in Turmoil Cried Out For a Hero

Its ten years since Xena started on Channel Five. Not ten years ago this week or anything – just ten years in general. When I first heard about it I wasn’t impressed. It sounded like a live action She-Ra or a rather unimaginative Bionic Woman style female clone of an established and fairly successful male character. I mean, come on, Xena – Warrior Princess? Who would watch a programme called Xena – Warrior Princess? To give them their due, Channel Five gave good promo. A statuesque and ever-so-slightly gorgeous brunette swinging a sword while the camera circled round her in slow motion. I gave in to my baser urges and watched the first episode.

I know the exact moment when I realised this show was something fantastic. It wasn’t the fight – where Xena, who has just given up the ways of violence and buried her weapons, kicks the asses of some passing slave traders – even though it was a damn good fight. No, the bit that won me over was when Gabrielle is faced with a Cyclops and talks it out of eating its dinner. The dinner, needless to say, was Gabrielle herself. Here, I thought to myself for there was no one around to share the thought with, is a show I like. It had wit, it has slapstick, it had great fights and it had not one but two utterly gorgeous stars. Yes, I was pleased when Xena decided that giving up the ways of violence wasn’t her cup of tea.

It wasn’t easy watching it on Channel 5 – it is cliché to talk about how poor their signal was but it was true nevertheless. Living in the middle of a city I had very muddy reception and my early Xena tapes – which I’ve still got somewhere – remind me that TV wasn’t always digital quality. There is some part of me which things those early weeks of Xena should always been seen through a haze of interference. But then there is a part of me which thinks Ryan Giggs should be given a knighthood when he retires.

I was a massive Xena fan almost from the very beginning. I’d watch the handful of transmitted episodes over and over, Xena-time was crucial and untouchable and whenever Forbidden Planet had anything Xena-related I’d buy it. I got some tat. Because the show had been on in the States for a couple of years, the episode guide books I found covered the first and second seasons and so I watched a good portion of those episodes with an idea of what to expect. Unlike Buffy, where I saw seasons one and two jumbled up on two different channels, I think I saw them all in the right order. Though my memories of the second series are strangely less vivid than the first or the third.

I loved how the show would mix serious and comedy more effectively than any other show on TV. There wouldn’t be a lot of mixed episodes – they were either straight (!) drama or wacky comedy. Fortunately they could do both without losing the audience. "Warrior… Princess" introduced us to the first (but by no means the last) Xena doppelganger. Subsequent episodes would have three Xenas or faux-Xenas running round in West End farces. It was all just so much fun.

But it could be breathtaking as well. Many was the episode which would end at such a perfect dramatic moment that the end credits would roll and I’d feel like I’d forgotten to breathe for the past few minutes. Season three took us on an emotional arc which I don’t think any other show has quite ever equalled. It ended with the first Xena musical – a much copied idea which will always have to live up to "The Bitter Suite".

By the third season I was watching the episodes on Sky One as they had first-run rights. This was something of a problem as they treated the show with far less respect than Channel Five did. They gave it an early evening, mid-week time slot. This meant that the episodes – rated 15 on video and DVD – didn’t air unedited. At first it was little things here and there but sometimes they matter. One episode ends with a shot where the camera moves round the head of a pivotal character – one Xena swore she wouldn’t kill – and the final reveal is that he has a tiny dagger, belonging to Xena, plunged into his temple. Except Sky shied away from actually showing the dagger which rather took something away from the scene. We basically ended on a man sitting down.

The editing got worse and worse over the years as declining ratings meant the series was airing at lunchtime on Sundays. I think the worst hatchet job I remember from that period saw upwards of seven minutes chopped out of it. Usually with all the seamless skill of a blind man cutting beef with a biro. It got too pathetic and I stopped watching after a few weeks of Sunday airings. There seems little point watching something which isn’t quite all there. Except Boris Johnson of course.

Not to say that was the only reason I stopped watching – it was merely the straw which broke the Grecian’s back. The first point where they seemed to be losing their way was when they decided the Greek Gods weren’t the supreme beings we’d always thought they were. They were merely local gods, on a par with other regions’ local gods and less powerful than various uber-gods (who more closely resembled demons than the smooth talking gods and goddesses we’d become accustomed to).

The stories became increasingly absurd as they tried to be deeper and more symbolic. This reached a nadir when they went to India and tried to incorporate their mythology into the series. Unfortunately, India hasn’t cast aside its ancient gods and goddesses as the Greeks, Romans, Norsemen and Celts have done. This caused a political correctness stink in the US with Hindu pressure groups claiming great offence at the idea that one of their gods would save the life of a character who may well be homosexual. Their deities would’ve let Gabrielle die, they argued, because she is tainted with lesbianism. All silly and typical of American pressure groups but people caved in and "The Way" is the great lost Xena episode. Not that it was part of a stellar run of episodes but it should still have been shown.

So we’d reached something of a pattern – when they tried to be mystical and symbolic and epic they failed miserably. But when they gave us a good emotional arc (such as that between Xena and her daughter Livia) it was awesome. Ah yes, Xena’s daughter. Lucy Lawless fell pregnant and this was worked into the series. Once she’d given birth (both in real life and on screen) they were left with the problem of two warriors and a baby. Unless Steve Guttenberg was about to join the cast there wasn’t much they could do. So they sealed them in an ice cave with no build up and thawed them out twenty five years later. Problem solved.

My reason for writing this isn’t that it is ten years since Xena began on British television. Nor that I still have my life-sized cardboard Xena on top of the wardrobe. Nor that I still use some Xena related passwords at work. It’s that the complete series is out on DVD for under £90 next week and I can’t decide whether to buy it. Should I go back and relive a series which, at its peak, meant more to me than any other series ever has? Will the "bad" spells seem better a second time around, when expectations aren’t so high? Or will the whole thing just seem silly after all this time? Does the rule about not going back to shows you really liked only apply to those which you watched as a child? I was twenty one when Xena started – and technically crazy if you want to get all medial on me – so I was hardly a child. But the same could be said of Bugs – I seem to remember it as a work of genius in the mid-90s but it turns out to have been shite all along.

I think that the way this column has contained way more negativity than I was expecting it to suggests I’ve still got issues with the way Xena – Warrior Princess turned out. Maybe I should go back and watch it again. It’s either that or Babylon 5 but that’s a whole different column.