Raiding the tombs of Indiana? (Relic Hunter)

Name: Ailran

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	Relic Hunter
Date:	17/09/05 (1025 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun action & good characters

Disadvantages: One off episodes leads to no character advancement

Relic Hunter hit the TV screens back in 1999 and lasted for three series before it was cancelled in 2002.
Produced by a Canadian company, Fireworks, in conjunction with German, UK and other European financing. Their main aim seems to have been to create a series that could be presold to a large number of countries from the offset. That way the money they can spend on an episode is known before starting.

To be able to do this the series would have to have a broad, cross-cultural appeal and to get this Fireworks created Professor Sydney Fox (Tia Carrere) and the series Relic Hunter. Sydney is a female Indiana Jones, a Lara Croft Tomb Raider character, an adventurer who searches out lost relics and artefacts.

With Tomb Raider big news at the time and a very popular figure with a young male target audience it was an inspired choice. With the right promotion and advertising Relic Hunter would attract an audience, question would be could they do enough with a TV budget, special effects and stories that would keep those viewers coming back every week?

Sydney is a professor and an adventurer. Along with her trusty English assistant, the permanently embarrassed and very Hugh Grant like Nigel (Christian Anholt), she rushes around the world searching for famous relics and archaeological artefacts. This can be anything from Elvis’ guitar to an ancient Scottish wedding band, from a bottle of wine to a Confederate flag, from a Templar Sword to a famous Baseball Mitt!

She does this for the University Museum, for major museums around the world or just to help people find old family heirlooms. Sydney isn’t after the money or glory, unlike other Relic Hunters that she clashes with from time to time!

Every episode of the series is a standalone story, there is very little to no continuity between the episodes. Only the reappearances of supporting characters show any sort of timeline to the adventures and that doesn’t really affect your enjoyment. Relic Hunter is lightweight, throwaway television, one to pop in and out of rather than following avidly.

Each story follows an almost paint by numbers formula. The opening, before credits sequence shows the background to the artefact, in its own time, and how it became lost. Much like the opening to the first Lord of the Rings film showing how the ring was lost.
After the credits there is generally a humorous scene-setting interlude as we see the three main characters (Sydney, Nigel and Claudia) in their offices before we find out how Sydney gets involved in finding the missing item.
Nigel and Sydney then rush off to another country (normally!) to find action, adventure and danger. There is invariably someone else after the same item so capture, escape and a fight of some kind is possible.

Now reading that you would probably say that it doesn’t sound great, and you would be kind of right, it doesn’t! Somehow though the series actually works, it is enormous fun and this is down mainly to the writing, the excellent characterisation and acting.
The basic premise of the series gives the writers a multitude of potential story ideas, much more than most TV programmes have. With a host of world history to pick and choose from the writers can pull myths and legends from any culture, from any time period of any country, thus enabling them to have radically different looks to every adventure, jungles one week, city the next for example.

The best writing was saved for the three main characters:-

Sydney Fox – The all round action girl. She has the brains to solve the clues to the locations of the objects, the beauty to talk the locals into helping and the kick ass martial arts skills to deal with any untoward situations.
Nigel Bailey – is a bit of a wimp really, British and Sydney’s assistant in her travels. Can work out things and puzzles as well as Sydney and seems able to get in trouble nearly all the time, the opposite of the damsel in distress that needs rescuing!
Claudia – the at ‘home’ office assistant. Presumably a student working in the office for extra credit, Claudia is a ditzy, blonde who is more interested in men and clothes than whatever her two bosses are up to.

The exchanges between the academic Nigel and the fashion conscious Claudia are one of the highlights of every episode. They are polar opposites on pretty much everything and always have an argument to do with their own ideas on ancient artefacts!
In fact it is the interplay between all three that kept me coming back to watch more during the first two series, but then characterisation has always been my thing so its no surprise that a series that invested something into the regular characters interested me.
Unfortunately Claudia was replaced, or Lindy Booth left, in the third season and her replacement Karen Petrusky (Tanja Reichert) didn’t bring the same charm or comedy timing to the part. Maybe it was just me and I liked Lindy Booth/Claudia so much that Karen was never going to be the same but the series got cancelled during that season so I like to think that others agreed with me!

The Bottom Line!

If you like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, if you like a bit of lightweight action adventure fun (see The Rocks’ ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ for a recent movie equivalent) Relic Hunter is worth a watch. It is not high quality drama but sometimes a good bit of escapism is just what you need to wind down to after a hard days work!

There were three seasons of Relic Hunter made, 66 episodes in total between 1999-2002.
The series was shown on Sky 1 in the UK and is still being shown even now. As of Summer 2005 it was on early mornings on Sky 1 and also on Sky Mix, obviously even now getting enough viewers that Sky consider it worthwhile still putting it on their schedule, even though they must be on 4th or 5th showings by now.


Favourite Episodes:

Diamond In the Rough – The search for a famous baseball glove underneath the stadium

The Myth of the Maze – trying to find the maze of the Minotaur of ancient Greek Legend

A Good Year – An ancient bottle of wine is the object in this episode

Three Rivers to Cross – Involving Sydney’s father, the excellent David Rasche from Sledgehammer and Nurses.

Stars:

Sydney Fox – Tia Carrere – Wayne’s World, Showdown In Little Tokyo
Nigel Bailey – Christien Anholt – son of Tony Anholt from The Protectors TV series
Claudia – Lindy Booth – Wrong Turn,

DVD availability:

At the moment there are 2 four-episode discs that are available at around £5, if you can find them. They are still about as I saw them only the other week in MVC.

There are also 4 box sets of around 8-9 episodes each that cover the first couple of series.
Discovered on the net is a box set of the whole first season at around £20.

Summary: Indiana jones and Lara Croft on TV