Fantasy TV was ubiquitous in the 1990s. Technology was decidedly not up to the challenge, but this mattered little to money-hungry producers or us deprived fans, and as such, gods and goddesses and angels on shoestring syndication budgets abounded. There were all of the Hallmark miniseries, of course-Jason and the Argonauts, Merlin, The Odyssey, Arabian Nights, The 10th Kingdom, etc.-but the first show that punched through is widely acknowledged to be Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, followed by its spinoff Xena: Warrior Princess, two decidedly different shows whose quirky takes on the Greek pantheon eventually paved way for the floodgates to open for genre TV in the future and even today. I came along a little later in the cycle, so I caught a bit of the latter shows, but the demigod and the Warrior Princess were both a bit before my time. I don’t know why I didn’t get into it-genre TV was less plentiful in the 90s, and maybe I was just more selective, or maybe there were only so many hours in the day with all the homework I had to do. In any case, I’m here to check them out now, and while they decidedly weren’t groundbreaking in terms of VFX, they were huge trailblazers and it’s interesting to see the influence they’ve had.
The gang’s all here, although Gabrielle is wearing more clothing than usual.
Xena is widely regarded (and rightly) regarded as the vastly superior of the two shows, but I watched Hercules first, so let’s go in order. Both shows were shot on lush New Zealand locations (Pre-LOTR!) and featured mostly local casts doing American accents (The first interview I saw with Lawless was bit of a shock!). Hercules began with a cluster of five TV movies, spun off into a weekly syndicated series that quickly grew very popular. But there’s not a ton to say about the show at first; our protagonist, the titular demigod (strapping Kevin Sorbo), wanders about from town to town and place to place fighting badly-rendered CG monsters, often sent by his wicked stepmother Hera, with his ill-defined superpowers and stopping various threats like slave traders and pirates with his sidekick Iolas (Michael Hurst). This latter buddy-movie dynamic gives the show some of its sense of fun as Hercules and Iolas preach various lessons to those they encounter about kindness and tolerance, and offers a powerful payoff in the second-to-last season which I don’t want to spoil. It was deliberately designed by its first showrunner as something the whole family could enjoy. This is an admirable goal, but unfortunately, it also makes the episodic early seasons rather dry and dull. The production values are solid by the standards of the time, but unimpressive today, and most of its action scenes aren’t that punchy as a result, although as a sidebar, many of the stunt team and crew went on to work on Power Rangers up in its arrival in New Zealand. The “arrow catch” trick that both shows must use three dozen times a season gets old fast, and a quick viewing of Arrow shows just how far fight scenes have come even on “fourth network” and syndication TV budgets since. It’s not that these early seasons are bad, just rather dull. Still, they establish one key element which will be the franchise’s main one, which is its treatment of mythology.
Might Aphrodite and Hercules ne’er do well half-brother.
Hercules is full of quirky, irreverent, and modern takes on the ancient Greco-Roman pantheon: Aphrodite as a spunky valley girl, a wisecracking River Stix ferryman, Zeus, the arrogant king of the gods towards whom Hercules harbors bitterness for his neglectfulness, the mischievous troublemaker Discord, sweaty Hephaestus the metal master, and many others, and of course the franchise’s most inspired creation, Kevin Tod Smith as the suave and witty yet ruthlessly amoral Ares, the god of war. Later seasons would introduce a wider variety of gods and in early Hercules seasons, this is mostly handled in a laid-back and easygoing way, but it does serve to set to set the groundwork for later. Obviously, these ideas weren’t new; pulp writers played with them long ago and they have been staples of comics for decades, but both shows brought them to TV with considerable freshness. Hercules goes through three sets of showrunners with different visions and a crisis where the star overcame a series of strokes, so bear with me while I go through it.
Around halfway through season two, the show finally takes a considerably darker turn, introducing a wider range of threats, chief among them the aforementioned Ares, who’s a transplant from over on Xena, and a Star Trek-style mirror universe with an evil version of Hercules. Hercules gets married, stripped of his powers, and involved in a time-travel assassination plot, among other things as the show grew more ambitious and even more willing to build the story and introduce multi-part arcs. Sadly, as previously mentioned, star Kevin Sorbo suffered a series of strokes and was largely out of the picture for a while (in many cases literally), making the creators have to come up with all kinds of ways of working without him. Some of these are inspired, like a few modern-day goofs where the cast actually play the creators desperately trying to come up with ideas in the star’s absence, while he secretly hides the fact that he and others on the show are really immortal superheroic deities. Others are rather bizarre, taking Michigan’s own national treasure Bruce Campbell as the King of Thieves and Robert Trebor’s wheel-dealing huckster Salmoneus in a strange take on Some Like It Hot with Michael Hurst in drag. The show kind of limps a bit in this era, but it saved the best for last (or at least second-to last).
Kind of terrifying. Not gonna lie.
The penultimate season of Hercules sees future J.J. Abrams alums Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman take over as showrunners, and they act like they’re trying out all the ambitions they never got to in the past. Hercules, deeply bitter and despondent after a personal loss, is a reluctant, washed-up hero before he lands on the shores of Ireland as the show’s ambitions grow and find him also visiting Egyptian and Sumerian and Norse gods and Christian angels, among others. This mythological mishmash arc is fantastic, by far the show’s best, as the evil god Dahak masterminds an attempt to destroy the world, culminating in Hercules regaining both his loss of self as well his personal material losses. Though still hamstrung by its TV budget, abandoning the Greco-Roman trappings for something new is an enormous shot in the arm. Both shows still occasionally feel padded-at 22 episodes a season starting with Hercules season two, there are all kind of experiments, and sometimes even the clip-shows are interesting, but it feels like it could be way more streamlined, but in the pre-DVD boxed set age, that’s to be expected to have plenty to sell in syndication, I suppose. Sadly, if this seemed too good to last, it kind of was. Sorbo, whose behavior since has made a controversial figure (to say the least), declined to renew his contract, resulting in a truncated final season of a mere eight episodes which crams a little too much plot into the finale. But Xena picks up this last thread with a single episode which serves a backdoor finale for Hercules, Zeus, and Hera as well as offering satisfy closure to Hercules’ lengthy arc. Which brings us to the Warrior Princess herself.
Gals bein’ pals.
Xena is a different creature altogether from its parent show. Like Hercules, it trades on a buddy dynamic between Xena (Statuesque and steely blue-eyed icon Lucy Lawless, who is incidentally, if you haven’t seen an interview with her, hilarious in real life) and Gabrielle (Renee O’Connor), but that’s pretty much where similarities end. Xena was a guest on Hercules who proved popular enough to spin off onto her own show, and it comes out of the gate much stronger. The first season introduces Callisto, Xena’s evil arch nemesis (Hudson Leick, manically chewing scenery), and while it’s unsure of the show’s future and less confident with longer arcs-this was common at the time, and indeed these two show were some of the pioneers in that regard for regular genre TV-it introduces the show’s elements, and a group of gods who’s quirkiness is tempered by a much darker edge. Xena herself has a violent past she constantly seeks to overcome by helping others, in contrast to the squeaky-clean Hercules, making her a much more interesting character to begin with. We’re given frequent flashbacks of her dark previous life, and the many ways it come back to haunt her, in some cases literally. This gives Xena a rich arc and makes her feel like a full character. Gabrielle’s arc runs through the whole series as well as she goes from farm girl to Amazon warrior. Like Hercules, it has to overcome a few clip shows and a number of uninspired episodes, but when it’s on form, it’s nothing short of fantastic. Special kudos to composer Joe LoDuca, who intermixes a wide variety of different cultural sounds and music (Vague shades of Whedon’s Firefly.).
She doesn’t just chew scenery, she inhales it.
Xena also, as I mentioned, introduces the whole franchise’s most inspired creation: Ares, the god of war, played by the late New Zealand actor Kevin Tod Smith. Suave, handsome, charming, cunning, ruthlessly amoral, yet likable, his romantic feelings for Xena, who seduced but also repulsed, are a running storyline that’s really worth giving your full attention. Xena’s first season starts slowly, although it does introduce another inspired idea, which a series of doppelgangers for Xena, allowing Lawless to go wild with her characterizations. As mentioned, in addition to Ares, it also brings us Xena’s arch-nemesis, the ferocious Callisto, played with scenery-chewing verve by Hudson Leick. A dark mirror for what Xena used to be an could be again, as well as Ted Raimi as Xena and Gabrielle’s comic sidekick Joxer. Like Hercules, Xena occasionally stumbles with it lengthy episodes count, but it has a lot more fun with the shifting tones. The show is all over the place by design: high action and adventure, comic farce, dabbles of surrealism, even some musicals. Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi (the latter also in a dual role) similarly contribute frequent humor and heart, along with broad cast of gods, Amazon warriors, and much more.
I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints; the sinners are so much more fun.
Of course, Xena has become an LGBTQI+ icon for the show’s “gals being pals” gay overtones, which are light, but unmistakable and a frequent source of fun. It was the 90s, but I don’t believe for one second the creators didn’t know exactly what they were doing, and as one of the early shows to tap into the Internet in the post-Usenet message board era, it had loads of fun with fan speculation. This super girl-power angle and some of its feminist flavor later went on to bleed into shows like Buffy as well. There are some episodes, like Hercules, which play on the idiosyncrasies of the gods in fun romances with Aphrodite and Cupid and such, but as the show progresses, it becomes increasingly dark and ambitious. As with Hercules, it begins integrating a broader ranger of mythology, including a trip to Egypt, India (controversial for its treatment of the themes at the time), Norse myths, Christianity, Asian mythology, and more, and an ultimate twilight of the Greek gods to be brought about by Xena’s daughter, as they seek to do anything to hold onto their power. Xena’s fight scenes are better than its brother show-90s money only went so far-but there’s some cool influence from Hong Kong action films.
Xena does early on what Hercules did in later seasons and introduces a wide variety of storylines. Some threats are human, like Julius Caesar (LOTR’s Karl Urban), who crucifies the young Xena when she’s still evil and leaves her for dead. Others involve Xena and Gabrielle’s pregnancies bringing about the twilight of the Olympian gods or the apocalypse itself. Throughout, we’re introduced to a wide variety of interesting characters and storylines, so many that it will take me too long to list. Plots range from broad slapstick comedy to action and adventure to intricate mythological epics. There are clunkers, as to be expected in such long-running shows with a few too many episodes, and I confess that I like the show best when it’s darker or in its mini-epics and finales. But there’s a wide variety of different things if that’s your preference: comedies, jokes about modern times (Like Hercules, it similarly mixes and matches the cast in amusing contemporary roles), and as mentioned, even some musicals! This wild mix of different era and styles makes for lots of fun, and even some of the missteps have the result of being uninteresting experiences, giving clever ways to handle even clip shows and sly and affectionate jabs at its own obsessive fandom. Unlike Hercules rather abrupt cutoff ending, Xena ended with a spectacular two-part finale that producer Robert Tapert himself directed. Xena and Gabrielle travel to Japan to face ancient demonic forces, but the episode also pays dazzling homage to Ching Siu-Tung and Tsui Hark’s wuxia classic A Chinese Ghost Story. The show ends on an emotionally and thematically satisfying note, and was wise to not overstay its welcome.
A Norse Valkyrie, who is just one of the many other myths who get integrated into the overarching story.
The franchise was an enormous pop culture juggernaut back in its heyday: there was a straight-to-VHS musical animated film (Which I was able to track down, and it’s more of an odd curiosity than anything), tons of action figures, a Young Hercules spinoff with a fresh-faced Ryan Gosling, lines of comics (a few still around), and more. There have been on-and-off talks of a Xena revival over years-although Lawless has said that everything has gone belly-up-and most importantly, the shows paved the way for future genre TV like Buffy, Angel, and Supernatural. It walked so that they could run. At a time when serialized storytelling was looked upon suspiciously by network execs who wanted to see episodes sold in any order for syndication purposes, both shows pushed the idea of story arcs and built their mythologies piecemeal like TNG. They picked and chose pieces to create their world from past episodes to create for the future, and even occasionally toying with the “shared universe” in a few crossovers. The Xenaverse leaves so much to talk about that I’ve probably glossed over quite a few things, but that’s how’s sprawling the world the shows built became. But it’s been a blast trying, and it’s easy to see why the show was trailblazer and built such a huge following in its day which still endures now. As a result of this influence, the shows (Well, Xena much more so…), despite dated elements, have aged really well, and it’s been a blast catching up at long last.
A trans actor playing Caligula. This show has everything!