Dr. Syn
One of my favorite shows growing up was "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh." It was a 3-part mini-series produced by Disney, starring the recently-deceased Patrick McGoohan of "The Prisoner" fame. Originally produced in 1964 under the title "Dr. Syn", it's a kind of Robin Hood tale of a preacher in south-east England who, during the Napoleonic Wars, disguises himself as a scarecrow and runs a smuggling operation, the proceeds of which he gives to down-and-out locals.
You always have to be careful with shows you loved as kids, because frankly, few shows are able to stand the test of time. One of my favorite regular TV series as a kid was "Emergency", which I made the mistake of getting when it came out on DVD a few years ago. To preserve the memory, I've so far avoided getting "Land of the Lost" from Netflix.
I couldn't resist, though, when I saw that Disney had, at long last, release "Scarecrow" on DVD. I actually found it at Disneyland last weekend; I'm sure I could have hunted around and found it somewhere else, but I didn't want to wait.
When I saw it as a kid, I neither knew nor cared that it was already 20 years old. (I assume that I saw it on "Wonderful World of Disney"). I'm not sure precisely when I saw it, either, but I know that, when my family first went to Europe in 1983, one of the places I absolutely wanted to visit was Romney Marsh, where the show supposedly takes place.
We did in fact go to Romney Marsh (which, given the lack of smuggling scarecrows or even a marsh, was quite disappointing) and found in a little bookstore in some village in the area the books upon which the show was based. The seven book series, written by Russell Thorndike and published between 1915 and 1944, is really fairly bad. I've tried reading them several times, and like the Lord of the Rings, it's a series of books that I really want to like but that I just can't.
So back to the show. That series (which I remember being considerably longer than only 3 shows) that made such an impression on my ten, eleven or twelve year old mind is actually just as good today as I remember. I'm surprised, as I watch them now, how much of the show I actually do remember.
Unfortunately, Netflix doesn't appear to have this available: you can find it, but it says that the DVD release date in "unknown". The good news is that the DVD is available on Amazon, and it looks like the books have even been reprinted. If you enjoy action-adventure stories, you should definitely check these out.
