Will and Henry meet up with the vagrant, Ozymandias, who gives them a compass and a map to help them on their way. But, first they must find a boat captain who will help the two runaways cross the channel to France.
So, here we are at the start of the second episode.
The premise has been set up and the players are (almost) all in position.
No opening prologue: seemingly straight into the credits from now on.
Adapted by Alick Rowe. Am not sure if he adapted both seasons. I suspect not. We shall see.
Same opening caption, setting the time and date. Just in case we forgot.
Will's mother realises that her son and Henry have both gone, much to her bewilderment. Her husband is not given much of a chance to have a viewpoint on it before shaven headed and capped Jack pops in to say that a search is being prepared.
Out in the countryside, Will and Henry are a bit glum, but still determined.
Ozzy pops up .
The riders are out and the music is very techno-funky.
He sends them south, with a compass and a map, telling them to go to a place called Rimney, where they must go to a harbour and find a boat called The Orion, owned by a falsely capped Captain Curtis, who will take them to France.
Some towns on the way to Rimney are to be avoided.
The music is funky again and Will spots his father amongst the horse riders.
This first series has a reputation of being slow and badly paced, with a several episode sojourn in the middle that wasn't even in the book at all. It will be interesting to see how it does play out.
Ozzy distracts the horse riders by running away, while Will and Henry sneak off in another direction.
Ozzy is captured, after incomprehensibly spouting the same poem while running. Doesn't he know any others?
Will and Henry have never seen the coast before.
Both boys seem to have the same, slightly wooden, style of acting at the moment. A flatness to the delivery.
I thought that Rimney was going to take two to three episodes to get to, but they appear to be there already. Who said this was slow paced?
They learn of a local Squire, "up at the castle", whose daughter is getting capped the next month.
This will, no doubt, be Eloise, Wills love interest, played by a different actress in each season, owning to the first actress being killed in a tragic car accident between seasons.
Captain Curtis makes his appearance.
The boys find their way to the Harbour Inn, because they are hungry. Yes, really focused on the mission, lads!
Will gets the map out and unfolds it as soon as they get to a table. Does Ozzy have an Idiot Recruitment Policy? No wonder only two out of every fifty young people he sends ever make it to the White Mountains!
A different Captain tries to recruit them to his boat, but Will and Henry try to make their escape with the help of Dorry, the barmaid; but they are then captured.
I wonder how much the "escape and capture" cliche is going to predominate throughout the season?
They are thrown into a cabin on, presumably, Nick's ship.
They spot Captain Curtis through the porthole, but are stopped from yelling by a burly crewman, who tells them that they are going to Africa. Perhaps they should change their mission to searching for the missing DOCTOR WHO episodes instead?
And so ends the second episode.
VERDICT:
A pleasant enough episode - and the plot is moving along nicely. Repetition has yet to set in -
and one wonders when we will meet Beanpole, a character that was rumoured to have been changed to female in the mooted film adaption.
So the mission is underway.
The quality of the obstacles facing our heroes will define whether season one is a good or bad series, but the signs of a quality show are there so far.
