There are few places on our fair British shores that have as distinctive a local lore as the Midlands county of Nottinghamshire. Icons of Hollywood sex appeal, from Errol Flynn to Kevin Costner, by way of a dashing red fox, have all donned the tights and beret to portray the righteous bandit of Sherwood forest: Robin Hood. But behind the kitsch lure of that legend is a real place; a place that James Graham, playwright and native of Ashfield, is seeking to illuminate. Sherwood, far from being another reimagination of the Hood legend, presents a community frayed by a long history of the rich robbing the poor, and not, despite the optimism of the myth, vice versa.
Sherwood opens like the first scenes of an Agatha Christie novel, with both the killer and their victim a secret. A mystery needs multiple motives to work, and it’s soon clear that cantankerous ex-miner Gary (New Tricks’s Alun Armstrong) isn’t long for this world. The rifts date back three decades, to the Thatcher government’s assault on Ashfield’s coal industry. Lines – both picket and metaphorical – were drawn, and crossed. Gary never misses the opportunity to highlight a “scab” – the name given to locals who broke the strike to keep working – even after all these years. “It were thirty f***ing year ago!” one of those locals, Dean (Shameless’s Sean Gilder), yells at him, launching a snooker ball in the working men’s club.
