Reviewing Movies

ROAR is a mini-series broadcast originally in the late Nineties starring a not-yet famous Heath Ledger as a summer replacement series and never finished. Set in pre-historic Ireland it purports to document the clans' resistance to the invading Romans. This series bears none of the stodginess of that introduction. In the opening episode our hero, Connor, goes from love-sick lothario to reluctant leader of his peoples' resistance movement when a rival tribe wipes out his family while he is dallying with that tribe's chief's daughter and his bodyguard, Fergus, is drunk in the wine cellar.

The series is imbued with a mystical spirit of the land given the name—Roar, rife with the sound of Uilleann Pipes, and visited by Druids and Sorcerers alike. As I have had wont to say, the fact that I find a series to be excellent is often the kiss of death to it, but mores the pity that this series didn't find longer legs, indeed 5 of its episodes were never aired on broadcast TV.

I neglected to mention that this series was shot while its hero was still in Australia and that Australia stands in for Ireland. Somehow this strains my stereotypical concept of near-desert outback. Must watch more closely to see if any roos appear in the background.