Despite Elliot Cowan’s biceps, and what biceps!, the first series of Sky family drama Sinbad shows why it was the only series
“Is this the point where you tell me we’re better off without you”
I got to see a sneak preview of the first episode of Sinbad just before it aired back in 2012 but not actually having Sky at home meant that I never got round to watching the series. Nowadays, their online player negates the need for a full-on installation so I was finally able to get round to revisiting the show aka ogling Elliot Cowan’s biceps.
And whilst I was clearly enamoured of the show’s initial charms nearly a decade ago, the series as a whole ended up as quite a bit of a slog. Occupying that same sort of early-Merlin vaguely-supernatural-but-still-family-friendly-adventure-of-the-week territory, it just never proved as interesting or engaging to me over its 12 episodes.
A motley crew of misfits are bound together after surviving a shipwreck, including Elliot Knight’s Sinbad, exiled from his home of Basra after accidentally killing the son of the emir. He loses his brother as a revenge killing and is cursed by his grandmother so he can’t spend more than 24 hours on land ever again which seems a bit harsh but hey ho.
And then caper after caper follows, where the new ship’s crew venture from dodgy-looking place to dodgy-looking place, trying to beat Sinbad’s clock in order to solve the adventure of the week, all the while getting ever closer to discovering the truth about Sinbad’s true destiny. And maybe younger audiences might be more amenable but too often I was bored watching this, even with supporting cast members like Sophie Okonedo, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Miranda Raison on hand.
