The Big Knights

Rather than screen­ing as a cohe­sive film, The Big Knights con­sists of com­piled episodes from an ani­mat­ed children’s tele­vi­sion series orig­i­nal­ly made for the BBC in 1999. Alexan­der Arm­strong nar­rates the com­i­cal exploits of two clum­sy, brash, over­sized knights named Sir Boris and Sir Mor­ris, voiced by David Rin­toul and the boom­ing Bri­an Blessed respec­tive­ly. Each episode revolves around a self-con­tained adven­ture in which the knights, along with their giant pets Sir Hor­age the dog and Sir Doris the ham­ster, must per­form some task or over­come some foe in order to help the res­i­dents of their home­land, the Medi­ae­val-look­ing King­dom of Borovia.

The show is incred­i­bly deriv­a­tive, although not nec­es­sar­i­ly in a bad way. Despite tak­ing fea­tures from ye olde Mid­dle-Ages – such as hors­es, witch­es, kings and cas­tles – there are also time machines, vam­pires, motor cars and hydro­elec­tric dams. The sense of humour is imma­ture and illog­i­cal, but in an inno­cent way, sim­i­lar to children’s car­toons such as Sponge­bob Squarepants, with jokes that infuse par­o­dy and scat­ter­gun pop-cul­ture ref­er­ences. The episodes them­selves are pleas­ing­ly diverse, show­cas­ing a range of imag­i­na­tive episodes; for instance, a straight­for­ward quest to deliv­er two princess­es safe­ly through the for­est imme­di­ate­ly fol­lows a com­plex, physics-bend­ing time trav­el caper.

You might recog­nise the dis­tinc­tive, pic­ture-book illus­tra­tion style as com­ing from the same ani­ma­tion team who would go on to cre­ate Pep­pa Pig and Ben and Holly’s Lit­tle King­dom. This is an ear­li­er, cheap­er attempt at sim­i­lar themes, and there are a cou­ple of fine-tun­ing issue, includ­ing instances where the ani­ma­tion looks cheap, or the same sequence has been reused over and over. How­ev­er, there is a cer­tain raw­ness to this ear­ly incar­na­tion of this style, which com­ple­ments the rau­cous mirth at the heart of the show.