Review of Highlander: The Raven

Considering I'm disagreeing with just about everyone here, let me start off by saying that I do understand the problems that all the other reviewers here had with this show. I'm one of those (perhaps rare) individuals who disliked every one of the Highlander movies (thought Endgame was an insult to the first show), as they were much too fake and just plain non-entertaining, but then absolutely loved the Highlander TV shows. The first one with Adrian Paul had characters who were walking around as if they were always on an endorphin high, which was a delight to watch as the audience knew a huge secret about these immortals that most of the mortal characters in the episode weren't informed of. So even watching the immortals, good and bad, interacting with mortals who didn't know who they were was a joy. The flashbacks were great, as was the actors' acting ability, the dialogue, fight scenes and distinct villains. The first show was great until the very last season, when it was painfully obvious that the writers were running out of ideas (The Haunting one was especially bad), but overall, definitely one of the best shows I ever had the pleasure of seeing. Then came The Raven, which quickly was obvious that this show wasn't as good as the predecessor. The writing wasn't as good, and some episodes were clearly not well done. That much I'm in agreement with everyone else here. But I would ask other viewers to also try to see the positive aspects that H:TR had. For starters, the chemistry between Amanda and detective Wolf was easily the best that I've ever seen on a film or movie. I'm not sure why exactly, but these two were just perfect together, in both dialogue, thought processes and acting, even better than Amanda and Duncan were. *******SPOILERS********** Then, I think that the writers here were trying to bring the world of immortals to deal with the point of view of a mortal, ie, Wolf, thus where we saw a mortal protagonist taking the heads of two immortals in the only season that this show was alive, the first by shooting at glass that decapitated his foe and the second (a very well-done episode) where Wolf used a sword to decapitate the immortal who was killing people for their organs. That was basically the act of allowing a mortal to interact with immortals as their equal for the first time, instead of always running to a friendly immortal to do his bidding when another immortal was a villain who needed to be dealt with (ala Joe Dawson with Duncan). Here, a mortal took charge. There were other episodes that were truly gems to watch, the best being the one where Amanda had robbed a soldier during WW1 and inadvertently caused the deaths of 120 of his `brothers', as that character stated in such a charming way. The one with father Liam and his doubts about his centuries-long faith in the priesthood was also a very good one, with Amanda baiting him to place himself between her sword and the woman journalist she pretended to wish to kill. The very first episode where Wolf's former partner had placed herself in between Amanda and a bullet, whereas basically leaving Amanda's facial expression almost screaming out `WHAT DID YOU DO?!' because she knew it was a sacrifice done for nothing, also leading her to possibly reconsider her values because someone who was dedicated to stopping her when she was a thief was still placing herself in harm's way to protect her life. And, last but not least, the last episode where we found out that Wolf himself was an immortal now, and the science of immortality was clearly explained, at least to me, when he confronted Amanda about it. Just too bad we never got to see a second season to this cool show, thus allowing detective Wolf to be an immortal himself. But this will always be one of my favorite shows. Not as good as the great first Highlander, Buffy, Angel and Fastlane (rest in peace also), but definitely one that was a joy to see every Saturday afternoon.

Thank you for reading, and remember to keep working out and stay safe:)