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Post by kg redhead on Dec 4, 2005 14:27:58 GMT -5
New Zealand's most successful show...
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Post by kg redhead on Dec 5, 2005 9:26:11 GMT -5
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys was a television series produced from 1995 to 1999, very loosely based on the tales of the classical culture hero Hercules. It ran for six seasons, producing action figures and other memorabilia as it become one of the highest rated syndicated shows in television history.
It had been preceded by several TV movies with the same major characters in 1994: in order, Hercules and the Amazon Women, Hercules and the Lost Kingdom, Hercules and the Circle of Fire, Hercules in the Underworld, and Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur.
Set in a fantasy version of ancient Greece not precisely located in historic time, the show starred Kevin Sorbo as Hercules and Michael Hurst as his sidekick Iolaus. Typical plot lines involved Hercules and Iolaus saving rustic villagers from monsters, evil warlords or the often selfish whims of the gods. In the earlier episodes (and mentioned in the show's opening title) Hercule's main nemesis is his evil stepmother Hera, who seeks to destroy Hercules using various monsters because he is a reminder of her husband Zeus' infidelity. Later in the series, the malicious God of War, Ares, replaces Hera as the show's primary antagonist.
The show had a successful spinoff, Xena: Warrior Princess, with which it shared recurring characters such as Ares (Kevin Smith), Autolycus (Bruce Campbell), and Salmoneus (Robert Trebor). Both shows, although produced in New Zealand using mostly antipodean actors, who strove for American accents (with varying degrees of success), were syndicated worldwide.
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