TV review: Patchwork of cliches from fantasy land

Kahlan is played by American Bridget Regan, and Cypher by Aussie Craig Horner. Photo / Supplied

Somewhere in fantasy land there must have been a big garage sale of all the bits and pieces you need to throw together a sword and sorcery epic.

Legend of the Seeker, which premiered on Prime last night and continues tonight (7.30pm), is based on the novel Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind, but seems more like a roughly stitched together patchwork of The Lord of the Rings, the Arthurian legends, the Bible and Star Wars.

I have not read the book but if the scriptwriters have embellished the original material, at no point do they stray into original territory. The show comes from Hercules and Xena creators Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi but seems more earnest than their trademark hybridisations of myth and modern irony and camp.

Much is made of the special effects but the real visual interest is in the geographic licence taken in the high action numbers. For example, last night's breathless opening chase had the heroine Kahlan (pronounced, rather prosaically, as Kaylin) hotly pursued by soldiers through a valley deep in the Southern Alps, through a pine plantation and emerging suddenly on big sand dunes a la Auckland's West Coast. I wait in hope for the sequence that will have the fights charging from the Volcanic Plateau and ending, say, in the Bay of Islands or at the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter.

The names of the characters are fantastically cliched: the poor woodcutter who learns of his mysterious destiny to save the world is called Richard Cypher; the evil tyrant with world domination in mind is Darken Rahl; and the wise wizard Zedd's full name sounded something like Zeddicus Zoroaster Zolander.

Cypher is played by Aussie Craig Horner, who has the essential requisite in a fine set of abs; Kahlan, the fair maid with the killer stare, is played rather stiltedly by American Bridget Regan.

The Kiwis steal the show. Jay Laga'aia is made for deconstructed leather gear and Craig Parker relishes every moment as Darken Rahl, one of those aesthetic dictators who probably has a sideline, between torture scenes, in interior design.

So far the action has been so full-on, it's been difficult to get much sense of who the Seeker is or why we should care about his stereotypical quest. Something about a powerful book and defeating Darken with a special sword, all of which seems to require journeys through the "Boundary".

But there is fun to be had, hoping the plot might burst out of its clichés.

Or wondering whether the actors will become competent enough with their fake weapons to allow some of the battle scenes to accelerate up a bit from slow mo. And then there's the scintillating prospect, that one of the characters might crack if they have to hear just one more portentous epithet from Wizard Zedd, and chop off his head.