Sinbad: Episode Seven – Dork Review

This week on Sinbad, our relentlessly half-naked hero returns to Basra to confront the demons of the pilot episode, save his grandmother, kill the aspiring despot and… actually resolve most storylines. I allowed myself to hope this was the series finale, and the rumours of five more weeks had been a vicious hoax.

No such luck. But at least something happened this week – did this make it better than the last one?

Sinbad’s Curse – To Never Be Touched?

No, not at all. Last week’s episode felt irrelevant,  whereas this moves us forward, but in baffling ways. Sinbad’s curse is idly written out, even though it felt like a central tenet of the series, and one of the least interesting sidekicks decides to leave the series halfway, for no well-established reason.

Seriously, was this intended as a finale? Did they get an email shortly after filming it, saying: “Guys! We can afford five more episodes! Make some crap up!”

The conflicted villain fights Sinbad in one of the worst choreographed fight scenes we’ve yet seen, both unable to visibly land a blow even though neither are CGI. Even better, Sinbad is unable to approach his grandmother because proximity to her makes his curse worse, so starts begging her to come over to him instead. What?

Anwar & Rina – A Love Curtailed By Screentime?

Look, this programme is terrible. They seem determined to never give the fun Cook character another storyline, a sweet Anwar/Rina subplot gets dropped halfway in favour of magical shouting and mumbling, I have no idea how or why the evil priestess was beaten.

Arguably, the resolution of most ongoing subplots also robs the characters of any motivation to stick together, but I think we have to accept they are meant to be real friends now. They must have bonded off-screen.

This episode did start watchably enough, I suppose, but descended into such levels of random “It’s magic!” by the end, it lost me. And then Sinbad learnt a “very important lesson” which the preceding scenes barely bothered to set up. I just can’t make myself care. Don’t watch this show. Doctor Who and Merlin will be back soon enough, and they should be at least competent.

More Sinbad on Dork Adore | Sinbad: Episode Five – Dork Review

Nick Bryan

Nick learned to read and write at an early age. This has developed into an unhealthy need to either write stories or consume them for later dissection. He reviews film and TV on Dork Adore and The Digital Fix, lives in London and enjoys a nice white beer.

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