Xena: Principessa guerriera

I love this show. Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor are fabulous as Xena and Gabrielle. Xena is a former warlord trying to atone for her past by traveling the world doing good. Gabrielle is her sidekick, a bard writing the stories of Xena's adventures. The show is packed (usually) with action, realistically, and breath-takingly, performed by Lawless and O'Connor. And when the show ventures into comedy, it is capable of being the funniest show on television. Did I mention that I LOVE THIS SHOW!

This one should have more fan base because of the new style of the time.

Lucy Lawless have a new style of strong women.

Not only being strong and beat up people but also being beautiful and seductive.

She was ahead of her time.

This was an amazing show that switched from comedy to high drama to tragedy to sword-fighting action and mayhem. All of this usually happened in the same episode. A great show for students of mythology, although the writers did incorporate their own ideas (into the mythological settings and characters) to give the show more texture and layers. The best part of the show was Xena and Gabrielle's intense affection, friendship and respect for one another. They are truly partners in everything they do and always willing to sacrifice for one another. However, there's plenty of comedy as well to keep the show from getting too serious. The more episodes you watch, the more you'll like and understand the concept of the show, and how it works on different levels simultaneously. Very highly recommended.

One of the best TV shows ever.

Xena: Warrior Princess is the thinking person's fantasy/action show. A perfect mix of often dark drama, wacky/campy comedy, action, angst and romance, it was poignant, thrilling, funny, suspenseful, sexy and much more. Set in the fantasy world of a creatively reinvented antiquity, X:WP offers us the ultimate female hero: strong and vulnerable, tough and soft, brave and caring, heroic and deeply flawed, she's all warrior and all woman. We follow Xena's journey on her quest for redemption as well as Gabrielle's growth from a naive peasant girl to a reluctant warrior. And there are other fascinating characters: Ares, the God of War who is determined to lure Xena back to the dark side but is eventually changed by his love for her; Callisto, Xena's victim and nemesis who manages to be sympathetic even at her most evil; Joxer, the bumbling warrior wannabe with the heart of a lion.

Of course the show had its weak moments, especially in the last three seasons. At its best, however, it featured smart writing and creative directing, enhanced by the wonderful acting of Lucy Lawless as Xena, Renee O'Connor as Gabrielle, Kevin Smith as Ares, Ted Raimi as Joxer and Hudson Leick as Callisto. (Alexandra Tydings' Aphrodite, Paris Jefferson's Athena are worthy of mention as well; so are Karl Urban as Julius Caesar and Marton Csokas as Borias, Xena's lover in her days as a warlord.)

I have to comment on one of the reviews which mentioned Xena and Gabrielle being out for revenge against men and complained that the heroines beat up men all the time but never get hit themselves. Hello? Did this person even watch the show? I suspect not. Some of the most prominent villains on the show were women (Callisto, Najara, Alti), and many of Xena and Gabrielle's allies were men. In fact, the episode "The Dirty Half Dozen" explicitly repudiates hostility to men. X:WP's feminism was never anti-male or heavy-handed.

Bottom line? If you haven't seen this show, get the DVDs (or VHS) and give it a try. Start with the premiere, "Sins of the Past." The first half of S1 wasn't all that great (the show had yet to find its footing) but watch "Hooves and Harlots" and "The Reckoning." If you're not hooked yet, try "Ties That Bind," "The Greater Good" and "Callisto." You'll probably want to stay on for S2.

Here's the thing, see, about XENA - the fantasy action show telling the tale of the formerly evil Xena, now a force for good, and Gabrielle the Amazon Queen, her warrior/bard partner.

You have two really beautiful women dressed in impractical leather goods flitting about the Ancient World wielding shiny weapons with great skill and nary a thought to chronology or historical accuracy. You have the relentless modern American speech. You have the over-discussed, over-analysed and highly subjective element of "lesbian subtext". You have campy humour, sly winks at the audience, over-the-top fight sequences, and more dialogue limited to the screaming of each other's names than the second half of Titanic.

You have re-used extras, recycled sets, a bikini-clad Aphrodite spouting Valley-girl speech, a penchant for killing off popular guest stars, TWO man-free pregnancies, high angst levels, a range of episodes that swing madly from dark violence to Andrew Lloyd-Webber style musicals and from intense drama to slapstick comedy.

You have strong female leads who accept responsibility for their choices and their actions, good and bad. You have really beautiful scenery in the form of New Zealand. You have great chemistry between the two stars, and you have enough smarts to know how to combine all of these things into a show that succeeds more than it fails.

Give it a chance. I promise, ten episodes and you'll be hooked. In short, XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS is smart TV pretending that it's dumb. Which is just fine by me, thanks.