A Medieval ‘Bonanza’ : ‘Covington Cross’: Feudal Fun When Knights Were Bold

Just a typical, medieval day around the family castle: The older boys are inadvertently destroying the household furniture with their swordfighting, young Cedric has locked a friar in the privy to escape his religious training and daughter Eleanor is facing a double whammy.

It’s bad enough that she has to take harp lessons when she’d rather be shooting her crossbow. But when she finds out that Sir Thomas Gray, Lord of Covington Cross Castle--i.e., Dad--has arranged for her to marry the slime-bucket son of their oily neighbor, well, that’s a bit much.

Sir Thomas, whose occupation appears to be “landowner,” is a very capable and thoughtful guy. But who can blame the widowed nobleman for looking perplexed from time to time? He must cope with a clutch of highly spirited kids and an independent-minded girlfriend, Lady Elizabeth, whose notions about women and society are centuries ahead of their time. And then there’s that scheming neighbor and a mysterious band of marauders who are terrorizing the local villagers.

Such is life around “Covington Cross,” the new family adventure series on ABC that depicts a time when everyone was Middle-Aged and the cry “Serfs Up!” signaled a peasant revolt. One of the few American prime-time shows ever to be shot entirely on location in England, it premieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. and the same episode will be shown again Sept. 11 and Sept. 19. The series continues Sept. 26 in its regular time slot of Saturdays at 8 p.m.

“It’s like a medieval ‘Bonanza,’ ” says actor Glenn Quinn, who plays the youngest son, Cedric, as well as Becky’s boyfriend Mark on “Roseanne.”

Executive producer Gil Grant (“Hull High,” “The Oldest Rookie”) concurs. “This is a frontier family show,” he says, “if you just move the frontier back about 500 years.”

Think of it as “Robin Hood” meets “Little House on the Prairie” with a touch of something that might be called “His Lordship Knows Best.”

“Covington Cross” will chronicle the grand adventures and domestic dramas of Sir Thomas and family as they confront life in ye merry--and sometimes not so ye merry--England of long ago.

Exactly how long ago is purposely left vague. Grant says he originally set the series in 1350, but found that having a precise time period was too constricting and would leave the show open to charges of historical inaccuracies.

For example, early on in developing the series, Grant recalls, he spotted a “really cool” chair that he thought would look good in the family castle. A production designer quickly pointed out that it wasn’t right for the period. “I said, ‘Believe me, no one is going to know.’ ” He now says the show is set somewhere between the 1200s and the 1400s.

“We’re doing an idealized version of a medieval show,” he stresses.

The series features a mostly British cast and crew, and much of the filming is done at picturesque Allington Castle, southeast of London. While it comes complete with moat, towers and heavily fortified entrance, Allington Castle is built on a slightly smaller scale than some of England’s better-known fortresses.

“I wanted to find a castle that wasn’t so imposing,” says Grant, strolling across the expansive grounds. “I wanted to find a place you could believe a family lived in. There’s a sweetness about this one and a smallness about it. You wouldn’t think a king would live here.”

Grant says he was surprised to get the go-ahead to shoot in England. “Whatever I write always winds up getting shot in North Hollywood,” he laughs. “I was positive that after all this talk about shooting in England, we’d wind up at the King’s Castle Restaurant in Toluca Lake.”

It certainly didn’t hurt that the series is being produced by Reeves Entertainment, which is owned by the British company Thames Television. Thames’ international sales division has so far sold the series in Denmark, Finland, Spain and Portugal. No buyers in Britain yet, however.

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Inside the main courtyard at Allington Castle, the cast and crew are busily trying to finish one of the final scenes for an episode in which, among other interlocking subplots, Sir Thomas and Lady Elizabeth find themselves competing for a contract to supply lumber to a duke who builds ships for the king.

“It’s a battle of the sexes going on here,” explains supervising producer Chris Ruppenthal, who wrote the script.

The courtyard is festooned with the accouterments of medieval life. Fires burn and carcasses of rabbits and birds hang upside down. Maids outfitted in carefully designed peasant-wear carry wooden buckets of water while their male counterparts chop wood and tend to other household chores. Like Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood, the men of Covington Cross don’t have to wear tights.

The Duke of Worringer, astride his horse, comes riding in through the main gate accompanied by Sir Thomas (Nigel Terry). Lady Elizabeth (Cherie Lunghi) greets them. The duke announces who will get the contract.

All the dialogue is carefully scripted to suggest “Olde” England without having to get into a lot of potentially off-putting “Whereforth art thou” sort of chat.

When Sir Thomas goes to see an unspecified King Edward in Tuesday’s pilot episode (Edwards I-IV all fit into the general time frame), his royal highness tells the lord of Covington Cross Castle, in a manner that wouldn’t be too out of place in a contemporary session of Parliament, “I’m being threatened by the Scots, the French are making noises, your own land is being robbed and pillaged by bandits. This is no time for Englishmen to be divided.”

But to remind viewers that they’re listening to 700-year-old conversations, the writers occasionally transpose some words in mid-sentence, thus producing a pseudo Middle English effect:

“What say you, Thomas?” the king asks at one point.

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Churning out a weekly medieval series also requires other special considerations. The actors must look credible handling ancient weaponry and transportation, for instance.

Outside the castle, the swordfighting coach gives pointers to Quinn, who has just flown in from Los Angeles, where he taped scenes for six upcoming episodes of “Roseanne.” Nearby, Tim Killick, who plays eldest son Armus, practices horseback riding.

Off by herself, working on some needlepoint in an elegant period dress while waiting for her next scene, is actress Ione Skye (“Say Anything”), who plays the crossbow-toting daughter, Eleanor.

“My character is very strong, very emotional,” she says. “This is unlike my character to be in a dress. I would like to be a knight, so I’m kind of like Joan of Arc, but not religious at all. It’s a very unusual character for the time.”

Skye, the daughter of ‘60s minstrel Donovan and the wife of the Beastie Boys’ Adam Horovitz, says she has never played a medieval character before, but adds, “I used to go to the Renaissance Faire all the time.”