Robin Hood: easily replaced by another Archer

On the face of it, the BBC's Robin Hood is a terrible television programme. Jonas Armstrong's Hood looks like a member of a boy band that got lost in the woods after a team-building weekend and has been forced to live on nothing but hair gel. His arch enemy Guy of Gisbourne is essentially a goth, brooding and troubled, tormented by both Maid Marian's rejection of him and the realisation that the Sisters of Mercy will never again tread the boards of Nottingham University Student Union. Historical accuracy, or even a vague effort to look and sound medieval, does not come into it.

In spite of all this, Robin Hood is great.

It's exciting, well-paced, witty primetime family entertainment, and it has survived a tough time in television drama, due to a winning combination of likable heroes, camp villains and against-all-odds happy endings. While Primeval has bitten the dust, and ITV will not be commissioning any pre-watershed drama for the foreseeable future, the BBC's Robin Hood shows no sign of dipping in popularity. But can it survive the biggest blow of all – the loss of Robin Hood himself?

Jonas Armstrong and Richard Armitage (who plays Guy of Gisbourne) are off to pastures new, but the BBC is understandably reluctant to pull this hugely successful drama. The solution is to bring in a long-lost half-brother to them both: Archer. A weapons dealer and soldier of fortune, Clive Standen's bed-hopping, lovable rogue has no particular allegiance to anyone, and seemingly no morals, until Robin Hood shows him a better way.

Clive Standen has a leading man charisma that could see him through, and regular viewers have grown fond of the supporting cast, in particular David Harewood's wise, noble Friar Tuck. But the real reason that Archer will work as a replacement for Hood is that, like his predecessors, he belongs to a youth movement that most people in Britain will be familiar with. Following the mod/boy-band-like Hood and the gothic Gisbourne, Archer is among that number found throughout rural England: the crusty.

Look at his straggling, rat-tail dreadlocks and wispy beard. Regard his disdain for authority and refusal to work for the Man. He's straight from a new-age traveller's camp site. He'll probably start selling a bit of weed when the weapons run out, and liberate the people of Nottingham through the cunning use of a dub reggae sound system. And what are the Merry Men, if not the original crusty contingent? Archer is the missing link; the man that the entire series has been leading up to.

Thanks to Archer, Robin Hood will survive without Robin Hood. In fact, it might even be better off without him.