Dwight in Shining Armor

The TV series “Dwight in Shining Armor” needs to be seen to be believed. What is most delightful about the series is the freshness and innocence of the spirit which animates it. One imagines that the multifarious imaginary plots are akin to the sort of humorous adventure stories that would entertain real-life hobbits were we to meet them.

As almighty Amazon wields the Rings of Power, having paid over a billion dollars for the rights to desecrate Tolkien’s masterpiece, it is tempting to take the pessimistic view that all is lost. Indeed, if we are not careful, we will begin to feel or fear that darkness has prevailed. We are in danger of coming to the same conclusion as Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, that there is no hope. For those who do not know The Lord of the Rings, Denethor is the Lord of Minas Tirith who spent so much time staring into the Palantir stone, watching the Enemy’s propaganda, that he came to the conclusion that all resistance to the power of evil was futile. Falling into despair, he abandoned his responsibilities and committed suicide.

For those who wish to resist the power of evil, the Denethor option is never an option. Suicide is the final defeat. It is the triumph of evil, the victory of death over life. Instead, we need to take the Frodo option. We need to bear the burden of evil without succumbing to it. We need to be ring-bearers, not ring-wearers. We need to take up our cross, which is nothing but the weight of our sins and the sins of others, in the knowledge that there is a power beyond the dominion of the Dark Lord, which will give us the strength to prevail against the gates of hell. But we cannot prevail alone. Apart from the power of God, we need the fellowship of neighbours. We need allies. We need heroes. We all need knights in shining armour to help us slay the dragons of darkness.

Knights in shining armour come in many shapes and sizes and in many surprising disguises. We might think of Sir Lancelot or Aragorn but we should also think of Merry and Pippin. We might think of St. George but we should also think of St. Joan. We might think of Faramir but we should also think of the Lady Éowyn. It was, after all, not the lord but the lady who slays the dragon in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

“Hinder me?” says the Lord of the Nazgûl. “Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!”

“But no living man am I!,” responds the Lady in shining armour. “You look upon a woman.”

Yes indeed, knights in shining armour come in many shapes and sizes and many surprising disguises. Take, for example, Dwight in Shining Armor, the eponymous hero of a fantasy series produced between 2019 and 2021 by BYU TV. Dwight is a gentle, unassuming and unadventurous high school student in a generically non-descript small town somewhere in a generally non-descript part of the United States. Like the hobbits, he is the last person you would believe could ever be a slayer of dragons. But that’s the point. The producers of this delightful and delightfully funny series are as close to the true spirit of Middle-earth as the producers of the Amazon series are light-years away from it.

By an apparent accident of fate or a quirk of providence, Dwight inadvertently frees a sleeping princess, Gretta the Besieged, from a spell which had kept her and everyone else in her kingdom in a deep sleep for a thousand years. Thus awakened, Gretta, who is the same age as the hapless Dwight, accepts him as her champion, even though she is a seasoned warrior clad in armour and he is evidently bereft of even the slightest hint of martial prowess. To complicate matters still further, Dwight’s freeing of the Princess from the spell also frees the whole of her kingdom from its millennium-long hibernation. Thus resurrected into life, the rest of the series interweaves the intrigues and magic of Gretta’s awakened medieval world with the mundane everyday world of small-town America.

What is most delightful about the series is the freshness and innocence of the spirit which animates it. There’s no dark underbelly smelling of the slime of the gutter. There’s no sneer of cynicism. One imagines that the multifarious imaginary plots are akin to the sort of humorous adventure stories that would entertain real-life hobbits were we to meet them.

Innocence is not synonymous with naiveté, however, or at least it needn’t be. It is evident, for instance, that the creators of the series were not only influenced by the obvious suspects, such as The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter books, but also by British TV shows, such as Black Adder, which is satirical and cynical in equal measure, while also being extremely funny. Princess Gretta’s personal guardian and wizard is named Baldric, which is the name of Black Adder’s servant, and Chlodwig, a knight and nobleman in Princess Gretta’s court, is strikingly similar in characterization to Prince Ludwig the Indestructible, who was played in the second season of Black Adder by Hugh Laurie. It is, in fact, difficult to see the simple-minded clumsiness of the former without being haunted by the archetypal presence of the latter. The other main character is Hexela, a naughty but lovable witch, who is on the side of the angels, almost in spite of herself. In addition, there are a host of other minor characters who add their own unique attributes to the comedic cocktail. The acting is of the highest calibre, each of the actors bringing their respective characters to such rambunctious life that they become larger than life.

None of the foregoing does justice to the simple-hearted brilliance of the series. Mere words cannot bring it to life. As such, more words will not suffice.

The life of humour is laughter and there are few shows that I’ve ever watched with my family which have made us laugh so much. Dwight in Shining Armor needs to be seen to be believed. See it. Believe it. The hobbit in you will not be disappointed.

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The featured image is courtesy of BYUtv.