Thu 4 Jun 2020
A TV Episode Review: RELIC HUNTER “Buddha’s Bowl†(1999).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Adventure[6] Comments
RELIC HUNTER “Buddha’s Bowl†A Canadian-produced series. 20 September 1999 (Season 1, Episode 1. Tia Carrera (Sydney Fox), Christien Anholt (Nigel Bailey), Lindy Booth. Guest Cast: Tony Rosato.
Any resemblance to the Indiana Jones movies is not only not incidental, but as far I can see, totally intentional. Sydney Fox is nominally a professor of archaeology and ancient history at Trinity College, but every week for three seasons on TV, she went off to yet another part of the world to track down a relic, if you will, of a large significance, importance, or (very often) of value. She’s also a master of martial arts, and if this first episode is any example, looks just fine in a simple black bra.
Accompanying her on all these adventures is her teaching assistant, Nigel Bailey, a much more reserved young man from England whom both Sydney and we, the viewer meet for the first time in “Buddha’s Bowl.†On his very first day on the job he’s swept off to Nepal, where a map is said to point the way to the relic’s present location.
Of course there is someone else looking for it as well, an old acquaintance and rival who knows Sydney well enough to call her “Sweet cheeks.” The scenery is great, the danger is real (stuck in a tomb filling with sand and no exit, for example), and Tia Carrera, in almost every scene, is a young woman whom every young male would most desperately like to trade places with Nigel to go on all 66 episodes with her.
Even some of us older fellows.
June 4th, 2020 at 11:02 pm
Saw this episode recently on Amazon Prime.
This wants to be a fun, turn off your brain at the remote entertainment broadcast TV does so well. But there is a lack of substance here beyond lots of running, banter, and sexy silliness.
Few would ever seek out this series to watch but watch if you are looking for escapism.
It succeeds in the cotton candy style of syndicated action series of the 1990s and early 2000s.
But boy is the clueless idiot assistant an insult to all mankind.
June 5th, 2020 at 2:34 pm
Probably two degrees of separation from Indiana Jones. The intermediary golden calf was surely the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider video game, introduced three years before. This series actually got out of the gate before the actual 2001 Tomb Raider movie with Angelina Jolie.
This was the era of syndicated action series that included everything from Hercules and Conan to Tarzan, Superboy, Renegade, and VIP starring Pam Anderson. I think the wave of syndicated series bit the dust when the cable networks began to produce their own shows.
June 5th, 2020 at 2:59 pm
You had me at Tia Carrera. Hubba-hubba!
June 5th, 2020 at 3:44 pm
I’m surprised that there were 66 relics to hunt. The side kick being an idiot is a tradition going back to Watson, Raffles’ Bunny, etc.
June 5th, 2020 at 3:56 pm
There is a lot of history to choose from, Brian, but even so, I think they had to make some of them up. You can look for yourself on the program’s Wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relic_Hunter:
The most recent one? A lost guitar of Elvis Presley, from 1960.
June 5th, 2020 at 9:34 pm
As stupid fun goes this was a pretty good run that once in a while exceeded its modest goals. Some times eye candy and stupid plots were all you really wanted, and even with cable there wasn’t always something better to watch, especially on Sunday night when this ran in my market.
Though it was no Xena I recall quite a few women liking this.