Lady Alex Spencer-Parker ( Ophelia Lovibond ) works for the British Museum. Since it relies on public funding, and the Tory Government threatens to cut the budget due to an Austerity policy, Alex volunteers to get the museum some good publicity by finding the Lost City Of Z .
Ulysses Hooten (Michael Landes - S.U. 2 ) is a roguish vagabond, a cross between Han Solo and Indiana Jones. He reluctantly teams up with Alex, and they have the usual smuggler/princess banter. Yes, there is a scene reminiscent of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , and then one taken from Romancing The Stone . All quite predictable.
As we learned at the end of the previous episode, Hooten gives the vast majority of his ill-gotten gains to the Nunnery he grew up in. Yes, the show's producers have a much more idealistic view of The Magdalene Laundry than most people these days. These particular nuns send Hooten on a quest.
Lady Alex Spencer-Parker ( Ophelia Lovibond ) is in Rome, to excavate an incredible site. She also has time for wedding-dress-shopping with her mother ( Jane Seymour ).
Lady Alex Spencer-Parker ( Ophelia Lovibond ) is in Egypt, trying to find the tomb of Alexander the Great before a rival archaeologist (Blake Ritson - Krypton ) does.
Hooten meets up with a hot babe named Melina ( Angel Coulby ). What could possibly go wrong?
There are a lot of references to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) . The European rival, the fascist gunmen, the secret tomb buried in the Egyptian desert ... Although the climax is set in an underwater temple, like in Lara Croft: Cradle Of Life .
Lady Alex Spencer-Parker ( Ophelia Lovibond ) gets a tip-off about the scroll of Buddha, which is in a long-lost monastery in Bhutan. Hooten cannot refuse, since he is about to get shot by a Bolivian he owes fifty thousand dollars to.
Hooten gets poisoned, and needs to find the scroll so he can be cured. Yes, he has two incentives to fulfill one quest.
This episode is more like Relic Hunter than anything else.
This was written by Karla Crome , better known as an actress.
Alex is busy organising her wedding when she gets a call from her friend who was filling in for her at work. The friend has travelled to Ethiopia, where she was abducted by a warlord (David Ajala - Supergirl ).
Hooten is dealing with an old friend who claims to have found the fabled fifty-first Faberge egg. The eggs were last used as a plot device in Octopussy (1983) , so it is about time we saw them again.
Alex has a rival, a female relic hunter, who is also after the artefact. She is an ass-kicking villainess, just like in the previous episode, although this one wears skin-right black leather. Her boss is Hooten's arch-rival, the man who killed Hooten's wife and child. Yes, the show has finally gotten its main story arc going.
Hooten has split up his partnership with Alex, and gotten himself a new sidekick - a young Asian boy like Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom . They are searching for the four artefacts of Buddha, in the area of Ankor Watt temple in Cambodia - like in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider .
Hooten's arch-enemy is revealed as Kane (Vincent Regan - Lockdown ). We finally get some backstory on him. The truth is, the episodic nature of this show means that Hooten's background is vague and consists of references that only affect the next episode. Not exactly the equivalent of Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride .
The main villain was finished off in the previous episode. Now Lady Alex Spencer-Parker ( Ophelia Lovibond ) is about to get married, but she takes time off to compete against Hooten in a race to find the lost treasure of Henry Morgan. This is the show's real story arc - the friendship between the two title characters.
Reviewed in our special supplement