MUMBAI: English entertainment channel Hallmark has in the past brought fantasy and myth to life with original television events such as Jason and the Argonauts, Arabian Nights, Merlin and The Odyssey.
Now the channel turns its eye on Hercules. This airs on 22 January at 9:30 pm and on 28 January at 6:30 pm.
As Alcmene Princess of Thebes played by Elizabeth Perkins awaits the return of her husband Amphitryon played by former Bond Timothy Dalton from war, the virtuous bride falls victim to the licentious Zeus and finds herself carrying the great god’s child. Born Hercules the strapping lad is rejected by his mother, envied by his brother Iphicles and loathed by Zeus’s wife Hera.
Seething with rage from the heavens, she abhors Hercules as damnable evidence of her husband’s infidelities. However the demigod has his allies.
From his journey through the Stymphalian Swamps in search of the slashing harpies to his face-off with leather-winged Nemean Lion to the man-eating mares of Lemnos, and, finally, across the flaming waves of the River Styx into the depths of Hell itself, Hercules must survive the odds to regain his stature as a god, as a hero, and as a man, accomplishing feats that will elevate him to the status of legend on Earth and achieve immortality in the heavens.