You know, I always remembered Highlander the series as being pretty cheesey. A few months back I discovered that the entire series is online now, for free on
www.hulu.com. (I discovered this while watching Dr. Horrible for the first time, which is also hosted on that site... how's that for tying the thread back to the original post?)
I spent much of my holiday break watching the series. A lot of it is still very cheesey. A lot of it is cheesey by modern standards, but wasn't so bad back when it came out. And a lot of it is surprisingly good. I watched the first couple of episodes for a laugh, and they were bad, but then it starts to get better and better throughout the first couple of seasons. (then it gets terrible again in the later seasons)
I didn't realize it until then, but a lot of my romantic ideals about honor and chivalric ideals were in some small part inspired by that show. I'm almost ashamed to admit that.
But there are a lot of episodes about putting honor over desire, and I started remembering times of my life that were likely, in a small way, influenced by this (as well as many other things besides Highlander, naturally). I kind of surprised myself, really.
For the record, the swordfighting is still pretty atrocious in the series... but the unarmed fighting is surprisingly quite good. While it was still theatrical, it was very precise, well done, and in many cases correct form (if slightly exaggerated). Go fig.