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''The Legend of King Arthur'' is a
British television fantasy serial, produced by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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in association with
Time-Life Television and the
Australian Broadcasting Commission
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national broadcaster of Australia. It is principally funded by direct grants from the Australian Government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a publicly-owned ...
, and broadcast on
BBC 1
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...
in 1979.
[Kevin J. Harty, "Cinema Arthuriana: A Bibliography of Selected Secondary Materials", '' Arthurian Interpretations'', Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 1989), p. 133.]
Plot
Cast
*
Andrew Burt
Andrew Thomas Hutchison Burt (23 May 1945 – 16 November 2018) was a British actor, voiceover artist, and counsellor.
Early life and education
Andrew Burt was born on 23 May 1945 in Wakefield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, to Hutchison Bu ...
as
King Arthur
*
Felicity Dean
Felicity Jane Dean (born 24 January 1959) is a British actress, who is critically acclaimed for her extensive work in film and on stage, including works with, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Al Pacino, HBO, Sir Jonathan Miller and Joseph Lose ...
as
Guinevere
*
Maureen O'Brien as
Morgan le Fay
Morgan le Fay (, meaning 'Morgan the Fairy'), alternatively known as Morgan ''n''a, Morgain ''a/e Morg ''a''ne, Morgant ''e Morge ''i''n, and Morgue ''inamong other names and spellings ( cy, Morgên y Dylwythen Deg, kw, Morgen an Spyrys), is a ...
*
David Robb
David Robb (born 23 August 1947) is a Scottish actor.
Early life
Born in London, the son of David Robb and Elsie Tilley, Robb grew up in Edinburgh and was educated there at the Royal High School, where he played Henry II in a school product ...
as
Lancelot
*Geoffrey Bateman as
Gawain
Gawain (), also known in many other forms and spellings, is a character in Arthurian legend, in which he is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table. The prototype of Gawain is mentioned under the name Gwalchmei in the earliest ...
*James Simmons as
Galahad
Sir Galahad (), sometimes referred to as Galeas () or Galath (), among other versions of his name, is a knight of King Arthur's Round Table and one of the three achievers of the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend. He is the illegitimate son of Si ...
*
Robert Eddison
Robert Leadam Eddison, OBE (10 June 1908 – 14 December 1991) was an English actor, who despite his lengthy career as a classical stage actor, is probably most widely remembered in the role of the Grail Knight in '' Indiana Jones and the Last ...
as
Merlin
*
Patsy Kensit
Patricia Jude Kensit (born 4 March 1968) is an English actress and was the lead singer of the pop band Eighth Wonder in the 1980s.
Beginning her career as a child actor, Kensit gained attention when she acted in a string of commercials for Bir ...
as the young Morgan
Production
Earnestly
historicist
Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying their history, that is, by studying the process by which they came about. The term is widely u ...
, the production design of the show was of the
heroic age, ''ca. A.D.'' 500, like the HTV production ''
Arthur of the Britons'' (1972–3). However, the tragic storyline of this BBC version kept closer faith with the
chivalric romance
As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalri ...
of ''
Le Morte d'Arthur''.
Reception
The
Arthurian
King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as a ...
scholar
Norris J. Lacy Norris J. Lacy (born March 8, 1940 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky) is an American scholar focusing on French medieval literature. He was the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor Emeritus of French and Medieval Studies at the Pennsylvania State University until ...
opines: "''The Legend of King Arthur'' has the leisure to depict the legend in detail, but the resulting periodic presentation, if not the medium itself, dilutes the force and drama of the Arthurian story in a way that rarely happens in literature, and certainly not either in the
French Vulgate or in
Malory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author of ''Le Morte d'Arthur'', the classic English-language chronicle of the Arthurian legend, compiled and in most cases translated from French sources. The most popular version of ''Le Morte d'Ar ...
."
[Norris J. Lacy, "Arthurian Film and the Tyranny of Tradition", ''Arthurian Interpretations'', Vol. 4, No. 1 (Fall 1989), pp. 78–79.]
Novelisation
A tie-in novel, ''The Legend of King Arthur'', authored by the screenwriter
Andrew Davies, was published in London by
Fontana/
Armada in 1979.
Home video and DVD releases
The serial was released on
VHS by
BBC Video
2 Entertain (stylized as 2 , entertain) is a British video and music publisher founded in September 2004 by the merger of BBC Video and Video Collection International in 2004. Under CEO Richard Green, the company operated as a joint venture b ...
in 1985, and on
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
by Simply Media in 2016.
See also
*
List of films based on Arthurian legend
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Legend of King Arthur
1970s British drama television series
BBC television dramas
1979 British television series debuts
1979 British television series endings
British fantasy television series
Television series based on Arthurian legend
Period television series
English-language television shows