The Legend of King Arthur

The Legend of King Arthur
Written by Andrew Davies
Directed by Rodney Bennett
Starring Andrew Burt
Felicity Dean
Maureen O'Brien
David Robb
Theme music composer Dudley Simpson
Country of origin United Kingdom
No. of series 1
No. of episodes 8
Production
Producer(s) Ken Riddington
Running time 30 minutes
Release
Original network BBC1
Original release 7 October – 25 November 1979

The Legend of King Arthur is a British television fantasy serial, produced by the BBC in association with Time-Life Television and the Australian Broadcasting Commission, and broadcast on BBC 1 in 1979.[1]

Cast

Production

Earnestly historicist, the production design of the show was of the heroic age, ca. A.D. 500,[2] 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 of Le Morte d'Arthur.

Reception

The Arthurian scholar Norris J. Lacy 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."[3]

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.[1]

Home video and DVD releases

The serial was released on VHS by BBC Video in 1985, and on DVD by Simply Media in 2016.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Kevin J. Harty, "Cinema Arthuriana: A Bibliography of Selected Secondary Materials", Arthurian Interpretations, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 1989), p. 133.
  2. ↑ Helmut Nickel, "Arms and Armor in Arthurian Films", in Kevin J. Harty (ed.), Cinema Arthuriana: Twenty Essays (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2002), pp. 240–41.
  3. ↑ Norris J. Lacy, "Arthurian Film and the Tyranny of Tradition", Arthurian Interpretations, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Fall 1989), pp. 78–79.
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