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]
It starred Andrew Burt as King Arthur, Felicity Dean as Guinevere, Maureen O'Brien as Morgan le Fay, David Robb as Lancelot, and Robert Eddison as Merlin.
Patsy Kensit also made a notable early appearance, playing Morgan as a child.
Earnestly historicist, the production design of the show was early medieval, ca. A.D. 500.[2]
A tie-in novelisation, The Legend of King Arthur, authored by the screenwriter Andrew Davies, was published in London by Fontana/Armada in 1979.[1]
The serial was released on VHS by BBC Video in 1985, and on DVD by Simply Media in 2016.
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]
External links
References
- 1 2 Kevin J. Harty, "Cinema Arthuriana: A Bibliography of Selected Secondary Materials", Arthurian Interpretations, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 1989), p. 133.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Norris J. Lacy, “Arthurian Film and the Tyranny of Tradition”, Arthurian Interpretations, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Fall 1989), pp. 78–79.