The Legend of King Arthur

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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
External links
[{{#property:P856}} Website]

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 Corporation, 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.

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. 1.0 1.1 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.