First broadcast in 2005, the extremely popular French television series Kaamelott takes on the Arthur of the medieval French tradition and casts a humorous new light on the monarch and his court. The series ran for six seasons on France’s television channel M6, ending on a cliffhanger in October 2009. The spelling ‘Kaamelott’ takes its inspiration from the spelling ‘Kamaalot’ found in some manuscripts of the thirteenth-century French Prose Lancelot–Grail cycle, and whether by accident or design, the back-to-back ‘A’s in the title prominently feature the initials of Alexandre Astier, Kaamelott’s creator, writer, director, editor, composer and principal actor. In the early seasons of the series we find none of the highly stylized medievalism of Eric Rohmer’s Perceval le Gallois, nor the grim and bloody realism of Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac, two memorable cinematic adaptations of the medieval French literary canon. Rather, the series has more in common with Monty Python and the Holy Grail, for we are treated to a parade of human failings that flies in the face of the Round Table’s reputation for perfection. Charged with the divine mission of finding the Holy Grail, Arthur finds himself impeded at every turn by the shortcomings of the knights in his entourage, parodies of the literary figures. This essay will focus on some of the ways in which Astier, in the early seasons of the series in particular, plays with and challenges the French literary tradition, ultimately inventing for his televised text an authority equal to that of any tradition that has preceded it.

The humour of the series is multifaceted and ever present, albeit much subdued in the fifth and sixth seasons, when the tone darkens to reflect the disintegration of Arthurs court and the format moves from episodes of approximately three and a half minutes each to seven and then around fifty minutes each. The mini-episodes of the early seasons, though, are irrepressibly funny. In her analysis of the British television series The Blackadder, set in the fictional fifteenth-century reign of Richard IV and starring Rowan Atkinson, Katherine Lewis notes that ‘much of the humor in Blackadder [sic] relies on intricately plotted farce and wordplay, in concert with Atkinsons famed “rubber face” qualities’, and we might make a similar observation about Kaamelotts early seasons. Centred on dialogue, these episodes revel in both the comedic physical mannerisms of and verbal exchanges between the characters.