Additional Summary: This is, alas, a poor quality musical comedy (or comedy musical) by either American or English standards.
The obvious comparisons for this show are Mel Brooks' Men In Tights, and Python's Jabberwocky (although to be fair it's not a musical). Maybe Bing Crosby's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but that would be really pushing it. By those benchmarks Galavant (prat)falls by the wayside.
Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy does medieval orders of magnitude funnier than this show, but then I'm biased (an ex-pat Brit absorbing the culture in the USA for the past twenty years, and conscious that Americans can do some forms of comedy better than anyone else).
It's a shame really, because some of the actors are evidently capable of much better performances than I have seen in the first two episodes. I hope things improve but honestly I have serious doubts.
There are clearly some really good writers out there (so many excellent shows ended in the last year or two) but they weren't hired for Galavant (I'm more familiar with the "gallivant" spelling but that's the least of my gripes).
It's almost as if no-one did research into the (English) subject matter, too, which always rankles a bit with Brits. Shakespeare may have maligned one King Richard but none of the three officially- recognized Richards could be mistaken for the character portrayed in the show.
There are nowhere near enough anachronisms to make the dialog Pythonesque, which might have helped.
As for being a fairy tale, well, it has none of the hallmarks of that genre. I'm a big fan of taking original fairy tales and revisiting them to extract new stories, but Galavant doesn't really do that.
Lots of potential here, but so far very little of it in evidence. I'll keep watching though, ever hopeful. Sometimes shows take a while to find their feet.
The obvious comparisons for this show are Mel Brooks' Men In Tights, and Python's Jabberwocky (although to be fair it's not a musical). Maybe Bing Crosby's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but that would be really pushing it. By those benchmarks Galavant (prat)falls by the wayside.
Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy does medieval orders of magnitude funnier than this show, but then I'm biased (an ex-pat Brit absorbing the culture in the USA for the past twenty years, and conscious that Americans can do some forms of comedy better than anyone else).
It's a shame really, because some of the actors are evidently capable of much better performances than I have seen in the first two episodes. I hope things improve but honestly I have serious doubts.
There are clearly some really good writers out there (so many excellent shows ended in the last year or two) but they weren't hired for Galavant (I'm more familiar with the "gallivant" spelling but that's the least of my gripes).
It's almost as if no-one did research into the (English) subject matter, too, which always rankles a bit with Brits. Shakespeare may have maligned one King Richard but none of the three officially- recognized Richards could be mistaken for the character portrayed in the show.
There are nowhere near enough anachronisms to make the dialog Pythonesque, which might have helped.
As for being a fairy tale, well, it has none of the hallmarks of that genre. I'm a big fan of taking original fairy tales and revisiting them to extract new stories, but Galavant doesn't really do that.
Lots of potential here, but so far very little of it in evidence. I'll keep watching though, ever hopeful. Sometimes shows take a while to find their feet.