The Adventures of Sir Lancelot
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The Adventures of Sir Lancelot was a British television series of the 1950s, produced by Sapphire Films for ITC Entertainment and screened on the ITV network. The series starred William Russell as the eponymous Sir Lancelot, a Knight of the Round Table in the time of King Arthur at Camelot.
The series debuted in the UK on Saturday September 15, 1956, on London weekend ITV franchise holder ATV, and on the NBC network in the United States nine days later. It is one of the very few British television series ever to have been screened on one of the major broadcast networks in the US (as opposed to on PBS or cable television stations). Its success on NBC led to it becoming the first British television series ever to be produced in colour, the last fourteen of the thirty half-hour episodes being shot on colour stock, although they were only seen in colour in the US. The last episode was shown on April 13, 1957 in the UK and September 16, 1957 on NBC. It later transferred networks in the US to ABC, who repeated the episodes from October 1957 to September 1958.
Bruce Seton and later Ronald Leigh-Hunt played King Arthur, with Jane Hylton as Guinevere and Cyril Smith as Merlin with Robert Scroggins as Lancelot's squire, Brian, who joined the cast in the second episode. Amongst the guest stars was Patrick McGoohan as Sir Glavin in episode four, "The Outcast". As was common with other British television series of the time, the programme employed several American screenwriters who had moved to Britain after being placed on the Hollywood blacklist, often under pseudonyms. These included Ian McLellan Hunter and Ring Lardner Jr. The series was produced by Sidney Cole, Dallas Bower and Bernard Knowles and made at Nettlefold Studios in Walton-on-Thames.
The complete series was released as a DVD box set in the UK by Network Video in 2004; in the US, only a few episodes have been released in this format.
[edit] References
- Thompson, Raymond H. (1991) "Television Series". In Lacy, Norris J. (Ed.), The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, pp. 445–446. New York: Garland. ISBN 0-8240-4377-4.
- Vahimagi, Tise (1994). British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford. Oxford University Press / British Film Institute. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.
