Kaamelott is a French comedy television series which parodies the Arthurian legend. Broadcast on M6 in France since 2005 in prime time (8:30PM to 8:40PM), on TSR2 in Switzerland and on Club RTL in Belgium, each season it has attracted more viewers, with records reaching about 5 millions viewers each evening.
While the series takes place in the 5 century, it uses a lot of modern languages and references to create an humorous view of the Arthurian legend, even in the last chapters, when the mood keeps on being darker and more dramatic as Arthur's kingdom begins to disintegrate.
The series is derived from a short movie, Dies iræ, that the show creator also wrote and directed. The short movie featured mostly the same cast as the TV series and followed the same concept. It was used to pitch the idea of the series to the M6 television network, at a time when M6 was looking to replace another successful short TV series, Caméra Café. However, Kaamelott exceeded Caméra Café's audience only three weeks after broadcasting started.
In this off beat account of King Arthur's quest for the Grail, virtually every journey, battle or adventure is stopped dead in its tracks by the knights of the round table's most worldly traits : cowardice, greed, idiocy or misplaced chivalry. As a consequence, instead of epic adventures we are treated with the characters' pragmatic and anachronistic take on each and every event in the Grail legend, true to the purest sitcom tradition. Written by tete-en-lair
