Disaster struck my Arthurian film project this week: I had been planning to add some variety with a viewing of George A Romero’s Knightriders, in which the Camelot story plays out within a motorcycle jousting team in early ‘80s California. But to my horror and amazement it’s not available to stream in the UK, and DVDs are surprisingly pricey: it joins Bresson's Lancelot du Lac and Cocteau's The Eternal Return on my list of hard-to-track-down Holy Grails.
Anyway, I spent so long looking for Knightriders that there wasn't time to watch a whole movie, so I turned instead to another old TV version, Arthur of the Britons, which is easily available on YouTube. This one comes from 1972 and I’d never seen it, although I’ve often heard it mentioned with great affection. I imagine there's a cohort five or ten years older than me for whom it crystallised the image of King Arthur and co in the same way Excalibur did for me. There’s a fan website full of interviews and behind-the-scenes here, from which I have pinched several pictures.
Like The Boy Merlin this is an attempt to set Arthur in a proper historical context. Arthur of the Britons is not a mediaeval king, he’s a Dark Age chieftain, and the first episode has him putting together a scrappy alliance of fellow Celtic leaders to fight off the encroaching Saxons. Unlike The Boy Merlin, it has no room for magic, or for most of the familiar Arthurian characters, so it ends up a bit like a 5th Century Western with Celts’n’Saxons instead of Cowboys’n’Indians. The Celts want to live in their forests, hunting wild boar Asterix style, but the invading Saxon settlers want to clear the land for farming. (I don’t think this bears very much resemblance to the actual politics and economy of post-Roman Britain, but whatever.) It’s not black and white though; the Saxons aren’t all bad and the Celts aren’t all good, which is a point in its favour. Arthur's greatness comes not just from his tactical know-how and handy way with a spatha but from his ability to unite people.
 |
| Oliver Tobias as Arthur |
Arthur is played by Oliver Tobias, who is startlingly handsome and chisel-jawed, as if someone has tried to grow a new James Bond in the lab. His adopted brother Kai is the equally good-looking (and rather more charismatic) Michael Gothard, so I can see at least two reasons why the show was popular. It’s nice to see Kai (AKA Cei, or Kay) as Arthur’s right-hand man, which was how he started out before he was edged into a comic relief role by fancier heroes like Lancelot as the legends developed. The show has him as a Saxon bought up among Celts, and some of the more interesting episodes are about his slightly divided loyalties.
 |
| Michael Gothard as Kai |
The third regular cast member is Jack Watson, who was rather typecast as dependable sergeants, I think. He plays Arthur and Kai’s father, Llud, who basically acts as their dependable sergeant. Other characters are portrayed by a parade of familiar British TV faces, including guest spots by Peter Firth, Michael Gambon, Clive Revell, Tom Baker, and Bernard Bresslaw, and a recurring part for BRIAN BLESSED as the very shouty King Mark of Cornwall.
The budget seems quite big - there are lots of horses, a cast of thousands (well, dozens), and elaborate village sets with thatched huts and palisades. But somehow that doesn’t help: when you see the obvious studio set of Merlin’s home at the start of The Boy Merlin you realise at once that it’s not trying to be a film, and accept it on its own terms (or switch off). Arthur of the Britons, being much more cinematic, invites comparison with the movies, and ends up looking a bit cheap: there are loads of extras in the battle scenes, but the fight choreography can be weak, and the action is often staged on pretty but very modern-looking bits of farmland.
The costume design seems a bit off too: our heroes dress in leather jerkins, puffy-sleeved fencing shirts, studded belts, drainpipe trousers, furry leg warmers and natty leather boots. At times it feels less like the Dark Ages and more like a post-apocalyptic wasteland where only British rock bands of a certain vintage have survived. You keep expecting someone to burst in and say, “Derek and his Dominos have made traitorous alliance with the men of Cream! Send word to Pikettywitch, for we have need of their swords in this dark hour…”
As for the actual swords, however much the scriptwriters keep insisting this is the 5th century the props department just can’t resist slipping in broadswords and claymores which must come from almost a thousand years later - it’s like making a drama about the Battle of Hastings where the Normans show up with machine guns.
Still, most of these quibbles can be put down to budgetary constraints or the fickle vagaries of fashion - by the standards of 1970s TV Arthur of the Britons is really quite decently written, shot, and acted. But it’s discarded so much of the Arthur of the legends that it’s barely Arthurian at all - as with Legend of the Sword, you feel they’re just making generic action-adventure and using Arthur’s name because it has brand recognition.
It’s also very blokey. I know the Arthurian Legends aren’t renowned for their feminism, but most of the films and shows I’ve looked at so far have had at least one or two good roles for women. Some do eventually show up in Arthur of the Britons, but the focus is very definitely on the trio of male heroes, and they live in a very male, military environment, and spend most of their time fighting and arguing. (Episode three, The Challenge, consists almost entirely of one long duel, and very boring it is too.) It’s an interesting reminder that the duels, tourneys, and battles which provide the big set pieces in most Arthurian films are really only one part of the legend’s appeal: the magic, the mystery, the dreamlike quality of Arthurian Britain are at least as important, and they’re often bound up with female characters like Morgan le Fay and the Lady of the Lake. Remove them, and you end up with something far less interesting.
That said, if beautiful men galloping around on beautiful horses in the sunlit meadows of the early 1970s is your idea of fun, this is definitely the programme for you.
Comments