Kaamelott


Kaamelott is a French comedy medieval fantasy television series created, directed, written, scored, and edited by Alexandre Astier, who also starred as the main character. Based on the Arthurian legends, it followed the daily lives of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table in Camelot. The series, which originally ran for six seasons, ran from January 3, 2005, to October 31, 2009, on the network M6.
The series was preceded in 2003 by a short film, Dies iræ, with mostly the same cast and concept, which was used to pitch the idea of the series to the network, which at a time was looking to replace another successful short TV series, Caméra Café. However, Kaamelott exceeded Caméra Cafés audience only three weeks after broadcasting started. It is widely regarded as one of the best, most iconic, and most popular French TV series of all time. It has also been praised for its fidelity as, outside of comedic and linguistic liberties, it stays faithful to the mythology and historic context, both alleged and verified.
While the series takes place in the 5th century, it uses modern language and situations to create a humorous view of the Arthurian legend. However, in later seasons, the mood becomes darker and more dramatic as Arthur's kingdom begins to disintegrate. The cast includes regular Astier collaborator Jean-Christophe Hembert, who directed his two subsequent one-man shows, and Astier's father Lionnel, his mother Joëlle Sevilla and his half-brother Simon.
After the end of the series in 2009, Astier started working on a film trilogy meant to conclude the story of the series. First announced in 2012 and planned for a shooting in 2013, production for the first film, Kaamelott: The First Chapter, was suspended and then repeatedly postponed due to various issues; filming eventually begun in January 2019, and it was released on July 21, 2021. Following the release of the first movie, Astier confirmed that the continuation of the story would be divided into two parts rather than a single sequel. Kaamelott: ''The Second Chapter - Part 1'' was released on Octobre 22, 2025.

Episodes

Format and broadcast

The episode format for Kaamelott was at first very short. Unaired pilot episodes attempted a six-minute format that was rejected by the television network. Broadcast episodes from season 1 to 4 lasted about three and a half minutes, the same as Caméra Café. These seasons are made up of a hundred of these short episodes, and originally seven such seasons were planned by Astier and M6. A season is referred to as a "livre", which means "book", in the promotional material and DVD covers.
The episodes were broadcast on M6 in France starting in 2005 in prime time, two every weeknight evening for seasons 1–4. The week's full ten episodes were aired on the Saturday of that same week. Each such season lasted ten weeks. A week's worth of episodes is about 35 minutes, which is comparable to the American one-hour network format of ca. 44 minutes or to the British half-hour format of 30 minutes. Each episode features a teaser, opening titles, three acts, closing titles and a tag, like an American sitcom episode. Season 1 aired early in 2005, 2 in fall 2005, 3 early in 2006, and 4 in fall 2006.
Each season attracted more viewers, with records reaching about 5 million viewers each evening.
The first half of Season 5 aired in spring 2007 as two 52-minute episodes, followed by 5 weeks of 7-minute episodes presented on the same schedule as the earlier seasons. The second half followed the same format in the fall of 2007.
Season 4 was the first season to have an overall story arc. Whereas in the earlier seasons one could watch the short episodes in any order, in Season 4 more than half the episodes were connected to a plot.
Season 5 has several intertwining plots which are presented chronologically through the whole season. This presented storytelling and editing problems which were incompatible with the old 3½-minute format, and has resulted in at least 3 different versions of Season 5: 3 52-minute episodes as televised, 50 7-minute episodes as televised, 8 52-minutes episodes in the DVD "director's cut." In the interview of the DVD, Alexandre Astier explains that is in the director's cut version that season 5 must be seen.
Season 6 was always, from the time shooting began, conceived of as a series of 40-minute episodes which would be presented as a miniseries, not cut up into shorter episodes.
Around the time that shooting began on Season 6, Astier announced that there would be no Season 7. Season 6 consists of a prequel followed by an episode which is a sequel to Season 5.
Season 6 had a theatrical premiere as part of the "Paris fait sa comédie" festival, with a showing of seven episodes at the Grand Rex theater on March 25, 2009. The Livre was shown on M6 in October and November 2009, as a series of nine 40-minute episodes, three each Saturday night. The ratings for Livre 6 were relatively low, perhaps because the DVD was expected to hit the market almost immediately afterwards.
The series has also been shown on TSR2 in Switzerland, on Club RTL in Belgium and on Historia in Canada.
Astier hopes to follow the television series with a trilogy of films about Arthur. He has said that the last episode of Season 6 prepares the audience for the movie series.

Production

From the beginning, the series was shot in a widescreen format and the photography was comparable to movie quality. Thus in appearance the film is a drama rather than a sitcom.
As the series goes on, there are more and more exteriors. Seasons 1-4 take place almost entirely in or near the fortress of Kaamelott. For the first two seasons, the interiors were shot in Paris, but production moved to Lyon for the third season. The castle exteriors are filmed at Montmelas-Saint-Sorlin a medieval castle near Lyon. Parts of Seasons 5 and 6 were filmed in Brittany, and some of Season 6 was filmed in Rome at the Cinecittà Studios on the sets built for HBO's Rome.
The shooting schedule for 100 episodes was 50 days in the early seasons, expanding later to 60 days; Astier prepares the scenarios for the entire season ahead of time. In order to shoot as economically and quickly as possible, all the scenes using a particular set are shot consecutively. This gives each season an individual texture, since an exterior setting will always have the same weather, more or less, and characters wear the same clothing in a particular setting when it reappears in various episodes. The last 12 episodes of Season 2 were shot at the same time as the Season 3 episodes.
Costuming continuity is achieved in the first seasons simply by having the principal characters dressed the same in nearly every episode. Knights seated at the Round Table wear armor in the first four seasons, and in the first season they also wear armor in battle exteriors. Through the first five seasons, though new costumes are introduced, Karadoc usually wears red, Perceval blue, Lancelot off-white, and Bohort green. Arthur wears blacks with deep reds and purples; Leodagan gray or gray-blue and black.
Astier usually writes the actual dialogue the night before a scene is shot. Thus if a three-minute episode includes an exterior scene, a scene in a bedroom, and a scene in the hallway, the actors would be learning their lines for the episode on three different days.

List of ''Kaamelott'' episodes

Content

The series title refers of course to Arthur's fortress Camelot; the peculiar spelling may come from the Old French Kamaalot, a spelling which can be found in the 13th-century French Lancelot-Grail cyclical romances. The double A forms the monogram of the show's creator, and the title generates puns based on the French word camelote.

Genre

The short format of the first four seasons demanded a comic structure, with each episode ending on an ironic note of some kind which would twist the situation presented into a memorable whole. Thus the series was perceived as pure comedy—parody, satire, sitcom, or “so British,” meaning a straight-faced historical send-up in the style of Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder or Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Astier had a lot of explaining to do when Season 5 turned out to have a very dark plot, full of terrible obsessions and passions. Season 5 also involved a move towards a different format; it was broadcast both in short format and in longer sections, and the DVD cut resembled a dramatic miniseries. Season 6 was conceived and edited only in a miniseries format, with long episodes telling a story that is primarily dramatic, with incidental comic elements.
Fantasy elements have been limited, undoubtedly to some extent by the budget. However, a few episodes suggest the possibility of an intersection of the traditional Arthurian world of fairies and wizards with science fiction.

Historical and traditional content

Although the show was at first perceived as pure comedy, in many ways it follows the medieval Arthurian legends, including such traditional characters as Lancelot, Guenièvre, Bohort, Perceval, Merlin, and the Lady of the Lake, as well as the Holy Grail and the sword Excalibur. The early seasons often include twists on traditional Arthurian or medieval themes which might delight scholars; historians Eric Le Nabour and Martin Aurell have published two books based on the series, and a number of distinguished medievalists are interviewed in the 5-part documentary "Aux sources de Kaamelott" by Christophe Chabert, which accompanies the DVD sets.
Like other 21st-century Arthurian versions such as King Arthur and The Last Legion, this one emphasizes Arthur's ties with Rome and its empire. In Season 1 of Kaamelott, several characters speak of adventures in Rome, but Arthur does not seem to like Roman art, food, etc.; however, in subsequent seasons his Roman connections become important to his character and history. Season 6 tells the story of how Arthur, a policeman in Rome, comes to understand his destiny and take the crown of Britain.
Traditionally Arthurian romance includes fantasy elements, but Astier may intend to connect these eventually to science fiction. He includes references to Stargate and Star Wars. The first episode entitled "Silbury Hill" suggests the operation of spiritual beings everywhere in Britain, but "Silbury Hill II" implies these are extraterrestrials and that this is known to Arthur and Léodagan. In Livre VI, we learn that Perceval was found as a baby in a crop circle, which, if these are made by space travellers from other planets, explains his affinity for stargates. Supernatural beings encountered by Arthur include Morgan Le Fay, Méléagant the emissary of gods who seem to want to destroy human rulers, and his guide the Lady of the Lake; at the beginning of Livre VI.2, a meeting of the gods whom the Lady of the Lake represents is depicted on Alpha Centauri, which implies that they at least are beings whose home is "the stars" rather than on earth. Thus, rather than recording relationships between humans and fairies, Kaamelott seems to posit relationships between Arthur and superior beings from other parts of the universe.
Like all Arthurian stories, Kaamelott twists history as well, and adds its own view of where Arthur came from and what his reign means. Roman Britain had contributed armies, generals, and maybe an emperor to the Roman empire; but in Kaamelott, Britain is an aggregate of kingdoms which perceives Rome as an occupying force and Arthur perhaps as a Pétain for having made peace with the Romans. The enemies of the historical Britons in the 5th century were the Picts to the north, the Irish, and the north-Germanic tribes who had originally been brought in as mercenaries to fight the Picts. Arthur enters history as the victor of twelve battles of the British against the Saxons and is also often depicted fighting the Picts and the Scots in the north. Astier's Arthur, by contrast, apparently stays close to his fortress Kaamelott, where he is attacked by Angles and Saxons but also by Attila and his Hun, Burgundians, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Vikings, Visigoths—just about every "barbarian" people that was on the move in Europe then, except for the Franks, ancestors of the French. The Picts, however, represented by Arthur's mother-in-law Séli, and the Irish, represented by a federated king, are Arthur's allies in Kaamelott. The geopolitics of Kaamelott resembles that of the comic book world of Asterix—a small, primitive "Celtic" society with its druid, warrior, and secret weapon, persisting on the edges of the Roman Empire—more than traditional English or American versions of the Arthur story.