Galavant is seeking an army to help him reunite with Isabella, while Richard is seeking a new direction in life as he comes to terms with the fact that he doesn’t know how to do anything except be a king, something that nobody really wants him to do anymore. It’s in that surprise second season that Richard truly comes into his own, as the show sends him off with Galavant on a combination odd couple/buddy comedy/road trip style adventure.
Yes, that IS Hugh Bonneville near the peak of Downton Abbey’s popularity (ABC/Screenshot) We get glimpses into his inner thoughts and insecurities throughout Season 1, but he still remains in a mostly villainous (or at least villainous adjacent) role until he is unceremoniously overthrown by Madalena and his long-suffering bodyguard Gareth and exiled out to sea along with Galavant. When we first meet him he seems like a fairy tale cliche, your typical malevolent ruler with hobbies like raising taxes and tormenting the poor. Princess Isabella is an entirely different kind of princess, more than willing to take things into her own hands when needs be and having her own agenda beyond just looking pretty and aiding our hero.īut no one winds up defying our expectations more than Timothy Omundson’s King Richard.
#GALAVANT RICHARD AND TAD COOPER SKIN#
Madalena, Galavant’s one-time true love, might have long legs and perfect skin but she is no fair maiden. Galavant certainly looks and (mostly) acts the part of heroic knight-in-shining-armor: handsome, chivalrous, tough-plus every other manly value, but he’s got more than his fair share of ego and moments of being…well, a jackass in a can. (Side note: Rutger Hauer? Good god, you could cast Rutger Hauer as a cheese sandwich and he would probably turn in an Oscar-worthy performance.)Įven our cast of characters all start out as ones that feel familiar to anyone who has watched or read any fantasy…anything, only to quickly reveal that nobody is quite who you’d expect them to be. The ever-typical “Enchanted Forest” turning out to be a gay pub run by the ever fabulous Kylie Minogue in one of Galavant’s many exquisite cameos? Check. Crashing the wedding of the king who has kidnapped Galavant’s “one true love,” only for said “true love” to declare that, actually, she’d rather prefer the luxurious life of a queen? Check. A band of fearsome pirates who’ve become landlocked and taken to guarding a nearby river? Check.
Galavant certainly takes us off on a hero’s journey, out where adventure lies, but the places that journey takes us and the people we meet there are never quite where or who we’d expect. Galavant is one of those shows that manages to be both an excellent addition to a genre and a brilliant satire of that same genre-think Screamor Black Dynamite or, yes, The Princess Bride. Way back in days of old-well, way back in the days of 2015 which…good lord is very close to being ten years ago-our screens were graced by two seasons of a goofy yet glorious musical fantasy, an upside-down fairy tale that answers the question of what it might look like if The Princess Bride, Monty Python & The Holy Grail, and any number of Renaissance-era Disney films were to engage in a wild night of passion. But the audience that did find the show-that niche of twenty-to-thirty-somethings who still unabashedly love Disney films and musicals alike-has never quite let it go.Īs one of the show’s many, many, many absurdly catchy musical numbers goes (see if you can find all the lines I’ve, ahem, appropriated!), there was no hero quite like Galavant, and indeed there was no show quite like Galavant. Starting life as a mid-season replacement for Once Upon A Time, with a first season of eight episodes compressed into just four weeks, the show was doomed to never find the ratings or the audience it deserved. Yes, it only lasted for two seasons, but even that was much longer than most people expected it would, least of all the show’s own cast and crew (it happened to be a favorite of Paul Lee, then President of ABC). Galavant is an interesting show to put under the Cancelled Too Soon category, if I may be completely honest. If only you had come out a few years later, you probably would have lived a long and healthy life on one of any number of streaming services (rather than, as you so eloquently put it, some cheap-a** cable network) instead of simply finding a second one there, fueled by the ever-popular formula of “hey this reminds me of the things I loved as a kid in the ’90s and/or early 2000s!” You indeed had your glorious, all-too-brief moment in the sun, but as is so often the case with that which shines brightly, you burned out all too soon.
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