About

Kaamelott is a French fantasy tv series that ran from 2005 to 2009, spawned comic books, a movie trilogy in the making as well as a cult following among French netizens and it helped launch the career of Alexandre Astier as stand-up comedian, director, actor and composer.

History

Kaamelott is a tv series created by Alexandre Astier, that is composed of short episodes (from 3 minutes to about 7 minutes for the latter seasons except the 6th season) that were broadcast on M6 tv channel on prime time from January 2005 to October 2009, for a total of 6 seasons. This short format was inspired by another popular French tv show from the same channel, Caméra Café, which was a sitcom about employees in an office space filmed from the point of views of a coffee machine during coffee breaks.
The plot centers upon King Arthur (Alexandre Astier) and his assembly of incompetent but loyal knights in his fortress of Camelot, experiencing everyday life and epic adventures during the fall of the Roman Empire, the Barbarian invasion and the quest for the Holy Grail. The show loosely follows the traditional medieval tales of the Arthurian mythology and the Round Table with modern humor and dialogue.
While the first seasons were about individual humoristic episodes that didn't follow any order, a more dramatic story was introduced starting in season 4 featuring a more serious tone in the conflict between King Arthur and Lancelot, his resignation as a king and how chaos ensued. The sixth season broke with the usual format by introducing a miniseries of 40-minute long episodes acting as a prequel to the original series.

Cult following

An archived news article from 2005^[1] about the series accounted for its immediate popularity among the public, stating that more than 3.9 million viewers were already enjoying the first season every evening, surpassing Caméra Café in views. According to the Wikipedia article on the show, it attracted more viewer each season, reaching a record of 5 million views for some episodes^[2].
This increasing popularity translated into the creation of many fan-made websites and forums^[3][4], especially for creating fanfictions and art. Another fan website was also made as a wide encyclopedia on the show^[5].
In addition to the tv series, an ongoing series of comic books were issued starting in 2006 and, as of December 2014, are composed of 7 chapters^[6].
With initial tv series ending in 2009, Alexandre Astier stated that he wanted to make a full feature film as a sequel. In a article from French news site 20 minutes released on October 20th 2014, it is learnt that it is going to be a trilogy and that he is still negociating to start shooting^[7].

Fan Arts

Memes

C'est pas faux

C'est pas faux (roughly meaning You have a point in English) is a catchphrase meant as a filler retort when replying to someone. While already existing as an idiom in French, the series popularized it through character Perceval who is presented as a not-really-bright illiterate, in episode 28th from the first season, aired on January 20th 2005 (an extract from it is shown below).

Perceval learnt the catchphrase from another not-very-smart character on the show, Karadoc, as a way of replying to someone who talked to him using complex words without making a fool out of himself. The entire episode shows him comically trying to use it when speaking with various other characters.
The French internet quickly embraced it as a catchphrase.

External References