The Middle Ages[1] were not a particularly fun time to be alive. This is the period in European history roughly between the fall of the Western Roman Empire (a.k.a., “Classical Antiquity”) and the Renaissance (a.k.a., the “Modern” era), or c. 500–1500 CE. Most people spent their time just staying alive, which was complicated by the plague,[2] famine[3], floods[4], cold[5], and war[6] — and all of this without indoor plumbing, [7] chimneys,[8] and the Internet.[9]
Despite calls to “Make Europe Great Again” by returning to the simplicity, faith, and community of the Middle Ages[10], no one actually wants to return to real medieval squalor. What is attractive, however, is the highly romanticized (and much cleaner) version of the Middle Ages depicted in popular culture. This is often taken to the absurd in medieval comedies. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) emphasized the muck, deprivations, and fragility of human life in the Middle Ages but still managed to be quite silly about it. Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) goes a different direction, by satirizing the completely sanitized medieval world of earlier films like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.
There’s much to make fun of in the Middle Ages, and much fun has been made. From The Court Jester (1955) we get, “The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.” From Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we learned the important difference between European and African swallows with their respective abilities to carry a coconut (and that bunny rabbits can be quite vicious). While The Princess Bride (1987) taught us the meaning of true love and the important difference between dead and mostly dead.
As with any genre, there are films that set out to be funny and those that get there accidentally. In the uncanny valley between good and so-bad-it’s-good lay the wrecks of many an earnest depiction of knights, and damsels, and druids. We’ll not dwell on those, but we will make mention of “The Top 5 Worst Medieval Movies That Are So Bad, They’re Hilarious” from Medievalists.net. Their list includes:
- In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007)
- Ironclad: Battle for Blood (2014)
- The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)[11]
- Season of the Witch (2011)
- Robin Hood (2018)[12]
So, if you’re into that sort of thing, you might want to check them out.
Our focus here is on the intentionally funny. So, for your amusement, we’ve scoured the world for the silliest trips to medieval times that one can have in the comfort of a well-ventilated living room with central heating and electric lights. This includes 17 movies and nine television series. We’ve only included one Shrek (2001). You’re welcome to continue on with Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), and Shrek Forever After (2010). We also acknowledge that anything based on Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) is going to be a comedy, but A Kid in King Arthur’s Court has to be the silliest, though not necessarily the best, interpretation. You might want to check out A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949) with Bing Crosby, and we highly recommend Bugs Bunny’s turn in A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur’s Court (1978),[13] featuring a cameo by Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood.
Our list, below, includes each work’s EIDR ID, which will take you to the associated EIDR Title record, with additional information about the show and links to third-party Web sites with even more information via the Alternate ID links. Enjoy!
[1] Often divided into the Early (500-1000), High (1000-1300), and Late (1300-1500) Middle Ages or the Dark Ages followed by the still miserable but slightly less dark times of the plague and 100 Years War that rounded out the Middle Ages.
[2] The bubonic plague, more popularly known as the Black Death (1347-1351) killed 20-25 million people, or about 1/3 of the population, with smaller outbreaks following in the 14th and 15th centuries.
[3] Including the Great Famine (1315-1317), which led to widespread starvation and disease.
[4] Especially the St. Lucia’s Flood (1287), caused by a storm surge, which killed 50-80 thousand people in the Netherlands and Northern Germany and permanently altered the coastline.
[5] This was the time of the “Little Ice Age” (c. 1250-1500), which peaked with The Great Medieval Freeze (1315-1322) that killed about 10% of the population.
[6] Particularly the Hundred Years War (1337-1452) between England and France.
[7] While indoor plumbing was invented 2500-3000 BCE in the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, it didn’t catch on in Europe until the 19thand early 20th centuries.
[8] If you didn’t set your house on fire, the smoke from an open fire would fill the house and filter up through a thatched roof, killing off the insects that otherwise would make it their home. So, there’s that.
[9] Officially born on January 1, 1983 when ARPANET (U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) switched to the TCP/IP networking protocol, invented by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn in the 1970s and still used today.
[10] So called, “medievalism” first appeared as a movement in the 14th century, then again during the Romantic Movement of the 18th and 19thcenturies, and can be seen today in the high fantasy of JRR Tolkien, D&D, and the Medieval Times restaurant chain. Renaissance fairs, as the name implies, focus more on the Renaissance that followed the Middle Ages, when life was measurably improved for those with enough money to take advantage of the improved comforts, such as the fork (first popularized in Europe by Catherine de Medici in 1533).
[11] Which I quite enjoyed, but then again, it was the ‘80s.
[12] By all rights, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) should be on this list. The film takes itself very seriously, though Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham does not (viz. “I’m gonna cut your heart out with a spoon!”). The movie loses all credibility when it’s revealed that everyone in Sherwood Forest lives in highly elaborate treehouses. Seriously, treehouses! Not just that, but treehouses with elevators. I mean, why go to all the trouble of building an entire village of interconnected treehouses if you’re not going to install elevators?
[13] This is a 30-minute TV special, so it didn’t make our list of movies and TV series.