TV Rewind: We Weren’t Ready for the Greatness of ABC’s Musical Fairytale Galavant

If you’re wondering how Galavant ever even managed to get made in the first place, I have no answers for you, because this is precisely the sort of show that mainstream television networks rarely if ever greenlight, let alone allow to exist for two entire seasons. A weird, charming mash-up of fantasy tropes and musical theater Easter eggs (a Season 2 number blatantly rips off Les Misérables’ “Do You Hear the People Sing?” with hilarious results), Galavant was a show as willing to confront the socio-economic issues both genres often ignore as it was to deconstruct the entire concept of the fairytale romance. There was certainly nothing else like it on the air at the time, and there’s been little since that can match its unique combination of heartfelt emotion and sly irreverence. (Though I’d argue that Apple TV+’s genre-bending Dickinson comes close.)

In pop culture, as is true so often in life, it’s surprisingly difficult to go first, to be the one that pushes boundaries or breaks established norms. And while it’s not all that uncommon to see television series incorporate singing, dancing, or complex group musical numbers nowadays, that certainly wasn’t the case even just a few short years ago. (Particularly when the meteoric rise—and subsequent flaming dumpster fire death spiral—of the FOX drama Glee was so fresh in everyone’s memories. Cautionary tales exist for a reason, after all.)

No one who wasn’t a television critic watched The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. (Sniff.) Everyone will tell you now how much they loved NBC’s bonkers Broadway drama Smash, but few people actually paid any attention to it when it was on the air. Shows like Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Julie and the Phantoms, and Schmigadoon didn’t exist yet. And any show that featured one-off musical interludes tended to lean more toward a Very Special Episode vibe, rather than the over-the-top (and extremely promotable) ridiculousness that ensues now when the kids from Riverdale perform Hedwig and the Angry Inch or Carrie.

Pop culture’s entire attitude toward this kind of content has dramatically shifted in an extremely short time frame, thanks in part to the rise of streaming services looking for precisely this sort of buzzy, offbeat content capable of breaking through a crowded media landscape. And while this sea change is entirely welcome, it’s hard not to wonder what might have been had Galavant premiered just a few years later. Granted, it still probably never would have been a major hit; Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist was one of the best shows I watched this year and NBC still canceled it anyway. Heck, even Galavant itself was painfully self-aware about the long odds its very existence faced: Its Season 2 premiere, after all, was titled “A New Season (Suck It, Cancellation Bear).” But it’s still nice to dream.

For whatever reason, in the world of so-called Prestige TV, there’s this bizarre insistence that whatever we’re watching must have some sort of deeper meaning or be fully serious 100% of the time. It’s rare to find a program that is simply content to be fun, focused on providing joy and laughter rather than making a thesis statement about the human condition. Galavant was that show, and perhaps that’s the most fantastical thing about its existence—that we got the chance to watch it at all.

Watch on Disney+

Lacy Baugher Milas is a digital producer by day, but a television enthusiast pretty much all the time. Her writing has been featured in Collider, IGN, Screenrant, The Baltimore Sun and others. Literally always looking for someone to yell about Doctor Who and/or CW superhero properties with, you can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.

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