Galavant, the new half-hour musical comedy debuting on ABC this Sunday, brings screenwriter Dan Fogelman (Cars) together with legendary composer Alan Menken (Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast) and lyricist Glenn Slater (Tangled). The series, airing in back-to-back episodes for four weeks, stars Joshua Sasse (Rogue) as Galavant, the dashing hero on a quest to take back the love of his life, Madalena (Mallory Jansen), from the evil King Richard (Timothy Omundson). The following are reviews from TV critics around the web, compiled by B&C.
“But with such a brief first season, and one seemingly set up to fail with its scheduling, it's hard to imagine Fogelman and company getting to make enough episodes to work out the kinks.”
—Alan Sepinwall, HitFix
“Galavant’s focus on lighthearted quips and banter over character growth or introspection keeps it from packing the punch of its more emotionally driven precursors, but its sincere embrace of musical-theater tropes and unabashed silliness are likely to win the show a loyal fan base nonetheless.”
—Kate Kulzick,A.V. Club
“Galavant largely overcomes the challenges that have traditionally bedeviled TV musicals with rambunctious energy, cheeky lyrics and music, and — significantly — a half-hour format, thus condensing the need to create songs into a manageable task.”
—Brian Lowry, Variety
“And as hard as everyone may be trying, nothing about Galavant (Sunday, 8 ET/PT, * * out of four) is quite as good as it needs to be — or nearly as good as the multiple spoofs it seems to be copying, in part because it never seems to be quite sure about what exactly it's spoofing.”
—Robert Bianco, USA Today
“If you are looking for something strange and new to watch, there is no better candidate than Galavant, the fairy tale musical comedy beginning this Sunday on ABC. This is, without question, the oddest show to arrive on television in quite some time.”
—Willa Paskin, Slate
“Many of the performances are top notch, and Omundson is even better than that, creating a perfectly credible and delectable mix of childishness and unrepentant evil in Richard’s character.”
—David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle
“I admire Galavant’s gutsiness, and after slogging through so many cop shows and misery shows and kid-murder, rainstorm, sad-face miniseries, it's a huge relief to watch something smart and silly and fun. ‘Not a failure’ sounds like faint praise, but given how big a risk the show took by merely existing, it's a shock to me that it works as well as it does. It just doesn't work completely.”
—Margaret Lyons, Vulture
