THINK "WHEN THINGS WERE ROTTEN," BUT FUNNY:

"Galavant" might be the closest thing we'll get to a naughty Disney musical.

The new half-hour comedy airs on Disney-owned ABC and comes from the writing and music team behind the animated Disney film "Tangled." It also presents a Magic Kingdom's worth of fairy-tale clichés--questing knight, fair maiden, villainous king--but spoofs them all with daffy song-and-dance numbers, winking references and bawdy jokes.

"Yes, he loved her to excess, thrice daily more or less," sings the narrator as he introduces Galavant ( Joshua Sasse ) and his beloved Madalena ( Mallory Jansen ), who breaks type by snubbing self-centered Galavant for the rich yet emotionally needy King Richard ( Timothy Omundson ).

From "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" to "Shrek," comedies set in medieval milieus are by now a genre unto themselves. But "Galavant" uses that setting to create a rarer thing: a broadcast series that diverges from the sacred sitcom touchstones of work, relationships and family. The fact that it's also a musical, with a klezmer bit ("Oy, What a Knight") and hooded executioners singing "dance, dance, dance until you die," makes "Galavant" one of the oddest network shows, comedy or otherwise, in some time.

Follow @brothersjudd