The Three Musketeers (1966 TV series)

The Three Musketeers (1966 TV series) was a BBC historical adventure television series based on the novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. It ran for ten episodes, airing on BBC One in 1966-1967.

The series starred Jeremy Brett as D'Artagnan, with Philip Franks as Athos, Peter Jeffrey as Porthos, and John Woodnutt as Aramis. James Bree portrayed Cardinal Richelieu, and Brian Blessed played the character of Porthos in the later episodes.

The adaptation closely followed the plot of the Dumas novel, depicting the swashbuckling adventures of the young D'Artagnan as he joins the King's Musketeers and becomes embroiled in court intrigues and conspiracies involving Cardinal Richelieu and Milady de Winter.

While considered a relatively faithful adaptation for its time, the series is now largely remembered for its production values, considered somewhat low by modern standards, and for its cast, which included several actors who would later achieve considerable fame. No complete surviving copies of the series exist in the BBC archives; only certain episodes or fragments are known to have been preserved. This contributes to the series being relatively obscure compared to other adaptations of The Three Musketeers.