French ‘Zorro’ is a delightful farce

[‘Zorro,’ from E1] markable facility for parkour before anyone thought to call it that.

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It was remade in 1940 with Tyrone Power; later, comic-book canon made it the film the family was leaving the night Bruce Wayne's family was killed; in any case, there’s a whole lot of Zorro in Batman). Antonio Banderas played the character twice, in “The Mask of Zorro” (1998) and “The Legend of Zorro” (2005).

Most significant, in the late 1950s, it became the basis of a Disney-produced TV series, starring Guy Williams, who is Zorro, I'd imagine, to most people, here and abroad. It has had a long, international afterlife; you can watch it now on Disney+. (France has local history with the character, Alain Delon having played him in the 1975 “Zorro.”) It might not have been the most consistently exploited IP over the last century, but who doesn’t know Zorro? Hands? Just as I thought.

The new “Zorro,” which arrived Tuesday on MHz Choice some two years after its European debut, is a thoroughly original and quite wonderful take on the material; it’s one of my favorite new shows this year, possibly the one that made me happiest. Starring Jean Dujardin, whom American audiences will know as the star of the 2011 silent film “The Artist,” which won him an Oscar for lead actor, it’s thoroughly a comedy without being a spoof — it isn’t “Zorro, the Gay Blade.” (Though, to be fair, most Zorro films, going back to Fairbanks, have comedy in them.)