TV Shakespeare

[french frank]

Details have now been published about BBC Two's Shakespeare Season for 2012:

Richard II (Ben Whishaw)
Henry IV Pt 1 (Jeremy Irons)
Henry IV Pt 2
Henry V (Tom Hiddlestone)

[I feel a 'Hurrah for the Olympics' coming on ...]

[aeolium]

Looks good, ff - especially RII, one of my favourites of the plays.

It'd be much easier to read the press release if they didn't include the actors' other TV claims to fame in parentheses (and I think the actors might feel it was unflattering that they had to be referred to).

I don't think it'll make me raise a 'Hurrah for the Olympics' though - it's only what the Beeb should be doing anyway, and used to do without the excuse of the Olympics in the past.

[Nick Armstrong]

Great news, but I completely agree with aeolium that

it's only what the Beeb should be doing anyway

as opposed to sending Simon Russell Beale to Paris to be seen walking though the barriers at Bastille metro station to illustrate a reference to revolutionary France (and countless similar instances)

[amateur51]

Looks good, ff - especially RII, one of my favourites of the plays.

It'd be much easier to read the press release if they didn't include the actors' other TV claims to fame in parentheses (and I think the actors might feel it was unflattering that they had to be referred to).

I don't think it'll make me raise a 'Hurrah for the Olympics' though - it's only what the Beeb should be doing anyway, and used to do without the excuse of the Olympics in the past.

I completely agree aeolium esp the bit about the actors' other claims to fame (). If the Olympix is what it takes I guess I'm grateful but it does seem to have been such a long time a-coming.

[PatrickOD]

Time enough then to get out the Plays and do a bit of homework. It's a long long time since I read them, and 'did' two of them at school, and I don't believe I ever got to see any of them. My one abiding memory of Shakespeare in my home town is of the spontaneous applause by the audience after the FILM of Richard III!

[MrGongGong]

Time for the BBC to wheel out Lenny Henry again (its been a month so long overdue !) to tell us all how he used to not like Shakespeare but has become converted etc etc etc etc
and how great it all is ,,,,,,,, if only teachers would blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Panjandrum]

Extremely lazy programming. Has no-one at the BBC ever read The White Devil; Volpone; Dr Faustus; or The Changeling? Rhetorical.

[french frank]

Has no-one at the BBC ever read The White Devil; Volpone; Dr Faustus; or The Changeling? Rhetorical.

Of course they have, Panjandrum - it's the ordinary people who have only heard of Shakespeare ...

The press releases always include the 'also starred in' details for the benefit of the press to give them something to pad out their stories with. What really riles me is when they include it in the online Drama on 3 details. Lazy and irrelevant.

Richard II also one of my favourites - don't know much about the Henry IVs. I wonder whether a television 'film' is more expensive than a television 'play'.

[Panjandrum]

Of course they have, Panjandrum - it's the ordinary people who have only heard of Shakespeare ...

Yes, but Joe Public is not going to be watching, I'll wager you.

It's basically the equivalent of Radio 3 only playing Beethoven. Can you tell me when was the last time any dramatist before the 20th century was performed on television other than the bard? Can you remember any productions of Shaw, Jonson, Middleton, Marlowe et al? These are hardly negligible playwrights: indeed, Dr Faustus exerted at least as large an influence on mainstream european literature as any work of Shakespeare over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries.

How much more enterprising a series putting Shakespeare into context alongside his contemporaries would have been.

[aeolium]

I don't think it's lazy programming - lazy programming is what you have now, which is no classic drama at all, Shakespeare or otherwise. IIRC there have been productions of Marlowe and Shaw on TV in recent years (Shaw perhaps as recently as last year). To expect a flood of Elizabethan and Jacobean TV drama productions to appear in the desert that is BBC TV's arts scheduling is to stretch expectation too far.

Anyway, 'lazy programming' which gives us a production of Richard II is OK in my book.

[Nick Armstrong]

Extremely lazy programming. Has no-one at the BBC ever read The White Devil; Volpone; Dr Faustus; or The Changeling? Rhetorical.

"Oh my dears how frightfully passé that Shakespeare fellow is... "

Come off it, Panny!

[amateur51]

Extremely lazy programming. Has no-one at the BBC ever read The White Devil; Volpone; Dr Faustus; or The Changeling? Rhetorical.

Sure there are other projects that the BBC might have undertaken but this one is fine by me. A judgement of the quality of the output will have to await the viewing thereof but 10/10 for the endeavour

[agingjb]

Er. "Age of Kings", "Wars of the Roses", "The BBC Shakespeare", single productions of Richard II with Mark Rylance, Fiona Shaw,...

I'd argue that yes, these plays should be produced by the BBC as frequently as they are, but isn't it possible to suggest without attracting scorn that the BBC should be showing all of Shakespeare and many other plays just as often?

[aeolium]

Er. "Age of Kings", "Wars of the Roses", "The BBC Shakespeare", single productions of Richard II with Mark Rylance, Fiona Shaw,...

I'd argue that yes, these plays should be produced by the BBC as frequently as they are, but isn't it possible to suggest without attracting scorn that the BBC should be showing all of Shakespeare and many other plays just as often?

But, JB, 'as frequently as they are' nowadays means very infrequently indeed. The four that are being produced for next year are to tie in with the 'cultural Olympics'. The productions you mention were shown in some cases decades ago - the BBC Shakespeare for instance was started in the 1970s. Even the Shaw Richard II (which I saw at the National) was shown 14 years ago. Of course I agree with you that we should have these plays on much more frequently (and other classic drama - the Oedipus plays were wonderfully done on TV in the 1980s), but at present it's hard to see that happening.

[french frank]

How much more enterprising a series putting Shakespeare into context alongside his contemporaries would have been.

It's not that I don't agree with one side of what you say - why not more classic *drama* (i.e. NOT just another Austen or Dickens adaptation) on television? Kevin Spacey wrote to the BBC a few years ago (unfortunately, I think he got tied up with the wrong issue), saying that the BBC should do more to create a theatre-going public by putting on (more) serious plays. 'Drama' for the BBC means Casualty and EastEnders.

I think Shakespeare has been chosen because he is seen, not merely by the British public (I was being ironic in my use of the phrase 'ordinary people' which just meant 'not BBC people'), but by the world as the acme of British culture and therefore the 'obvious' choice for Olympic Kulcher Year. Without the Olympics we wouldn't be getting anything at all.