BBC Shakespeare: The Hollow Crown, BBC2 / BBC HD

[Nick Armstrong]

Oh I shall be opining, never fear... No time just yet, what with one thing and another and all this fine weather. Back later.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I thoroughly enjoyed it! Hal's rather scary making the sign of the cross; his self-doubt (of course he looked "out of his depth"!); the execution of the prisoners; his flirting with Katherine were all done well. The melded transition into the Crispen's Day speech a touch of genius as was the "origin" of the Chorus (spoiler removed for those who haven't seen it) and the connection between opening and end of the production - an excellent Telly correspondence to the Theatrical structuring of the Play; and the comedy of Katherine's learning English was spot on. And what a supporting cast: Anton Lesser, Richard Griffiths, Jeremie Covillault, Owen Teale - wonderful. And the perfectly judged accumulating pace of the production had the hairs on the back of my neck writhing! And Falstaff's death had exactly the right combination of pathos and humour - as did Mistress Quickly's farewell to her husband and the other "volunteers". And the sight of Bardolph's corpse on the gibbet - and Hal's responses to the sight, and the boy's response to Hal's response ...

Yes, as always, the "editing" of the Text was infuriating and unnecessary and damaging, curse them! But I disagree strongly with DracoM's "dreadful".

[gurnemanz]

Agreed. And missing out most of the opening speech of KHIV Part I:

So shaken as we are, so wan with care
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant
And breathe short winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in strands afar remote..

which sets up the whole atmosphere of Henry IV's disfunctional court, was also a weird, weird decision that I've found it very difficult to forgive them for.
Hiddlestone was good as Hal, though.

In R2 they also missed out one my favourite bits - the gardener's apricocks metaphor:

Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks,
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight:
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
Go thou, and like an executioner,
Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays,
That look too lofty in our commonwealth:
All must be even in our government.
You thus employ'd, I will go root away
The noisome weeds, which without profit suck
The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.

[Northender]

The lady wife and I are, I must confess, starting to get quite excited about Friday evening - we shall be glued (as they say) to the telly with the answerphone switched on. (I am, of course, referring to the first part of 'The Hollow Crown'). We shall watch the remaining three parts over the ensuing 15 days or so.

[DracoM]

I thoroughly enjoyed it! Hal's rather scary making the sign of the cross; his self-doubt (of course he looked "out of his depth"!); the execution of the prisoners; his flirting with Katherine were all done well. The melded transition into the Crispen's Day speech a touch of genius as was the "origin" of the Chorus (spoiler removed for those who haven't seen it) and the connection between opening and end of the production - an excellent Telly correspondence to the Theatrical structuring of the Play; and the comedy of Katherine's learning English was spot on. And what a supporting cast: Anton Lesser, Richard Griffiths, Jeremie Covillault, Owen Teale - wonderful. And the perfectly judged accumulating pace of the production had the hairs on the back of my neck writhing! And Falstaff's death had exactly the right combination of pathos and humour - as did Mistress Quickly's farewell to her husband and the other "volunteers". And the sight of Bardolph's corpse on the gibbet - and Hal's responses to the sight, and the boy's response to Hal's response ...

Yes, as always, the "editing" of the Text was infuriating and unnecessary and damaging, curse them! But I disagree strongly with DracoM's "dreadful".

But the pace did NOT 'accumulate'.

On the contrary, the tempi of shooting in the last 20 minutes or so slowed to sleepwalking pace, with long, long lingering shots of waste on the battlefield [ which incidentally renders the reading of the massively massaged lists of dead and wounded even more epically silly and comic than on the page], glum faces, and endless bits of H5 on his knees and / or almost in tears, making sure by such sledgehammer editing that we didn't miss the DIRECTOR'S take on it all, namely that war is not very nice. Gosh, never thought of that - thank you director for pointing it out.

And while on the subject, the one truly, truly shocking event reported in the PLAY but totally omitted in the TV version is the sneaky destruction by the French of the English baggage train and the 'boys' guarding it. Now if the TV version wanted to show the spur for H5's 'anger' and explain his order to kill the prisoners, surely that atrocity was exactly the way to do it? A made-for-TV event? Baffling cut by director/editor. It is an event that unites all the squabbling UK factions within H5's army and shows the audience why such an extremity drove this 'mirror of all Christian kings' to order the death of the French prisoners.

I do not see why so little was made of such a major moral issue as that and why so MUCH was made of the Bardolph, Nym, Pistol stuff, yet left out ALL the Boy's acid commentary on that gang's shabby activities. Shak uses the BOY regularly and tellingly as a direct counterpoint to the Chorus's narrative jingiostic glorification, a dialectic you lose if you give that Boy nothing to say as in the TV version. The Boy is also involved in the splendid Pistol with French prisoner semi-comic scene, does all the translations for Pistol [ thus showing him better educated than the King ] and THEN comments on what he has seen. I know it seems odd for me to complain about the Boy's cutting from the TV version, but the more you examine his words / actions, the more you realise how subtle is his role, and how crucial. The TV Boy hardly had a word, yet in the play his cheerily unfazed cynicism / choric commentary more exactly match how Brits customarily face disaster and amazing events, very close to mordant trench humour of 1st WW, and does it more analytically than almost anyone else in the play, and is certainly closer to our own day's take on public events. Sad loss.

Shakespeare does not end the play as the TV play did with misery, a funeral, and sombre music. The mention of H6 and the mess is a mere three line footnote in the final Chorus - as befits a rank propaganda piece. The Shak play ends much more sunnily than the TV version: the huge Act 5 speech by Burgundy is a long counter-weight to what we have seen of war, and a plea by Shakespeare for a return to order, there are blessedly successful negotiations hinted at, there is the huge and very funny flirtation scene, followed directly by a scene of formal elaborate peace-making to close Act 5. I can understand why the huge tiresome tracts of inter-UK rivalry /humour / mucking about were taken out, but to end the TV version so bleakly runs counter to the entire thrust of the Shakespeare play.

So, sorry, but I'm no retreating on this: it was a poorly edited and scarcely credible version of the original Shakespeare, and despite the abundant talent on view, at its heart a take on the4play that left poor Tom Hiddleston with an unsurmountable problem of acting, which IMO he did not manage to unravel.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Oh no; I didn't post in expectation of your "retreating", DracoM: merely to point out the features that I found raised it well above the "dreadful" with which you ended your post. I didn't find the production to be "definitive", but there was so much about it that I thoroughly enjoyed - including the sombre ending - that I do not recognise "dreadful" (or "poorly edited and scarcely credible" for that matter) as a fair description.

[eighthobstruction]

The real life of H5 far far more interesting than the H4/H5 plays....which are of course historically totally inaccurate [totally],
and hence the play starting with the death of H5 (with a seemingly devoted wife) was inept. They were married less than 2 years I believe (during which H5 was mostly at war, and never saw H6)....H5 had been in battles since the age of 16....took a arrow in the face in the battle of Shrewsbury and was scarred....his treatment of prisoners at both Agincourt and Rouen was contentuous....thus the marriage to catherine was tense....blaa blaa....

I thought Hiddlestone did well in H5, though I didn't believe him in H4....Richard Griffiths was a disconnected joke, no Shakespearian flavour at all....Paterson Joseph as York not convincing and a bizarre choice....if it was to be a multiracial cast, well ok, then there should have been a far more mixed colour cast. Joseph on his own looked odd.

Enjoyed H5....agree with Draco M ref the boys turn from Falstaffs crew....

[Nick Armstrong]

I think I stand somewhere between Draco and Ferney on this, and I suspect I have considerably less knowledge of the original play than either.

I'm reasonably comfortable judging a version cut and adapted for television on its own merits, but I find Draco's comments about the role of the boy intriguing. I want to get back to the original and track what you mean, Draco. However, like ferney I enjoyed the little 'coup de théâtre' at the end which made sense of the boy's rôle in this production. Like Draco, until the end I wondered what on earth they were doing, leading with the funeral accompanying the Chorus's prologue.

There were other things to enjoy - details which raised it above the 'dreadful', often concerning Hiddleston's portrayal which I thought was compelling. I loved little touches like the little narrowing of his eyes to his Uncle just before letting the Montjoy in for the first time...

But overall I don't think it held together, and some performances were disappointing - Julie Walters let the lines about Falstaff's death go for naught, the ineffable Richard Griffiths was WRONG as the Duke... And John Hurt's voiceover was pretty awful too: artsy actory but failing to convey the sense. I replayed the last few lines several times - he drained them of sense, for me. Plus I agree with 8thO about having a black Duke of York - for all the rationalising, when you're going for a naturalistic, realistic historic look, that's just daft I'm afraid and destroys my ability to suspend disbelief (however good the actor, which he is - very).

And... and... and... ABOVE ALL the whole thing was spoilt irremediably for me by the WRETCHED MUSIC!! That solo trumpet on a bed of strings with drum taps was such a cliché'd reproduction of any number of Hollywood sentimental-patriotic Civil War etc movies... war cemeteries, stars'n'stripes being folded into triangles by white gloved marines... the idiom was so American, it had me thinking - like Draco - that this was the Bard designer-scored for the US market.

The music is so important, in any film. Had there been a sensible score, giving more impetus and more idiomatic flavour, I suspect the whole experience would have been transformed for me.

[JimD]

The music is so important, in any film.

This has probably been addressed elsewhere, but I would like to add that I was somewhat sceptical about the use of music in the previous 'plays'. The point is amplified for me by the above quotation. This production is filmic for a number of reasons, not least the 'score'. But does a Shakespearean play need/benefit from/justify music, other than when it fits the dramatic situation? Perhaps I am being overly ascetic, but I would like to think that the answer is 'no'. And were these productions meant to be 'films'? One of the intriguing aspects of the Olivier film is the way it plays with and comments on the film/theatre tension, in the way strangely invited by the Chorus. Apologies for running two issues together. I write having recorded but not yet had a chance to watch the Henry V.

[vinteuil]

I enjoyed Richard II - I liked it a lot.

Henry IV pt one - I gave up after twenty minutes.
Henry IV pt two - I gave up after ten minutes.

Henry V - I gave up after five minutes.

Sorry. I'm sure it says more about my 'difficulties' with

a) theatre
b) Shakespeare
c) televised theatre
d) televised Shakespeare

- than any intrinsic defects or demerits in these productions.

[Northender]

I enjoyed Richard II - I liked it a lot.

Henry IV pt one - I gave up after twenty minutes.
Henry IV pt two - I gave up after ten minutes.

Henry V - I gave up after five minutes.

Sorry. I'm sure it says more about my 'difficulties' with

a) theatre
b) Shakespeare
c) televised theatre
d) televised Shakespeare

- than any defects or demerits in these productions.

At that rate, according to my calculations, you'd give up on 'The Tempest' some 4 hours and 50 minutes before it began.

[vinteuil]

At that rate, according to my calculations, you'd give up on 'The Tempest' some 4 hours and 50 minutes before it began.

... I like your calculating mind, sir!

[DracoM]

Totally agree that Griffiths as Burgundy was laughable - all that gurning face and crushing of the text. He has a critical role in banging heads together, and giving lessons to both kings and here he was just an R101 sized irrelevance.

Seen Paterson Joseph a lot on stage and screen and he's very good indeed, but even he must have been embarrassed by his York, and baffled by his choice as actor for it. Was not York a deal younger than H5, but our PJ looked at least a decade older.

No, for me, Jeremy Irons particularly and latterly Anton Lesser stood out head and shoulders, the first outstanding IMV as H4, and the latter as a peerless verse speaker - less is more - in H5. Julie Walters and usually excellent Maxine Peake were given almost nothing to do, but anyway were far better in the H4 plays, and again, I totally agree that Julie Walters was given no chance to deliver the panegyric on Falstaff at all. And as said above, the music was simply cringeworthy, predictable and utterly wrong for this production.

[DracoM]

Have to say that I am just a little bit surprised that so few people have commented on what is after all the major BBC cultural initiative of The Hollow Crown.

[Anna]

Have to say that I am just a little bit surprised that so few people have commented on what is after all the major BBC cultural initiative of The Hollow Crown.

Maybe cos it was made for the American market, dvd sales?