Post by jamtomorrow on Jul 20, 2012 4:59:05 GMT -5
OK – just seen some of the best British TV I’ve ever seen, and I need to tell people about it NOW!
I speak of the BBC’s recent “Hollow Crown” mini-series.
It had long been felt that Shakespeare’s plays don’t work on TV. On stage; well, obviously; they were written for the stage. And on film, the director has the opportunity to use massive battle scenes, and CGI special effects, and so bring to physical life that which Shakespeare relied upon his poetry to place in the audience’s imagination.
But television? It’s that “neither here nor there” medium, far too compromised on every side to deliver up true art. This viewpoint re: Shakespeare was hardly dispelled by the BBC’s huge and worthy undertaking, in the 1970s, to produce television versions of all Shakespeare’s plays. The best thing about this series was that it preserved for ever some truly massive Shakespearean performances of the later 20th Century: Michael Horden as Lear and Prospero, Derek Jacobi as Hamlet. The trouble was, that when the BBC went to look for people to do television Shakespeare, they went to theatre people, not television people. The result was that we got stage plays with a camera pointed at them, not television interpretations of the plays. There was two-dimensional scenery that wobbled if a wafting cloak should pass too near, and we got some performances that, I’ve no doubt, would’ve been brilliant if belted out under the proscenium arch, but delivered fifteen inches from the camera lens seemed horribly overcooked.
But in the intervening years we’ve been introduced to the concept of the mini-series, that has done so much to rescue television; with the mini-series, novelistic depth can be brought to plot and character – forget the obligation to wrap up every story thread neatly in forty-five minutes, and forget the necessity of “Previously, on Teletubbies....” At the same time, there’s a tightness and discipline imposed on the mini-series; it can’t just ramble on like an ongoing Soap Opera, nor can it adopt the “we’ll deal with that... later... eventually” approach of something like Lost. And for this reason, I think the BBC just might have hit upon the ideal formula for TV Shakespeare in The Hollow Crown.
It’s a mini-series built around Shakespeare’s slightly less-famous English History cycle (the more famous being the Wars of the Roses), that being Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2 and Henry V. For my money, it’s the better choice of the two cycles. Although the Wars of the Roses focuses on a single, ongoing struggle (whereas the Hollow Crown features Bollingbroke’s overthrow of Richard, the rebellions against Bollingbroke/Henry IV and Henry V’s war in France) and features Richard III, one of the most incredible literary works of all time, Shakespeare wrote the other plays later (although they depict events historically prior to the Wars of The Roses), and in a relatively short space of time, so that they have a good deal of cross-over in terms of characters, storylines, themes and style. In The Hollow Crown, the actors carry over from one play to the next, and the same crew work on them all but there is one director for Richard II, one for Henry IV 1 and 2, and another for Henry V.
Essentially, what I think they’ve done is to ask: what can television do to help in the telling of these stories?, and in so doing they’ve made excellent use of cross-cutting, sometimes splicing together two of Shakespeare’s scenes to provide contrast and illumination. Soliloquy delivered as voiceover can sometimes be terribly cheesy, but here it’s used to very good effect, having characters’ thoughts spoken over scenes that illustrate them, but never in a clumsy or over-literal fashion.
The plays are wonderfully paced, and roll along with a force that’s all their own. In terms of language and dialogue, these are probably the most accessible Shakespeare’s I’ve ever seen, but that’s entirely due to the skill of the actors and the directors, and not at all to any dumbing-down of the works.
There are some outstanding performances on show here. I don’t think I’ve seen a better performance from Jeremy Irons than the one he gives here as Bollingbroke/Henry IV. The way he moves from an ambitious man who will do whatever it takes, to a man who convinces himself that he did what had to be done, to one who is torn apart by guilt and anguish is truly compelling. Tom Hiddleston is great as the Prince who will become King, simultaneously emotionally genuine and always planning three moves ahead; it’s difficult to be calculating, ruthless and a good guy at the same time, but he manages it. And Simon Russell Beale is great as Falstaff. Usually, an actor can either make you like Falstaff or dislike him, and SRB manages to do both. He shows how fearful Falstaff is, and the extent to which his whoring, boozing and merrymaking are desperate distractions from the reckoning that is coming his way, and how his friendship with Hal is the thinnest of lifelines that he has to grasp at, which makes us pity him; at the same time, he shows how utterly selfish Falstaff is, and how he will do anything to gain advantage for himself.
A DVD box set is coming out shortly, and I’d heartily recommend it. Once in a while something comes along to restore your faith in television, and this is one of those.
I speak of the BBC’s recent “Hollow Crown” mini-series.
It had long been felt that Shakespeare’s plays don’t work on TV. On stage; well, obviously; they were written for the stage. And on film, the director has the opportunity to use massive battle scenes, and CGI special effects, and so bring to physical life that which Shakespeare relied upon his poetry to place in the audience’s imagination.
But television? It’s that “neither here nor there” medium, far too compromised on every side to deliver up true art. This viewpoint re: Shakespeare was hardly dispelled by the BBC’s huge and worthy undertaking, in the 1970s, to produce television versions of all Shakespeare’s plays. The best thing about this series was that it preserved for ever some truly massive Shakespearean performances of the later 20th Century: Michael Horden as Lear and Prospero, Derek Jacobi as Hamlet. The trouble was, that when the BBC went to look for people to do television Shakespeare, they went to theatre people, not television people. The result was that we got stage plays with a camera pointed at them, not television interpretations of the plays. There was two-dimensional scenery that wobbled if a wafting cloak should pass too near, and we got some performances that, I’ve no doubt, would’ve been brilliant if belted out under the proscenium arch, but delivered fifteen inches from the camera lens seemed horribly overcooked.
But in the intervening years we’ve been introduced to the concept of the mini-series, that has done so much to rescue television; with the mini-series, novelistic depth can be brought to plot and character – forget the obligation to wrap up every story thread neatly in forty-five minutes, and forget the necessity of “Previously, on Teletubbies....” At the same time, there’s a tightness and discipline imposed on the mini-series; it can’t just ramble on like an ongoing Soap Opera, nor can it adopt the “we’ll deal with that... later... eventually” approach of something like Lost. And for this reason, I think the BBC just might have hit upon the ideal formula for TV Shakespeare in The Hollow Crown.
It’s a mini-series built around Shakespeare’s slightly less-famous English History cycle (the more famous being the Wars of the Roses), that being Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2 and Henry V. For my money, it’s the better choice of the two cycles. Although the Wars of the Roses focuses on a single, ongoing struggle (whereas the Hollow Crown features Bollingbroke’s overthrow of Richard, the rebellions against Bollingbroke/Henry IV and Henry V’s war in France) and features Richard III, one of the most incredible literary works of all time, Shakespeare wrote the other plays later (although they depict events historically prior to the Wars of The Roses), and in a relatively short space of time, so that they have a good deal of cross-over in terms of characters, storylines, themes and style. In The Hollow Crown, the actors carry over from one play to the next, and the same crew work on them all but there is one director for Richard II, one for Henry IV 1 and 2, and another for Henry V.
Essentially, what I think they’ve done is to ask: what can television do to help in the telling of these stories?, and in so doing they’ve made excellent use of cross-cutting, sometimes splicing together two of Shakespeare’s scenes to provide contrast and illumination. Soliloquy delivered as voiceover can sometimes be terribly cheesy, but here it’s used to very good effect, having characters’ thoughts spoken over scenes that illustrate them, but never in a clumsy or over-literal fashion.
The plays are wonderfully paced, and roll along with a force that’s all their own. In terms of language and dialogue, these are probably the most accessible Shakespeare’s I’ve ever seen, but that’s entirely due to the skill of the actors and the directors, and not at all to any dumbing-down of the works.
There are some outstanding performances on show here. I don’t think I’ve seen a better performance from Jeremy Irons than the one he gives here as Bollingbroke/Henry IV. The way he moves from an ambitious man who will do whatever it takes, to a man who convinces himself that he did what had to be done, to one who is torn apart by guilt and anguish is truly compelling. Tom Hiddleston is great as the Prince who will become King, simultaneously emotionally genuine and always planning three moves ahead; it’s difficult to be calculating, ruthless and a good guy at the same time, but he manages it. And Simon Russell Beale is great as Falstaff. Usually, an actor can either make you like Falstaff or dislike him, and SRB manages to do both. He shows how fearful Falstaff is, and the extent to which his whoring, boozing and merrymaking are desperate distractions from the reckoning that is coming his way, and how his friendship with Hal is the thinnest of lifelines that he has to grasp at, which makes us pity him; at the same time, he shows how utterly selfish Falstaff is, and how he will do anything to gain advantage for himself.
A DVD box set is coming out shortly, and I’d heartily recommend it. Once in a while something comes along to restore your faith in television, and this is one of those.