The BBC Television Shakespeare Collection [DVD]
Category: DVD, TV series
Product description
![The BBC Television Shakespeare Collection [DVD]](/img/bbc-tv-shakespeare.jpg)
The roll call of actors who appeared in the series is mind-blowing and includes some of the most prominent performers of stage and screen of the time, often with some very unlikely casting choices. Esteemed classical actors such as Derek Jacobi, John Gielgud, Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart, Frank Middlemass and Richard Griffiths are joined by stars better known for their film and television work - Charles Gray, Bob Hoskins, John Cleese, Felicity Kendal, Nigel Hawthorne and Anthony Hopkins - the aim being to widen the appeal of Shakespeare's plays for a mass television audience.
Product review
When the series first began airing (on BBC2) in the late 1970s, the BBC's
televised Shakespeare plays were much criticised for their substantial budget.
For an organisation that was considered elitest and out-of-touch, this looked
like a vanity project, and some poor reviews and often dismal ratings did
nothing to dissuade the BBC from completing the project (although the production
budget noticeably declined in later years). Today, the series is widely
regarded as one of the best things the BBC ever made and it is a pretty unique
achievement - to dramatise every one of Shakespeare's plays (or at least
the ones where the Bard's authorship is not contested) within such a short
period of time, achieving a fairly uniform standard of quality whilst sticking
pretty rigorously to the text.
The series' main strength is the calibre of actors that it attracted throughout its seven-series run, which achieved an equitable mix of established stage actors of the old school and performers better known for their work on film and television. There are some bizarre (yet inspired) casting choices - notably Roger Daltrey in a dual role in The Comedy of Errors and Rikki Fulton as Autolycus in The Winter's Tale - but more often than not the eccentric casting works and brings a freshness to some familiar plays.
John Cleese makes an excellent Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, and Felicity Kendal (star of the sitcom The Good Life) is so at home in the role of Viola in Twelfth Night you'd almost think the part had been written for her. Anthony Hopkins and Bob Hoskins are incredibly well-matched as the Moor and Iago respectively in Othello, and Robert Lindsay's Iachimo is a superb complement to Helen Mirren's Imogen in Cymbeline, a stunning production of one of the less well-regarded Shakespearean plays.
The style of production varies somewhat according to the director, with Jonathan Miller and Elijah Moshinsky bringing a more artistic flair to their work than Jane Howell and David Giles, who generally have a harder job transporting us away from the crushing confines of the television studio. Miller was also a producer on the series and his visualisations are some of the most striking, taking their influence from classic paintings of the 16th and 17th century. The most stylish plays in the series include Miller's Timon of Athens and Moshinsky's All's Well That Ends Well, and the historical plays deserve a special mention for their meticulous attention to period detail - the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III are particularly strong in this respect.
A few of the productions fail to live up to expectations - Macbeth, Love's Labour's Lost and The Tempest all look cheap and tacky and are the biggest disappointments. Others are almost totally eclipsed by far better made big screen versions - Hamlet, Henry V, King Lear and Much Ado About Nothing. But there are a few gems in the collection that make up for the let downs - Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Richard II, Twelfth Night and Pericles, Prince of Tyre can all hold their own against any RSC production. Overall, The BBC Television Shakespeare is an important cultural achievement and it amply achieves its objective, which was to bring the work of the world's greatest playwright to a mass audience.
The series' main strength is the calibre of actors that it attracted throughout its seven-series run, which achieved an equitable mix of established stage actors of the old school and performers better known for their work on film and television. There are some bizarre (yet inspired) casting choices - notably Roger Daltrey in a dual role in The Comedy of Errors and Rikki Fulton as Autolycus in The Winter's Tale - but more often than not the eccentric casting works and brings a freshness to some familiar plays.
John Cleese makes an excellent Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, and Felicity Kendal (star of the sitcom The Good Life) is so at home in the role of Viola in Twelfth Night you'd almost think the part had been written for her. Anthony Hopkins and Bob Hoskins are incredibly well-matched as the Moor and Iago respectively in Othello, and Robert Lindsay's Iachimo is a superb complement to Helen Mirren's Imogen in Cymbeline, a stunning production of one of the less well-regarded Shakespearean plays.
The style of production varies somewhat according to the director, with Jonathan Miller and Elijah Moshinsky bringing a more artistic flair to their work than Jane Howell and David Giles, who generally have a harder job transporting us away from the crushing confines of the television studio. Miller was also a producer on the series and his visualisations are some of the most striking, taking their influence from classic paintings of the 16th and 17th century. The most stylish plays in the series include Miller's Timon of Athens and Moshinsky's All's Well That Ends Well, and the historical plays deserve a special mention for their meticulous attention to period detail - the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III are particularly strong in this respect.
A few of the productions fail to live up to expectations - Macbeth, Love's Labour's Lost and The Tempest all look cheap and tacky and are the biggest disappointments. Others are almost totally eclipsed by far better made big screen versions - Hamlet, Henry V, King Lear and Much Ado About Nothing. But there are a few gems in the collection that make up for the let downs - Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Richard II, Twelfth Night and Pericles, Prince of Tyre can all hold their own against any RSC production. Overall, The BBC Television Shakespeare is an important cultural achievement and it amply achieves its objective, which was to bring the work of the world's greatest playwright to a mass audience.
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