As TNT gives up on its “punk rock-esque 16th century London” interpretation of young Will Shakespeare one can’t help wondering if they should have tried something more in the style of a campy Young Frankenstein or played it straight like Young Sherlock Holmes.
Meanwhile the BBC has renewed its series featuring a midlife Shakespeare, Upstart Crow. The Beeb went for an historically accurate, anxiety-ridden Shakespeare, “wracked with worry and self-doubt.” No wonder it’s playing well. How could audiences not fall in love with a version of the most prolific and popular writer of his day (and many days that followed) playing the part of a social-climbing misfit? An overwrought Shakespeare feels right in these troubled times.
For those seeking meaning in the plays–a way to relate to them in our electronic age, the best show by far was and is Slings and Arrows. Available on DVD or streaming on Amazon, you don’t have to take my word for it; read the 241 five-star reviews. This Canadian series, featuring Paul Gross, interweaves the action of the plays (one play per six-episode season) with the lives of the actors performing the plays in this fictitious acting troupe. It’s smart and sexy and reminiscent of Tom Stoppard’s Shakespeare in Love without Stoppard’s rowdy humor.
Which begs the question, why hasn’t Tom Stoppard attempted an HBO series of Shakespeare in Love? For that matter, why hasn’t Joss Whedon extended his excellent adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (featuring his Firefly cast) to the other plays? Heck, he could do the next one Firefly-style. Why not an Eastern-Western, sci-fi version of Twelfth Night, opening with a spaceship crashing in a foreign land? Or an Avengers, Wonder Woman-style, female-driven, superhero version of As You Like It?
Any accessible on-screen performance that makes the plays relatable gets a thumbs up from this viewer.
Visualizing Shakespeare 