Upstart Crow: The Play's the Thing

"Or must I pluck another from the chicken's arse?"

This second episode is every bit as good, and every bit as Blackadderish, as the first- and just as unashamedly geeky about Shakespeare lore. This is a sitcom which has the likes of Henry Condell and Robert Greene (the truly excellent Mark Heap) as characters and where the plot turns on factors such as the Stuart James VI of Scotand being the likely next king of England and how he is the son of Mary Queen of Scots.

Exhibit A for both of these points is the use of Christopher Marlowe here. On the one hand, by saying Shakespeare wrote all Kit's plays, the script is taking the mickey out of those nutters who for some reason think the Earl of Oxford (who died in 1604, before many of the most famous plays) wrote the whole Shakespeare canon. On the other hand they cheerfully show Kit as being a laddish "roisterer" who seems to love neither tobacco nor boys, and bears an uncanny and certainly deliberate resemblance to Lord Flashheart.

There are so many little in-jokes, too, which make this series particularly enjoyable for the Shakespeare geek. Roll on the next one... but first, several days of other stuff.

Upstart Crow: Star Crossed Lovers

 "But Kate, you know very well that ot's illegal for girls to do anything interesting."

Ok, now this isn't me making a habit of blogging sitcoms- there are all sorts of reasons why they don't lend themselves as well to a proper episodic blog post, at least for me. So this is just a few brief witterings per episode, rather less content than usual, but we'll see how it goes.

Essentially, this is bloody brilliant. Yes, it's basically the world of Shakespeare in the style of Black Adder II, with the lines very Blackadderish indeed and with Will Shakespeare (a perfectly cast David Mitchell) performing the same narrative function as good old Edmund. But this is by Ben Elton, someone who has every right to do this. There's something to be said for getting a writer to do what he's good at. Sometimes it's good to be in one's comfort zone.

The cast is superb, and the assortment of regular characters introduced here are at once redolent of Blackadder (aspiring actress Kate is quite deliberately based on "Bob") and based on Shakespeare's real family and regular actors- I love how Will Kemp is used to take the piss out of Ricky Gervais. This is roughly based on the young-ish Shakespeare of the 1590s, but let's not be too fixated on historical accuracy. Let's just say that, as someone who sees Romeo and Juliet being, in large part, the still young-ish Shakespeare, whose earlier work consisted of such violent crowd pleasers as Titus Andronicus and the Henry VI trilogy, taking the piss out of Italian romances by having a deliberately bathetic ending, I enjoyed this immensely.

We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story

"Sometimes you need to bow to the talent!"

It's good to know that these types of dramas are still happening even though all new drama has been sadly banished from BBC 4. This particular example is merely quite good rather than great, but long may this sort of thing continue.

The main interest for most of us, of course, is the casting. Shane Ritchie for Bill Pertwee works well, John Sessions as Arthur Lowe works well (although I'm glad they used real footage from Pardon the Expression as watched at home by Jimmy Perry), although the casting of Michael Crichton as Arnold Ridley doesn't work. Crichton is a bloody good actor but he's just, well, nowhere near physically frail enough. It's Keith Allen who really steals the show, however, as sceptical BBC executive Paul Fox.

You're reminded of just how counterculture and creative the BBC was in 1967; Jimmy Perry served in the war, yet he dresses like a hippy, as do an awful lot of people. There's a nice little in joke about Jon Pertwee turning down the part of Mainwaring because of money; shades of how he left Doctor Who there.

This isn't exactly a televisual highlight of 2015, but it's a pleasant way to spend an hour, with plenty of in-jokes for British TV nerds like me.

Holy Flying Circus (2011 TV Film)

"You're not the nicest man in the world; you're a very naughty boy!"

I know- odd time to blog it. But I'm off work with a hammy leg and I needed something to watch, having Sky plussed this month's ago.

It's sobering to note that, in a sense, 2011 is another age; BBC 4 used to makes its own one-off dramas back then, invariably excellent. This, I think, was one of the best.

This is a comedic dramatisation of the initial reception to Monty Python's Life of Brian, leading up to and beyond the notorious "debate" between John Cleese and Michael Palin on one side and a sneering Malcolm Muggeridge and a waspish queen of a bishop on the other. Naturally, the focus is on Cleese (Darren Boyd steals the show here and Palin (Charles Edwards). Cleese is played, for comic relief, as Basil Fawlty, but his abrasiveness and annoying tendencies are leavened by the fact that he's always, always right, and votes Lib Dem... er, Liberal, to boot. I particularly love the blatantly anachronistic bit about why the Pythons didn't go after Muslims.

Palin is, of course, portrayed as the nicest main in the world, the audience identification character and only semi-serious bit of a drama long on surreal and humorous assaults on the fourth wall, although his wife is portrayed, magnificently, by Rufus Jones, who also plays Terry Jones. This is a decision of sheer genius, given Terry J's habit of playing the "pepperpots", but it does lead  to a troubling my oestrogen-lite cast.

Steve Punt plays Eric Idle as a money-grabbing bastard, but the other Pythons recede into the background of what is a magnificently silly drama. It looks very 1979, and has some sharp points to make about both then and now; the bombastic producer in 1979 is contrasted with the Head of BBC 4. Both are rather less prim than the splendid Head of Rude Words, but the point about BBC bureaucracy, with all these unnecessary heads of this and that, is well made.

The debate itself is based on true events; the bishop and Muggeridge were as smug and childish as the drama shows, showing exactly the sort of undergraduate humour that the bishop effects to dismiss. It's quite realistic that the public, even the People's Church of St Sophia, would side with them.

This is really quite brilliant, and it's a crying shame that BBC4 won't be doing any more.