Richard III (Dominic Cooke, 2016)

"So wise so young, they say, do never live long..."

And so the BBC's Hollow Crown series comes to an end with Benedict Cumberbatch excelling as our antihero in Richard III. Much emphasis is placed on the direct continuation of the Henry VI plays; we begin with a "Previously" montage and the cast is the same, adding a certain richness; Sophie Okonedo in particular has been magnificent as Margaret from Henry VI's young bride to the embittered young woman we see here. But the stand-out performance is obviously Cumberbatch, from the very beginning.

This, unlike the previous two instalments, is based on a play I know well, so I will not be treading over the same ground here as I did in uni essays many years ago. Suffice to say that this play, though still an early one, is deliciously addictive tale of the pursuit of power, and its central billion is one of the greatest in all drama. But it feels very different seen in sequence, with Richard and many other characters familiar from earlier plays.

Visually, this is a claustrophobic production of the play, with Richard often seen in a dark room with a chessboard (symbolism much?), and even the climactic battle scenes shot closely and claustrophobically, giving us a vivid impression of the fear, violence and chaos. There's a lot of visual storytelling here, helping with the abridging of the play.

This, and the whole second series of The Hollow Crown, has been a triumph. Now, if only they'd filmed Cumberbatch's Hamlet...

 

Henry VI, Part 2 (Dominic Cooke, 2016)

"O tiget's heart wrapped in a woman's hide!"

The cast also includes Stanley Townsend, Sam Troughton and Jason Watkins and is a superb assemblage of actors not all of whom, alas, can be tagged. This is a superb array of performances.

Anyway, the BBC continue their Season of Shakespeare's Henry VI plays plus Richard III under the Hollow Crown imprimatur, and it's awesome. Here, despite the title, we have the very end of Part 2 and all of Part 3, much abridged. I've seen and read a lot of Shakespeare but these television plays are my first experience of the Henry VI plays.

These plays are early; Shakespeare was much younger when writing them than he was for his more acclaimed plays, so the theme of kingship is not dealt with in the subtlety of the plays he would later write for the decades prior to Henry VI's accession. The dialogue and characterisation are sublime, though; Queen Margaret is delicious, and it's so fascinating to see the young Richard of Gloucester, slowly forming into the Machiavel he will eventually become. Benedict Cumberbatch stands out, obviously, but Sophie Okonedo gives the most memorable performance as z superb Margaret, and Stankey Townsend's Warwick deserves mention too, as does Adrian Dunbar's Richard of York.

It's a gloriously bloody play, with Richard of York's sadistic dispatching at Margaret's hands as its centrepiece. Henry, again, is shown to be a peaceful, harmless wet blanket- something which, for a King, paradoxically engenders civil war, death and untold misery, as Henry sees at his defeat by Edward IV, with father killing son and vice versa. No wonder he goes mad. And in allowing his armies to be commanded by a woman ("The Queen has more success when you are absent"), he fails at what a King was expected to do.

It's a superb production of a gripping play, one I'm glad I've seen. And the end- with Richard plotting his own way to the throne- makes me excited for the next instalment, one much more familiar...

Henry VI, Part 1 (Dominic Cooke, 2016)

"A day will come when York shall claim his own..."

It's been four years, but the BBC have finally got around to doing Shakespeare's Wars of the Roses plays under their The Hollow Crown imprint. Strictly speaking this isn't Henry VI, Part 1: we end the much-truncated production about halfway through Part 2. But it's a welcome attempt at some rarely-filmed plays and the cast, including those listed below, includes Philip Glenister, David Troughton and Michael Gambon.

Like its Hollow Crown predecessors, this is a straightforward retelling with 15th century costume and no directorial flourishes. That means it's all reliant on the acting, and the acting is superb. This is a play from a very young Shakespeare- one of his early hits- and isn't well known, also being somewhat lacking in famous lines, much as Shakespeare's dialogue is never less than sublime, even in his youth. There aren't, as far as I'm aware, any film versions to compare this to, so in spite of being good rather than great it's sort of the best by default.

We begin with huge vistas of Dover's white cliffs; this tries to be as visual as possible, in the Hollow Crown house style. But it's all about the performances. I haven't seen this play before, truncated or not, but I much enjoyed it, raising perhaps an eyebrow at just how wet the King is, how women are just chattels in this world, the very derogatory portrayal of Joan of Arc, but most of all, as ever with Shakespeare, getting drunk in the language.

The production is merely good; the play (or play and a half) is sublime.

Doctor Who: The Beast Below

“I’m the bloody Queen, mate. Basically, I rule.”

So, Matt Smith’s first story in space and in the future. The UK, on a rock, floating in space. Devon. Surrey. There’ll be a Leicestershire somewhere. Probably infested with the bloody space BNP, knowing us.

This is a future Britain where it’s forever the 1950’s; there’s even a Magpie Electricals. And the 1950s classroom is made terrifying by the ever-reliable Steven Moffat, with just a circus-like creature in a booth and the three words “Bad boy, Timmy.” I’ll go on about this properly later on, but this is effectively The Happiness Patrol done much better, and with much more successful imagery. I mean, which is the scarier icon, Bertie Bassett or a post-Life on Mars test card girl?

I love the new theme. It’s similar, but not too similar, to the Trial of a Time Lord theme, but creepier. And the title sequence is great too. I’m liking this new era so far. I’m certainly loving our two leads. How can anyone not love the shot of Amy flying, in space, anchored to reality only be the Doctor’s hand on her ankle? Fairytale indeed.

Time to come down to Earth, though. I’m no continuity obsessive (Er, that’ll be my inner twelve year old child. Not me, guv.), but the Moff has got is facts wrong! Solar flares? In the 29th century? I think this is supposed to evoke The Ark in Space, but the Nerva Beacon was only built in the 29th century, during the time of Revenge of the Cybermen. Tsk. Stop looking at me like that. No, really.

You’ve got to love companions’ first stories, not least for the cobblers the Doctor can only get away with spouting at these times. “We are observers only,” he says. “That’s the one rule I’ve stuck to in all my travels. I never get involved in the affairs of other peoples or planets.” Then he goes straight out of the TARDIS to comfort a little girl, irrevocably involving himself. And this is even integral to the resolution of the plot. Moffat, you’re brilliant.

This is a great introduction to our new Doctor and his eccentricities. The reasoning as to why this world of red phone boxes and lollipop ladies is such a repressive police state, the glass of water on the floor, the warnings about “escaped fish”- this is unmistakeably the Doctor, but just as unmistakably not the last one.

Amy, who is 1,306 and long dead, has her first thoughts about a wedding, “A long time ago, tomorrow morning”, that she’s clearly terrified by. But this doesn’t impede her sense of adventure, and neither does that Death to the Daleks-y root thing.

And the Doctor meets the mysterious, masked Liz 10 and gets some answers; this impossible vessel is travelling without an engine. If this didn’t feel 2000 AD enough (and I don’t just say that because it makes me think of Pat Mills and space whales), we have a voting booth and buttons marked “Protest” and “Forget”. “And once every five years,” says the Doctor is a wonderful bit of satire, “everyone chooses to forget what they’ve learned. Democracy in action.” So he’s bringing down the government, another sign that this is basically a much-improved version of The Happiness Patrol, complete with gunge tank, but without the “camera pointed at a stage with abstract scenery” vibe. I mean, here the cameras move about a lot and everything, although it still looks a little too studio-bound. This is especially obvious in the scene where it’s revealed they’re inside a huge mouth. That asteroid in The Empire Strikes Back this ain’t. These few scenes are my only real criticism of the story, though. I mean, I even gave The Happiness Patrol a 5/5.

Liz 10’s identity is revealed as “technically not a British subject”, and someone whose family has certainly known the Doctor, in various senses (“And so much for the Virgin Queen, you bad, bad boy!”).

The big reveal is very, very clever, with the Queen simultaneously behind it all and investigating her own actions, over and over again, every ten years ago choosing between the buttons “Forget” and “Abdicate”. It’s also horrible, with the creature being horribly and constantly tortured for centuries. Amy redeems herself by working it all out, but what does it say about the Doctor that this lonely and literally tortured being is essentially a metaphor for him?

All’s well in the end, a good 5/5, and the Doctor and Amy are off to another adventure with Winston Churchill and the Daleks. But what’s that? A crack…

(Oh, and I’ve just seen that extra scene on the DVD for the first time. Fantastic!)