Making its debut with Romeo and Juliet on 3 December 1978, and concluding nearly seven years later with Titus Andronicus on 27 April 1985, the BBC Television Shakespeare project was the single most ambitious attempt at bringing the Bard of Avon to the small screen, both at the time and to date.
Producer Cedric Messina was already an experienced producer of one-off television Shakespeare presentations, and was thus ideally qualified to present the BBC with a daunting but nonetheless enticingly simple proposition: a series of adaptations, staged specifically for television, of all 36 First Folio plays, plus Pericles (The Two Noble Kinsmen was considered primarily John Fletcher's work, and the legitimacy of Edward III was still being debated).
The scale of Messina's proposal, far greater than that of previous multi-part Shakespeare series such as An Age of Kings (BBC, 1960) and Spread of the Eagle (BBC, 1963), required an American partner in order to guarantee access to the US market, deemed essential for the series to recoup its costs. Time-Life Television agreed to participate, but under certain controversial conditions - that the productions be traditional interpretations of the plays in appropriately Shakespearean period costumes and sets, designed to fit a two-and-a-half-hour time slot.
The running-time requirement was swiftly jettisoned when it became clear that the major tragedies in particular would have suffered severely, but other artistic restrictions remained largely in place throughout. Although later productions under Messina's successors Jonathan Miller and Shaun Sutton would be more experimental, Miller was unable to persuade first-choice directors such as Peter Brook and Ingmar Bergman to take part, and Michael Bogdanov resigned from Timon of Athens (eventually tx, 4/16/1981, with Miller himself directing) after his modern-dress interpretation was considered too radical a departure.
This gave the BBC Television Shakespeare cycle the reputation of being overly staid and conventional, which was not always deserved. Though Messina's own productions (1978-80) were largely conservative, Jonathan Miller (1980-82) revamped things both visually (thanks to a design policy of sourcing sets and costumes from great paintings of the era in which the play was set) and in terms of direction and casting, in some cases using popular actors with little or no Shakespeare experience (John Cleese as Petruchio, Bob Hoskins as Iago) to attract new and younger audiences.
Under Miller, directors such as Jack Gold, Jane Howell and Elijah Moshinsky were encouraged to be more adventurous, with Howell in particular adopting such a stylised approach for The Winter's Tale (tx. 8/2/1981) and the Henry VI/Richard III cycle (tx. 2-23/1/1983) that they pushed the definition of "traditional" to the limit, but also garnered the series some of its best reviews. Miller's aesthetic policies continued under Shaun Sutton (1982-85), who brought the project to a belated close.
Whatever its artistic reputation, there was no doubt that the BBC Television Shakespeare was a commercial triumph, breaking even financially by 1982 (ahead of expectations) and fully justifying Messina's gamble. Its success was helped by the rapid growth of video recorders in schools, creating a secondary market that was much bigger than initially predicted - though the initial decision to sell the plays only as a complete set provoked complaints from people who baulked at paying the substantial asking price because they were after a smaller selection or individual titles. The BBC eventually released some of the more popular titles separately, but it was not until late in 2005 that the entire series was available individually on DVD at a competitive price.
Although the BBC Television Shakespeare project as a whole met with a mixed reception, it had several positive virtues. Chief among them was the fact that its completist remit meant that several of the more obscure plays received their first television adaptation, and in most cases the BBC version remains the only one. Happily, such productions as Henry VIII (tx. 25/2/1979), Cymbeline (tx. 10/7/1983), Pericles (tx. 11/6/1984) and Titus Andronicus were considered amongst the cycle's most impressive achievements, with Henry VIII subsequently voted the best production of all by the Shakespeare Association of America.
A complete list of BBC Television Shakespeare productions is as follows:
Series One (producer: Cedric Messina): Romeo and Juliet (tx. 3/12/1978), Richard II (tx. 10/12/1978), As You Like It (tx. 17/12/1978), Julius Caesar (tx. 11/2/1979), Measure For Measure (tx. 18/2/1979), Henry VIII (tx. 25/2/1979)
Series Two (p. Cedric Messina): Henry IV Part One (tx. 9/12/1979), Henry IV Part Two (tx. 16/12/1979), Henry V (tx.23/12/1979), Twelfth Night (tx. 6/1/1980), The Tempest (tx. 27/2/1980), Hamlet (tx. 25/5/1980).
Series Three (p. Jonathan Miller): The Taming of the Shrew (tx. 23/10/1980), The Merchant of Venice (tx. 17/12/1980), All's Well That Ends Well (tx. 4/1/1981), The Winter's Tale (tx. 8/2/1981), Timon of Athens (tx. 16/4/1981), Antony and Cleopatra (tx. 8/5/1981)
Series Four (p. Jonathan Miller): Othello (tx. 4/10/1981), Troilus and Cressida (tx. 7/10/1981), A Midsummer Night's Dream (tx. 13/12/1981)
Series Five (p. Jonathan Miller, Shaun Sutton): King Lear (tx. 19/9/1982), The Merry Wives of Windsor (tx. 28/12/1982), Henry VI Part One (tx. 2/1/1983), Henry VI Part Two (tx. 9/1/1983), Henry VI Part Three (tx. 16/1/1983), Richard III (tx. 23/1/1983), Cymbeline (tx. 10/7/1983)
Series Six (p. Shaun Sutton): Macbeth (tx. 17/10/1983), The Comedy of Errors (tx. 24/12/1983), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (tx. 27/12/1983), Coriolanus (tx. 21/4/1984), Pericles (tx. 11/6/1984)
Series Seven (p. Shaun Sutton): King John (tx. 24/11/1984), Much Ado About Nothing (tx. 30/11/1984), Love's Labour's Lost (tx. 5/1/1985), Titus Andronicus (tx. 27/4/1985)
The BBC also produced Shakespeare in Perspective, an accompanying series of 25-minute personal introductions to individual plays by an eclectic range of presenters from the literary (Anthony Burgess, Dennis Potter, Jilly Cooper) to the scholarly (Germaine Greer, Frank Kermode, Michael Wood) to the celebrity (Roy Hudd, George Melly, Barry Took). These usually took the form of straight-to-camera addresses from assorted locations with some connection to the play, which were intercut with extracts from the accompanying BBC Shakespeare production, usually screened later that evening.
Michael Brooke
For the BBC Television Shakespeare, tx. 23/1/1983, colour, 230 mins
Director Jane Howell
Production Companies BBC Television, Time-Life Television
Producer Shaun Sutton
Script Editor David Snodin
Designer Oliver Bayldon
Music Dudley Simpson
Cast: Ron Cook (Richard), Paul Jesson (Clarence), Zoë Wanamaker (Lady Anne), Michael Byrne (Buckingham), Brian Protheroe (Edward IV), Annette Crosbie (Duchess of York)
The rise and fall of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, whose murderous Machiavellian schemes help him to the throne of England, but make him far too many enemies along the way.
At nearly four hours, the BBC Television Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Richard III is by far the longest screen adaptation of Shakespeare's play, made longer still by the Henry VI trilogy, broadcast over the three previous Sundays in January 1983. Richard first appeared as a minor character in Part II, but after his father's death and his brother Edward's coronation, he rapidly assumed centre stage, so that by the start of the play that bears his name, he is ready to launch a realistic bid for the throne.
While one-off productions of Richard III such as Laurence Olivier's (1955) and Ian McKellen's (d. Richard Loncraine, 1995) generally made extensive changes for the benefit of those unfamiliar with its predecessors, Jane Howell's production presents it as originally conceived by Shakespeare, as the culmination of an epic historical saga that ties up the earlier plays' dangling narrative threads.
Howell also consciously viewed Richard III as a nightmarish parody of the Henry VI plays, the doubled casting once again highlighting ironic parallels. Buckingham has the face of corrupt witchcraft-linked priest John Hume (both Michael Byrne). Tyrrel, the killer of the Princes in the Tower, looks like the Earl of Warwick (both Mark Wing-Davey), and the First Murderer resembles Richard's long-dead father, the Duke of York (both Bernard Hill).
Ron Cook's whining, wheedling, soft-spoken performance as Richard is sharply removed from the more traditional image of the character (seen to best advantage in Laurence Olivier's definitive rendition), but this low-key treatment fits Howell's desire to highlight the wider political and historical issues that one-off productions often sideline or ignore, with Richard as much a victim of the forces of history as a self-styled Machiavellian manipulator.
A key difference between this Richard III and its namesakes is that the women's parts are presented in full, and enhanced by an unusually strong quartet of actresses (Rowena Cooper and Julia Foster reprising earlier roles, Annette Crosbie and Zoë Wanamaker making their debuts). Queen Margaret (Foster) is the greatest beneficiary, since the character was omitted altogether from the Olivier and McKellen versions, and only granted her first scene in An Age of Kings (BBC, 1960) - but her part here is not only intact but also extended by an extraordinary (if controversial) final image featuring her cackling with glee whilst straddling a gigantic pyramid of corpses, having triumphantly outlived all the men who tried to do her down.
Michael Brooke
http://rapidshare.com/files/112725854/RICHARD_III_BBC.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/112726707/RICHARD_III_BBC.part02.rar
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