David Giles - Richard II (1978)

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. 10/12/1978, colour, 157 mins

Director David Giles
Production Companies BBC Television, Time-Life Television
Producer Cedric Messina
Script Editor Alan Shallcross
Designer Tony Abbott
Music Adviser David Lloyd-Jones
Cast: Derek Jacobi (King Richard), John Gielgud (John of Gaunt), Jon Finch (Henry Bolingbroke), Wendy Hiller (Duchess of York), Charles Gray (Duke of York), Mary Morris (Duchess of Gloucester)

The story of King Richard II, and how he was deposed, replaced and finally murdered, brought down by his failings both as a king and as a man.



The second entry in the BBC Television Shakespeare cycle, Richard II (BBC, tx. 10/2/1978) boasted one of the most distinguished casts of the entire project, with Derek Jacobi in the title role, John Gielgud (whose involvement with the play dated back to 1929) as John of Gaunt, Charles Gray and Wendy Hiller adding depth and shading to the normally thankless parts of the Duke and Duchess of York, and Jon Finch, formerly Polanski's Macbeth, as Richard's suitably saturnine nemesis Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV.

Fittingly, in a play that consists entirely of verse (at least a quarter of it rhyming), director David Giles and designer Tony Abbott decided against shot-on-location realism, a dominant feature of the BBC cycle's first season. Instead, they staged the play in studio sets that emphasised the formal and ritualised aspects without resorting to the kind of symbolic stylisation that Jane Howell's productions of the Henry VI/Richard III cycle would adopt later on.



This unfussy visual approach emphasises the original text and its delivery, Giles' preference for medium shots and close-ups (the only significant exception being the scene where Richard confronts his would-be usurpers from his castle ramparts, where extreme long shots emphasise his shrunken political stature) further underlining that this is as much a psychological as a political drama, at its most effective when focusing on individuals.

Richard II is one of Shakespeare's most difficult roles. Although childish, petulant, arrogant, blinded by the belief in his divine right to rule, and fatally unable to empathise with his too-casually-banished subjects, he nonetheless attains something close to authentically tragic stature as he muses in his prison cell on the path his life has taken and what it has taught him (Giles imaginatively stages this not as a single speech but as a series of dissolves, suggesting gradually increasing self-awareness over time). Rightly, Jacobi makes little attempt at playing for sympathy, his finely nuanced delivery of some of Shakespeare's most beautiful verse counterbalancing the character's many failings.



Almost exactly a year after its first broadcast, Richard II was repeated as a lead-in to the two Henry IV plays and Henry V, effectively screened as a weekly four-part serial in the run-up to Christmas 1979. David Giles directed all four productions, with many actors (notably Jon Finch) playing the same roles to ensure consistency. Derek Jacobi's second and final performance for the BBC Television Shakespeare would be as Hamlet (tx. 25/5/1980).

Michael Brooke

http://rapidshare.com/files/116893431/RICHARD_II_BBC.part01.rar
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http://rapidshare.com/files/116898639/RICHARD_II_BBC.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/116899229/RICHARD_II_BBC.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/116899795/RICHARD_II_BBC.part12.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/116899905/RICHARD_II_BBC.part13.rar

no pass

David Giles - The Life and Death of King John (1984)

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. 24/11/1984, colour, 157 mins

Director David Giles
Production Companies BBC Television, Time-Life Television
Producer Shaun Sutton
Script Editor David Snodin
Designer Chris Pemsel
Music Colin Sell
Cast: Leonard Rossiter (King John), William Whymper (Chatillon), Mary Morris (Queen Elinor), Robert Brown (Earl of Pembroke), John Castle (Earl of Salisbury), John Flint (Lord Bigot), John Thaw (Hubert de Burgh), George Costigan (Philip, the Bastard)

The life and death of England's 'bad king', in conflict not only with the French and the Pope but also those who dispute his claim to the throne.



Produced near the end of the mammoth BBC Television Shakespeare project, The Life and Death of King John (tx. 21/11/1984) also featured the last recorded performance by Leonard Rossiter, who died between production and transmission.

David Giles had previously helmed the BBC Shakespeare's Richard II/Henry IV/Henry V cycle (1978-79), though he adopts a more stylised approach here - especially in France, represented by a patently fake blue-sky backdrop studded with white fleurs-de-lys. The decision to present the text almost intact (see below) and limit onscreen action to Shakespeare's original specifications results in some lengthy, somewhat static speeches, and many key narrative elements are treated purely as verbal accounts by messengers, without even the silent visual flashbacks characteristic of other screen Shakespeares.



As a result, this production relies heavily on the calibre of its cast, but is thankfully well served. Rossiter gives a dark and saturnine reading of English history's 'bad king', the wig, crown and close-cropped beard ensuring that there's little potentially distracting physical resemblance to the sitcom roles that made him famous. His wheedling voice and fake bravado are much more familiar - though entirely fitting a man manifestly unfit to be king, both in terms of legitimacy and personal merit.

George Costigan is effectively contrasted as the charming but scheming Philip the Bastard, delivering his more conspiratorial soliloquies as if conferring privately with the audience in order to win them over. Mary Morris and especially Claire Bloom give powerful voice to Elinor and Constance, respective mothers to John and the doomed but arguably more legitimate Arthur, while John Thaw fleshes out the loyal but sentimental Hubert de Burgh, disobeying the King's orders to have Arthur killed, then strategically confessing after John's typically opportunistic change of mind.



Scholars disagree as to the play's precise date, but it is generally thought to precede Richard II, and it suffers from the comparison. Both plays depict deeply flawed monarchs who end up usurped and murdered, but John's invective lacks the poetic intensity of Richard's private soliloquies, and consequently the latter's tragic stature. But this production is nonetheless a valuable record of a rarely-staged minor play, and a welcome reminder of Rossiter's versatility as a serious actor.

(The cuts are so minimal that they can be itemised here: act/scene/line references from the Arden Shakespeare edition edited by E.A.J.Honigmann are 2.1.486; 3.1.196-201 and 219-220; 3.3.32 and 96; 4.1.16-24, 41-58, 60-67 and 117-120; 4.2.233; 4.3.47)

Michael Brooke

http://rapidshare.com/files/115686747/The_Life_and_Death_of_King_John_BBC.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/115687147/The_Life_and_Death_of_King_John_BBC.part02.rar
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http://rapidshare.com/files/115690917/The_Life_and_Death_of_King_John_BBC.part13.rar

no pass

David Giles - Henry IV (1979)

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. 9/12/1979, colour, 147 mins

Director David Giles
Production Companies BBC Television, Time-Life Television
Producer Cedric Messina
Script Editor Alan Shallcross
Designer Don Homfray
Music Adviser David Lloyd-Jones
Cast: Jon Finch (King Henry IV), David Gwillim (Prince Hal), Tim Piggot-Smith (Hotspur), Anthony Quayle (Sir John Falstaff), Brenda Bruce (Mistress Quickly)



While King Henry IV attempts to unite the warring factions making up his kingdom, his son Prince Hal prefers the rumbustious company of Sir John Falstaff.

Broadcast on 9 December 1979 as the second part of a four-play cycle that began with a repeat of Richard II (BBC, originally tx. 10/12/1978), Henry IV Part I opens with a brief flashback to King Richard's murder, providing a graphic reminder that Henry Bolingbroke's ascent to the throne was by no means either smooth or necessarily legitimate. Some continuity is provided by the repeated casting of Jon Finch as Henry (whose increasingly disease-ridden skin symbolises the rottenness at the heart of his court), though most of the other roles common to both plays have changed, with Tim Pigott-Smith taking over from Jeremy Bulloch as a fiery, red-headed Hotspur.

The biggest name in the new cast was Anthony Quayle, who had played Sir John Falstaff on stage for decades, with two earlier incarnations broadcast live by the BBC (King Henry IV Part I, BBC, tx. 19/8/1951; The Merry Wives of Windsor, BBC, tx. 2/10/1955). His rendition is far from the jolly buffoon of legend, emphasising not only the character's age and alcohol-induced infirmity but also his scheming, conspiratorial nature and frequent willingness to stab his colleagues in the back for personal gain (aspects that would be accentuated in Part II). All of which is entirely true to Shakespeare's original text, but these darker aspects of Falstaff's character are often neglected by actors and directors who prefer to stress the comedy.



David Gwillim makes an appropriately ingenuous Hal, taking full advantage of the opportunity to develop the character over three lengthy plays from young prince to fully-fledged King Henry V: by the end of Part I, having defeated Hotspur at Shrewsbury, he has won his spurs in more than just the literal sense.

David Giles' competent if conservative production takes a broadly similar approach to his Richard II, confined to the studio but with no attempt at symbolic stylisation: the tavern scenes in particular have an authentic-looking grubbiness. Although clearly restricted by budget, the battle scenes are staged with a convincing physicality, though Hotspur's final lines are somewhat muffled by having to deliver them through a mouth full of blood, a gratuitous touch that came in for much criticism at the time.

Henry IV Part II was broadcast a week later (tx. 16/12/1979), followed by Henry V (tx. 23/12/1979), both productions retaining the same cast and production team as Part I.

For the BBC Television Shakespeare, tx. 16/12/1979, colour, 150 mins

Director David Giles
Production Companies BBC Television, Time-Life Television
Producer Cedric Messina
Script Editor Alan Shallcross
Designer Don Homfray
Music Adviser David Lloyd-Jones
Cast: Jon Finch (King Henry the Fourth), David Gwillim (Henry, Prince of Wales), Anthony Quayle (Sir John Falstaff), Rob Edwards (Prince John of Lancaster), Ralph Michael (Lord Chief Justice), Jack Galloway (Poins), Gordon Gostelow (Bardolph), Brenda Bruce (Hostess Quickly), Frances Cuka (Doll Tearsheet), Robert Eddison (Justice Robert Shallow)



In the final years of Henry IV's reign, the monarch worries about his regal responsibilities and whether his son Hal will ever measure up to them.

Broadcast on 16 December 1979, the BBC Television Shakespeare's Henry IV Part II retained the same cast and production team as Part I (shown a week earlier), though it showed a few small differences in approach. About a quarter of the original text was excised (more than the other BBC history plays), resulting in a tighter, more focused production, which also benefited from the play being arguably better suited to television. While Part I was sweeping and expansive, Part II is low-key and intimate, most key scenes being played out between just two or three people in medium shot.

The illness that was already beginning to exert its grip on Jon Finch's Henry IV has now visibly erupted on his skin, impossible to miss in the close-ups accompanying the already pessimistic "uneasy lies the head" soliloquy, his face mirroring the crumbling of his kingdom, a world apart from the confident young buck who seized the throne from Richard II.

David Gwillim's Prince Hal has also darkened and deepened, notably in the scenes with Poins (increasingly assuming Falstaff's role as his main confidant), the long scene where Hal and Henry debate the nature of kingship beside the latter's deathbed, but also in the final devastating scene where he renounces Falstaff (Anthony Quayle). Here, a sharp shift in costume and lighting serves to emphasise his newly-established regal 'otherness', he seems almost to be giving off a faint glow, and is clearly unapproachable by the likes of Falstaff and his comrades even before he utters the fateful "I know thee not, old man".

As Hal and Falstaff grow further apart, so the latter becomes increasingly detached from the play's central intrigues, but Shakespeare compensates with rich pen-portraits Falstaff's surroundings. The Eastcheap bawdy-houses are staffed by put-upon Mistress Quickly (Brenda Bruce) and cynical, world-weary Doll Tearsheet (Frances Cuka), more than capable of defending herself against the likes of swaggering Pistol (Bryan Pringle) - at knifepoint if necessary. These are contrasted by the bucolic Gloucestershire countryside, where Justices Shallow (Robert Eddison) and Silence (Leslie French) sit and reminisce, largely oblivious of the power struggles going on around them.

But David Giles' production is constantly alive to them, its focus on the machinations of power underscored by a Shakespeare in Perspective programme broadcast immediately beforehand, in which Panorama presenter Fred Emery made a convincing case for the Bard as an outstanding political commentator.

Michael Brooke

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David Giles - Henry V (1979)

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. 23/12/1979, colour, 166 mins

Director David Giles
Production Companies BBC Television, Time-Life Television
Producer Cedric Messina
Script Editor Alan Shallcross
Designer Don Homfray
Music Adviser David Lloyd-Jones
Cast: David Gwillim (King Henry V), Alec McCowen (Chorus), Jocelyne Boisseau (Katherine), Thorley Walters (King Charles VI), Julian Glover (Constable of France)

The triumphant reign of King Henry V, uniter of his kingdom and conqueror of the French at Agincourt.



The BBC Television Shakespeare's Henry V was broadcast on 23 December 1979, at the end of a four-week series covering the whole of Shakespeare's second history cycle. All four plays were directed by David Giles and given a traditional staging in the studio, though the battle scenes suffered from production values better suited to the more intimate Richard II and Henry IV Part II.

The chronological sequence gave television audiences the first chance to see a single actor shift from Prince Hal into King Henry since Robert Hardy in An Age of Kings (BBC, 1960). But while Hardy's bluff and hearty rendition was arguably more convincing as decisive monarch than callow youth, David Gwillim's Henry is a clear development from his younger self. At the end of Henry IV Part II Hal suggested an abrupt change of demeanour to something more regal, but in the early scenes of Henry V his inexperience is clear, as is his eagerness to seek advice from all quarters before reaching a firm decision on the question of France. He plays the warrior-king, but we know it's essentially a performance - even the scar on his cheek acts as a permanent aide-mémoire of a wound suffered at the end of Henry IV Part I.



While it is easy to accept a one-off production such as Laurence Olivier's film (1944) as presenting an image of unvarnished heroism, David Giles pointed out that: "he was only playing Henry V, he wasn't playing Hal as well. If you've played Hal the boy, you can't quite do that" - and he restores material that Olivier tellingly omitted, notably the scene where Henry orders the killing of French prisoners of war. However, Gwillim delivers this almost as a throwaway line, as though he's ashamed of himself for saying it - and one of the few major cuts to the text occurs in his speech to the citizens of Harfleur, where 27 lines of threatening invective in which he denies responsibility for his soldiers' actions have been discreetly removed.



In general, though, significantly more of Shakespeare's original play is included than was the case with Olivier, An Age of Kings or the later Kenneth Branagh film (1989), making this Henry V a valuable record, for all its limitations as spectacle. Gwillim is very much the star, but Alec McCowen makes a rousing Chorus, and newcomer Jocelyne Boisseau delivers a touching (and authentically French) Katherine.

Michael Brooke

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no pass

David Giles - A Murder Is Announced (1985)

Quote:

A murder is announced in the Chipping Cleghorne Gazette to take place on October 5th, 7 PM at Little Paddocks cottage. The people living there, retired secretary Miss Blacklock, her companion Miss Bunner, Miss Blacklock's two distant cousins, Patrick and Julia and Mrs.Haymes, a gardener, have no idea what the ad is about. Several villagers arrive at the house under the false pretenses of "just walking by" or "Was in the neighborhood". At exactly 7 PM, the lights go out, and a man enters the room, and shines a flashlight in everyone's face. Then shots are heard. As the lights come back on, they find the man who entered the room has been shot. Miss Marple must unmask the killer but soon more murders turn up.










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no pass