2 years ago

High Quality
Currently watching:  The delightful ShakespeaRe-Told, a BBC production that modernizes four of Shakespeare’s plays.  Though updated, the scripts hew very close to the source, so much so that if you’re unfamiliar with the plays you might miss some of the well-layered jokes. In “Much Ado About Nothing,” Beatrice and Benedick are warring TV presenters.  Think maybe Matt Lauer and Katie Couric — back when they were spewing out that morning show pablum together — if Lauer were more of a swaggering cad and Couric were more witty and less brittle and they had both once been hot for each other but then he dumped her.  Hero (the delightful Billie Piper) is a weather girl, natch.  There is a delightful meta-moment when Ben, preparing the speech he’ll give as Claude’s best man, has Beatrice help him decode Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 (“Let not the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments”). It is a winking nod to the Bard and touching and also injects a dash of poetry into these modern proceedings. “The Taming of The Shrew” seems to come by way of AbFab, with Kate as a snarling pygmy of an MP, Bianca a jet-setting superstar (played by the actress that was Lila, the sponsor/artist/crazy sex witch on season two of “Dexter”!).  Twiggy appears the idle, wealthy family matriarch.  Oh, and Petruchio!  Let’s just say he’s got a bit of an Eddie Izzard thing going on, and not so much in that he does stand-up. ANYWAY!  Of course putting these stories in a modern context highlights some of the absurdities apparent in the original plays, and of course disbelief must be suspended.  Do not think too hard.  But! They are so great in only that way that the BBC can just chuck a bunch of facile actors together with these stripped down, intelligent scripts and it is all just pitch perfect.

Currently watching:  The delightful ShakespeaRe-Told, a BBC production that modernizes four of Shakespeare’s plays.  Though updated, the scripts hew very close to the source, so much so that if you’re unfamiliar with the plays you might miss some of the well-layered jokes.

In “Much Ado About Nothing,” Beatrice and Benedick are warring TV presenters.  Think maybe Matt Lauer and Katie Couric — back when they were spewing out that morning show pablum together — if Lauer were more of a swaggering cad and Couric were more witty and less brittle and they had both once been hot for each other but then he dumped her.  Hero (the delightful Billie Piper) is a weather girl, natch.  There is a delightful meta-moment when Ben, preparing the speech he’ll give as Claude’s best man, has Beatrice help him decode Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 (“Let not the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments”). It is a winking nod to the Bard and touching and also injects a dash of poetry into these modern proceedings.

“The Taming of The Shrew” seems to come by way of AbFab, with Kate as a snarling pygmy of an MP, Bianca a jet-setting superstar (played by the actress that was Lila, the sponsor/artist/crazy sex witch on season two of “Dexter”!).  Twiggy appears the idle, wealthy family matriarch.  Oh, and Petruchio!  Let’s just say he’s got a bit of an Eddie Izzard thing going on, and not so much in that he does stand-up.

ANYWAY!  Of course putting these stories in a modern context highlights some of the absurdities apparent in the original plays, and of course disbelief must be suspended.  Do not think too hard.  But! They are so great in only that way that the BBC can just chuck a bunch of facile actors together with these stripped down, intelligent scripts and it is all just pitch perfect.