Much Ado About Nothing

A fan of Kenneth Branagh's version, I tuned into this accidentally, not expecting very much. Boy, was I wrong. Usually when some fool tries to do a modern remake of Shakespeare it's awful to the point of cringing, but I loved this! Not only was it clever, Beatice and Benedict worked in a newsroom and their biting comments were laugh-out-loud-hilarious, but there was more sexual tension than that in Branagh's version - where he was actually married to Emma Thompson playing Beatrice to his Benedict! The actor playing Benedict was emulating Branagh slightly, but came off rather better and to be honest, hotter. Beatrice was a 21st century independent woman with some edgy one liners that she delivered amazingly - her personality coming through perfectly, and there is this amazing scene where Ben had me in stitches, crawling across the floor...oh man, was that funny! Definitely worth a watch!

The amazon version has cut about ten minutes from the show. It already is much shorter than the original, but the amazon version misses a lot. Now the focus is on Hero not Beatrice. An interesting effort, but we miss so much of the repartee.

After seeing some bad adaptations of my revered "Alice's Adventures Underground," I decided to try this. Though the comedies aren't generally the stuff around which to build lives, a few from the middle period do matter.

During this period, Shakespeare seems to have found one of his three balances among the structure of poetical phrases, the structure of poetic introspection and the long form shape of the story. Of the three, adapters must toss the language, so the measure of success is how well the small concepts weave into the larger. Supposedly, if this is done well enough some of the subtle magic of why the original is so hypnotic will be conveyed. In other words, we should get joy from the sheer difficulty of the conceptual gymnastics as well as the pleasure from a good experience from the play itself.

This wins in my book.

The key trick is that the domain has been shifted to folks in the business of TeeVee broadcasting. So there is a built in fold in the very lives of everyone involved. We naturally accept the two conspiratorial theaters that are woven, one to create a wedding and another to foil one.

The production is good, earnest, unconstrained.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

The new 2005 BBC series of updated modern-language Shakespeare TV movies is currently being shown Wednesday nights on Danish television. I missed one or two, but I caught Macbeth, which didn't impress me terribly, and last night they showed Much Abo About Nothing. This was a lot better than the Macbeth installment. It managed to maintain most of the structure of the original play, while changing some things (including significant parts of the ending) to keep it simpler and fresh. It was nowhere near the quality of a genuine Shakespeare play, although the acting certainly wasn't bad. Billie Piper's Hero impressed particularly, whereas I was not too taken with the actress portraying Beatrice. Benedick and Claude were played by types who reminded a lot - almost too much - of the Branagh movie's equivalents, but as I am a huge fan of Branagh's movie, this is not something that annoys me.

This version did have some shortcomings, such as a much too small role for Peter (Don Pedro), and, of course, the lack of the original Bard text, and I also felt it was more interested in being entertaining than in being any kind of complex literary comedy. But while the Macbeth episode of this series seemed contrived and simplified to the point of massive dilution, the Much Ado episode worked far better,despite being a very straight (and, again, simplified) version of the original. It seemed to me like it had been immensely easy to write; nothing much more than rephrasing parts of the Shakespeare dialog into modern language and changing the setting. Still, it was done with remarkable flair. Certainly Shakespeare Lite at the end of the day, but not bad at all.

7 out of 10.

Next Wednesday it's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I remember the days at school having to read Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet, and to be honest the lure of a good Stephen King book was always greater! So basically Shakespeare, or the idea of Shakespeare has never rocked my boat. However, I decided at the last minute to watch the programme, and boy was I glad I did. Very entertaining storyline, and I thought Billie Piper was a real star. Damian Lewis played his character Benedick to perfection, a perfect rendition of a very cringeworthy character, before his reform! I highly recommend it to anyone who has always had Shakespearaphobia as a place to start. I am even contemplating buying the original book to see how I get on with it!