The Hollow Crown

[JollyBob]

I managed to catch up with Richard II on iPlayer - what a treat! Thoroughly enjoyed it, and I agree with Steve, too.

Have recorded Henry IV pt1, and am really looking forward to it as I studied it at school and did the class trip to Stratford to see it. The only thing I'm not looking forward to is having to explain bits to my wife every five minutes.

[Plynkes]

I guess the guy who played Harry Percy is Alun Armstrong's son? Seeing as he don't half look like him, and his surname is... Armstrong.


They cropped some of my favourite lines, but other than that I liked it.

[JollyBob]

Just caught up.

I approve. Very nicely done, better than Richard II I thought. Falstaff was excellent.

[Arlequín]

Agreed... I thoroughly enjoyed that. Percy was played well I thought and enjoyed the bit where he and Glyn Dwr face off. 

[Captain Blood]

Yep. Loved that. Really bloody good. So much more gutsy and believeable than the Richard II - mainly down to a much better cast I think, as well as direction.
And plenty of extras!
I think with RII they were going for a bit of style over substance in places.
In this one, Richard Eyre threw the kitchen sink at it, and it really worked.

Strangely, the only aspect I wasn't completely sold on was Simon RB's Falstaff.
He is a brilliant actor, no doubt about that, but his characterisation seemed a little 'thin' to me. Not in girth, obviously, but in voice / presence. A bit too short and wheezy and not quite rumbustious and larger than life enough...
But it's a very minor criticism. Overall, this was a real treat and I'm gagging for the next two...

 

[Aaron]

I hope we eventually get to enjoy these in the colonies.

[Captain Blood]

I hope we eventually get to enjoy these in the colonies.

Feel sure you will. These four films will surely be top of the BBC's sales catalogue to public service broadcasters the English-speaking world over...

[Arlequín]

Strangely, the only aspect I wasn't completely sold on was Simon RB's Falstaff.
He is a brilliant actor, no doubt about that, but his characterisation seemed a little 'thin' to me. Not in girth, obviously, but in voice / presence. A bit too short and wheezy and not quite rumbustious and larger than life enough...
But it's a very minor criticism. Overall, this was a real treat and I'm gagging for the next two...

Yes...he certainly lacked the braggadocio of other famous names who've played him. For that matter so did the guy who played Harry Monmouth... the whole point of the play was that he transformed from a feckless callow youth, partly under Falstaff's (or indeed Oldcastle's, as it was originally meant to be) tutelage into the man who would lead the army that conquered France. The Henry IV slapping was well done, but you kinda got the feeling he hadn't gone that far wrong in the first place.

Instead you got Hotspur as a kind of hero-worshipped role-model for Harry V, who I thought really stood head and shoulders (until it would be put on a spike at least) over the rest of the cast.

Feel sure you will. These four films will surely be top of the BBC's sales catalogue to public service broadcasters the English-speaking world over...

Yes I agree, expect them on the other side of the pond presently! Not exactly a fair swap for some of the HBO shows, but we try. 

[Steve F]

Beale reminded me of Harriet Walter: another acclaimed stage actor who dials it back a bit too much on screen.  It didn't help that his hair, beard and make-up made him look like he was playing a dwarf for Peter Jackson.  But the worst disservice was the decision to put Falstaff's best speech, the "what is honour?" soliloquy, into voiceover.  Separating an actor's voice from his body does not help his performance, and a Shakespeare play is words in performance or it is nothing.

Otherwise, top marks.  Tom Hiddleston's Hal was not very dissolute, true, but that's a valid choice - he can be played as basically the same person throughout, but in different circumstances (as here), as undergoing a real change of heart, or as deliberately dissimulating during his roistering days (as Branagh played him in the scenes he carried into his Henry V).  It would be nice to have more performances to compare, but, I think, this is the first filmed or videotaped Henry IV in 22 years.

During that time, the BBC has made about 2,000 hours of EastEnders, so we can see where their priorities lie.

[JollyBob]

Henry IV part 2 - not the half of the play I'm overly familliar with. Bloody good, but bleak. The quality of the production hadn't diminished since part 1, anyway.

John of Lancaster gets my vote for sneaky underhanded git of the year. What a trick!  

[Steve F]

I was quite disappointed by Part 2; Simon Russell Beale's quiet, subdued Falstaff made the first hour sag and drag worse than his belly.  But Irons and Hiddleston were both excellent.  It's scary to note from the accompanying documentary, though, how much of the cracked and croaking sound of Irons's voice was entirely natural and not performance.

(Edited to correct the spelling of Tom Hiddleston's name.)

[TWD]

Having missed the first two I finally caught up with this series on Saturday.
Thought it was superb.

I loved SRB's nuanced performance as Falstaff and found his rejection very powerful, even though I knew it was coming.
He was almost more eloquent when not speaking - gazing into the fire aware of his mortality and vulnerability. A great example of how television, well utilised, can actually add to the power of Shakespeare.

As to the historical accuracy, or otherwise, it's a play - it's supposed to entertain me and illuminate the human condition, not provide historical information. It could be set on the moon for all I care as long as I get to hear the language and try to understand what it can tell me about life. Who cares what they're wearing? That's what documentaries are for.

Off to i-player this week to get the first two down before the grand finale next Saturday, which will be a proper "phones off, door locked" few hours.

[Paul]

I´ll have to wait for the DVD release but it looks well worth it.

[Captain Blood]

I loved SRB's nuanced performance as Falstaff and found his rejection very powerful, even though I knew it was coming. He was almost more eloquent when not speaking - gazing into the fire aware of his mortality and vulnerability.

SRB gave a great performance, no doubt of that. Personally though, I prefer my Falstaffs rumbustious, lairy and unrepentant. Not querulous, introspective and full of self-doubt. It's an interpretation of course, and so valid - and he played it quite brilliantly. But it's the actor or director saying 'let's try to do something a bit different with this', rather than the character suggested by the text.

As to the historical accuracy, or otherwise, it's a play - it's supposed to entertain me and illuminate the human condition, not provide historical information. It could be set on the moon for all I care as long as I get to hear the language and try to understand what it can tell me about life. Who cares what they're wearing?

I disagree. I'm not fussed about strict historical accuracy on the wargames table. But if you are making a film to be seen by millions of people, which purports to portray a particular era, I think there's an obligation to try to get things right.
Kids still grow up today believing that vikings wore horned helmets and cavaliers only wore floppy hats, because these and many other stereotypes were embedded in popular culture by illustrators and movie-makers.
If you're going to make a film (the BBC's contribution to the Cultural Olympiad no less), spend millions, and employ top costume designers, why go to all that trouble and expense and then not bother getting things more or less right?
I've seen and acted in Shakespearean productions placed in all sorts of different eras and weird and wonderful settings - and that's fine. But if you set out to say 'we're going to make a version set at the time of the events portrayed, and we're going to use real castles, and real armour, and make it look as real as we can - but let's just show the Lords of England all wearing tea towels wrapped round their heads...' well that's just lazy and inept.

Doesn't lessen my appreciation of the acting one jot. But does leave me wondering why filmmakers so often settle for getting things wrong, when it would be so easy to get them right.

[Steve F]

But it's the actor or director saying 'let's try to do something a bit different with this', rather than the character suggested by the text.

A particular problem here - apart from the way that this particular interpretation served the structure of the play badly - is that no-one seems to have shared the idea with Julie Walters, David Bamber, Maxine Peake or Tom Georgeson, all of whom gave fully-throated, even hammy performances.  The result was that, far from Falstaff being the dominant member of this little clique, you sometimes wondered how they noticed he was in the room.

  But if you are making a film to be seen by millions of people, which purports to portray a particular era, I think there's an obligation to try to get things right. ... I've seen and acted in Shakespearean productions placed in all sorts of different eras and weird and wonderful settings - and that's fine.

One concern here is that these are the first screen versions of these plays for over 30 years (apart from Henry V, and it has been 23 years since Branagh filmed that).  If you want to play variations on a theme, it is important to establish the basic version of the theme first.  A weird and wonderful setting for Macbeth, or Hamlet is fine - they are familiar texts and relatively straight versions of them are easy to come by; and though they draw on history, they are not about history in the way that the Henriad is.  It seems to me important that an audience coming to these plays for the first time realises that this is a dramatisation (with liberties, of course) of what actually happened here: it's that sense, rather than the details of costume (David Suchet's teatowel) or setting (they used actual castles, but they didn't plaster and paint the walls) that matters most.