The Hollow Crown

[Plynkes]

Four new BBC adaptations of Shakespeare's history plays:



Starts tonight at 9pm on BBC2 with Dickie II.

[Mister Rab]

I'm thoroughly looking forward to these. The trailers look brilliant and the cast list is pretty special, too. One for recording, methinks 

[Mr.J]

I saw a trailer last week and I'm very excited too. They look really good. Thanks for the reminder.

[Plynkes]

Hurrfud? Is that how they really used to say it? Jesus, that's how Texans pronounce it.


'erry-furrd, you morons!  

[Plynkes]

Oh my God.

What were those Welsh supposed to be? I'm really enjoying this (especially the wonderful Patrick Stewart), but those cartoon Braveheart/caveman Welshmen are just insulting.

[JollyBob]

Well, shit.

Well done BBC, I saw all the coming soon trailers and thought "oooh, fantastic, I'll watch that!" then heard nowt about it for about a month and now I'm missing it. Really well publicised, thanks very much. Are they ashamed of putting something like this on? Its what I grew up expecting the BBC to produce, but now they seem ashamed of doing anything even remotley highbrow and do their best to bury it. Maybe that way they can say - look, nobody watched it! the people don't want it! let's make another series of celebrity shitfarm instead! 

Bollocks. Now I'll have to find time to catch it on the iPlayer. 

[Plynkes]

Well, Welsh Braveheart-cavemen notwithstanding, I enjoyed that immensely; no doubt helped by the fact that unlike the last time I attended a performance of this play, on this occasion I don't have to write any fucking essays about it!  

Bring on Harry Hotspur and the Prince of Wales...

[Mr.J]

Well I missed it and it's not on iplayer yet. Really looking forward to watching it, hopefully it'll be up tomorrow night.

[Christian]

... unlike the last time I attended a performance of this play, on this occasion I don't have to write any fucking essays about it!  

[inkydave]

Oh my God.

What were those Welsh supposed to be? I'm really enjoying this (especially the wonderful Patrick Stewart), but those cartoon Braveheart/caveman Welshmen are just insulting.

 Yep me too. Patrick Stewart and David Suchet stole the show for me. Stewarts 'This Sceptered Isle' bit gave me goosebumps.

[Captain Blood]

Loved it. Wonderful all round, although I found Ben Whishaw's Richard just a little OTT in the 'fey' stakes.
But Stewart and Suchet were both wonderful.

Needless to say most of the armour and costume was fanciful and wrong for the period, but obviously the untutored eye would never have been able to tell.

The only thing I really didn't like were the pathetic crowd scenes. Is the BBC so hard up that it can't run to more than 10 extras when it needs to portray an army? Or is it some kind of inverse quasi-theatrical snobbery? An army of 10 men on a theatre stage might look quite convincing. An army of 10 men on the TV screen, when we're used to CGI armies of thousands from Peter Jackson and co, just looks pathetic.
I remember the much vaunted Elizabethan epic with Helen Mirren a few years ago, where ERI's famous 'heart and of stomach of a king' speech to the English army at Tilbury consisted of a handful of desultory extras aimlessly sitting around and occasionally waving their pikes a bit. Dismal. For God's sake, hire a few more extras so that battle scenes start to look as convincing as the interior scenes between a handful of characters, which were excellent.

But I'm looking forward to the next three. Just a shame they're not giving the same treatment to Richard III which IMHO is far and away the best and most gripping of the Plantagenet history plays.

[Steve F]

Loved it. Wonderful all round, although I found Ben Whishaw's Richard just a little OTT in the 'fey' stakes.

Finally got round to watching this. I thought that Whishaw's fey oddness worked, but wished that he hadn't emphasised the rhymes so much - particularly as the rest of the cast worked hard to suppress them.  The most surprising performance, for me, was Rory Kinnear's Bolingbroke, who seemed to be stumbling along, surprised by the events that pushed him forward, rather than being the thrusting politician I'd imagined from reading the play.  And it's hard to imagine him turning into Jeremy Irons in his old age - he looks too much like his own dad.  Suchet and Stewart were excellent (the only John of Gaunt I'd previously seen was Gielgud in the c1980 BBC production, who seemed to be taking his cue from the actors in Blackadder the Third), and I really wouldn't want to meet David Morrissey's Northumberland in a dark alley.

Though somewhat anachronistic and fanciful, I found it refreshing that the production design did attempt to evoke medieval England, rather than pre-Columbian America or Cambodia under Pol Pot or something.  And there were no bloody disused factories! Hooray!

[Captain Blood]

Agreed on all points Steve!

Am looking forward to SRB as Falstaff, although I won't get to see it until later in the week on iPlayer... 

[Arlequín]

I'm in two minds as regards accuracy etc. The originals were performed by actors in 'Elizabethan' clothing and possibly earlier Tudor items scrounged for their 'antiquity'... three or four people besides the actors would form an 'army', so we aren't so badly served. I did think that the outfits did resemble a portrayal of Al-Shaq-Speare's 'Saladin II' at times though. I was equally surprised at just how ethnically diverse England was in the late 14th Century... still if I have to suspend disbelief as a trade off for good acting, I'll live with that.

I'm not sure what the Beeb are hoping to do here. Their old version of the series was done on a set, with limited cast. This new one is done in the open 'on location'... with limited cast and I find myself wondering why? Surely the open space could have been used to portray 'real battles', even through CGI?

As for the 'Braveheart' Welsh... not far off how they would have been originally portrayed - as 'near-savages'. Quite overdone in this instance though and I do wonder what they will do to poor Glyn Dŵr in this week's, with his "summoning spirits from hell" bit.

This week's is likely to be my favourite... Falstaff, Young Henry VI, Pistol et al. It's perhaps the lightest of the bunch and I'm looking forward to the 'recruitment' scene... which if done true to the play, will be a good primer for anyone interested in how troops were raised for 'domestic' conflicts near this time.  

[Plynkes]

Well, Welsh civilization certainly made some huge advances between 1399 and 1403. From cavemen to castles and ballads in such a short span of time.