Fakespeare: the Thread For Discussing Those New BBC Adaptations

If the Beeb wants to produce some one-off standalone dramas, why not bring back Play for Today instead of these cacky soap operas that try to make their audience feel ever-so-slightly cultured by pretending to be Literature? It's not like Shakespeare's plots were original, so strip away the language and what have you got? Happy Shopper faux-culture for idiots.

This sort of thing makes me think scrapping the licence fee would be a good idea.

But compared to everything else that was on last night (and yes, Madchen's thread did just give me a twinge) it felt a bit of a relief, like something comforting.

And scottish slang != Trainspotting. Much like Rab C Nesbitt != Trainspotting.

Obviously, I prefered James McAvoy:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/shakespeare/macbeth/images/450x187/home.jpg

What should the BBC be doing instead of this? Obviously I was completely captivated by their William Fielding adaptation, somewhat more modern in date and theme than Shakespeare, but still with the nice costumes.

(Meta-question: What's wrong with enjoying a good costume drama?)

I argued with my girlfriend about this, and she said "wll what about the people who'd find the language difficult you = snob", to which my reply was, well what about people who do understand the language? Me = uncatered-to.

let's face it, who likes SP for the plots?

Most of which were lifted from older sources anyway, so in very little sense is this "Shakespeare"

x-post, nothing, I suppose. I just wonder why the BBC constantly feel the need to "update" things.

x-post, nothing, I suppose. I just wonder why the BBC constantly feel the need to "update" things.

I think because they are trying to educate the Yoof that "hey, look, Shakespeare can be cool and modern!" to try and introduce them to their cultural heritage. Which kind of misses the point a bit.

I don't know. I like the way that Shakespeare played with language and just invented words when the passion took him. But it can be difficult to wade through without a 16th Century dictionary at times. I can never read it without recourse to the footnotes.

What I said above: Play for Today. If they're going to run single dramas like the Fakespeares, why not commission a range of writers to produce a series of new, original films?

I'm sure I'm being naively optimistic, but it feels like the BBC wouldn't have the balls to put out some of the PfT stuff on BBC1 today. But it's happy to spend huge sums on ropey Brit attempts to create edgy US-style series.

TBH, I haven't really noticed any BBC series. I guess they had CSI:BBC but I haven't seen that in a while. Spooks? I haven't had any interest in watching that at all.

Christ, my comfort watching has ended up being the Leerdammer mysteries on ITV and the Toucan Skit Scop and Donners on Five. (Pardon my terrible Afrikaans spelling there.)

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I think the prob with the Shakespeare is that I've got no problem if people aren't interested in his work - why should they be? - but if you're going to ride on his reputation then aping the least original bit of his plays, the plots, seems cheap somehow. I'd argue that the effect is as much a product of the words as anything else, and whatever people feel like Baz Luhrmann and other recent cinema modernizers, they've proved it's possible to keep the dialogue and get an audience involved.

I mean, by the time I was old enough to appreciate BBC dramas, we'd gone to the States. And my experience of them was when they got boxed up and sold to PBS and repackaged as Masterpiece Theatre, which was kind of a Sunday night tradition in my house, with the reassuringly plummy tones of Alistair Cookie telling you what to think.

I mean, even Serious Documentaries. Five seems to have pipped them to the post, because they'll take a Serious Documentary Subject and sex it up a bit and have it presented by an intellectual hunk like Nigel Spivey (OK, he was on BBC2 for his last outing).

In my head it just represents this thing I don't get from TV anymore. I'm sure that's prob'ly partly nostalgia, but I'm sure it's partly because "mainstream" TV doesn't do it anymore.

I watched about the first twenty minutes of Macbeth last night (well, what woman isn't going to want an eyeful of young McAvoy in his leather trews?) but lost interest fairly rapidly when he started carving up the pig's head and talking about respect. It just seemed like a silly, forced speech. Also, I'm not sure the stakes were high enoug. Celebrity chef isn't really on a par with King of Scotland, is it?

Harking back to great BBC series though, I see from my Amazon recommendations that Our Friends in the North is available on DVD.

I wasn't in the UK in the early 80s and in the 70s I would have been too young.

How do you think the rise of C4 affected it? Didn't they kind of elbow in on the BBC's (especially BBC2's) perceived arty and intelligencia audience? C4's films got imported to the States to art cinemas.

but then realised that "Masterpiece" was code for "adapted from a book", which meant everything from Henry V to the Sharpe novels and Jeeves and Wooster. A fairly broad range.

yes"! that's what was great about it. I think it (well, PBS rather than just MT) really shaped and informed a lot of my taste in television.

it was a combination of the two. 1) the bbc were terrified of thatcher and tried to rein in the play for today lot (who were all hard-leftists). 2) channel 4 was started precisely in order to ghetto all the 'weird stuff'. so a lot of talent shifted over to channel 4 -- and channel 4's strategy was to have a short cinema run, in order to get an international profile, and then go on tv. 'my beautiful laundrette' (for working title!) was conceived this way, but was such a big hit it stayed in cinemas, despite being on 16mm.

but then at some point c4 and working title discovered richard curtis.

I really think that the Baz Luhrmann's R+J same-dialogue modernized-setting solution is the obvious good way of doing this. (I mean his actual film itself does a lot lot more than that but none of that wld be necessary for a watchable miniseries).

I saw the Much Ado and was interested how they changed the ending to the play, as what Claudio does is so despicable that there is no way a girl (let alone Teh Billie Piper) would have him back. I did not see Macbeth but why do modern adaptations always call him Joe MAcbeth. As in gangster version Joe Macbeth (get Sid James in that.

i'm still mad that they updated the snooker theme tune :( it has all beats and stuff in it now :((((

I've also got a big chip on my shoulder that I haven't articulated yet about the way modernised versions of old books try to show that the writer was dealing with "timeless, universal Themes". I think that's horseshit, but I haven't got time to elaborate right now cos I'm going down the pub to do my own modernisation of the life of Dylan Thomas. :D

But then again, the comedies usually fare better than the tragedies in modern adaptations. And MND is one of my favourite plays.