NYTimes.com: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” Shakespeare wrote some 400 years ago, and although crowns are far less abundant now, uneasy heads are everywhere on the world stage. So the audience for the new series “The Hollow Crown” should understand exactly what Henry IV of England means when he speaks that famous line. That, at least, is the hope of the BBC and PBS, the co-producers of the four-part series, which was shown in Britain last year and is to be broadcast on “Great Performances” in the United States, beginning on Friday, Sept. 20.
2 comments:
It would seem that the success of the Game of Thrones television series has really set something in motion with epic adventure stories being turned into TV shows. However, the difference here is that these Shakespearean stories have been told thousands of times in many different forms, by endless numbers of extremely talented people. Any new take on Shakespeare's classics will still be considered old, overdone, even nonsensical. And doing them in the traditional way holds the problem of grabbing interest; with so many iconic actors (Lawrence Olivier) already holding sway over these roles, how do modern actors hope to compare and find a way to dodge or even rise above the stereotype? The same problem exists for designers; with shows that have been beautifully done so many times, how do we make something original? I wish them all the luck on this daring endeavor.
I like the idea of putting old Shakespearean histories in a new light. I feel like alot of these works are sometimes overlooked and putting them in a television series seems like a good way to gather a wider audience. When you have something that could leave off in the middle of the play, it allows for a cliffhanger and brings the audience back for more the previous week. I also agree with what the article was saying about this being the right time for telling these stories in this form of entertainment. With inventions like Netflix I think it is safe to say television is more widely used than ever and so allows for a wider audience.
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