Scot-free
he editor’s wish for me to include something Caledonian to match the spirit of the rest of the magazine seemed simple enough but hard to accomplish. I wrote about Mary, Queen of Scots only a few months ago, I did not attend the Edinburgh Festival in 2005, and there was no convenient stage production of the Scottish play near at hand. Instead, I’ll discuss television drama in 2005 with a brief nod at a TV Macbeth. I am aware that many readers of The Actuary have neither the time nor the inclination to watch much TV. For those, let me report a major drama success last year.Two British actors have struck gold in the US. Ian McShane stars as the onomatopoeic Al Swearengen in the gritty, brutal, titillating Deadwood from HBO, shown here on Sky One; Hugh Laurie leads as the laconic, eponymous House in Fox’s medical series first shown on Hallmark and later on Channel Five. As examples of cutting-edge drama development on the small screen they are faultless. In a different class of its own on Sky One was Hex, an erotic, cheeky, supernatural thriller set in a public school, which is part Dennis Wheatley leavened with Harry Potter and a soupçon of sapphic Chick Lit. I suspect that I was neither the target age nor gender for the last.The winter schedules on BBC promised much but except in one case failed to deliver. Another HBO offering, Rome, was instantly and correctly called bonkus maximus by the tabloids. As Caesar, Ciarán Hinds was suitable imperial and his nose appropriately aquiline but the mishmash of soldiering, sex, and sultry women palled. Similarly, the BBC’s series Egypt, depicting the golden age of archaeology, despite evident large production costs, struggled to compete with the memory of Indiana Jones now embedded firmly in my mind. You will note that each of the five shows mentioned so far has just one word as its name, so thank Messrs Shakespeare and Dickens who sometimes created longer titles.
Bard workShakespeaRe-told was the catch-all for a series of four contemporary settings of the bard’s work and, in general, I approved the effort. The one disappointment was Macbeth, in which the hero was king of a kitchen. The contrivance failed to work for me and, as with a certain cricketer’s biography, I fell asleep before the end. The three comedies transposed well but in two examples it was the exceptional acting that carried the day. I do wonder how much love for Shakespeare has been created by the BBC’s efforts. But let us rejoice in the performances of Damian Lewis, Sarah Parish, and the ubiquitous Billie Piper in Much Ado about Nothing which was set in a TV studio on the South Coast. Just as delightful were the star turns from Shirley Henderson and Rufus Sewell in The Taming of the Shrew, but the heroine’s role as a political party leader was improbable and the story lost its way towards the end. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was the weakest of the three comedies, although Johnny Vegas played an interesting Bottom. I had realised that what was missing from these reworkings was the poetry – plot is not sufficient. As if to echo my thought Oberon suddenly spoke some original lines but it was too little, too late.
Dickensian gloryI reserve my hymn of praise for the BBC’s Bleak House. Those of us who for a time were hooked on early episodes of The X-Files in 1993 must have been agreeably shocked at the metamorphosis undergone by Gillian Anderson who as Lady Dedlock has speech that could freeze water and cheekbones which could inflict a nasty cut. Her brilliant performance is but one of dozens in this riveting adaptation. The revelation scene on the ghost’s walk between Anderson and Anna Maxwell Martin, as Esther, was one of the most moving I have ever seen on the small screen. Add the malevolence of Charles Dance’s Tulkinghorn, the depth of the many character actors (Johnny Vegas (again!) as Krook, Phil ‘Shake me up, Judy’ Davis as Smallweed, to name just two) and we have a production which alone justifies the licence fee.Initially, I fretted about the marketing of the version as ‘soap’ – it usually followed EastEnders. But recalling how ‘soap-like’ Dickens’s characters are and how his early books were serialised monthly confirms that he was a trailblazer of the domestic cliffhanger. The BBC is merely following in his footsteps. Were he alive today Dickens would have been scriptwriting for his own TV company, Pickwick Inc.
