With such a stellar group of British actors, it's amazing how they have managed to ruin Shakespeare. I've seen so many excellent productions, both on stage and on film, but this series stunned me with its awfulness. I watched Richard II, which was boring and grey. The heavy-handed Christ metaphor is not supported by the text and is so obviously shoe-horned in by the director that one wonders why he didn't choose a different story altogether that might have matched his narrow-focus interpretation. Richard is played as such an ethereal, dreamy idiot I'm surprised there wasn't sitar underscoring, along with lava lamps in the castle. It doesn't work with the text. Neither did the St. Sebastian silliness. I certainly enjoy seeing cute gay men, but was this a Shakespeare play or a Herb Ritts photo-shoot documentary? I hung in there for Henry IV parts one and two and they were also dreadful. Where was Henry IV? A better title would have been "The Overly-Extended Drunken Antics of Falstaff". By Part Two I was fast-forwarding through huge swathes of Falstaff nonsense hoping for some sense of interesting story. Instead, people rant and rail with no genuine purpose. I felt nothing for the characters at all and great contempt for the directors. I assume the final shots of Falstaff are supposed to be poignant, but I could not have cared less what happened to that character. This series was such a huge disappointment. I couldn't be bothered to watch the rest of the series. Really, don't waste your time.
Review of The Hollow Crown
The Hollow Crown
(2012–2016)
What a waste of talented actors. What a waste of viewers' time.
15 January 2018