Shrieking, bellowing, yelling — is this the loudest Lear ever made?
London’s nightscape glittered like coloured crystals drowning in tar, at the start of Anthony Hopkins’s modern-day King Lear (BBC2). We’ve seen this swooping shot of the City skyscrapers before, in the opening credits of The Apprentice. Was this a deliberate allusion, comparing shakespeare’s most brutal tragedy to a reality TV gameshow?
Perhaps we’d see daughters Goneril, Regan and Cordelia trundling their wheelie suitcases over the Millennium Bridge, all hoping to be anointed as successor to mad, evil old King sugar — sorry, I mean King Lear.
But this adaptation was hardly so subtle. Metaphors and hidden meanings had no place in a production that never stopped bellowing its messages in our faces. This might be the loudest piece of TV ever made.
Emma Thompson ( Goneril) screamed at her father’s army rabble till her veins popped. Emily Watson (Regan) shrieked fit to shatter glass as her fingernails dug out the eyes of the duke of Gloucester (Jim Broadbent).
Everybody tried to outshout everyone else, Hopkins loudest of all. He was never knowingly caught underacting, nor underdoing the symbolism of a broken Britain.
The stormy heath that shakespeare imagined for the king’s mad scenes became a refugee camp filled with starving immigrants, and then a concrete shopping centre in a soulless new town.
Hopkins has wanted to make this TV version for a long time — so long that he once had a teenage Keira Knightley in mind for young Cordelia, instead of Florence Pugh. now he’s finally brought it to the screen, the 80-year- old has been selling it for all he’s worth, even boasting (like Lear) of his real-life estrangement from his daughter.
some of the casting was inspired. Jim Carter, the eternal butler of downton Abbey, was perfect as the loyal Kent, and Tobias Menzies (best-known as Black Jack Randall in outlander) was wickedly nasty as the duke of Cornwall.
Menzies will play Prince Philip in the next series of The Crown, which doesn’t bode well for the Buckingham Palace spin doctors.
Yet Christopher Ecclestone was an odd choice for Goneril’s effete footman, oswald. Ecclestone camping it up is like Alan Carr playing an all-in wrestler — not impossible, but definitely not typecasting. The wardrobe department had some funny ideas, too. The duke of Burgundy wore African robes and a gold-hemmed hat. Perhaps there was a misprint in the cast list, and someone bought clothes for the duke of Burundi.
shakespeare has been a mainstay of television ever since a 1938 live airing of Julius Caesar in fascist uniforms, featuring dennis Price (now that would have been something to see).
natural history quizzes, with studio experts puzzling over strange teeth and eggs, have been around for decades, too.
Curious Creatures (BBC2) is a new twist on a format that dates back to educational programmes such as Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? in the Fifties. Kate Humble presides over a panel game designed for family viewing, with lots of facts and surprises guaranteed to entertain animal-loving children.
Even if you’ve never heard of a harpy eagle, it’s fun to know that its talons are as long as a grizzly bear’s claws and can crush a man’s bones to muesli.
Lucy Cooke is one of the team captains, with Chris Packham, who was back on screen 90 minutes later as springwatch returned for a week of live shows. Chris revealed he can recognise hippos from their jawbones and aye-aye lemurs from their paws.
Let’s hope he doesn’t find too many of those in the springwatch nesting boxes.