David Mitchell on why William Shakespeare is a sitcom everyman

The actor and writer talks to Gemma Dunn about the new season of Upstart Crow

Some actors may find the idea of playing William Shakespeare daunting – but not David Mitchell.

In fact, when the Peep Show star was first offered the chance to portray the literary genius in Upstart Crow – the Ben Elton-penned sitcom – a few years back, he jumped at the chance.

“I told myself that, however challenging it might be, it’s not like I was being asked to be James Bond,” he said at the time. “And let’s be completely honest, the Bond franchise would have to go in a very peculiar direction if I was up for the part...”

It was a good decision. For while there’s rightly no tux in sight for Mitchell in Upstart Crow, the BBC2 comedy – which follows the playwright as he starts to make a name for himself in London, while also trying to take care of his family in Stratford-uponavon – has been hailed a roaring success since its 2016 inception, with two hit series to date.

The third, Mitchell promises, is set to be even bigger and better.

“It’s the best series we’ve made,” the 44-year-old says, when we catch up over the phone. “It’s very much along the same lines – it’s Will’s struggles to become accepted as the genius he knows he is, [but] we see the moments and events in his life that may or may not have inspired some of his key works.

“You know, we’ve got Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merchant Of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing as well as Love Labour’s Lost, which the references to may be understood by slightly fewer people.”

Series three or four is usually a sweet spot in the life of a sitcom, the Wiltshireborn comic declares: “The first series is written without the cast in mind, [whereas] the second series starts to be written with people in mind,” Mitchell reasons, “and that beds in even more with the third series.

“I think Ben Elton is writing some of his best stuff ever, really, in this show,” he adds. “The scripts – the brilliant scripts – turn up with huge reams of words for me to David Mitchell as Shakespeare and Tim Downie as Marlowe, right, in the Ben Elton-penned sitcom Upstart Crow

learn, so basically my job, as I see it, is not to get his words wrong.

“It’s a studio sitcom. So you’ve only got one or two goes at it – and one of those two goes has to count because that’s going to be the version that is broadcast.”

Does he like playing to a live studio audience, then?

“I love it, because it’s what I imagined TV would be like before I worked in it,” admits Mitchell, who has also become a panel-show regular in recent years.

“I thought it would all be like putting on a play every week, but in front of a load of cameras and an audience, but very few things are like that.

“Obviously, Peep Show wasn’t,” continues Mitchell, who won a Bafta for the groundbreaking Channel 4 sitcom, alongside his Mitchell and Webb comedy partner, Robert Webb.

“It’s exciting: in a way, a long period of shooting something is satisfying when you’ve finished it, and it’s edited together and hopefully you like it, but it’s not exciting in the moment. There are too many moments.

“But shooting Upstart Crow builds up over the week to the studio recording evening, and then you’re fully adrenalised.

Joining Mitchell this season are regular players Harry Enfield, Paula Wilcox, Liza

Tarbuck, Helen Monks and Gemma Whelan, to name a few, as well as guest stars, including Ben Miller, Lily Cole and Sir Kenneth Branagh.

“I think Ben’s writing and his name attracts them,” Mitchell says of the impressive lineup. “But I also think that we’re doing something that was done a lot in the Eighties and Nineties – a proper old-school studio sitcom – but doesn’t happen much now.

It attracts a “multigenerational” audience, he states: “There are young fans, but there are lots of middleaged and older people who also like it. It’s nice to have a new comedy that appeals to that demographic as well.”

Is pitching Shakespeare as a relatable figure – the dreams, the struggles – another reason for its appeal?

“Frankly, that was Ben Elton’s vision,” Mitchell says. “He saw Shakespeare in previous dramatisations – [for example] Shakespeare In Love sees him as a sort of heart-throb hero, but Ben looked at his struggles and the way, even now, people deny the authorship of his plays.

“He looked at how he was successful in his time, but quite modestly successful, considering his subsequent cultural impact, and thought, ‘Yeah, no, this is the sitcom every man’. This is a man who’s got a family he’s trying to hold together, he’s got dreams and he’s got jeopardy, and that’s the classic sitcom structure.”

“I think Ben Elton is writing some of his best stuff ever”

● Upstart Crow returns to BBC2 on Wednesday, 8:30pm