Comedy raises the Bard
AS A teenager I spent many hours studying a book called England Under The Tudors by Professor Geoffrey Elton. I also roared with laughter at a comedy called Blackadder, written by Professor Elton’s nephew, Ben.
History flows through the younger Elton’s veins as his latest very welcome effort UPSTART CROW (BBC2) proves. The title refers to an insult that a rival writer once slung at William Shakespeare.
Modern research has suggested that the Bard was a commuter, dividing his time between the London theatres and family life back in Stratford-upon-Avon.
This real history forms the backbone of Elton’s new comedy with a vexed Will (David Mitchell) complaining about replacement donkeys on the route and the lack of a serving cart. At home he’s humoured by his wife, chided by his teenage daughter and savaged by his father in an agreeable mishmash of the modern and ancient.
“Dad! I don’t say stuff like that!” protested his Brummie-accented daughter Susannah (Helen Monks) as she tested out some lines from his new play Romeo And Juliet. Later, in London, much mirth was mined from the gender-bending rigours of the Tudor stage.
Two burly blokes competed for the part of a 13-year-old Juliet while the obvious choice for the role of Kate (Gemma Whelan) was reduced to making tea.
Forever glancing over its shoulder at the future, Elton’s new show slipped by as smartly as Blackadder once did and enabled us to forget things he’d written in between. The plot neatly mirrored that of Romeo and Juliet and there were gags about Bullingdon Club toffs and other pig-based political scandals.
In sympathy with everyone who’d had to study the Bard at school, there were taboo-busting gags at English teachers’ expense. “Comedy is my strong point,” Will insisted to his critics. “It just requires lengthy explanation and copious footnotes.” This show is a lot funnier than the Gravedigger or any of Shakespeare’s comedy turns. To be a hit or not to be? That is the question.
At an advanced stage in my life I realised why moths flew into light bulbs. They think any source of light is the moon and being nocturnal they fly towards it.
A massive, evolutionary advantage therefore would be on offer to the moth who decided to do his business in daylight.
No death by light bulbs, no rolled-up newspaper chasing you, free light everywhere, dawn to dusk. Lacking this insight, the creatures of the night have made many other, stranger adaptations, as ATTENBOROUGH’S LIFE THAT GLOWS (BBC2) displayed. Most schoolchildren know that a firefly flashes to attract a mate but the world of bioluminescence is more complex than that. Fireflies actually have a whole, Morse-like language of flashing code.
Other species flash to ward off an attack. Deep in the sea, microscopic creatures employ a kind of double-bluff flashing that entices predators in but in the process, lights them up handily so that bigger things can scoff them.
Thanks to a robotic sub and aptly named oceanographer Dr Haddock, Attenborough found the weirdest lighting systems of all at the bottom of the sea. Vampire squid, comb jellies, dragonfish… these life-forms were mind-blowing enough without the self-generated neon display. Without it though we’d never know they exist.