Cumberbatch seduces as Shakespeare’s serial killer
Before this current series of The Hollow Crown (BBC Two, Saturday), the Richard III Society piped up with a request. Dedicated to promoting the idea that the last Plantagenet is more sinned against than sinning, its chairman urged the BBC to warn viewers that the plays in which Richard appears are drama, not history.
In Henry VI Part II, all the society’s monstrous fears came home to roost. From the moment Benedict Cumberbatch’s limping young Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was hauled onto his father’s horse to join the Yorkist insurrection, through to his pitiless assassination of Tom Sturridge’s Henry VI, here was a study of galloping psychopathy from its nascent phase through to full horrid efflorescence.
It was a thrilling and – go on, let’s admit it – seductive display of evil on the wing. His iridescent pupils twinkling with a malign and remorseless hunger for power, Cumberbatch brilliantly suggested a solitary figure outside the dynastic fray embodied in his purring postmurder avowal to the camera, “I am myself alone.”
Not that Richard was the only serial killer. As the Yorks took power, then lost it again to the Lancaster faction, led by Sophie Okonedo’s wrathful Queen Margaret, the ketchup quotient intensified. The trilogy’s first instalment had been all squabbling and scheming. On the menu here were gouged guts, lopped limbs and carved throats. The heads of Ben Miles’s dastardly Somerset and Adrian Dunbar’s fiery Plantagenet were gleefully tossed about like rugby balls.
Ben Power’s efficient reduction of the three Henry VI plays into two meant that, in this episode in particular, the next battle or betrayal was always queuing up on the runway. But even in a bloody carnival of frantic side-swapping and vengeful retribution, there was never a chance of getting lost. This was a breathless, brilliantly assured adaptation.
Henry’s murder put an end to Sturridge’s slightly uneasy first date with Shakespeare. Mostly the cast was packed with stars all stage-reared and fit for purpose. Among the more effete and smaller-boned thesps, Jason Watkins’s Suffolk and Anton Lesser’s Exeter shared the honours as least timber-shivering swordsmen. It was sad in particular to see Exeter mown down as Lesser has been a fine adornment to The Hollow Crown.
A key fascination of this film was seeing the cogs of history click. Anyone saving up to watch the climactic turn of Cumberbatch as Richard III is urged to spool back and catch this episode in which his future victims – and his Tudor nemesis – were introduced. The Richard III Society, meanwhile, have advised the BBC to spend the licence fee more wisely in the future. How, exactly? Jasper Rees
The day of a funeral is a promising setting for a new sitcom, offering a condensed combination of emotional charge and dark comic potential. In the first episode of Mum (BBC Two, Friday), we saw Cathy (Lesley Manville) prepare to say a final farewell to her husband while contending with an assortment of awful relatives. It was less black humour, more the beige shade of a nice cup of tea; soothing and enjoyable, if lacking in bite.
One highlight came in the form of Cathy’s gormless son, Jason (Sam Swainsbury), and his new girlfriend, Kelly (Lisa McGrillis), who turned up in a red mini-dress and no knickers. Kelly may have been an Essex girl cliché, but McGrillis infused her with a sweetness that made you smile.
And what of Cathy herself, stoic heroine of this everyday tragedy? In the opening episode, she did more tolerating than anything else, failing to offer a sharp riposte to her brother’s snobbish new girlfriend, Pauline (Dorothy Atkinson), who mocked the trappings of Cathy’s suburban semi. Cathy only let loose once, in a touching scene with her old friend, Michael (Peter Mullan).
You didn’t need the glasses that Cathy had misplaced to see that he was in love with her, and that Mum would soon morph into a tale of both bereavement and belated romance. I hope that, as it does so, it unleashes more of Manville’s pent-up brilliance. While there were some weak patches in the first episode – the fact that a woman’s lost glasses are on her head is not especially funny – Mum looks set to offer a much stronger take on the trials of the M&S set than BBC One’s Boomers. Ceri Radford