![]() The “Henry VI” plays are early Shakespeare, eventful but psychologically simple compared to what would come, and some effort has been expended to make them play less like a pageant and more like lifelike, psychologized drama. The battle scenes, of which there are several across the series’ several hours - or as Shakespeare puts it, - are loud, muddy and bloody, and there’s blood between the battles as well. The mood is drear, the images often dark the music is dark too, leaning on brass and low strings. ![]() They’ve compressed four plays into three, combining the less-staged “Henry VI” plays, parts 1 through 3, with the popular “Richard III.” Indeed, such combinations seem historically to have been the rule, “Part 1” having rarely been staged on its own.īut he does a good job of supporting the story, working in an economical epic style - shooting in fields and forests and big medieval spaces, but with the crowds and pageantry dialed down - that keeps the action human and underscores the idea that this stretch of history boiled down to a family feud. The new series settles for one, Dominic Cooke, with the text adapted by Cooke and Ben Power (who co-wrote the screenplay for the earlier “Richard II”). The earlier “Hollow Crown” assigned its four plays to three different directors and came in a variety of styles. It recounts the history of the houses of Lancaster and York as they vie for control of England across much of the 15th century, and if you’re a viewer whose conception of warring houses comes mostly from “Game of Thrones,” these films seem to have been made, in part, with you in mind. Three years after the BBC filmed the four Elizabethan docudramas known as “The Henriad” - “Richard II,” “Henry IV” (parts 1 and 2) and “Henry V” - as “The Hollow Crown,” it picks up the history with “The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses,” which premieres in the U.S. Four centuries on, we’re still stealing from and staging him. Shakespeare is the guy, your one-stop author for every sort of person and condition and situation - everything you need to comprehend the strange, messy richness of human life is encompassed within his collected works.
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