A top-notch cast tries to pay homage to the bard but this series hardly reaches Shakespearean heights.
For one thing, the level of extraneous noise is such that sometimes (especially early on) it drowns out the actors.
Tim Curry is Shakespeare; Ian McShane, in part one, aquits himself well as Marlowe; John McEnry is Will's Stratford pal Hamnet Sandler; Rob Cook is . . . Oh, somebody. Nicholas Clay is Southampton. The cast runs quite deep.
They use every old saw about Shakespeare, from his holding horses to his line that William the Conqueror came before Richard the first (cleaned up for family viewing). But we know tons more about Shakespeare forty years on, and have more sensible speculation about how plays of the day were written. It's too bad this material couldn't be incorporated into a smoother version with the same cast.
But it was made in the day when British TV was largely done in long, videotaped, stagey interiors where people speaking loudly to reach the microphones. And grainy exteriors.
The series was written by a real writer, John Mortimer, not some TV hack. So some of the wilder nonsense can be explained by his writers' imagination. But it has to be dramatic, after all. Still, the series is at its best when Shakespeare's words are enacted.
