Love Is Not Love

With most of the humour centred on the complexity and opaqueness of Shakespeare's sonnets, this episode weaves a neatly labyrinthine plot around the Sonnets' two most famous subjects, the earl of Southampton, his supposed patron and the Dark Lady. Elton has fun with the possibilities these offer a sitcom writer.

The comedy is good while some of the structuring is a bit uneven. This series has a feel of being slightly rushed through to me. Had Elton spent longer trying to pen a fuller script each time then Upstart Crow could easily be a classic. Or maybe its just Elton's limitations as catchy punchline writer rather than a skilled character writer our greatest sitcom writers are.

Shakespeare thinks sonnets are the way to go on the road to immortality not plays as young kids have short attention span these days. Ben Elton can still get mileage out of drawing comparisons between then and now as well as the state of transport every time Will goes home to visit his family.

However all those sonnets are about a fair youth and the dark lady nothing about his wife Anne. The subjects of the sonnets are not impressed by his scribbling. Will ends up in trouble with Anne and his rival Sir Robert Greene who thinks writing about the fair youth is homosexuality is the fast track to the torture chamber. As Will's dad remarks, he is in a bucket of the brown stuff.

There series has hit a consistency, there are laughs to be had and Elton has found a template for the show that works.