We are now busily  of the death of William Shakespeare, and with Genome’s retrospective glance we decided to tease out programmes which take an unusual look at the Bard’s work.

Programmes that refer to Shakespeare and his works are of course even more numerous than performances of his works. We're looking at unusual documentaries on the great man, and other quirky offerings, including dramas inspired by his plays, as well as programmes featuring Shakespeare (and his relations).

One of the most memorable productions I personally remember was 1973 schools series ,  an adaptation of the story of Julius Caesar by John Bowen.  Not only staged in modern dress, it was also rendered into modern English.  With an excellent cast and high production values for a schools drama, what shocked was the level of violence for something shown during daytime. In place of the traditional stabbing of Caesar by daggers, his assassination involved flick knives, and the bloody results were very graphic. 

The original three-part production was so successful that it was shown again in an adult viewing slot the next year, edited into a 90-minute , and in 1975 an for schools examined the series, with comments from the cast.

Another re-imagining of Shakespeare came thirty years later in the ShakespeaRe-told strand, with four new plays based on , Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  These were peak-time productions with all-star casts, featuring the likes of Damian Lewis, Julie Walters, James McAvoy, Billie Piper and James Nesbitt.

Neither of these was of course the first time Shakespeare had inspired other writers, and there have been many other re-imaginings of his works from Forbidden Planet to the films of Kurosawa to .

Another innovative interpretation of some of Shakespeare’s plays came with , where abbreviated versions of some of the best-known plays were turned into animation, using various techniques. 

Initiated by Ö÷²¥´óÐã Wales, and including Welsh translated versions as well as the English originals, the series also employed the skills of Russian animation studios at a time when the country was in a state of flux with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Inspiration for wholly original works has also come from Shakespeare’s life and legend, and the many mysteries and controversies surrounding him, as far back as George Bernard Shaw’s , shown on television several times from the 1930s onwards.

There is also the Clemence Dane play Will Shakespeare, and in more recent times radio dramas like by Robert Nye, and A Song for Edmond Shakespeare, imagining events in the lives of his wife Anne Hathaway, and his brother Edmund respectively.  Anne Hathaway’s famous bequest from her husband also inspired the play which was produced on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã as long ago as 1931, and re-performed several times.

1982 saw Radio 4 broadcast John Wilders and John Powell’s ‘imagined scenes from a documentary life’ in , which starred Martin Jarvis.  in 1996 was Nan Woodhouse’s take on the travails of being the relation of a celebrity, from the viewpoint of Shakespeare’s youngest daughter.

In the field of conventional documentaries, of course Shakespeare has been better served that many others, as the most analysed and referenced figure in British culture.  To take some fairly random examples, was a 1971 film looking at how the RSC prepared for a production of The Tempest at Stratford, which included Ben Kingsley and Ian Richardson among its cast.  

and were two examples where Shakespeare’s plays have been mounted in challenging settings as a way of involving communities in the first instance, and prisoners in the second.

The place of Shakespeare in British culture has inevitably made him the subject of humour on numerous occasions.  was a 1947 Third Programme comedy ‘lecture’ by Stephen Potter of Oneupmanship fame.  There have been many comedy sketches using the best-known Shakespearean scenes, such as the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, memorably re-enacted for with Frank Bruno.

Blackadder never featured Shakespeare himself, even in , which covered the period he lived in – though he was briefly mentioned and there were various themes that would have been familiar to Will himself. The first series, , however, was a spoof of many aspects of the History Plays, and included of course lines from Richard III, as portrayed by Peter Cook – the series acknowledged the debt by crediting Shakespeare for “additional dialogue”.

While not a comedy (as such), Doctor Who has also featured references and appearances by Shakespeare.  As well as Tom Baker’s Doctor claiming to recognise his own writing on an original Shakespeare manuscript (Will having sprained his wrist writing sonnets), Shakespeare makes two appearances in person. 

In 1965 episode , the Doctor uses a device called the Time-Space Visualiser to look at various scenes from history, including that of Shakespeare being commanded to write a play about Falstaff in love by Queen Elizabeth I (and inadvertently being inspired to write Hamlet as well).  That was a cameo, but he was a lead character in 2007 David Tennant episode , where the plot revolves around the writing of the lost play Love’s Labours Won.

What are your favourite Ö÷²¥´óÐã Shakespeare moments?  Let us know below (extra points for iambic pentameters!)

Last week our guest blogger talked about some lesser-known comedies, this week it’s the turn of one of the better-known ones – but a sketch show with a difference, rather than a sitcom.

It was brought to my attention recently that one episode of Not Only…But Also, the classic Ö÷²¥´óÐã2 sketch series starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, was allegedly shorter by about five minutes in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Archive than as originally transmitted. 

While this is not that unusual – once a programme is exported, it is possible for edits to be made for censorship or timing reasons, and if the exported version is all that survives, as in this case, that is what we end up with – I decided to do some research and discover whether this was the case here, and what was actually missing.  Armed with a copy of the recording and the script, it soon became apparent that it was true…

Cook and Moore had first come to prominence in the stage revue Beyond the Fringe, which was credited with launching the 1960s satire boom.  When that finally ended in 1964 after a Broadway run (with a Ö÷²¥´óÐã showing of a special in London), they were both looking for new projects. 

Dudley Moore’s first Ö÷²¥´óÐã credit had been as a musician, and many of his early appearances including on Monitor and in a short television series, , were in that capacity, both as composer and performer.  With his jazz trio, he also appeared in several radio series.

In 1964 Moore was approached to present a one-off programme for the new Ö÷²¥´óÐã2 channel, in which he would perform music, comedy and poems with guests including singer Diahann Carroll, Beatle John Lennon – and Peter Cook.  

This pilot show was originally more than an hour long, and it is this version which survives in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã archives.  By the time it was transmitted in January 1965, it had been decided to commission a series starring Moore and Cook.  The first episode was cut down to 45 minutes with the spare material transferred to episode two. 

The pilot had been entitled  followed by the list of guest artists.  The series proper became known as Not Only… But Also, with Moore taking first billing in series one, but the order alternated in the second series, and by series three it was alphabetical, favouring Cook.

The timing discrepancy in question was in the episode transmitted on , a stand-alone edition shown well after the second series in January and February that year.

Looking in detail at the ‘Christmas’ episode (not that there is anything very seasonal about it) showed not only what had been cut – a section of one studio sketch and a whole filmed sketch – but also (see what I did there?) it was noticeable how much what was said on screen departed from the script.  Cook and Moore’s comedy was heavily improvised, and even though a script was needed for production reasons, it was obviously an acknowledged part of their creative process that they would not necessarily stick to it. 

Many traditional actors might have found this too challenging – but Cook and Moore clearly enjoy the mental sparring involved.  Cook probably has the greater tendency to wander from the text, given his anarchic temperament and low boredom threshold, as well as his mischievous delight in trying to throw Moore off kilter. But Moore, who perhaps better remembers where they are supposed to be going and to try to get there, also has a jazzman’s love of improvisation, reacting in the moment to play around with the script.

The amount of material missing from the print of the December 1966 episode amounts to approximately four minutes.  The show, recorded on 9 December, begins with a filmed sketch where Dudley is a new member of a fox hunt, who is given a fox costume and chased by the hounds . At the end of the item he goes down a burrow and emerges in the studio.  This was followed by a song by guest Marion Montgomery, backed by the Dudley Moore Trio (on recording, there was a break to allow Moore to change costume). 

After another break, the next sketch has Cook as a ‘fairy cobbler’ and Moore as his wife, a frustrated fairy called Melanie.  The sketch demonstrates how the written dialogue differs from what was actually said on the night, but it also has a large section of dialogue missing on the recording compared to the script. It seems likely that this was recorded and cut later, as there is an obvious edit in the programme.  It’s not clear why it was cut, and when, unless it was the censor’s objection to the word ‘titter’. (It’s lucky Frankie Howerd wasn’t a guest star or there would hardly be anything left…)

The next item is a film sketch entitled ‘Golf quickie’, which is also missing from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s copy of the show – as with all the film items, no details are listed on the recording script. 

In the case of drama or situation comedy scripts, film sequences tend to have their dialogue and stage directions included, as they contribute to the sense of the whole plot, but in a sketch show the film is not always relevant to the surrounding material, so the director might choose to omit it for brevity’s sake.  The film itself would be played to the studio audience, to add their laughter to the soundtrack of the finished programme.

Next is another musical item by the Dudley Moore Trio, then the obligatory ‘Pete and Dud’ sketch, with Cook and Moore in their trademark flat caps and plastic macs, ruminating on the universe and Dud’s Aunt Dolly.  As with the ‘fairy cobbler’ sketch, the spoken word diverges from the written, but it was the usual practice of the two to improvise sketches onto a tape recorder, then have this written down as a guide script. However on the day they would just use this as a basis for what they would actually say. 

Towards the end of the sketch there is a filmed insert – the sketch is about Dud having an alien encounter on Willesden Common, and in the film sequence he is taken to another planet – with the payoff  to the item back in the studio. 

Another Marion Montgomery number is followed by a final sketch, ‘Swinging London’, starting on film with Cook as an American television reporter, and featuring another cameo appearance by John Lennon.  The sketch moves to the studio, where Dudley is the proprietor of an exclusive public toilet, the ‘Ad Lav Club’, a satire on trendy London nightclubs (and perhaps a dig at critics of ‘lavatorial’ humour).  Finally Dudley and Peter drive off on a piano from the club, which, back on film, travels across country and onto a railway track, as the closing theme ‘Goodbye’ is played – for once by an orchestra, rather than sung by the comedians (whose version was a hit single in 1965).

As mentioned earlier, this was the last Ö÷²¥´óÐã show for several years by Cook and Moore, and their 1970 series, although followed by two episodes made in , would be their last major television work together. 

Cook and Moore’s comedy is definitely classic stuff, and it is regrettable that more of it has not survived -  there are only eight complete episodes of the 22 made. At least more of it is retained than of Beyond the Fringe colleague Alan Bennett’s , of which little more than off-air soundtracks and a couple of filmed sequences are left of its six episodes. 

The missing material from the December 1966 episode, although probably only surviving in sound, may not plug a huge gap in the Not Only… archive, but we at the Genome Project like to think that every little helps…

Let us know any other TV or radio mysteries you'd like us to investigate - and any other subjects you want the Genome blog to cover...