Update on the BBC site about the proposed Shakespeare adaptations, which all sounds rather marvellous (for details on me trying to crowbar my way into this, look here. Three hour-long plays at first, with more to come if those are successful. Might there be room in there for a half-hour sitcom adaptation of Romeo and Juliet?
Well, probably not, but you never know. Can I suggest that nobody writes a modern-day adaptation of 'Midsummer Nights Dream' where Titania and Auberon are represented by David Beckham and that other one? I'm sure no-one's going to, but always better to be safe than sorry...
I'd quite like a resetting of The Tempest in a call centre, although I've no idea how you'd go about it. I'm sure some bright spark can come up with the details (Whee! Look at me, I'm a producer!).
NB: just read more info in the Guardian. Initial adaptations are: The Taming of the Shrew in politics (Shirley Henderson as an opposition MP told to find herelf a husband to make herself more electable), Much Ado as an early evening regional news show and Midsummer Night's Dream in a holiday park, all of which sounds rather excellent.
I'd love to see one of these things handed over to people like Simon Pegg/Jessica Stevenson, or Neil Gaiman, or Mark Millar though, just to see what they'd do with it. Commissioning editors, james and the blue cat has spoken. Ignore his wise words at your peril.
Ooh shit, third-person. It has begun....
7 comments:
The Tempest in a Call Centre is surely too much of a challenge not to be taken up.
Good luck with the R&J stuff, I'm excited for you! You are gentlemen of brave metal; you would lift the moon out of her sphere, if she would continue in it five weeks without changing.
Ooh, nice quote. My best line in R+J is:
JULIET: Newsflash: you had me at 'If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine'.
Which I'm still very proud of.
I realize the above comment makes me look like an annoying smug man who takes credit for the work of greater writers. So it's par for the course then.
God, I'm not only commenting on my own blog, I'm also commenting on the comments, making me the saddest man in the world. I'm going to have a very hot bath now. If the world is very lucky, I'll dissolve completely and sort of float out to sea. Lucky old fish.
Out of interest, what does happen when you start talking in the third person? Apart from looking a bit poncey. Do you start narrating your day-to-day life in your own head?
I think you start to take yourself very very seriously and then go mad. But first you have to be surrounded by people who only ever say 'yes' to you.
Fortunately I'm surrounded by people who only say 'Shut up James'.
And 'Put that down. You'll break it.'
Sorry, I'm a bit late to comment on this James. But i am v excited about this project and would love you to get in there with R&J or anything else. As a working class girl who was helped to love Shakespeare, opera and other supposedly 'posh' arty things by the BBC, I had started to despair of the patronising attitude of public service broadcasters to what young people are prepared to watch.
It's up to them to use great writers, like you, and great performers to bring these things to life. As you say, using performers familiar from soaps or comedies or bands would be a great hook.
I think I've said this on the C4 Comedy forum but Tamsin and Julian as Beatrice and Bendick would have been great. As that's already cast maybe you could write Twelfth Night for them, with Tamsin as Viola and Julian as Orsino. She already goes to a boys' barber and could do transgender stuff much more convincingly than most Violas I've seen. And Julian can do that rather dreamy, poetic and ever so slighty decadent act so well.
Oh, please do that. Please.
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