The Hollow Crown

Richard III: Historians now dispute the extent to which Richard III (Benedict Cumberbatch) was actually the malevolent and power-hungry creature depicted here, but there can be no doubt as to William Shakespeare's interpretation - nor of Cumberbatch's either. With the sudden death of his brother Edward IV and his other brother Clarence having been reputedly drowned in a vat of wine, it falls to the young Edward V to succeed. His uncle, though, has other plans and whilst demonstrating all outward signs of friendship he manages to concoct a deviously effective plan to sow seeds of doubt on the legitimacy of this young lad (Caspar Morley) by suggesting his mother (Keeley Hawes) wasn't legally married. Cleverly, he ensures that it looks like he is responding to a public plea as he supplants his nephew, takes crown and so spawns the still largely unsolved mystery of the princes in the Tower. Even his own mother (Dame Judi Dench) is apalled by this action, but not so aggrieved as Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond and a claimant via Edward III (Luke Treadaway) who raises an army determined to restore the throne to the Lancastrians. It's a fairly well known story and this adaptation from Dominic Cooke and Ben Power stays fairly faithful to the bard's assessment of the man's character - and it's that character than Benedict Cumberbatch plays extraordinarily well. Right from the start he has an evil glint in his eye and throughout he maintains a characterfully unpleasant and duplicitous nature. This playwright was used to using ghostly apparitions in his work, or using mind tricks to symbolise guilt - and here he does both to harangue the king's conscience as his sins mount up with fairly incredible speed. Even the laws of sanctuary are not sacrosanct. There features a solid cast to support, though this play doesn't really offer much meat on the bones for Ben Daniels, Keeley Hawes, James Fleet or the scarcely featured Treadaway. That doesn't rally matter so much as this is essentially a one-man show and from very capable hands it is presented, too. With well executed battle scenes and a great aesthetic depicting dark castles and perfect costume design, this is a fitting conclusion to this superior seven part history of a time when neither God nor birth guaranteed the king would keep the crown ere long.

Henry VI, Part 2: With virtually nothing left to call English in France now, the ailing and mentally strained Henry VI (Tom Sturridge) returns home with his French wife Margaret (Sophie Okonedo) to a court that is just as rife with intrigue as the one he has just left. The King has been enthroned for many a year now, but that isn't going to stop Warwick (Stanley Townsend) from advancing the claims of Edward (Geoffrey Streatfield) as more legitimate by way of his lineage from the deposed Richard II and before. What does temper his treasonable intent is the decency of York (Adrian Dunbar) who having the throne at his feet, agrees to allow Henry to continue to reign provided he grants the succession to the Yorkist heirs. Needless to say, this irks his wife who brutally ensures the truce is broken. Now Edward and Warwick imprison the King whilst she and her son flee to the court of King Louis XI (Andrew Scott). To cement his role as kingmaker, Warwick follows shorty afterwards and proposes a marriage of state without realising that his new boss has fallen deeply for Elizabeth Woodville (Keeley Hawes). Feeling embarrassed and betrayed, he jumps ship (again) and promises to restore Henry VI to his crown. We all know how that went, and also just how brutally menacing Shakespeare liked to portray his real villain of the piece - Richard (Benedict Cumberbatch). This production ventures outdoors a lot more and the combat scenes are really well arranged to give us a genuine feeling of not just the terrain and conditions, but of the severity of the weapons at the time - no quick kills here! The acting is really only adequate here, though - Sturridge does well as he slowly loses what grasp on the plot her ever had, but is rarely on screen as the king and I didn't really find Townsend's duplicitous Warwick nor Dunbar's ambitious York to have quite the impact I would have wanted. Cumberbatch does give us an indication of what is to come but otherwise this has much more of an holding role in the tale of the War of the Roses, condensing the decline of one king and the ascension of the other in quite a rushed fashion. I know that was as much down to the bard as to Dominic Cooke, but it still seemed a bit shallow at times and a little too much of a chronology. Still, it's a great piece of television theatre that does illustrate well that the crown might well be hollow, but never more than when the head that wore it was even more so.

Henry VI, Part 1: Now that Henry V has died young, the crown passes to his infant son who grows under the regency of his uncle, the lord protector Gloucester (Hugh Bonneville), into Tom Sturridge. Despite claims to his throne from others with quite possibly more legitimacy, there is a period of stability in England whilst the warmongers battle it out in France against Jean D'Arc (Laura Morgan). As part of a complex series of negotiations, a deal is struck that will see the young king marry Margaret of Anjou (Sophie Okonedo). It's a bit of an one-sided arrangement that essentially sees the King dispossessed of his French possessions. Back at home, and with the married king now in his majority, the conspiracy from Somerset (Ben Miles) and York (Adrian Dunbar) works to manoeuvre Gloucester from power and ultimatly restore the deposed Plantagenet line to the throne. The king's problems aren't helped by his wife's infidelities with Somerset or by Gloucester's wife (Sally Hawkins) being accused of witchcraft! It's actually Okonedo who steals the show here as the clearly ambitious and manipulative Queen; Bonneville is decent enough too, as is the underused Dunbar, but Sturridge doesn't impress so easily and that leaves part one of the story of Henry VI's near forty year reign looking great but lacking a degree of potency. By it's very nature, this has less variety to it's history and so delivers a more dry and less engaging tale of court intrigues and betrayals. Both Richard II & Henry IV (especially part 1) have more diversionary visuals to help keep the narrative from becoming too bogged down in the dialogue. This has fewer elements to entertain in that fashion and so, despite it's fiery start, is a much more procedural enterprise to watch. It's the second part of this play where the bolder elements emerge, but this lays the ground well for even more turbulent times to come.