Upstart Crow - Series 3 [DVD] [2018]

Ben Elton, the writer and creator of Upstart Crow, would be amused to be compared to Shakespeare. No one can be. Yet the career arc of Elton and the Stratford bard look similar to me. How so? In the way that Shakespeare saved his best for last. In his biography of Shakespeare (1970), Anthony Burgess famously said that by 1598 (aged 34) the playwright had achieved everything he had ever wanted (success, wealth, fame, a family coat of arms that made him a gentleman) but then “proceeded to present life as a tragedy”, writing his famous tragic works of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth in quick succession.Upstart Crow is not tragic. It’s funny. No, it’s hilarious. Even the tacky laugh track adds to the hilarity. But Elton is seriously in a place in his career now where Shakespeare was in his — at the top of his game, at the height of his powers. The writer of Blackadder and many other funny television projects has reached a new level of wit and satire with Upstart Crow. This is the third series in a run of episodes without a single dud, every episode witty with copious in-jokes, jibes, jests. Shakespeare’s age is skewered for its intolerance, sexism, tyranny, intrigues and inhumanity. Women are nothing and Catholics are tortured, hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered or burned at the stake (though these gruesome things are happily not shown in the programme). Elizabeth is paranoid, her spies are everywhere (more than 36,000 people were executed during her reign). Shakespeare couldn’t laugh at this stuff (he was too busy trying to stay alive and out of trouble), but Elton does, as if comedy can be just as forensic as tragedy in depicting ugly truths. But the ugliness is not confined to Shakespeare’s Elizabethan England. No. Our own mad, turbulent times are skewered as well: Brexit, Trump, environmental degradation. Laugh through the tears, Elton seems to suggest. Take it seriously but don’t let it make you crazy the way it is.Upstart Crow is a welcome, healing tonic. Human foibles and stupidities are everywhere in it, but Shakespeare’s world and our own are not so different, or different in details, not essentials. Cruelty, greed and idiocy are still present. Conceit and arrogance as well. So too oppression and intolerance. Elton holds up the mirror so that we can see our own ugliness through Elizabethan eyes.What of love, kindness, charity, consideration, friendship, loyalty, honesty and dignity? It’s here too, both in Shakespeare’s world ours. It’s as though Elton is saying, just as Shakespeare did, that totality is a mixed bag and remains so however hard you try to make things better. But the trying part of the equation — key concept — is always good and sometimes worth it. Shakespeare complains of Stratford and his rustic family there but always returns. Why? London is so much more exciting and adventurous. It’s because he loves Anne, his children, parents, home and hometown. He’s loyal to his roots, to his personal history. London may have made him a star, but it’s still in Stratford where dutiful wife Anne darns his socks and patches his puffy pantaloons.There is charm in this. Beauty too. Yes, we laugh at all the escapades and foibles as we are meant to. But there is humanity and dignity in this series too. The sexism against Elizabethan women, for instance, is so blatant, casual, natural and accepted (by men) that it throws light on our own ways of dealing with this problem today. Our world is certainly better than Shakespeare’s in this regard, but only in degree, not substance. Why do we still have such a difficult time in making women happy?Once you’re hooked you don’t want the episodes to end, and you hope Elton will go on writing. But it’s a phantom, a dream. The best one can hope for is that all’s well that ends well, as I suspect the series will this year or next. I hope I’m wrong but I’m probably not. Blackadder was wonderful. But this is writing on a whole other level — wise, witty, even compassionate in its offhand way. We love Shakespeare, as always. But now Elton adds another dimension that makes us love the Stratford playwright even more.Ben Elton may not want a knighthood. I have no idea what he thinks about that. But Upstart Crow says to me he should have one.

It is a DVD

series 1 and 2 perhaps were better than 3rd, but still No. 3 pretty good too!

Adore this show, it's kept me sane and laughing throughout the pandemic so I was pleased to get series 3.

This series is just getting better and better....Brilliant acting, and full of funny comments on Shakespeare, theatre, class, gender and everything. Each episode spinning a yarn about how Shakespeare COULD have gotten the inspiration for this or that particular play.I am waiting for season 4!!

This is just a wonderful piece of theatre-- Shakespeare as it would be hard to imagine him-- and such fun-- and during the course of the fun, one's Shakespeare gets brushed up from the cleverly inserted allusions to the great man's actual plays. he main character actually manages to look like the various 'portraits' (none as yet securely proven) of the great man himself. Love every minute of it!

It probably helps if you know Shakepeare's plays, but I am sure it is funny even if you don't. This is the most inventive, irreverent and and eye-wateringly hilarious comedy. David Mitchell is superb as Will Shakespeare, and the supporting cast members are all terrific. I hope Ben Elton keeps on writing. This is wnderful stuff.

This show is enjoyable on many levels and I'm constantly surprised at how filthy conversation can be disguised by Shakespearian English. Now, if THIS Bard's version of anything had been on my English reading list...