Emma Thompson is set to portray Queen Elizabeth I in the second season of the popular Shakespearian comedy, Upstart Crow to air on BBC2 later this year. Just this week, the show was named best new TV sitcom at the comedy.co.uk awards. This isn’t the first historical role Thompson has played during her long career. She played Eleanor Dashwood in the 1995 drama Sense and Sensibility opposite Hugh Grant.
During the next season of the comedy, viewers will see the now iconic playwrite continued his epic journey to become a London playwrite whilst still trying to keep his family, living at Stratford Upon Avon, contented. He’ll receive help from his friends played by Rob Rouse, Gemma Whelan and Tim Downi. Shakespeare will suffer various commuting problems. He’ll take a low-cost trip to Verona, endure coach cancelations, and survive an ugly reunion with a schoolmaster.
Filming has already begun for the second season. Upstart Crow is written by Ben Elton and stars Paula Wilcox as William’s mother Mary Arden, Liza Tarbuck as Anne Hathaway, his wife, Helen Monks as their daughter Susanna, and Mark Heap as his nemesis Robert Greene.
There will be many guest appearances made in the upcoming series of episodes. The Mighty Boosh’s, will make an appearance. Thomas Morley will be played by Noel Fielding as he and Shakespeare begin work on a new comedy. Comedians David Mitchell and Harry Enfield will play the bard and his father. Head of comedy at BBC Studios, Chris Sussman told the Telegraph about Mitchell: “It’s great to welcome back our merry band of players – and if David Mitchell manages to learn all the soliloquies Ben’s written for him then he should be instantly knighted.”
In one particular episode, Shakespeare will present an early draft of Eighth Knight, later named Twelth Knight.
From my awareness of such as the third Oxford edition of Shakespeare’s plays to other modern editions of his works–including Prince Phillip’s selection once of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”–as being Shakespearean, I do not believe anyone today can write as well as the Bard. Lowbrow satire is a cheap way of claiming to be one of his comedies as here. Then there are the plays he might have written, as my question why he never did Henry VII: perhaps answered by the burning down of his theatre in London after the first performance of Henry VIII and Shakespeare’s silence thereafter. Some people even think they can perform Shakespeare in children’s Jungle Gyms.
Why is it necessary to make another movie about Queen Elizabeth I ? Helen Mirrien did an outstanding portrayal a short while ago.