#bbc 4

Sudden burst of creativity

It will be available on iPlayer for 10 months. Yes, I know it's on youtube and on dvd, but here it is broadcast for the first time since 1959!

So fire up those VPNs, kids!

David Tennant looks back on the role he time-travelled into after leaving the Tardis, playing Hamlet in Greg Doran’s award-winning 2008 production for the Royal Shakespeare Company. David’s portrayal was described at the time as ‘athletic, and immensely engaging’, full of ‘vigour and wild humour’ and ‘the best great Dane in years’. Here, he talks about his approach to the part, performing opposite Patrick Stewart, who played the role of Claudius, and the reaction he got when the production became a hit with BBC audiences when it was screened on Boxing Day 2009.

David Tennant stars in a film of the Royal Shakespeare Company's award-winning production of Shakespeare's great play. Director Gregory Doran's modern-dress production was hailed by the critics as thrilling, fast-moving and, in parts, very funny. Hamlet must decide whether to avenge his father's murder at the hands of his uncle Claudius (played by Patrick Stewart), who has married his brother's wife - Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. This visually sumptuous screen version was filmed on location with all of the original stage cast. BBC Productions in association with Illuminations and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

PRISONER C33

In 1895, in cell 3, on floor 3, in Reading Gaol, we find Prisoner C33.

Starved, thin and with his hair crudely hacked short, he is confined, alone, in this dark cell, denied water to wash himself with and allowed no access to a toilet.

Prisoner C33 is only ever referred to as Prisoner C33. His real name is Oscar Wilde (played by Toby Stephens: Lost in Space, Summer of Rockets, Jane Eyre), dramatist of genius, poet, wit, novelist, husband, father of two children, and until recently, the darling of London society. He has been imprisoned for the crime of having participated in a homosexual relationship. He is struggling to reconcile his identity as a creative genius with the trauma of his treatment as a despised criminal.

In despair, and fearing the onset of insanity, he fantasises being in conversation with his former self – his elegant, debonair, famous, popular, longhaired, flamboyant self, before this nightmare began. Their talk, Oscar with Oscar, is full of Wildean wit, mischievous humour, nostalgia, philosophical insight, and sardonic wisdom. But as he contemplates his fall from grace, he agonises over the loss of his wife and sons, and over the conflict between love and hate, aroused in him by the memory of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.

We live now at a time of ‘cancel culture’. Prisoner C33 vividly reminds us that only a century ago, a great artist, a genius of the theatre was cancelled for being gay, in unutterably humiliating national condemnation.

DURATION

1 x one hour (1 x 68-minute version also available)

YEAR OF PRODUCTION

2022

PRODUCED BY

Angelica Films for BBC

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION

UK

DIRECTOR

Sir Trevor Nunn

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Sally Angel

PRODUCER

Andrew Fettis

CAST

Toby Stephens