Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: David Mitchell, Kenneth Branagh, Liza Tarbuck, Tim Downie, Harry Enfield, Gemma Whelen, Lily Cole, Dominic Coleman, Jocelyn Jee Esien, Mark Heap, Rob Rouse, Steven Speirs, Spencer Jones, Helen Monks, Paula Wilcox, Rosanna Beacock, Hannah-Jane Fox, Karl Theobald, Luka Petrovic.
Words, songs, and inspiration hang in ether waiting for the right ear in which to discern their meaning, what though a clever mind can deduce is sometimes another soul will mark them with greater solemnity, the time is not always right – and the words are heeded, but allowed with great wishes and understanding to find another home in which to be born, another time in which the need is nobler, the suffering of the people more acute.
A story in the hands of a teller of tales is not the same as a mirror of the age being shown to reflect the unhappiness of the land, or of the soul of a human being and whilst the path to redemption shown to Will Shakespeare as he suffers the ignominy of 16th Century English travel and still mires in the unease and desperate thought of the death of his young son, it is to the imagination of Ben Elton in which this once thought Upstart Crow hears a tale which will change some people’s lives.
Christmas is not always a time for the fullness of entertainment and constant dreams of moments of avarice, the want, it is has become a circus which sees end, and instead of glitter in our eyes and copious amounts of food buckling the table, it is to the constraint, the belief in seeking spirit to which we should look, and it is in the message delivered via Ben Elton in this year’s Christmas offering of the dexterously penned Upstart Crow, that the audience can find an understanding of the pleasure in helping someone mend their ways.
It is a Christmas episode which could only have been, the beauty of pathos stirring as the final moments of the 2018 series is remembered, the sadness and pain of comedy showcasing a child’s death, matching with absolute depth the final moments of Ben Elton’s other magnificent creation, the bittersweet ending of Blackadder Four. It is a Christmas episode which captures that continuation of time, but also one in which the mesmerisingly dulcet tones of Kenneth Branagh joined the ensemble as The Stranger who imparts a singular truth to the Stratford Bard.
A Crow Christmas Carol is a fine addition to the series as a whole, a sense of growth endures, and whilst the audience figures remain bafflingly low for such a programme, it cannot be denied just how insanely good it is, how David Mitchell and Liza Tarbuck light up the screen as Shakespeare and his wife Anne, how the writing is bawdy, clever, insightful and beautifully captured by the entire cast.
On Christmas Day there can’t be better ways to celebrate and commemorate the day that with an Upstart Crow.
Ian D. Hall