ABSTRACT
The BBC/Time Life ‘Complete Works’ made for television in the 1980s is regarded patronisingly by critics. Seen as a misguided attempt to reproduce on screen ‘whole text’ productions of 37 plays, striving for an authoritative and even definitive status, the series as a whole dated as soon as it was made. Given its educational intention, the direction was conservative, the acting thespian. At best a mixed bag with occasional gems like Jane Howell’s Henry VI trilogy, the productions are at worst pedestrian. They invite adverse comparison with successful box-office film versions like those by Zeffirelli, Branagh, and Luhrmann, although this is unfair, ignoring the fact that many film versions are just as boring and less worthy than the BBC’s. Moreover, if Branagh, for example, were instructed to produce films of the entire canon, week in week out, each to be completed in two weeks and shot entirely in a studio, all on a tiny budget, much as his messianic zeal would probably welcome the challenge, he would find it difficult to maintain his lavish style.
