Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

sheepshearer No matter if it's real or not, no one wants to hear canned laughter. It's not 1980.

dt-81 I find rather hard to believe that folk believe that there is canned laughter in this show. I also find it had to believe that someone who claims to have watched only 30 seconds of it can actually judge. I have attended 2 recordings of this rather clever show and can categorically state that the laughter is real laughter from real people sitting in their bums watching the actors sweating. Ben Elton is there throughout, pointing clues between takes for those not fully versed in Shakespeares. In fact in some of the breaks where characters have to make lengthy costume change he goes into long spiels about have British sit-coms are made and that laughter tracks are never used at the BBC.Second series in now in the can - hopefully there will be a third.

the_reminder This is a very smart, funny and sweet comedy about Will Shakespeare as a struggling writer, actor, business- and family man. It has clearly been written and created by people who know and love Shakespeare's work. It is certainly more enjoyable the more you know about the man and his work, but I think it can be funny regardless. Those who aren't hardcore fans of the bard may particularly appreciate the other characters' complaints about how Shakespeare expresses things in an unnecessarily complicated way ("But it's what I do!") and about how the jokes in his plays require extensive footnotes for anyone to be able to enjoy. I must also mention that I love the fact that this Will regularly goes home to Stratford to spend time with his family - and perform the tasks on his wife's list of "dad jobs". Anne Shakespeare here is hardly Will's intellectual equal but she is kind and caring and thankfully not the shrew that misogynist academics have been trying to make her out as for the past few centuries. Feminist Germaine Greer believes Anne was the rock on which Shakespeare relied throughout his life, and I think this is how "Upstart crow" portrays her. As a non-British Shakespeare buff, I sense that there are some jokes about contemporary life in Britain that go over my head, though I still enjoy things like the jokes about the British rail and the annoyingly small number of lavatories for women in theatres. The actor who plays Will Kempe seemed oddly familiar but thanks to the late IMDb boards I was able to find out that this is because he is doing an impression of Ricky Gervais, whose career, one could argue, has some similarities to Kempe's.The first couple of episodes are in my opinion the weakest of the first season, so please stick with it! Can't wait for season 2.

jose-viegas This is a very intelligent show. Not everyone will be able to find the humour on it. It uses a lot of sarcasm and pictures the Shakespearean era with a lot of parallels to current days. The way it describes the public transportation delays and problems, we can always relate to what happens nowadays. One of the characters I can relate directly with Ricky Gervais personas (don't know why :) ). The critics about women's role in the society, political and government laws are always amusing. The way it dismantles Shakespeare work and how it should be interpreted is hilarious. In summary, if you like the intelligent English humour, and wish to learn a little bit more about Shakespeare life on a very flexible way...it is a must.