One of the Better BBC Adaptations

The BBC Shakespeare adaptations seem to vary in quality and inspiration. Some are excellent (Jacobi's Hamlet), some are uneven (Williamson's MacBeth), many seemed uninspired.

I'm glad that they made the effort to film even his more obscure works, many of which have many hidden gems. While the "Cymbeline" plot was contrived, I enjoyed it for combining themes and characters that were obviously borrowed from his other works. In "Cymbeline," you had shades of Othello (Iacomo as Iago), King Lear (Cymbeline betrayed by his wife and step-son), The Merchant of Venice (Imagen disguised as a male youth), etc. As one of his late plays, it was both a tribute and a clever parody of the Bard's own canon.

And apart from an uninspired performance by whoever played Iacomo, the acting was great. Richard Johnson's Cymbeline was the best of all of his filmed Shakespeare roles, much better than his Cassius in the Robards/Heston "Julius Caesar."