"Imagine if Jackanory were set free of its childish shackles. What beautifully funny tales would it unleash? Each show is a master class in storytelling and performance."
Ok, but...what the heck is a Jackanory?
According to wikipedia, a British children's show that aired from 1965 to 1995. Famous guest stars -- well, famous in Britain, although I recognized some names, such as Judy Dench, Rupert Everett, Jeremy Irons, and Prince Charles -- would sit in a chair, reading a story aloud. Occasionally a print illustration would flash on the screen.
The stories were distinctly British, too. I've never heard of most of them: Ameliearane, The Children of Green Knowe, The Turf-Cutter's Donkey, Nurse Matilda, The Warden's Niece.
Just reading, not acting out the stories. Why didn't the kids just turn off the telly and pick up the book? Or was that the idea?
So, Crackanory: four seasons, but only one on Amazon Prime, fifteen minute episodes of original stories, mostly science fiction or fantasy, still narrated, but illustrated by a combination of live actors and animation. Looking for gay representation or beefcake, I watched Episode 2: "A writer of erotic thrillers finds a lost Shakespearean play, but loses the only copy, and has to re-write it himself."
Alan (Adeel Akhtar) moves into a house in Specksham, and discovers that the previous owner left some boxes from a museum in the attic. He opens one of the boxes and discovers a play, A Tragedie of Summer, by William Shakespeare. A lost Shakespearean play!
He gives it to the British Library, where scholars conduct computer research on word count and such, and declare it authentic. Then, for some reason, they return it to him. After making some copies, no doubt? No, they just return it.
But the Royal Shakespeare Company wants to mount a performance, for which they will pay him 3 million pounds. They just need a transcribed copy.
Are you rolling your eyes at the ridiculousness yet?
Then tragedy strikes: Alan accidentally drops the play into his new paper shredder. He calls the British Library, but no one there actually read it. No one even knows what it's about. So Alan decides to re-write it himself, using his minimal knowledge of Shakespeare and Elizabethan England.
Why didn't we get an interior of the British Library? The episode has only one set, an attic room, with one actor, who isn't even cute, although he writes in his underwear, showing a bit of a bulge. And the narrator is beyond annoying.
Surprisingly, no one at the RSC questions the authenticity of the play Alan writes, except for a young man "on work experience" (an intern?) named Eric.
Thank God, another character.
Nope -- the narrator just tells us that when Eric aired his suspicions, he was canned.
Alan drives out to Stratford to see his...um, Shakespeare's play. The audience goes wild. The critics love it.
But Alan isn't happy. He's written the greatest piece of literature in world history, but no one knows about it. That dead hack Shakespeare is getting all the credit, while his own novels get terrible reviews.
Alan doesn't express any heterosexual interest, but I doubt he's gay coded, since his novels have titles like The Bikini Murders.
He calls a press conference and announces that he lied. No one believes him. Finally a judgement is made: he must write a new play in the same style.
He looks through the museum boxes again, and finds another lost Shakespearean play, The Beggar of Rome. So he copies it out and presents it as his own work.
Do you know where this is going?
The critics hate it. Alan is prosecuted for fraud and loses everything. Wait -- if the play he "wrote" was terrible, wouldn't they conclude that he was lying about lying, and the original play was genuine? This doesn't make any sense at all.
I expected some clever plot twists. This was not clever. It was ridiculous, and not in a good way.
Watching, writing the commentary, and conducting the background research took over an hour. You're lucky that reading the article takes only a few minutes. And I'll throw in a photo of a cute Desi bodybuilder.