Macbeth
- Episode aired Nov 14, 2005
- TV-14
- 1h 30m
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
1.1K
YOUR RATING
A chef and his restaurant-hostess wife resort to murder to take ownership of a high-class Glaswegian restaurant.A chef and his restaurant-hostess wife resort to murder to take ownership of a high-class Glaswegian restaurant.A chef and his restaurant-hostess wife resort to murder to take ownership of a high-class Glaswegian restaurant.
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Did you know
- TriviaBilly's line "Just call him 'The Scottish Chef'" is a sly reference to the superstition in the theatre that it is bad luck to mention the title "Macbeth" - instead it is usually referred to euphemistically as "The Scottish Play".
- Quotes
[Malcolm unwittingly makes a faux pas by mentioning the name of TV chef Gordon Ramsay]
Joe Macbeth: If I make a mistake, it hurts me. Do you understand that? I mean, actual physical pain.
Malcolm: That's very 'Gordon Ramsay'.
[stunned silence]
Roddy Maloney: We don't use that name in this kitchen. Didn't your father tell you?
Billy: It's bad luck to say it out loud. Just call him 'The Scottish Chef'.
- ConnectionsVersion of Macbeth (1898)
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I was very excited about these four new versions of great plays. Then I saw "Much Ado about Nothing" which happens to be the best of these and my hopes soared. Now I have seen all four.
This is the least successful. The comedies (using the meaning of the term applied to the plays) use language to sustain a world where love and intrigue are complex, lacy things. This effect can be carried by cinematic means, with potentially as much sophistication.
But in the tragedies, the language is used to build structures great and small that knot concepts in challenging and troubling ways. This, potentially could be effected cinematically, but to lead the narrative you would need a rare cinematic genius. That is not the case here. So what you have is the story roughly preserved and a few character traits that come along with it. It loses so much power that the only fun is in the references to Shakespeare — the same fun you get from those teen parody compilations.
There are two clever things here. We have lost all of the context in which the play was written, all that stuff about divine selection of rulers, magical insight into the mechanics of the universe, and locally the controversies about James and his rough Scots exoticism. So replanting that context into an elite kitchen is a very clever idea. It works conceptually and it works cinematically as well, because we already have a rich food-vision vocabulary. There have been many kitchen films, some good.
The other notable transplant seems to be popular, to judge from the comments here. The three witches are what in the US are called garbage men. The risk needs to be admired, but it didn't work for me. The idea here is that being exposed to the dross of the world gives insight into its paths. But in the play, the worlds are the other way around: there is a set destiny and everything that exists in that ecology is dross. The small crazinesses and reference to unpleasant things doesn't do it.
Anyone who thinks Lady Macbeth is effective here simply as a character needs to compare her to Swinton's character in "Michael Clayton."
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
This is the least successful. The comedies (using the meaning of the term applied to the plays) use language to sustain a world where love and intrigue are complex, lacy things. This effect can be carried by cinematic means, with potentially as much sophistication.
But in the tragedies, the language is used to build structures great and small that knot concepts in challenging and troubling ways. This, potentially could be effected cinematically, but to lead the narrative you would need a rare cinematic genius. That is not the case here. So what you have is the story roughly preserved and a few character traits that come along with it. It loses so much power that the only fun is in the references to Shakespeare — the same fun you get from those teen parody compilations.
There are two clever things here. We have lost all of the context in which the play was written, all that stuff about divine selection of rulers, magical insight into the mechanics of the universe, and locally the controversies about James and his rough Scots exoticism. So replanting that context into an elite kitchen is a very clever idea. It works conceptually and it works cinematically as well, because we already have a rich food-vision vocabulary. There have been many kitchen films, some good.
The other notable transplant seems to be popular, to judge from the comments here. The three witches are what in the US are called garbage men. The risk needs to be admired, but it didn't work for me. The idea here is that being exposed to the dross of the world gives insight into its paths. But in the play, the worlds are the other way around: there is a set destiny and everything that exists in that ecology is dross. The small crazinesses and reference to unpleasant things doesn't do it.
Anyone who thinks Lady Macbeth is effective here simply as a character needs to compare her to Swinton's character in "Michael Clayton."
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
helpful•51
- tedg
- Apr 29, 2010
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