The Merry Wives of Windsor
1982: David Hugh Jones

This is the BBC Shakespeare version of the play, directed by David Hugh Jones in 1982. It is one of the better ones of the series, largely due to its faithful direction and its superior acting; it also won some awards for production design. It's elegantly put together on all fronts, and splendidly acted.

Watchers of BBC over the years will recognize a number of faces. The first and probably the most obvious is Richard Griffiths (Falstaff), who became most famous, prior to his death in 2013, as the corpulent Vernon Dursley in the Harry Potter movies. Here he is only slightly less corpulent, but a good deal younger. He is not the actor who plays the role in the BBC Henry IV plays (Anthony Quayle: there is a certain amount of continuity of parts between some of the plays). Others who may well be known include Ron Cook (Peter Simple here; Richard III in the BBC version of that play), and Nigel Terry (Pistol; he played John in The Lion in Winter, and Arthur in Excalibur), and Ben Kingsley (Master Ford; known from Gandhi and many other films: he also did a splendid turn as Feste in one production of Twelfth Night).

The setting is more or less naturalistic, and the presentation more cinematic than stagey, though the sets are fairly few and limited: nobody is going to mistake them for regular location shoots, but they are closer than most of the BBC stagings. There is some occasional music around the edges, but it is not intrusive. In fact, one of the distinct pleasures of this production is that it actually uses Elizabethan-era music both in the songs of the production and as incidental music. Some of it is, I believe, original with the production, but some of it is traditional. Either way, it is atmospherically supportive of the homely period representation that the production is trying to create.

All the performances are captivating and engaging. The increasingly improbable plot unfolds with enough energy that one doesn't question them overly; there is some amount of playing along with it in a farcical mode. Griffiths’ Falstaff is cynical and not nearly as appealing as he is in Henry IV, Part 1, but that’s not a matter of the acting as much as it is of the writing. He still prevents the character from becoming simply odious. Nigel Terry’s Pistol and Ben Kingsley’s Ford are remarkably well realized and not mere by-the-numbers portrayals: Ford in particular has a number of nervous affectations that are entirely different from anything else you'll see in the rest of Kingsley’s work. We are seeing some thoughtful actors early in their careers, and that in and of itself is worth doing.

There is one rather offputting detail that emerges toward the very end, and while I’m sure that it’s not something that was even remotely in the minds of those who made the film, there are people who might today take exception to it, if they aren’t able to take into account the context and intention. It’s merely this: in the last act, where the hapless Falstaff is beset by a bunch of towns-people dressed up as fairies (and in this case, many of them are children), they are chiefly garbed in white robes with pointed hoods, such that they resemble nothing so much as a junior instantiation of the Klan. Even in this remote context, that can be a disturbing vision. I think it’s worth looking past it as an inadvertent matter, but others may find it problematic.

This is as good a cinematic introduction to the play as one is likely to find, and it’s free of the more overtly lewd bits that sometimes show up in other productions. To see the play in its theatrical context, the Globe version from 2011 might be more to the point; comparing both would be even better.

Buy the complete BBC Shakespeare Plays at Amazon. Note that this will require a Region 2 player or a region-free player: it will not play on most normal American DVD players. Nevertheless, the price is so reasonable that even with a region-free player thrown into the deal, you’ll come out ahead.

Buy the complete set of the BBC Shakespeare Plays or individual plays (including this one) in Region 1 format direct from Ambrose Video.