November marks 400 years since the publication of William Shakespeare's First Folio, the impressive book that collected the legendary playwright's plays together.
To mark the anniversary, the BBC has planned an ambitious season of programming across TV and radio stations, BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds that will show the Bard's influence is just as strong as ever.
There are plenty of highlights to look forward to, including the new three-part docuseries, Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius (which features A-list stars including Brian Cox, Martin Freeman, David Tennant, Helen Mirren, and Judi Dench).
Plus, BBC Four is set to showcase plenty of archival performances of some of Shakespeare's greatest plays, and Shakespeare's Sonnets: A Modern Love Story will see more stars like Rose Ayling Ellis and Oanna Kimbook performing a collection of Shakespeare's poetry.
Below, you can find the entire TV and radio Schedule for the upcoming Shakespearean season. Please note even though some shows may have aired you can catch up with them on iPlayer.
BBC’s 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's First Folio: Full TV and radio schedule
BBC Two
November 8
9 pm - Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius
10 pm - Upstart Crow season 1 repeat, complete box set on iPlayer
BBC Four
Saturdays
October 7 - Michael Parkinson Interviews with Orson Welles and Richard Burton
October 14 - The Hollow Crown series 1 (four episodes) and series 2 (three episodes) across six weeks preceded by an introduction from Richard Eyre
October 14 - Simon Schama's Shakespeare - two episodes
Sundays
October 1 - Hamlet - David Tennant and Patrick Stewart star in the critically lauded, award-winning 2009 production of Shakespeare's great play, with introduction from David Tennant
October 1 - The Wars of the Roses - Peter Hall's 1966 production, adapted by John Barton, starring Ian Holm, John Barton, Donald Sinden, Janet Suzman and Peggy Ashcroft (for 3 weeks), with an introduction from Dame Janet Suzman
October 8 - Shakespeare Live! from the RSC - the 2016 gala took place in the presence of HRH Charles III (who was then the Prince of Wales), featuring a star-studded cast and a new introduction from Gregory Doran
October 8 - Much Ado About Nothing (2022), an afro-futuristic adaptation of one of Shakespeare's best-loved romantic comedies
October 15 - A Midsummer's Night's Dream (2016), Russell T. Davies' TV adaptation, starring Maxine Peake, Bernard Cribbins and Nonso Anozie, with an introduction from Russell T. Davies
October 15 - The Merchant of Venice (1972) - BBC adaptation, starring Maggie Smith, Frank Finlay and Charles Gray
October 22 - Henry V - a new performance of the classic Historic play, performed at The Globe, with Oliver Johnstone in the title role
October 22 - Othello from the RSC (2020), with an introduction from Hugh Quarshie
October 29 - Shakespeare Sonnets: A Modern Love Story - performances of Shakespeare's sonnets featuring Eloka Ivo, Rose Ayling Ellis, Eben Figueiredo and Ioanna Kimbook.
October 29 - As You Like It - BBC TV adaptation from 1978, featuring Helen Mirren, Brian Stirner and Richard Pasco, introduced by Helen Mirren
October 29 - Macbeth - BBC TV adaptation from 1983 featuring Nicol Williamson, Jane Lapotaire and James Bolam
October 29 - Henry V- a new performance of the classic Historic play, performed at The Globe, with Oliver Johnstone in the title role
October 29 - Othello produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and starring Hugh Quarshie, proceeded by an introduction with Hugh Quarshie
November 5 - Talking Shakespeare - from Peter O'Toole to David Tennant, this new BBC archive compilation pulls together the insights from leading acting talent on their experience of performing Shakespeare
November 5 - Hamlet - a new performance from Bristol Old Vic, featuring Billy Howle and directed by John Haidar
November 5 - Dame Judi Dench - This Cultural Life - one of Britain's foremost Shakespearean actors of the post-war era, in conversation with John Wilson
November 5 - Hamlet at Elsinore (1964), with an introduction from Steven Berkoff - This 1964 drama features early performances from Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine and Donald Sutherland
Wednesday (Folio Day)
Thursday Film Club will be taken over from October 12 with Shakespeare adaptations:
October 12 - Henry V (1988) starring Kenneth Branagh and Derek Jacobi
October 19 - Richard III (1956) starring Laurence Olivier
October 26 - Julius Caesar (1953) starring Marlon Brando
November 2 - All is True (2018) starring Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench
BBC iPlayer
BBC iPlayer will showcase the season by bringing all the TV programmes together in one place, making them easy to find and available to watch, when and where our viewers choose.
Radio Schedule
BBC Radio 4
November 4
You're Dead to Me - 10 - 10.30 am
Radio 4's hit history podcast You're Dead To Me is recording a special episode to explore the life work and legacy of William Shakespeare. Host Greg Jenner and his guests will be exploring what we know of the man behind the work in front of a live audience at Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot, Merseyside. Greg will be joined by Farah Karim-Cooper, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at King's College London, and the comedian and writer, Richard Herring
This Cultural Life - 7.15 - 8 pm
Judi Dench is John Wilson’s guest on This Cultural Life. She talks about her formative influences and the experiences that led her to become one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of our age, and why she still regards Shakespeare as the guiding force of her creative life.
November 8
Front Row - 7.15 - 8 pm
1623 Review Show, presented by Tom Sutcliffe. Front Row’s panel of guests make a change from their usual review of the week’s arts and instead go back in time and review the music, poems and plays from the year that the First Folio was published.
November 11
First Folio - 3 - 4 pm
A comedy-drama to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of the 'definitive' work that made Shakespeare's reputation. Writer Mike Harris imagines the process of publishing the First Folio. Produced by Brill Productions for BBC Radio 4.
BBC Sounds
Radio 4 will promote content on Sounds that has already broadcast earlier this year as part of the anniversary including: Taking Issue with Shakespeare: a five part series in which Gordon Brown, Michael Gove and other public figures discuss issues that matter to us and mattered to Shakespeare too – populism, levelling up, the monarchy, masculinity and rural/urban divisions
BBC Radio 3
October 22
The Al-Hamlet Summit - 7.30 - 8 pm
The Al-Hamlet Summit is a new production of Kuwaiti-British writer Sulayman Al-Bassam’s powerful reimagining of Hamlet. Shakespeare’s story of a reluctant revolutionary pitted against a corrupt authoritarian regime is transplanted from Denmark to a modern Arab state in trouble. There’s an enemy on the border, a crumbling dictatorship and civil war in the air… First performed at the Edinburgh Festival in the wake of 9/11, the play won awards both there and in Cairo.
October 29
Hamlet Noir - 7.30 - 9.30 pm
In Hamlet Noir, Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy takes on a thrilling Scandi-Noir twist, skilfully interweaving the original text with a gripping detective narrative. Set in present-day Denmark, with an all-Scandinavian cast, the story unfolds against a backdrop of brooding landscapes – with the opening scenes recorded at Kronborg - and intense power struggles. Prince Hamlet, torn between madness and grief, is on a relentless quest to avenge his father’s murder. Meanwhile, a tenacious detective, Eva, investigates the suspicious deaths at the Danish Court. But as Eva slowly unearths the truth and Hamlet edges closer to ultimate catharsis, both find themselves entangled in a web of treachery and corruption.
November 5
Words and Music: Shakespeare - 5.30 - 6.45 pm
With specially recorded readings by Tracy-Ann Oberman, currently starring in the RSC’s production “The Merchant of Venice 1936”, plus archive Shakespearean sonnets and speeches performed by Richard Burton, Dame Edith Evans, Marlon Brando and Carrie Fisher, alongside music by composers and performers including Verdi, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Walton, Amy Beach, Ned Rorem, Cleo Laine and Rufus Wainwright.
Sunday Feature: Shakespeare's Rival - 6.45 - 7.30 pm
William Shakespeare didn’t appear from nowhere, ready to write the world’s favourite plays. A half generation before him, a group of young, ambitious and well-educated playwrights took the Elizabethan stage by storm. Lead among them was Robert Greene, who wrote the run-away best seller of the period and pushed the boundaries of what theatre was or should be. Now, he’s mostly remembered for accusing Shakespeare of being an ‘upstart crow’. But what made Greene’s writing stand out at the time, and how much did his university education contribute to his blaze of fame? Professor Nandini Das revisits a time when the value and purpose of theatre was all to play for to explore what English drama might have been. And, Nandini asks, if it was Greene’s name up in lights, might our very understanding of the value of the arts be different?
Hamlette - 7.30 - 8.45 pm
In Tamsin Oglesby’s radical re-imagining of the story of Hamlet, the protagonist is a young MP, Harriet (Jeany Spark) who, rather than contemplating revenge for the death of a father, is consumed by the question of how to avenge the rape of her sister. Her dilemma: to speak or not to speak. To confront the rapist, to lose her job, possibly her career, to make her sister relive the trauma, to avenge her suffering, to take on systemic misogyny, and by opposing, end it? Also starring Natasha Little, Matthew Gravelle and Jasper Britton.
November 6 - November 10
Composer of the Week: Berlioz & Shakespeare - 12 - 1 pm
Berlioz burst onto the musical stage of 19th century Paris determined to break the mould of France’s elegant and refined classical style. He wanted to create music that could be bombastic, barbaric and grotesque, as well as sentimental, scintillating and sorrowful. In this, he was inspired by writers as much as fellow musicians. He was captivated by stories and crowded his imagination with the tales of Virgil, Scott, Goethe and, most of all, William Shakespeare. This week, Donald Macleod traces the tangled literary connections in Berlioz’s life and music, including the profound spell cast by Shakespeare over the composer’s art and personality.
November 8
Shakespeare Day - 7 am - 7 pm
On the 400th anniversary of the first publication of his First Folio, a day of music on Radio 3 inspired by Shakespeare, Radio 3’s Breakfast, Essential Classics, Composer of the Week, Afternoon Concert and In Tune will be dedicated exclusively to music with strong links to Shakespeare – from composers across the ages inspired by his plays, to music that features in his great works, to the famous scores created for film adaptations. Some of classical music’s greatest figures – Prokofiev, Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, Verdi and Britten have created works in homage to Shakespeare – Radio 3 spends a day in their company.
Free Thinking: Shakespeare as Inspiration - 10 - 10.45 pm
Matthew Sweet is joined live by guests Professor Preti Taneja – author of a novel We That Are Young which sets the King Lear in Delhi, by Dr Iain Smith who studies films from around the world, by Research Fellow Michelle Assay who has studied Shakespeare, music and Hamlet in Russia, and by Andrew Dickson, journalist and author of Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe. As Radio 3’s day of music inspired by Shakespeare nears its end, Free Thinking looks at paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites, at films from Bollywood and Japan, and at the way Shakespeare’s plays resonate in political hot spots and conflict zones across the world from South Africa to Ukraine.
November 12
The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd - 7.30 - 9 pm
Hieronimo pursues the murderers of his son Horatio and takes revenge. Known as the first Revenger's Tragedy, it speaks, like Hollywood Westerns, to questions about private revenge versus public justice. Hamlet was heavily influenced by this great play, which powerfully explores the morality of revenge, the stages of grief, and violence, and the poetry of extreme emotion.Spain is in the middle of a peace treaty with Portugal, when Marshall Hieronimo is forced down a brutal path of vengeance from which there is no return.
The Spanish Tragedy was the most popular play of the entire Elizabethan period; if people hadn't seen it, they knew about it, and now it's been almost forgotten. Adapted and abridged by Pauline Harris and Emma Smith, and intercut with contemporary music, here is a unique opportunity to experience a play that has never been broadcast on BBC Radio. This is the play Shakespeare, like everyone else of his generation, couldn't get out of his head, and Hamlet is his way of responding to it.
