BBC1, 8:30 pm

The Daily Telegraph Television & Radio Magazine, November 5, 2005

Shakespeare has been updated before. But if this first of four new TV adaptations is anything to go by, the BBC's Shakespeare Retold season looks set to display the charm and gusto of its source material. David Nicholls's witty interpretation transplants the comedy to a regional newsroom, where Beatrice (Sarah Parish) and Benedick (Damian Lewis) spar off-camera as vituperative co-presenters. "You certainly put a 'w' into anchorman, don't you?" snaps Beatrice. The casting is exquisite. Parish's deadpan Beatrice and Lewis's smarmy, hairsprayed Benedick exude all the chemistry that love and comedy could wish for. And Billie Piper gives Hero a surprisingly uncompromising edge. Nicholls knows how to draw the laughs from every scene, but also how to retain the tender wit of the original. He makes Claude's jilting of Hero at the altar wince-makingly painful and Benedick and Beatrice's journey to love enthralling. It's a class act. And it's hilarious.