Sunday night in a house with three kids can be chaos. The boy is in the tub, the oldest is fretting over a test she has in biology in the morning, and my middle child is curled up in bed with my wife trying to find a show to watch.
“Daddy, come quick! Shakespeare!” they yell. I’m busy quizzing my daughter on the relationship between apocryphal and deuterocanonical books in the bible, and my son wants to show me a cool bubble experiment he has concocted. But eventually I break free and make it into the Shakespeare room.
A lady, who I recognize, is talking about Shakespeare. But oh what is her name? That’s going to drive me crazy. I know I know her.
Then it switches. “Oh, well, I know that guy,” I say, looking past the scruffly beard and mustache and the very recognizable eyes. “That’s Ralph Fiennes.”
“THOR!” my daughter exclaims.
I’m not sure where she got that. “Really? No, he wasn’t in Thor.” (It just dawned on me writing this that she’s confusing him with Tom Hiddleston.)
“VOLDEMORT!” she tries again.
“There you go. Yes he was Voldemort.”
Cut back to other lady. *snap* “I know who that is, that’s Julie Taymor! Duh, obviously.”
My wife and daughter look at each other like Daddy’s gone cuckoo.
I pull myself away from the screen to deal with other children, but make it back to another guy I recognize. It’s Hugh Bonneville from Downton Abbey, who I actually haven’t seen do much Shakespeare. I mistakenly associate him with the scientist in the Thor movie, but with a little IMDB help I realize I’m confusing him with Stellan Skarsgard.
Turns out the show was “Shakespeare Uncovered“, season two episode one. I know of the show but haven’t really followed it, so somebody enlighten me – did season two just start, or is that an old re-run we stumbled across?