Videos on BBC's "Much Ado About Nothing," featuring Benedick and Beatrice

On this post are three scenes from the BBC premiere of Much Ado About Nothing, where the classic play is adapted into a British broadcasting station situation. These scenes depict the tensions between Benedick and Beatrice. In the play they throw painful words at one another. It is a chemistry that can be considered acidic but the two elements work very well together.

In the classic play, Benedick and Beatrice always fight with each other, with Beatrice usually coming up with more sharper lines just to make Benedick the soldier look bad. She descibes him as "no less than a stuffed man; but for the stuffing - well, we are all mortal." Beatrice dubs him as "Signor Montano," meaning an upward thrust in fencing. But what Beatrice is really implying is that Benedick climbs the social ladder through means of "mounting."

Benedick, a reluctant suitor towards Beatrice, claims that he will never wed, to say "Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine is (for the which I may go the finer), I will live a bachelor."

With the 2005 BBC version, these scenes show that little has changed despite modern times taking over.







This scene in depicts the "masquerade" scene where Sarah Parish's Beatrice thought she was speaking to Claudio but instead talks to good old Benedick in a helmet.






And this scene is even funnier yet, with Damian Lewis playing an effective, lovesick Benedick who realizes his affections for Beatrice while playing with a round object.







This scene taking place on a beach depicts the relationship between Benedick and Beatrice at its hottest, as them bickering with each other is one of Much Ado About Nothing's high points in the classic story.

All I have to say is that I wish I could see the full length version of this adaptation!

- Kristopher