All the world’s a stage — or sometimes a television screen — when in comes to William Shakespeare.
This summer, Laurie Davidson stars as a young and hunky version of the playwright in TNT’s “Will” (Mondays at 9 p.m.), a fanciful interpretation of Shakespeare’s formative years. Of course, you never know where the Bard or his works might pop up. These unlikely series, in fact, served up versions of Shakespeare.
• THE SHOW: “The Twilight Zone”
• SHAKESPEARE TIES: In the May 23, 1963, episode “The Bard,” a hack writer (Jack Weston) gets a book of magic spells and conjures up Shakespeare (John Williams) to pen his scripts. But it’s not all’s well that ends well when the Bard finds out how his work has been altered.
• THE SHOW: “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”
• SHAKESPEARE TIES: In the 1970 episode “Archaeology Today,” one sketch featured Eric Idle as Shakespeare sharing issues about his domestic strifes with Michelangelo (Terry Jones) and Mozart (Michael Palin). In a 1974 bit, Terry Jones played Hamlet, who ends up on a psychiatrist’s couch because he’s tired of endless requests from everyone to say “To be or not to be.”
