So you've read Hamlet. Maybe you've been forced to memorize Puck's monologue from the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream. And you've definitely seen at least the Leo scenes from the coked-out, Hawaiian-shirt draped classic Romeo + Juliet. But did you know that Shakespeare was punk... and hot?
TNT's new series Will insistently asks this question every 90 seconds, practically coating its substitute English teacher lanyard in nervous sweat. This unofficial prequel to Shakespeare in Love, which is somehow both incredibly horny and mildly prudish at the same time, confirms, reconfirms, and files a book report stating: "We are pretty sure Shakespeare was hot." Played by newcomer Laurie Davidson, this is the kind of young, wide-eyed, generically hot poet who makes up words Stand and Deliver style because, he says, who else is going to do it?
This Shakespeare engages in a Hamilton-esque rap battle, in iambic pentameter, shouting about the necessity of his verbal dexterity. He's persecuted for being a Catholic, sort of, which makes him a rebel. And indeed, though Shakespeare is married with children at the beginning of the series, he quickly abandons them to run off and be a writer, then becomes enamored with Alice Burbage, the daughter of his patron and leading man. (Of course young, hot Shakespeare has a love interest—where there's a Will, there's a bae.)
Though Will is ostensibly depicting a "new" take on the bard, its approach isn't exactly fresh—the number of straightforward, staid productions of Shakespeare might be eclipsed only by "cool" productions of Shakespeare. Will creator Craig Pearce is, in fact, one of the co-writers of iconic hot Shakespeare movie Romeo + Juliet, a film that succeeds by actually adapting Shakespeare's work rather than drilling a lesson into the audience's collective, Hamlet-held skulls. Even ABC's Still Star-Crossed, a bizarrely-planned sequel to Romeo & Juliet tracking the aftermath of the lovers' suicide, manages to do better justice to Shakespeare by virtue of actually being entertaining.
But while Will is a bad addition to the canon of modern work about Shakespeare, it's a relevant addition to an even more important genre: dramas about hot versions of historical figures. This is, perhaps, our most important cultural export in the last few years, from hot Genghis Khan (Marco Polo) to to hot Houdini (Houdini and Doyle) to hot Mary, Queen of Scots (Reign). Each of these shows is "inspired by [newly hot historical figure]'s early years," giving the writers and producers leeway to exploit a vague historical record in the interest of drama and smoldering hotness. Most of them take their solemn task as as necessitating casting a generically hot white guy.
Will is merely one instantiation of broader, Manifest Destiny-style imperative to make things hot. Riverdale applies the same principle to fictional characters who, historically, are decidedly not hot, rather than real people who may or may not have been hot. (Let's not even started on the hot, hot brilliance of The Young Pope.) In most of these cases, the obvious trappings of modern culture are deployed to make the audience feel smarter, hitting them over the head with the conclusion, "I get it!"
But they also raise a crucial question: Who else can we make hot?
Hot Robert Moses
Robert Moses, an explicit racist, may have used New York's expansion to doom hundreds of thousands of people to ghettoized, impoverished existences and destroy the Bronx. But can't you just get behind a sexy anti-hero drama about a powerful urban planner who loves to burrow underground with some stealthily destructive tunnels? The Power Bottom Broker stars Robert Pattinson as the young Moses, with a score by Trent Reznor. Coming this fall to VH1.
Hot Otto Von Bismarck
This brutally efficient master diplomat helped steer Germany toward unification, while laying the groundwork for the state of European at the beginning of World War I. (He also mastered the techniques of realpolitik.) But did you know the "Iron Chancellor" was also a stone fox? Junker stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and premieres on FX in August.
Hot Aleister Crowley
The world's greatest occultist summons a horrifying demon, causing a very expensive but still not great-looking bundle of special effects and accidentally killing his own mother. Wracked with guilt, the young Crowley is torn between his growing supernatural abilities and his previously unknown Greek Orthodox heritage. Timothy Simons stars in MTV's Aleister.
Hot Byron
One of England's greatest men of letters sets out on a bizarrely chaste sexual romp through the countryside, writing famous words and taking credit for other people's work. Blessedly, TNT can seamlessly reuse the sets and actors from Will with only a scant investment in re-dubbing the old scenes. It will be canceled after three episodes.
