Upstart Crow

We were fortunate to get tickets for episode 2 of  this new BBC comedy written by Ben Elton.   The extra picture is of the information we were each given as we took our seats.

I had to sneak an afternoon off work to be able to go.  That made for a rather frantic morning due to various issues, including Ed having succumbed to a violent bout of food poisoning.

Anyway, based on seeing the filming of this episode I can guarantee that when the series is aired in April it is going to be very popular.      Ben Elton is a genius writer of sit coms and this is no exception.   He was present and came on at the very beginning to tell us all how he had been commissioned by the BBC to write a sitcom based on Shakespeare, it being the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death this year, and to introduce the actors.    He did keep popping back on set between takes to talk to us all.  He is so funny and every time he addressed us it was like being at one of his stand up routines.     
We were in the studio for 3 hours in all.  It flew by though.  Some scenes took several attempts due to the inevitable corpsing, line fluffing etc etc.   All very funny and fascinating to see how it is all done.    Legions of people are involved behind the scenes.

All in all well worth playing truant from work and the discomfort of standing about in the freezing cold outside the studio.