On November 2nd I sat down, via Skype, with my pocket dramaturg Kate Pitt to watch Netflix’s The King together. Having been forewarned, we sat down with alcohol.

Let’s clear this up right now: The only thing fundamentally wrong with The King is that it claims to be an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV parts 1 & 2 and Henry V. This is its original sin, albeit one only obvious to people familiar with the plays. Had the creators envisioned The King as an independent mud-and-blood period piece, covering the same historical events as Shakespeare’s plays but not explicitly based on them, I probably would have enjoyed it. However, by yoking their piece to Shakespeare, The King’s creators effectively shot themselves in the foot with a longbow (if that’s even physically possibly) by inviting viewers to constantly compare it with the source material.

Things were not helped by scriptwriter and Falstaff actor Joel Edgerton’s comments on Shakespeare:

“We’ve written ‘Henry IV’ and ‘Henry V’ as a period film, but with our own dialogue. For lack of a better word, [it’s] ‘Game Of Thrones’ meets Shakespeare only in that, you can watch ‘Game Of Thrones’ and understand what’s going on. I feel like, with complete deference to Shakespeare, there is something that happens when even the most intelligent people watch Shakespeare. They feel stupid, because he does the kind of roundabout version of telling you simple things. So, we just wanted to let the audience understand exactly what’s going on, and not just some people, but everybody,” he explained. (Source: Indiewire.com)

I’m not going to dwell on this too much, but the idea that “even the most intelligent people” can’t understand Shakespeare’s language is infuriating on many, many levels. Yes, Shakespeare can be totally unintelligible, but that is almost entirely the fault of the method of delivery, rather than the raw material. Do you have to try a bit harder to understand Shakespeare than “regular” English? Yes, unquestionably. But that doesn’t make it NOT WORTH TRYING.

So, to sum up: I’m all in favor of making Shakespeare accessible to new audiences who otherwise would not be exposed to his works. That’s why I’m drawing this comic, after all. However, if you’re going to do that, you have to at least vaguely respect the source material. Otherwise you’re just making a rod for your own back. I’ll address the main rod The King made for itself later on, but for now, and for your entertainment, here is how Kate and I processed our experience on Twitter.