'Slings & Arrows' made Shakespeare must-see TV. The prequel sounds just as delightful
If there's no business like show business, and there is no playwright like Shakespeare, then it stands to reason - and is, in fact, a fact - that there's no series like "Slings & Arrows," a gorgeous Canadian import from the first decade of this century. Set at an Ontario Shakespeare festival, its three seasons are built around productions of "Hamlet," "Macbeth" and "King Lear," respectively, echoing their themes in big and little ways.
The series, whose first season began streaming Monday on Acorn TV (Season 2 follows on Nov. 25, and Season 3 on Dec. 16), stars Paul Gross as Geoffrey, who quit acting after a nervous breakdown during a performance of "Hamlet" several years earlier; Ellen (Martha Burns, married to Gross in this world), his estranged former leading lady; and Oliver (Stephen Ouimette), director of the New Burbage Shakespeare Festival, who (small spoiler) spends most of the series as a ghost, variously annoying, advising and commiserating with Geoffrey, who steps in to fill his shoes.
The show was written by Susan Coyne, a veteran of Canada's Stratford Festival, on which the series is more or less based; Mark McKinney, from the sketch group Kids in the Hall and currently of NBC's "Superstore"; and comedian and
