{"id":362470,"date":"2025-12-21T12:03:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T12:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/362470\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T12:03:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T12:03:10","slug":"amadeus-a-remake-actually-worth-doing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/362470\/","title":{"rendered":"Amadeus: a remake actually worth doing"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Photo by Simon Emmett\/Sky<\/p>\n

Somewhere between 2011\u2019s Footloose and 2024\u2019s Mean Girls, I stopped enquiring as to the point of remakes. There\u2019s nothing that makes you feel old and irrelevant quite like your generation\u2019s cult classics being regurgitated for a new, younger audience, and Hollywood is going to keep doing it regardless. All the same, adapting Peter Shaffer\u2019s 1979 play\u00a0Amadeus\u00a0for the second time, when the first screen version was Milos Forman\u2019s 1984 masterpiece, seems to be asking for trouble.<\/p>\n

There were, however, three reasons to be optimistic: Joe Barton, the writer behind the perennially underappreciated\u00a0Giri\/Haji; Will Sharpe, star of the perennially underappreciated\u00a0Giri\/Haji,\u00a0The White Lotus\u00a0and\u00a0Too Much; and Paul Bettany, who has held a special place in my heart since 2001\u2019s\u00a0A Knight\u2019s Tale\u00a0(there I go feeling old again).<\/p>\n

Sky\u2019s five-part television adaptation of\u00a0Amadeus\u00a0seems to answer its critics early doors, with a gentle nudge and a wink. Emperor Joseph (a rather unprincely Rory Kinnear) asks his court composer, Salieri, to \u201cput on a remake\u201d of his French opera\u00a0Tarare\u00a0in Italian. Salieri protests \u2013 he wants to make new work \u2013 but the Habsburg Emperor shuts this down: \u201cA return to past successes is what\u2019s needed in delicate times.\u201d<\/p>\n

The framing \u2013 a story within a story \u2013 is the same as in Forman\u2019s film, with some small differences. An aged Antonio Salieri (Bettany) attempts suicide and is confined to a psychiatric hospital. There he is visited not by a priest, as in the film, but by Mozart\u2019s widow, Constanze (Gabrielle Creevy). (The artificially aged Bettany is passable, but Creevy quite dreadful.) Salieri tells her he wishes to make his confession, and then we enter the flashback in which the action unfolds.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Treat yourself or a friend this Christmas to a New Statesman subscription for just \u00a32 <\/p>\n

It is 1781, ten years before Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart\u2019s death, and the composer is newly arrived at the court in Vienna from Salzburg. The setting is decadent and gilded, rendered in meticulous detail; the wigs are piled a little lower, the bosoms slightly less heaving, than in the film. Sharpe\u2019s Mozart is a prodigy but ill-mannered, excitable, a drunken, petulant reprobate, and Salieri his wily, predatory and less preternaturally talented rival. Despite the Emperor criticising his work for having \u201ctoo many notes\u201d, Mozart soon establishes a reputation as a musical genius. Salieri, realising that he has been blessed with neither the same gifts nor the same enrapturing character, declares God his enemy and sets out to ruin the young upstart.<\/p>\n

The big beats are broadly familiar, but spread over five 50-minute episodes, the whole thing is given more time to breathe and luxuriate. Barton has begun again with his script, so while there are nods to the 1984 version, it feels entirely fresh, at times cuttingly comic. Constanze takes a more central role than in the film, giving the series a more modern feel. Bettany\u2019s Salieri is in turns full of jealousy, rage, admiration and resignation, all playing out over his wolfish features, but he can\u2019t match F Murray Abraham\u2019s Oscar-winning turn. Sharpe\u2019s Mozart, on the other hand, is a revelation. The high-pitched giggle of Tom Hulce\u2019s portrayal is gone, and so too is a little of the buffoonery. There is still a naive excitability, to Sharpe\u2019s imagining, but Barton also explores Mozart as a tortured artist: tormented by letters from his overbearing father, mourning the death of his infant son, wrestling with his own genius.<\/p>\n

Forman\u2019s original inevitably casts a long shadow over it, but Barton\u2019s\u00a0Amadeus\u00a0is nonetheless sumptuous, highly enjoyable television: a success for delicate times, indeed.<\/p>\n

[See also: Christmas telly has lost its magic<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Content from our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Simon Emmett\/Sky Somewhere between 2011\u2019s Footloose and 2024\u2019s Mean Girls, I stopped enquiring as to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-362470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}