{"id":332014,"date":"2025-12-23T19:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T19:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/332014\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T19:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T19:19:10","slug":"amadeus-review-funny-sumptuous-intelligent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/332014\/","title":{"rendered":"Amadeus review \u2014 ‘funny, sumptuous, intelligent’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty-five-year-old wunderkind Mozart (Will Sharpe) arrives in Vienna, leading to\u202fdeep resentment in older court composer Salieri (Paul Bettany).<\/p>\n

Streaming on: Sky Atlantic<\/p>\n

Episodes viewed: 5 of 5<\/p>\n

It may technically be another interpretation of\u00a0Peter Shaffer\u2019s 1979 play, but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0Milo\u0161\u00a0Forman\u2019s 1984 movie<\/a>\u00a0and its eight Oscars\u00a0that loom over this show. Written by Joe Barton (Giri\/Haji<\/a>, Black Doves<\/a>), the\u00a0lavish expansion of\u00a0Amadeus\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0soar as elegantly as Forman\u2019s, but it finds\u00a0a\u00a0tune\u00a0all its own.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The story begins with an aged Antonio Salieri (Paul Bettany)\u00a0confessing\u00a0to the killing of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Will Sharpe).\u00a0We then flash\u00a0back to their\u00a0initial\u00a0meeting. In Vienna, Salieri is\u00a0an\u00a0obsequious\u00a0court composer, secretly terrified by his own mediocrity.\u00a0He\u00a0considers music the voice of God,\u00a0so when he meets the renowned young genius Mozart and finds him to be a philandering drunk who treats his gift carelessly, Salieri\u2019s furious\u00a0that\u00a0the\u00a0Lord would choose to speak through someone so unworthy. He\u00a0vows to destroy them both.<\/p>\n

Barton\u2019s dialogue\u00a0is at its most sparkling when\u00a0Salieri and Mozart share the screen.<\/p>\n

With five episodes to play with,\u00a0Barton has more space to explore the contrasts, and similarities, between the two men. Salieri is\u00a0so\u00a0consumed by his own mortality, and fear of being forgotten, that\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0too afraid to really live. Mozart lives so freely that ideas flow unimpeded.\u00a0Building out from the play, we get more of Mozart\u2019s own, less destructive demons.\u00a0His preoccupation is not with the Holy Father, but his own\u00a0actual\u00a0lower-case\u00a0dad, whose approval is always just out of reach. A home life of love and tragedy guides his compositions from merely beautiful to meaningful.\u00a0It all fits in smoothly.<\/p>\n

Barton\u2019s dialogue\u00a0is at its most sparkling when\u00a0Salieri and Mozart share the screen, particularly in a scene where each\u00a0lays\u00a0out\u00a0his\u00a0own thoughts on music and God. \u201cMaybe God doesn\u2019t speak to you because you fucking bore him,\u201d suggests Mozart with casual acidity (language and behaviour is not period-piece prim\u00a0here\u00a0\u00a0\u2014\u00a0see also: bunk-ups over a buffet and Salieri having a depressed wank at his piano.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bettany\u2019s\u00a0is the stand-out performance, a scheming villain who\u2019s also\u00a0somewhat\u00a0sympathetically\u00a0trapped\u00a0by\u00a0his own self-loathing. Sharpe, who\u2019s several years older than Mozart was when he died, may not convince as a 20-something prodigy, but\u00a0he plays the role in a lower key than the movie\u2019s Tom Hulce, whose cartoonish\u00a0giggling may have been tough going over five hours. Gabrielle Creevy is fabulous as Mozart\u2019s wife, who has no intention of being a mere background character in her husband\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

If, as is so often the case these days,\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0a bit of water-treading in the middle, this more than justifies its existence.\u00a0A very good\u00a0series to sit alongside a great play and movie.<\/p>\n

This is a funny, sumptuous, intelligent take on the play \u2014 far from merely a cover version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty-five-year-old wunderkind Mozart (Will Sharpe) arrives in Vienna, leading to\u202fdeep resentment in older court composer Salieri (Paul Bettany).…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-332014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}