Film review by Steve Bennett

The co-writer of Bill, Laurence Rickard, has been quoted as saying he hoped to created something ‘half as good as Shakespeare In Love’ with this feature-film debut from the Horrible Histories gang. Which could prove a temptation too much for harsh critics to say ‘job done’… but although it’s not up to the 1998 precursor, there’s plenty to enjoy this longer outlet for the group's talents.

Perhaps with one eye on export markets, we’re certainly in familiar territory here – for like Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard’s earlier script, this envisages the Bard as a down-on-his luck writer of questionable talent. Fresh down to the mean streets of ‘that London’ from his Stratford home, after his stint as lead lutist with the bar band Mortal Coil ended in ignominy, he winds up finding a mentor in the similarly poverty-stricken Christopher Malowe, who gripes: ‘The plague is killing art.’ ‘And people,’ Bill points out, almost as an afterthought. So they wind up dressing as a tomato and a cucumber to hand out leaflets in the market urging Tudor Londoners to eat their ‘two a week’ hoping for a break.

Clearly keen to build a proper narrative, Rikard and co-scribe Ben Willbond imagine a parallel plot in which British spy Richard Hawkins is captured stealing treasures from King Philip of Spain as part of England’s war with the hated Catholics, prompting a diplomatic pow-wow, the centrepiece of which will be a play. Twists and turns notwithstanding, you can roughly see how this might pan out…

In fact, the plot sometimes take too much priority over the jokes. Bill doesn’t have the gay abandon of a Python movie, with whom the team are often compared, or the other obvious forebear, Blackadder II. And it could almost certainly could have done with a couple more songs, always a highlight of the CBBC sketch show.

But on the fringes there is a ready supply of wry gags, silly puns and sight gags, many of the latter involving Rikard himself as a master of disguise Sir Francis Walsingham. And of course there are knowing lines aimed at parents who might have more knowledge of Shakespeare than most the PG audience the film’s ostensibly aimed at. Anachronisms abound, too – such as delightful one-liner of setting the terror level to a ‘dark woad’.

Baynton is as enjoyably watchable as ever as Shakespeare, finding his voice, backbone and purpose thanks to Howick’s Marlow and his wife Anne Hathaway (Martha Howe-Douglas). Meanwhile Simon Farnaby shines as the vain, cowardly and friendless traitor Earl Of Croydon – one of several roles he takes for, like Python, the cast multi-task here.

Willbond plays up the suave bad guy in King Phillip, while as the hideously-toothed Queen Elizabeth, Helen McCrory channels Anne Robinson more than she does Miranda Richardson’s spoilt Queenie as she steals here scenes.

The supporting cast contains a raft of comedy circuit favourites including Justin Edwards as Sir Francis Drake, Rufus Jones as Sir Walter Raleigh, John Henry Falle and Jamie Demetriou as Spanish hench-hombres who unconvincingly pose as the acting troupe The Cockerney Players Of Bow and Richard Glover as a nervous Catholic traitor. Homeland and Wolf Hall’s Damian Lewis also makes a dashing cameo as Hawkins, a character quickly forgotten about as the script acknowledges in a cunning in-joke.

Bill looks better than its budget, too, and should have enough international appeal to make that money back. Let’s hope so, because this seems like only scratching the surface of what the team are capable of.

Review date: 18 Sep 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett