text: I was never in the past interested in this play although love Shakespeare and have seen most of his plays now and enthusiastically studied some at school. Something about this story and all the fuss about it seemed to put me off. I never bothered to try to see Hamlet until fairly recently deciding I should at least try to watch it and I borrowed the Olivier version from the library. Well, I struggled with it. Olivier seemed far too old, not only in his looks but in his acting of the part. The play had been enormously cut to fit a more conventional movie length and I think must have missed out too much as I found it difficult to concentrate on it, soon became bored and annoyed by it. I still think Olivier's Henry V is the best version I've seen of that rousing play - tho' admit I haven't rewatched the Beeb version yet and can't recall how it was when first shown.<br /><br />I heard of the Branagh full length version of Hamlet. Although I enjoyed his Much Ado, I think the Beeb version is far better and I wasn't entirely impressed by his Henry V. But I was off Branagh a bit after seeing his disappointing effort at a musical of Love's Labour's Lost which is a play I like and was so well made by the Beeb. <br /><br />Finally acquiring the complete Beeb Shakespeare on DVD recently, I soon rewatched one of my most favourite Shakespeare plays, Richard II, and was simply enthralled by Jacobi in the part so was immediately persuaded to watch his Hamlet next. What a revelation this play now is for me! Yes, it is splendid, but I feel it needs an actor you can emphathise with to play Hamlet and this for me is Jacobi. Amazing. Intriguing to note that although he is older than I understand the character Hamlet was, it doesn't show whilst in Olivier it did. Now I note he's also in the Branagh version and had much to do with training Branagh, so I shall have to watch that to see what Jocobi does with Claudius! I'm interested to discover Jacobi has trained Branagh as yes, you can certainly see the influence.<br /><br />And now I'm going to watch it all over again....