Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!

For Christmas 2024, I gave my parents the Series 1-4 DVD collection of the BBC TV drama mystery series ‘Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators’. It was a winner for them as well as for me. So much so that I later purchased the 2022 Christmas Special on DVD.

We’ve greatly enjoyed checking out ‘Shakespeare & Hathaway’ over Christmas last year leading into January 2025. We religiously watched an episode or two per day, getting into the series and enjoyed the various mysteries being solved by our heroes Frank and Luella.

The series takes place in Stratford-upon-Avon, which is a place my parents and I have been to on holidays years ago. It’s the place where the Royal Shakespeare Company plays are performed and where William Shakespeare was born. There’s plenty of Shakespeare in this! 😀

Incidentally, it’s Luella Shakespeare and Frank Hathaway in the series. Not Frank Shakespeare and Luella Hathaway if you’re easily confused. And of course, the series stars Mark Benton as Frank and Jo Joyner as Luella, who I’ve enjoyed so much throughout.

If you recognise them in ‘Doctor Who’, Mark Benton played Clive in ‘Rose’ and has been in ‘Energy of the Daleks’ and the ‘Rose Tyler’ spin-off audio series by Big Finish. Jo Joyner played Lynda with a ‘Y’ in ‘Bad Wolf’/’The Parting of the Ways’. It was very lovely to see both in this.

In the series, Mark Benton as Frank Hathway is an ex-detective inspector, now private investigator who meets Jo Joyner as Luella Shakespeare when she employs him to investigate the fiancé she met online. They soon find out the fiancé is a con man after all.

Unfortunately, the con man gets killed and Luella is suspected of murder before Frank finds a way to clear her name. Luella joins Frank and his assistant Sebastian Brudenell and uses her recovered savings to buy into Frank’s business and be a private investigator.

Patrick Walshe McBride stars as Sebastian Brudenell, who is a young aspiring RADA-trained actor that uses his skills to go on undercover investigations on behalf of Frank and Luella. I’m surprised the series wasn’t called ‘Shakespeare, Hathaway and Brudenell’. 😀

There’s also Amber Aga as Detector Inspector Christina Marlowe, who was once Frank’s junior. Sadly, she’s only in Series 1 and 2 of ‘Shakespeare & Hathaway’ and I like her more than Tomos Earnes as Detective Sergeant Joseph Keeler, who I found quite a mean guy.

There’s the late Roberta Taylor as Gloria Fonteyn, a theatre costumier who was in the first three seasons of ‘Shakespeare & Hathaway’. And there’s Yasmin Kaur Barn as Police Constable Viola Deacon, who has been in Series 3 and 4 so far and is a rather nice person.

So far, ‘Shakespeare & Hathaway’ has lasted for four seasons. There will be a fifth season coming soon, which I’m looking forward to. I’m surprised the 2022 Christmas Special isn’t included in the Series 1-4 DVD collection, but then, it must have been released after that.

Series 1 was shown on TV in February 2018 whilst Series 2 was shown in February 2019. Series 2 was shown on TV in February 2020 and Series 4 was shown in February 2022. The Christmas Special came out in December 2022. I greatly enjoyed the Christmas Special.

There have been special guest stars in certain episodes of the series I recognised, including Julia Deakin, Jamie Glover, Annette Badland, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Anna Wilson-Jones, David Calder, Don Gilet, David Schofield, Paul Clayton, Tamzin Outhwaite, Josette Simon, Christopher Timothy, Simon Williams, James Dreyfus, Joe Sims, Will Thorp, Michael Maloney, Ace Bhatti, Nicholas Asbury, Denis Lill, Cliff Parisi, Tessa Peake-Jones and the late Timothy West. 🙂

‘Shakespeare & Hathaway’ has been a worthwhile series for my parents and me to check over Christmas last year and the beginning of 2025. My parents and I are currently watching the series a second time on DVD. I hope it won’t take long for Series 5 to arrive.

Incidentally, Sarah Sutton (Nyssa in ‘Doctor Who’) has seen ‘Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators’ when I asked her at ‘Happy Who Year at the Playhouse’ in Epsom in January 2025 if she’d seen it. I had a feeling Sarah would’ve seen the series. 😀

Thanks for reading!

Bye for now!

Tim 🙂