A re-run blog from September last year, as part of our holiday offerings. There's a great set of Comments at the original post here. My thinking on this has shifted over the past ten months, but that's for a further post on my return.
How should television mark the quatercentenary of Shakespeare's death in 2016? That is the question today, following on from the post two days ago about the tercentenary of Shakespeare's death in 1916, and yesterday's on the quatercentenary of his birth in 1964 (from which the glorious half-crown stamp above comes) and about The BBC Television Shakespeare of a decade later. It will come as no surprise that I am proposing a new Complete Works for the screen, but what I want to try to tease out is what that might look like and how it might be achieved.

This isn't of course the first time that a new Complete Works has been suggested. In late 2007 the BBC announced that it was going to film new versions of all the plays in a deal with Sam Mendes and his Neal Street production company. But it seems that a commitment to this idea has faded away, not least because of this vision's very high costs. So why -- and how -- do I think it could be done differently?

I'm certain that the idea of diversity and difference would have to be at the heart of any new Complete Works. The plays should be approached in all kinds of ways by all kinds of companies with all kinds of producers and funding partnerships. In this the BBC could look to the RSC's Complete Works festival across 2006-07 to which the company itself contributed only a minority of new productions. Others were brought in from abroad or brought into being with new kinds of partnerships.

What any Complete Works for the twenty-first century has to avoid at all costs is the sameiness of the Messina monument from thirty years back. The project would have to have a commitment to excellence at its heart, and a profound respect for Shakespeare's language in all its many moods and forms, but otherwise the more variety the better. Our approach to filming Hamlet might be one model but other plays could be done in small-scale versions, they could be taped live, they might be animated or produced as musicals or, as Annette suggested, staged with sock puppets. (On second thoughts, that's perhaps a footstep too far.)

A new Complete Works would inevitably need to work closely with many of today's major talents, and it would be fortunate if it could involve the greatest stars of today both in front of and behind the cameras. But it would need also to look to emerging actors and directors and designers, and to work with colleges and schools and a thousand other kinds of groups in communities.

Partnerships too would have to be central to any new Complete Works. Not least for funding, since the straightened BBC with its licence fee under threat from pretty much everyone, is not alone going to find something north of £35 million for all of the plays to be filmed a la Hamlet. But they need not be, and if public funders like the Arts Council and the Film Council here could be brought in, if foreign broadcasters could collaborate on individual productions that were relevant and appropriate for them, and if there were imaginative ways of recouping investments, then across the next seven years it might be financially feasible. (It would however cost rather more than the half-crown above.)

With seven years to go before 2016 (which was the span needed to make The BBC Television Shakespeare), there's no sense that all the productions should be held back until then. Rather they should be threaded into the schedules from now on, perhaps with Hamlet seen as the first offering. Not everything need be on BBC Two or even BBC Four -- the web alone could be entirely appropriate for some of the productions. And the project should be bold in its choices, incorporating perhaps marginal texts like Edward III and Sir Thomas More and certainly finding imaginative ways of presenting The Sonnets and the longer poems.

Unlike in the late 1970s, the BBC should not for a moment think of doing this on its own. (I'm assuming, with a sense of inevitability, that the Corporation is the only broadcaster in the world who might, perhaps, just maybe, take this on.) Rather, the BBC should work on it with the very best British performance companies, including of course the RSC and the National Theatre and Shakespeare's Globe but also perhaps Kneehigh Theatre or Punchdrunk or the National Theatre of Scotland and others. And it must look abroad too, so that this could be a credible Complete Works for the world.

A contemporary Complete Works would also have to be pragmatic and opportunistic, picking up and moving forward initiatives that are already planned or underway. Productions conceived for cinema presentation or new movie versions might, if appropriate, become part of the Complete Works. So might projects being developed, off-screen or on- for the RSC's  World Shakespeare Festival alongside the Olympics in 2012. Nor should the initiative have a grandiloquent title like The BBC Television Shakespeare -- indeed it would be vital that the BBC should be humble enough to take a catalysing role but relinquish any credit that precedes the author.

Nor, of course, should such a project be just about 'television'. Any new Complete Works has to have at its heart a commitment to all kinds of distribution channels, whether on giant outdoor screens or across the net or on mobile devices. And this has all kinds of implications for the aesthetics of the productions -- and, crucially, for the rights structures. Social media must also have a key place close to the centre, developing audiences and awareness and understanding but also drawing people in and making them part of the processes and decisions. (If I can't be part of the production team, and even if I can, I'll happily co-ordinate the project's blog.)

What would unify a contemporary Complete Works, in addition to its commitment to excellence, would be the kinds of deep, rich and evolving online resources about the plays and productions that are being planned for Hamlet. And this is precisely where the BBC could contribute added value of the most valuable kind, even if only a handful of the productions were themselves funded and produced by the Corporation.

The broadcasters continually ask for Big Ideas. I think this is one. And one that's grounded in diversity and innovation and partnership and education and access and creativity and imagination -- and in the always relevant, always surprising words of William Shakespeare. How about it BBC?

Image: The 2/6 stamp for the 1964 Shakespeare Festival was designed by Christopher and Robin Ironside, unlike the lower denominations which were produced with David Gentleman designs. 4.300,000 were distributed forty-five years ago -- who (like me) has one squirreled away in a drawer? © Royal Mail Group plc.