SOURCE: Pilkington, Ace G. “The BBC's Henriad.” Literature/Film Quarterly 21, no. 1 (1993): 25-32.

In the following review of David Giles's production of the Henriad for BBC television, Pilkington notes the strong focus on Hal in the series, which served as a unifying force in the plays and featured Hal's development from prince to king.

David Giles did not know when he directed the BBC Richard II that he would also be the director for all of the Second Tetralogy and what might readily be styled the Henriad.¹ However, by the time Giles started into 1 Henry IV, Cedric Messina, producer for the first two years of the series, had committed himself, and Giles was looking forward to a sequence of three plays. With Messina's support, he determined to shoot the plays as a unity. For example, 1 Henry IV begins with a flashback to Richard's death, and in 2 Henry IV “Before...