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Television

BBC1’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems deliberately designed to flush out purists

<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Plus: an inexplicable new French import, BBC2’s Versailles, which continues to be excruciating even after the drama ends</span></p>

4 June 2016

9:00 AM

4 June 2016

9:00 AM

Spoiler alerts aren’t normally required for reviews of Shakespeare — but perhaps I’d better issue one before saying that in BBC1’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Monday) Theseus dies near the end. Not only that, but Hippolyta and Titania fly off on butterfly wings to become lovers, and the mechanicals’ play goes down a storm.

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