You may have seen the 1984 original, but this saucy new version hits the right notes

Amadeus ★★★★ (Binge)

Genius cuts both ways in this earthy British period drama. The brilliance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Will Sharpe), the prodigious composer who was the Lennon and the McCartney of the late 18th century, is a wellspring of revelation and inspiration. But for Mozart’s lesser peer, Antonio Salieri (Paul Bettany), the blow-in’s gifts create only agony and uncertainty. As with Timothee Chalamet’s Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, genius demands cruel, cold sacrifice.

Like the previous Amadeus, the Milos Forman movie that won Best Picture at the 1984 Academy Awards, this limited series was adapted from Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play. Shaffer invented the rivalry between the two composers, but its mix of jealousy and longing feels authentic and contemporary. The blithely arrogant Mozart is a source of private torment to the established Salieri, culminating in the former’s controversial death.

The tone is saucy, not stuffy. Party-boy Wolfgang has “a few sharpeners” before his 1781 Vienna debut for Emperor Joseph II (Rory Kinnear), while Salieri references an opera he “released”; the British cast use their natural tones, avoiding Central European accents. Creator Joe Barton, fresh from the bloody espionage follies of Netflix’s Black Doves, mixes black comedy and high anguish. He also carves out Mozart’s wife, Constanze (Gabrielle Creevy), as a necessary alternate voice.

With Mozart’s historic opening nights as punctuation, complete with Salieri’s crushed but compelled face in the audience, the story has some familiar musical biopic traits. It’s a rise and fall tale with Mozart fulsomely indulging his appetites in public and blowing his money while defying the royal court, much to the consternation of his martinet father and former manager, Leopold (Jonathan Aris). It’s very much different century, same setbacks.

Sharpe has always been very good at impishness with a tormented underbelly, but the crucial role in Amadeus is that of Salieri. Bettany captures a villain whose machinations stem from heartbreak and disbelief: the look on Salieri’s face when he first sees an original Mozart composition, a perfect first draft in comparison to his stoic revisions, is brutal. It’s no wonder the pious Salieri renounces God – defrock me, Amadeus.

Bettany finds the depths, operatic and organic, of Salieri’s struggles, whether in the moment or as a bitter old man still trying to attach his forgotten name to Mozart’s growing posthumous legacy. “The more you listened, the more the layers presented themselves,” Salieri says of an early Mozart commission, and it’s the same watching this telling of Amadeus. Genius is a good time that ultimately spares no one.