A bonkers update of a classic

What to do about the Shrew, and the taming of it, in 2006? Last night's retelling of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew (TV One, 8.30pm) went for the bonkers interpretation, which is about all you can do with a story about a hissing, snarling miss who must, by the end of the show, be tamed by her husband, Petruchio.

The retelling is updated to the hilt. Kate is a politician about to make her bid for leader of the opposition. Pre-nups are in the plot, and the best way to relieve a modern shrew of her power is to take away her mobile phone and hide it in the oven.

That's a good joke: no career woman is going to go looking for it in there now, is she?

Anyone who gets huffy about The Shrew and how silly it is today when, to achieve a happy ending, a woman must be tamed into submission by her man, might ponder the most successful ingredient in this adaptation.

Kate is an unmarried politician who is advised to marry as a PR exercise, because "everyone thinks she is a dyke ... or Maggie [Thatcher]". Of course that would never happen today. Ha, ha.

The makers have thrown in a few twists, other than the obvious ones involving pre-nups, and so on. Kate is supposed to be a virgin on her wedding night. She must be because she is such a shrew and hates men so much and men hate her so much.

But she told Petruchio it was rude and ungallant to even ask. Then, as he went off to make her breakfast, she giggled away in a most unshrew like manner. So we were in on that joke, too.

Shirley Henderson's Kate seemed at first to be over-doing the shrewing: she swears and says "swivel it" and bares her nasty little teeth as though playing a small bad-tempered panto animal. But it worked.

Shrew needs to be played up. It's a nonsense after all, one more than widely hinted at when Petruchio turns up at the wedding as a pissed cross-dresser.

In the airline lounge, on the way to the honeymoon, he orders whisky "and whatever the little lady wants".

"And what does the little lady want?" asks the barman.

"I don't know. A kick up the arse, a bucket of cyanide."

I liked, too, the update of the day-is-night, the-moon-is-the-sun scene. "How brightly shines the moon," says Petruchio. "That's the sun, you idiot," says Kate.

Petruchio: "You shouldn't contradict me."

Kate: "You shouldn't talk bollocks."

A lot of bollocks was talked by all and much fun was had along the way. Three more retellings are to come. I'll watch them all, providing the bloke hasn't hidden the remote in the oven.