Hamlet: Carling Black Label Advertisement

Synopsis: Television advertisement for Carling Black Label lager. Hamlet, in Elizabethan dress, and holding Yorick’s skull on stage recites ‘Alas, poor Yorick/I knew him’. He drops the skull to gasps from the audience. Hamlet then plays keepie uppie with the skull, kicking it first from one foot to another, then heading the ball to audience appreciation. Another actor enters and says ‘My noble lord Hamlet, over ‘ere son, on the ‘ead’. He heads the skull which knocks Hamlet over and the skull flies into the audience balcony. Yorick’s skull gives, drunkenly, the slogan ‘I bet he drinks Carling Black Label’. A bust of Shakespeare is seen next to a can of lager.
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Medium: Television
Technical information: Colour / Sound
Year of release: 1989
Duration: 0:30

Notes: The advertisement could be accessed free from the Museum of Broadcasting website but streaming of all digitised material was curtailed in February 2008.

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