Amadeus: Will Sharpe and Paul Bettany bring Mozart and Salieri to life in this smart and sexy TV remake

By Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, Professor of Musicology, University of Sheffield

Revisiting Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus is no small feat. Joe Barton, the writer behind Netflix’s Black Doves, has taken on the challenge of reworking Shaffer’s dense account of Mozart’s life and legend into a five-episode series for Sky Atlantic. It’s a bold move: the original play – and the 1984 film adaptation – already felt exhaustive, sometimes overwhelmingly so.

Yet Barton manages something unexpected. Shaffer’s monologue-laden tale of Mozart’s rival Antonio Salieri’s guilt becomes…

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