I can’t really remember how many times I’ve seen the Academy Award-winning Amadeus, directed by Miloš Forman. It was used so frequently throughout my education, sometimes in fragments and sometimes in whole, depending on how old I was at the time. For years, I think I just assumed it was a fairly strong historical account of the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Of course, Amadeus is based on the play by Peter Shaffer, which was adapted into the 1984 film, and now that play has been adapted again into a five-episode limited series starring Paul Bettany and Will Sharpe, stepping into the roles previously played by F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce.

Salieri versus Mozart. I suppose, if you’re a purist of the play, there’s an argument to be made that a five-hour miniseries, or a little shorter since not every episode runs a full 60 minutes, offers a more comprehensive look at the man, the myth, and the legend. However, I found that it mostly exhausted me. It’s sort of like watching an extended director’s cut of a film and realizing why someone edited it down in the first place. Sometimes, more is just more.

I didn’t really find much purpose in the existence of this version of Amadeus. It goes through many of the same familiar beats, following the rise of a brilliant young composer who challenges the established contemporary style of Antonio Salieri. Mozart is able to gain the favor of Emperor Joseph II, even though Salieri is already the court composer and essentially the most important musical figure in the emperor’s orbit. Salieri is told that he must shepherd this bright young composer, even as Mozart increasingly stands in the way of Salieri’s desire to leave his own mark on the world.

Of course, it’s an inferiority complex. If you’ve seen Amadeus, you already know that. Even if you haven’t seen Amadeus, you probably know Mozart. People who know nothing about classical music know his name. Salieri has not stood the test of time in quite the same way, and is far more likely to be remembered by music aficionados, professors, historians, and people who have seen Amadeus. That disparity is at the heart of the story. Salieri has dedicated his entire life to music, only to watch this obnoxious young man walk into the room with more natural talent than Salieri could ever hope to possess.

However, I would contend that the best reason to watch this limited series is Paul Bettany, because he is fantastic. It’s difficult to compare his performance here with F. Murray Abraham’s Oscar-winning work in the 1984 film, but Bettany has always been an underrated actor, and here he is exceptional as Salieri. Part of me always wants to be a traditionalist and say that the original performance is the best, but there’s something about Bettany’s performance that feels more invested and, at times, more maniacal. He can see the world changing around him, and the only way he believes he can stop it is by removing his competition from the equation. The machinations of how he goes about doing that are what fuel this five-episode limited series.

Within the additional running time, we also get to know Mozart a little better, although Will Sharpe plays him in a more reserved fashion than Tom Hulce did in the film. Hulce’s Mozart was more of a party-loving man-child, while Sharpe approaches Mozart as someone with serious daddy issues, constantly searching for approval. When he can’t get it from his father, he starts looking for it in Salieri. This version spends less time emphasizing the partying and sleeping around, while significantly increasing the importance of Constanze, played by Gabrielle Creevy, who has a much larger role here than she did in the 1984 film.

The result is a bit of a mixed bag. This is one of those remakes where the material itself is strong enough that the new version is never going to be truly bad, but I kept wondering why it was necessary. We get this all the time with remakes and reimaginings. When you remake something that already worked, the audience has to search for the reason why. What is this version bringing to the table that wasn’t already there? In this case, the best answer I can offer is Paul Bettany.

Will Sharpe is fine. The rest of the cast is good. Gabrielle Creevy certainly benefits from the expanded role given to Constanze. But I found Bettany to be electric, delivering one of the best performances in a limited series this year. Whether he would be considered a lead or supporting actor is probably debatable, but either way, it is an exceptional performance. Bettany commands the entire series, and his work here is worth watching even when the rest of Amadeus starts to feel tedious and unnecessary.

That’s ultimately where I landed on Amadeus. The series isn’t bad. It’s actually just good enough to land on the other side of fresh for me, making this a small recommend. I just wish the series had found more reasons to justify its existence beyond one exceptional performance. If you happen to be the one person on the planet who cannot stand Paul Bettany, go ahead and do something else, because he is the reason to watch this.

Paul Bettany commands Amadeus and reminds everyone why he deserves, at some point in his career, to join the ranks of Oscar nominees. The series around him might struggle to justify why this story needed to be told again, but Bettany never struggles to justify why he was the right actor to tell it.

Fresh: 6.1/10