We are shooting a film for BBC Four of William Shakespeare's vivid political thriller on which I am the producer.

Behind the scenes on the set of Julius Caesar

We are camped out in an abandoned and decaying shopping mall in north London.

But when the lamps are switched on and the camera turns over we are transported to the tropical temperatures of a modern African state and to an overheated world of conspiracy, assassination and revenge.

Director Gregory Doran, who later this year takes over as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, started two years ago to prepare a new stage production of Julius Caesar for the company.

As he worked he was struck by the parallels between Shakespeare's tale of the violent overthrow of a dictator in ancient Rome, including its bloody aftermath, and the history of certain African states since independence.

The events of the unfolding Arab Spring seemed only to enhance the contemporary echoes.

The film, which Greg has also directed (as he did the 2009 BBC film of Hamlet with David Tennant), was shot in the middle of rehearsals for the stage production.

With the same distinguished cast (including Paterson Joseph, Cyril Nri and Jeffery Kissoon) this television production complements the theatre version, which opened earlier this month to hugely enthusiastic reviews.

At the same time the film is a distinctive and original interpretation for the screen, with the spaces of the shopping mall allowing us to create a richly detailed African world and the camera achieving an exceptional intimacy with the motivations and the ideals, the hopes and the fears of Shakespeare's characters.

While respecting the essentials of the stage production the film re-imagines many of the key scenes including the central drama of Caesar's murder.

On screen this is set on the shopping mall's escalator, where Caesar has paused in what we imagine to be the anonymous architecture beneath the Senate House.

So while this has been opened out as a spectacle for the camera the later appearance of Caesar's ghost before the climactic battle called for the tightest of shots filmed only an inch or so from Brutus' face.

In their very different ways both for me are highlights of the film: exciting and immediate and illustrative of how Shakespeare can still surprise and thrill audiences familiar with the political drama of The West Wing and The Killing.

From its first production in 1938 to the most recent in 1979 the BBC has broadcast eight previous versions of Julius Caesar (making it the most popular of Shakespeare's plays on television).

None however will have made quite such sense as this African setting for Cassius' exultant - and chillingly prophetic - words just after he has plunged his dagger into Caesar's heart:

John Wyver is the producer of Julius Caesar.

Julius Caesar is on Sunday, 24 June at 8pm on BBC Four and will be available on iPlayer until Sunday, 1 July 2012.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

That's one of my more vivid memories from the location shoot for director Rupert Goold's film of Macbeth with Sir Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood.

Fortunately my canine assailant was being expertly restrained as the camera captured my far from feigned fear. I'm the co-producer of Macbeth which is being broadcast on BBC Four on Sunday, 12 December. Sadly my starring moment ended up on the cutting room floor.

The shot was originally intended for the sequence we called, after the former East Germany's secret police, "the Stasi montage". Which suggests that our film of Macbeth is not exactly a conventional presentation of the Scottish play.

This is Shakespeare's bloody drama reimagined in the midst of a mid-20th Century war zone. The witches are deadly nurses and Banquo is assassinated by handgun and silencer.

Rupert Goold's Macbeth started at the Chichester Festival Theatre, transferred to the West End and then had a triumphant run on Broadway. The film came together after my production company Illuminations worked with Sir Patrick on the film for the BBC of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamlet with David Tennant.

As with Hamlet, shown on Boxing Day a year ago, we transplanted the stage production to a richly visual location and shot it across three weeks just like a feature film. Our setting was the eerie below ground world at Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire.

This warren of tunnels, claustrophobic cells and a vast windowless ballroom was created in the mid-nineteenth century by the reclusive fifth Duke of Portland. His descendants still live in the main house, but they seemed content as Macduff's invading army fired off round after round of exceptionally loud blanks from their automatic weapons.

Although his production began life on the stage, Rupert Goold has crafted a fast-moving and highly cinematic version for the screen. Yet I believe it demonstrates a deep respect for Shakespeare's drama, and a full text (including the often-excised "England" scene) is played with very few cuts or additions.

At the heart of the film are compelling performances from the immensely polished and practised stage cast.

Kate Fleetwood is a calculating and chilling Lady Macbeth who descends into a desperately moving madness.

Patrick Stewart is imperious as Macbeth: a man of "vaulting ambition" yet also hesitant, a deadly dictator of overweening confidence, but also a man tormented by guilt and regret.

John Wyver is the co-producer of Macbeth.

Macbeth is available in iPlayer until 9.59pm on Sunday, 19 December.

Comments made by writers on the TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.