Those of a nervous disposition, and anyone who is offended by randy faeries, love potions or men with furry ears, look away now. What follows might seem traumatic.
When A Midsummer Night's Dream was staged in 2023 at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, trigger warnings were issued, alerting audiences to the play's 'language of violence, sexual references, misogyny and racism'.
And when the BBC screened the Dream ten years ago, its squeamish adaptation removed lines in which lovestruck Helena urges her lover to treat her like a dog: 'The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.'
Apparently, our national broadcaster, as well as the theatre where many of Shakespeare's plays were first performed, thinks his poetry is downright unwoke. So it's hardly surprising when a bunch of over-sensitive A-level students at a posh public school suffer a collective panic attack at the thought of reading the text.
The third series of The Teacher stars Victoria Hamilton as Helen, a recently divorced drama tutor at a snooty boarding college for wealthy snowflakes. She inflames their self-righteous wrath by insisting they study the play.
And she disgraces herself by forgetting that one pupil who used to be Daphne is now Dee and sports non-binary 'they/them' pronouns. Led by Gen Z agitator Cressida (Alice Grant), the students respond by burning the textbooks to punish Helen for her 'outdated and problematic opinions' -- such as expecting the teenagers to actually do some work.
That's an intriguing set-up for a school drama and, if writer Kat Rose-Marton had developed the plot so that Helen's career was threatened by her refusal to be browbeaten by culture warriors, The Teacher could have risen well above the standard of C5's usual potboiler hokum.
But Hamilton's character loses all sympathy when she over-reacts massively to some backchat. Ranting at Dee, she snarls: 'It's about time you lot learned to fight your own battles. If you can't handle that, you might as well just kill yourself now.'
No one capable of losing their rag like that should be allowed anywhere near children, let alone one as obviously vulnerable as Dee -- who does take her own life that night.
Cressida, who filmed the outburst on her phone, blackmails the teacher into abandoning the Midsummer Night's Dream coursework. She's an insufferable madam, but she's hardly the first schoolgirl to try and wriggle out of doing Shakespeare.
Helen digs herself deeper into trouble by lying to police, and then getting her ex-husband to physically threaten Cressida.
I don't think Cressida is meant to be the heroine but, when she fights back and plays the video in front of the whole school, I was cheering her on.
If this four-part drama, which continues on Wednesday, doesn't end with Helen sacked and facing prison, I'll be less than satisfied.