Category Archives: Television

Cadbury faces fresh accusations of child labour on cocoa farms in Ghana

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A new TV documentary alleges that children as young as 10 are using machetes to harvest pods

The food giant that owns the Cadbury brand is embroiled in fresh allegations of employing child labour after an investigation obtained footage of children working with machetes on cocoa farms in its supply chain.

Children as young as 10 have allegedly been found working in Ghana to harvest cocoa pods to supply Mondelēz International, which owns Cadbury. Campaigners say the farmers are being paid less than £2 a day and can’t afford to hire adult workers.

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Stacey Abrams made president of Earth in Star Trek cameo

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Candidate for governor in Georgia and self-confessed superfan makes appearance in season four finale of Star Trek: Discovery

The Georgia gubernatorial candidate and voting rights campaigner Stacey Abrams has been made president – of United Earth.

The honour was bestowed by the Paramount+ TV series Star Trek: Discovery, in its season four finale.

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Bob Saget’s fractures possibly caused by falling on carpeted floor

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Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos star died from accidental blow to the head, medical examiner concluded

Fractures around Bob Saget’s eye sockets and bleeding around his brain were possibly caused by the comedian hitting “something hard, covered by something soft”, such as a carpeted floor, according to a report released on Tuesday that provided more details of the death of the TV star.

The 65-year-old star of Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos was found by a hotel security officer on his bed at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando on 9 January, after he failed to check out and his family asked for a wellbeing check.

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Emilio Delgado, Sesame Street actor for 45 years, dies aged 81

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Delgado, who played fix-it shop owner Luis on beloved children’s show, was a rare Latino face on US TV

Actor and singer Emilio Delgado, the warm and familiar presence in children’s lives for 45 years as fix-it shop owner Luis on Sesame Street, has died.

His wife, Carol Delgado, said he died from the blood cancer multiple myeloma at their home in New York. He was 81.

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Patricia Arquette: ‘I’ve buried a lot of people I love’

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As she returns to TV in the mind-bending Severance, the actor talks about life in the ‘never-ending emergency’ that is America, why she’ll never find Trump funny, and her need for a low-drama lifestyle

‘How did I feel?” repeats Patricia Arquette, clearly irritated. I have just asked the actor how it felt to land a role in Medium, the supernatural drama series that won her an Emmy – only to be asked to lose weight for the role. Although it happened in 2005, it is still clearly a sore point. “I felt annoyed and crappy. But I feel like it’s been a conversation my whole life. When True Romance came out, some critics said I was too fat or too heavy. I changed channels recently, happened upon True Romance, and thought, ‘Oh my God, look how young I was! I had a beautiful body. What are you talking about?’”

After True Romance, the Tony Scott-directed film in which she played a sex worker who falls in love with Christian Slater’s comic-book nerd, Arquette went on to star in plenty of acclaimed films, from David Lynch’s Lost Highway to Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead. The latter starred Nicolas Cage, who she married in 1995. Their marriage lasted nine months.

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‘I don’t have penis envy. I have 12 in a drawer at home’ – the fearless female standups of the 60s

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They were pigeonholed, derided – and even shot at. With The Marvelous Mrs Maisel back on TV screens, we find out what life was really like for women who dared to be funny in the postwar years

Back in the days when they were still called comediennes, an older comedienne turns to a younger one and says: “What is your persona?” The younger woman is confused. Bob Hope and Lenny Bruce don’t have personas, she says. They are just allowed to be funny as themselves, so why isn’t she? “They have dicks,” snaps back Sophie Lennon, one of the most memorable characters in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel.

In the hit Amazon show – set in 50s and 60s New York – Midge Maisel discovers her talent as a standup. She’s an accidental comic, getting up on stage at a Greenwich Village club one night, drunk and angry and confessional, after her husband leaves her for his secretary. At the time, there is really only one mainstream female standup: Lennon, whose persona is that of a Queens housewife, complete with feather duster, fat suit and grating catchphrase. Maisel, with her shocking, electrifying set – it ends with her getting arrested – represents a new style of comedy, particularly for women.

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‘Good times? I was out of it’: The Dropout’s Naveen Andrews on booze, drugs and baffling the world in Lost

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He found fame in The English Patient before becoming a huge TV star. Now he is tackling the Theranos fraud scandal. But addiction in the 90s nearly cost him everything

If your abiding image of Naveen Andrews is as Sayid from Lost – the soulful Iraqi officer whose sad eyes, powerful biceps and luxuriant hair set many mid-00s hearts a-flutter – you might be in for a shock seeing him in The Dropout. Paunchy, bespectacled, greying, with shockingly normal-length hair, he is less a strapping man of action and more a middle-aged man of business – and not a very good one at that. Andrews portrays Sunny Balwani, the partner and alleged co-conspirator of Elizabeth Holmes, who was once the world’s youngest female billionaire and is now a convicted corporate fraudster.

On a video call from his home in Santa Monica, California, Andrews, 53, looks more Sayid than Sunny. His black gym vest exposes reassuringly well-toned biceps; the hair is returning to its trademark resplendence. He gained 9kg (1st 6lb) for The Dropout, he explains, to make his face fuller and his belly paunchier. He also modified his movements to seem slower and older. “Well, I did at least want to resemble the character I was playing,” he says, a little sting of sarcasm in his inflection.

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‘Nobody has sex after 40? That’s just not the case’ – Outlander turns up the highland heat

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As the raunchy TV show about a time-travelling nurse and an ageing highland warrior returns, its stars open up about the vibrant love lives of the over-70s – and respond to criticism of the show’s troubling use of sexual violence

Outlander isn’t a show that can be described in a nutshell. Is it a period drama? Sci-fi? Action? Romance? Caitríona Balfe, who has been the show’s star for eight years, still doesn’t know. “God, yeah,” she puffs. “It sort of defies definition, but that’s part of the appeal.” One thing agreed upon among fans is that, against a dedicated attention to historical detail and endless panoramic shots of Scotland, Balfe’s raunchy relationship with co-star Sam Heughan is the beating heart of the story. Heughan, however, insists it’s not just constant shagging: “When it’s written off as a ‘bodice-ripping drama’ I think, ‘But there’s so much more to it.’”

The adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s novel series follows the story of second world war nurse Claire, played by Balfe, who is honeymooning with her husband, Frank, when she touches a stone in the Highlands and falls back in time to 18th-century Scotland. There, she falls in love with clansman Jamie, played by Heughan. He affectionately calls her “sassenach” – gaelic for “English outlander”. Together, they travel around the world, encountering and often disrupting historical events, moving back and forth between centuries (only Claire has the gift of time travel), going into battle, saving lives, dealing with witchcraft trials, becoming a power couple and having a lot of sex.

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‘Everybody needs good Neighbours!’ How Ramsay Street changed my life

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The Australian soap has kept me hooked since 1986, becoming a major part of my daily existence – even when I didn’t have a TV signal. Ramsay Street, you will be missed

• Beloved soap Neighbours to end after 37 years on air

From the upbeat opening bars of its theme tune and the declaration that “Everybody needs good neighbours”, Neighbours was like a blast of fresh air blowing across British TV screens in 1986. Here was a show that was on BBC One twice a day; lunchtime and a repeat in the late afternoon. This was when Netflix was but a twinkle in Reed Hastings’s eye and a “streaming service” was probably a water-feature option offered by landscape gardeners. You watched Neighbours or you missed it.

Centred on Ramsay Street, the Lassiters hotel complex, and the lives of the Ramsays and the Robinsons (think Jim Robinson and mother-in-law Helen Daniels), it was soon a must-watch for students in the UK because – despite being watched “ironically”, however one does that – it had young people at its heart. This is the show that brought us Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Guy Pearce and Panda from The Masked Singer, Natalie Imbruglia. Talk about a hit factory. But, wandering the banks of Lassiters lake, we were also in the company of Harold and Madge, Dr Karl and Susan Kennedy, “Toadfish” Rebecchi and more. But now, the curtain falls. After almost 9,000 episodes, Neighbours is to come to an end.

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Park Seo-joon: ‘I actually couldn’t believe Marvel wanted to speak to me’

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The actor talks about joining the MCU, his friendships with BTS’s V and the rest of the ‘Wooga Squad’, and the social and economic issues behind his TV hits Itaewon Class and Fight for My Way

In an early scene of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, a brief conversation between rich student Min-hyuk and his friend Ki-woo proves a crucial moment in the multi-Oscar winning film. “Tutor a rich kid. It pays well,” the scooter-riding Min-hyuk tells the impoverished Ki-woo, who lives in a semi-basement home with his family. And when Min-hyuk offers Ki-woo the opportunity to take over his job as a tutor for the rich Park family, he acts as a bridge between the two worlds, and sets the plot of the film in motion.

Min-hyuk is played by Park Seo-joon, and despite the brevity of Park’s appearance in Parasite, it will have been the first time most international audiences will have got a good look at him. Park is a big name in South Korea however, thanks to a string of successful domestic TV series – mostly romantic comedies such as She Was Pretty and Fight for My Way – and the Netflix hit Itaewon Class. Now his international profile is about to be raised, after it was confirmed he will be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Captain Marvel 2: The Marvels, appearing alongside Brie Larson, Iman Vellani and Zawe Ashton, making him the third South Korean actor to join the MCU.

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Neighbours: the 10 best memories, from Scott and Charlene to Madge’s ghost

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With the Aussie soap finally confirmed to end, we celebrate the best moments from 37 years on Ramsay Street – including plenty of twists, weddings and a tornado

Once upon a time, Neighbours had good friends. But with producers Fremantle failing to find a new UK backer to save the Aussie soap, Neighbours is set to end in June after a groundbreaking 37-year run.

First airing on the Seven Network in 1985, it was taken over by Channel 10 just four months after launch and was transformed into water cooler fodder and a Logies award generating machine. At its peak, more than one million Australians tuned in each night to catch up on the exploits of these “typical” Aussie families living in a cul-de-sac in suburban Melbourne.

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Beloved Australian soap Neighbours to come to an end after 37 years on air

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The show where household names such as Margot Robbie and Kylie Minogue had their start will wrap for the last time in June

The Australian soap Neighbours will shoot its final scene in June following a record 37-year run, after producers Fremantle failed to secure another UK broadcaster.

The series, which launched the international careers of countless stars including Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Margot Robbie and Guy Pearce, is the longest-running drama series on Australian television and was so popular in Britain it has been bankrolled by Channel 5 since 2008.

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Netflix to pause all projects and acquisitions in Russia

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The streamer has halted work on four original series as a result of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine

Netflix has paused all future Russian projects and acquisitions as a result of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

According to Variety, the streamer is “assessing the impact of current events”, which has led to four Russian original series being indefinitely paused. Zato, a crime series set after the fall of the Soviet Union, directed by the Belarus-born director Darya Zhuk, was already in production but has now been put on hold.

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Patrick Stewart: ‘I’d go straight home and drink until I passed out’

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As he beams aboard another Star Trek adventure, the 81-year-old actor talks about playing Picard as an intergalactic Prospero, hitting the bottle during an exhausting Macbeth – and reaching page 310 of his memoir


Patrick Stewart is slightly surprised to be talking about the impending second series of Star Trek: Picard, during a break from shooting the third in California. The reason is that he so firmly turned down the first season. After playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard, 24th-century hero of Starfleet, in 176 TV episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and four spin-off movies, Stewart was convinced that “I’d done everything I could with Picard and Star Trek”.

But the producers – Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), Michael Chabon (Wonder Boys), Kirsten Beyer (Star Trek: Discovery), Alex Kurtzman (The Mummy) – persisted. And Stewart “took a look at the names, and there were Academy award and Pulitzer prize winners. So I thought the most courteous thing to do would be to have a meeting to tell them face to face why I was going to turn them down.”

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How did Euphoria become the most loved and hated show on TV?

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The HBO teen drama’s second season is either a glorious mess or an excessive fantasy of high school. Either way, it’s a record-breaking hit

If you were anywhere near social media this past Sunday night, you probably at least glimpsed the divisive mess that was the second season finale of Euphoria, HBO’s technicolor, gleefully excessive soap on the outsized trials and tribulations of suburban California teens. After a buzzy and acclaimed but modestly watched debut in 2019, the show’s second season has blown up: HBO announced Tuesday that Euphoria, with help from its new streaming home on HBO Max, is now its second most watched show since 2004. It averaged 16.3 million viewers an episode this season, behind only OG HBO juggernaut Game of Thrones, which drew an average of 44.2 million viewers during its final season in 2019.

But perhaps more impressive, and telling, than its 2022 viewing stats is Euphoria’s digital footprint. According to Twitter, the drama is the most tweeted-about show of the (still young) decade, with 34m tweets in the US alone. This is by design: Euphoria, adapted by Sam Levinson from the Israeli show of the same name, is audacious in style, almost pugnaciously provocative in substance, with imitable peacocking fashion and easily memeable cutaways. In other words, catnip for the online crowd.

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Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – stunning TV that is suddenly unmissable

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Filmmaker James Jones had no idea when he started it two years ago that a terrible synchronicity would make his blistering documentary about the nuclear accident in northern Ukraine a must-watch

Had it been released at any point in the past few years, Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes would have been an important documentary; a feature-length blend of audio interviews and largely unseen archive footage that puts the 1986 disaster into horrifying new perspective. That it comes out now – just days after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including an attack on the Chernobyl site itself – makes it as unmissable as it is harrowing.

Obviously, this timeliness was never the intention. Indeed, the film-maker James Jones had a different historical event in mind when he started work on it two years ago. “I initially thought the relevance was Covid,” he says. Like Chernobyl, the early days of the pandemic were marked with mysterious illnesses that the local government attempted to keep a lid on. “I was interested in the idea that this invisible enemy was threatening us,” he says. “An authoritarian regime was lying about it, and Chinese citizens were starting to voice their disquiet publicly.”

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Screen Actors Guild awards 2022: Squid Game, Will Smith and Coda win big

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Netflix phenomenon and Apple’s deaf family drama make history at this year’s SAG awards ceremony

The indie drama Coda has won big at this year’s Screen Actors Guild awards, picking up best ensemble in a movie and best supporting actor for Troy Kotsur, who is the first ever deaf actor to win an individual SAG award.

The Apple drama about a deaf family was bought for $25m from last year’s Sundance film festival and has also been nominated for three Academy Awards, including best picture.

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Peaky Blinders review – Tommy Shelby’s back where we want him to be: in all kinds of trouble

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It’s war on three fronts, across two continents for the Birmingham gang leader. Without his beloved Aunt Polly, will he be able to take it?

Man walks into a bar. Herringbone cap, baby face, topcoat flapping in silhouette, weaponry secreted in case things turn sour. Which they always do. “Glass of water, please,” he says. The French stereotypes at table four give him the evils. Nobody orders soft drinks in these parts if they know what’s good for them. You could cut the tension with a – well, a razor blade concealed in the brim of your cap would do the job.

It’s 1933, in a remote outpost of la Francophonie called Miquelon Island, which, as you know, is just off the coast of Newfoundland, and, therefore, beyond Canadian and American jurisdictions. For years, these Gallic stereotypes have been ferrying bootleg whiskey to Boston. But, now, prohibition is ending and their business model is collapsing.

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EU to ban Russian state-backed channels RT and Sputnik

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Ursula von der Leyen says stations will ‘no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war’

The EU has announced it will ban the Russian state-backed channels RT and Sputnik in an unprecedented move against the Kremlin media machine.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our union. So we are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”

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‘I feel like a competition winner’: Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan on luck, social media and her ‘nice’ list

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Five years ago, she was working in an opticians. Then came Derry Girls and Bridgerton. Now she’s a Hollywood name, no wonder she can’t believe her good fortune

I have a nice list,” declares Nicola Coughlan. She pauses, perhaps to catch her breath at the end of another mile-a-minute answer, or perhaps for dramatic effect. “Of celebrities!” The disclosure comes somewhat out of nowhere, 40 minutes into our Friday-afternoon interview on Zoom. I’d asked the star of Derry Girls and Bridgerton about her public love-in with Kim Kardashian – not the tabs she’s been keeping, privately, on her new famous friends.

In fact, Coughlan explains, “ideally” her nice list is of names she hasn’t met herself. “People are always going to be nice to you, aren’t they? This has to be evidence from several sources that they’re nice.”

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