Category Archives: Television

Police ‘ineptitude’ contributed to Stephen Port murders, says producer

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Shoddy investigation into serial killer also result of underfunding, says producer of BBC drama about murders

Three victims of the serial killer Stephen Port might still be alive today were it not for a shoddy police investigation that was the result of “ineptitude, poor systems and underfunding”, the producer of a new drama about the crimes has said.

Jeff Pope is senior producer of Four Lives, a dramatisation for BBC One of the murders of four young gay men: Anthony Walgate, 23; Gabriel Kovari, 22; Daniel Whitworth, 21; and Jack Taylor, 21.

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I spent my house deposit on a boat to reach the Mokohinau Islands – the magic on our doorstep | Clarke Gayford

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It wasn’t a financially astute move but it led to my TV series and helped me discover the truly important things in life

  • Guardian writers and readers describe their favourite place in New Zealand’s wilderness and why it’s special to them

My entire experience of Auckland changed when I got a boat. It was the perfect antidote to a professional DJ lifestyle, where getting up at 5am to be on the water become immeasurably preferable to coming home at 5am from work. On trips out I began sticking my head underwater with such vigour that I somehow turned it into a whole new profession.

It didn’t happen straight away, of course. My 40-year-old, 14-foot beige fibreglass boat with a semi-reliable two-stroke engine, named Brown Thunder, only had so much range, and my real goal lay much farther offshore, tantalisingly out of reach. A place where tales of clear blue tropical water and huge fish swirled around a group of uninhabited islands, teasing me from the pages of marine magazines or the crusty lips of old salty sea-mates.

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The person who got me through 2021: Awkwafina made me hopeful for success in dark days

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In Nora from Queens, Awkwafina’s adorable loser alter ego was inspiring. Faced with constant failure, she kept going, with wit and warmth

During the past 20 months I’ve become addicted to TV shows about women trying and failing to make it. Broad City, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, 2 Broke Girls: it’s like looking in a mirror, if I could be bothered to do even that. But the absolute fabulous queen loser of all is Awkwafina, in her self-created show Nora from Queens.

Awkwafina plays a bizarro-reverse-mirror version of herself as a nearly thirtysomething bum, living in her childhood home with her grandmother and her widowed father. It’s pure lockdown comfort TV, with every petty slight and worldly favour soothed away by familial love. Nothing Nora from Queens does ever works out, and yet it’s always fine in the end. Attempted jobs, moneymaking schemes, love interests and opportunities for growth come and go, with all the wit and humour being incidental. The laughs come from off-the-cuff comments, the quickest physical reactions and scathing jibes, but the emotion is gooey and true. And that’s how I live now – with Nora from Queens as my more adorable, charismatic, sexy, funny, hipster-chic proxy. I actually have the same sloppy tracksuit bottoms, oversized T-shirts, thick dorky glasses and button-down overshirts that Nora wears in the show. If she gets up at noon every day in TV fantasyland, heck, I do it every day in reality. And if she fails at everything while refusing to leave her childhood home or embrace adulthood, well, me too – and I’m 10 years older than Awkwafina herself and 15 older than the show’s character.

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Russell T Davies: ‘I genuinely thought – who wants to watch a show about Aids?’

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It’s a Sin has been voted the Guardian’s best TV show of the year. Russell T Davies reveals why it took him 30 years to write, who the real Colin is – and why he just can’t keep away from Doctor Who

• The 50 best TV shows of 2021, No 1: It’s a Sin

Russell T Davies doesn’t hold back. If he’s thrilled, he shouts about it. And sure enough, the 6ft 6in giant of a man is shouting today. “I’m gobsmacked. I’ve never come first in this. Ever,” he exclaims, admitting that he has always had his eye on the Guardian’s list of the best TV of the year. “If I’ve had a show on, I spend every December watching that countdown wondering if I’ll be on it – I think A Very English Scandal got to No 2.” He’s right, it did. Three years on, his wonderful Channel 4 mini-series It’s a Sin has been voted the Guardian’s best TV show of the year. “I’m ridiculously thrilled,” says Davies, who is Zooming from his home in Manchester.

It’s 30 years since his first TV series – Dark Season, featuring a 15-year-old Kate Winslet – aired on the BBC. Since then, Davies has created any number of groundbreaking dramas (including Queer as Folk; Cucumber, Banana and Tofu; Years and Years) as well as breathing new life into Doctor Who. But he is particularly pleased to have won for It’s a Sin, the five-part drama about a group of young gay friends living – and dying – through the Aids era of the 80s and early 90s. This is the show he knew he had to write 30 years ago, and spent the intervening decades years putting off, because it was simply too personal and painful.

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Girls5Eva review – Tina Fey’s gags are so good they should be revered

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There are shades of 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt in this hilarious show about a one-hit-wonder girl band reuniting after 30 years. No wonder, given it’s by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock

If you didn’t know beforehand, it would not be long before you realised that Girls5Eva (Sky, Now) came from the school of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, who gave us those perennial delights, 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. The new show, about a manufactured 1990s girlband of the same name (“We’ve been best friends ever since we auditioned for a man in a New Jersey hotel room!”), is the brainchild of Kimmy writer and producer Meredith Scardino, in collaboration with Fey and Carlock. It provides a similar cocktail of laughs. There are parodies (this time mostly of music videos rather than TV shows or characters), “proper” jokes so densely packed you’re still unearthing more on third and fourth viewings, call backs, and throwaway gags so good they would be revered treasures anywhere else. The chemistry among its leads recalls – even if it doesn’t quite get there, because nothing can or will – the chemistry between Ellie Kemper and Titus Burgess in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. In short, it is a joy.

Under the aegis of their sleazy manager Larry, Girls5Eva had one hit (Famous 5Eva) three decades ago but fell into obscurity after their follow-up tanked. It was called Quit Flying Planes at My Heart and was released on 10 September 2001. Since then, one of the girls has died (Ashley – “The one who got us all through our breakups with Moby”) and the remaining four members have drifted apart. We first meet Dawn (Sara Bareilles) as she is listening to the radio while having a mammogram. She has the perfect breasts for it, her doctor says – “Already so smooshed!” The Fey spirit, unable to know of a physical female indignity without leaping to embrace it for comic effect, remains strong throughout. Dawn herself is the mother-figure of the group. Always the responsible one then, she is now married with one child, constantly stressed (“Fireworks or terrorism?” she shouts when woken by a strange noise at night), and works long hours at her idiot brother’s restaurant (Dean Winters, essentially reprising his 30 Rock Dennis Duffy role). Hearing Famous 5Eva sampled as part of hit rapper Li’l Stinker’s latest moneymaker, she goes to pick up her royalty cheque from Larry and is coaxed into delivering the rest to her former bandmates, too.

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The 50 best TV shows of 2021, No 2: The White Lotus

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An immaculate social satire featuring scabrous character studies, a murder-mystery and a shocking revenge scene

‘Wave like you mean it,” the hotel manager tells his staff as they line up on the beach waiting for the next boatful of guests to arrive at the luxurious White Lotus resort. With that line, Mike White’s immaculate six-part creation is set. On to the beach come the clientele, awed by the beauty of their surroundings but already taking the humans on the shoreline for granted – checking that their needs (wants) have been anticipated, extracting further efforts from those they are sure exist only to serve, and soon demanding (in what in Shane’s case will evolve into a series-long war of attrition with the manager, Armond) apologies and upgrades whenever minor mistakes are made.

The White Lotus had many superficial similarities with previous glossy hits such as Big Little Lies. It looked gorgeous, had an array of affluent white characters living what they considered ordinary and what most would consider easeful, glamorous lives, and a murder-mystery woven in.

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Sex and the City stars respond to sexual assault allegations against Chris Noth

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Statement came as CBS said Noth will no longer be part The Equalizer ‘effective immediately’ following allegations by two women

The leads of Sex and the City’s recent reboot And Just Like That have responded to sexual assault allegations made by two women against their fellow castmate, Chris Noth.

Cynthia Nixon – who plays Miranda in the series and its reboot – shared a statement on social media, signed by herself, Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie) and Kristin Davis (Charlotte).

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Need a warped, tortured or evil character for a Hollywood film? Cast a British actor

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UK stars Olivia Colman, Idris Elba and Benedict Cumberbatch are all in demand with US directors. We look at why

A sensitive, geeky youth, stuck on a lonely cattle ranch, might understandably yearn for a kindly uncle figure; someone to confide in, or be mentored by. But the companionship actor Benedict Cumberbatch offers his brother’s stepson, Peter, in the widely Oscar-tipped western Power of the Dog is a very long, precarious horse ride away from anything avuncular.

In fact, Cumberbatch’s portrayal of the emotionally thwarted Phil Burbank is a study in twisted misery. In one early scene, Burbank notices some fragile paper flowers the teenager has made to decorate a dinner table at his mother’s canteen. But, instead of praising them, “Uncle Phil” is driven to publicly sneer.

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‘Why can’t I give it a go?’: How Rose Ayling-Ellis’ Strictly success is inspiring deaf youngsters

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Actor’s achievements helping others embrace deaf identity and pursue passions on own terms

Amid all the noise, glitter and razzle-dazzle, the most iconic moment of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing took place in complete silence. The music paused for several seconds while deaf actor Rose Ayling-Ellis and her dancing partner Giovanni Pernice continued to glide elegantly across the floor.

The dance was intended as a tribute to the deaf community, but it has resonated far more broadly: as well as receiving a perfect score, the couple’s performance has been labelled the “greatest ever” on the show, while an official BBC clip has been viewed 1.7m times on YouTube.

There has been a resounding (silent) cheer for Ayling-Ellis’ success from the deaf community, who see her as a rare on-screen role model capable of inspiring deaf young people, who often struggle with pressures to fit into mainstream schooling, to embrace their deaf identity and pursue their passions on their own terms.

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Ricky Gervais on offence, anger and infuriating Hollywood: ‘You have to provoke. It’s a good thing’

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He has made a career out of winding people up in everything from The Office to his Golden Globes speeches – but is the comedian’s bark worse than his bite?

Ricky Gervais’s assistant leads me past a huge, empty room to the top floor of an office above a shop on a swanky London high street. Gervais is sitting behind a desk at his computer in another huge, empty room, and looks as if he’s just squatted the place. There is nothing that suggests this is his office, except for the branded mugs sitting on his desk; one shows his face, the second says Tambury Gazette, the fictional newspaper where Gervais’s character, Tony, works in his hit Netflix series After Life.

As soon as he sees me, he swings his legs off the floor and on to the desk. I expect him to say, “Right, shoot”, as his fabulous fictional creation David Brent might have done, but he reins himself in. It’s 20 years since Gervais made his name with The Office, and it’s often been difficult to know where Brent ends and Gervais begins.

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Duchess of Argyll sex scandal retold in new BBC drama series

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Admirers of vilified aristocrat say they hope series will allow her to be ‘seen in a different light’

It took the judge more than three hours to read out his damning judgment at the end of one of the longest, most expensive and toxic divorce cases of the 20th century.

Margaret, the Duchess of Argyll, was, he declared with contempt, “a highly sexed woman” who was not “satisfied with normal relations and had started to indulge in disgusting sexual activities to gratify a debased sexual appetite”.

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Javier Bardem: ‘When I won the Oscar, I felt great, but it didn’t make any sense’

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Famed for portraying bad guys in Skyfall and No Country for Old Men, the Spaniard opens up about his marriage to Penélope Cruz, his formidable mum, and his hopes for his kids

The bad news is that, at the last minute, my interview with Javier Bardem is changed from being a face-to-face encounter to one conducted by the less risky means of video chat (damn you, Omicron!) But the good news is this means I get to snoop around Bardem’s home in Madrid, where he Zooms me from, and which he shares with his wife, the actor Penélope Cruz, and their two children, Leonardo, 10, and Luna, eight. OK, I don’t actually see the whole house, but he does give me a panoramic view of his study while his kids shout and play outside.

“You can see my little bookcase here,” Bardem says, picking up his laptop and giving me the grand tour. “And my map of the world. It’s very chaotic.”

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Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler on saving Christmas: ‘We don’t usually meet people who hate our books’

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The Gruffalo creators are back with Superworm, their ninth festive special – that’s one more than Eric and Ernie. The Christmas TV royalty talk tinkering with Olivia Colman’s script … and the perils of mega success

Meeting Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler is a little like meeting the royal family. To learn anything about them is to be bombarded with an avalanche of statistics. In this country alone, a Julia Donaldson book sells every 11 seconds. In 2014 it was reported that 40p in every pound spent on children’s picture books went on a Donaldson title. And her work with Scheffler has taken on a rabid life outside of literature, too. Go to the woods and you’re likely to discover a Gruffalo trail. Chessington World of Adventures theme park is essentially a Donaldson/Scheffler temple, brimming with themed rides and marauding characters.

And, let’s not forget, they are also the reigning king and queen of Christmas Day. Starting with The Gruffalo in 2009, one of their books has been sumptuously animated and proudly placed in every BBC One Christmas schedule. This year, Superworm – about an earthworm superhero captured by a wizard lizard – has received the treatment, narrated by none other than Olivia Colman and with Matt Smith as the titular creepy crawly. In grand Donaldson/Scheffler tradition the animation is bright and tactile, and the storyline has been augmented with a rich seam of festive melancholy. On a Christmas day dripping with repeats, this will not only go down as the BBC’s stand-out offering, but is also their ninth Christmas special. If you’re counting, Morecambe and Wise only managed eight.

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Shatner in Space: Captain Kirk’s in a willy-shaped spaceship – and it’s poetry in motion

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This documentary is indescribably touching as it captures the Star Trek actor’s rocket voyage. Even if it is a Jeff Bezos ego trip

There are two competing schools of thought when it comes to William Shatner’s space mission. The first is characterised by a kind of awestruck wonder over the beautiful symmetry of it all: Shatner starred in Star Trek, Star Trek inspired a generation of engineers, the engineers built a rocket, the rocket flew Shatner into space. The second tends to think that letting a billionaire indulge an actor by flying him to the brink of the atmosphere in a spaceship shaped like a willy might not be the best use of our resources.

Shatner in Space is firmly for the first crowd. A 45-minute documentary about his mission, it airs on Amazon Prime. Jeff Bezos owns Amazon Prime. He also owns the rocket that Shatner flew on. Anyone expecting even an iota of criticism would be better off looking elsewhere.

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‘We were pinned as the bitches’: the OC and 90210 stars reclaiming their voices

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Hit noughties US teen shows – and UK ones like Skins – were irresistible to their wide-eyed, hormone-fuelled viewers. Now their casts are reuniting in podcasts to discuss the good – and the bad – of adolescent stardom

There is nothing new about a nostalgic TV reunion. In the last year we’ve seen televisual specials reunite actors from Friends, New Girl and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for emotional chats and table reads of episodes past. There are cast-led rewatch podcasts like Fake Doctors, Real Friends – hosted by the Scrubs stars Zach Braff and Donald Faison – or West Wing Weekly and Office Ladies (about the US Office). But, often, they are bathed in a cosy glow. They fail to lift the lid on the shows’ darker side. They avoid raising problematic issues that call into question the ethics of the industry they work in.

This is not true when it comes to the wave of podcasts that have brought together the casts of 00s teen shows. Years spent portraying the breakups, makeups, hedonistic parties and burgeoning sex lives of teenagers – in hits such as The OC and 90210 – have made way for audio series in which their casts discuss the good and the bad of adolescent stardom.

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‘I’m hooked all over again!’ Readers review And Just Like That

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The Sex and the City sequel has just arrived on our screens. But is it a ‘sharp-tongued, hilarious’ return to form or ‘a barrage of forced woke moments’? Here are your verdicts

After almost 20 years away from our screens, Carrie and co are back for a Sex and the City sequel: And Just Like That. But as the fiftysomething women grapple with the modern era of dating apps and teenage children in the long-anticipated reboot, fans are divided.

Warning: these opinions contain spoilers from the first episode of And Just Like That.

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Succession creator Jesse Armstrong on its thunderous finale: ‘That might be as good as I’ve got’

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Season three of the hit show has made even more headlines than usual. We ask its British creator if he’s had enough yet, if actor Jeremy Strong is doing OK – and if his character Kendall is actually Jesus

• Warning: contains spoilers

Yesterday, like much of the rest of the world, I watched the finale of the third season of Succession. And, like much of the rest of the world, I found myself buffeted by one astonishing twist after another – and a gasp-inducing climax that outdid even those of series one and two. Unlike my fellow viewers, however, pretty much the first thing I see after the end credits roll is the face of Jesse Armstrong, the show’s creator, popping up over Zoom and politely attempting to dissuade me from discussing the episode.

Unlike other big TV showrunners – who will happily explain, and sometimes over-explain, every single second – Armstrong prefers to remain hands off. He tries not to read the acres of theorising that Succession inspires. Such post-match analyses, he says, can often feel like a tightrope walk. “There’s a bit of me that just wants to find out what the fuck everyone is saying about the show,” he says from his book-lined study in London. “But you can’t. It wouldn’t be good for me psychologically – and it wouldn’t be good for the creative process of doing the show.”

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Why it’s time to say goodbye to Tiger King

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Netflix’s continued obsession with the pandemic hit has brought a follow-up special, a second season and now a spin-off but enough is enough

To think of Tiger King is to immediately transport yourself to the heady days of lockdown 2020. Remember it? Remember how filled with artificial purpose we all were? We did Zoom quizzes with all our friends! We made banana bread! We clapped for frontline workers!

Looking back, it seems relatively clear that all those things were stupid. Nobody wants to spend more time on Zoom than they have to. Nobody likes banana bread. The clapping didn’t change anything. And as for Tiger King? With the benefit of hindsight, Christ, we chose the wrong show to obsess over. Looking back, Tiger King was grubby and exploitative. Once you’d crossed the “Are these people for real?” hurdle, you found yourself sitting through a carnival of monstrous behaviour. Tiger King was the documentary equivalent of that old Black Mirror episode: as fun as it sounds to watch someone have sex with a pig, at the end of the day you actually have to watch someone have sex with a pig.

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Naomie Harris says ‘huge star’ groped her during audition

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Bond actor recalls past #MeToo incident and contrasts lack of censure with ‘immediate’ removal on recent project

The Oscar-nominated actor Naomie Harris has said a #MeToo incident on one of her recent projects prompted the “immediate” removal of the perpetrator, as she recalled another occasion when she was groped by a “huge star” who faced no censure.

Harris, who played Moneypenny in the last three Bond films and was up for an Oscar for her role in Moonlight in 2017, declined to name either of the men allegedly responsible.

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