Category Archives: Television

Actor Carrie Coon: ‘My husband says I have ice-water in my veins’

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The chameleon-like star of Fargo and The Leftovers on performing opposite Jude Law in new thriller The Nest, the sophistication of British audiences – and her ‘showmance’ with husband Tracy Letts

A toddler is playing a tuba in the next room and Carrie Coon apologises in advance if she’s a little distracted. Unexpectedly saddled with childcare duties today, the 40-year-old is keeping one eye on her two children – three-year-old son Haskell and his month-old sibling – while she chats over Zoom from her Chicago home.

The Ohio-born actor is currently enjoying something of a well-earned moment. Best known for TV roles including grieving widow Nora Durst in post-apocalyptic saga The Leftovers and divorced, dogged Minnesota cop Gloria Burgle in the third (and best) season of Fargo, for which she was Emmy nominated, she now stars alongside Jude Law in acclaimed new psychological thriller The Nest. This autumn she also plays one of the leads in the eagerly awaited reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise.

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Modesty pouches and masturbation montages: the making of Sex Education

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The rude, raucous and revolutionary comedy is back for another term. The stars and creators reveal how it became one of Netflix’s biggest British hits

Sex Education is back with a bang. Several, in fact. The Netflix hit’s third series starts with an epic sex montage. There’s sex in a car; in a living room; in a variety of teenage bedrooms. There are casual encounters, committed relationships, sex together, alone, virtually, playing the drums and with a sci-fi theme. It is a symphony of shags, an opera of orgasms, all set to the thumping beat of the Rubinoos’ I Think We’re Alone Now. As the old saying goes, there’s nowt so queer as folk, and Sex Education is determined to prove it.

The Netflix comedy-drama only began in 2019, but thanks to its cross-generational, multinational appeal, it already seems like part of the cultural landscape. The funny, frank, flamboyant show about teenage life, sex and identity is an awards magnet and has made stars of its young cast, who now front fashion campaigns and appear regularly on stage and cinema screens. Gillian Anderson and Asa Butterfield star as mother and son Jean and Otis Milburn, who live in an enviable, chalet-style house overlooking the gorgeous Wye valley.

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Strictly Come Dancing 2021: the contestants – ranked

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Robert Webb, AJ Odudu, Tom Fletcher and Nina Wadia are among the celebrities getting their dancing shoes on for Strictly. But who will succeed … and who on earth is Tilly Ramsay?

The 2021 Strictly Come Dancing line-up has been unveiled in full, which can only mean one thing. It’s Christmas already. Merry Christmas everyone!

But who are these brave celebrities who have dared to develop a close friendship with a professional dancer that has a statistically high likelihood of ending their marriage? Below you will find them all, ranked from worst to best in terms of probable success.

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Amazon moves production of Lord of the Rings TV series to UK

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Show has been shot in New Zealand so far but filming will move to UK from June 2022

Amazon has made the surprise decision to move production of its $1bn-plus Lord of the Rings series from New Zealand to the UK, rejecting tens of millions of dollars in incentives to shoot the TV show in the same location as the blockbuster films.

Amazon, which four years ago paid $250m to secure the TV rights to JRR Tolkien’s works after founder Jeff Bezos demanded a Game of Thrones-style hit for its streaming service, chose to film the first series in New Zealand after competitive bids from around the world.

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More than Friends? Are David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston really dating?

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The Friends reunion seemed pointless – until now. If it paved the way for Ross and Rachel to get together in real life, the world might explode with joy. So why do I have a sinking feeling?

Initially, this year’s Friends reunion didn’t exactly offer much in the way of entertainment. There was Justin Bieber dressed as a potato, and there was that meme about Matt LeBlanc looking like someone’s Irish uncle. Apart from that, the whole thing felt like an elaborate attempt to give James Corden even more air time.

But that was then. Because now that David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston are dating, the Friends reunion has become an important historical document and must be preserved for ever.

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Marvel and DC face backlash over pay: ‘They sent a thank you note and $5,000 – the movie made $1bn’

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As the comics giants make billions from their storylines and characters, writers and artists are speaking out about their struggles for fair payment

Watch any superhero movie and you will see a credit along the lines of “based on the comic book created by”, usually with the name of a beloved and/or long-dead writer or artist. But deep, deep in the credits scroll, you will also see “special thanks” to a long roster of comic book talent, most of them still alive, whose work forms the skeleton and musculature of the movie you just watched. Scenes storyboarded directly from Batman comics by Frank Miller; character arcs out of Thor comics by Walt Simonson; entire franchises, such as the Avengers films or Disney+ spinoff The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, that couldn’t exist without the likes of Kurt Busiek or Ed Brubaker.

The “big two” comic companies – Marvel and DC - may pretend they’ve tapped into some timeless part of the human psyche with characters such as Superman and the Incredible Hulk, but the truth is that their most popular stories have been carefully stewarded through the decades by individual artists and writers. But how much of, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) $20bn-plus box office gross went to those who created the stories and characters in it? How are the unknown faces behind their biggest successes being treated?

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I Am Victoria review – a masterclass in what pushes a woman to the edge

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In the new series of Dominic Savage’s searingly truthful dramas, Suranne Jones plays a mother trying to do it all … and hurtling towards a meltdown

Two years ago, Channel 4 gave us the novel – not unprecedented, but still novel – series I Am … It comprised three dramas created, written and directed by Dominic Savage, who devised the stories with three female actors. I Am Nicola starred Vicky McClure as a woman realising she is in a coercively controlling relationship and trying to find a way out. Samantha Morton was the protagonist in I Am Kirsty, hemmed in by poverty and predated upon for all the vulnerabilities that go with that. Gemma Chan was in I Am Hannah, about a young woman appraising everyone’s interest in her biological clock.

There were moments when polemic overwhelmed the storytelling, but overall (and the Nicola instalment in particular) they were strikingly truthful stories told in a strikingly truthful way. I loved what they did and what they represented – a fine, new way to get women’s real lives and experiences on screen. Savage seemed to have got himself brilliantly out of the way, committed himself fully to that goal and succeeded.

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Kitchen nightmares: do we need more celebrity cooking shows?

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The release of Paris Hilton’s Netflix series where she semi-cooks semi-dishes is the latest in an increasing trend of stars spending more time in the kitchen

To state the obvious, nobody is going to watch Cooking With Paris to sharpen their culinary skills. The new Netflix series piggybacks on last year’s bizarre, almost Lynchian YouTube video where Paris Hilton cooked what can only be described an anti-lasagne, and stretches it out to a painful degree. In episode one, Hilton attempts to make marshmallows for Kim Kardashian and grunts with disgust when they make a mess of her lace gloves. In episode two, Hilton takes time out from making a funfetti flan to pose in the photo booth she installed in her living room. If you hang around long enough to find out what happens in episode three, you’re a braver soul than me.

Related: Cooking With Paris review – Hilton in the kitchen? Prepare to have your mind blown

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Comic Jamie MacDonald on being creative and blind: ‘It’s triumph with – not over – adversity’

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In new BBC show Blind Ambition, MacDonald and Jamie O’Leary meet artists who have lost their sight – including a rapper, a photographer and a wood turner ‘who still has all his fingers’

I’m a blind standup comedian, currently co-starring in the BBC Two documentary Blind Ambition. As the title suggests, the show is about blindness. But please don’t think this is a violins, tissues at the ready, “oh didn’t they do well” type of documentary. The show creator and Essex wide boy Jamie O’Leary wanted to make a different kind of show about disability.

You’ll know the classic disabled show formula: person has a dark phase then overcomes their disability and achieves something wonderful. In this paradigm the disability is a hurdle that needs to be jumped over. Or, if there are mobility issues at play, an obstacle to get around. In the Blind Ambition paradigm, blindness – a disability readers of the New York Times voted the worst thing a person could have in the world (which is bollocks as blind people can’t read the flipping New York Times so couldn’t vote) – is positive.

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‘A malignant narcissist’: uncovering the dark side of John DeLorean

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The defining car mogul’s ego and criminality are explored in the eye-opening new Netflix docuseries Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean

In Northern Ireland, many still revere the automotive magnate John DeLorean as a local hero for situating his car factory in Belfast at the height of the Troubles, a time of extreme economic deprivation during which the influx of jobs came as a godsend. Others – his family, his personal confidantes, his colleagues, the FBI officials responsible for his eventual arrest – remember the business tycoon as a greedy, flagrantly unethical megalomaniac. The new miniseries Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean triangulates the truth in hiding somewhere between these two characterizations.

Related: Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean review – how years of lies felled an automotive giant

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Jessie Cave on body image, bereavement and being relentless: ‘I don’t have any secrets’

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The actor, comic and writer talks about her bestselling debut novel, the cruelty of costume fittings, how it felt to be in the Harry Potter franchise – and finding hope in small things

As a compulsive diary writer – she has kept one since she was eight – Jessie Cave knows that, unless it gets written down, life gets forgotten. She is glad, then, that she wrote her debut novel, Sunset, because the way she felt at the time “would have just gone, and then you’re in a different place and you don’t remember”. This book, says Cave, was “absolutely the only thing I could write during that period”.

In March 2019, her younger brother Ben died in an accident aged 27. Her book was written in the aftermath, that manic feeling that sometimes comes with grief pushing her on. It went straight to No 1 on the Sunday Times’ bestseller list after being published in June. “I don’t know if I would have that energy now,” she says.

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Jimmy Savile: 10 years on, what has changed in uncovering abuse?

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As TV revisits the scandal, the author of an acclaimed play about it asks what the media and key institutions have learned – and whether survivors are now treated any better

Journalistic parlour game question: what are the most significant news stories of the past decade? Few would argue with the pandemic and Brexit. Not far behind, perhaps, is the Jimmy Savile scandal.

Not many stories change our world. This one did. It transformed how we deal with allegations of sexual assault. We reassessed our attitude to celebrity. We saw more clearly than ever how morally corrupt institutions could be. It was the harbinger of the #MeToo movement.

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On my radar: Domhnall Gleeson’s cultural highlights

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The actor on an exhibition that’s like a rave, the best crispy chicken and why he’s having to take a break from Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest

Domhnall Gleeson was born in Dublin in 1983. Following his father, Brendan, into acting, he broke through in 2010 with small but memorable roles in Never Let Me Go, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (as Bill Weasley) and True Grit. He played the lead in Frank and a romantic interest in Brooklyn, though he is probably best known as General Hux in the latest Star Wars trilogy. From 4 to 29 August, Gleeson stars in Enda Walsh’s new play, Medicine, at the Traverse theatre as part of the Edinburgh fnternational festival. He lives in Dublin.

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First image revealed of Imelda Staunton as the Queen in The Crown

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Actor best known for Vera Drake takes over from Olivia Colman for fifth series about the UK royal family

The first image of Imelda Staunton in character as the Queen in season five of The Crown has been revealed.

Staunton has taken over from the Golden Globe winner Olivia Colman, as the fresh series ushers in a new era for the royal family. Netflix gave fans a first glimpse of Staunton as the monarch while she was still filming the next instalment of the Netflix show.

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The X Factor: Simon Cowell’s show is dead – but it has been for years

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ITV is cancelling the TV talent show before it ‘fizzles out with a whimper’. After a decade of plummeting ratings, we remember its highs, lows … and Chico Time

“COWELL WIELDS AXE” roared the front page of The Sun today, as it alleged that Simon Cowell, bored of gazing over a world made in his image, has chosen to cancel The X Factor once and for all after 17 years. The story quotes an insider, who says “Simon remains at the top of his game … He owns the rights to the show, and it’s his call – not ITV’s – whether or not he drops it. Clearly the last thing he wants is for X Factor to fizzle out with a whimper and become a bit of a joke”.

About that last bit. If you wanted to produce a perfect scientific diagram of the concept of fizzling out, then it would probably look something like a graph of X Factor viewing figures over the years. After the show’s biggest year in 2010, ratings went into freefall, steadily losing droves of eyeballs every time it returned. What’s more, the show hasn’t actually been on television since 2018. For all of today’s attempts to mimic an explosive ‘The King Is Dead’-style dramatic impact, the truth is that most people assumed it quietly passed away in its sleep several years ago.

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Arthur, children’s animated TV series, to end after 25 years

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The final season of the longest running animated series in the US will air in 2022

Arthur, the longest running children’s animated series in the US, will soon come to an end.

PBS Kids plans to end the beloved television show after 25 seasons, said an original developer of the show during a podcast released on Wednesday. The final season will air in 2022.

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BBC Olympics coverage misses events after loss of TV rights

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Viewers complain after rights-holder Discovery puts majority of events behind paywall

The BBC has faced a series of complaints about the lack of live Tokyo Olympics coverage on its channels, after viewers failed to realise the International Olympic Committee has sold the majority of UK television rights to pay-TV company Discovery.

During the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics the BBC was able to offer dozens of free livestreams of different sports, revolutionising how British viewers watched the games and providing much-needed publicity to niche events that would not normally have enjoyed their moment in the public eye.

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Idris Elba: ‘I used work to exorcise my demons’

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The actor was working as a bouncer when he got a small part in a new show called The Wire. Two decades on, he’s a blockbuster fixture. The Suicide Squad star talks about fighting for his big break, losing his dad, and why acting helped him out of a ‘dark, weird junction’

“I appreciate my quiet time, I really do,” Idris Elba tells me, “but I didn’t choose a career in quiet time.” At 48, his life seems relentlessly full of activity, projects, causes, releases. He’s the star of an imminent summer blockbuster, The Suicide Squad. He’s a rapper who releases music online at a rate of about a track a month. He hosts a podcast. He’s just released a new line of T-shirts. Earlier in 2021, Elba signed a deal with HarperCollins to write children’s books. He and his wife, the Canadian model Sabrina Dhowre Elba, have recently been petitioning world leaders (France’s, Belgium’s) on behalf of rural farmers in Africa. The couple have also co- designed a Louboutin sandal. When Elba sits down to chat to me over Zoom, it’s during a break between night shoots on a new movie he’s making, and I’m tempted to tell him to forget about it; shut the laptop; sleep.

Is he someone who hates sitting still?

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Jason Sudeikis: ‘Ted Lasso isn’t a show, it’s a vibe’

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The SNL star turned Hollywood mainstay plays a caring, sharing football coach in the award-winning comedy from Apple TV+ but is he as nice in real life?

How much of Jason Sudeikis is Ted Lasso, and how much of Ted Lasso is Jason Sudeikis? The extraordinarily strong hairline belongs to both, but that’s where the similarities start to swim apart and fuse together: Lasso wears a cheerfully thick moustache with his, while Sudeikis tends towards clean-shaven; since his 2003 start on SNL, Sudeikis has spent the last 18 years making people laugh, while Lasso’s attempts at humour (“Your body is like day-old rice – if it ain’t warmed up properly, something real bad could happen”) often whoosh over the heads of those around him. But they both seemingly spend an unusual amount of thought and care on the lesser-appreciated component parts that make a large organisation (a movie set; a football club) tick.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

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Sexy Beasts review – would you want to date a white mouse with a mullet?

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In Netflix’s dating show, contestants dress as animals, insects, demons and dinosaurs – so they’re not chosen for their looks. The results are so screamingly awful, you’ll end up weeping into your sofa

Sometimes I think it makes sense as a covert government anti-Covid strategy (now that they’ve given up on overt, data-driven, scientifically sanctioned ones): give the public a new dating show in which people are done up as figures from a plushy fetishist’s (look it up, I don’t have time to explain everything) malarial dream. This will keep them spellbound with delight, or weeping silently into the sofa at the thought that the western civilisation we once hoped for is over. But, either way indoors, alone, spreading nary an airborne droplet to the young and vulnerable.

I believe it to be a multi-pronged public health strategy. First they softened us up with last week’s Apocalypse Wow on ITV2, which left the nation staring bleakly past its television screens into an unknowable future that seemed suddenly not to brim with overwhelming possibility for humanity and its endeavours. Now there is Netflix’s Sexy Beasts, a reworking of a BBC show from 2014 with no other possible justification. What comes next, I cannot imagine. After a nugatory attempt, the mind quails and halts, unwilling to go further. Thus, do I fight to explain the advent of this monstrosity into our lives.

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