Category Archives: Television

Emily in Paris but no Small Axe? This year’s Emmys snubs and surprises

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An exciting selection of newcomers can’t fully take away the sting of some egregious snubs, such as Steve McQueen’s acclaimed anthology series

I just have to point this out upfront: there is a chance that Emily in Paris is going to win an Emmy this year. Emily in Paris, for crying out loud. A show so mesmerisingly awful that, when it was nominated for a Golden Globe this year, it caused such a crisis that it almost permanently ended the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as an entity. At least that nomination could be racked up to good old-fashioned jury manipulation. But this one – an Emmy nomination for best comedy series, no less – can’t be written off so easily. Did … did people actually like Emily in Paris? If so, this is not a world I want to live in.

Related: Emmys 2021: The Crown and The Mandalorian lead nominations

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‘I’d let you bite me!’ Shark Beach With Chris Hemsworth is dangerously flirty TV

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Never mind that the Hollywood star has never encountered a great white – this documentary has Thor, his perfect jawline … and flirting so full-on it could crack the camera lens

There are only three reasons why you would watch the new documentary Shark Beach With Chris Hemsworth: you love sharks, beaches or Chris Hemsworth. Hopefully it’s the latter, because that’s clearly what the producers have anticipated.

The opening scene sees the Hollywood actor gazing out to sea at sunrise, surfboard under his arm, blue-steeling the horizon. “There’s nothing quite like the ocean at first light,” he murmurs, as if auditioning for an aftershave commercial. Waves crash. Hemsworth smoulders. A didgeridoo blows.

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Raffaella Carrà, Italian cultural institution and LGBT icon, laid to rest in Rome

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Thousands in streets to mourn television star, actor and singer as funeral is broadcast live on TV

In Italy’s week of mourning for Raffaella Carrà, one image summed up her universal appeal: a rainbow flag – the symbol of the LGBT movement – next to her coffin in a Catholic church.

Carrà, who died on Monday aged 78, was a cultural institution in her home country, regarded as its “best-loved woman”. The queen of light entertainment TV, she also acted and topped the music charts of Europe and South America with pioneering, sex-positive pop music.

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I Think You Should Leave: the sketch show exposing our online egomania

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Digging deep into the nonsensical and narcissistic – yet apparently acceptable –ways that we behave online, Tim Robinson’s Netflix series is ahead of the curve

In the first season of I Think You Should Leave, Tim Robinson’s superlative Netflix show, there’s a sketch that made me laugh more than any joke I have ever seen on social media. In it, a trio of brunching women decide to post an attractive picture of themselves on Instagram, accompanied by an obligatory and utterly transparent self-deprecating caption, “so it doesn’t look like you’re just bragging”. But one of the party can’t get to grips with this odd internet etiquette. “OK, got it,” she grins earnestly. “Slopping down some pig-shit with these fat fucks, and I’m the fattest of them all. If I died tomorrow no one would shed a tear. Load my frickin’ lard carcass into the mud, no coffin please, just wet, wet mud. Bae.”

You might think the vortex of narcissism, desperation and mindless rote behaviour that characterises many people’s Instagram use would be an obvious, not to say rather tired, subject for satire by now. In fact, TV comedy that mines laughs from the warped ways people behave online is vanishingly rare. But I Think You Should Leave – which returned for a much-lauded second season this week – does it in practically every sketch, drilling down into the absurdity of online interaction, and, in doing so, exposes the half-obscured egomania and self-interest that drives it.

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Rainn Wilson: ‘I had agents who were, like: You need to get your teeth fixed, build loads of muscles’

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He may have an impressive film CV, but the actor is destined to be remembered as The Office’s resident dork. He talks about why he was perfect for the role, his new movie, Don’t Tell a Soul – and his love for Steve Coogan

Some actors associated with a signature role will tire of talking about it. No such preciousness from Rainn Wilson, who appears on camera from his Los Angeles home wearing a grey T-shirt emblazoned with the word “Scranton”. That Pennsylvania city provided the setting for the US version of the mockumentary sitcom The Office, which ran for nine widely adored, award-winning series. Wilson earned three Emmy nominations for playing the livid, disagreeable Dwight, the Rust Belt equivalent of Mackenzie Crook’s Gareth. Today’s beard and baseball cap, as well as his chipper demeanour, banishes all memory of the pasty face, DIY haircut and startled expression he wore in that show.

Wilson has starred in everything from Juno to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and the Jason Statham shark thriller The Meg, but he knows that any conversation will inevitably lead back to The Office. “Dwight is the part I’m best known for and always will be,” says the 55-year-old. “And that’s fine with me.” First, though, there is his new thriller to discuss. In Don’t Tell a Soul, a cross between A Simple Plan and Paranoid Park, he plays an unassuming security guard who gives chase after encountering two teenage brothers (Fionn Whitehead and Jack Dylan Grazer) stealing from a house in rural Kentucky. During the pursuit, he plunges into a hole in the forest floor, which leaves the boys with absolute power over him. The question is not whether they will use it, but how.

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Raffaella Carrà, Italian entertainment icon, dies aged 78

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Star of music, TV and film who had UK Top 10 hit in 1978 with Do It, Do It Again had been suffering an undisclosed illness

Raffaella Carrà, the pop singer and actor who was an entertainment icon in her native Italy, has died aged 78.

Her long-term partner, Sergio Iapino, announced her death, saying: “Raffaella has left us. She has gone to a better world, where her humanity, her unmistakable laugh and her extraordinary talent will shine forever.” He said she had been battling an unnamed illness for some time.

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Feel Good’s Mae Martin: ‘If you put a teenage girl in any industry, people will take advantage’

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The non-binary comedian’s hit TV show draws heavily on an often troubled life. They talk about addiction at 14, the loving parents who kicked them out, the older men who abused their trust – and the happiness they eventually found

At the beginning of the pandemic Mae Martin’s first TV series, Feel Good, was broadcast on Channel 4 to great acclaim. Just recently, the second series came out on Netflix to even greater acclaim. While most of us have disappeared in lockdown, Martin has become a star.

Feel Good is a disarmingly autobiographical love story. It tells the story of a character called Mae struggling with relationships, addiction, identity and life on the comedy circuit. Mae is attracted to men and women, but to women more, particularly women who identify as straight. The first series focuses on Mae’s relationship with Georgina, a teacher who had previously only slept with men and is reluctant to admit to her super-straight, super-posh friends that she and Mae are living together. Mae is a mix of streetwise and naive – reckless, precocious, promiscuous, self-absorbed and a bag of nerves.

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Sweet Tooth: the prescient pandemic hit bringing joy to the masses

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Centred on a killer virus, Sweet Tooth could have been the most troubling TV to watch during Covid. Instead, as its creators and star Nonso Anozie attest, the Netflix show has become a smash because it’s so redemptive – and happy

The pandemic might not be over yet, but you can already trace a line through the culture it has produced. The overenthusiastic “let’s put on a show!” mania of cast reunions filmed over Zoom quickly gave way to the gnawing listlessness depicted in Bo Burnham’s comedy special Inside. Another part of the line, however, happened by accident.

Netflix’s Sweet Tooth is a series about a devastating global pandemic that kills millions of people and resets humanity. It was filmed last summer, in that brief golden gulp between Covid lockdowns. However, Sweet Tooth wasn’t rush-produced to reflect the situation; instead, it is based on a decade-old graphic novel and has been in development for five years.

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Ghislaine Maxwell began to share ‘little black book’ with Epstein as early as the 1980s

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New documentary reveals sex offender used socialite for access to her famous and rich friends years from the 1980s onwards

Ghislaine Maxwell’s association with Jeffrey Epstein began years earlier than previously understood, according to a documentary investigating the socialite who became an alleged procuress for the paedophile financier.

The new information challenges the common assumption that Epstein stepped into a vacuum in her life after the death of her father, the newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell, who was found in the sea near the Canary Islands in 1991.

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‘The thought is unbearable’: Europeans react to EU plans to cut British TV

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EU media critics say post-Brexit plans could pave way for more homegrown content

It was during a trip to Brighton for an English language course in 1984 that the young German student Nicola Neumann first discovered British television.

“The elderly couple who put me up tried really hard to educate me further, so we’d sit in front of the telly together every evening and then talk about the programmes afterwards,” she said.

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Love Island earns ITV £12m before new series as advertisers jostle to take part

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The most commercialised show on British television has signed up nine official partners

Love Island has netted ITV more than £12m in revenues even before the first episode of the new series of the hit reality show airs on Monday, as sponsors and advertisers rush to attach themselves to the most commercialised show on British television.

With uncertainty over Covid restrictions scuppering holidays abroad for a second successive year, the arrival of the feelgood summer juggernaut could not be more perfectly timed to tap into a viewer and advertising boom.

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‘They thought we were terrorists’: meet Joe Rush, the master of mutoid art and king of Glastonbury

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The punky master of outsider art was once a pariah, thrown out of Britain for his anarchist ways. Now, he’s a national treasure. Joe Rush relives 40 years of sticking it to the ‘straight world’

“They thought we were terrorists,” says Joe Rush, remembering the day not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall when he and a fellow anarchist took over a patch of no man’s land at the heart of the German capital. They filled it with military hardware: tanks and artillery and the like – along with a MiG-21 fighter jet that they pointed directly at the nearby Reichstag.

“The authorities were furious,” he says. And no wonder. The police feared that, just as the cold war was ending, another military face-off had begun. “They thought we were going to fire missiles into the Reichstag,” says Rush. “So we pointed the MiG into the ground to make it clear we weren’t.”

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Mischa Barton on success, paparazzi and survival: ‘I’m not broken’

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As party girl Marissa in The OC, Barton found fame at a time when young female stars were being hounded by the press. She talks about strength, resilience and her battle against revenge porn

For some actors, the roles they have played stick to them like shadows, long after they should have been left behind. Just ask Mischa Barton. It is 15 years since she starred as Marissa Cooper in the teen drama The OC, and yet still she can’t shake her off. When Barton appeared in the reality show The Hills in 2019 – inspired by The OC’s privileged young Californians but featuring real-life people – she was supposed to be herself, but the producers expected Cooper. “It is the constant mistake,” she says wryly. “They were even calling me by my character name. Seriously? Like, this far down the line they can’t get my name right?”

The parallels, though, are irresistible. Marissa was a troubled party girl with a love of fashion who met a tragic end. Mischa (even their names are similar) was also a troubled party girl with a love of fashion, whose life at times seemed out of control. There was the extreme fame, the breakdown, the reported threats of suicide, estrangement from her parents and a “revenge porn” court case. Barton has weathered it all with a sense of humour and now, at 35, a bit of perspective.

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John Oliver rips into US clean-energy loans: ‘This business model is fundamentally flawed’

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The Last Week Tonight host digs into a government program whose lack of oversight has left many risking their homes

John Oliver turned his attention this week to a public lending program called Pace, whose state-supported clean energy loans have stranded many vulnerable homeowners in overwhelming debt or at risk of losing their homes. The program, which stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy, “is a cautionary tale about how good intentions when not paired with careful, smart design, can end in disaster”, the Last Week Tonight host explained.

Through Pace, local governments borrow money at low rates made available to low-income borrowers for energy-saving home improvements, which are then paid back through increases to property taxes.

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Stanley Tucci: the flirty hero of foodie TV you need in your life

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The actor charms the pants off everyone he meets in his new culinary travelogue that will whet your appetite for a trip abroad when it’s finally allowed

You may not realise this at the moment, but your heart has been crying out for a series like Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy. If you saw last night’s first episode, tucked away on CNN International, you will already be aware of this. If you didn’t, stop what you’re doing and seek it out. It’s less a TV show and more an hour of full-body relaxation. By the time the episode ended, I felt as if my entire brain had been taken out and massaged in olive oil.

Although the title suggests a different series, in which a beloved actor receives a concussion then forlornly attempts to navigate Google Maps, this is actually a culinary travelogue. Tucci visits a different Italian region in every episode and contentedly samples its food. It is a formula you will have seen thousands of times before, albeit with a couple of key differences.

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‘I am very shy. It’s amazing I became a movie star’: Leslie Caron at 90 on love, art and addiction

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The legendary actor reflects on her riches-to-rags childhood, confronting depression and alcoholism – and dancing with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire

Leslie Caron and her companion, Jack, greet me at the front of their apartment. They make a well-matched couple – slight, chic, immaculately coiffured. Caron, the legendary dancer and actor, is 90 in two weeks’ time. Jack, her beloved shih tzu, is about nine.

Caron heads off to make the tea, with Sidney Bechet’s summery jazz playing in the background. I am left alone with Jack to explore the living room. It feels as if I am tunnelling through the history of 20th-century culture. Here is a photo of a pensive François Truffaut; below is a smirking Warren Beatty. The centrepiece on the wall is a huge watercolour of Caron’s great friend Christopher Isherwood, painted by his partner, Don Bachardy. To the left is Louis Armstrong, to the right Rudolf Nureyev, with whom she starred in 1977’s Valentino, and further along is Jean Renoir, who she says was like a father to her. And we have barely started.

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The Handmaid’s Tale season four review – hope at last in the most harrowing show on TV

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Elisabeth Moss has always made this impressive if horrifying TV. But as the new series turns June into queen of the rebels, it has a shot of new life

I am not sure if “enjoyment” is quite the right word in relation to watching The Handmaid’s Tale (Channel 4). It has been, at various points over the last three seasons, either a harrowing slog or an extremely harrowing slog. But at its best, it is impressive, inventive drama that pushes unfamiliar buttons with great skill. It had a magnificent, haunting first season, which largely stuck to the plot of Margaret Atwood’s classic novel, but afterwards it struggled under the weight of its own misery. June (Elisabeth Moss) escaped from Gilead, and was captured, ad infinitum, which made it feel like a gruesome hall of mirrors in which hope was pointless. It made me wonder whether continuing to watch was pointless, too. But a diversion into global politics gave it a shot of new life, and season four continues to explore new ground. It needed it, and it works.

The lengthy recap at the beginning is useful, given that the pandemic delayed production. According to its showrunner, Bruce Miller, the logistics of shooting in Canada also had a direct effect on shaping the story. June organised a cohort of rebels, pulling together an underground network of Marthas and Handmaids, to smuggle 86 children out of Gilead, saving them from life under a brutal regime. The Waterfords have been arrested by the Canadian government and are in captivity, but at the end of season three, it looked as though June may have run out of luck. Still, without her, this is Handmaids’ Tales, rather than The Handmaid’s Tale. If the question is, how much more can one woman endure, then the answer comes quickly: using no anaesthetic, Janine cauterises the shotgun wound in June’s abdomen with a red-hot poker. Welcome to season four.

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David Schwimmer: ‘I was a roller-skating waiter’

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The actor, 54, on childhood activism, studying drama at Oxford, bringing up his daughter and learning to fight the good fight

My parents are my heroes. I marvel how they were able to work as young lawyers while keeping family as a priority. They raised my sister and me with a hyper-awareness of justice, equality and gay rights. I have memories of protesting on picket lines. It really informed my worldview and perspective.

I wanted to be a surgeon. I was fascinated by the human body: I knew everything about the lymphatic, the vascular and the skeletal systems. I was a big science geek, but I found that I could talk to more girls in acting class than in the science lab. So that kind of derailed my medical career.

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‘Just don’t show her body!’ Netflix makes a true crime show with a difference

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A Murder in West Cork delves into the killing of Sophie Toscan du Plantier – but this doc makes her more than a victim. Its creators discuss how they fused intrigue with empathy

On the morning of 23 December 1996, Sophie Toscan du Plantier was found murdered in a lane near Schull, West Cork. She was 39 years old and a regular visitor to Ireland from Paris, where she lived with her husband, a celebrated film-maker, and 13-year-old son, Pierre Louis Baudey-Vignaud. Her death transfixed the media in both Ireland and Paris, partly because it was just so jarring. The murder rate in Ireland was so low that there was only one state pathologist, and it took him 28 hours to reach the scene.

It was close to Christmas. Sarah Lambert, the producer of Netflix’s new documentary, Sophie: A Murder in West Cork, struggles to underline how big a deal this was. “More so in Ireland than a lot of other countries, Christmas is such a family time. I know a lot of married couples that will separate and go back to their parents. People were flabbergasted that she, a mother, would be there by herself so late in December.” The location was so remote, the community so tight-knit, that such violence seemed incongruous. It was expected there would be a swift resolution. In a place where you couldn’t buy a new cardigan without everyone knowing about it, how would anyone get away with murder?

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