Category Archives: Television

Dutch football captains lead boycott of TV show over racist remarks

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Virgil van Dijk and Sari van Veenendaal hit out at pundit and say ‘enough is enough’

The captains of the Dutch men’s, women’s and youth national football teams are boycotting a leading sports TV programme over the racist comments of a longstanding pundit, warning: “Enough is enough.”

The Liverpool centre-back Virgil van Dijk, and the Atlético Madrid goalkeeper Sari van Veenendaal have led the way after years of the behaviour of Johan Derksen on the Veronica Inside show being explained away as straight-talking humour.

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Sun screen: the best TV shows to watch over the summer months

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From Love Island to Queer Eye, as the longest day of the year beckons our writers pick their favourite summery television so you needn’t brave the outside world

For many Brits of a certain age, the launch of the latest Love Island trailer is the bat signal that summer is truly starting. Whatever the weather, every July between 2015 to 2019, when Caroline Flack promised me a “long, hot, summer”, I knew I was in for one.

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Harry Enfield says blacking up as Mandela was ‘so wrong it was right’

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On Radio 4’s Today programme, the comedian justified decision to portray former South African president in blackface

Harry Enfield has defended the use of blackface on television in an interview broadcast on Radio 4’s Today programme. In conversation with host Nick Robinson and fellow guest Ava Vidal, the comedian aimed to justify his decision to portray Nelson Mandela, describing it as “so wrong that it was right”.

Enfield, known for playing characters including Loadsamoney and Kevin the Teenager on television, said he had also used makeup to play an Indian soldier in a BBC programme, a decision he also deemed appropriate.

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How Hollywood has tried, and mostly failed, to tackle police racism

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From Birth of a Nation to Watchmen, the big and small screens have tried to wrestle with racial tensions within law enforcement with mixed results

As we’ve all seen, when it comes to American police brutality, the gloves are now off and the masks too. Faced with yet more incontrovertible evidence of brutal and racist policing – both the killing of George Floyd and others, and some forces’ response to the public protests – it has become virtually impossible to maintain the image of American law enforcement officers as straightforward protectors and servers of the people. 

Related: George Floyd protests: fired officer to appear in court as calls to defund police sweep US – live

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History remixed: the rise of the anachronistic female lead

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The lives of women from history, from Catherine the Great to Shirley Jackson, are being brought to the screen with a radical focus on character over facts

It is a point in favor of TV’s sprawling proliferation that one gets, in the course of a year, both a lush, serious historical drama starring Helen Mirren as Catherine the Great on HBO, and its tonal opposite, Hulu’s raucous, gleefully brutal The Great, which puts an asterisk right on the title card: “An Occasionally True Story.” The Great, developed by Tony McNamara, the writer of absurd court send-up The Favourite, cares little for the historical accuracy of the 18th-century Russian monarch. Its Catherine (Elle Fanning) arrives in the backward, hedonistic Russian court as a naive 19-year-old bride in 1761. The real Catherine was 35 and a mother by then, but that’s fine – free from the constraints of biography or pedantic seriousness, The Great’s occasional truth delivers, ironically, a more lasting impression of a real, flesh and blood princess – one slowly but determinedly amassing power, enlightened but ambitious to rule.

Related: The Great review – gleefully garish new series from The Favourite writer

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Tiger King’s Carole Baskin handed control of Joe Exotic’s zoo

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Baskin, whose rivalry with Exotic was documented in the Netflix hit, is now the owner of the Oklahoma premises following court proceedings

Beleaguered zoo owner Joe Exotic, subject of Netflix’s hit documentary series Tiger King, has now suffered the indignity of rival Carole Baskin gaining control of what was once his zoo. Baskin, a self-styled conservationist and owner of the Big Cat Rescue facility in Hillsborough County, Florida, has been given control of the Wynnewood, Oklahoma premises by courts, after Exotic failed to pay her $1m in copyright and trademark suits.

Exotic – real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage – is currently in prison, having been found guilty of 17 counts of animal abuse and a murder-for-hire plot against Baskin, and sentenced to 22 years.

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Tributes paid to Boys from the Blackstuff actor Michael Angelis

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Writer Jack Thorne among those to pay their respects to Angelis, who has died aged 68

Tributes have been paid after the death of Michael Angelis, an actor who will be remembered as the morose rabbit-obsessed Lucien from The Liver Birds, the desperate Chrissie in Boys from the Blackstuff, and the narrator of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Angelis died suddenly while at home with his wife on Saturday, his agent said. He was 68.

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Michael Angelis, Thomas the Tank Engine narrator, dies aged 76

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The Liverpudlian actor voiced the children’s programme for 13 series and was known for TV work in The Liver Birds and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet

Michael Angelis, best known as the narrator of Thomas the Tank Engine series Thomas and Friends, has died at the age of 76. 

The actor died suddenly while at home with his wife on Saturday, his agent said.

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Kylie Jenner in row with Forbes over billionaire status

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Kardashian family member reacts angrily to magazine’s claim she spun ‘a web of lies’

A row has broken out between one of the world’s leading business magazines and the youngest member of reality TV’s most famous family over the value of her cosmetics company.

Forbes magazine has accused Kylie Jenner, the youngest half-sister of Kim Kardashian West, of spinning a “web of lies” to inflate the size and success of her business. It claimed her family went to unusual lengths to present its youngest adult member as being richer than she was.

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‘It’s outrageous’: inside an infuriating Netflix series on Jeffrey Epstein

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Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich synthesizes legal information with first-person testimony of the billionaire’s abuse and bought immunity into a shocking watch

It’s difficult to watch Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, a four-hour Netflix series on the now-deceased convicted sex offender without a choking sense of outrage. How many girls had to suffer to get attention? How perversely twisted is the American justice system that a Gatsby-esque billionaire, friends with such powerful figures as Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Donald Trump, a longstanding donor to Harvard and MIT, could buy his way out of an almost certain life sentence for child sex abuse and trafficking?

Filthy Rich arrives, of course, less than a year after Epstein, 66, died, officially by suicide, in a New York jail last August. “There’s no justice in this,” Shawna Rivera, speaking publicly for the first time about Epstein’s alleged abuse starting when she was 14, says in the final episode. “There was just so much more to be said that will never be said.”

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‘No rear view mirror in this car’: Bob Geldof on love, loss and lockdown

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The Boomtown Rats’ new album, their first in 36 years, coincides with a BBC documentary on the band

Bob Geldof doesn’t do nostalgia. Now 68, the Irish musician and activist says that he has lived his life refusing to look back. “I have the point of view that there’s no rear view mirror in this car,” he says.

So it might seem surprising that he not only agreed to the BBC making a documentary, Citizens of Boomtown, about his first band, The Boomtown Rats, but has also spent the last year actively engaged in reliving his past through it.

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Sazae-san, the world’s longest-running cartoon, put on hold by coronavirus

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Re-runs of famous Japanese cartoon bring broadcast until further notice, in first interruption in 45 years

Production of the world’s longest-running cartoon has been interrupted by the coronavirus, forcing the broadcast of re-runs for the first time in decades.

Sazae-san, a mainstay of the Japanese weekend that first aired in 1969, revolves around a typical Tokyo family consisting of Mrs Sazae, who lives with her parents, husband, son, brother and sister.

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Jerry Stiller, star of Seinfeld and father of Ben, dies aged 92

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Comedian who formed a popular duo with his wife, Anne Meara, has died of natural causes

The comedian Jerry Stiller has died at the age of 92. His death was announced on Monday on Twitter by the actor Ben Stiller, who called him “a great dad and grandfather, and the most dedicated husband”.

Jerry Stiller enjoyed a long career on stage and screen, often accompanied by his wife, Anne Meara, with whom he formed a popular comedy act. They met in 1953, married the following year and regularly teamed up for improv sketches, performing in Las Vegas nightclubs and on The Ed Sullivan Show and other TV programmes, often in character as the squabbling spouses Mary Elizabeth Doyle and Hershey Horowitz, playing upon their Irish Catholic and Jewish cultures. In 2010, they took their act online, performing from the front room of their New York apartment. Meara died in 2015.

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Russian author defends gulag-era story as TV series provokes backlash

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Literary star Guzel Yakhina shocked by emotional ‘cabin fever’ response to dramatisation

The Russian novelist Guzel Yakhina had learned to live with the persistent buzz of controversy surrounding her bestselling debut novel, Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes.

Her coming-of-age story of a young woman deported to Siberia during the Stalin-era purges of wealthier peasants, or kulaks, had been picked over for its portrayals of Soviet repressions and national identity in the largely Muslim region of Tatarstan ever since it was published in 2015.

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No match for Dr Fauci – are TV Doctors like Dr Phil causing more harm than good?

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Dr Phil, Dr Oz and others appearing on cable news now exist in a bizarre realm halfway between fiction and authenticity

Last week, a group of actors known for their roles as fictional medical professionals on television released a video on Instagram thanking the real doctors on the frontlines fighting against the pandemic, raising money on their behalf.

Olivia Wilde of House, Scrubs stars Zach Braff and Donald Faisona, Nurse Jackie’s Edie Falco, Julianna Margulies and Maura Tierney of ER, and others, came together to share a message of support for doctors and nurses, and joked in a way best summed up by Neil Patrick Harris: “I’m not a doctor, but I was paid to be one on TV.”

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No conferring! Take our devilishly hard University Challenge quiz

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Are you a brainbox like Brandon, or even half as wise as Wang? Ahead of Monday’s final, pit your wits against our truly tricky questions, as compiled by the show’s question setters

In which present-day country is the ancient kingdom of Sheba, whose queen visited King Solomon?

Oman

Yemen

Saudi Arabia

Which Latin-derived philosophical term was popularised by Ivan Turgenev’s 1862 novel Fathers and Sons, where it was used to describe the crude scientism espoused by the character Bazarov?

Nihilism

Nominalism

Probablism

Which US state capital was named after a dukedom conferred on the future James II (James VII of Scots) in 1664?

Albany

Hartford

Bismarck

More than 80% of compounds used in nuclear medicine are labelled using which radioisotope? It has atomic number 43 and mass number 99.

Gallium

Thallium

Technetium

Appearing in the title of an opera by Philip Glass, which term did Mahatma Gandhi use for his policy of non-violent resistance to British rule?

Satyagraha

Pratyahara

Swaraj

Named by the US sociologist Robert K Merton after a book of the Bible, which "effect" can be summarized as: "The rich get richer while the poor get poorer"?

Mark

Matthew

Genesis

Depicting an impoverished pea-picker and her children in 1936, Migrant Mother was a celebrated image by which photographer?

Dorothea Lange

Jack Delano

Arthur Rothstein

Polka dots and "infinity rooms" with mirrors are a characteristic feature of the installations of which Japanese artist, born in 1929?

Yayoi Kusama

Tatsuo Miyajima

Yoshitomo Nara

What term denotes the boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar medium? It lies about 123 astronomical units from the sun.

Heliopause

Heliosheath

Heliotrope

The first independent French-speaking African state, which country did Ahmed Sékou Touré rule from 1958 until his death in 1984?

Ivory Coast

(Republic of) Guinea

Mali

Describing an allegorical place populated by women of "great renown", The Book of the City of Ladies is a 1405 work by which French author?

Marie de France

Christine de Pizan

Clémence de Bourges

In transport history, the Rainhill Trials - won by Stephenson’s Rocket - took place towards the end of which decade?

1780s

1820s

1850s

Expressed in metric tons, what is one gigagramme?

1,000

10,000

100,000

Changsha is the capital of which Chinese province, the birthplace, in 1893, of Mao Zedong?

Hunan

Hebei

Hubei

Which Swiss architectural firm designed the Bird’s Nest stadium for the 2008 summer Olympics?

Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Mario Botta Architetti

Herzog & De Meuron

15 and above.

Wang, is that you?! If those were all guesses, then they were superb

14 and above.

Wang, is that you?! If those were all guesses, then they were superb

13 and above.

Wang, is that you?! If those were all guesses, then they were superb

12 and above.

Wang, is that you?! If those were all guesses, then they were superb

11 and above.

Wang, is that you?! If those were all guesses, then they were superb

10 and above.

And at the gong ... looks like you’ve done a more than respectable job!

9 and above.

And at the gong ... looks like you’ve done a more than respectable job!

8 and above.

And at the gong ... looks like you’ve done a more than respectable job!

7 and above.

And at the gong ... looks like you’ve done a more than respectable job!

6 and above.

And at the gong ... looks like you’ve done a more than respectable job!

5 and above.

Oh, do come on! Sadly, it’s a non-starter for 10

4 and above.

Oh, do come on! Sadly, it’s a non-starter for 10

3 and above.

Oh, do come on! Sadly, it’s a non-starter for 10

2 and above.

Oh, do come on! Sadly, it’s a non-starter for 10

0 and above.

Oh, do come on! Sadly, it’s a non-starter for 10

1 and above.

Oh, do come on! Sadly, it’s a non-starter for 10

The University Challenge grand final airs Monday 20 April at 8.30pm on BBC Two

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People opened up because I’m the Beavis and Butt-head guy’: Mike Judge on his new funk direction

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The writer-director’s comedies – from Office Space to Silicon Valley – always sum up the spirit of their times. So why has he made an LSD-soaked cartoon about George Clinton and Bootsy Collins?

Few writer-directors have been as consistent and ruthless at capturing the moment as Mike Judge, although he never actually intends to do so. “It’s always a shock when something comes out and it feels so relevant,” he says, in his laconic surfer-dude tone, talking to me by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “But I tend to look at stuff that feels as if it’s everywhere, but nobody’s talking about.”

Judge, 57, is so beady at spotting what’s everywhere, his shows themselves end up becoming ubiquitous, the thing everybody’s talking about. It is impossible to imagine 90s TV without his seminal hits, Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill, the former satirising the worst of youth culture, the latter fondly depicting gentle American conservatism acclimatising itself to the Bill Clinton era.

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Drama out of crisis: Spanish sitcom tackles life in lockdown

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Quarantine Diaries focuses on sweeping changes unleashed by coronavirus pandemic

From Herculean efforts to keep children from interjecting in conference calls to fitness classes derailed by daytime drinking, a new sitcom in Spain – billed as the first of its kind on primetime TV – is set to tackle the quirks of life in lockdown.

The show aims to offer a humorous take on the sweeping changes unleashed by the pandemic, said Álvaro Longoria, the creator and producer of Quarantine Diaries. “We are in no way trying to make fun of the people that are suffering. The focus is on those trying to make normal life out of an extraordinary situation.”

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Australia’s arts have been hardest hit by coronavirus. So why aren’t they getting support? | Esther Anatolitis

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The majority of arts companies and casuals will get little benefit from the jobkeeper package

Data released this week proves what the arts and recreation industry already knows: we are by far the industry hardest hit by Covid-19’s economic destruction.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, only 47% of arts and recreation businesses remain trading. And that number is falling.

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