Category Archives: Television

Honor Blackman, James Bond’s Pussy Galore, dies aged 94

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Actor also known for role in Avengers praised as ‘hugely prolific creative talent’ by family

• Peter Bradshaw on Honor Blackman: an elegant and witty star who never took herself too seriously
• Honor Blackman: a life in pictures

Honor Blackman, the actor best known for playing the Bond girl Pussy Galore, has died aged 94.

Blackman, who became a household name in the 1960s as Cathy Gale in The Avengers and had a career spanning eight decades, died of natural causes unrelated to coronavirus.

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Claire Danes on the end of Homeland: ‘It was so nice to play such a badass’

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A landmark of 21st-century TV drama is about to finish its 10-year run. Its star reflects on how playing Carrie Mathison – and learning from real spies – has shaped her view of politics

Perhaps the defining image of Homeland, one of the most ambitious US drama series of the past decade, is Claire Danes’s character, Carrie Mathison, a mercurial CIA officer, staring at a video screen and displaying a sixth sense for the vital clue. So it is fitting that Danes appears to this interviewer not in person but via FaceTime.

“Let me just get on to my wifi,” she says, as the signal flickers, “I thought I was. OK, that should be better.”

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French reality show seeks to turn around lives of ‘dunce’ pupils

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Les Cancres (The Dunces) features pupils coached by celebrities who also struggled at school

French schoolchildren learn an early lesson that failure in the classroom is likely to mean failure in life.

Pupils are encouraged to compete for the best marks and grades that will allow them to study at prestigious grandes écoles and subsequently become part of France’s professional or political elite.

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What happened after Netflix quarantine smash Tiger King ended?

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The phenomenally successful docuseries about tigers, criminals and polygamy has led to memes, celebrity fans and a newly awakened legal case

In the century since March began, one series has emerged as the go-to distraction for the millions now sequestered in their living rooms: Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. The bizarre documentary series on a feud between big cat owners, as well as about 95 other things, has been the No 1 program on Netflix’s US platform since it premiered less than two weeks ago. And though the news and social media remain dominated by coronavirus coverage, the five hours of drama between outlandish characters in the disturbing American trade of private zoos has proved to be strange and fittingly unhinged counter-programming. Everywhere (online) you look: if it’s not about the pandemic, it’s probably Tiger King.

Related: Murder, madness and tigers: behind the year's wildest Netflix series

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‘It’s pure rock’n’roll’: how Money Heist became Netflix’s biggest global hit

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While still a cult concern in the UK, this Spanish thriller is the streaming service’s most popular foreign show. As it returns, its creator and stars explain how it became unmissable

You’ve rewatched The Wire, seen every episode of Friends at least twice and are starting to wonder if this is what it feels like to “complete” Netflix. But wait: there’s a world-changing, cultural juggernaut of a TV show that – while hugely popular – you may well have missed.

This week, Money Heist – or, to use its Spanish title, La Casa de Papel – begins another eight-episode run on Netflix, where it is the streaming giant’s most-watched non-English language show worldwide. The first season of the full-throttle thriller saw its gang – all code-named after major cities and memorably clad in revolutionary-red overalls and Salvador Dalí masks – break into the Royal Mint of Spain, taking 67 people hostage and literally printing money: 2.4bn euros, to be exact. It’s fair to say that the plot doesn’t quite go to plan, though it does result in three raunchy romances and an island escape. Season three, an even wilder ride, proved that for this gang loyalty is as much a motivation as loot.

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The Real Michael Jackson review – how did he get away with it for so long?

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The ‘Wacko Jacko’ persona was a deliberate ruse to cover a much darker truth, says Jacques Peretti as he examines his own complicity in letting the pop star off the hook

If you keep wondering what to think about Michael Jackson’s complicated legacy – is it OK to play Billie Jean at a party? Do you have to switch radio stations if Smooth Criminal comes on? – imagine how Jacques Peretti feels. He has made three films about the pop icon in the past 15 years and in this, his fourth, he aimed to build the fullest picture yet. But how many of us are brave enough to confront that picture?

The Real Michael Jackson (BBC Two) comes just over a year after the broadcast of HBO/Channel 4’s Leaving Neverland, a gruelling, four-hour documentary built around the detailed accounts of two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who say they were sexually abused by Jackson as children. Peretti’s film was initially billed as a rival Jackson film, but in the event, it’s much more like an unofficial sequel; a film that could not exist if Leaving Neverland hadn’t cleared the media’s hagiographic haze, but which also provides necessary context on the huge fallout from Jackson’s 2009 death.

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Matthew Macfadyen: ‘We are all living by the seat of our pants’

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The British actor on the triumph of HBO’s Succession - and being cast as the ‘coughing major’ in ITV’s Quiz

I met Matthew Macfadyen on one of those days in ancient history, a couple of weeks ago, when we were still not quite sure whether to make silly jokes about elbow-touching greetings, or to fear for civilisation’s immediate future. In many ways, Macfadyen is the archetypal actor for this kind of moment, a master of shifting and ambiguous tone, whose frequent bursts of laughter often threaten to turn hollow. One of the many joys of his portrayal of the bullied and bullying son-in-law Tom Wambsgans in the HBO show Succession – arguably the defining contribution to the defining TV drama of our times – is his winning ability to switch from empathy to psychopathy in a heartbeat.

Next month, Macfadyen will bring all of that gift for nuance to the three-part ITV drama Quiz, in which he plays Major Charles Ingram, the “coughing major” who was convicted of cheating his way to the top prize on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2001. The show, an adaptation of the West End play by James Graham, has been directed for television by Stephen Frears. Macfadyen’s major takes the hot seat across from Michael Sheen, who adds Chris Tarrant to his repertoire of uncanny impersonations.

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The Sultan’s Trail was good practice for lockdown | Adrian Chiles

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My experience on the Sultan’s trail found that two Christians, two Muslims, a Jew and two atheists could live peaceably together, although the mountain scenery seems a lifetime away now

Back in early autumn I went on a pilgrimage from Belgrade to Istanbul with six others to film a television programme that airs on Friday. At the best of times, the mountains of Bulgaria would feel a lifetime away, but now it all feels so much further.

I took part because I enjoy talking about faith, and love walking. Our route was part of the Sultan’s Trail, a long-distance footpath from Vienna to Istanbul. It marks the 16th-century marches taken by Suleiman the Magnificent and his Ottoman armies as they conquered Belgrade and most of Hungary before the Viennese held out against them. The trail is styled the “path of peace”, along which all cultures and religions can come together.

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Auschwitz Memorial criticises Amazon for Hunters show and antisemitic books

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  • Prime show stars Al Pacino as head of band of Nazi hunters
  • Memorial wants books by Nazi Julius Streicher removed

The Auschwitz Memorial criticised Amazon on Sunday, for fictitious depictions of the Holocaust in its TV series Hunters and for selling books of Nazi propaganda.

Related: Outcry after MSNBC host compares Sanders’ Nevada win to Nazi invasion

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The cheating wife, her rich lover and a court case for ‘immoral’ Pakistan TV hit Meray Paas Tum Ho

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Creators of Meray Paas Tum Ho could be facing legal suit amid accusations the hugely popular show was ‘misogynistic’

A court in Pakistan has summoned the creators of a wildly popular television series after a petition was filed demanding they apologise for portraying Pakistani women as “greedy, selfish and non-professional”.

In the petition filed at the Sindh high court last month, lawyer Sana Saleem said the television series Meray Paas Tum Ho (I Have You) was “ridiculing a woman who makes the same decision as every other man in society”.

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Jussie Smollett: actor charged again over alleged hoax attack

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  • Smollett indicted by special prosecutor on six counts
  • Actor accused of lying to police in Chicago

The TV actor Jussie Smollett has been indicted by a special prosecutor on six counts accusing him of lying to Chicago police – almost a year after similar charges against him relating to an alleged hoax attack were dropped amid outcry from many sides.

Smollett faces six counts of disorderly conduct, the special prosecutor Dan Webb said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.

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Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood: ‘I confronted my own school bully’

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She loved her nude scenes in the Netflix hit but the West End’s Uncle Vanya gave her stage fright. The Stockport star remembers being the class clown and tracking down her tormentor

Aimee Lou Wood wasn’t sure she wanted to be in Uncle Vanya, even as she made her way to the audition. Having trained at Rada, she knew the lineage of actors who had played the prized part of Sonya, and what an honour it would be to star in a West End Chekhov at the age of 25. “But I just thought it was so the opposite of what I would want to do,” she says.

She did have a point. Sonya is a church-going, sexually naive teenager from the backwaters of 19th-century Russia. Wood, at the time, was fresh out of filming the Netflix teen drama Sex Education. Her character opens the first series with a bout of energetic sex that ends in her boyfriend’s faked orgasm. (Connor Swindells, who played the boyfriend, is her real-life partner of two years.)

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How a new Sesame Street show is bringing Muppet magic to refugee camps

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Three new Muppets, Basma, Jad, and Ma’zooza, will star in new show for the millions of children displaced across the Middle East

Cooperation, kindness and the alphabet. For over 50 years, the characters of Sesame Street, from the Cookie Monster to Big Bird, have helped children from diverse backgrounds navigate the challenges of life as a small person in a big world.

From the moment it launched, Sesame Street has unflinchingly dealt with difficult issues – and from this week they are bringing their special brand of magic to the children who need them the most.

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Rachel Maddow on her critics: ‘Your hatred makes me stronger. Come on! Give me more!’

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The MSNBC host’s show has become a safety blanket for many US progressives. She discusses her demonisation by the right, tackling the president’s lies – and coming out at 17

Rachel Maddow, the US TV host, has a message for her critics: “Bring it. Your hatred makes me stronger. Come on. Give me more. Give me more. I love it!”

That is just as well, given the way she has polarised viewers in the past few years. Maddow, 46, has presented her primetime show on MSNBC, a 24-hour cable news channel, on weeknights since 2008. If most cable news and social media is fast food, she tries to rustle up a three-course meal: sensible, sober, sometimes painfully detailed and replete with oblique references to half-forgotten politicians of yesteryear. Since Donald Trump’s rise in 2016, however, The Rachel Maddow Show has become a nightly safety blanket for many progressives who identify with the “resistance”.

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Hostile politicians, cuts and controversy: why the BBC has never been so vulnerable

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After a shocking week for the broadcaster, what are the issues it must tackle to keep its place in the nation’s cultural landscape?

In his eye-catching pitch for his new job as chair of the powerful parliamentary group that monitors the BBC, Julian Knight, MP for Solihull, promised, among other things, to run the culture, media and sport select committee, as an “unofficial ‘Royal Commission’ on the future of the corporation”.

Last Thursday, a victorious Knight swiftly underlined his plan to “ask difficult questions about the BBC’s future funding model”. He also applauded a suggestion from fellow MP James Cartlidge that a more commercial BBC could become “a top export service”. These words sent a renewed January chill down the corridors of New Broadcasting House.

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SAG awards: Phoebe Waller-Bridge wins best female actor in a comedy for Fleabag

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The Crown also takes home outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series in one of the final awards shows before the Oscars

Phoebe Waller-Bridge has been named most outstanding female actor in a comedy at the Screen Actors Guild awards on Sunday.

The creator and star of Fleabag took home yet another prize for her work on the acclaimed comedy’s second season, adding to her Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice awards and Emmy wins.

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Simpsons actor Hank Azaria says he will no longer voice character of Apu

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Actor stops playing immigrant Indian convenience store owner following years of controversy and accusations of racism

The Simpsons actor Hank Azaria has said he will no longer be voicing the character of Apu, following years of controversy and accusations of racism.

Azaria lends his voice to numerous characters in the long-running show, including Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum and Comic Book Guy.

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Brian Blessed: ‘All my life, 90% of men have bored the arse off me’

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Dressed in pyjamas and wellies, the great actor talks about his astronaut training in Russia, the original Cats – and putting his might behind his daughter Rosalind’s very personal plays

On a shelf in Brian Blessed’s study is a plastic toy, a replica of himself as Prince Vultan in the film Flash Gordon. There is a resemblance but, with this actor, the very idea of a miniature seems wrong.

The mountainous original is sitting at his desk, wearing a striking winter morning costume of red fleece, pyjama bottoms and wellington boots. He must be the hairiest 83-year-old man in existence, his huge head crowned by a thick grey thatch, his neck Tudor-ruffed by what seem metres of white beard.

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Too woke? Nope – Doctor Who is more offensive than ever

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Since returning with a female Doctor, the sci-fi smash has been accused of political correctness. But, as recent storylines prove, the truth is far worse

Doctor Who returned last week with another first: Sacha Dhawan’s casting as the first person of colour to play the Doctor’s arch nemesis, the Master. The decision was broadly met with praise, but in darker corners of the internet the argument that the show has become too politically correct rages on.

“Too PC” has become a familiar jibe levelled at the sci-fi hit since 2018 when Jodie Whittaker became the Thirteenth Doctor and new showrunner Chris Chibnall took up the mantle. As well as the first woman to play the title role, their first series featured two BAME companions and episodes about Rosa Parks and the partition of India, written by Doctor Who’s first ever BAME writers. The show quickly found itself embroiled in a culture war, with talk of its apparent political correctness becoming commonplace (see the Twitter hashtag #notmydoctor). Whittaker and Chibnall were forced to defend the show against these claims before this series began: Whittaker reminded viewers that there’s “still racism within our current society”, and Chibnall added that “the Doctor and the show are beacons of compassion and empathy”.

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