Philip Foster lives in Spain and was sentenced in his absence after defrauding more than 6,000 people
A former TV soap actor has been sentenced to eight and a half years in prison after masterminding a £13.6m fraud that targeted aspiring models.
Former Brookside actor Philip Foster, 49, ran an operation involving a network of sham modelling agencies for more than eight years.
Continue reading...Irish journalist hosted gameshows including Going for Gold and Game for a Laugh in the 1980s and 90s
Henry Kelly, who presented TV shows such as Going for Gold and Game for a Laugh, has died aged 78.
His family said he “died peacefully” on Tuesday “after a period of ill health”.
Continue reading...Screen Actors Guild awards go to Shōgun and Conclave ensembles, while Jane Fonda gives a rousing political speech while accepting a life achievement award
Timothée Chalamet has won best actor in a surprise upset at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild awards for his performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, with Demi Moore and the ensembles of Shōgun and Conclave also winning big.
Chalamet won best male actor in a leading role, his first in an awards race that has been led all season by The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody, who has picked up the Golden Globe, Bafta and Critics’ Choice awards and is still widely predicted to win the Oscar next week.
Continue reading...An independent standards authority says the industry must learn from recent scandals and create safer working environments
New guidelines will be issued this week for the UK’s creative industries after a series of scandals including reports of inappropriate behaviour by Gregg Wallace and Gino d’Acampo, and bullying allegations on the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing.
The Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority (CIISA) will set new standards with the aim of stamping out bullying, harassment and discrimination, and address “power imbalances”.
Continue reading...Show removed from iPlayer as ‘further due diligence’ carried out and critics ask if any Hamas members were paid for filming
A BBC documentary about Gaza has been pulled from its iPlayer service while the broadcaster deals with intensifying accusations that the film was biased because it failed to make clear the father of its child narrator was a Hamas deputy minister.
BBC sources indicated the intention was to make the documentary available to watch again once a “due diligence” exercise had taken place, but the decision reflects a frustration that the filmmakers did not inform the broadcaster of the situation before transmission.
Continue reading...Singer biopic wins best film and best actor for motion capture star Jonno Davies, while Trent Dalton adaptation wins in 12 of its 22 nominated categories
The Netflix adaptation of Trent Dalton’s bestseller Boy Swallows Universe has dominated the annual Aacta (Australian Academy of Cinema, Television and the Arts) awards, winning 12 of its record-breaking 22 nominations.
The Aacta president, Russell Crowe, hosted the awards ceremony at Hota (Home of the Arts) on the Gold Coast on Friday, which featured a live performance by Robbie Williams, whose musical biopic, Better Man, collected nine awards on the night.
Continue reading...Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky also among UK broadcasters making cuts as Netflix, Disney and Amazon pile on pressure
UK broadcasters slashed their spending on big-budget TV shows to the lowest level in almost a decade last year, even as their US rivals Netflix, Disney and Amazon ploughed hundreds of millions more into British-made premium content.
In a sign of the increasing competitive pressures of the streaming era, the amount spent on high-end TV shows costing more than £1m an hour to make by domestic operators such as the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky, plunged by a quarter last year to £598m.
Continue reading...Oscar-winning director – and longtime Buffy fan – Chloé Zhao is onboard to direct, with Dolly Parton as executive producer
A sequel reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is reportedly in the works, with Sarah Michelle Gellar expected to return to the titular role and the Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao to direct the pilot episode.
On Tuesday Deadline reported sources close to the project confirming that the streaming service Hulu is “near a pilot order”, with lifelong Buffy fan Zhao onboard to direct the episode, written by the Poker Face writers Nora and Lilla Zuckerman.
Continue reading...Agents says the ‘celebrated Irish pop legend’ died ‘with her loving siblings by her bedside’
The singer and TV personality Linda Nolan, who had chart success alongside her sisters in the pop vocal group the Nolans before a TV career, has died aged 65.
She had been diagnosed with cancer in 2017. Her agent, Dermont McNamara, said in a statement that she had died in Blackpool’s Victoria hospital “with her loving siblings by her bedside, ensuring she was embraced with love and comfort during her final moments”.
Continue reading...Partnership ‘a long time coming’ and is latest expansion of Australian-made animated series
The global hit children’s TV show Bluey is to make its Lego debut with the first sets due to hit shelves later this year.
The world of Bluey, which has proved such a small-screen hit a film is to be made for global release in 2027, is to be brought to life in plastic brick form with six sets to be revealed this spring before going on sale later this year.
Continue reading...This year’s SAG noms see a strong showing for music-led films while Nicole Kidman, Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie are snubbed
Music-led films Wicked and A Complete Unknown and TV shows Shôgun and The Bear lead this year’s Screen Actors Guild nominations, it was announced this morning.
Blockbuster musical Wicked heads up the film side with five nominations including for actors Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey, as well as the ensemble. It was also nominated for stunt ensemble. The film, based on the long-running Broadway hit, has made more than $680m at the global box office.
Continue reading...The low-budget immigration saga and the Netflix crime musical picked up major film wins while the historical epic dominated television awards
The Brutalist, Emilia Pérez and Shōgun won big at the 82nd Golden Globes, the unofficial kick-off to this year’s awards season.
The low-budget epic The Brutalist, a drama telling the story of a Holocaust survivor turned immigrant architect in the US, won three awards for best film – drama, actor for Adrien Brody and director for the actor-turned-film-maker Brady Corbet. At the end of his speech, Corbet paid tribute to the film-maker Jeff Baena, who died this week by suicide.
Continue reading...Bestselling author and Netflix producer said extensive early experience of grief was ‘very cruel but effective teacher’
American thriller writer Harlan Coben said experiencing “quite a bit of tragedy” in his 20s made him a better writer.
The bestselling author, who wrote the Myron Bolitar thriller series and novels turned Netflix shows such as Fool Me Once and Missing You, said he was in his 20s when his father died of a heart attack at the age of 59 in 1988.
Continue reading...Choice of Thilo Mischke, author of Around the World In 80 Women, for ARD’s flagship arts show criticised
More than 100 prominent German writers and artists have signed an open letter refusing to appear on one of Germany’s top culture programmes on public television after the broadcaster announced a new host who has been accused of sexism and racism in his writing.
ARD said in late December it had picked the author Thilo Mischke, 43, to co-present its flagship culture show, ttt – Titel, Thesen, Temperamente (Titles, Theses, Temperaments), after the programme’s veteran host Max Moor stepped aside.
Continue reading...Families Like Ours has become national talking point but some scientists say events depicted could not happen
Featuring scenes of huge crowds boarding ferries, protest and desperation as six million Danes become climate refugees and life as they know it rapidly collapses, the new TV series by the Oscar-winning director Thomas Vinterberg is a potential “look into the future”, he says.
Familier som vores (Families Like Ours) – a drama which depicts a flooded Denmark shut down and evacuated – has been viewed nearly 1m times and become a national talking point. At its premiere at the Venice international film festival, it evoked tears, shouts and a standing ovation, with one critic describing it as “grimly prophetic”.
Continue reading...Producer says ‘courage has gone out of broadcasting’ and audiences want to see grittier issues
The creator of some of Britain’s best-loved soaps has said the “courage has gone out of broadcasting” and suggested that television bosses should not be afraid to flout Ofcom rules.
Phil Redmond – the brains behind Hollyoaks, Grange Hill and Brookside – said there was “too much risk aversion” in television, with producers afraid to upset regulators even if it meant pleasing audiences.
Continue reading...Family plans to livestream memorial service for teenage actor who died two days after getting hurt in Vestavia Hills, Alabama
The teenage actor Hudson Meek has died after he fell out of a moving vehicle in Alabama, authorities said.
Meek, 16, was hurt on December 19 while on a street in Vestavia Hills, a suburb of Birmingham. He died two days later, according to the Jefferson county coroner’s office.
Continue reading...Change in festive schedule comes after Wallace stepped away from hosting cookery show amid allegations about his behaviour
Two MasterChef celebrity Christmas specials have been pulled from the BBC’s schedule after Gregg Wallace stepped away from hosting the cookery show, a BBC spokesperson said.
The broadcaster had previously announced a Celebrity MasterChef Cook-Off and a Strictly Festive Extravaganza as part of its festive schedule, both billed as hour-long programmes for BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
Continue reading...A musician, the original Wheel of Fortune host and later a rightwing podcaster, Woolery died at home in Texas
Chuck Woolery, the affable, smooth-talking game show host of Wheel of Fortune, Love Connection and Scrabble who later became a rightwing podcaster, skewering liberals and accusing the government of lying about Covid-19, has died. He was 83.
Mark Young, Woolery’s podcast co-host and friend, said in an email early on Sunday that Woolery died at his home in Texas with his wife, Kristen, present. “Chuck was a dear friend and brother and a tremendous man of faith, life will not be the same without him,” Young wrote.
Continue reading...Say Nothing, about 1972 abduction and murder of Jean McConville, is horrendous, says Michael McConville
The son of Jean McConville, a woman who was murdered and buried in secret by the IRA, has condemned a new Disney series on her death as “horrendous” and “cruel”.
The series is based on the acclaimed book Say Nothing, about McConville and the wider role of the IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, written by the US journalist Patrick Radden Keefe.
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