Category Archives: Television & radio

‘People said I didn’t have enough talent’: the rise of Italy’s graphic novel gonzo

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Michele Rech aka Zerocalcare’s book signings attract huge crowds and now he has a hit Netflix animated series inspired by his life

Michele Rech is uncomfortable with success. The shy 38-year-old comic book artist, who works from a modest apartment on the outskirts of Rome, does not use the word “fame” but refers instead to his rise to national prominence as a “thing” he struggles to manage.

In the art world, he is known as Zerocalcare and is the cartoonist’s equivalent of Hunter S Thompson. Rech’s graphic novels are a form of gonzo journalism – inspired by his own adventures as a protester on the frontlines of police violence in Italy, and in Syria, where he was embedded with Kurdish forces.

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The BBC’s Ros Atkins: ‘I do a bit of body-boarding… posting videos is like catching a wave’

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The journalist behind those ‘explainer’ videos on seeing his No 10 Christmas party video go viral, being a drum’n’bass DJ and wearing ‘an awful lot’ of blue

Ros Atkins, 47, grew up in Cornwall and the Caribbean before reading history at Cambridge. His BBC career began on Radio 5 Live shortly after 9/11. He now presents Outside Source on the BBC News Channel and recently went viral for his “explainer” videos, broadcast on BBC Breakfast and posted online. He lives in south London with his wife and two daughters.

How are you finding newfound fame?
Well, I’ve neither been mobbed nor chased down the street, but it’s always pleasant if people pay attention to what you do.

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The person who got me through 2021: Miss J and America’s Next Top Model transported me to carefree times

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Three years after it ended, scandal surrounds the show, but its familiarity and formula provided a comfort blanket. I really hope they bring it back

It sounds troublingly shallow, but when I saw the tweet that said “Holy shit, ANTM [America’s Next Top Model] is on Amazon Prime” my heart soared. I am not one who can pretend the pandemic isn’t still raging but, in that fleeting moment, I felt a spiritual lightness I hadn’t experienced since 2019.

I dropped everything to binge the episodes, then fell deep into a rabbit hole of detective work: where are the contestants now? Are they on Instagram? I found a whole subsection of TikTok dedicated to calling out where the show was problematic, and YouTuber Oliver Twixt has a highly viewed series of interviews with ANTM contestants levelling accusations of maltreatment at the show’s producers. Whatever the reason, ANTM is back in the cultural sphere.

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On my radar: Moses Sumney’s cultural highlights

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The singer-songwriter on Balenciaga’s visions, the mountains of North Carolina, and the haunting power of Eve’s Bayou

Singer-songwriter Moses Sumney, 29, grew up between Ghana and California and studied creative writing and poetry at UCLA. His piercing falsetto and genre-defying music have brought him critical acclaim, starting with his self-recorded 2014 EP Mid-City Island, followed in 2017 by his debut album, Aromanticism, and the 2020 double album Græ. Sumney has collaborated with musicians including Bon Iver and James Blake and toured with Solange and Sufjan Stevens. His latest project is Blackalachia, a self-directed concert film created in association with WePresent, shot over two days in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, where he lives.

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Golden Girls star Betty White dies aged 99

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The actor’s career spanned more than 80 years – but role as Rose Nylund on 80s sitcom cemented status

Betty White, the actor best known for roles in sitcoms The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls, has died aged 99.

White died at her home on Friday morning, just two weeks before she would have turned 100. Her agent Jeff Witjas told People magazine: “Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever.”

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The person who got me through 2021: Dr Karl Kennedy in Neighbours was strangely reassuring

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He became a stand-in for the family I couldn’t see – a paternal character who comforted me amid the loneliness and uncertainty

For the past 20 years there have been a handful of constants in my life: my family, my best friend and Neighbours. Not neighbours like the people you borrow a cup of sugar from, but rather that sunshine-filled Australian soap you probably stopped watching once you left university.

When I graduated, I carried on. First, out of habit (I needed to know the fate of Toadie’s mullet), but later for its nostalgic continuity and reassurance.

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Guardian readers nominate their person of the year

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From the frontline of Covid to inspirational sports personalities, our worldwide audience name their choices

Guardian readers were asked to offer suggestions of who they would choose as their person of the year. Dozens of names were put forward – from scientists to sports personalities, from healthcare workers to climate activists.

And in a sign of the ongoing debate overgender issues, many readers also nominated the author JK Rowling, and online content creator Ranboo.

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Only Murders in the Building to Cooking With Paris: the unsung TV heroes of 2021

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Paris Hilton’s disgusting dishes! Martin Freeman as a bad dad! A history of swear words! Here’s another chance to discover the incredible shows of the year you may have missed

“The sci-fi murder mystery doctor dramedy Earth needs now!” That was the US marketing blurb for Resident Alien, a plucky attempt to turn the show’s audacious genre-mashing into a marketing angle. While it certainly has a lot going on – an alien crash-lands in small-town Colorado and attempts to evade detection by hijacking the identity of a big-city doctor – it only took a few episodes for me to realise why I was enjoying it so much. This story of a fusspot out-of-towner clashing with the rhythms of a town full of curious eccentrics is a spiritual descendant of 1990s fish-out-of-water touchstone Northern Exposure, complete with snowy setting and covetable local bar.

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‘We would discuss how dislikable I was’ – what’s it like to see your life story on TV?

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Telling your story in a book is hard enough. But what if it ends up on screen? Adam Kay, writer of This Is Going to Hurt, and Dolly Alderton, who penned Everything I Know About Love, relive the shocks

Most people find seeing themselves on screen distinctly squirm-inducing. Even an unintended glance in the mirror can trigger a minor identity crisis, as we glimpse the gulf between how others see us and how we imagine ourselves. But for writers whose life stories are adapted for television – their flawed personalities painstakingly recreated by actors – the experience can be even more bewildering.

“Bizarre is the only way to describe it,” reflects Adam Kay, whose 2017 bestseller This Is Going to Hurt, a memoir of his hellish and hilarious years as a junior doctor, lands in 2022 on BBC One. On TV, Kay is played by Ben Whishaw, who evidently took his research seriously. “I watched an early cut with my husband,” Kay recalls, “and he said: ‘It’s amazing how he’s got all of your weird mannerisms.’ I didn’t even realise I had weird mannerisms!”

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Police ‘ineptitude’ contributed to Stephen Port murders, says producer

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Shoddy investigation into serial killer also result of underfunding, says producer of BBC drama about murders

Three victims of the serial killer Stephen Port might still be alive today were it not for a shoddy police investigation that was the result of “ineptitude, poor systems and underfunding”, the producer of a new drama about the crimes has said.

Jeff Pope is senior producer of Four Lives, a dramatisation for BBC One of the murders of four young gay men: Anthony Walgate, 23; Gabriel Kovari, 22; Daniel Whitworth, 21; and Jack Taylor, 21.

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The person who got me through 2021: Huey Morgan comforted me amid a deluge of human waste

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I had plumbing problems and his radio show transported me from the faecal hellscape in my garden. It became the ideal soundtrack for my pandemic reality

It was spring, and human excrement was pumping into our garden. I watched through the window as a perplexed young plumber with a long metal pole excavated the dark, gurgling drain. As if lockdown hadn’t been bad enough, our kitchen was now heavy with the stench of a thousand flushes. No one knew how to stop it. There was only one thing to do: brew weapons-grade black coffee and switch on the radio. That’s how I discovered Huey Morgan’s Saturday morning breakfast show on BBC 6 Music. It made everything feel a little more right in the world.

What started as a way to distract from the tide of hot, liquid excrement on our patio quickly became the highlight of the week for my girlfriend and me. Huey – of Fun Lovin’ Criminals fame – thumbing you through his records: early 90s rap, early 80s disco, and early 70s soul to blow away the cobwebs, with choice modern selections marbling the retro soundscape.

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Russell T Davies: ‘I genuinely thought – who wants to watch a show about Aids?’

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It’s a Sin has been voted the Guardian’s best TV show of the year. Russell T Davies reveals why it took him 30 years to write, who the real Colin is – and why he just can’t keep away from Doctor Who

• The 50 best TV shows of 2021, No 1: It’s a Sin

Russell T Davies doesn’t hold back. If he’s thrilled, he shouts about it. And sure enough, the 6ft 6in giant of a man is shouting today. “I’m gobsmacked. I’ve never come first in this. Ever,” he exclaims, admitting that he has always had his eye on the Guardian’s list of the best TV of the year. “If I’ve had a show on, I spend every December watching that countdown wondering if I’ll be on it – I think A Very English Scandal got to No 2.” He’s right, it did. Three years on, his wonderful Channel 4 mini-series It’s a Sin has been voted the Guardian’s best TV show of the year. “I’m ridiculously thrilled,” says Davies, who is Zooming from his home in Manchester.

It’s 30 years since his first TV series – Dark Season, featuring a 15-year-old Kate Winslet – aired on the BBC. Since then, Davies has created any number of groundbreaking dramas (including Queer as Folk; Cucumber, Banana and Tofu; Years and Years) as well as breathing new life into Doctor Who. But he is particularly pleased to have won for It’s a Sin, the five-part drama about a group of young gay friends living – and dying – through the Aids era of the 80s and early 90s. This is the show he knew he had to write 30 years ago, and spent the intervening decades years putting off, because it was simply too personal and painful.

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The person who got me through 2021: Larry David helped me embrace life as a bald man

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I have finally admitted that my hair has gone for ever, and taken great comfort from the reigning king of baldness

This year will go down in history as the year I went bald. Well, actually, 2018 went down as the year I went bald. But still, 2021 will go down as the year that I stopped fastidiously brushing three long wisps of cobweb over my scalp in the berserk belief that it somehow made me look less bald. I am bald now. Hello.

Obviously, being bald is rubbish. A bad roll of the genetic dice means I am now conclusively unattractive in the eyes of most of the world. Of course I am – I’m 85% forehead now. I can never go out and commit a crime, because a witness would only have to draw a face on their thumb and show it to the Photofit guy and I’d be in handcuffs by teatime.

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Girls5Eva review – Tina Fey’s gags are so good they should be revered

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There are shades of 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt in this hilarious show about a one-hit-wonder girl band reuniting after 30 years. No wonder, given it’s by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock

If you didn’t know beforehand, it would not be long before you realised that Girls5Eva (Sky, Now) came from the school of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, who gave us those perennial delights, 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. The new show, about a manufactured 1990s girlband of the same name (“We’ve been best friends ever since we auditioned for a man in a New Jersey hotel room!”), is the brainchild of Kimmy writer and producer Meredith Scardino, in collaboration with Fey and Carlock. It provides a similar cocktail of laughs. There are parodies (this time mostly of music videos rather than TV shows or characters), “proper” jokes so densely packed you’re still unearthing more on third and fourth viewings, call backs, and throwaway gags so good they would be revered treasures anywhere else. The chemistry among its leads recalls – even if it doesn’t quite get there, because nothing can or will – the chemistry between Ellie Kemper and Titus Burgess in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. In short, it is a joy.

Under the aegis of their sleazy manager Larry, Girls5Eva had one hit (Famous 5Eva) three decades ago but fell into obscurity after their follow-up tanked. It was called Quit Flying Planes at My Heart and was released on 10 September 2001. Since then, one of the girls has died (Ashley – “The one who got us all through our breakups with Moby”) and the remaining four members have drifted apart. We first meet Dawn (Sara Bareilles) as she is listening to the radio while having a mammogram. She has the perfect breasts for it, her doctor says – “Already so smooshed!” The Fey spirit, unable to know of a physical female indignity without leaping to embrace it for comic effect, remains strong throughout. Dawn herself is the mother-figure of the group. Always the responsible one then, she is now married with one child, constantly stressed (“Fireworks or terrorism?” she shouts when woken by a strange noise at night), and works long hours at her idiot brother’s restaurant (Dean Winters, essentially reprising his 30 Rock Dennis Duffy role). Hearing Famous 5Eva sampled as part of hit rapper Li’l Stinker’s latest moneymaker, she goes to pick up her royalty cheque from Larry and is coaxed into delivering the rest to her former bandmates, too.

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The 50 best TV shows of 2021, No 2: The White Lotus

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An immaculate social satire featuring scabrous character studies, a murder-mystery and a shocking revenge scene

‘Wave like you mean it,” the hotel manager tells his staff as they line up on the beach waiting for the next boatful of guests to arrive at the luxurious White Lotus resort. With that line, Mike White’s immaculate six-part creation is set. On to the beach come the clientele, awed by the beauty of their surroundings but already taking the humans on the shoreline for granted – checking that their needs (wants) have been anticipated, extracting further efforts from those they are sure exist only to serve, and soon demanding (in what in Shane’s case will evolve into a series-long war of attrition with the manager, Armond) apologies and upgrades whenever minor mistakes are made.

The White Lotus had many superficial similarities with previous glossy hits such as Big Little Lies. It looked gorgeous, had an array of affluent white characters living what they considered ordinary and what most would consider easeful, glamorous lives, and a murder-mystery woven in.

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Sex and the City stars respond to sexual assault allegations against Chris Noth

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Statement came as CBS said Noth will no longer be part The Equalizer ‘effective immediately’ following allegations by two women

The leads of Sex and the City’s recent reboot And Just Like That have responded to sexual assault allegations made by two women against their fellow castmate, Chris Noth.

Cynthia Nixon – who plays Miranda in the series and its reboot – shared a statement on social media, signed by herself, Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie) and Kristin Davis (Charlotte).

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Need a warped, tortured or evil character for a Hollywood film? Cast a British actor

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UK stars Olivia Colman, Idris Elba and Benedict Cumberbatch are all in demand with US directors. We look at why

A sensitive, geeky youth, stuck on a lonely cattle ranch, might understandably yearn for a kindly uncle figure; someone to confide in, or be mentored by. But the companionship actor Benedict Cumberbatch offers his brother’s stepson, Peter, in the widely Oscar-tipped western Power of the Dog is a very long, precarious horse ride away from anything avuncular.

In fact, Cumberbatch’s portrayal of the emotionally thwarted Phil Burbank is a study in twisted misery. In one early scene, Burbank notices some fragile paper flowers the teenager has made to decorate a dinner table at his mother’s canteen. But, instead of praising them, “Uncle Phil” is driven to publicly sneer.

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Gugu Mbatha-Raw: ‘It’s a misconception that people act to get attention’

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Shaped by her father’s early life in apartheid South Africa, the actor brings political awareness to all of her roles, from Black Mirror and The Morning Show to the new BBC thriller The Girl Before

As those of us who have spent more time than usual at home over the last couple of years will know, those four walls can be a sanctuary, prison or, at times, both. Beautiful, monolithic and eerily empty, the house in the new BBC/HBO drama The Girl Before is definitely both. “The house,” says Gugu Mbatha-Raw with a laugh, “is the real star.” At one point in the first episode, Mbatha-Raw’s character Jane appears to have developed an intense relationship with it, caressing its smooth stone and glass.

In The Girl Before, adapted from the bestselling psychological thriller by JP Delaney, Jane passes a rigorous vetting process before being allowed to rent this minimalist dream home. In return for cheap rent, she has to agree to around 200 strange and stringent rules set by the architect and owner. “No books?” she says, incredulous, when the estate agent reels off some of the stipulations (no pictures, no ornaments, “no children, obviously”). Jane will be watched, her every move and metric monitored, even her moods influenced, by the technologically advanced house and its creepy creator. She soon finds out that she is the second tenant – and she makes a chilling discovery about the first, Emma (played by Jessica Plummer).

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‘Why can’t I give it a go?’: How Rose Ayling-Ellis’ Strictly success is inspiring deaf youngsters

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Actor’s achievements helping others embrace deaf identity and pursue passions on own terms

Amid all the noise, glitter and razzle-dazzle, the most iconic moment of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing took place in complete silence. The music paused for several seconds while deaf actor Rose Ayling-Ellis and her dancing partner Giovanni Pernice continued to glide elegantly across the floor.

The dance was intended as a tribute to the deaf community, but it has resonated far more broadly: as well as receiving a perfect score, the couple’s performance has been labelled the “greatest ever” on the show, while an official BBC clip has been viewed 1.7m times on YouTube.

There has been a resounding (silent) cheer for Ayling-Ellis’ success from the deaf community, who see her as a rare on-screen role model capable of inspiring deaf young people, who often struggle with pressures to fit into mainstream schooling, to embrace their deaf identity and pursue their passions on their own terms.

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