Category Archives: Television & radio

Bob Odenkirk: ‘Soon people won’t remember Breaking Bad’

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He charmed as slimeball lawyer Saul in the drugs drama and its spinoff – but now Bob Odenkirk has gone badass in action thriller Nobody. Has he left his comedy days behind?

On the surface, Bob Odenkirk’s new film is entirely preposterous. As the story of a man who goes on a murder spree after his house is broken into, Nobody is an all-out, full-throated action movie. In one scene, 58-year-old Odenkirk tears a handrail off the inside of a bus and beats a man senseless with it.

However, as he explains, the story stems from something much more personal. “My family had two break-ins,” he reveals from his home in LA, where he’s sitting beneath a vast Chinatown poster. “It was very damaging.”

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Lisey’s Story review – a swollen snoozefest from Stephen King

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Supernatural silliness, metaphorical monsters, and dread that doesn’t so much as build as never lets up ... not even Julianne Moore’s turn as a grieving wife can save this bloated bore

The advice that a writer should “kill all your darlings” has been variously attributed. William Faulkner, Allan Ginsberg, Oscar Wilde, GK Chesterton and Arthur Quiller-Couch all get a look-in. Stephen King approved the accepted wisdom in his book On Writing. “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings,” he said with the relish one would hope for from a master of horror. “Even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

Related: Joan Allen: ‘Acting’s like tennis. You bring your game’

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Tongue-in-cheek tales from 19th-century India – podcasts of the week

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Meera Syal and Jennifer Saunders star in Audible’s new spoof, Raj! Plus: a tense history lesson in GunPlot, and Unearthed offers gripping plant-themed tales

Raj!
Meera Syal and Jennifer Saunders give standout performances in Audible’s new pod drama, spoofing life in British-controlled India. Ineffectual governor Henry arrives in a rural province, “allergic to emotions”, part of an unwieldy bureaucratic structure, and unwilling to acclimatise. As well as the lines you might see coming (“can’t imagine the British ever going for Indian food!”), there is plenty you might not, in this tale of blustering Brits, and Syal’s Rajmata side-eyeing and sticking it to the man.
Hannah J Davies

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Christina Hendricks: ‘We were critically acclaimed – and everyone wanted to ask me about my bra’

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The star of Good Girls discusses Mad Men, sexual harassment and squaring her glamorous reputation with her ‘weird, goofy’ personality

Christina Hendricks appears on our video call with the most dramatic backdrop. Art deco gold peacocks bedeck a black wall, making her look, as she has so often in her career, a bit too good to be human. Perfectly poised, perfectly framed, perfectly lit, she is more like a dreamy vision of what humans look like. “I, erm, like your wall,” I say, pointlessly. She flashes a smile, as if to say: “Obviously.”

We are here primarily to discuss the comedy-drama series Good Girls, the fourth season of which will resume in the US this month after a midseason break. The elevator pitch would be Breaking Bad for girls: three suburban women, each hovering on the edge of bankruptcy, unite to embark on a life of cack-handed crime, only to discover they are good at it. The ensemble – Hendricks, Mae Whitman, who plays her sister, and Retta, their friend – works strikingly well, their pacey comic rapport instilling a sense of perpetual motion. You just can’t imagine Good Girls ending. Every time a plot line seems to be reaching its climax, something worse – and funnier – happens.

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A banal, excruciating mess – you review Friends: the Reunion

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The show you’ve waited 17 years for aired at last – and could you BE any more emotional? But what did you rate and what did you hate? And why did Matt LeBlanc come out on top?

Friends was a huge part of my life. Growing up, and realising I was gay but having nobody to talk to, I felt very alone and very isolated. Watching Friends got me through some really dark moments.

I sat down to watch [the reunion], fully expecting to hate it, but was crying within minutes. All the feelings I had growing up came back. I loved seeing the cast get together and hearing how they felt on set and how they reacted when they arrived. The bond they all share is so clear and strong. I always felt as if I was a part of Friends, as silly as that may sound, but watching it definitely influenced my personality. I’m sarcastic like Chandler, a clean freak like Monica and a little bit different like Phoebe.

Seeing them all together again just reminds you that lifelong ‘Friends’ are achievable. I just wish I could let the cast and the writers know how much it means to me. Scott, 30, Essex

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Mare of Easttown finale review – Kate Winslet drama is a stunning, harrowing success

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The actor’s turn as a complex, fallible detective has been a privilege to witness, in a murder mystery that kept us guessing right to the profoundly moving end

In interviews, Kate Winslet always said it wasn’t a thriller. And she was right. Yes, Mare of Easttown (Sky Atlantic) began with a murder in a small, bleak Pennsylvania town and Winslet’s police detective Mare Sheehan being called upon to investigate. But it was almost immediately clear that the seven-part drama was setting up to be so much more – and even clearer soon after that it was likely to succeed in all its endeavours.

It was a character study, of how a woman ground down by life after the loss of a son to drugs and suicide, the consequent divorce from her husband and raising of her grandson in the face of a custody battle with his mother (her son’s former girlfriend, rehabbed but fragile) endures.

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‘My parents still have no clue what I’m doing’: Lupin star Omar Sy on Hollywood, fame and fighting racism

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After a decade in Hollywood, French actor Omar Sy returned home to star in Netflix’s much-loved hit, Lupin. He talks about playing the charming thief, growing up with Arsenal’s Nicolas Anelka and his battle with racism

Actors, obliged to exhaustively market their wares, will pose for hours in front of posters of their latest film or TV show. They’ll hop between city premieres, sit on dreary festival panels, tell rehearsed comic stories on night-time talkshows, then get up early to be on breakfast radio. Before meeting Omar Sy, a 43-year-old Frenchman who stars in the massively popular Netflix drama Lupin, I’d never heard of an actor picking up a bucket and brush to spend a day gluing up their own billboard posters on the Paris metro. Sy, who is 6ft 2in, born in a working-class Parisian suburb to West African parents, explains the thinking behind this unusual marketing stunt that took place just before the first series of Lupin debuted earlier this year.

“A lot of people know me in Paris,” begins Sy, who worked as a comedian in France through his 20s before becoming a film star there in his early 30s. “Because people in France have watched me in stuff for years, I’m used to meeting strangers who recognise me and who already have smiles on their faces.” In Lupin, lightly adapted from the classic heist books by Maurice Leblanc, Sy plays a French-Senegalese man called Assane Diop, an anonymous Parisian who is used to being ignored and overlooked in his home town, but who is willing to use that to his advantage while robbing the city’s jet-set blind. “The show is entertainment and we want to have fun with it,” he says, “but at the same time we’re talking about something very serious: that some people in France are simply not seen.”

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Friends reunion: the one where China censors its guest stars

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Viewers say scenes featuring Lady Gaga, boyband BTS and Justin Bieber are missing from Chinese version

For many Chinese millennials, the US sitcom Friends was a window to the American way of life. Teachers would use the show to help students learn English. Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai have Friends-themed Central Perk cafes. So when news that the original cast were to hold a reunion special nearly 20 years after the show was first introduced into China, diehard fans were excited, and some of China’s biggest online streaming platforms bought the rights to broadcast the show.

But eagle-eyed viewers complained on Thursday that some of the much-talked-about scenes in the original 104-minute runtime were missing.

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Cillian Murphy: ‘I was in awe of how Helen McCrory lived her life’

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The star of Peaky Blinders on his late colleague, how he convinced the producers to cast him rather than Jason Statham as Tommy Shelby – and returning to the monster-movie genre in A Quiet Place Part II

Cillian Murphy, star of the new horror sequel A Quiet Place Part II, is something to behold: X-ray eyes at once penetrating and ethereally blue, cheekbones so pronounced you could stretch out and go to sleep on them. Unfortunately, the beholding will have to wait. We have barely exchanged greetings over Zoom when his voice breaks up, the screen freezes and the room falls silent. A quiet place, indeed.

We switch to phones. We can do this, I tell him. “I have faith,” he replies, in a soothing Cork accent that compensates for the lack of visuals. Murphy’s gift for intensity has made him a natural fit for characters damaged (Dunkirk, The Edge of Love) or outright villainous (Batman Begins, Red Eye), but today he is quick to laugh and keen to talk. He is speaking from a flat in Manchester, where he is staying while he shoots the sixth and final series of Peaky Blinders. That stylish crime drama, which rocketed from BBC Two cult success to global phenomenon, revolves around a 1920s Birmingham gang led by Murphy as the vicious Tommy Shelby. With his eyes, looks could kill – although he keeps razor blades in the brim of his cap, just in case.

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‘I had to find them’: kidnapped filmmaker Mellissa Fung on her mission to find the Boko Haram girls

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After being abducted on assignment in Afghanistan, journalist Mellissa Fung shares an intense bond with the teenage girls who were held captive by Boko Haram

The journalist and filmmaker Mellissa Fung is showing me her wound – or to be precise, the scar where her wound once was. It’s from the struggle with one of the Afghan rebels who, 12 years ago, kidnapped Fung near Kabul and held her in a pit in the ground for a month, a place she refers to simply, and rather chillingly as, “the hole”.

“In combat training they teach you not to fight back, but I played ice hockey as a kid so I couldn’t help it,” Fung says. “The guy had a knife so I learned my lesson.”

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BBC interview did not harm Diana, claims Martin Bashir

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Journalist defends 1995 Panorama special saying he and Diana stayed friends after the broadcast

Martin Bashir has said he “never wanted to harm” Diana, Princess of Wales with the Panorama interview, adding: “I don’t believe we did.”

The journalist’s reputation is in tatters following Lord Dyson’s report that he used “deceitful behaviour” to land his world exclusive 1995 interview.

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Eurovision 2021: follow all the action from Rotterdam – live

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Good evening, Europe! The song contest is back at last. Join us on a glorious ride through every performance, every vote ... expect pyrotechnics, dry ice, green screen gimmicks and one giant Russian dress

I keep thinking that the pods the artists are sitting in look like the galactic senate from Star Wars: Phantom Menace but I can’t find a picture where we won’t have to pay Lucasfilm a zillion galactic credits to use it so I can prove it to you. So just imagine that I have.

I’m just taking a breather while they do this recap. After this we are going to get – I believe – loads of performances from former winners on the rooftops of Rotterdam, some weird orchestra/DJ mash-up, and also a spectacular dancing countdown. I mean, why not? It’s Eurovision. I’ve honestly loved it, it has been a really strong final this year so far. I just said in the comments, there’s about eight or nine songs that if they won, you’d think, “Yep, sure, it was always on the cards”.

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Billie Piper: From vulnerable teen pop star to director of an ‘anti-romcom’

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The characters she plays do not match her own life, the actress insists, but it’s hard not to see parallels with her own journey

Billie Piper has occupied a near continual, if shifting, position in the public imagination for almost a quarter of a century. That’s a notable achievement by any reckoning of a performer’s career, but it’s also rather alarming, given that she’s still only 38.

Having started out as 15-year-old chart sensation, she walked away from the pop music treadmill, enjoyed a boozy marriage with the DJ Chris Evans, returned to frontline fame in Doctor Who, struck out on a path of acclaimed dramatic performances on TV and the stage, and has now made her directorial debut with the feature film Rare Beasts.

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Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown – style icon of the pandemic

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The Pennsylvania detective’s unvarnished realness has hit a fashion nerve with viewers

The style icon everyone is talking about wears drab flannel shirts with flat shoes and crumpled jeans. She has frown lines and dark roots. She might wear mascara if she’s going out to eat but if she’s going to work she doesn’t bother. As a Pennsylvania detective in Mare of Easttown, the Oscar-winning actor Kate Winslet bucks the trend for high fashion on the small screen that has given us a string of glossy shows such as Succession, Queen’s Gambit and Halston, with a character whose unvarnished realness has hit a nerve.

A grizzled detective with a complicated personal life; a naked female corpse; a sleepy small town squirrelled with secrets. The set-up of HBO’s hit show, Mare of Easttown is familiar TV fare, but the transformation of serial Vogue cover star Kate Winslet into Mare Sheehan provides an unexpected plot twist. Nowhere to be seen are the blow-dries of Big Little Lies or the silk blouses and velvet coats of The Undoing. Instead, the first episode sees Detective Sheehan dressed in nondescript denim and sack-adjacent plaid, one woolly-socked foot up on her kitchen table, drinking a bottle of beer while using a bag of frozen oven chips as an improvised ice pack for a sprained ankle.

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Will you get douze points? Take our fiendish Eurovision quiz

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From Abba to Bucks Fizz, dancing grannies to French diplomacy, our quiz requires some serious song contest chops to get 12 points – or a perfect 20

Vampires, naked apes and free booze! The wildest Eurovision performances ever

After last year’s hiatus, the Eurovision song contest is finally back on Saturday night at 8pm on BBC One, with all the glitz, glamour and camp delight that entails. To get you in the mood, take our fiendish Eurovision quiz. Can you avoid the dreaded nul points? Let us know how you do in the comments below …

Good evening, Europe! This is London calling! Can you spot the winner of the last contest to be held, in 2019? His name was Duncan Laurence

This one?

This one?

This one?

Or this?

Which of these acclaimed international stars has competed in Eurovision? Madonna, Celine Dion, Vanessa Paradis or Kate Bush?

Madonna

Celine Dion

Vanessa Paradis

Kate Bush

When was the very first Eurovision song contest held?

24 May 1956

12 March 1958

29 March 1960

23 November 1963

James Newman is the UK entry in 2021. But what is his song called?

Firefly

Flames

Embers

Dragonfire

For many years Norway was cursed as the only country to have scored the dreaded "nul points" on four separate occasions. But in 2015, another country equalled this dismal record. Who?

United Kingdom

Netherlands

Austria

Germany

Which country sent a bunch of grannies to represent it in 2012?

Russia

Albania

Armenia

Azerbaijan

“Be it a mug, a goblet, a cup, a glass, or flute, raise it and toast the memory of the man who was and always will be the voice of Eurovision … the late great, Sir Terry Wogan." In the UK, during which song is it a tradition to toast Terry?

Third

Fifth

Seventh

Ninth

Waterloo by Abba is arguably Eurovision's most famous winning song. Which year did it win?

1971

1972

1973

1974

In the year that Abba won with Waterloo, the French entry was withdrawn from the contest. Why?

The death of the French president, Georges Pompidou

A dispute with the EBU over the competition being hosted in the UK

French broadcasters were concerned the entry could be seen as propaganda for a referendum campaign taking place

Because the song had been associated with signalling an attempt at a military coup

Bucks Fizz won the contest in 1981 with Making Your Mind Up. How many number one singles did the original Bucks Fizz line-up have in the UK in the 1980s?

None

One

Two

Three

Which original member of Eurovision-winning band Bucks Fizz stood in the 2019 UK general election to be an MP for the Brexit Party?

Jay Aston

Cheryl Baker

Bobby G

Mike Nolan

Verka Serduchka has become a Eurovision icon. But which country did they represent in 2007?

Belarus

Ukraine

Austria

Poland

Which is the most eastern city to have ever hosted the Eurovision final?

Helsinki

Tashkent

Baku

Moscow

In what year did Australia first compete in the Eurovision song contest?

1997

2009

2015

2017

Australia isn't the only country not from Europe to have competed in the contest. Which African nation competed for its one and only time in 1980?

Morocco

Algeria

Egypt

South Africa

Which of these – among Europe's smallest competing countries – has won the Eurovision song contest?

Malta

San Marino

Cyprus

Luxembourg

By the time he represented the UK in 1968 with Congratulations, Cliff Richard had already scored more than forty Top 40 hits in the UK. Where did Congratulations finish in the Eurovision song contest that year?

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

Which country had its entry for this year disqualified?

Belarus

Ukraine

Armenia

Bulgaria

The United Kingdom has hosted the contest in five different cities. Which of these has not had the honour of holding the final?

Brighton

Birmingham

Glasgow

Harrogate

This lot won Eurovision in 2006 for Finland with Hard Rock Hallelujah. What were they called?

Loki

Lordi

Kinda

Kooki

18 and above.

So close to a perfect score, but basically you are Cliff Richard coming 2nd in 1968

20 and above.

"Douze points!" – well, vingt points, but you get the point. Well done.

14 and above.

Excellent Eurovision knowledge – c'est une magnifique victoire

8 and above.

Good effort

0 and above.

"Nul points!" – you are the Norway of this quiz

1 and above.

This is the kind of score that is going to get you relegated to the semi-final for next year

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Martin Bashir used ‘deceitful behaviour’ to secure Diana interview, report finds

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BBC chief Tim Davie apologises after investigation identified ‘clear failings’ in tactics used by journalist to secure interview

The BBC has been forced to make a humiliating apology after an investigation found that Martin Bashir used deceitful tactics that were later covered up by senior executives to secure his sensational 1995 interview with Diana, Princess of Wales.

The inquiry, conducted by the former supreme court judge John Dyson, was withering of both Bashir and the corporation’s former director general, Tony Hall, who was accused of overseeing a flawed and “woefully ineffective” internal probe into the issue.

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Vampires, naked apes and free booze! The 20 wildest Eurovision performances ever

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Baffling stunts and bizarre lyrics are de rigueur at europop’s premier competition – so it takes quite something to make this list

At Eurovision, you have three minutes to impress the world. While an unforgettable song and stonking vocals are key to getting douze points, how else can you make your performance stand out? With bewildering stunts, surreal lyrics and distracting props, of course! With the biggest event in europop returning this week, let’s revisit some of the weirdest performances over the years – the ones that really made Terry Wogan and Graham Norton wince.

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Eurovision 2021: the good, bad and weird songs to look out for

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Amid the German ukuleles, anti-colonial Dutch anthems and Ukrainian folk-techno, can the UK’s James Newman reverse a long run of disappointment?

Future scholars of camp will pen entire counterfactuals about the great cancelled Eurovision of 2020 and what might have been: while the majority of last year’s contestants are back for 2021, they must all perform different songs. It feels especially cruel to Daði Freyr, the Icelandic act who would surely have won with viral hit Think About Things, a charming study in nerdish twee full of homemade keytars and school-play dance moves. But led by Freyr himself – imagine fey Scandi singers such as Jens Lekman or Erlend Øye crossed with Napoleon Dynamite – the group are back and pretending that last year never happened, with more of the same disco-pop, if lacking maybe 10% of 2020’s magic.

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‘I can’t believe someone’s written this’: the Muslim punk sitcom breaking new ground

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Raucous comedy We Are Lady Parts follows an all-female group’s journey on to the toilet circuit. Its cast believe it’s time for new voices to be heard

It is loud when I enter the virtual room. Raucous laughter and excited chatter fill the air, and for a moment I feel like a teacher quieting an unruly class. It is a fitting start, given that I’m here to interview the cast of Channel 4’s new musical comedy, a six-part series following the exploits of an anarchic all-female, all-Muslim punk band setting out to make some noise.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

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Trailer released for Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey TV series

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Footage suggests Harry will revisit trauma of his mother’s death in Apple TV+ series on mental health

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex feature in an emotional trailer for Harry’s mental health documentary series with Oprah Winfrey, and footage hints that he will revisit the trauma he experienced after his mother’s death.

The two-minute trailer includes archive film from the 1997 funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, showing Harry, then 12, standing with his head bowed as his mother’s coffin passes by, alongside the Prince of Wales, who then turns to speak to his son.

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