Category Archives: Television & radio

‘Rehab made me grateful to be alive’: Margaret Cho on sobriety, solitude and Stop Asian Hate

Posted on by

One of the world’s most outrageous comedians, Cho is helping to lead the battle to end racism against Asian-Americans. She discusses hatred, hope and how humour saved her life

● Warning: this article contains discussion of suicide from the start

The thing about being a standup comedian is that you can never turn off that part of your brain, not even when you are trying to kill yourself. Margaret Cho learned this in 2013 when she attempted suicide in a hotel room, using a shower curtain rail. “It started bending and I was like: Oh shit, I’m too fat to kill myself, so I had to get down,” says Cho. “I thought: I’ll go on a diet and I’ll try again when I reach my goal weight, which means I’m never going to kill myself, because I’ll never reach my goal weight.”

The 52-year-old Emmy-, Grammy- and Oscar-nominated comedian, author, actor and podcaster lets out a delighted cackle. “That joke … people get really upset. They’re like: ‘You should put in a trigger warning.’ I don’t know how to do a trigger warning!” The point Cho is trying to make is a serious one. “My sense of humour probably saved me from dying,” she says. “You can’t really shut that part of you off, because humour is really hope. Humour and laughter is the intake of breath, which is the preservation of the body for the next moment … at your darkest moments; it’s actually the thing that shines the brightest. I’m really grateful for it and I’m really grateful I got to live.”

Continue reading...

The anti-Marie Kondo: Netflix celebrates the clothes we keep

Posted on by

Worn Stories looks to unravel the tales behind the most treasured items in our wardrobes – but is such meaning and emotion easily conveyed via television?

I am not a minimalist: I don’t want to live with extreme amounts of nothing. I like “things”, and I like my things, which means I have several boxes of clothes, bags and shoes in my possession that have accompanied me through the best part of two decades. One of the boxes is my best and largest suitcase. When I was still travelling fairly regularly, I would have to empty out the contents of the suitcase and pile them somewhere else for my return, a process that feels a bit like uncovering memories and repressing them again, two weeks later, with a zip that goes all the way around.

Given the displacement of a series of house moves in my earlier 20s, the fact that I even still possess the navy corduroy American Apparel hotpants I wore to go clubbing at university (now, for users of the fashion app Depop, a vintage item), or the 70s-era yellow, white and purple-striped T-shirt I was wearing when I had an encounter with the far more colourful Iris Apfel, the interior designer, feels nothing short of miraculous. Today, I can recite what I was wearing to interview various figures in my former role as an editor at a fashion magazine, outfits carefully planned though liable to go awry, like when the zip on my green, chequered skirt broke off while meeting Chloë Sevigny.

Continue reading...

Ruby Rose on gender, bullying and breaking free: ‘I had a problem with authority’

Posted on by

After coming out as a lesbian, aged 12, she suffered a horrendous attack at school. Now a successful actor, she is determined to help those wrestling with their identities

Ruby Rose spent much of her childhood travelling around Australia with her mother, an aspiring artist, trying to make ends meet. They were poor, but they were unstoppable, says Rose. Her mother had sold their TV, so there were no dreams of becoming the Hollywood action star she is now, nor the model, presenter, DJ, VJ and campaigner she has been over the years. When Rose was a child, she just wanted to write.

“I wanted to write a book for kids that were my age. I just wanted to have a way to communicate and speak to kids like me, who didn’t have someone,” she says, over Zoom. “I was just this kid who had no friends, who was super unpopular, got bullied and beaten up at school, and was like: ‘I’m going to be a famous writer.’”

Continue reading...

The return of the bonkbuster: how horny heroines are starting a new sexual revolution

Posted on by

I longed for novels about female desire - women empowered by sex and their expressions of lust. So I sat down and wrote my own

The idea for my novel Insatiable emerged from a simple question: where were all the horny women? I knew that we were secretly legion. In fact, I suspected that I was surrounded by women, sitting on buses, standing in queues, staring out of the window and simultaneously entertaining all kinds of filthy daydreams. After all, millions of us had bought and read Fifty Shades of Grey. Even if half the sold copies were bought by people who wanted to mock it, that left millions of genuinely horny women unaccounted for – and buying the sequels.

I was not transported in the way I had hoped; I did not find Christian sexy, I did not relish the BDSM and, most of all, I struggled to connect with the beautiful, blank lead character, Anastasia. She seemed similar to every other sort-of-horny woman I had seen on screen, a sexual object before she was a sexual subject, a person who had to be perfect and prove herself desirable before she was allowed to pursue desires of her own.

Continue reading...

George RR Martin signs five-year, eight-figure deal for more HBO projects

Posted on by

Game of Thrones author also has a Netflix film on the way, but there is still no word of his finishing the fantasy series that made his name

After the huge success of HBO’s adaptations of his Game of Thrones books, George RR Martin has signed a deal to develop several television series for the network and its streaming arm, HBO Max.

Related: George RR Martin: ‘Game of Thrones finishing is freeing, I’m at my own pace’

Continue reading...

Fear in your ear: the unstoppable rise of the horror podcast

Posted on by

The Battersea Poltergeist is just one of many surging up the charts. Its creator, and others, explain why the pandemic has led people to seek out scary stories

By his own admission, Danny Robins has always been “obsessed with ghosts”. “I think it might have been growing up with atheist parents,” says the writer and broadcaster, who co-created Radio 4’s lauded Sir Lenny Henry vehicle Rudy’s Rare Records, among many other works. Among them is the 2017 investigative podcast about the paranormal, Haunted. “As a kid, I was very aware of the absence of belief,” he continues. “I think I might have just wanted to be part of a club. To be part of a club of believers.”

Now in his early 40s, Robins is trying to recruit as many believers as possible to the club via his new docudrama podcast, The Battersea Poltergeist. Available on BBC Sounds, it tells the story, beginning in 1956, of a bizarre 12-year-long haunting that resulted in Shirley Hitchings (just 15 at the start of it all) and the victim of the titular spook, fleeing to Bognor Regis. A poltergeist in Enfield in 1977 may have inspired Hollywood, but it’s south-west London’s one that put in the longest shift.

Continue reading...

Schitt’s Creek motel for sale – minus the ‘Rosebud’ sign

Posted on by

First the Rose family’s former mansion hit the real estate lists – now it’s the 10-room motel they called home

The motel home of the Rose family in the Emmy-sweeping Canadian TV series Schitt’s Creek is up for sale for C$2m.

The Hockley Motel in the Canadian town of Mono, Ontario, was a key filming location throughout the six seasons of the hit CBC sitcom.

Continue reading...

Tina review – celebration of a singer who is simply the best

Posted on by

Made with the full cooperation of its 81-year-old subject, this one-off about the astonishing life of Tina Turner is not a gritty documentary, but rather a loving swan song

Sky Documentaries’ two-hour film Tina, a retrospective on the now 81-year-old Tina Turner’s career is stuffed full of footage of her performances over the years. Black and white film of Anna Mae Bullock (as she was then) in the late 50s singing with Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm. Then on into the 60s, after he had realised what an asset he had on his hands and married the singer thus known as Tina Turner. Then flowering in the late 60s and early 70s, as the duo rose to greater and greater fame thanks to the Grammy-winning Proud Mary and the multimillion-selling hits River Deep – Mountain High and Nutbush City Limits.

Then come the 80s, when she made an astonishing comeback and dominated every stage she set foot on as a solo performer. And on into the 90s and the new millennium – including performing at the Grammys with Beyoncé and a 50th anniversary tour in 2008 – until she chose to step back. Apart, that is, from a second memoir, a Grammy lifetime achievement award, a musical about her life and a remix of What’s Love Got to Do With It that made her the first artist to have a top 40 hit in seven consecutive decades in the UK

Continue reading...

How Millie Bobby Brown used her superpowers

Posted on by

The Stranger Things star is still in her teens, but has moved beyond new kid on the block to be a Hollywood power broker

It was clearly a moment designed to perplex. Fans of the hit Netflix show Stranger Things were left speculating at the end of season three as to how and why Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, had suddenly lost her supernatural power to move things around with her mind.

Theories have ricocheted across social media during the long wait for the return of the show. But Brown, an English actress who is only 17, has already made such an impact with her Stranger Things role that this spring the question seems something of a side issue, even among her many devotees.

Continue reading...

Lucille Bluth was the role Jessica Walter was born to play

Posted on by

Walter’s Arrested Development matriarch was drunk, dismissive, cruel and likable, yet we all envied her freedom. This was her masterstroke

Jessica Walter racked up a reported 161 film and TV credits over her 70-year acting career. If that number had only been 160, she would have still been the best sort of actor: a safe pair of hands who gets consistent work shoring up individual episodes of long-running shows. The spectrum of series that Walter appeared in over the years was impressive: Flipper, Columbo, Hawaii Five-O, Quincy, Knot’s Landing, Magnum, and Law and Order are just a few. She would pop in for a single episode, class it up a little and leave.

However, she will be remembered for one show above all. As Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development, Walter landed the role she was born to play: a beautifully written, brilliantly wicked character that she elevated to icon status.

Continue reading...

Jessica Walter, star of Arrested Development, dies aged 80

Posted on by

The Emmy-winning actor, who also starred in Play Misty For Me and Grand Prix, died at her home in New York

Actor Jessica Walter has died at the age of 80.

Walter, best known for her Emmy-winning role as Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development, died in her sleep at her New York home.

Continue reading...

‘Downton Abbey is ludicrous’: the biggest TV hits we’ve never seen – until now

Posted on by

Continuing our series on a year of bumper pandemic viewing, our critics finally watch the shows that had passed them by, from Downton to Twin Peaks

As with my experience of so many modern cultural touchstones, I first came to 24 via a Simpsons parody. Being only seven years old in 2001, when the 24-episode “real time” thriller first aired, my knowledge of Kiefer Sutherland’s exhausting counter-terror mission to stop the assassination of a presidential hopeful came from a 2007 Simpsons episode starring Lisa and Bart in a split-screen chase to hold off the detonation of a powerful stink bomb at Springfield Elementary.

Continue reading...

‘We needed to rescue the nation from despair’: culture’s year of Covid

Posted on by

Comedians went virtual, Ai Weiwei went to Portugal – and Bake Off pledged the show would go on. In the first of a two-part series, cultural figures look back on a year that shook their industry

Continue reading...

Keeping an eye on the force: life in the real Line of Duty

Posted on by

As the popular BBC drama returns, a former crime reporter takes a look at the reality of fighting police corruption

Last week, an officer from South Wales police received formal notification that they were under investigation regarding their dealings with a man who had been arrested and held overnight in a cell in Cardiff.

The suspect had been released from custody the following morning then found dead shortly afterwards. The investigation is to focus on whether the level of force used by the officer was “necessary, proportionate and reasonable” in the circumstances.

Continue reading...

Russia’s Eurovision entry to be investigated for ‘illegal’ lyrics

Posted on by

Manizha’s song Russian Woman incites hatred towards men and should be banned from the contest, say critics

Russian investigators said they will examine the lyrics of the country’s entry to this year’s Eurovision song contest after it angered conservative groups who accused its Tajikistan-born singer of inciting hatred towards men.

Manizha Sangin, known as Manizha, is set to perform the song Russian Woman at Eurovision in the Netherlands in May. The song praises the strength of Russian women, urging them to be more independent and to resist sexist views on beauty, age and bearing children.

Continue reading...

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier review – sturdy start to Marvel’s latest

Posted on by

Disney’s Avengers spinoff series offers up a patchy yet encouraging combination of exhilarating action and soapy drama

There was every legitimate reason to feel a little daunted and wearied by Disney’s glut of small-screen streaming announcements back in 2019 that was then compounded last year during another migraine-inducing investor day, an overlong list of shows expanding universes that were already stretched beyond necessity. But after The Mandalorian brought a surprising new edge to the Star Wars universe and, more recently, WandaVision found a certain offbeat creativity within the overly straitlaced world of Marvel, exhaustion was replaced with intrigue as Disney+ insisted on itself as more than just a digital dumping ground.

Related: Marvel's next wave of heroes will tear up tradition in the name of progress

Continue reading...

Allen v Farrow review – a one-note pick over the bones of old investigations

Posted on by

The HBO series arrives on Sky in the UK, but fails to dig deep and do more than regurgitate Mia and Dylan Farrow’s allegations against Woody Allen

Eight months after his relationship with not-quite-stepdaughter Soon-Yi was revealed in 1992, Woody Allen was accused of sexually abusing Dylan Farrow, his younger daughter with his partner Mia Farrow, when she was seven. Allen strongly denied all the allegations, as he has continued to do over the nearly 30 years since. But they fell on fertile soil. How could a man who could start an affair with his partner’s daughter not be capable of just about anything else, the argument went? A welter of publicity followed, claims (that no mother, especially one as devoted as Farrow, could possibly make such a thing up), counterclaims (that in fact she had done so, that Dylan was coached – which she denies, and that it was all an act of vengeance for the Soon-Yi affair), along with gossip and hearsay proliferated.

Dylan and her brother Ronan Farrow began speaking about the matter publicly themselves in 2014. This has disinterred old battle lines and occasioned new accounts from people who were close to the family at the time and from Moses, another of the Farrow children, which contradict either things they said at the time or the saintly mother narrative that seemed the most natural one. Meanwhile, doctors examined Dylan at the time and found no evidence to support Farrow’s contention, and Allen was investigated by the Yale New Haven hospital’s child sexual abuse clinic and the New York State’s social services department, who reached similar conclusions.

Continue reading...

On my radar: Aidan Moffat’s cultural highlights

Posted on by

The Arab Strap vocalist on late-night horror chats with his mum, spending time with Alan Partridge, and bingeing on Succession

Born in Falkirk, Scotland, in 1973, Aidan Moffat is the vocalist of indie rock band Arab Strap, which he founded in 1995 with Malcolm Middleton. Characterised by Moffat’s half-spoken vocals over lo-fi instrumentation, the band gained international acclaim with 1996 single The First Big Weekend; they went on to release six studio albums before splitting in 2006 and reforming in 2016. Since 2002, Moffat has released music under the name L Pierre, and collaborated with artists including Mogwai and Bill Wells. Arab Strap’s first album in 16 years, As Days Get Dark, is was released this month on Rock Action.

Continue reading...

Netflix weighs up crackdown on password sharing

Posted on by

Streaming service tests feature that asks viewers if they share household with subscriber

Netflix has begun testing a feature that asks viewers whether they share a household with a subscriber, in a move that could lead to crackdown on the widespread practice of sharing passwords among friends and family.

Some Netflix users are reported to have received a message asking them to confirm they live with the account owner by entering a code included in a text message or email sent to the subscriber.

Continue reading...

‘We know exactly what we want to say’: inside a film that normalizes stuttering

Posted on by

Stuttering affects one in 20 children, yet is still stigmatized, something the documentary My Beautiful Stutter hopes to correct

One of the most moving scenes in My Beautiful Stutter, a documentary now streaming on Discovery+, involves just a microphone and an open stage. Many of the attendees at Camp Say in Hendersonville, North Carolina, a getaway for youth who stutter hosted by the New York-based organization the Stuttering Association for the Young, grew up feeling broken or confused, ostracized by a neurological disorder that tangles the flow of fluent speech. Some campers recite poetry, others get through just their name before breaking into tears, all afforded the space to speak rarely given in the non-stuttering world (what can take a non-stutterer a minute to read or say could take a person who stutters 10 times as long). Tears abound; the scene hums with the bottomless human desire, felt most acutely as a teenager, to be seen, heard, loved, accepted.

Related: 'They become dangerous tools': the dark side of personality tests

Continue reading...