Netflix faces call to rethink Liu Cixin adaptation after his Uighur comments

Five US senators have written to question plans to adapt The Three-Body Problem after its author voiced support for China’s mass internments in Xinjiang

Five Republican US senators have asked Netflix to reconsider its plans to adapt the bestselling Chinese author Liu Cixin’s book The Three-Body Problem, citing Liu’s comments in support of the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighur Muslims.

In a letter to Netflix, the senators said they had “significant concerns with Netflix’s decision to do business with an individual who is parroting dangerous CCP propaganda”. The letter cites Liu’s interview with the New Yorker last year, in which the Chinese novelist was asked about the mass internment of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang.

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Watchmen, Succession and Schitt’s Creek dominate virtual Emmys

The most diverse field in Emmys history garnered several awards for black actors and a full sweep for a Canadian sitcom

It was uncharted waters for the 72nd Emmy awards – the first major acting awards show held since the pandemic began, a strange and subdued ceremony in which stars accepted awards on Zoom. But unwelcome new methods (the telecast required more than 100 live feeds), and the end of former Emmys juggernauts Game of Thrones and Veep, ushered in a celebration of new series and talent: Canadian comedy Schitt’s Creek swept the comedy awards, HBO’s Succession dominated in drama and the evening’s most-nominated show, HBO’s prescient, eerie Watchmen, cleaned up in the limited series category.

Related: Emmy winners 2020: the full list

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Radio reporters to be axed by BBC and told to reapply for new roles

Critics fear end of an era because of plans to make audio journalists work across media platforms

BBC radio voices have described and defined modern British history. Live reports from inside a British bomber over Germany during the second world war, or with the British troops invading Iraq in 2003, or more recently from the frontline of the parent boycott of a Birmingham school over LGBT lessons have also shaped the news agenda.

But now the BBC plans to axe all its national radio reporters and ask them to reapply for a smaller number of jobs as television, radio and digital reporters, rather than as dedicated audio journalists. Many fear it is not just the end of their careers but the premature end of an era for the BBC.

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Diana Rigg: star with an independent streak to match her glamour

From kick-ass screen roles to award-winning theatre and TV ones, with a curious sideline in nuns, the Yorkshire-born actor’s class and spirit earned her a magnificent career

When Diana Rigg made her Broadway debut in 1971, the theatre programme Playbill introduced her in terms that established the wide range of work and appeal that still marked her career at her death today, five decades later, at the age of 82.

The then-31-year-old Yorkshirewoman, theatregoers were told, was “a highly established star of the theatre, motion pictures and films in England” who had recently “become popular in the United States as the glamorous Emma Peel in The Avengers television series and as the leading lady in the latest James Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”.

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Diana Rigg, Avengers and Game of Thrones star, dies aged 82

Actor who played Emma Peel in hit spy series and James Bond’s only wife was diagnosed with cancer in March

The actor Diana Rigg, known for her roles on stage and in film and television – including The Avengers and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – has died at the age of 82.

Rigg, who rose to prominence in the 1960s through her starring role as Emma Peel in The Avengers alongside Patrick Macnee, enjoyed a long and varied career, playing Lady Olenna Tyrell in HBO’s smash hit Game of Thrones, a show she admitted in 2019 that she had never watched. She also played Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, or Tracy Bond, James Bond’s first and only wife to date, in the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

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Sue Perkins: Along the US-Mexico Border review – darkness leavened with a dash of wit

More of a travelogue than a documentary, Perkins begins in the border town of Tijuana, where she finds tequila-fuelled parties sit uneasily alongside the scale of asylum seekers’ suffering

Watching Sue Perkins present a programme always brings to mind the moment in Blackadder when Edmund, in financial straits, is showing prospective buyers around his home. “You’ve really worked out your banter, haven’t you?” says one of them. “No, not really,” replies Blackadder. “This is a different thing – it’s spontaneous, and it’s called wit.”

Wit is Perkins’ USP. All presenters have warmth and intelligence, though both can vary in degree and kind, and in the proportions in which they are blended. But it is Perkins’ ability to think on her feet – and, I suppose, the willingness of her editors to keep it in and not flatten her into traditional affectlessness – that marks her (and the likes of Grayson Perry and Paul O’Grady when he lets rip) out. It adds zest to proceedings. This is always welcome, even when – as with last night’s opening episode of the two-part Sue Perkins: Along the US-Mexico Border (BBC One) – the programme’s subject matter is notably colourful stuff on its own.

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Goodies star Bill Oddie reveals he has been ‘very ill’

Performer and presenter says he has been suffering ‘almost fatal’ condition of lithium toxicity

Former Goodies star Bill Oddie has revealed he has been suffering from an “almost fatal” condition this summer.

The 79-year-old conservationist and birdwatcher used Twitter to tell followers he had been “very ill” with “lithium toxicity”.

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BBC boss Tim Davie to crack down on staff airing views on social media

New director general says he wants to focus on impartiality after accusations of bias

Tim Davie is to crack down on staff posting their views on social media in a move to restore the view of the BBC as impartial, and raised the question of slashing the corporation’s output by a fifth, cutting more jobs and potentially shutting TV channels.

The new director general said the BBC had to focus on impartiality to address accusations of bias from politicians on both sides of the political divide.

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Does Netflix’s Blood and Water show the ‘real’ South Africa?

The streaming giant’s Cape Town-set series has been a huge hit. But do dramas of its ilk lack authenticity, or is their global feel the key to their success?

Neon lights dance across an infinity pool, while, inside an enormous mansion, couples canoodle in immaculate white corridors and the cool kids sneak away to smoke. At this kind of party, there are those who are recognised at the door and those who have to blag to get their name on the guestlist. As the birthday girl schmoozes with her guests, an awkward attendee does anything to escape the hubbub and keep her head down, as red cups pile up in the garden and a queue forms for the bar.

So far, so teen drama. But this isn’t London or LA: the two girls are Fikile Bhele and Puleng Khumalo, and the show is Blood and Water, set in South Africa. The second African series produced and released by Netflix, it focuses on the class divide between private Parkhurst school in Cape Town and its unnamed public counterpart, as well as Khumalo’s search for her missing sister. Like many dramas aimed at younger viewers, the first instalment kicks off in the midst of a debauched, booze-soaked gathering before branching out into the dark underbelly of popularity – think student-teacher relationships and moneyed parents wielding their power in the education system in the form of “donations”.

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Alan Partridge on his new podcast: ‘This is the real, raw, be-cardiganed me’

He’s back – sporting a post-lockdown haircut and hosting a new podcast. Britain’s No 1 raconteur talks about his new hat, driving a Vauxhall, and why Boris Johnson looks like the evil rabbit in Watership Down

Turn right out of Norwich railway station, take the number 12 bus, change at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, ride eight stops on the number 4 towards Swanton Morley, walk 1.1 miles, and you can’t help but spot the twin louvred conical towers of the oasthouse that Alan Partridge calls home. It is from this very oasthouse that Partridge – raconteur, national treasure, wit – broadcasts his brand new podcast, From the Oasthouse: The Alan Partridge Podcast, and to which Partridge has invited the Guardian.

Partridge bounds out to greet me in what appears to be an effusive show of hospitality. He offers a handshake before snapping it back into a more pandemic-appropriate wave. “I am so fine with social distancing,” he says. “Remember, I work in television where you’re forever mauled, hugged and leant on by over-pally floor managers or cackling makeup ladies. Now I can say, ‘Get your hands off me!’ without appearing in any way rude.”

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Michaela Coel isn’t buying anything new next month. Are you?

From Chewing Gum to I May Destroy You, the writer and actor has carved out a groove as a true original. Who better to convince us all to shop secondhand?

Michaela Coel could be wearing anything she wanted, right now. As the star and creator of I May Destroy You, the BBC drama that became a water cooler hit even in a summer without water coolers, Coel is the hottest property in town. Any fashion designer would jump at the chance to dress her. But today she is enthusing over a time-pummelled black sweatshirt with faded insignia, sourced not from a Bond Street boutique but from Oxfam’s cavernous warehouse in Batley, North Yorkshire. “I’m here for it,” she murmurs approvingly, pulling it over her head.

She’s here for all of it. She’s here for the pale pink Burberry trenchcoat, another Batley treasure unearthed for our shoot by Oxfam’s senior fashion adviser, Bay Garnett, a nod to Coel’s neon bubblegum bob as Arabella in IMDY. She’s here for the dynamite 80s jeans and matching jacket in toffee-apple faux-leather, a rare Gaultier Jeans find. She’s here for the Fanta-coloured boilersuit (think Ripley in Alien meets Bananarama on Top Of The Pops), for the elegant 70s Jaeger mustard blazer with anchor-stamped gold buttons, and for a knockout pair of Versace high-waisted shorts, illustrated with classic Rita Hayworth film posters.

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Rivals plan Fox News-style opinionated TV station in UK

Groups pitching to perceived desire for alternative output as trust in BBC falls

Rival efforts are under way to launch a Fox News-style opinionated current affairs TV station in Britain to counter the BBC.

One group is promising a news channel “distinctly different from the out-of-touch incumbents” and has already been awarded a licence to broadcast by the media regulator, Ofcom, under the name “GB News”. Its founder has said the BBC is a “disgrace” that “is bad for Britain on so many levels” and “needs to be broken up”.

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Maisie Williams: ‘The people at the top of TV don’t want equality’

As the Game of Thrones star returns to screens in Sky’s Two Weeks to Live, she talks on-set scrapes, off-screen battles, and how the television industry could up its game overnight

When Maisie Williams was shooting a fight scene in her latest TV project, Two Weeks to Live, she took a blow to the head. “I got hit a couple of times with a glass bottle,” she says, matter-of-factly over the phone. I can’t see her face but I can almost hear her smiling, a faint giggle detectable between sentences. “I also kicked my co-star in the chin and made his mouth bleed. Other than that, it was pretty scrape-free.”

A kick in the face and multiple rounds of bottling might sound like the opposite of “scrape-free”, but perhaps it is for an actor such as Williams, best known for her role as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones. As the noblewoman turned assassin, Williams’s fight scenes included some of the show’s most pivotal, such as the one in the bloody, battle-filled penultimate episode, The Long Night, which Williams trained for a year to film.

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Danbury, Connecticut will name sewage plant after John Oliver

  • British-born comic abused city in recent segment on juries
  • Mayor says plant is ‘full of crap just like you, John’

Officials in Danbury, Connecticut, say they will name their sewage plant after the comedian John Oliver, in retaliation for an expletive-filled rant about the city on his HBO show.

Related: John Oliver: US is 'making a mockery of the phrase a jury of your peers'

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The week in TV: Lovecraft Country; African Renaissance; Manctopia and more

Horrors of all kinds abound in HBO’s brilliant new drama; Afua Hirsch explores African history; and inside the mind of Derren Brown

Lovecraft Country (Sky Atlantic) | sky.com
African Renaissance: When Art Meets Power (BBC Four) | BBC iPlayer
Handmade in Africa (BBC Four) | BBCiPlayer
Derren Brown: 20 Years of Mind Control (Channel 4) | 4oD
Manctopia: Billion Pound Property Boom (BBC Two) | BBC iPlayer

Lovecraft Country was, in its ambitions and its potential heft, already a phenomenon just on paper. Add in the presence of JJ Abrams and Jordan Peele as executive producers, along with a sublime cast of strength in depth, and it landed on our screens last week with a burnished gleam of unmistakable triumph. It is that rare thing: a show that can deliver gut-punch messages of contempt (and hope), yet which remembers throughout that it’s a drama, keeping one thrillingly on the edge, ripe and reeking with surprise.

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Alan Davies: ‘I’ve become a huge enemy of silence and secrecy’

The comedian and actor has written a raw and compelling book about his early life, including the abuse he suffered from his father

Your memoir details personal experiences you have never talked about in public before. This includes the sexual abuse you suffered as a child, at the hands of your father, after your mother’s death from leukaemia. Why write about these experiences now?
I kept feeling their presence in their absence from so many parts of my life. I didn’t have the courage, strength or fortitude to confront them. They were never in my comedy. I’d always been focused to get to the next milestone, the next show, the next fringe. I’d also already written a memoir [2010’s Teenage Revolution: Growing Up in the 80s] but all the things that mattered were missing.

In 2016, you started a part-time MA in creative writing at Goldsmiths University. Was that to help tell this story?
I wanted to get this material out of myself, but I was writing about my life in the third person at first, workshopping it as short stories. Then, towards the end of the first year, I wrote something for an assessment, which became a chapter in the book, relatively unchanged [a chapter called Hands, which details the first incident of sexual abuse Davies suffered, at the age of “eight or nine”]. The assessment just had my student number on it, so it felt safe to write it. The tutor feedback was anonymous, too. It allowed me to present a version of myself where nothing was concealed from view.

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The week in podcasts and radio: On the Ground – review

A notorious ‘friendly fire’ incident during the Iraq war is picked apart in this meticulous 5 Live podcast

On the Ground (BBC 5 Live) | BBC Sounds

Audrey Gillan is known to radio lovers as the Scottish reporter who befriended two rough sleepers in Spitalfields, London, and made a six-part series about them. Tara and George was broadcast on Radio 4, and won radio programme of the year at the 2019 Broadcasting Press Guild awards. It was a tender and affecting series, with Gillan, if not at the forefront, decidedly involved: she was honest about her feelings around homelessness, her worries about Tara and George and how they were living. It was this relationship – as well as the one between Tara and George themselves – that gave the series its flavour and heart.

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Filmmakers told to ditch sex scenes to protect actors from coronavirus

Updated guidance suggests directors take inspiration from classic films made when sex on screen was prohibited

British film and TV directors are being encouraged to seek inspiration from classic romances such as Casablanca and ditch depictions of sex altogether when planning intimate scenes under new guidelines for directing during the Covid-19 crisis.

Directors UK, the professional association for screen directors in Britain, suggested some creative alternatives to avoid sex scenes with physical interaction while social distancing is required, in an update to its Directing Nudity and Simulated Sex guidelines, which are focused on safe working during the pandemic.

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Three top producers ‘part ways’ with Ellen show after internal investigation

Departures come amid backstage turmoil and complaints of bullying, racism and sexual misconduct against three producers

Three top producers on the The Ellen DeGeneres Show have exited the popular television talkshow, Warner Bros said on Monday, after an internal investigation into complaints of bullying, racism and sexual misconduct against them.

A spokesperson for Warner Bros, which produces the show, on Monday said that three senior producers had “parted ways” with the show.

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‘Could I feel what they were doing? Yes’: Rob Delaney on the pain and pleasure of his vasectomy

The actor and comedian decided it was time to have the procedure after he and his wife had had four children. Here he writes candidly about the experience, and why it was the kindest cut

I got a vasectomy a few months ago. A vasectomy is when they cut and tie off the vas deferens, which are these little tubes in your ball sack (scrotum) so that there’s no sperm (sperm) in your jizz (semen) when you bust (ejaculate). I did this because my wife and I don’t want her to get pregnant again. It doesn’t mean we don’t want any more kids, it just means that if we did have any more, they’d have to be adopted or stolen or left to us because friends or family with young kids died in a plane crash or had their brain stems blown apart by less-lethal rounds fired at them at point-blank range while they were waiting in an 11-hour line attempting to vote in November.

I figured after all my wife, Leah, and her body had done for our family, the least I could do was let a doctor slice into my bag and sterilise me. Leah had taken birth control for decades, which is a giant pain in the ass and also decidedly sexist pharmacological slavery. IMAGINE a man having to remember to not only take a pill every day, but also having to deal with employer-provided private insurance prescription plans in the US which drop you or sell your plan to another company without telling you, among other crimes. And messing up once could land you with – for example – an ectopic pregnancy that isn’t diagnosed soon enough because you’re afraid to go to the doctor due to your high deductible, so you literally die and are dead, in a cemetery. I think I speak for my bros when I say: “No thanks!”

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