Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2025-10-08T17:19:27.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Still playing make-believe
items: Doctor Who icon Jodie Whittaker discusses exciting new role: "Suranne Jones is a swan and I’m a feral chicken"
items: One last job before I die
items: Suranne Jones says producing shows like Frauds could be her retirement plan "when I maybe don’t want to act so much"
items: Meet the Guinnesses
items: Peaky Blinders writer is “firing on all cylinders” with new show, reveals James Norton – as its cast explain their characters
items: Ready for action
items: Stephen Graham and Adolescence director explain why Netflix crime drama is filmed in one take
items: We're going on a bear hunt
items: 'I had a scorpion in my trousers'
items: 'I faced my mortality'
items: Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen came "face-to-face with mortality" on Celebrity Bear Hunt
items: Shirley Ballas on being hunted by Bear Grylls: "I had a scorpion in my trousers!"
items: Back in the game
items: Squid Game season 2 will feature games cut from the first season
items: Back in the Game
items: Queen Charlotte star Golda Rosheuvel teases Bridgerton Easter eggs in new series
items: Jodie Whittaker: 'If I don't go back to Doctor Who, I'll be devastated'
items: Maureen Lipman talks DNA Journey, Celebrity Gogglebox and TV habits
items: David and Georgia Tennant, Michael Sheen and Anna Lundberg on what is and isn’t 'Staged' on their Zoom drama
items: Spitting Image creator Roger Law on bringing satire to Britbox as he reveals what he really thinks of Boris
items: Kate Beckinsale: starring in The Widow was a "gamble"
items: "I like British writing": Julie Walters reveals why she turned down Hollywood
items: Keeley Hawes: I found The Missing too traumatic to watch
items: Meet Game of Thrones season six's biggest and baddest villains
items: Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams: Arya is completely different to the character I auditioned for
items: Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau: Being a Lannister doesn't necessarily mean being bad

Still playing make-believe
type: item
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: App
subject: App features
description: In Frauds, Jodie Whittaker’s character is adept at putting on masks – which is a skill she’s been perfecting all her life
encoded: Add Frauds to your watchlist It’s an image that once seeded is hard to suppress: “Suranne is a swan,” says Jodie Whittaker, “and I’m a feral chicken.” That’s one way of describing two of Britain’s best actors, an award-winning duo yoked together as the odd couple in ITV’s current drama Frauds about a pair of hucksters on their last heist. Whittaker’s Sam is the calm and Jones’s Bert is the chaos, but in real life, says Whittaker, it’s the other way round. “Suranne is a swan because although there might be little legs pedalling underneath, she is gliding along on top. Then there’s me saying, ‘Argh, I’ve lost my scripts. I think I’ve left part of my costume in my trailer.’ I’m like the 14-year-old boy who forgot their backpack and gets sent home from school. I’m loud, noisy and unfocused whereas Suranne is just such an amazing person to be around because it feels like she’s got her s**t together.” Yet, with all due respect to feral chickens, Jodie Whittaker has very much got her s**t together. If every modern actor craves variety, meaty scripts, a dab of acclaim and a modicum of fame, then Whittaker is currently in pole position. She was and remains, of course, the first female Time Lord in Doctor Who. But since then, she’s zigged and zagged from hard-edged dramas like Jack Thorne’s Toxic Town and the second series of Jimmy McGovern’s Time, to roles doing cartoon voiceovers, the new job in Frauds – funny, smart, action-packed — and after this a starring role in the much-anticipated TV adaptation of James Graham’s hit play Dear England. Along the way there’s always the Tardis to fall back on, as she did in her surprise cameo earlier this year. “I’m really lucky – I get to work in some very intense, emotional dramas and I will always want to be a part of that. But there is something very refreshing about getting to the end of the script of episode one of something like Frauds and going, ‘Oh, I haven’t cried.’” Putting on Sam’s shoes also gave Whittaker license to be a b…

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Doctor Who icon Jodie Whittaker discusses exciting new role: "Suranne Jones is a swan and I’m a feral chicken"
type: item
date: 2025-10-06T23:01:33.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: In Frauds, Jodie Whittaker’s character is adept at putting on masks – which is a skill she’s been perfecting all her life.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. It’s an image that once seeded is hard to suppress: “Suranne is a swan,” says Jodie Whittaker, “and I’m a feral chicken.” That’s one way of describing two of Britain’s best actors, an award-winning duo yoked together as the odd couple in ITV’s current drama Frauds about a pair of hucksters on their last heist. Whittaker’s Sam is the calm and Jones’s Bert is the chaos, but in real life, says Whittaker, it’s the other way round. “Suranne is a swan because although there might be little legs pedalling underneath, she is gliding along on top. Then there’s me saying, ‘Argh, I’ve lost my scripts. I think I’ve left part of my costume in my trailer.’ I’m like the 14-year-old boy who forgot their backpack and gets sent home from school. I’m loud, noisy and unfocused whereas Suranne is just such an amazing person to be around because it feels like she’s got her s**t together.” Yet, with all due respect to feral chickens, Jodie Whittaker has very much got her s**t together. If every modern actor craves variety, meaty scripts, a dab of acclaim and a modicum of fame, then Whittaker is currently in pole position. She was and remains, of course, the first female Doctor in Doctor Who. But since then, she’s zigged and zagged from hard-edged dramas like Jack Thorne’s Toxic Town and the second series of Jimmy McGovern’s Time, to roles doing cartoon voiceovers, the new job in Frauds – funny, smart, action-packed — and after this a starring role in the much-anticipated TV adaptation of James Graham’s hit play Dear England. Along the way there’s always the Tardis to fall back on, as she did in her surprise cameo earlier this year. “I’m really lucky – I get to work in some very intense, emotional dramas and I will always want to be a part of that. But there is something very refreshing about getting to the end of the script of episode one of something like Frauds and going, ‘Oh, I haven’t cried.’” Putting on Sam’s shoes also gave Whitta…

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One last job before I die
type: item
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Suranne Jones stars as a con artist in a thriller with female friendship at its heart
encoded: Add Frauds to your watchlist So many stories start on Coronation Street, and the partnership between Suranne Jones and writer Anne-Marie O’Connor is no different. “We’d known each other socially,” explains Jones, who played Karen McDonald on the cobbles between 2000 and 2004, “through Jen and Lee [Jenny James and Lee Boardman, both actors on the show].” “And we were with the same agency,” adds O’Connor. “But I would never have gone to Suranne and said, ‘Hey, will you have a look at a script’, because that would just have been mortifying.” It took Jones writing a page treatment for what would become the 2023 ITV drama Maryland for her agents to pair them up. It worked so well that on the first day of filming in Ireland, an exec from the production company asked them what else they had. View Green Video on the source website “We really winged it,” says Jones. “In fact, you winged it, AM. You said, ‘We’ve been talking about this new series about some frauds.’ It was freezing cold that day and we said, ‘It needs to be different to Maryland – it needs to be hot.’” “That’s about as much as we had,” says O’Connor, who then set the series in southern Spain. Their work together on Maryland meant that ITV’s head of drama, Polly Hill, was listening, and Frauds was quickly commissioned. Jones and O’Connor duly got out their whiteboard to flesh out their story. “I’ve not met anybody,” O’Connor says, “who wants to dive into characters’ stories and what makes people tick in the way that Suranne does.” For Maryland, a story about sisters, they talked about family. For Frauds, the subject was female friendship. “For me, it was about sharing all of my memories, good and bad, with Anne-Marie,” says Jones. “Even traumatic stories – it was stuff that I needed to get out. It’s like purging when we work together. If Anne-Marie gets stuck on anything she’ll ask me, ‘How would you feel in this moment?’” And so together they created a pair of chalk-and-cheese grifters taking on one last job …

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Suranne Jones says producing shows like Frauds could be her retirement plan "when I maybe don’t want to act so much"
type: item
date: 2025-09-29T23:01:13.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: ITV
subject: Magazine
subject: News
description: The actor spoke to Radio Times magazine about her darkly comic drama for ITV, which she co-created and executive produced.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. So many stories start on Coronation Street, and the partnership between Suranne Jones and writer Anne-Marie O’Connor is no different. “We’d known each other socially,” explains Jones, who played Karen McDonald on the cobbles between 2000 and 2004, “through Jen and Lee [Jenny James and Lee Boardman, both actors on the show].” “And we were with the same agency,” adds O’Connor. “But I would never have gone to Suranne and said, ‘Hey, will you have a look at a script’, because that would just have been mortifying.” It took Jones writing a page treatment for what would become the 2023 ITV drama Maryland for her agents to pair them up. It worked so well that on the first day of filming in Ireland, an exec from the production company asked them what else they had. “We really winged it,” says Jones. “In fact, you winged it, AM. You said, ‘We’ve been talking about this new series about some frauds.’ It was freezing cold that day and we said, ‘It needs to be different to Maryland – it needs to be hot.’” “That’s about as much as we had,” says O’Connor, who then set the series in southern Spain. Their work together on Maryland meant that ITV’s head of drama, Polly Hill, was listening, and Frauds was quickly commissioned. Jones and O’Connor duly got out their whiteboard to flesh out their story. “I’ve not met anybody,” O’Connor says, “who wants to dive into characters’ stories and what makes people tick in the way that Suranne does.” For Maryland, a story about sisters, they talked about family. For Frauds, the subject was female friendship. “For me, it was about sharing all of my memories, good and bad, with Anne-Marie,” says Jones. “Even traumatic stories – it was stuff that I needed to get out. It’s like purging when we work together. If Anne-Marie gets stuck on anything she’ll ask me, ‘How would you feel in this moment?’” And so together they created a pair of chalk-and-cheese grifters taking on one last job on the Costa de…

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Meet the Guinnesses
type: item
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The stars reveal the flawed family members behind their new roles
encoded: Add House of Guinness to your watchlist Anthony Boyle is Arthur Guinness “I play Arthur, the eldest. He left Ireland early on and went to Eton. He rejected his Irishness; he’s a classic, what we Irish would call a ‘West Brit’ — someone who aspires to be more English than Irish. Arthur loves the trappings of high society and likes British rule. He’s in London having a lovely time, living his authentic, true self, when his father dies and he has to return home. “He thinks he’s going to get a chunk of money from his father’s will. But he ends up tied to his brother Edward; they have to run the brewery and share all the money — or else they both get nothing. Arthur has also been concealing his sexuality. He’s gay — this was true — and he met partners at Eton. He just wants to go to London, have sex, drink, smoke, and have the craic. Whereas Edward lives the Guinness brand, as we’d say now.” Louis Partridge is Edward Guinness “Edward is the youngest brother and, along with Arthur, the inheritor of the brewery. He’s lived in his father’s shadow, and he’s always thought, ‘Once Dad pops his clogs, I’m going to run this brewery my way.’ He has ideas, he’s a bit of a strategist and is quite confident in his ability to grow the business. He’s a champion of social benevolence — he pioneered the pension, which is amazing — but it’s because to him benevolence equals votes, votes equals power, power equals expansion, and expansion equals profits. He has ideas to expand Guinness into the New World — ideas that we now know worked. “His problem is the rest of his family. Benjamin’s a complete f***-up and a liability; Arthur’s gay in a time when you could not be gay, and Anne’s sleeping with Rafferty [James Norton]. He just wants these problems to go away so he can concentrate on the business. But then he meets someone he shouldn’t and realises that there’s a life outside the brewery.” Emily Fairn is Anne Plunket (née Guinness) “The eldest daughter of Benjamin Guinness, Anne is a very…

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Peaky Blinders writer is “firing on all cylinders” with new show, reveals James Norton – as its cast explain their characters
type: item
date: 2025-09-15T23:01:57.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
description: Meet the flawed family members of House of Guinness.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. The stars of Netflix's new series House of Guinness discuss their characters in the new show. Anthony Boyle is Arthur Guinness “I play Arthur, the eldest. He left Ireland early on and went to Eton. He rejected his Irishness; he’s a classic, what we Irish would call a ‘West Brit’ — someone who aspires to be more English than Irish. Arthur loves the trappings of high society and likes British rule. He’s in London having a lovely time, living his authentic, true self, when his father dies and he has to return home. “He thinks he’s going to get a chunk of money from his father’s will. But he ends up tied to his brother Edward; they have to run the brewery and share all the money — or else they both get nothing. Arthur has also been concealing his sexuality. He’s gay — this was true — and he met partners at Eton. He just wants to go to London, have sex, drink, smoke, and have the craic. Whereas Edward lives the Guinness brand, as we’d say now.” Louis Partridge is Edward Guinness “Edward is the youngest brother and, along with Arthur, the inheritor of the brewery. He’s lived in his father’s shadow, and he’s always thought, ‘Once Dad pops his clogs, I’m going to run this brewery my way.’ He has ideas, he’s a bit of a strategist and is quite confident in his ability to grow the business. He’s a champion of social benevolence — he pioneered the pension, which is amazing — but it’s because to him benevolence equals votes, votes equals power, power equals expansion, and expansion equals profits. He has ideas to expand Guinness into the New World — ideas that we now know worked. “His problem is the rest of his family. Benjamin’s a complete f***-up and a liability; Arthur’s gay in a time when you could not be gay, and Anne’s sleeping with Rafferty [James Norton]. He just wants these problems to go away so he can concentrate on the business. But then he meets someone he shouldn’t and realises that there’s a life outside the bre…

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height: 4508

Ready for action
type: item
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Stephen Graham reunites with the director of Boiling Point for an unflinching new one-shot drama
encoded: Add Adolescence to your watchlist It is the smallest of bumps but it consigns 45 minutes of hard work to the bin. I’m on-set in South Kirkby, West Yorkshire, watching filming on Adolescence, an extraordinary new Netflix drama starring Stephen Graham and Ashley Walters. Each of the four episodes is one continuous take. In the first, playing out here before my eyes, 13-year-old Jamie (played by newcomer Owen Cooper) gets a knock on the door at his house. Police officers pile in and the boy is arrested for murder. His father Eddie (Graham), shocked and bewildered, joins Jamie in the police car on the journey to the police station. View oEmbed on the source website The house, a real location, is just minutes away from a studio, where the production team have built an entire walk-through police station set. The camera follows Jamie and Eddie in the car – it is literally passed through the window at one end and passed out again when it arrives at the police station – and then the cameraman walks backwards as Jamie is led to be checked in and charged. But then the cameraman nudges a doorframe, ever so gently… “It was a beautiful take,” says Graham afterwards, “but there was a bump. So we can’t use it.” They will do it all again. In fact, the team filmed each episode around ten times before choosing the best take. The end result is a series that is as immediate and bracing as the shocking story it tells. “Where it came from, for me,” explains Graham, who co-created and wrote Adolescence with Jack Thorne (The Virtues, Toxic Town), “is there was an incident in Liverpool, a young girl, and she was stabbed to death by a young boy. I just thought, why? “Then there was another young girl in south London who was stabbed to death at a bus stop. And there was this thing up North, where that young girl Brianna Ghey was lured into the park by two teenagers, and they stabbed her. I just thought, what’s going on? What is this that’s happening?” Graham, who has two teenage children of hi…

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Stephen Graham and Adolescence director explain why Netflix crime drama is filmed in one take
type: item
date: 2025-03-04T00:01:04.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
subject: On demand
description: "Doing this you combine both disciplines, theatre and television."
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. It is the smallest of bumps but it consigns 45 minutes of hard work to the bin. I’m on-set in South Kirkby, West Yorkshire, watching filming on Adolescence, an extraordinary new Netflix drama starring Stephen Graham and Ashley Walters. Each of the four episodes is one continuous take. In the first, playing out here before my eyes, 13-year-old Jamie (played by newcomer Owen Cooper) gets a knock on the door at his house. Police officers pile in and the boy is arrested for murder. His father Eddie (Graham), shocked and bewildered, joins Jamie in the police car on the journey to the police station. The house, a real location, is just minutes away from a studio, where the production team have built an entire walk-through police station set. The camera follows Jamie and Eddie in the car – it is literally passed through the window at one end and passed out again when it arrives at the police station – and then the cameraman walks backwards as Jamie is led to be checked in and charged. But then the cameraman nudges a doorframe, ever so gently… “It was a beautiful take,” says Graham afterwards, “but there was a bump. So we can’t use it.” They will do it all again. In fact, the team filmed each episode around ten times before choosing the best take. The end result is a series that is as immediate and bracing as the shocking story it tells. “Where it came from, for me,” explains Graham, who co-created and wrote Adolescence with Jack Thorne (The Virtues, Toxic Town), “is there was an incident in Liverpool, a young girl, and she was stabbed to death by a young boy. I just thought, why? “Then there was another young girl in south London who was stabbed to death at a bus stop. And there was this thing up North, where that young girl Brianna Ghey was lured into the park by two teenagers, and they stabbed her. I just thought, what’s going on? What is this that’s happening?” Graham, who has two teenage children of his own with his …

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We're going on a bear hunt
type: item
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: App
subject: App features
description: In a new survival series, 12 celebs confront caimans, spiders and jumping ants while being hunted down by Bear Grylls — so what happened when RT's Benji Wilson was sent to Costa Rica to experience it too?
encoded: Add Celebrity Bear Hunt to your watchlist Normally, when a bunch of celebrities are dropped into the jungle for television entertainment, the worst they have to put up with is a bowl of sheep’s testicles and a ribbing from Ant and Dec. Celebrity Bear Hunt is different. Granted, the celebrities are still dumped in the jungle, but this time the jungle is in Costa Rica – and their judges are not the voting public, but former SAS soldier and survival expert, Bear Grylls. As Bear puts the celebrities – including Shirley Ballas, Mel B, Boris Becker and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen – through a series of survival challenges, those who fail to pass muster face the “Bear Pit” – a Hunger Games-style face-off set in four square kilometres of savannah, scrub and jungle, where they’re hunted down by Bear himself over 60 minutes and, if captured, eliminated from the show. Meanwhile, presenter Holly Willoughby, once a guest host of I’m a Celebrity… herself, looks on with concern. But really, how scary is Bear Grylls? Billed by Netflix as “one of the world’s most fearsome predators”, from the comfort of my sofa I scoffed at the idea that the 50-year-old former Chief Scout might have some bite with his bark. I’ve watched him eat elephant poo to survive in the wild, but I’m not actually scared of him. Or rather, I wasn’t until last year, when I was flown to the set of Celebrity Bear Hunt in Costa Rica and dumped in the “Bear Pit” myself. It turns out it is a genuine test of survival skills. The conditions are challenging in themselves – hot, humid and dehydrating. I’m warned about Lyme disease, told that my feet may get fungal infections and that there are face-eating spiders and bullhorn acacias (which harbour armies of ants that jump on you if you brush against them). Luckily, Grylls himself appears from nowhere to give me some tips. He starts by smearing mud on my face. “At least get you looking the part,” he says. “When you’re lying in the dirt motionless, a caking of dirt helps protec…

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'I had a scorpion in my trousers'
type: item
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Strictly’s head judge Shirley Ballas was out of her comfort zone, but gets a ten for courage
encoded: Add Celebrity Bear Hunt to your watchlist Why did you agree to be hunted by Bear Grylls? When I first got asked to do it, I talked to my mother. She said, “Don’t do it! You’re too old! It’s too far away! You’re going to get bitten by a snake or a spider.” But I thought, why not put myself so far out of my comfort zone that people think, “Is she mad?” I was the eldest there, by the way. Boris Becker and I, we were like Mum and Dad. But Bear Grylls believes we’ve all got an action hero inside us. I think I found that in myself. How did it feel being hunted in the Bear Pit? They put you in this head-to-toe costume so you don’t get bitten, then you’ve got to find these tools to get yourself out before he catches you. It’s a very strange feeling to be hunted. God, I was sweating. When it got late in the day and the shadows were coming, all the time knowing Bear is lurking... it terrified me to death. Did you discover anything about yourself? I lived without a mobile phone for the whole time we were there. First day, first two days, difficult. After that, great. Didn’t have to talk to anyone. I think I learnt that I like my own company. What was it like going from being a judge to a contestant? It’s not a problem for me. I like to be told what to do. I’m the same on Strictly. What do you need from me to make this work? Tell me. How did this challenge compare to what Chris McCausland did on Strictly? It was phenomenal, what Dianne [Buswell, his professional dance partner] did with Chris McCausland. I mean, for Chris, it was difficult because he didn’t even see shadows, did he? Even he thought he wasn’t going to last past week two. Have you picked up any survival skills? Yeah, if I get stuck on a desert island, I know how to collect pee and use it to stay alive. Did you drink your own wee? I wouldn’t exactly say it was mine… I’m just going to say it taught me survival skills beyond anything else. I mean, I had a scorpion in my trousers! They have all sorts of critters. Did …

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'I faced my mortality'
type: item
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Far from the lap of luxury, interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen surprised himself...
encoded: Add Celebrity Bear Hunt to your watchlist You get put through the wringer in this series — why subject yourself to it all? I live a life of unendurable luxury, of insufferable comfort. So there was something at the back of my head saying, “What would it be like? Is it survivable?” There is that sort of really bolshie, irritating instinct that makes me feel I should do something like this, because I’ve never done it before. And if I don’t do it soon, the chances of ever being able to get away with it will be incredibly compromised. From the glimpse we get in the trailer it doesn’t look like you did get away with it? I’m not going to blow too much of the surprise but it was literally, I think, one of the few times I have come face to face with mortality. What did you learn about yourself? I thought I was a floppy so-and-so who wouldn’t want to get involved in this stuff – that Bear would detail all these challenges and I’d go, “That’s not for me. I’ll be in my tent with a gin and tonic.” But I discovered I’m actually rather irritatingly gung-ho. I got overexcited at the idea of pushing myself, intoxicated by the surges of testosterone compelling me to want to do well. How were the older celebs supposed to compete against athletes like Danny Cipriani? Well, this is meant to be the point. We were supposed to be divvying up challenges based on our skill sets. I was flying a flag for the elderly contingent alongside Shirley and Boris. The idea was that, particularly Shirley and I, would be strategic about thinking how best to deploy the resources we had. Do you think you might have overdone the camouflage? I admit I might have gone a bit too far. We were supposed to be in camouflage. But I think I looked more like a showgirl: there’s something very Folies Bergère about my camo. But as I pointed out to Holly when she said I might have gone a bit over the top, “Darling, the jungle is over the top.”

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Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen came "face-to-face with mortality" on Celebrity Bear Hunt
type: item
date: 2025-01-28T00:01:34.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Entertainment
subject: Reality TV
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
subject: On demand
description: The TV personality spoke to Radio Times about his Costa Rican adventure for the Netflix series.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. You get put through the wringer in this series – why subject yourself to it all? I live a life of unendurable luxury, of insufferable comfort. So there was something at the back of my head saying, 'What would it be like? Is it survivable?' There is that sort of really bolshie, irritating instinct that makes me feel I should do something like this, because I've never done it before. And if I don't do it soon, the chances of ever being able to get away with it will be incredibly compromised. From the glimpse we get in the trailer it doesn’t look like you did get away with it? I'm not going to blow too much of the surprise but it was literally, I think, one of the few times I have come face to face with mortality. What did you learn about yourself? I thought I was a floppy so-and-so who wouldn’t want to get involved in this stuff – that Bear would detail all these challenges and I’d go, 'That’s not for me. I’ll be in my tent with a gin and tonic'. But I discovered I'm actually rather irritatingly gung-ho. I got overexcited at the idea of pushing myself, intoxicated by the surges of testosterone compelling me to want to do well. How were the older celebs supposed to compete against athletes like Danny Cipriani? Well, this is meant to be the point. We were supposed to be divvying up challenges based on our skill sets. I was flying a flag for the elderly contingent alongside Shirley and Boris. The idea was that, particularly Shirley and I, would be strategic about thinking how best to deploy the resources we had. Do you think you might have overdone the camouflage? I admit I might have gone a bit too far. We were supposed to be in camouflage. But I think I looked more like a showgirl: there's something very Folies Bergère about my camo. But as I pointed out to Holly when she said I might have gone a bit over the top, 'Darling, the jungle is over the top'. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Cele…

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Shirley Ballas on being hunted by Bear Grylls: "I had a scorpion in my trousers!"
type: item
date: 2025-01-28T00:01:09.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Entertainment
subject: Reality TV
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
subject: On demand
description: The Strictly Come Dancing judge talks to Radio Times about survival series Celebrity Bear Hunt.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. When veteran Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas stepped off the helicopter in the Costa Rican jungle and met her fellow contestants for Netflix's new reality contest, Celebrity Bear Hunt, she was concerned. "They were all so young! I was the eldest one there," the 64-year-old says. "I mean, Danny Cipriani is this strapping rugby player… My worry was that I wouldn't be able to hold up my end of the deal because I'm older and I'm not as strong. But I put myself into it 100 per cent. And actually, I think I did relatively well." The challenges of Celebrity Bear Hunt are all about survival – making shelters, tying knots, keeping hydrated (yes, drinking wee is involved), evasion and escape as the wannabe survival experts go head to head with Bear Grylls. But as Ballas points out, "Bear believes there’s an action hero in all of us," and so there’s a fair dollop of self-improvement in this Bear Hunt, too. "Bear's whole credo is that you can find things within yourself in survival that you maybe didn't know were there," she says. "Putting yourself in situations that you could never, ever imagine yourself being in and working as a team. So if you're not a team player, you're in a bit in trouble." And Ballas considers herself a team player. "I'm that kid from a housing estate. I can just fit in. I don't need you to look after me – I'm not an old lady yet. And I didn't go in there with any airs and graces. You know, I'm not that type of person," she says of diva-like behaviour. "We had a few of them, but I wasn't that person." Fellow contestant Boris Becker, who joined Bear Hunt after a stint in prison for bankruptcy fraud, was one of the good guys, she says. "We were like Mum and Dad for the group. I fell in love with that man. Just a lovely human being." She stresses that in the jungle, sometimes a more mature person’s considered approach won the day: "Working things out, thinking and sometimes taking your time a l…

Back in the game
type: item
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Despite global success, Squid Game didn’t make its South Korean creator Hwang Dong-hyuk rich – which is why he’s made a sequel
encoded: Add Squid Game 2 to your watchlist Last year, the director and creator of the ultra-violent South Korean drama Squid Game, Hwang Dong-hyuk, was scrolling through YouTube when he came across a video that stopped him dead. “It was these African children playing Red Light, Green Light,” he says, referring to the now infamous playground game (we’d call it grandmother’s footsteps) that featured in Squid Game. “The biggest surprise for me was just how far and fast the show has reached all over the world,” says Hwang. “Despite the fact that this is a series that kids cannot watch.” Whether or not those kids had watched the 18-rated TV show, the video clip – and countless others like it – proved that its influence was global. In the dying embers of the Covid crisis, somehow a Korean-language take on The Hunger Games took over the world. Released in late 2021, the story of a deadly set of children’s games being played by debt-laden down-and-outs dressed in green tracksuits on a mysterious island, is Netflix’s biggest ever show. It ranked number one in Netflix’s top ten in 94 countries across the world, including the USA, India, Brazil and Turkey. More than 142 million households spent over 1.65 billion hours watching it in the first 28 days of its release. Here was a genuine cultural phenomenon, leading to a worldwide resurgence of interest in Korean culture. It earned Hwang Dong-hyuk an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, making him the first Asian winner and the first native Korean in the category. It was also the first time a non-English language series had triumphed. Even so, he’s still surprised to see African children mimicking his creation. “I think it came as a shock to me to really see how much influence and impact we have in this day and age,” says 53-year-old Hwang. Squid Game was a global smash that almost no one, its creator included, expected. Now, on Boxing Day, the games begin again, with a third and final series set for 2025. “Back when I was …

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Squid Game season 2 will feature games cut from the first season
type: item
date: 2024-12-10T00:01:11.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
description: "Much like season 1, all of them are close to children's games, where they have to be very simple and easy for everyone to instantly understand."
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Last year, the director and creator of the ultra-violent South Korean drama Squid Game, Hwang Dong-hyuk, was scrolling through YouTube when he came across a video that stopped him dead. "It was these African children playing Red Light, Green Light," he says, referring to the now infamous playground game (we’d call it grandmother’s footsteps) that featured in Squid Game. "The biggest surprise for me was just how far and fast the show has reached all over the world," says Hwang. "Despite the fact that this is a series that kids cannot watch." Whether or not those kids had watched the 18-rated TV show, the video clip – and countless others like it – proved that its influence was global. In the dying embers of the Covid crisis, somehow a Korean-language take on The Hunger Games took over the world. Released in late 2021, the story of a deadly set of children’s games being played by debt-laden down-and-outs dressed in green tracksuits on a mysterious island, is Netflix’s biggest ever show. It ranked number one in Netflix’s top ten in 94 countries across the world, including the USA, India, Brazil and Turkey. More than 142 million households spent over 1.65 billion hours watching it in the first 28 days of its release. Here was a genuine cultural phenomenon, leading to a worldwide resurgence of interest in Korean culture. It earned Hwang Dong-hyuk an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, making him the first Asian winner and the first native Korean in the category. It was also the first time a non-English language series had triumphed. Even so, he’s still surprised to see African children mimicking his creation. "I think it came as a shock to me to really see how much influence and impact we have in this day and age," says 53-year-old Hwang. Squid Game was a global smash that almost no one, its creator included, expected. Now, on Boxing Day, the games begin again, with a third and final series set for 2025.…

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Back in the Game
type: item
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: App
subject: App features
description: On set in South Korea, RT gets an early glimpse of the follow-up to the hit drama, Squid Game
encoded: Add Squid Game to your watchlist How do you follow-up Netflix’s biggest ever show? For the director of Squid Game, Hwang Dong-hyuk, coming up with Squid Game 2 was a huge challenge — not least because, as he admits speaking on set in South Korea, “nearly everyone died!” View oEmbed on the source website Nearly, but not quite everyone. The show’s hero Gi-hun, played by Lee Jung-jae, was the sole character who did make it through the first series’ gauntlet of deadly children’s games to take the first prize of 45.6 billion Korean Won (around £28 million). Now, he’s back in the game. “Remember,” says director Hwang, “that at the end of season one, Gi-hun promised to find the guys who host the games. That’s the big storyline of season two: he goes into the game once again to find who that is. That’s why we’re here again.” “Here” is a production studio in the South Korean city of Daejeon, an hour south of Seoul, on the set of Squid Game’s infamous maze stairs, a series of staircases looking like something created by MC Escher, which take the contestants from their lodgings to each of the games. Next to the maze stairs is the contestants’ dormitory — and with details of the new series plot kept top secret, it’s on our way between the two sets that Radio Times spots a clue. Passing the costume department, alongside the ranks of familiar green tracksuits and pink guards’ jumpsuits, we notice a box of patches: Xs and Os for the Squid Game players to wear alongside their numbers. What could it mean? “Aha!” says Hwang. “Well, if season one was about class differences, in season two I wanted to show people siding with other people and the animosity that creates. So those Xs and Os are simple symbols for players voting for who wants to stay in the game and who wants to leave.” Voting, factionalism, anger? In 2024? Once again it looks like Squid Game has tapped into the zeitgeist…

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Queen Charlotte star Golda Rosheuvel teases Bridgerton Easter eggs in new series
type: item
date: 2023-05-04T05:00:46.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Netflix
subject: On demand
description: The universe sort of swirls round within itself, so it will be fascinating to see whether the fans notice little nuances."
encoded: This interview was originally published in Radio Times magazine. While filming the second season of Netflix hit Bridgerton (wig the size of a mature shrub, 20kg dress strapped on like a bomb disposal suit), actor Golda Rosheuvel, who plays Queen Charlotte in the drama, received a text message. “It said I needed to go to a meeting that evening with [Bridgerton creator] Shonda Rhimes. So I got on to Zoom, there were a few other faces on the screen, a few things were announced and then Shonda said, ‘Oh yeah… we’re going to see if we can do a spin-off about Queen Charlotte.'" Rosheuvel, who’s speaking to Radio Times magazine via Zoom, does her own impression of the shocked emoji to illustrate the group reaction. But actually, she says, it makes total sense: an origin story for her character, the Queen of Great Britain from 1761, after her marriage to King George III, is an origin story for the hit series itself. “It’s set in the same world as Bridgerton, with the same costumes and colours. We wanted to show how Charlotte came to be, the first steps of a 17-year-old young woman who came to this country from Germany and married George, a man she’d never met before. You see the first encounter of George and Charlotte, which is beautiful. And then you see how they live and how they interact with each other and how they get used to each other. Ultimately it is a love story.” Rosheuvel also points out that in spite of the title, Queen Charlotte isn’t just about the young Charlotte, who’s played by India Amarteifio, the young King George (Corey Mylchreest), or the queen in her middle years, when Rosheuvel takes over the role again. “Lady Danbury and Violet and the whole matriarchy are there, too, both young and as they are in Bridgerton. It’s about how these women came to be – how a woman of colour, in Danbury’s case, got into the court and then all of the emotional love, the relationships between the women and how they were built up. But throughout, it’s all kept under the um…

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Jodie Whittaker: 'If I don't go back to Doctor Who, I'll be devastated'
type: item
date: 2022-10-22T08:00:01.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Sci-fi
subject: TV
subject: The Big RT Interview
description: Jodie Whittaker talks to Radio Times Magazine about leaving Doctor Who - and maybe coming back.
encoded: Nobody likes goodbyes – but when you’re an inveterate weeper like Jodie Whittaker, the kind of person who can barely get through a Christmas advert without sniffles, endings are unbearable. “I am that person,” she says. “I cry. I cry if someone else cries and I’m not even upset. So my last scene? That last day? It was so emotional.” “That last day” was Whittaker’s final day as the Doctor. Doctor Who isn’t always shot in scene order – a finale can just as well be filmed on day one – but in this case her regeneration scene was the last thing she filmed as the time-travelling Time Lord. “Ninety per cent of that last day I was basically in bits,” she says. “It’s the best job I’ve ever done and I’ve loved every second of it, but it was the right time. It was like giving yourself stitches – you know you need to do it, but it felt like s**t.” And so she cried. A lot. Jodie Whittaker is, by her own admission, an emotional person, full of smiles, tears and – as in this interview – near-constant laughter. “I’m always on the brink of tears. And I’ve had to contain that playing this character more than I do most characters I’ve ever played. Usually being on the brink is like my winning ticket. With the Doctor I’m much happier [she says it with jazz hands] than I normally am.” Whittaker credits departing showrunner Chris Chibnall – who also wrote for her on three series of Broadchurch as the endlessly browbeaten Beth Latimer – for bringing out the real Jodie. “For a long time I don’t think anyone knew that I had a Yorkshire accent and laughed a lot. Had Chris not been the person to give me this job I don’t think I’d have been seen for it.” Chibnall got to know Whittaker on Broadchurch, where he saw the person in between takes, when she wasn’t performing or doing “troubled”. That person is, in her own description, “a bit fidgety, a bit twitchy, doesn’t sit still, tries to have about 15 conversations but doesn’t quite get to the end of any of them, winds everyone up because I’m re…

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Maureen Lipman talks DNA Journey, Celebrity Gogglebox and TV habits
type: item
date: 2022-04-10T08:00:50.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: Interview
description: The actor and writer spoke to Radio Times magazine about her current favourite programmes and why she wanted to be a part of ITV's genealogical docuseries.
encoded: As Dame Maureen Lipman makes an appearance on the new season of ITV's DNA Journey next week, Radio Times magazine caught up with her to find out all about her time on the show. The Coronation Street actor also revealed what she's been watching on TV recently, and whether or not she will ever make a return to Celebrity Gogglebox. This interview was originally published in Radio Times magazine. What’s the view from your sofa? At the moment I don’t really have a sofa. That’s between me and Sofology... but I have a chair and I have a fake fire, and like to sit there with a glass of wine. And what do you watch? I’ll watch what’s on Sky Arts and then I’ll scroll down and if there’s something like Countryfile on I’ll watch that: it gives me some peace. I don’t care whodunnit. Not for me. What I’m really enjoying is This Is Going to Hurt. It’s wonderful. Beautifully acted, very funny, but also hard and dark. I believe it. What won’t you watch? I hate cookery programmes. The other night, the news from the Ukraine was absolutely heinous and then the television changed from the new... and it’s Nigella. Obviously, this isn’t Nigella’s fault, but there she is saying, “I like steak. I like to do it with double cream...” And I’m just thinking, “This is so inappropriate.” You’re in the new series of ITV’s DNA Journey with Rula Lenska. Why did you want to do it? I didn’t really want to do it because I’m prejudiced against what I call weeping documentaries. Even The Repair Shop, which I used to love, has gone completely lachrymose. And also because I knew that Rula was a Countess, whereas I was from some dismal shtetl. As it happened, it turned out to be one of the nicest things I’ve ever done. You make a great couple… I didn’t really know her until we were both on Corrie. It was great when she was on because I had someone else like me – if you could describe her as like me. She’s a bit more glamorous. We were the elderly crumpets. Well, she was the elderly crumpet. I’m just elderly.…

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David and Georgia Tennant, Michael Sheen and Anna Lundberg on what is and isn’t 'Staged' on their Zoom drama
type: item
date: 2021-01-10T09:00:17.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Comedy
subject: News
subject: TV
subject: The Big RT Interview
description: The Staged stars spoke exclusively to Radio Times about the challenges of filming the Zoom comedy drama at home during lockdown.
encoded: Georgia Tennant has been married to David Tennant for nearly a decade, but it took until last year for the actors to finally work together. It’s not been for a lack of trying. “Nobody seemed to want to let me do it,” explains Georgia. “For one part I was told by a casting director that I wasn’t a convincing partner for him… I was like, ‘But we’re married. With quite a few kids!’ So, basically, every actor who could possibly play the part would have to be eliminated in order for me to be allowed to play his wife…” It’s taken a global pandemic for those stringent criteria to be met – and now, thanks to Staged, Tennant and Michael Sheen’s BBC comedy drama about the two stars trying to rehearse a play in lockdown via Zoom, Mr and Mrs Tennant have finally got to play Mr and Mrs Tennant. “I don’t think this is something we would have imagined we’d have done,” says David, 49, who is sporting a moustache that Georgia calls “slightly creepy”. “But then suddenly in March, Around the World in 80 Days is closed down and I’m airlifted out of South Africa [he was filming a new TV adaptation currently in production] and nothing's happening, all bets are off. And then, well, the only thing we can do has to be from our house. And this idea presented itself.” No other actor could enter the Tennants’ west-London home, so if anyone was going to play David’s wife, it would have to be David’s wife. “And anyway, imagine having to tell my wife that she was being played by someone else,” laughs David. Except that that is precisely the big joke that kicks off Staged series two. America, it is imagined, has seen the first series of Staged and wants to make their own version. It’s a word-for-word rewrite of the UK version but with “David Tennant” and “Michael Sheen” recast with other players. So begins six more 15-minute vignettes of paranoid actors, lockdown delirium and blurred faces (and their partners) shouting at laptops. Funnily enough, say both Tennants as we talk on Zoom, they experien…

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Spitting Image creator Roger Law on bringing satire to Britbox as he reveals what he really thinks of Boris
type: item
date: 2020-10-03T08:00:55.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Comedy
subject: News
subject: TV
subject: The Big RT Interview
description: Benji Wilson talks to Roger Law, the man who brings Spitting Image's flamboyant puppets to life.
encoded: COVID, Brexit, Donald Trump, the climate crisis, doomsters, gloomsters, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Dilyn the Downing Street dog. You may either laugh or cry. Which is why, in the annus horribilis that is 2020, there has never been a better time for the return of Spitting Image. “What’s going on, it’s just terrifying when you stop to think about it,” says Roger Law, one half of the original creative pair that made Spitting Image the benchmark for wrecking-ball satire in the 1980s and 90s. “I suppose that’s the reason I wanted to go back to it. The time is definitely right.” It’s been 24 years since Law and co-creator Peter Fluck saw their latex puppets with the podgy fingers and fabulously foul mouths waddled off stage by ITV. At its peak, Spitting Image was watched by 15 million viewers, and it was still managing around half that when it was axed in 1996. Now, in a different time and wielding the same satirical sledgehammer, Spitting Image is back. But this time, Fluck isn’t involved. “Flucky?” says Law. “Ha! He’s a fine artist now. Does he want any more of this? No, he doesn’t. He made it clear years ago.” But Law, in his Mao hat and swearing like a trooper throughout our chat, now wants more himself. “I was asked all the time, but I just turned it down for ages. It took 13, 14 years of my life. It was like a production line. I did it for so long… I’d had a gutful.” Law moved to Australia with his wife Deirdre to start a new life. Then he moved to China to start a new career as a ceramicist and then back to Australia. They were away for 20 years. “Jolly interesting it was, too. But I got to the point where I had to decide whether to stay in Australia or come home – I’ve got eight grandchildren that I’m curious about on occasion, so I came back.” Needless to say, the political scene he found on his return to Britain was not to his liking. “You realise what a nest it all is. And I sort of wanted to do it again.” Revitalised, Law met with Avalon, the production company be…

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Kate Beckinsale: starring in The Widow was a "gamble"
type: item
date: 2019-04-08T07:00:27.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The Hollywood actress is appearing in a TV series for the first time in 20 years
encoded: Kate Beckinsale can barely remember the last time she appeared on television. “The last time I did a TV series I was getting my A-level results,” she says, racking her brain to recall the few TV roles she’s done. “And I remember I did Emma on ITV a long time ago [it was in 1996 when Beckinsale – now 45 – was 23 years old]. But no, nothing like this. I mean look at me.” She’s referring to her costume for new drama The Widow, written by Harry and Jack Williams, the sibling duo behind The Missing, Liar and Baptiste. It consists of jeans and a dirty singlet. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail and her face is smeared with sweat and dust. “Not exactly high glamour,” says the woman who usually appears in the press as the acme of Hollywood style. Kate Beckinsale to star in new ITV drama from the makers of Liar and The Missing Everything you need to know about The Widow on ITV Listen to the RadioTimes.com Podcast now: subscribe on iTunes/subscribe on Google Podcasts In The Widow, Beckinsale plays Georgia Wells, a woman who believes her aid-worker husband died in a plane crash in the Congo three years previously. Living as a virtual recluse in northern Wales, one day she gashes her leg on a rock and goes to the doctor in town. In the surgery waiting room, the TV is showing a news bulletin with footage of riots in Kinshasa. And there Georgia sees – or thinks she sees – a glimpse of her supposedly dead husband. View oEmbed on the source website That leads her on a journey to Africa and takes her into the shady world of coltan mining (coltan being a highly lucrative component in mobile phones and electric car batteries) and child exploitation. As ever with the Williams brothers, no one is quite who they seem to be, and stories set in seemingly disparate worlds – a blind man in Rotterdam, a Congolese child soldier – are slowly pulled together. It’s a thriller laden with hooks, but sustained with the promise that, come the ending, all will become clear. When Beckinsale was init…

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"I like British writing": Julie Walters reveals why she turned down Hollywood
type: item
date: 2017-11-26T08:08:04.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Documentaries
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The Oscar-nominated actor also talks why she's doing a documentary about trains and how the Weinstein scandal made her "angry more than anything"
encoded: Earlier this month, Julie Walters was made a Dame. As the Queen awarded her the honour, they had a little chat. Walters recalls: “The Queen said, ‘It’s so marvellous that you’ve got this, I’m so pleased. How long have you been doing acting?’ “I said ‘43 years’ and she replied, ‘In so many different things, well done.’” Well said, Ma’am: from Mo Mowlam to Molly Weasley, from Mrs Overall to Mamma Mia! to a sexual predator’s wife in last year’s scorching National Treasure, part of what makes Julie Walters a worthy Dame is her infinite variety. Julie Walters: why National Treasure isn’t about Jimmy Savile Julie Walters and Maxine Peake reflect on their friend Victoria Wood But I have to tell her, as she takes a well-earned breather at her farm in West Sussex, that I never pictured Dame Julie Walters presenting a programme about trains. “Ha! I’m often asked to do documentaries and my agent always says, ‘Don’t do this unless you’re really passionate about it’. The thing is, I’ve got a romantic thing about trains, I really have. I remember steam trains at Snow Hill station in Birmingham from my childhood, going down there with my parents and meeting people and how exciting it was. “And then there’s the filmic thing with Strangers on a Train and Brief Encounter and of course Harry Potter and the Hogwarts Express. So when this came up I thought, ‘Well actually, I quite fancy this.’” The result is a four-part series that is really just an opportunity for more of the British public to meet one of their enduring favourites (the phrase “national treasure” having been rendered off limits ever since the Channel 4 drama), and for her to meet them. View oEmbed on the source website She’s well aware that she is, as she puts it, with another raucous laugh, “stepping into Michael Portillo’s trousers”, but her approach is distinctive – it’s Walters that makes the programmes watchable. People just really like her – and she likes them. She may be acting royalty, but she’s happiest among t…

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Keeley Hawes: I found The Missing too traumatic to watch
type: item
date: 2016-10-12T09:17:57.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The actress, who has three children of her own, plays the mum of a girl who was missing for 11 years
encoded: The first series of The Missing was about a couple’s search for their abducted young child. Keeley Hawes couldn’t watch it, and she still hasn’t. “I haven’t seen it, partly because I’ve got three children myself and I do find things like that quite difficult.” View oEmbed on the source website But when she came to be cast in the second series of The Missing, which flips the plot to tell the story of an abducted child who comes back to her family, Hawes was forced to imagine any mother’s worst nightmare. “We all know the story about Madeleine McCann,” she says. “There’s this line that Kate McCann wrote in her book that really stuck with me. I kept thinking about it. She wrote, ‘Every morning you wake up and think, is today the day?’ Well, in our story, today is the day." Hawes plays Gemma, the wife of Sam (David Morrissey), and in a twist typical of the work of Harry and Jack Williams, who wrote the first series, they are a couple who have managed not to let the abduction of their daughter destroy their lives. View oEmbed on the source website “The family have moved on,” says Hawes, “because they have to get on with their lives — how people get on in this situation I have no idea, but they do. Then they get the call to say that their daughter might have been found. This girl has come back. But then it turns into a story of ‘be careful what you wish for.’” Hawes is reluctant to say any more about the storyline, which is split between 2014 and 2016, just as the first series straddled two timeframes. It also contains the Williams brothers’ trademark mix of plot switchbacks and surprises. “Almost everything I can tell you is a spoiler!” says Hawes. “But people love to second-guess. When I did Line of Duty people were sending photographs of white boards they’d set up trying to figure it out. This will be the same.” What she will say is that for her character things start out badly — there’s something about the returned daughter that doesn’t convince her mother. “And then …

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Meet Game of Thrones season six's biggest and baddest villains
type: item
date: 2016-04-24T08:00:00.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: From High Sparrow to The Mountain, we talked to the worst of the worst of Westeros
encoded: Game of Thrones is know for making its baddies some of the most memorable on television, and as the series returns for its sixth season we're catching up with the maddest, meanest and most compelling villains currently terrorising Westeros. Starting with... The Sociopath Name: Ramsay Bolton Played by: Iwan Rheon You might say that Iwan Rheon has “the look”, with ice-blue eyes and snarling intent, but if you’d seen him as a hero in Misfits, or as a loveable boy next door in the sitcom Vicious, you’d realise he’s not merely a good bad guy. Nonetheless, Ramsay Snow, now Ramsay Bolton, is a character it will be hard for Rheon to leave behind. Ramsay is Edmund from King Lear with a serrated edge: an illegitimate child from a time when that means banishment and rejection. His actions on the battlefield may have got his father Roose Bolton to accept him as the family heir, but in this series Ramsay’s depravities will reach a new low. “The more desperate the characters get, the darker the things that they do,” says Rheon, “and it’s at a point of desperation where you’ll see what Ramsay’s capable of.” View oEmbed on the source website We’ve already seen a fair bit of what Ramsay’s capable of and it’s not been pretty. “I’m often shocked by the things he does and the lengths that he’ll go to — who wouldn’t be?” says Rheon, as we run down the list — rape, torture, mutilation, not to mention sustained mental degradation and a penchant for feeding people to the hounds. “He is a sociopath, without a doubt. There’s a lack of empathy towards others and his love of hurting other things is frightening. But I guess, as an actor, I have to figure out the logic behind all that.” He says: “I pitched Ramsay somewhere between the Joker from The Dark Knight and Dennis the Menace, with a bit of Liam Gallagher in there.” We say: Not even the Joker could crack a smile at some of Ramsay’s horrors. The Cult Leader Name: High Sparrow Played by: Jonathan Pryce One of the original character notes fo…

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Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams: Arya is completely different to the character I auditioned for
type: item
date: 2014-04-06T06:00:00.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Fantasy
subject: News
subject: TV
description: "Maybe one day she’s not going to be such a likeable character," reveals the young British star
encoded: If there’s any underlying theme to Game of Thrones, it’s that you can toss your notions of goodies and baddies out of the window (with Bran Stark), because this is a brutal power struggle where, as the first season tagline ran, “you win or you die”. Arya Stark has not died, unlike almost all of her family. At 12, however, she has already had to cope with first her father, and then almost everyone else she’s ever held dear, being slaughtered in cold blood. Along the way she has gone from cheeky tomboy to cold-eyed killer. “I’m definitely playing an Arya who’s completely different to the one I auditioned for at the beginning,” says 16-year-old Maisie Williams. “She is becoming ruthless and is starting to pick up influences from the Hound [her captor and a fearsome mercenary], who maybe isn’t the best person to be getting influences from when you’re 12 years old.” Maisie, from Somerset, has been on the show since the start. “Arya grew up in a fantastic environment, and never saw any conflict between anyone in her family. But she was wrapped in cotton wool because she was never told the truth about the world in which she lives.” She knows the truth now. “Yeah, she’s had to find out the hard way. I feel like she’s almost angry at her family because she could have done so much better in this game had she known then what she knows now – that it is a game. You have to play hard.” And so Arya, a fan favourite from the books and the series, a character we’re all rooting for, may not turn out to be the heroine everyone wants. She has seen too much, too young. “It’s like in the real world, you know, you see these child stars – like Justin Bieber’s little mishaps at the moment. If you’re influenced by this stuff growing up, then it’s not always going to turn out great. I feel like that’s a possibility for Arya and that maybe one day she’s not going to be such a likeable character.” Williams is well positioned to talk about the perils of too much, too young. She has been working …

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Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau: Being a Lannister doesn't necessarily mean being bad
type: item
date: 2014-04-06T06:00:00.000Z
creator: Benji Wilson
subject: Fantasy
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The Danish actor who plays The Kingslayer Jaime Lannister on what to expect from series four
encoded: When it began in 2011, the sex and violence of HBO’s fantasy drama Game of Thrones – based on the novels by George RR Martin – got some people harrumphing, but many millions more in 60 countries were hooked. The Stark family were the good guys, a sort of salt-of-the-(middle)-earth kind of people. By contrast, the Lannisters were the villains of the piece, metropolitan schemers dead set on reclaiming the throne in King’s Landing, the capital of Westeros. The scene was set in the first episode, when favoured son Jaime Lannister threw the young Stark boy, Bran, out of a tower window after Bran happened to catch Jaime and his twin sister Cersei in flagrante. Not nice. So, incest, infanticide, high treason, more than a little smug – the rap sheet against Jaime when we first met him was long. He began the show as the boo-hiss panto villain, a man known as the Kingslayer on account of having killed his old boss, mad King Aerys Targaryen, and his innate superciliousness instantly made him the preening high-school jock everyone was willing to fail. But last series saw a turnaround. Jaime had been captured by the Starks but a deal was struck and he found himself being escorted back to his family by the Amazonian Brienne of Tarth. He began by mocking her in his usual fashion, snide spirit unbowed – but as the series went on a more human side was revealed. Finally, in a climactic scene (in a bath tub), he told Brienne why he killed the king. It was to stop the monarch murdering nearly everyone in King’s Landing – the Kingslayer was a hero, not a knave. “His whole life has been spent being a soldier and it’s a very hard, brutal, unsentimental world that he lives in,” says Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime. “Clearly he’s lost his innocence over the years and has become very cynical. But meeting Brienne and seeing her innocence, her extreme belief in doing the right thing and being honourable, has kind of reminded him of what he was, what he believes in and maybe what he stil…