Is Martin Clunes's new Huw Edwards drama really 'too soon'?
Martin Clunes stars as the disgraced newsreader in an upcoming production from 5.
Add Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards to your watchlist Whenever television dramatises a recent scandal, the same response quickly surfaces: it’s “too soon”. But the phrase can sometimes feel like a polite way of saying we’d rather not confront our discomfort just yet. After all, awkward truths become far easier to process once they’ve been safely consigned to the past. Given the personality at the heart of it, Power: the Downfall of Huw Edwards (airing on 24 March on 5) is bound to be the latest drama to find itself at the centre of this debate. Dramatising the fall of the once-trusted newsreader was always likely to provoke such a reaction. For years, Edwards appeared as solid and familiar as the desk he sat behind. Yet waiting doesn’t necessarily make such stories more respectful. Time alone can’t solve the ethical question that defines this case. If anything, facing it now may help keep our gaze on the wrongdoing rather than allowing it to fade from view. Arguably, what matters more is tone rather than timing. The risk with a project such as this is that it exploits a traumatic situation for entertainment or humanises its central figure to the point where it feels like mitigation. Thankfully, the focus here is less on any remorse Edwards may have felt after his disgrace and more on the controlling grip the presenter – played with quiet menace by Martin Clunes – exerted over the 17-year-old boy he groomed. The result is a stark study in the imbalance of power, with vulnerable youngster Ryan (Osian Morgan) depicted as someone caught in the psychological leverage Edwards wielded as a person of influence. At times, the drama captures that manipulation in small but palpably distressing detail: in private exchanges, Edwards repeatedly addresses the teenager as “baby”, a tone grotesquely out of step with the sober image he projected each night to viewers. In other moments, he berates and bullies his prey, steadily eroding Ryan’s self-worth and distancing him from his mother, Carys (Sian Reese-Williams), who fears she is losing her son. The story also explores the deeper impropriety beyond those first headlines. Early press reports focused on Edwards’s relationship with a then-unnamed teenager, but investigators later unearthed worrying online conversations with another man between late 2020 and mid-2021. Those messages were found to include illegal images of children, some classified as being in the most serious categories. The discovery prompted a police investigation into Edwards’s internet activity, which eventually saw him admit offences relating to indecent images of minors. The portrayal of these events is heightened by Clunes’s casting. For decades, the actor has been widely associated with warm roles, most notably the gruff but lovable GP in Doc Martin. That familiarity functions almost as a comfort blanket: audiences are instinctively reassured by his presence. Here, though, as Edwards’s predatory behaviour becomes more overt, the effect is deliberately upsetting – as though the blanket is fraying and unravelling before our eyes. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/01/PowerThe-Downfall-of-Huw-Edwards-wtannouncement-imageEpisodicMT00010v2MidresSTRICT-EMBARGO-WEDNESDAY-7TH-JANUARY8PM-aee1ad3.jpg" width="4500" height="2967" alt="Martin Clunes as Huw Edwards in Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards, sat at a newsdesk, wearing a suit." title="POWER: THE DOWNFALL OF HUW EDWARDS (w/t) - STRICT EMBARGO - WED" /> Edwards himself, of course, was once the embodiment of trust, something we’re reminded of in a recreation of his announcement of the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022. Seeing a similarly recognisable figure in the form of Clunes deliver that moment only sharpens the point about how quickly such faith can shatter. It’s a theme that’s returned to when, in a striking dramatic device, Edwards is shown once again seated behind the news desk - only this time, he’s reading a report about his own conviction. It’s a narrative flight of fancy but an effective one: a bracing reminder of the drama’s chief preoccupation with the gulf that can exist between public persona and private reality.
Is drama Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards really 'too soon'? I argue it's a stark study of an imbalance of power
Whenever television dramatises a recent scandal, the same response quickly surfaces: it’s “too soon”. But the phrase can sometimes feel like a polite way of saying we’d rather not confront our discomfort just yet. After all, awkward truths become far easier to process once they’ve been safely consigned to the past. Given the personality at the heart of it, Power: the Downfall of Huw Edwards (airing on 24 March on 5) is bound to be the latest drama to find itself at the centre of this debate. Dramatising the fall of the once-trusted newsreader was always likely to provoke such a reaction. For years, Edwards appeared as solid and familiar as the desk he sat behind. Yet waiting doesn’t necessarily make such stories more respectful. Time alone can’t solve the ethical question that defines this case. If anything, facing it now may help keep our gaze on the wrongdoing rather than allowing it to fade from view. Arguably, what matters more is tone rather than timing. The risk with a project such as this is that it exploits a traumatic situation for entertainment or humanises its central figure to the point where it feels like mitigation. Thankfully, the focus here is less on any remorse Edwards may have felt after his disgrace and more on the controlling grip the presenter – played with quiet menace by Martin Clunes – exerted over the 17-year-old boy he groomed. The result is a stark study in the imbalance of power, with vulnerable youngster Ryan (Osian Morgan) depicted as someone caught in the psychological leverage Edwards wielded as a person of influence. At times, the drama captures that manipulation in small but palpably distressing detail: in private exchanges, Edwards repeatedly addresses the teenager as “baby”, a tone grotesquely out of step with the sober image he projected each night to viewers. In other moments, he berates and bullies his prey, steadily eroding Ryan’s self-worth and distancing him from his mother, Carys (Sian Reese-Williams), who fears she is losing her son. The story also explores the deeper impropriety beyond those first headlines. Early press reports focused on Edwards’s relationship with a then-unnamed teenager, but investigators later unearthed worrying online conversations with another man between late 2020 and mid-2021. Those messages were found to include illegal images of children, some classified as being in the most serious categories. The discovery prompted a police investigation into Edwards’s internet activity, which eventually saw him admit offences relating to indecent images of minors. The portrayal of these events is heightened by Clunes’s casting. For decades, the actor has been widely associated with warm roles, most notably the gruff but lovable GP in Doc Martin. That familiarity functions almost as a comfort blanket: audiences are instinctively reassured by his presence. Here, though, as Edwards’s predatory behaviour becomes more overt, the effect is deliberately upsetting – as though the blanket is fraying and unravelling before our eyes. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/01/PowerThe-Downfall-of-Huw-Edwards-wtannouncement-imageEpisodicMT00010v2MidresSTRICT-EMBARGO-WEDNESDAY-7TH-JANUARY8PM-aee1ad3.jpg" width="4500" height="2967" alt="Martin Clunes as Huw Edwards in Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards, sat at a newsdesk, wearing a suit." title="POWER: THE DOWNFALL OF HUW EDWARDS (w/t) - STRICT EMBARGO - WED" /> Edwards himself, of course, was once the embodiment of trust, something we’re reminded of in a recreation of his announcement of the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022. Seeing a similarly recognisable figure in the form of Clunes deliver that moment only sharpens the point about how quickly such faith can shatter. It’s a theme that’s returned to when, in a striking dramatic device, Edwards is shown once again seated behind the news desk - only this time, he’s reading a report about his own conviction. It’s a narrative flight of fancy but an effective one: a bracing reminder of the drama’s chief preoccupation with the gulf that can exist between public persona and private reality. Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards will air on Tuesday 24 March at 9pm on 5. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
From Benson to Scarpetta: How women are rewriting the rules of US TV crime drama
Forget the hard stare and slammed fist – today’s detectives solve crimes by thinking differently.
When it comes to playing the long game, few people have more patience than fans of Dr Kay Scarpetta. Patricia Cornwell’s forensic pathologist has been solving murders in readers’ imaginations ever since the publication of Postmortem back in 1990. Yet it has taken until 2026 for crime fiction’s most famous medical examiner to finally journey from bookshelves to the screen. Now, at last, she arrives in Scarpetta, with Nicole Kidman snapping on the latex gloves for Prime Video. After 30-odd years of anticipation, the adaptation feels less like a premiere and more like the end of one of television’s longest gestation periods. But Scarpetta’s debut is also oddly well-timed. Because if the current wave of American crime drama proves anything, it’s that the procedural – once the most stubbornly male corner of TV – has quietly become a genre led by women. Every good detective needs evidence, of course, so let’s consult the schedules. There we find the reboot of Matlock, where Kathy Bates plays an underestimated older lawyer who proves far more formidable than the sleek New York firm that hires her initially suspects. Elsewhere, there’s High Potential, in which Kaitlin Olson’s single parent – armed with a sky-high IQ and a low tolerance for policy – becomes an unlikely asset to the LAPD. Over in Elsbeth, Carrie Preston solves crimes largely by being so winningly kooky that suspects forget they’re supposed to be lying to her. And anchoring Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson has spent three decades proving that empathy can be just as powerful a weapon as intimidation when tackling especially heinous crimes. What distinguishes these shows isn’t simply that women stand at their centre. It’s that the mysteries unfold differently because they do. Their appeal lies not just in who gets top billing, but in the fresh perspectives their crime-solvers bring to the case. To see how much has changed, it helps to look back at the traditional protagonists of the police procedural. For decades, television detectives tended to bring suspects to book through sheer force of personality. Cast your mind back to the 1970s and you’ll find the granite authority of Kojak or Ironside, both capable of taking command of a room with little more than a steely glare. Even the crumpled genius of Columbo relied on relentless persistence. However mild he appeared, he’d always tirelessly grind the truth out of his increasingly exasperated prime suspect. Many of today’s female-led procedurals work to a different rhythm. Their lead characters don’t dominate the room; they solve the case because few expect them to. In these shows, power lies less in authority than in being misjudged – a useful advantage when everyone else assumes they’ve already worked you out. In Matlock, Kathy Bates’s lawyer turns the assumptions people make about her into a kind of legal superpower. Over in Elsbeth, Carrie Preston knows perfectly well that suspects mistake her eccentricity for stupidity – and happily lets them believe so until they slip up. And in High Potential, Kaitlin Olson’s civilian consultant looks like the least authoritative person in the precinct, even as her mind is racing several steps ahead of the officers around her. In each case, the gap between how these women are perceived and what they can actually do becomes an investigative tool in its own right. The kind of intelligence these shows prize is different, too. In the vintage procedural, the decisive moment usually arrived through brute force: a lung-straining chase down the street, a slammed fist in the interrogation room, the perp finally 'fessing up under pressure. In newer ones, the breakthrough often comes from something quieter – a slip of the tongue, a glance that lingers too long, the behavioural tell that gives the game away. In Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson solves cases partly because she understands the trauma and psychology of survivors. In the now cruelly cancelled Poker Face, Natasha Lyonne’s drifter detective has a flair for spotting incriminatory lies. Scarpetta adds yet another kind of authority into the mix. Where traditional detectives probed suspects, she interrogates the body itself, reconstructing a victim’s final moments through forensic science. Her authority stems not from intimidation, but from her ability to clock evidence everyone else has missed. Read more: What to watch on streaming: today's picks from Netflix, Prime Video and more Patricia Cornwell talks Scarpetta finally making it to the screen and her surprise cameo: "I was so overwhelmed" It’s a further sign of how the modern procedural hero is governed less by toughness than by perspective. What draws us in isn’t a stand-off or showdown – it’s the pleasure of watching a particular kind of mind spark to life. View Green Video on the source website None of this happened overnight, of course. Earlier series such as The Closer, which starred Kyra Sedgwick, or Veronica Mars, with Kristen Bell, demonstrated long ago that viewers would embrace female investigators who approached detection in unconventional ways. Even further back, Cagney and Lacey proved how magnetic credible female cops could be as the focus of a serious drama. What feels different now is that such characters no longer seem unusual or the exceptions. They’re becoming the genre’s defining figures. Which makes the release of Scarpetta seem all the timelier. After more than 30 years in the bestseller charts, she finally steps into a more liberated television landscape that feels primed for her – one where the procedural is no longer dominated by a single male model of detective, but open to a wide range of minds capable of bringing criminals to justice. All episodes of Scarpetta are available from Wednesday 11 March on Amazon Prime Video. Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Prime Video and pay £8.99 a month after that. Add Scarpetta to your watchlist on the <a id="OWA8b702c45-bee9-94e4-f018-57518e78041b" title="https://www.radiotimes.com/download-the-app/?af_xp=custom&pid=website&c=editorial_content&is_retargeting=true&af_reengagement_window=30d" href="https://www.radiotimes.com/download-the-app/?af_xp=custom&pid=website&c=editorial_content&is_retargeting=true&af_reengagement_window=30d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-outlook-id="449c28d9-909e-4aab-b6b8-153454f55d5e" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="0">Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Star Trek is struggling to find its moment – and it might need to face up to a hard truth
As the franchise marks its 60th anniversary, its optimistic vision feels out of step with the current political mood.
Add Star Trek: Starfleet Academy to your watchlist There’s a scene late in the 1991 movie Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country where old warhorses Kirk and Spock wonder whether they’ve outlived their own usefulness. The film itself is a Cold War allegory that sees the once-adversarial Klingons brokering for peace, a situation that leaves the Enterprise crewmates confronting a galaxy that may no longer need them. It’s a sobering moment in a story that serves as a swan song for the original team. But it’s also a question that echoes today, not just for Kirk but for Star Trek itself. The underwhelming performance of latest offshoot Starfleet Academy in early Nielsen ratings, and the fact that no new series is currently in production, suggest a once-dominant sci-fi brand is struggling to capture the public imagination. Streaming fragmentation muddies the numbers, but the cultural temperature feels far cooler than in previous eras. A show that once defined television science fiction now feels strangely peripheral. But this could be more than just franchise fatigue. It may be that Star Trek’s worldview is simply out of step with the political mood. Because historically, the franchise tends to flourish at one particular kind of time: moments when the United States feels confident about the future. Just consider when Star Trek has previously thrived. It arrived amid the optimism of JFK’s “reach for the stars” rhetoric. It soared again with The Next Generation during Reagan’s “Morning in America” resurgence of the late 1980s and the post-Cold War triumphalism of Clinton’s 1990s. In short, Star Trek chimes when America believes the future belongs to it. Contrast that with the periods when it’s struggled. In the 1970s, distrust of institutions runs high after the Watergate scandal – and Star Trek exists mostly in reruns until the films revive it. Once we hit the 2000s and George W Bush’s war on terror, Star Trek again stumbles with the lacklustre Enterprise, which is axed after four seasons. There’s a sense here that when the prevailing culture becomes anxious or cynical, the show’s utopian tone can feel naïve and irrelevant. The exception is '90s spin-off Deep Space Nine, the one show willing to test Star Trek’s ideals rather than just celebrate them. With later seasons set during a time of war, Captain Benjamin Sisko is seen questioning the extent to which the Federation ought to sacrifice its principles to survive. View Green Video on the source website There’s real moral ambiguity here, but with Deep Space Nine airing alongside The Next Generation and later Voyager, the optimistic core of Star Trek was being protected elsewhere. Deep Space Nine could push boundaries because it wasn’t the shop window. Today, there’s no such protective glass. All of which brings us to 2026 and Donald Trump’s more aggressive posture on the world stage. With opinion polarised and faith in governments waning, Starfleet’s assumptions – cooperation, decency, consensus – feel increasingly distant from political reality. It may sound churlish to point this out in the year when Star Trek is marking its 60th anniversary, but none of the recent series (Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, Starfleet Academy) have left a deep cultural footprint. Might this be because the Federation looks suspiciously like a benevolent superpower extending its reach across the galaxy – liberal internationalism with warp drive? At a time when US influence is contested, that metaphor leaves us with a prickle of unease. There’s a paradox at the heart of this. Yes, Star Trek can feel like an imperialist project, but it’s also aspirational. It shows what humanity might become. But optimism works best when it feels attainable. In moments where we feel jaded and sceptical, a perfect future can feel less like hope and more like denial. And so, just as the original Enterprise crew realised it was time to hand over the future in The Undiscovered Country, Star Trek perhaps ought to come to the realisation that it needs a pause. The franchise has survived dormant periods before and then returned when the public was ready to believe in its values once more. Perhaps the most Trek thing the brand could do right now is wait patiently for the future to catch up with it again.
Spoilers, sweetie! Why Doctor Who fans need to learn the joy of waiting
Fans are already fretting about casting and Christmas plot details. But the long wait is not a problem that needs solving.
Add Doctor Who to your watchlist It’s the early hours of Christmas Day 2007 and I’m woken by the sound of paper being torn in my son’s bedroom. Stumbling half-dazed to where he ought to have been sleeping, I’m met instead by the sight of discarded wrapping and an action figure of David Tennant clutched triumphantly in my young child’s hand. So excited was he by the prospect of Doctor Who toys arriving that he couldn’t wait until morning. But he was of primary-school age, so that anticipatory thrill was understandable – if slightly taxing for his dad, who’d been wrestling with Sellotape and gift tags until close to midnight. At the time, I did, admittedly, feel robbed of precious sleep. But looking back, I should have been grateful that the youngest Doctor Who fan in our house had at least managed to contain his excitement until the clock ticked over to the 25th of December. Because in 2026, Doctor Who fandom is in danger of hyping itself into a state of insensibility a full nine months before Christmas. Granted, the most recent episode of the BBC sci-fi series – which saw Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor regenerate into Billie Piper – left audiences with several questions. Chief among them: whether Piper, who was once companion Rose Tyler, is really playing the Doctor at all. Answers will no doubt arrive in December. But already, a faint air of online panic hangs over claims that the script for the upcoming Christmas special exists in several different versions. Theories about surprise regenerations fill speculative “news” articles, while a supposed casting delay is seized upon as proof that the show must somehow be in disarray. It has become a depressingly familiar pattern. The moment there is a gap in information, the vacuum fills with confident declarations that Doctor Who has entered the disaster zone – a conclusion eagerly amplified by sections of the press whose broader mission is to do down the BBC. But dare we consider the possibility that the production team may simply want to keep hold of its secrets, especially with such a long stretch between this year’s festive special being crafted and broadcast? These days, though, patience from the public feels about as likely as the Doctor landing the TARDIS exactly where he intended. We expect entertainment instantly. Entire seasons arrive in a single streaming drop. Autoplay hustles us into the next episode before the credits have barely got going. And the words “Coming soon”, which once carried a delicious sense of anticipation, now sound intolerably vague. Uncertainty used to feel like part of the production process. Now it’s treated as a system failure. Casting needs to be confirmed immediately. The moment an episode begins shooting, plot details are expected to enter the public domain. And if a Christmas special is still months away, the alien threat and the emotional pay-off ought to be announced in a press release before a director has even yelled, “Action”. Yet it wasn’t always like this. The gap between initial announcement and broadcast used to be where the pleasure lived. Before an episode aired, it existed in a state of pure possibility. But we seem to have forgotten how to relish a plotline that might still fizz off in any number of directions. Maybe Piper really is playing the Doctor and not Rose. Or perhaps Rose and the Doctor somehow changed places when he regenerated. The current instinct, though, is not to enjoy this imaginative liminal zone but to exterminate it – like a Dalek on a rampage. The sooner a mystery is solved, the better. Which is slightly counterproductive when you consider that stories are built around the thrill of not knowing. And look, I get it. Doctor Who has always been an immersive jigsaw and its fans have grown used to piecing together its long history in fragments. Coupled with lingering uncertainty about the show’s next phase following the end of the BBC’s production deal with Disney, it’s understandable that dedicated viewers are now leaning into the future, impatient for the next milestone to arrive. But suspense isn’t a problem that needs fixing with the wave of a sonic screwdriver. Stories – like life – are destined to unfold in time (and space). And the hush that surrounds a Christmas special isn’t a frustrating broken link. It’s the moment when anticipation grows and imaginations spark. People are forever wishing their lives forward. Children want to be older; adults can’t wait for the weekend. But perhaps we should heed the warning of River Song, whose catchphrase of “Spoilers!” is a rebuke to the Doctor whenever he gets too curious about his own future. Instead of demanding answers, we might try revelling in this brief stretch where we all become co-writers of the Time Lord’s next adventure. Because once the Christmas special airs, that creative space collapses. A thousand possibilities streamline into a single version of events. Speculation gives way to the dreaded star rating. What worked? What didn’t? And then comes the familiar, slightly hollow realisation: now we have to wait all over again. The finished episode can only unfold in one way. What we have now is the unwatched version – the one that still contains every permutation our minds can conjure. And perhaps that’s the real gift. Back in 2007, my son couldn’t bear to leave his Doctor Who presents untouched until dawn. The excitement of what might be inside proved too much to resist. But sometimes the unopened package is where the magic lives. And maybe – just maybe – the rest of us should learn to leave the wrapping paper intact for a little longer.
It’s the early hours of Christmas Day 2007 and I’m woken by the sound of paper being torn in my son’s bedroom. Stumbling half-dazed to where he ought to have been sleeping, I’m met instead by the sight of discarded wrapping and an action figure of David Tennant clutched triumphantly in my young child’s hand. So excited was he by the prospect of Doctor Who toys arriving that he couldn’t wait until morning. But he was of primary-school age, so that anticipatory thrill was understandable – if slightly taxing for his dad, who’d been wrestling with Sellotape and gift tags until close to midnight. At the time, I did, admittedly, feel robbed of precious sleep. But looking back, I should have been grateful that the youngest Doctor Who fan in our house had at least managed to contain his excitement until the clock ticked over to the 25th of December. Because in 2026, Doctor Who fandom is in danger of hyping itself into a state of insensibility a full nine months before Christmas. Granted, the most recent episode of the BBC sci-fi series – which saw Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor regenerate into Billie Piper – left audiences with several questions. Chief among them: whether Piper, who was once companion Rose Tyler, is really playing the Doctor at all. Answers will no doubt arrive in December. But already, a faint air of online panic hangs over claims that the script for the upcoming Christmas special exists in several different versions. Theories about surprise regenerations fill speculative “news” articles, while a supposed casting delay is seized upon as proof that the show must somehow be in disarray. It has become a depressingly familiar pattern. The moment there is a gap in information, the vacuum fills with confident declarations that Doctor Who has entered the disaster zone – a conclusion eagerly amplified by sections of the press whose broader mission is to do down the BBC. But dare we consider the possibility that the production team may simply want to keep hold of its secrets, especially with such a long stretch between this year’s festive special being crafted and broadcast? These days, though, patience from the public feels about as likely as the Doctor landing the TARDIS exactly where he intended. We expect entertainment instantly. Entire seasons arrive in a single streaming drop. Autoplay hustles us into the next episode before the credits have barely got going. And the words “Coming soon”, which once carried a delicious sense of anticipation, now sound intolerably vague. Uncertainty used to feel like part of the production process. Now it’s treated as a system failure. Casting needs to be confirmed immediately. The moment an episode begins shooting, plot details are expected to enter the public domain. And if a Christmas special is still months away, the alien threat and the emotional pay-off ought to be announced in a press release before a director has even yelled, “Action”. Yet it wasn’t always like this. The gap between initial announcement and broadcast used to be where the pleasure lived. Before an episode aired, it existed in a state of pure possibility. But we seem to have forgotten how to relish a plotline that might still fizz off in any number of directions. Maybe Piper really is playing the Doctor and not Rose. Or perhaps Rose and the Doctor somehow changed places when he regenerated. The current instinct, though, is not to enjoy this imaginative liminal zone but to exterminate it – like a Dalek on a rampage. The sooner a mystery is solved, the better. Which is slightly counterproductive when you consider that stories are built around the thrill of not knowing. And look, I get it. Doctor Who has always been an immersive jigsaw and its fans have grown used to piecing together its long history in fragments. Coupled with lingering uncertainty about the show’s next phase following the end of the BBC’s production deal with Disney, it’s understandable that dedicated viewers are now leaning into the future, impatient for the next milestone to arrive. But suspense isn’t a problem that needs fixing with the wave of a sonic screwdriver. Stories – like life – are destined to unfold in time (and space). And the hush that surrounds a Christmas special isn’t a frustrating broken link. It’s the moment when anticipation grows and imaginations spark. Add Radio Times as a Preferred Source on Google Keep up to date on what’s worth watching with your favourite entertainment news from Radio Times – see more of our exclusive news and interviews featured prominently in Top Stories when using Google. People are forever wishing their lives forward. Children want to be older; adults can’t wait for the weekend. But perhaps we should heed the warning of River Song, whose catchphrase of “Spoilers!” is a rebuke to the Doctor whenever he gets too curious about his own future. Instead of demanding answers, we might try revelling in this brief stretch where we all become co-writers of the Time Lord’s next adventure. Because once the Christmas special airs, that creative space collapses. A thousand possibilities streamline into a single version of events. Speculation gives way to the dreaded star rating. What worked? What didn’t? And then comes the familiar, slightly hollow realisation: now we have to wait all over again. The finished episode can only unfold in one way. What we have now is the unwatched version – the one that still contains every permutation our minds can conjure. And perhaps that’s the real gift. Back in 2007, my son couldn’t bear to leave his Doctor Who presents untouched until dawn. The excitement of what might be inside proved too much to resist. But sometimes the unopened package is where the magic lives. And maybe – just maybe – the rest of us should learn to leave the wrapping paper intact for a little longer. Doctor Who will return at Christmas and is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. Check out more of our Sci-fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
There’s a scene late in the 1991 movie Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country where old warhorses Kirk and Spock wonder whether they’ve outlived their own usefulness. The film itself is a Cold War allegory that sees the once-adversarial Klingons brokering for peace, a situation that leaves the Enterprise crewmates confronting a galaxy that may no longer need them. It’s a sobering moment in a story that serves as a swan song for the original team. But it’s also a question that echoes today, not just for Kirk but for Star Trek itself. The underwhelming performance of latest offshoot Starfleet Academy in early Nielsen ratings, and the fact that no new series is currently in production, suggest a once-dominant sci-fi brand is struggling to capture the public imagination. Streaming fragmentation muddies the numbers, but the cultural temperature feels far cooler than in previous eras. A show that once defined television science fiction now feels strangely peripheral. But this could be more than just franchise fatigue. It may be that Star Trek’s worldview is simply out of step with the political mood. Because historically, the franchise tends to flourish at one particular kind of time: moments when the United States feels confident about the future. Just consider when Star Trek has previously thrived. It arrived amid the optimism of JFK’s “reach for the stars” rhetoric. It soared again with The Next Generation during Reagan’s “Morning in America” resurgence of the late 1980s and the post-Cold War triumphalism of Clinton’s 1990s. In short, Star Trek chimes when America believes the future belongs to it. Contrast that with the periods when it’s struggled. In the 1970s, distrust of institutions runs high after the Watergate scandal – and Star Trek exists mostly in reruns until the films revive it. Once we hit the 2000s and George W Bush’s war on terror, Trek again stumbles with the lacklustre Enterprise, which is axed after four seasons. There’s a sense here that when the prevailing culture becomes anxious or cynical, the show’s utopian tone can feel naïve and irrelevant. The exception is '90s spin-off Deep Space Nine, the one show willing to test Star Trek’s ideals rather than just celebrate them. With later seasons set during a time of war, Captain Benjamin Sisko is seen questioning the extent to which the Federation ought to sacrifice its principles to survive. View Green Video on the source website There’s real moral ambiguity here, but with DS9 airing alongside the Next Generation and later Voyager, the optimistic core of Star Trek was being protected elsewhere. DS9 could push boundaries because it wasn’t the shop window. Today, there’s no such protective glass. All of which brings us to 2026 and Donald Trump’s more aggressive posture on the world stage. With opinion polarised and faith in governments waning, Starfleet’s assumptions – cooperation, decency, consensus – feel increasingly distant from political reality. It may sound churlish to point this out in the year when Star Trek is marking its 60th anniversary, but none of the recent series (Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, Starfleet Academy) have left a deep cultural footprint. Might this be because the Federation looks suspiciously like a benevolent superpower extending its reach across the galaxy – liberal internationalism with warp drive? At a time when US influence is contested, that metaphor leaves us with a prickle of unease. There’s a paradox at the heart of this. Yes, Star Trek can feel like an imperialist project, but it’s also aspirational. It shows what humanity might become. But optimism works best when it feels attainable. In moments where we feel jaded and sceptical, a perfect future can feel less like hope and more like denial. And so, just as the original Enterprise crew realised it was time to hand over the future in the Undiscovered Country, Star Trek perhaps ought to come to the realisation that it needs a pause. The franchise has survived dormant periods before and then returned when the public was ready to believe in its values once more. Perhaps the most Trek thing the brand could do right now is wait patiently for the future to catch up with it again. Star Trek is available to watch on Paramount+. <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/offers/?benefitId=paramountplusgb&ref_=DVM_PDS_CHN_UK_mi_C_mkw_sNynrT7ZC-dc_pcrid_637893181401&mrntrk=slid__pgrid_143491579803_pgeo_9045946_x__adext__ptid_kwd-1210995054370&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAs5i8BhDmARIsAGE4xHwTfGgy5aYKkYxNQV68UYUZhVWUr2bVS4o-EfnvpowOvplyXMbKqXAaArmvEALw_wcB&tag=radtim0b-21&ascsubtag=radiotimes-2191954" target="_blank" rel="noopener sponsored">Sign up to your seven-day Paramount+ free trial. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Why I'm still watching reruns of The Office while the world is on fire
When the headlines feel unbearable, is turning on a sitcom a cop-out or a way of keeping sane?
Add The Office US to your watchlist After spending a soul-rending hour the other evening watching the planet lurch towards catastrophe on BBC News, I did the only thing that seemed remotely survivable: I watched Michael Scott burn his foot on a George Foreman grill in The Office. Classic coping strategy. When the world darkens, reach for comedy. Except when I mentioned this in my own office the next day, a colleague pushed back. Wasn’t that the problem? Hadn’t we all spent too long hooked up to a drip feed of television? Wasn’t I just dosing myself with distraction while the house burned down? The instinct, he suggested, shouldn’t be to laugh at Steve Carell. It should be to go outside, hold a placard, and join a march. A sitcom might feel like a salve, but what if it’s also the reason we feel so politically sapped? He had a point. I was thinking I’d been sensibly managing my mood, when perhaps I’d simply been feeding a culture of diversion that leaves us passive. It reminded me of a book I read years ago by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he argued that television turns the world into razzmatazz. When everything becomes entertainment, nothing carries any weight. Suddenly, my 25-minute visit to the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company felt less like harmless relief and more like complicity. I’d only wanted a break from a news cycle that amplifies dread with every airstrike. Instead, apparently, I was another strand in the web. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/03/GettyImages-138361947-7eca5e3.jpg" width="3000" height="2001" alt="Kate Flannery as Meredith Palmer, B.J. Novak as Ryan Howard, Leslie David Baker as Stanley Hudson, Mindy Kaling as Kelly Kapoor, Steve Carell as Michael Scott, Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute, Brian Baumgartner as Kevin Malone and Jenna Fischer as Pam Beesly in The Office, stood together outside." title="The Office" /> But then – one mug of tea and a few deep breaths later – perspective returned. When I switched away from the invective of Donald Trump and the bellicose rhetoric of Pete Hegseth, I hadn’t felt mobilised so much as overwhelmed. I wasn’t being called to action; I was being buried under it. And so, turning to a beloved American sitcom wasn’t an escape from reality so much as an attempt to stay capable of facing it. Which raises an uncomfortable question: what does it mean to stay informed? The modern answer seems simple. Keep the news on. Witness events in Iran as they unfold. Stay alert. But when the same burning buildings and breaking banners loop every 15 minutes, there comes a point when updates stop informing and start agitating. It’s like standing under a fire alarm and insisting that you’re learning something new from every blare. TV news, of course, wasn’t originally built like this. For most of its history, it arrived in rationed bulletins: the Six O’Clock News, the 10 O’Clock News, Newsnight for the insomniacs. Editors had time to take stock and decide what had actually happened and what merely sounded dramatic. Then the programme ended, and the evening resumed. Now, with images of destruction in the Middle East so constant, the effect is different. We feel survivor’s guilt from a distance. And watching comedy can start to feel shameful, as if a sitcom were a trivial response to real-life trauma. But in feeling this moral dissonance, we may be misunderstanding television’s role. Entertainment has always existed alongside tragedy. In the Second World War, ITMA thrived on the radio. During Covid, Strictly Come Dancing still filled Saturday nights. These shows weren’t acts of denial. They were psychological lifelines. Audiences weren’t indifferent to the crises around them; they simply needed somewhere to set their anxiety down for an hour or two. And this is where fiction does something the news rarely can. News stories break and spiral without ending. Sitcoms console. In The Office, problems arise, teeter towards disaster and tidy themselves before the end theme. The show also holds on to an unfashionable idea: that daftness and decency can live in the same person. Michael Scott may be misguided and petty, but he’s still worthy of compassion. In a public sphere that’s permanently raging, that small faith in human decency is refreshing. So, watching an episode needn’t be seen as abandoning the world, more a reminder of what’s worth protecting. Even so, taking refuge in stories doesn’t make me immune to my colleague’s critique. He’s right: comfort can slide very easily into distraction. We live in a culture engineered to keep us seated. Streaming platforms are so determined to prevent contact with the standby button that whole days can vanish courtesy of autoplay. Still, television doesn’t have to anaesthetise you. Deciding what to watch – and, crucially, when to stop – can transform zombie viewing into something closer to a deliberate choice. Ignoring the “Continue Watching” prompt may be a modest act of defiance, but it is a conscious one. Not quite storming the streets with a placard, perhaps. But civic virtue comes in many flavours. Nor does life require a stark choice between rising up and checking out. Yes, demonstrating matters. But participation doesn’t only happen in the streets. It also lives in the charities you support, the journalism you fund, the communities you show up for, the children you raise, and even the words you put into the world. And if all that is to be sustained, it requires something less dramatic but just as vital: rest. Outrage can be energising, but sustained indefinitely, it risks becoming knackering. And no one can live entirely at top volume. Which raises a quieter possibility: that an evening spent watching a situation comedy is not civic failure, but an emotional MOT. Rest is, after all, being increasingly framed as a small act of resistance – a way of giving the knockback to a culture of ceaseless urgency. So perhaps the real worry isn’t that we might reach for The Office in times of strife. It’s that we might do nothing else. Watching Michael Scott and his toasted toes isn’t the problem. The problem would be letting it be the only response. In the meantime, though, something is life-affirming about watching a world in which the worst disaster is an inept middle-manager grilling his foot for breakfast instead of bacon. Spending 25 minutes in Scranton won’t fix the planet, but it may just leave us fortified enough to confront it again after the credits roll.
Yes, I'm still watching reruns of The Office while the world is on fire - and this is why
After spending a soul-rending hour the other evening watching the planet lurch towards catastrophe on BBC News, I did the only thing that seemed remotely survivable: I watched Michael Scott burn his foot on a George Foreman grill in The Office. Classic coping strategy. When the world darkens, reach for comedy. Except when I mentioned this in my own office the next day, a colleague pushed back. Wasn’t that the problem? Hadn’t we all spent too long hooked up to a drip feed of television? Wasn’t I just dosing myself with distraction while the house burned down? The instinct, he suggested, shouldn’t be to laugh at Steve Carell. It should be to go outside, hold a placard, and join a march. A sitcom might feel like a salve, but what if it’s also the reason we feel so politically sapped? He had a point. I was thinking I’d been sensibly managing my mood, when perhaps I’d simply been feeding a culture of diversion that leaves us passive. It reminded me of a book I read years ago by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he argued that television turns the world into razzmatazz. When everything becomes entertainment, nothing carries any weight. Suddenly, my 25-minute visit to the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company felt less like harmless relief and more like complicity. I’d only wanted a break from a news cycle that amplifies dread with every airstrike. Instead, apparently, I was another strand in the web. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/03/GettyImages-138361947-7eca5e3.jpg" width="3000" height="2001" alt="Kate Flannery as Meredith Palmer, B.J. Novak as Ryan Howard, Leslie David Baker as Stanley Hudson, Mindy Kaling as Kelly Kapoor, Steve Carell as Michael Scott, Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute, Brian Baumgartner as Kevin Malone and Jenna Fischer as Pam Beesly in The Office, stood together outside." title="The Office" /> But then – one mug of tea and a few deep breaths later – perspective returned. When I switched away from the invective of Donald Trump and the bellicose rhetoric of Pete Hegseth, I hadn’t felt mobilised so much as overwhelmed. I wasn’t being called to action; I was being buried under it. And so, turning to a beloved American sitcom wasn’t an escape from reality so much as an attempt to stay capable of facing it. Which raises an uncomfortable question: what does it mean to stay informed? The modern answer seems simple. Keep the news on. Witness events in Iran as they unfold. Stay alert. But when the same burning buildings and breaking banners loop every 15 minutes, there comes a point when updates stop informing and start agitating. It’s like standing under a fire alarm and insisting that you’re learning something new from every blare. TV news, of course, wasn’t originally built like this. For most of its history, it arrived in rationed bulletins: the Six O’Clock News, the 10 O’Clock News, Newsnight for the insomniacs. Editors had time to take stock and decide what had actually happened and what merely sounded dramatic. Then the programme ended, and the evening resumed. Now, with images of destruction in the Middle East so constant, the effect is different. We feel survivor’s guilt from a distance. And watching comedy can start to feel shameful, as if a sitcom were a trivial response to real-life trauma. But in feeling this moral dissonance, we may be misunderstanding television’s role. Entertainment has always existed alongside tragedy. In the Second World War, ITMA thrived on the radio. During Covid, Strictly Come Dancing still filled Saturday nights. These shows weren’t acts of denial. They were psychological lifelines. Audiences weren’t indifferent to the crises around them; they simply needed somewhere to set their anxiety down for an hour or two. And this is where fiction does something the news rarely can. News stories break and spiral without ending. Sitcoms console. In The Office, problems arise, teeter towards disaster and tidy themselves before the end theme. The show also holds on to an unfashionable idea: that daftness and decency can live in the same person. Michael Scott may be misguided and petty, but he’s still worthy of compassion. In a public sphere that’s permanently raging, that small faith in human dignity is refreshing. So, watching an episode needn’t be seen as abandoning the world, more a reminder of what’s worth protecting. Even so, taking refuge in stories doesn’t make me immune to my colleague’s critique. He’s right: comfort can slide very easily into distraction. We live in a culture engineered to keep us seated. Streaming platforms are so determined to prevent contact with the standby button that whole days can vanish courtesy of autoplay. Still, television doesn’t have to anaesthetise you. Deciding what to watch – and, crucially, when to stop – can transform zombie viewing into something closer to a deliberate choice. Ignoring the “Continue Watching” prompt may be a modest act of defiance, but it is a conscious one. Not quite storming the streets with a placard, perhaps. But civic virtue comes in many flavours. Nor does life require a stark choice between rising up and checking out. Yes, demonstrating matters. But participation doesn’t only happen in the streets. It also lives in the charities you support, the journalism you fund, the communities you show up for, the children you raise, and even the words you put into the world. And if all that is to be sustained, it requires something less dramatic but just as vital: rest. Outrage can be energising, but sustained indefinitely, it risks becoming knackering. And no one can live entirely at top volume. Which raises a quieter possibility: that an evening spent watching a situation comedy is not civic failure, but an emotional MOT. Rest is, after all, being increasingly framed as a small act of resistance – a way of giving the knockback to a culture of ceaseless urgency. So perhaps the real worry isn’t that we might reach for The Office in times of strife. It’s that we might do nothing else. Watching Michael Scott and his toasted toes isn’t the problem. The problem would be letting it be the only response. In the meantime, though, something is life-affirming about watching a world in which the worst disaster is an inept middle-manager grilling his foot for breakfast instead of bacon. Spending 25 minutes in Scranton won’t fix the planet, but it may just leave us fortified enough to confront it again after the credits roll. The Office US is available to stream on Sky and NOW. Find out more about how to sign up for Sky TV. Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
The end of the shared TV experience? Why streaming's power grab should worry viewers
The fight for Warner Bros Discovery risks television becoming a gated empire of elites.
The Warner Bros Discovery takeover has been presented to us all as a numbers game, the ever-climbing bids like a Jenga tower made of gold bullion. For those keeping score, it appears as though Paramount has reached the battlements of that tower ahead of rivals Netflix, its triumph having made for a blockbuster business epic with a budget in the billions – $111 billion, to be precise. But this is far from a mere financial story, for the prize pot for the victors is the back catalogue of such touchstones as the sitcom Friends and the Game of Thrones franchise. And the day now appears to be fast approaching when Paramount (already the rights owners of Yellowstone and Star Trek) also gets its clutches on the likes of Joey Tribbiani and Jaime Lannister. Should the regulators give their approval, this is likely to be a major turning point in the landscape of TV, with the potentially winning bid making Paramount one of the most exclusive gated media communities on the planet. TV shows once available to everybody are already now siloed away on streaming services, but this deal will give Paramount control over two substantial players: Paramount+ and HBO Max. In the US, plans are already afoot to combine them into one platform, though HBO Max is set to be rolled out here in the UK as a separate entity. Yes, that’s right, it’s yet another members-only platform for which punters must shell out. There really ought to be a term for this. Subscription creep? Streaming fatigue? On-demand overload? But how did we reach this point where television – once the great democratising force of the 20th century – became such a walled-off domain in the 21st? Those who came of age in the terrestrial-only era can recall a time when TV in Britain at least had a truly cohesive quality. Unlike newspapers (which divided their readers along political lines) or cinema and theatre (where admission was gained only with a ticket), television belonged to everyone. It was common cultural ground – a landscape where ITV could air both Bullseye and The South Bank Show, while the BBC showed ‘Allo ‘Allo! and Arena. For evidence of a social leveller, look to those TV schedules. Channels may have been few, but their reach was nationwide. But the era of entry without exclusion was not to last. An early sign of a rope barrier being put in place came with the launch in 1989 of satellite broadcaster Sky. For the first time, viewers discovered a new concept: the paywall. And neighbourhoods were suddenly split between those who had access to The Simpsons and live Premiership football and those who went without. It was sold to us as greater choice, but what Sky really represented was the start of television being a paid-for commodity. Circle back to Friends and you can see that tiering of TV in action. The US sitcom debuted in the UK on the free-to-air Channel 4 in 1994. Sky, recognising its popularity, then poached it and acquired first-run episodes in 1996, in much the same way as it later did with such established terrestrial hits as ER, Lost and 24. Spool forward to 2026 and Friends is again being used as an enticement to subscribe. After being removed from Netflix in the UK in December 2025, it’s now getting promoted as a key part of HBO Max’s line-up. So, a series that was once a fixture in TV’s public square is now being fought over in the equivalent of private members’ lounges. Looking at the fate of Friends, it’s difficult not to conclude that television hasn’t so much evolved as been fenced off. But it’s something we tend not to notice because there’s now so darn much of it. The paid-for model introduced by Sky in the late 1980s is now the norm for services provided not via satellites but through wi-fi. At times, it can feel as though there are more platforms than there are eyeballs to watch them. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney+ – as the options increase, our bank balances deplete, as the medium that once needed little more than a licence and an aerial now requires multiple monthly direct debits. But this is a mirage of plenty. In truth, few can afford everything that’s on the market, so we end up picking a selection that suits our budget. Watching TV has become an exercise in choosing a side, stumping up for the fee, and missing out on the rest. Yet there’s a paradox at the heart of this age of apparent proliferation. For while we have more platforms to choose from than ever, there are now fewer people in charge. The audience may be fragmenting, but ownership is clustering. And if we can’t afford to watch everything, it’s worth querying who’s in control of what’s on offer. The situation with Warner Bros Discovery is a reminder that power is in danger of being hoarded. And the suspicion is that when media ownership consolidates, risk-taking goes out the window, especially in the US where companies are loathe to take on a president easily bruised by criticism. Eyebrows have already been raised at the friendly relationship between Paramount boss David Ellison and the White House. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, donated $1m to the president’s inauguration fund in 2025, with Prime Video releasing a documentary the following year focused on the first lady. The irony for UK viewers is that, as we pay more for these American-owned platforms, the programmes we’re watching are being made with an eye not on Ofcom but the man in the Oval Office. Television, an art form that once reflected our broad social palette, now finds its boardrooms preoccupied with US politics. And the danger is that with a narrower appetite for risk, viewers will be exposed to a shrinking range of viewpoints. Might we end up paying a premium price for streaming services afraid to offend? There have, admittedly, been recent occasions when dramas made for streaming platforms have bitten at our social conscience. Think of the piercing anguish of Adolescence (Netflix) or the polemical streak in Suspect: the Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes (Disney+). But when political leaders go on the attack or frame creatives as ideological enemies, global brands begin to fret about share price. In the broadcast era of old, networks could be brave and contain any loss – now, controversies have the potential to reverberate across the markets. In hindsight, the launch of Sky in 1989 feels like the thin end of a wedge whose thick end includes the abundance of streaming and the gradual dissolving of television as a shared experience. Watercooler moments are slowing to a trickle and national viewing events have become fewer in number. Programmes that once worked on us as a collective have now become niche. TV has gone from the living room to the laptop, while the licence fee now exists alongside the payment plan. But perhaps the biggest cost of all this will not appear on bank statements but in the loss of communal memory. The Line of Duty episode we all debated. The Ross and Rachel kiss in Friends that drew a collective gasp of breath. As ownership contracts, caution increases and prices rise, what was once a national conversation becomes monetised and hyper-targeted. A culture that was once bound together is now being packaged up and sold back to us in pieces.
The revolution on the shelf? Why physical media still matters in the age of streaming TV
Owning television is more than just nostalgia – it’s a cultural statement in an era of easy access.
In the world of TV collectables, some items are clearly priceless, others are priced to clear. Keep vintage comic books and action figures in unsullied states, and you could be sitting on a pension plan. VHS copies of your favourite 90s sci-fi shows? Not so valuable, as it turns out. For proof, just visit my neighbourhood in south London, where Star Trek: Deep Space Nine videocassettes in the local charity shop can be yours for just 50p a pop. Oh, the indignity. These faded cultural artefacts, with their cracked plastic cases and sun-bleached sleeves, once retailed at £10.99 each. I know, because I was someone who’d save up to buy them back in an era when storytelling was rationed to two episodes per VHS. Can you imagine the anticipation? How we would fill the time between monthly releases by rewatching what we had repeatedly until we knew the 'stardates' backwards? Those who grew up in the streaming age, where the Star Trek franchise can be found in seconds on Paramount+, will no doubt find this hard to comprehend. But in the 1990s, collecting contemporary television required commitment. Without Wikipedia, we’d piece together timelines using copies of magazines such as TV Zone and Starburst. Blurbs would be memorised, cover art scrutinised, and on the day of release, we’d race to Virgin Megastore, ten-pound notes and loose change hot in our pockets. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/07/GettyImages-475631214-d31f198-e1772617565927.jpg" width="2400" height="1600" alt="Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock (Mr. Spock) and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk on the bridge of the USS Enterprise on the Star Trek: The Original Series episode Space Seed." title="Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock (Mr. Spock) and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk on the bridge of the USS Enterprise on the Star Trek: The Original Series episode Space Seed." /> This was a clunky 'rewind and eject' world, one where the only place you’d expect to find an autoplay feature would be on the bridge of a starship. But might this labour of fandom have had its positive facets? Did the effort of collecting intensify attachment in a way that has been lost in today’s frictionless scrolling-and-streaming world? Compare these past pilgrimages to the modern era, where everything is equally available but equally ignorable. Star Trek is still being made, but a friend was telling me only the other day how his son half-watches the spin-off Starfleet Academy in his bedroom on a phone propped on a stand while playing on a PS5 on a larger screen. On the one hand, it’s heartening to find that the world of Trek has endured, but dispiriting to realise not only that the medium upon which I watched it is now defunct, but that episodes are just ambiently absorbed, their plots competing with Overwatch and Snapchat notifications. Where once we used to commit, we now just seem to graze, safe in the knowledge that whole seasons are waiting without urgency on a watchlist. But might a section of Gen Z be rising up? Have some realised that the Shangri-La of streaming offers merely the illusion of ownership? And is there now a secret desire to invest in physical media? A recent article in the Los Angeles Times reported that Americans spent 12 per cent more on 4K Blu-rays in 2025 than in the previous year, with young customers fatigued by streaming seeing the buying of discs as "a form of cultural rebellion". Dare we believe that obsolescence is making a comeback as resistance? Said a contributor to the piece, "I want something I can put on my shelf", their words expressing a desire for tangibility and durability, as well as perhaps a recognition that, where streaming is concerned, you’re forever at the mercy of licensing deals where programmes can appear and disappear. In that simple sentence, there appears to be a need to once again be more than just a passive consumer and instead take ownership rather than rent access to a feed. Not so different, really, from the days of those VHS tapes. Perhaps the art of collecting was never lost – it was just biding its time? So, might it not matter that those 50p VHS relics of DS9 are currently piled unloved and unpurchased in the charity shop? For a start, the stories they contain are anything but extinct. For while the medium has died, the Star Trek mission continues. And the same could also be true of us. The desire to have and hold may have been hushed by streaming, but it hasn’t been extinguished entirely. Netflix and the like may have made watching TV effortless, but when everything is in easy reach, it can stop feeling hard-won. But if the next generation is now reaching for something they can slot into a player, there’s evidence right there that progress doesn’t always move forward. Sometimes, like a time-travel plot in an old sci-fi favourite, there’s great pleasure in looping back.
The Warner Bros Discovery takeover has been presented to us all as a numbers game, the ever-climbing bids like a Jenga tower made of gold bullion. For those keeping score, it appears as though Paramount has reached the battlements of that tower ahead of rivals Netflix, its triumph having made for a blockbuster business epic with a budget in the billions – $111 billion, to be precise. But this is far from a mere financial story, for the prize pot for the victors is the back catalogue of such touchstones as the sitcom Friends and the Game of Thrones franchise. And the day now appears to be fast approaching when Paramount (already the rights owners of Yellowstone and Star Trek) also gets its clutches on the likes of Joey Tribbiani and Jaime Lannister. Should the regulators give their approval, this is likely to be a major turning point in the landscape of TV, with the potentially winning bid making Paramount one of the most exclusive gated media communities on the planet. TV shows once available to everybody are already now siloed away on streaming services, but this deal will give Paramount control over two substantial players: Paramount+ and HBO Max. In the US, plans are already afoot to combine them into one platform, though HBO Max is set to be rolled out here in the UK as a separate entity. Yes, that’s right, it’s yet another members-only platform for which punters must shell out. There really ought to be a term for this. Subscription creep? Streaming fatigue? On-demand overload? But how did we reach this point where television – once the great democratising force of the 20th century – became such a walled-off domain in the 21st? Those who came of age in the terrestrial-only era can recall a time when TV in Britain at least had a truly cohesive quality. Unlike newspapers (which divided their readers along political lines) or cinema and theatre (where admission was gained only with a ticket), television belonged to everyone. It was common cultural ground – a landscape where ITV could air both Bullseye and The South Bank Show, while the BBC showed ‘Allo ‘Allo! and Arena. For evidence of a social leveller, look to those TV schedules. Channels may have been few, but their reach was nationwide. But the era of entry without exclusion was not to last. An early sign of a rope barrier being put in place came with the launch in 1989 of satellite broadcaster Sky. For the first time, viewers discovered a new concept: the paywall. And neighbourhoods were suddenly split between those who had access to The Simpsons and live Premiership football and those who went without. It was sold to us as greater choice, but what Sky really represented was the start of television being a paid-for commodity. Circle back to Friends and you can see that tiering of TV in action. The US sitcom debuted in the UK on the free-to-air Channel 4 in 1994. Sky, recognising its popularity, then poached it and acquired first-run episodes in 1996, in much the same way as it later did with such established terrestrial hits as ER, Lost and 24. Spool forward to 2026 and Friends is again being used as an enticement to subscribe. After being removed from Netflix in the UK in December 2025, it’s now getting promoted as a key part of HBO Max’s line-up. So, a series that was once a fixture in TV’s public square is now being fought over in the equivalent of private members’ lounges. Looking at the fate of Friends, it’s difficult not to conclude that television hasn’t so much evolved as been fenced off. But it’s something we tend not to notice because there’s now so darn much of it. The paid-for model introduced by Sky in the late 1980s is now the norm for services provided not via satellites but through wi-fi. At times, it can feel as though there are more platforms than there are eyeballs to watch them. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney+ – as the options increase, our bank balances deplete, as the medium that once needed little more than a licence and an aerial now requires multiple monthly direct debits. But this is a mirage of plenty. In truth, few can afford everything that’s on the market, so we end up picking a selection that suits our budget. Watching TV has become an exercise in choosing a side, stumping up for the fee, and missing out on the rest. Yet there’s a paradox at the heart of this age of apparent proliferation. For while we have more platforms to choose from than ever, there are now fewer people in charge. The audience may be fragmenting, but ownership is clustering. And if we can’t afford to watch everything, it’s worth querying who’s in control of what’s on offer. The situation with Warner Bros Discovery is a reminder that power is in danger of being hoarded. And the suspicion is that when media ownership consolidates, risk-taking goes out the window, especially in the US where companies are loathe to take on a president easily bruised by criticism. Eyebrows have already been raised at the friendly relationship between Paramount boss David Ellison and the White House. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, donated $1m to the president’s inauguration fund in 2025, with Prime Video releasing a documentary the following year focused on the first lady. The irony for UK viewers is that, as we pay more for these American-owned platforms, the programmes we’re watching are being made with an eye not on Ofcom but the man in the Oval Office. Television, an art form that once reflected our broad social palette, now finds its boardrooms preoccupied with US politics. And the danger is that with a narrower appetite for risk, viewers will be exposed to a shrinking range of viewpoints. Might we end up paying a premium price for streaming services afraid to offend? There have, admittedly, been recent occasions when dramas made for streaming platforms have bitten at our social conscience. Think of the piercing anguish of Adolescence (Netflix) or the polemical streak in Suspect: the Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes (Disney+). But when political leaders go on the attack or frame creatives as ideological enemies, global brands begin to fret about share price. In the broadcast era of old, networks could be brave and contain any loss – now, controversies have the potential to reverberate across the markets. In hindsight, the launch of Sky in 1989 feels like the thin end of a wedge whose thick end includes the abundance of streaming and the gradual dissolving of television as a shared experience. Watercooler moments are slowing to a trickle and national viewing events have become fewer in number. Programmes that once worked on us as a collective have now become niche. TV has gone from the living room to the laptop, while the licence fee now exists alongside the payment plan. But perhaps the biggest cost of all this will not appear on bank statements but in the loss of communal memory. The Line of Duty episode we all debated. The Ross and Rachel kiss in Friends that drew a collective gasp of breath. As ownership contracts, caution increases and prices rise, what was once a national conversation becomes monetised and hyper-targeted. A culture that was once bound together is now being packaged up and sold back to us in pieces. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
In the world of TV collectables, some items are clearly priceless, others are priced to clear. Keep vintage comic books and action figures in unsullied states, and you could be sitting on a pension plan. VHS copies of your favourite 90s sci-fi shows? Not so valuable, as it turns out. For proof, just visit my neighbourhood in south London, where Star Trek: Deep Space Nine videocassettes in the local charity shop can be yours for just 50p a pop. Oh, the indignity. These faded cultural artefacts, with their cracked plastic cases and sun-bleached sleeves, once retailed at £10.99 each. I know, because I was someone who’d save up to buy them back in an era when storytelling was rationed to two episodes per VHS. Can you imagine the anticipation? How we would fill the time between monthly releases by rewatching what we had repeatedly until we knew the 'stardates' backwards? Those who grew up in the streaming age, where the Star Trek franchise can be found in seconds on Paramount+, will no doubt find this hard to comprehend. But in the 1990s, collecting contemporary television required commitment. Without Wikipedia, we’d piece together timelines using copies of magazines such as TV Zone and Starburst. Blurbs would be memorised, cover art scrutinised, and on the day of release, we’d race to Virgin Megastore, ten-pound notes and loose change hot in our pockets. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/07/GettyImages-475631214-d31f198-e1772617565927.jpg" width="2400" height="1600" alt="Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock (Mr. Spock) and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk on the bridge of the USS Enterprise on the Star Trek: The Original Series episode Space Seed." title="Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock (Mr. Spock) and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk on the bridge of the USS Enterprise on the Star Trek: The Original Series episode Space Seed." /> This was a clunky 'rewind and eject' world, one where the only place you’d expect to find an autoplay feature would be on the bridge of a starship. But might this labour of fandom have had its positive facets? Did the effort of collecting intensify attachment in a way that has been lost in today’s frictionless scrolling-and-streaming world? Compare these past pilgrimages to the modern era, where everything is equally available but equally ignorable. Star Trek is still being made, but a friend was telling me only the other day how his son half-watches the spin-off Starfleet Academy in his bedroom on a phone propped on a stand while playing on a PS5 on a larger screen. On the one hand, it’s heartening to find that the world of Trek has endured, but dispiriting to realise not only that the medium upon which I watched it is now defunct, but that episodes are just ambiently absorbed, their plots competing with Overwatch and Snapchat notifications. Where once we used to commit, we now just seem to graze, safe in the knowledge that whole seasons are waiting without urgency on a watchlist. But might a section of Gen Z be rising up? Have some realised that the Shangri-La of streaming offers merely the illusion of ownership? And is there now a secret desire to invest in physical media? A recent article in the Los Angeles Times reported that Americans spent 12 per cent more on 4K Blu-rays in 2025 than in the previous year, with young customers fatigued by streaming seeing the buying of discs as "a form of cultural rebellion". Dare we believe that obsolescence is making a comeback as resistance? Said a contributor to the piece, "I want something I can put on my shelf", their words expressing a desire for tangibility and durability, as well as perhaps a recognition that, where streaming is concerned, you’re forever at the mercy of licensing deals where programmes can appear and disappear. In that simple sentence, there appears to be a need to once again be more than just a passive consumer and instead take ownership rather than rent access to a feed. Not so different, really, from the days of those VHS tapes. Perhaps the art of collecting was never lost – it was just biding its time? So, might it not matter that those 50p VHS relics of DS9 are currently piled unloved and unpurchased in the charity shop? For a start, the stories they contain are anything but extinct. For while the medium has died, the Star Trek mission continues. And the same could also be true of us. The desire to have and hold may have been hushed by streaming, but it hasn’t been extinguished entirely. Netflix and the like may have made watching TV effortless, but when everything is in easy reach, it can stop feeling hard-won. But if the next generation is now reaching for something they can slot into a player, there’s evidence right there that progress doesn’t always move forward. Sometimes, like a time-travel plot in an old sci-fi favourite, there’s great pleasure in looping back. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
With conspiracy culture now weaponised, can a revival of The X-Files really work today?
What hope is there for Mulder and Scully in our current paranoid culture?
Nostalgia for the 1990s is currently a potent fuel, and news that plans for a revival of The X-Files are solidifying has excited fans who have elevated FBI agents Mulder and Scully to the realms of the mythic. But glance at any early episode of the hit sci-fi drama about investigations into the otherworldly and it soon becomes clear just how much of a product of its time it is. Aesthetically, it’s undeniable. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) conducts research not on Google, but by whizzing through a blur of microfiche. When her partner Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) frets about being under surveillance, it isn’t CCTV that concerns him, rather a bug on his landline phone. Photos are developed in darkrooms, not uploaded to Instagram. And evidence mounts in manila folders not online forums. But nothing dates the series so much as its slogan: The Truth is Out There. To put that phrase into context, we must cast our minds back to 1993 – the year that the eerie whistle of The X-Files theme tune was heard for the first time. The date 9/11 was still a benign one on the calendar and Donald Trump merely a mega-rich hotelier who’d recently cameoed in the sequel to Home Alone. The political scientist Francis Fukuyama had us believing that we’d reached “the end of history”: liberal democracy had won, the Cold War was consigned to the past. But then came along this weird little out-there conspiracy drama with its catchphrase of unease that flipped this sense of optimism. "The Truth is Out There” suggested that there was a perception gap between our lives of apparent contentment and the real answers that lay beyond our line of sight. What was being hidden from us? Who was keeping it concealed? And could these two investigators in their basement office fill in the missing parts to that occluded picture? As it turned out, the truth in the case of The X-Files was that high-up suits in government had been colluding for malign purposes with aliens – a concept dreamt up by the show’s creator Chris Carter, who’d come of age in the era of Watergate and thus had his belief in institutions and authority tainted. He’d taken his personal trust issues and extrapolated them out into a grand science-fiction concept, feeding much of that wariness into the character of Mulder. But this was conspiracy theorising of a high-spirited kind, the mythology of The X-Files being a tantalising puzzle to solve rather than a cry of nihilistic despair. When it came to discovering the secrets of The X-Files, viewers scented the thrill of the chase rather than anything more sinister. QAnon, “Globalist” puppet masters, 5G towers – all that lay in the future. The problem for The X-Files revival is that such polarising talk is now very much our present. Ryan Coogler, the Sinners director who’s now bringing The X-Files back to our screens, said only recently that his version will feature “both monsters of the week and the overarching conspiracy”. Few will have a problem with the former, as many of the genetic mutants and folkloric creatures that populated the original run have lived long in the nightmares of ‘90s kids. For instance, it can be no accident that, of the many episodes it could have picked for its curated week of repeats, the UK broadcaster 5 has opted to include Squeeze, which saw the debut of limb-stretching serial killer Tooms, whose creepy elasticity has haunted a generation. Coogler is free to go to whatever macabre extremes he chooses to scare us half to death, but when it comes to conspiracy culture, he ought to be more circumspect. For if he were to plot Mulder’s journey down a logical path, the FBI agent would, at the very least, be hosting a podcast called Trust No One, where no end of left-of-left field views would be being aired. But in the current climate, might he even have been among those storming the Capitol in 2021 in a horned helmet? View Green Video on the source website Obviously, this is just a joke (and a small provocation) when it comes to the possible fate of Mulder. But there can be no denying that in the decades since Duchovny and Anderson were propelled to fame, conspiracy culture has been weaponised to such an extent that democracies are now at risk of being destabilised. What once felt like spine-tingling fun has become political leverage, with real-world misinformation often feeling just as outré as anything found in an X File. And thanks to the immediacy of social media, any conspiracy arc that Coogler depicts runs the risk of being corrupted faster than Tooms can scurry down a ventilation shaft. What was once fantasy escapism will become confirmation bias. In short, what hope is there for dramatised fears of an alien invasion when reality is far more paranoid? The truth is no longer just out there. It’s everywhere and nowhere. Monetised and memed. In the 1990s, it was a playful invitation to the curious. In 2026, it unfortunately feels a yell from the aggrieved in the digital wilderness. The X-Files is available to watch on Disney+. You can sign up to Disney+ from £5.99 a month now. Check out more of our Sci-fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast. 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Goodbye, Rob Grant – the Red Dwarf co-creator who found the laughs in loneliness
Paying tribute to the man who brought solace to a generation of sci-fi-loving misfits.
Nerds had yet to inherit the earth in 1988, so any 10-year-old sci-fi fan in the UK tended to feel isolated. Doctor Who, then scorned and shabby, would be spoken about at low volume in shadowy corners of the playground. Multi-sided dice were rolled only behind closed bedroom doors. Marvel comics hidden within the pages of Smash Hits in the canteen for fear of being ripped away and rubbished. It was a lonely, sequestered life. But not, as we soon discovered, as lonely and sequestered a life as the one about to be led by Dave Lister (Craig Charles), the underdog, uber-slob hero of a then-unknown comedy by the name of Red Dwarf, scripted by Doug Naylor and his now-late writing partner Rob Grant. That first series is now looked upon as a pale, grey, rudimentary version of the show that eventually became BBC Two’s most-watched comedy of the period. But for primary-school-age children, who gravitated towards fantasy rather than football, it was instant catnip. Or, as it ought really to be written, Catnip with a capital C. Its low budget gave it an air of stripped-back bleakness that matched the desolate situation in which Lister found himself. Here was the last human alive charting a course through the blankness of space on this huge mining vessel. And, thanks to a species-ending disaster, all he had for company at that stage was the ship’s senile computer (Norman Lovett), a walking-talking-preening descendant of his pet cat (Danny John-Jules) and a hologram recreation of Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie), the dead bunkmate who he’d loathed in life. But the genius of this concept was that it captured so perfectly a sense of loneliness. And, in so doing, made so many of us who were adrift feel less alone. This felt like TV made especially for kids of our age. At the time, Red Dwarf’s forebear The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy seemed out of reach and a little posh. Douglas Adams’s books were read by older siblings. Cousins. Teachers. Its literary humour was off limits; the television adaptation having aired when we were too young to really appreciate it. Red Dwarf, on the other hand, was scrappy and immediately accessible. We seized upon those characters, revelled in the grubbiness of Lister’s usage of “smeg”, enjoyed having our brains stretched and kneaded by such concepts as stasis booths, genetic evolution and future echoes. It depicted the vastness of space but filtered it through the everyday disarray of curry stains and knackered toasters. It taught us that authority figures were often buffoons and that losers could be the winners. It tamed our existential angst and turned it into a gag. And so, for all these reasons, many will no doubt be feeling thankful this morning for the imaginations of Grant and Naylor, despite the sad news of the former’s death at the age of just 70. For this Dwarfer, the apotheosis of their partnership is not even the TV series but the novel they wrote following that initial small-screen success: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, a first-edition copy of which I still own more than three decades after having it signed by them at an event in (I think?) Manchester’s one-time bookshop Sherratt & Hughes. To this day, it feels like Red Dwarf in its purest form. On the page, Lister’s melancholy is starker. Rimmer's petty bureaucratic outlook more painful and soul-destroying. For many of its chapters, it feels like the two of them are locked together for eternity while being mocked by the emptiness of space that surrounds them. But despite its preoccupation being extinction, it’s a strangely comforting read. What we feel ultimately is that, with the cosmos no longer demanding anything of Lister, he’s free to be himself and kick back. Humanity has been all but wiped out but what’s left is... well, surviving. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/09/432792-145488e-e1771432075780.jpg" width="3844" height="2560" alt="Danny John-Jules as the Cat, Chris Barrie as Arnold Rimmer, Craig Charles as Dave Lister, and Robert Llewellyn as Kryten in Red Dwarf" title="Danny John-Jules as the Cat, Chris Barrie as Arnold Rimmer, Craig Charles as Dave Lister, and Robert Llewellyn as Kryten in Red Dwarf" /> And the solace for those affected by the death of Lister’s co-creator Rob Grant is that his and Naylor’s work will also survive. Even thrive – with a prequel novel that Grant penned with Andrew Marshall set to be published posthumously later this year. But for the nerdier among us who clung to Red Dwarf from the start, before the mythology got knottier and the special effects slicker, there remains the ultimate comfort. That oddballs and rejects don’t have to feel sidelined by the universe – they can actually be its most important characters. Watch Rob Grant speaking to Radio Times earlier this year about new prequel novel Titan: View Green Video on the source website Red Dwarf: Titan will publish in hardback, ebook and audio on 16 July 2026 – it is available for pre-order now. Red Dwarf is streaming now on BBC iPlayer. Check out more of our Sci-fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Add The X-Files to your watchlist Nostalgia for the 1990s is currently a potent fuel, and news that plans for a revival of The X-Files are solidifying has excited fans who have elevated FBI agents Mulder and Scully to the realms of the mythic. But glance at any early episode of the hit sci-fi drama about investigations into the otherworldly and it soon becomes clear just how much of a product of its time it is. Aesthetically, it’s undeniable. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) conducts research not on Google, but by whizzing through a blur of microfiche. When her partner Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) frets about being under surveillance, it isn’t CCTV that concerns him, rather a bug on his landline phone. Photos are developed in darkrooms, not uploaded to Instagram. And evidence mounts in manila folders not online forums. But nothing dates the series so much as its slogan: The Truth is Out There. To put that phrase into context, we must cast our minds back to 1993 – the year that the eerie whistle of The X-Files theme tune was heard for the first time. The date 9/11 was still a benign one on the calendar and Donald Trump merely a mega-rich hotelier who’d recently cameoed in the sequel to Home Alone. The political scientist Francis Fukuyama had us believing that we’d reached “the end of history”: liberal democracy had won, the Cold War was consigned to the past. But then came along this weird little out-there conspiracy drama with its catchphrase of unease that flipped this sense of optimism. “The Truth Is Out There” suggested that there was a perception gap between our lives of apparent contentment and the real answers that lay beyond our line of sight. What was being hidden from us? Who was keeping it concealed? And could these two investigators in their basement office fill in the missing parts to that occluded picture? As it turned out, the truth in the case of The X-Files was that high-up suits in government had been colluding for malign purposes with aliens – a concept dreamt up by the show’s creator Chris Carter, who’d come of age in the era of Watergate and thus had his belief in institutions and authority tainted. He’d taken his personal trust issues and extrapolated them out into a grand science-fiction concept, feeding much of that wariness into the character of Mulder. But this was conspiracy theorising of a high-spirited kind, the mythology of The X-Files being a tantalising puzzle to solve rather than a cry of nihilistic despair. When it came to discovering the secrets of The X-Files, viewers scented the thrill of the chase rather than anything more sinister. QAnon, “Globalist” puppet masters, 5G towers – all that lay in the future. The problem for The X-Files revival is that such polarising talk is now very much our present. Ryan Coogler, the Sinners director who’s now bringing The X-Files back to our screens, said only recently that his version will feature “both monsters of the week and the overarching conspiracy”. Few will have a problem with the former, as many of the genetic mutants and folkloric creatures that populated the original run have lived long in the nightmares of ‘90s kids. For instance, it can be no accident that, of the many episodes it could have picked for its curated week of repeats, the UK broadcaster 5 has opted to include Squeeze, which saw the debut of limb-stretching serial killer Tooms, whose creepy elasticity has haunted a generation. Coogler is free to go to whatever macabre extremes he chooses to scare us half to death, but when it comes to conspiracy culture, he ought to be more circumspect. For if he were to plot Mulder’s journey down a logical path, the FBI agent would, at the very least, be hosting a podcast called Trust No One where no end of left-of-left field views would be being aired. But in the current climate, might he even have been among those storming the Capitol in 2021 in a horned helmet? View Green Video on the source website Obviously, this is just a joke (and a small provocation) when it comes to the possible fate of Mulder. But there can be no denying that in the decades since Duchovny and Anderson were propelled to fame, conspiracy culture has been weaponised to such an extent that democracies are now at risk of being destabilised. What once felt like spine-tingling fun has become political leverage, with real-world misinformation often feeling just as outré as anything found in an X File. And thanks to the immediacy of social media, any conspiracy arc that Coogler depicts runs the risk of being corrupted faster than Tooms can scurry down a ventilation shaft. What was once fantasy escapism will become confirmation bias. In short, what hope is there for dramatised fears of an alien invasion when reality is far more paranoid? The truth is no longer just out there. It’s everywhere and nowhere. Monetised and memed. In the 1990s, it was a playful invitation to the curious. In 2026, it unfortunately feels a yell from the aggrieved in the digital wilderness.
It’s Scooby-Doo with an 18 certificate: Why the Scream franchise owes a major debt to the classic cartoon
How Hanna-Barbera’s mystery-solving Great Dane became the blueprint for a horror franchise.
When is a compliment not a compliment? When you say a TV show or a film has "gone a bit Scooby-Doo". This is meant to suggest it's formulaic and faintly embarrassing, which makes what I’m about to write uncomfortable, but I believe Scooby-Doo kids grow up to be Scream-loving adults. Not ironically. Not guiltily. But properly, and with pride. This sounds insulting to both parties, I know. Scooby-Doo! Scream! One features a talking dog; the other a creepy guy who only talks on landlines. But they share a connection that runs deep (deeper than just Matthew Lillard starring as both Stu Macher and Shaggy). Because Scooby-Doo – especially the original 1969 Where Are You! version, before the franchise started shaking things up with guest stars and noisy puppy nephews – is a masterclass in horror-lite and mystery. Yes, it has its repeated idiosyncrasies. They split up. Velma loses her glasses at a pivotal moment. Scooby and Shaggy are chased by the bad guy. Sometimes they dress as French waiters for reasons no one ever questions (how come they can always find a stainless-steel cloche in a crisis?). But beneath that, something subtly educational is going on. Because Scooby-Doo is actually teaching you things. One: everyone's suspicious. Two: the monster is never really a monster. Three: fear can be punctured with a joke about a vertiginous stack of burgers. Four: if you pay attention, things make sense. And five – crucially – nothing beats the moment when the mask comes off. Put it like that and you can suddenly see the through-line to Scream. Ghostface is just the Spooky Space Kook who’s done a film studies degree and found a knife block. That mask removal is the pivotal thing. The moment when chaos becomes order. When the person who was helpful, or at least seemed benign, turns out to be the problem. Benevolence suddenly becoming malevolence. It’s startling but also satisfying. And it carries a reassuring message: that terror, however primal, can be tackled by people with questioning minds. It works on several levels at once – emotionally, cerebrally, dramatically – and if you’ve been hot-wired for that pleasure early, you’re determined to seek it out again. Some of us went from Scooby-Doo to Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie. Others took a more macabre turn along the shelves at Oldham Library via Goosebumps and Stephen King. But the principle's the same: cleverness and tenacity beating chaos. The monster loses. Order reasserts itself. Everyone exhales and, if they're lucky, gets to grab a milkshake at the diner. The difference, as we get older, is the intensity. Scooby-Doo is where the needle starts to creep upwards. Then the psychological layers thicken, the blades get sharper. And by the time you reach Scream, you're being rewarded for years of studying. And at this stage, knowing the rules isn't merely smart; it might help you survive. Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott remains alive because she questions what's expected of her. Jamie Kennedy's Randy Meeks stays in the land of the living (at least for a while) because he’s devoured the handbook. Luckily for her, Randy's niece Mindy inherits a similar hunger for knowledge. It’s the same logic as Fred shoving Scooby and Shaggy out as bait – risky, yes, but rooted in an understanding of how events usually pan out. In Scream, awareness is a prized commodity. What’s clever is that, for all the sly winks, Scream still plays fair as a whodunnit. Ghostface isn't an implacable force in a boiler suit like Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. He’s human. Fallible. Which means, in theory, he could be tempted by the promise of notoriety, retribution, or a tasty baguette being offered up by French waiting staff. The deviation is that, instead of being hoisted aloft in a net trap, the solution usually involves bullets and a frenzy of stabbing. It’s Scooby-Doo with an 18 certificate. Hollywood has made a packet out of this particular trick: frightening us into thinking. I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Happy Death Day – all variations on the same idea. And while critics readily acknowledge Scream’s cleverness, not many tip their hat to the gang in the floral-decorated van who got us primed for action. Which is strange, really. Because decades before Ghostface dialled his first number, Scooby-Doo was demonstrating to us that the scariest things often turn out to be someone in a costume, and that if you keep your wits about you, don’t assume the obvious and pursue the clues, you'll probably manage to puzzle it out in the end. And if not – well, at least you’ll get a major buzz from the unmasking. View Green Video on the source website Read more: Scream's Neve Campbell addresses return to horror franchise following controversy Why isn't Neve Campbell in Scream 6? Fate of Sidney Prescott Scream 7 is released in cinemas on Friday 27 February in the UK. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
ER is coming to Netflix – and it's time we recognised it changed television forever
The classic US hospital drama set the gold standard back in 1994.
Add ER to your watchlist. We all have an example of a TV show like this, right? The one that holds an outsized importance in our affections? For me, it’s undoubtedly and wholeheartedly ER, the 15 seasons of which are coming to Netflix in the UK on 9 February. It’s a method of accessing the series that would have been inconceivable to the undergraduate version of myself who, back in the mid-1990s, was watching on a 14-inch portable TV with his girlfriend in manky digs. It felt, at the time, like an impossibly sophisticated drama. All that frantic talk of Chem-7s, CBCs, Coags, EKGs being clean or otherwise. No real idea what any of it meant, but it sure seemed as though we were eavesdropping on the way things truly worked at the sharp end of hospital life. And the acts of heroism on display, such as reckless Doug Ross (George Clooney) risking all to rescue a boy trapped in a storm drain as the rain waters rose. It felt filmic, almost mythic. Well, as much as anything can on a tiny, boxy Sony without Nicam Stereo. For the two of us, ER had staying power. We, like the nebbishy and lovable Dr Carter (Noah Wyle) were students when it began. But when it ended, a decade and a half later, we were bringing our second-born son home from hospital. Those real-life births, incidentally, made all-the-more fraught by us having witnessed on TV every late-stage pregnancy complication known to the medical profession. But such awareness mattered not. Each winter, we’ll still watch season one’s Blizzard because nothing says Christmas like a multi-car pile-up in the snow. And every festive season, we’ll tell our now-grown-up kids just how much ER meant to us when we were their age. They’ll smile indulgently for a second or two and then go back to thinking of us as they ordinarily do. As index fingers with a banking app attached. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/01/er-season-6-ec8f04f.jpg" width="3000" height="2000" alt="Anthony Edwards as Dr Mark Greene, Laura Innes as Dr Kerry Weaver and Noah Wyle as Dr John Carter in ER, rushing through a hospital ward with a patient on a gurney." title="Anthony Edwards as Dr Mark Greene, Laura Innes as Dr Kerry Weaver and Noah Wyle as Dr John Carter in ER" /> Yet a not insubstantial part of me is hoping that they’ll now somehow come to ER via streaming. In a Gen Z epiphany, they’ll abandon Grand Theft Auto and IShowSpeed and realise instead that kindly Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) can be as much a hero to their generation as ours. Because despite us merely dusting down the odd tinselly episode on an annual basis, ER is not just for Christmas. In fact, it ought to be given its due more vocally in general, especially by critics who believe the most recent golden age of TV dawned with the debut of The Sopranos in 1999. Spool back to 1994 and the birth of ER and you’ll find the true start of what’s now categorised prestige television. Before this time, dialogue had overlapped and morals had been compromised (Hill Street Blues), there’d been tonal ambiguity and attempts to make TV as art (Twin Peaks), even depictions of doctors as burnouts rather than paragons of virtue (St Elsewhere). But ER achieved what those others didn’t in being ambitious, serious, influential but also massively popular. Just think about it. Hill Street Blues was a critical darling, but its hold over audiences was never as strong. St Elsewhere had the ethical quandaries yet lacked the accelerative thrust. And Twin Peaks featured serialised storytelling of a type we’d rarely seen outside of soaps, but its surreal tone led to it being constrained by network interference. ER, on the other hand, could produce such devastating hours of TV as Love’s Labor Lost (in which Greene tragically misdiagnosed a pregnant patient – a mistake that would haunt him for the rest of his career), win Emmy awards for the results and still top the Nielsen ratings. And yet it’s never really spoken of in the same glowing terms as the Breaking Bads or The Wires of this world. Why? Perhaps its home on US network NBC rather than cable channel HBO has resulted in it now being overlooked? Did its increasingly grandiose set-piece stunts do it more harm than good (certainly, Dr Romano didn’t fare well from his two fateful encounters with helicopters)? Maybe the fact that it ended its run with a completely different regular cast to its original line-up has led to accusations that it outstayed its welcome? But watch its finale And In the End... and you’ll see how just effectively ER stayed thematically true to itself. Patients keep arriving on gurneys, while doctors continue to heal and teach. And making a return to Chicago’s Cook County General in its last on-screen appearance is Carter, once a callow trainee, now a seasoned mentor and someone passing on his wisdom in an unshowy manner to Mark’s daughter Rachel, these days a wannabe medic herself. “Dr Greene, you coming?” Carter asks as ambulances pull up to the bay and the cameras pan out. It’s the most beautiful piece of narrative symmetry: the shifts continue, as do the lessons, and characters are shown to matter because of what they hand down to the next generation. ER set that tone in 1994 and held its nerve until 2009. In fact, the only way it could have been more perfect would be for it to have aired solely on crummy, small portable TV sets.
We all have an example of a TV show like this, right? The one that holds an outsized importance in our affections? For me, it’s undoubtedly and wholeheartedly ER, the 15 seasons of which are coming to Netflix in the UK on 9 February. It’s a method of accessing the series that would have been inconceivable to the undergraduate version of myself who, back in the mid-1990s, was watching on a 14-inch portable TV with his girlfriend in manky digs. It felt, at the time, like an impossibly sophisticated drama. All that frantic talk of Chem-7s, CBCs, Coags, EKGs being clean or otherwise. No real idea what any of it meant, but it sure seemed as though we were eavesdropping on the way things truly worked at the sharp end of hospital life. And the acts of heroism on display, such as reckless Doug Ross (George Clooney) risking all to rescue a boy trapped in a storm drain as the rain waters rose. It felt filmic, almost mythic. Well, as much as anything can on a tiny, boxy Sony without Nicam Stereo. For the two of us, ER had staying power. We, like the nebbishy and lovable Dr Carter (Noah Wyle) were students when it began. But when it ended, a decade and a half later, we were bringing our second-born son home from hospital. Those real-life births, incidentally, made all-the-more fraught by us having witnessed on TV every late-stage pregnancy complication known to the medical profession. But such awareness mattered not. Each winter, we’ll still watch season one’s Blizzard because nothing says Christmas like a multi-car pile-up in the snow. And every festive season, we’ll tell our now-grown-up kids just how much ER meant to us when we were their age. They’ll smile indulgently for a second or two and then go back to thinking of us as they ordinarily do. As index fingers with a banking app attached. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/01/er-season-6-ec8f04f.jpg" width="3000" height="2000" alt="Anthony Edwards as Dr Mark Greene, Laura Innes as Dr Kerry Weaver and Noah Wyle as Dr John Carter in ER, rushing through a hospital ward with a patient on a gurney." title="Anthony Edwards as Dr Mark Greene, Laura Innes as Dr Kerry Weaver and Noah Wyle as Dr John Carter in ER" /> Yet a not insubstantial part of me is hoping that they’ll now somehow come to ER via streaming. In a Gen Z epiphany, they’ll abandon Grand Theft Auto and IShowSpeed and realise instead that kindly Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) can be as much a hero to their generation as ours. Because despite us merely dusting down the odd tinselly episode on an annual basis, ER is not just for Christmas. In fact, it ought to be given its due more vocally in general, especially by critics who believe the most recent golden age of TV dawned with the debut of The Sopranos in 1999. Spool back to 1994 and the birth of ER and you’ll find the true start of what’s now categorised prestige television. Before this time, dialogue had overlapped and morals had been compromised (Hill Street Blues), there’d been tonal ambiguity and attempts to make TV as art (Twin Peaks), even depictions of doctors as burnouts rather than paragons of virtue (St Elsewhere). But ER achieved what those others didn’t in being ambitious, serious, influential but also massively popular. Just think about it. Hill Street Blues was a critical darling, but its hold over audiences was never as strong. St Elsewhere had the ethical quandaries yet lacked the accelerative thrust. And Twin Peaks featured serialised storytelling of a type we’d rarely seen outside of soaps, but its surreal tone led to it being constrained by network interference. ER, on the other hand, could produce such devastating hours of TV as Love’s Labor Lost (in which Greene tragically misdiagnosed a pregnant patient – a mistake that would haunt him for the rest of his career), win Emmy awards for the results and still top the Nielsen ratings. And yet it’s never really spoken of in the same glowing terms as the Breaking Bads or The Wires of this world. Why? Perhaps its home on US network NBC rather than cable channel HBO has resulted in it now being overlooked? Did its increasingly grandiose set-piece stunts do it more harm than good (certainly, Dr Romano didn’t fare well from his two fateful encounters with helicopters)? Maybe the fact that it ended its run with a completely different regular cast to its original line-up has led to accusations that it outstayed its welcome? But watch its finale And In the End... and you’ll see how just effectively ER stayed thematically true to itself. Patients keep arriving on gurneys, while doctors continue to heal and teach. And making a return to Chicago’s Cook County General in its last on-screen appearance is Carter, once a callow trainee, now a seasoned mentor and someone passing on his wisdom in an unshowy manner to Mark’s daughter Rachel, these days a wannabe medic herself. “Dr Greene, you coming?” Carter asks as ambulances pull up to the bay and the cameras pan out. It’s the most beautiful piece of narrative symmetry: the shifts continue, as do the lessons, and characters are shown to matter because of what they hand down to the next generation. ER set that tone in 1994 and held its nerve until 2009. In fact, the only way it could have been more perfect would be for it to have aired solely on crummy, small portable TV sets. ER is coming to Netflix UK on Monday 9 February 2026. Add ER to your watchlist on the <a id="OWA8b702c45-bee9-94e4-f018-57518e78041b" title="https://www.radiotimes.com/download-the-app/?af_xp=custom&pid=website&c=editorial_content&is_retargeting=true&af_reengagement_window=30d" href="https://www.radiotimes.com/download-the-app/?af_xp=custom&pid=website&c=editorial_content&is_retargeting=true&af_reengagement_window=30d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-outlook-id="449c28d9-909e-4aab-b6b8-153454f55d5e" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="0">Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Forget the doof-doofs – The Traitors' cliffhangers may have just outplayed the soaps
The Traitors is giving us a whole different slice of melodrama.
When lists are compiled of seismic TV cliffhangers, it’s to drama that critics ordinarily turn, be it The Walking Dead's Negan with his baseball bat, JR’s bullet to the guts in Dallas or EastEnders' Kat redrawing the Slaters’ family tree with the three words, "Yes, I am!" But if last night’s edition of The Traitors proved anything, it’s that fiction no longer has a stranglehold on unresolved friction. If the job of a cliffhanger is to compel an audience to keep watching, then the fate of the treacherous Rachel ought to be offered up in a masterclass on heightened stakes. Yet, what marks it out as different to acclaimed deferred payoffs from the past is the key ingredient of irrational human behaviour. Real people are unpredictable at the best of times, but put them under pressure at a roundtable where money and safe passage are at risk, and the messiness becomes momentous. Which is not to say that The Traitors is free from editorial manipulation. Each episode is as expertly designed and layered as Claudia’s wardrobe on a windswept Scottish morning. And those tasked with editing each show must have felt a whopping amount of job satisfaction when work was completed on Thursday’s jaw-dropper. But, for viewers, the tension crucially doesn’t feel manufactured. That sense of the Faithful and Traitors having agency over their fates puts events in a state of real flux, something that can’t really be said whenever a line-up of suspects is issued for the latest soap whodunnit. In those instances, the resolutions have usually been predetermined by a storyline team bound by the usual rules of characterisation, foreshadowing and the necessity of scheduling a big reveal to coincide with either a major anniversary or the festive season. And canny soap fans, being well-schooled in such tricks, are sometimes able to outsmart the writers. But in the case of knee-jerk Faithful James, it’s impossible to rely on convention. We can speculate, argue, and maybe take a side, but guaranteeing the outcome of this particular narrative? It’s a fool’s errand and one that will likely leave the average person blushing harder than Stephen under a studio light. Yes, it’s packaged up with hooting owls and Fleetwood Mac songs given gothic makeovers. However, the effect is to make The Traitors' suspense feel lived rather than pre-plotted. All drama, be it in the castle or in soapland, is in the business of staging peril. But the state of anticipation in which we’ve been left ahead of tonight’s final has the livewire feel of danger unfolding in real time. As such, Kat Slater may just have newfound competition on those countdowns of last-minute TV jolts. Add Radio Times as a Preferred Source on Google Keep up to date on what’s worth watching with your favourite entertainment news from Radio Times – see more of our exclusive news and interviews featured prominently in Top Stories when using Google. The Traitors season 4 concludes on Friday 23rd January at 8:30pm on BBC One and iPlayer. Seasons 1-3 are available to watch on iPlayer. Add The Traitors to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
The Thursday Murder Club review: A safe and cosy whodunnit with touches of pathos
This highly anticipated adaptation of Richard Osman's best-seller is a little broad and cute – but risk has never been part of the business of cosy crime.
★★★☆☆ The Thursday Murder Club is in select cinemas and on Netflix from 28 August. Add it to your watchlist In a flash of self-awareness early on in this adaptation of Richard Osman’s best-seller The Thursday Murder Club, pensioner sleuth Joyce (Celia Imrie) is seen remarking to her cohort Elizabeth (Helen Mirren) that it feels like she’s in "one of those Sunday night dramas about two bright-eyed, feisty old lady detectives". But the line also serves as a way of pre-empting any criticism that could be headed in the direction of this cute whodunnit about a band of amateur mystery-solvers living in a plush retirement complex. View oEmbed on the source website For what we have here is a tale that, were it to be deprived of its stellar cast, would fit snugly in the weekend schedules alongside the murderous yet somehow comforting goings-on in the likes of St Mary Mead or Midsomer. Joyce, for instance, is all about the chintz, with pastel-pink living quarters that could have been interior designed by Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter, while fellow club member Ron (Pierce Brosnan) is the cuddliest trade unionist to have ever burned charcoal in a brazier. His best pal is psychiatrist Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), a man so buttoned-up he’s become one with his bowtie and tweed. And chief clue-finder is the redoubtable Elizabeth, an ex-spook as scrubbed and stylish as Jackson Lamb is filthy and slovenly. All these main players probing the untimely death of a property developer are as exemplary as you’d expect, though Brosnan’s (London?) accent does wander more quickly than any resident in an old folks’ home ever could. But as a piece of filmmaking, The Thursday Murder Club is cleanly rather than cinematically directed by Chris Columbus, to the extent that it feels, as Joyce suggests, like its story ought to have been told across several episodes of a series rather than in a single movie. What doesn’t help matters are the names in the supporting cast, many of whom are offering variations on parts they’ve played previously on TV. So, David Tennant gives us a spin on his cad from Rivals, Jonathan Pryce is essentially a facsimile of his dementia-diagnosed former spy on Slow Horses, and Daniel Mays appears as a clone of his harassed Magpie Murders cop. But risk has never been part of the business of cosy crime, as what viewers crave in projects such as this is reassurance, along with enviably picturesque environs and the odd credible twist. Read more film reviews: The Life of Chuck review: Tom Hiddleston charms in entertaining, imaginative and non-horror Stephen King adaptation Freakier Friday review: Get set to party like it's 2003 all over again Weapons review: One of the best horror films of recent years The Naked Gun review: Liam Neeson's legacy sequel is a 90-minute hoot Fantastic Four: First Steps review — Pedro Pascal's Fab Four give Marvel a much-needed boost Here, some of the complexities of the original novel have been streamlined or dropped, a move that benefits some (Naomi Ackie’s PC Donna De Freitas) but shortchanges others (Henry Lloyd-Hughes’s Polish handyman Bogdan). However, the verdant Coopers Chase, where the gang all reside, is almost Downton-level vast (how are they all affording it?) and its green-and-pleasant scenery is surely destined to be envied by the US export market. Yet this is not quite a land of lost content, as retrieving the movie from the realm of total make believe are some touches of pathos which, although not as potent as on the page, are still affecting. These moments may be fleeting, but the odd rumination on belonging and mortality add some welcome emotional shades to what can, at times, be a broad take on the source material. Still, a couple of hours spent in the company of the key quartet is never less than comradely, and with a bookshelf full of subsequent cases just waiting to be dramatised, it's unlikely that we've seen the last of our feisty famous four.
The Thursday Murder Club review: A cute whodunnit adaptation with touches of pathos
This highly anticipated adaptation of Richard Osman's best-seller is a little broad and safe – but risk has never been part of the business of cosy crime.
In a flash of self-awareness early on in this adaptation of Richard Osman’s best-seller The Thursday Murder Club, pensioner sleuth Joyce (Celia Imrie) is seen remarking to her cohort Elizabeth (Helen Mirren) that it feels like she’s in "one of those Sunday night dramas about two bright-eyed, feisty old lady detectives". But the line also serves as a way of pre-empting any criticism that could be headed in the direction of this cute whodunnit about a band of amateur mystery-solvers living in a plush retirement complex. For what we have here is a tale that, were it to be deprived of its stellar cast, would fit snugly in the weekend schedules alongside the murderous yet somehow comforting goings-on in the likes of St Mary Mead or Midsomer. Joyce, for instance, is all about the chintz, with pastel-pink living quarters that could have been interior designed by Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter, while fellow club member Ron (Pierce Brosnan) is the cuddliest trade unionist to have ever burned charcoal in a brazier. His best pal is psychiatrist Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), a man so buttoned-up he’s become one with his bowtie and tweed. And chief clue-finder is the redoubtable Elizabeth, an ex-spook as scrubbed and stylish as Jackson Lamb is filthy and slovenly. All these main players probing the untimely death of a property developer are as exemplary as you’d expect, though Brosnan’s (London?) accent does wander more quickly than any resident in an old folks’ home ever could. But as a piece of filmmaking, The Thursday Murder Club is cleanly rather than cinematically directed by Chris Columbus, to the extent that it feels, as Joyce suggests, like its story ought to have been told across several episodes of a series rather than in a single movie. What doesn’t help matters are the names in the supporting cast, many of whom are offering variations on parts they’ve played previously on TV. So, David Tennant gives us a spin on his cad from Rivals, Jonathan Pryce is essentially a facsimile of his dementia-diagnosed former spy on Slow Horses, and Daniel Mays appears as a clone of his harassed Magpie Murders cop. But risk has never been part of the business of cosy crime, as what viewers crave in projects such as this is reassurance, along with enviably picturesque environs and the odd credible twist. Read more: Helen Mirren talks "the team getting back together" for The Thursday Murder Club sequels The Thursday Murder Club's Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan are this week's cover stars Here, some of the complexities of the original novel have been streamlined or dropped, a move that benefits some (Naomi Ackie’s PC Donna De Freitas) but shortchanges others (Henry Lloyd-Hughes’s Polish handyman Bogdan). However, the verdant Coopers Chase, where the gang all reside, is almost Downton-level vast (how are they all affording it?) and its green-and-pleasant scenery is surely destined to be envied by the US export market. Yet this is not quite a land of lost content, as retrieving the movie from the realm of total make believe are some touches of pathos which, although not as potent as on the page, are still affecting. These moments may be fleeting, but the odd rumination on belonging and mortality add some welcome emotional shades to what can, at times, be a broad take on the source material. Still, a couple of hours spent in the company of the key quartet is never less than comradely, and with a bookshelf full of subsequent cases just waiting to be dramatised, it's unlikely that we've seen the last of our feisty famous four. The Thursday Murder Club is now showing in select UK cinemas and will stream on Netflix from Thursday 28th August 2025. Discover a world of crime & mystery with Sky Essential TV for just £15 a month. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
13 must-watch crime dramas based on books – from Slow Horses to The Day of the Jackal
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Magpie Murders – available now on iPlayer Literary editor Susan Ryeland (Lesley Manville) receives inspiration from a famous fictional detective. Sequel Moonflower Murders is also available, while filming has just wrapped on the third and final instalment in the trilogy, Marble Hall Murders. Adapted from the novels by Anthony Horowitz Murder Most Puzzling – available now on 5 A crossword-setter (Phyllis Logan) with a secret moves to a supposedly sleepy market town and starts solving murder cases. The police, naturally, take umbrage. Adapted from A Clue for the Puzzle Lady (2000) and its sequels by Parnell Hall. The Marlow Murder Club – available now on U Upmarket Buckinghamshire is the setting for this cozy whodunnit which finds a trio of female sleuths (led by Samantha Bond) taken on as helpers to the official force. Adapted from the 2021 novel (and its sequels) by Robert Thorogood A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder – available now on iPlayer/Netflix Student Pip (Emma Myers) isn’t satisfied with the verdict in the case of a missing teen and turns investigator herself. A follow-up is currently in the works. Adapted from the 2019 novel (and its sequels) by Holly Jackson Virdee – available now on BBC iPlayer Bradford detective Harry Virdee (Staz Nair) hunts a killer targeting the Asian community, just as his new wife scandalises his family. Adapted from AA Dhand’s 2018 novel City of Sinners Department Q – available now on Netflix Matthew Goode stars as an arrogant copper who’s assigned a basement office and a stack of cold case files. Think Slow Horses with detectives instead of spies. Adapted from 2007 Danish-language novel The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen Dalgliesh – available now on 5 Poet and police officer Adam Dalgliesh (Bertie Carvel) lays claim to being TV’s most cerebral detective in these elegantly plotted mysteries set in the 1970s. Based on the PD James Adam Dalgliesh novels (1962-2008) The Gold – available now on BBC iPlayer Neil Forsyth’s account of the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery – starring Hugh Bonneville and Jack Lowden – tracks stolen bullion across the decades. Both series available now. Forsyth and Thomas Turner’s tie-in non-fiction book The Gold: The real story behind Brink's-Mat: Britain's biggest heist was published in February 2023 The Beast Must Die – ITVX Cush Jumbo’s Frances seeks revenge on her son’s murderer in this twisted thriller. Also stars Billy Howle as detective Nigel Strangeways and Jared Harris. Adapted from the 1938 novel by Cecil Day-Lewis, under the pen name Nicholas Blake The Day of the Jackal – available now on Now Eddie Redmayne is the well-paid assassin and Lashana Lynch the intelligence operative on his tail in this classy reimagining of the classic thriller. A second series is in the works. Adapted from the 1971 Frederick Forsyth novel The Night Agent – available now on Netflix A lowly FBI agent (Gabriel Basso) on the night shift in the White House finds himself caught up in a grand conspiracy as he attempts to unmask a traitor. Adapted from the 2019 novel by Matthew Quirk Killing Eve – available now on BBC iPlayer Jodie Comer’s breakout role came as an unhinged assassin hunting a spy (Sandra Oh). A new prequel, called Honey, is currently in production. Based on the Villanelle novellas (2014-2016) by Luke Jennings Alex Rider – available now on Prime Video The teen spy (Otto Farrant) battles tech billionaires and secret assassins over three series of globe-trotting adventures. Also starring Vicky McClure and Stephen Dillane. Based on the Alex Rider books (2000-2023) by Anthony Horowitz ... and 5 more to watch soon Down Cemetery Road – coming soon to Apple TV+ Two women (Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson) team up to find a missing child. Adapted from the 2003 novel by Slow Horses’ Mick Herron. Murder Before Evensong – due in the autumn on 5 Canon Daniel Clement (Matthew Lewis) follows in the footsteps of Father Brown and Grantchester’s clerical crime-solvers in a 1980s murder mystery. Adapted from the 2022 novel by Richard Coles Lynley – due in the autumn on BBC1 He’s upper crust, she’s working class - together they make for a formidable pairing. Leo Suter and Sofia Barclay stars as the aristocratic DI Lynley and the maverick DS Havers. Based on Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley novels (1988-2025) Atomic – coming soon to Sky Atlantic/NOW Two friends caught in a uranium-smuggling plot vow to prevent a nuclear holocaust while evading MI6 and the CIA. Stars Alfie Allen and Shazad Latif. Inspired by the 2006 non-fiction book Atomic Bazaar by William Langewiesche Night Manager 2 – due in 2026 on BBC1 Tom Hiddleston’s sharp-suited inside man returns in a long-awaited sequel to the glossy John Le Carré story – with Hugh Laurie back as executive producer. In the meantime, the first series is available to watch on iPlayer. Based on The Night Manager (1993) by John Le Carré The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what else is on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
The 10 best page-to-screen adaptations to watch now
Amateur sleuths, cops and spooks lead our list of the best TV adaptations of novels. Which ones will you add to your watchlist?
With the news that Mark Gatiss is unconventionally making a novel out of his TV drama Bookish, our RT experts have chosen ten of the best TV shows that started life on the page. We start with the amateur sleuths of "cosy crime" before moving on to cop and spy dramas – and if you like TV with such a literary touch, there's more good news, as many more highly-anticipated adaptations are in the pipeline. For example, there’s Down Cemetery Road from Slow Horses author Mick Herron (on Apple TV+ later this year), the Rev Richard Coles-penned cosy-crime show Murder Before Evensong (due this autumn on 5), Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley cases (BBC1, this autumn), a nuclear-war spy drama called Atomic (coming soon on Sky) — and the small matter of The Night Manager 2, expected on the BBC in 2026…
Star Trek: Section 31 review – Beloved franchise should have stayed on terra firma
Michelle Yeoh reprises her iconic role as Philippa Georgiou.
Back when Michelle Yeoh first played Emperor Philippa Georgiou in TV’s Star Trek: Discovery, her schedule wasn’t as packed as it is today. Yet despite the boost to her career following an Academy Award win for 2023’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, she’s still found time to reprise the role of Georgiou in this bombastic feature-length outing, Star Trek: Section 31, which finds the ruthless one-time despot pressganged into joining a secret division of Starfleet on a race-against-time mission. Among the members of this black-ops unit are some recognisable names and races, including a shapeshifting Chameloid called Quasi (Sam Richardson), whose species was introduced back in 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. And then there’s Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), who as fans of the Next Generation know, will go on to captain the USS Enterprise-C. But, to be honest, these nods to the wider universe are merely surface dressing, as what we get is a noisy affair in which the optimistic ethos and iconography of Trek are mostly jettisoned in favour of a grungy aesthetic and a bog-standard sci-fi plot about a destructive weapon being put to ill use. Part of the problem is this stripping away of emblems that many associate with the series, from the pristine uniforms to the gleaming interiors of starships. Instead, the vessel on which Georgiou and her crew are travelling is described as "a garbage barge", while a sequence in which Garrett searches through a vat of trash has more a feel of Star Wars than Trek. But perhaps the more pressing issue is the focus on the institution of Section 31 itself. Its origins, for those who aren’t aware, lie in spin-off Deep Space Nine, where it was a very minor player in a series that, at times, explored the compromises the Federation had to make in pursuit of its utopian ideals. Here, however, where we find Section 31 more untethered from Starfleet, it’s difficult not to come away thinking that its existence conflicts with Gene Roddenberry’s original upbeat 1960s vision of the future. Far from reflecting Kennedy-era idealism, Section 31 feels far more like a shadowy, paranoic Nixonian creation. View oEmbed on the source website Also wrestling with their demons is Georgiou herself, who, amid her many fight scenes, fleetingly soul-searches and attempts to reconcile with her past as a tyrant ruler on a mirror universe version of Earth. But such concerns, along with a few stabs at humour by Georgiou’s ragtag crew (former EastEnders star Rob Kazinsky being the most effective here as an agent with a mechanical exoskeleton), are drowned out by the whizz-bang explosions. All too often, orange fireballs are seen screaming across the screen, but rarely are they truly spectacular. And what’s been forgotten is that Star Trek is often at its most effective in quieter moments where philosophy rather than the firing of photon torpedoes is to the fore. Rather, the obvious aim here is to make a grab for the Guardians of the Galaxy crowd, but neither the script nor the action sequences are nimble enough. With a built-in audience that’s presumably older than those which follow other fantasy franchises, it’s understandable for Trek to be feeling that, to survive, it must adapt. But the result is not as much fun as it needs to be to attract newcomers, while long-time enthusiasts may end up wishing they’d stayed on terra firma in the company of their old box sets. Star Trek: Section 31 arrives on Paramount Plus on 24th January. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Call The Midwife's Peter Davison on filming under social distancing - and what to expect from Nonnatus House this Christmas
The former Doctor talks to David Brown about joining the circus for Call The Midwife, working during the pandemic, and wanting to act for as long as he can stand.
Peter Davison is not a man to let the small matter of quarantine deter him from working. This spring he was hard at it, recording Doctor Who audio adventures from a cupboard that he’s decorated to resemble a TARDIS, complete with roundels he made from cardboard boxes (pictured below). “I put a lot of effort into it because I’m a very sad person,” he says of his “moment of lockdown lunacy”. He admits that he feels most alive when acting and so jumped at the chance to emerge from his police box and run away to the circus for a festive turn as a ringmaster in this year’s seasonal Call the Midwife episode. It was filmed according to social distancing rules after restrictions were initially eased – but, at 69, did he feel as though he was risking his health? “I carry that strange British trait of thinking it’s never going to happen to me,” he reflects. “But I didn’t find it easy. It was very nice to be offered a part, and I was happy to do it, but because everyone on set was treated as though they were exuding billowing clouds of COVID-19, I didn’t get the sense of joyousness that I imagine has been there in the past.” Even those well used to life at Nonnatus House found the filming experience odd. “We’d been away so long I wasn’t sure I could remember how to do it,” admits Linda Bassett, 70, whose alter ego Nurse Phyllis Crane reveals an unexpected passion for circus life when Davison’s troupe visits Poplar. “Rehearsing in masks made it hard to tell what anyone was thinking.” The nation, though, will be relieved that the cast has managed to get the episode in the can, as Call the Midwife has now become a key part of many people’s Christmas viewing. Bassett says fans come up to her to tell her that they love Nurse Crane. “You can only react to that kind of thing with warmth, even though I am a little bit baffled as to why Nurse Crane is loved. But it’s so kind of them.” Davison, on the other hand, ought to be well used to the adoration, as a former lead of both Doctor Who and All Creatures Great and Small, both of which get Christmas specials this fortnight in their rejuvenated forms. So how does he feel to see them still in the schedules? “It’s slightly scary, but gratifying. When I heard they were remaking All Creatures, there was a tinge of, ‘How dare they?’ But I gather it’s very good.” Both are refreshingly un-actorly and direct. Bassett, for instance, questions the common misconception that Call the Midwife takes a rose-tinted view of the 1960s. “This wasn’t a sweet time – the 1950s and 60s were brutal. I went to school in that era and it was tough. And you’ll find that the people at Nonnatus aren’t often gentle. But what they are is kind. And whenever life is tough, being kind is so important.” Davison is equally frank about the travails of life in 2020. “I’m getting a bit tired of Zooming people,” he sighs. “This year has all been about protecting older, vulnerable people. But the irony is that every vulnerable person I’ve spoken to – and I’m nearly at that age myself – doesn’t want to be locked away and protected from this disease. The last years of these people’s lives are being stolen when they’d much rather be taking the risk while they’re still compos mentis. I understand that hospital numbers have to be kept at a level where it’s still possible to look after patients, but a huge miscalculation is being made somewhere.” Not that the two of them are planning on spending their own futures behind closed doors. Bassett says she has no intention of exiting a show with such “fantastic company”, while for Davison, “working is my social life, so I want to keep going for as long as I can stand up and remember lines”. And why not, when plum roles, such as the chance to play against type as Henry, the boorish husband of Alison Steadman’s Gail in Mike Bartlett’s recent BBC One drama Life, are out there for the taking? “Yes, I found my niche playing nice, charming Tristan types,” he says. “You do long for those opportunities to do something more. When Life went out, The Observer’s review effectively said, ‘Peter Davison – what a find!’ My agent said I should be recommended for a best newcomer award.” Nearly 40 years on from his first scenes in the TARDIS (the “real” one, rather than the homemade DIY variety), it doesn’t take a Doctor’s diagnosis to see that he has plenty of energy left. “I still get a real buzz when I’m doing something. But do you know, I never even thought I’d be alive at this point. I remember thinking all those years ago that in the year 2000, I’d be 49 and my life would effectively be over. And here I am, still going strong. I’m just very happy to have got this far.” This interview originally appeared in the Radio Times magazine. For the biggest interviews and the best TV listings subscribe to Radio Times now and never miss a copy. The Call The Midwife Christmas Special airs tonight on BBC One. If you’re looking for more to watch, check out our TV Guide. In the US, the Call the Midwife Holiday Special 2020 airs on PBS at 9/8c on 25th December.
Doctor Who's Jo Martin says her casting as the Fugitive Doctor was "groundbreaking"
"I was a fan of Doctor Who back in the day and not seeing myself on screen as a child was tough," says the Holby City actress.
Doctor Who actress Jo Martin has called her casting as a surprise incarnation of the Time Lord "groundbreaking". Speaking to RadioTimes.com, the star also revealed that Black science-fiction fans have reached out to her following her unveiling as ‘the Fugitive Doctor’ in the most recent series of the BBC One drama. "A lot of Black geeks who love sci-fi have sent me pictures of them doing cosplay. They thank me and tell me it’s great that they now have someone to dress up as,” Martin said. “I was a fan of Doctor Who back in the day and not seeing myself on screen as a child was tough. It’s an awful thing to grow up thinking it’s wrong to be Black. So it’s fabulous that there are now characters like this who young kids can look up to." Originally introduced with the character name of Ruth Clayton, Martin was later revealed, in the episode Fugitive of the Judoon, to be a previously unseen incarnation of the Doctor – a twist that series lead Jodie Whittaker called "an extraordinary moment". Now, Martin, who also plays hospital CEO Max Gerry in medical drama Holby City, has revealed her own feelings at being cast on both shows: “What’s really special about these parts is that they’re groundbreaking. No one would expect a Black, middle-aged woman to be Doctor Who, but there we have it. "And on American medical shows, there’s a lot more black representation in terms of status. So for Holby City to have a black female CEO is an amazing thing as well. I feel honoured to be a part of both these shows and to be representing these characters. It’s great for everyone." Doctor Who is to return over the Christmas period with a new festive instalment entitled Revolution of the Daleks, while Holby City is back on Tuesday 10th November with a hard-hitting episode that’ll find Max having to manage her under-pressure workforce during the first spike of the coronavirus pandemic. Check out what else is on with our TV Guide
Why the end of The Fall was a big disappointment
"This desire to turn what should be standalone serials into long-running series needs to stop," says David Brown
Warning - the following contains plot spoilers for The Fall's final episode. From the start..! So, they let the bastard get away with it. Paul Spector, the murderer whose killing spree has fuelled The Fall, evaded the clutches of DSI Stella Gibson and remained at large to slaughter again in series two. Maybe we shouldn’t be that surprised: last month, Ben Stephenson – the controller of BBC drama – revealed that we were building “to a gripping cliffhanger” and that the Belfast-based thriller had been recommissioned. But surely the impact of The Fall would have been greater had it been given a proper conclusion and remained a five-parter? This desire to turn what should be standalone serials into long-running series needs to stop. It didn’t used to happen with shows that are now generally regarded as TV classics. There was never a need to make Closer to the Edge of Darkness or The Return of the Singing Detective, so why order another batch of episodes of The Fall? The answer, of course, is ratings (it’s been BBC2’s biggest drama series to launch in eight years), but continuing the story of a sizeable hit isn’t always the right move. Just look at the precedent set by Homeland – a tightly woven conspiracy tale for its opening run, a credulity-straining misfire in its second season. Because, let’s face it, the decision to serve up more episodes of The Fall undermined the coherence of tonight’s finale, almost to the point where the whole thing began to feel like a con. For a start, Paul’s ability to uproot his family and disappear in an instant seemed improbable. Also, Sally Ann’s decision to stay with her husband when she was under the impression that he’d had an affair with the under-aged babysitter seemed implausible – she had the girl’s number on her mobile, so why didn’t she call to get her version of events? OK, so he didn’t confess to murder, but he was still admitting to being a perv. Then there was the deus ex machina device of having one of Paul’s near-miss victims appear from nowhere to provide a photofit. And let’s not forget that Paul – when under police questioning – supplied a sample of his own handwriting, which could then have easily been checked against the letter sent to the dead woman’s dad. There were further niggles too: why, in the penultimate episode, did the guy who was eventually stabbed with the scissors not dial 999 before Paul went in for a second attack? Where did Paul’s sudden ability to spout Nietzsche come from? Why did the subplot about police corruption go nowhere? And, most importantly, why did we learn nothing about Paul’s motivation and his reasons for marrying someone who looked nothing like the type of women he was murdering? All crime dramas should have a proper pay-off. That doesn’t mean we need a tidy Agatha Christie-style solution, but there definitely needs to be some kind of resolution. The Fall made such an obvious pitch for a second series that, in the process, it forgot what it should have been trying to achieve. For a drama that preyed on our worst fears, we should have felt thrilled by this final episode. Instead, we were left cheated. If you have missed The Fall you can watch it on Amazon Prime and Netflix. This article was first published online in 2013.
BBC Breakfast's Naga Munchetty says team was supportive but "lessons to be learnt" after guideline row
David Brown talks to Naga Munchetty and BBC Breakfast producer Mark ahead of the BAFTAs.
This interview is part of our BAFTA 2020 special for more visit The Big Interview hub. For BBC Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty, the working day begins at 5am — with an analysis of her boss’s wardrobe. “There’s always a quick appraisal of what I’m wearing,” says assistant editor Mark Grannell, to which Munchetty replies, “Yes, but it’s always complimentary! He’s very well dressed. Though he did do double-denim once and that didn’t fly with me…” One other thing with which Munchetty can find fault are the headlines, which will be debated in the hour before the show goes live at six o’clock: “Yes, I do come in and tear apart the headlines. But we disagree agreeably — what we all want is for the news to be accurate but also impactful.” What sets Breakfast apart from the other BBC bulletins is its informality. “We’re not the Today programme on television,” says Grannell. “Depending on what the main news is, we try and inject a bit of light into the shade. The interaction between the presenters is really important.” View oEmbed on the source website But there are risks in having such a relaxed atmosphere, as Munchetty discovered last year when she expressed anger at US president Donald Trump’s choice of words in telling four congresswomen to “go back home”. In September, the BBC decided that she’d breached guidelines, only for a public outcry that then led director-general Tony Hall to reverse the ruling. Her Breakfast colleague Dan Walker told Radio Times that the BBC’s defence of Munchetty should have been more robust — does she agree? “There are lessons to be learnt. The Breakfast team was very supportive at the time and, since then, I’ve had regular conversations with Tony Hall and other BBC bosses. My whole strategy was to just keep my head down because I didn’t want to be the story.” When asked whether it’s made her more circumspect about what she says on air, Munchetty insists that “it’s absolutely business as usual.” On the emotive issue, Grannell adds, “Naga’s a tough cookie, so she can look after herself. But I think the Breakfast team is very protective of her, as a colleague. And, on a human level, my sympathy was with Naga.” And how do the pair feel about the thorny issue of the licence fee? “It’s not for me to make this case,” insists Grannell. “All I’ll say is that coverage of coronavirus is a prime example of what’s so good about the BBC, right across the board.” “There’s been noise about the licence fee for decades,” says Munchetty. “But at Breakfast, we’re not ratings-driven, we’re not there to garner attention on social media. We’re there to provide a service and make sure people are informed, educated and entertained. I think a licence is worth that.” These interviews originally appeared in the Radio Times magazine. For the biggest interviews and the best TV listings subscribe to Radio Times now and never miss a copy. If you're looking for more to watch, check out our TV guide.
Succession's Jesse Armstrong wrote a screenplay about Rupert Murdoch’s family
David Brown chats to Jesse Armstrong and Brian Cox ahead of the BAFTAs.
This interview is part of our BAFTA 2020 special for more interviews visit The Big Interview hub. Coronavirus may have halted work on the new series of Succession, but star Brian Cox has devised a neat way to incorporate the pandemic into the season-three plotlines. “Logan could be handed a mask, just look at the person giving it to him and then tell them to f*** off,” he says, down the line from upstate New York (where he rushed off to straight after the RT photoshoot, before lockdown was enforced). “That could be the COVID crisis dealt with for the whole season.” It would be in keeping for the tyrannical media mogul Logan Roy, who leads the cast in this year’s most critically acclaimed, BAFTA-nominated drama (in the international category), as well as earning Jesse Armstrong a nod for best writer: drama. But it could all have been so different for Logan. “At one point, I did think he might expire at the end of the first season or even the first episode,” reveals Armstrong. “Though this all changed before we committed ideas to paper. And once I saw Brian, I realised how big a weight he is at the centre of our solar system. He’s great to write for.” When asked previously about the inspiration for the Roys and their media empire, Waystar Royco, Armstrong has always distanced his creations from comparisons to the real-life Murdochs. But he admits now that those ties are closer than we’ve been led to believe. “They’re fictional creations who’ve come out of a ton of reading and research. I’d written a screenplay about Rupert Murdoch’s family and it never got made. And it got me interested in the similarities between all these guys — Murdoch, Robert Maxwell and Conrad Black — who are passing from their position of predominance as tech takes over. But, also, how cable news and newspapers are still shaping our political climate.” View oEmbed on the source website Two things Armstrong won’t be drawn on, though, are when the cast will be back before the cameras or how COVID-19 will actually be handled. “We’ve carried on writing during the lockdown,” he says. “And we hope to start filming in the not-too-distant future, but it’s still up in the air. As for coronavirus, there are things to think about, in terms of how we deal or don’t deal with it. But I’m not going to get into it in public.” Cox is happy to “live in a state of ignorance” until his scripts arrive, trusting the writers to keep the character as exciting as ever. “He’s a much more interesting character than, say, Donald Trump,” the actor explains. “Trump is a bad part because the man has got no dimension. He’s a nitwit. A dumbass. The man’s a congenital idiot. If someone asked me to play Trump, I’d say no. Logan Roy, on the other hand, is a great part. And it’s true what they say, the devil does get the best tunes.” These interviews originally appeared in the Radio Times magazine. For the biggest interviews and the best TV listings subscribe to Radio Times now and never miss a copy. If you're looking for more to watch, check out our TV guide.