Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2026-05-04T16:02:10.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: The Hardacres stars Julie Graham and Claire Cooper reveal the importance of a women-led set and why the show is so needed today
items: Mawaan Rizwan talks saying goodbye to Juice: “I think it’s healthy to close chapters”
items: Things You Should Have Done creator Lucia Keskin talks ADHD medication, old comedies and dark humour
items: Rivals star reveals why her new Harry Potter TV series role was a no-brainer
items: Here We Go writer teases season 4 - while star and Ghosts favourite explains secret to its success
items: Close to home
items: ‘I love my work but don't identify as an actor'
items: Half Man review: After Baby Reindeer, Richard Gadd faces a difficult second album
items: The Responder writer reveals the real-life personal inspirations behind his new Sheridan Smith drama
items: This Is England legend talks his new Sheridan Smith drama: "I worked my arse off for The Cage"
items: Mint review: A charming romantic drama for these permissive times
items: 10 Questions with Christopher Eccleston
items: 'The sex isn't just about sex'
items: Christopher Eccleston: "Masculinity shouldn't be contingent on other people's oppression"
items: British acting legend Lindsay Duncan talks "provocative" new BBC drama role – and why she'd never call herself English
items: Frances Barber talks politics on TV and playing Margaret Thatcher: "I hated her"
items: View from My Sofa: Kris Marshall
items: Beyond Paradise star Kris Marshall reveals which TV detectives helped inspire Humphrey – and that he's only watched Love Actually once
items: Lost in the shuffle
items: Call the Midwife's Heidi Thomas on saying goodbye to Sister Monica Joan – and those secret ghost cameos
items: 'There's a wonderful tone of togetherness'
items: 'Everybody was really sobbing'
items: Call the Midwife creator talks series hiatus: "All of a sudden everybody was really sobbing"
items: Call the Midwife star reacts to season 15 finale: "We’ve never had to be upset at the end before"
items: Doctor Who legend Steven Moffat teases new TV show: "It’s the closest thing I’ve done to Press Gang"
items: A 'toxic fairy tale'
items: The Lady writer explains new Sarah Ferguson TV drama and how series handles Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
items: Under Salt Marsh’s Rafe Spall talks impact of nepotism in his career: "That’s called an advantage"
items: In the transcendent
items: Yellowstone star Kelly Reilly reveals why she was ready for Under Salt Marsh after "violence and revenge" of Beth Dutton

The Hardacres stars Julie Graham and Claire Cooper reveal the importance of a women-led set and why the show is so needed today
type: item
date: 2026-05-04T16:01:55.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: Actors Julie Graham and Claire Cooper on class, family dynamics and female-led stories.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Julie Graham’s breakthrough role was in Sally Wainwright’s At Home with the Braithwaites in 2000. Since then, she’s brought her grit, wit and humanity to, among others, Benidorm, Shetland and This City is Ours. Claire Cooper made her name as Jacqui McQueen in Hollyoaks and went to on play Anne Boleyn in Lucy Worsley’s Six Wives and starred in Kay Mellor’s In the Club. Now they’re back as mother and daughter, Ma and Mary, in series two of the rags-to-riches period drama The Hardacres... Ma and Mary’s relationship is tricky, tempestuous and tender. How does it develop in the new series? Julie Mother and daughter relationships are complicated. I never believe mother-daughter relationships where they’re all nice with each other and supportive. It’s just b***ocks. So I love the tensions between Ma and Mary. Claire This time around, we’re more agreeable but we haven’t lost that bite. We’re still spicy with each other. Julie Whenever we can, we find little moments where we can really get on each other’s nerves. Similarly, when we find the emotion of it as well, it’s really special. Claire and I are friends but I do feel like I’m her mother sometimes. What’s your relationship like with your own mother? Julie Mine’s dead, so it’s great now. Claire My mum’s awesome. Does your on-screen chemistry come naturally or is it something you can manufacture? Claire There needs to be a genuine spark. Julie gives me that freedom, an environment where I can take big risks. Ultimately, a friendship blossoms because you’re being so authentic with each other. Julie If you’ve got to play something that’s a little bit spicy and a little bit antagonistic, as Ma and Mary often are, it does help if you adore somebody. The more you like them, the easier it is. The Hardacres doesn’t romanticise the class system or fetishise poshness. Is it the anti-Downton Abbey? Julie The fact that it was created by working-class writers [Amy Roberts and Loren …

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Mawaan Rizwan talks saying goodbye to Juice: “I think it’s healthy to close chapters”
type: item
date: 2026-05-04T16:01:25.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: The creator, writer and star of sitcom Juice now has a Bafta nomination – and big ideas for the future
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. It’s the morning after the night before and Mawaan Rizwan has a languorous air about him. Tired but satisfied, almost post-coital, he reclines in the back of a car leaving London for Stratford-upon-Avon where, until 30 May, he’s on stage at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Bertold Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. As the city’s edifices of steel, sandstone and glass give way to suburban sprawl, Rizwan is in a reflective mood. “I’m really alive right now,” he says. “Like, every cell in my body is creatively fulfilled.” The night before was the Bafta Craft awards, where those who work behind-the-scenes in TV are recognised for their creativity and talent. There, Juice’s Philippa Mumford picked up the award for production design, declaring it “a dream come true” before Rizwan crashed the stage to sing her praises. “It’s unheard of that a comedy wins this category because we were so low-budget,” he said, as the ingenious and inventive Mumford beamed beside him. “Philippa worked her arse off and the team were incredible and everything was made by hand. In the age of AI, we need people like Philippa.” We need people like Rizwan too, says Seán Linnen, who directs him in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a parable about the rise of Hitler that has clear resonance for today. “He has such a hunger to tell a story in the most entertaining way and if you give him a note or an idea, he’ll run into it head-first and explode it – which then gives permission for the actors around him to do the same thing. And they go to places that you think are impossible to reach. He makes other actors bolder and braver. He has such precision and poise, and then is also fearless in being messy and ugly and raw and mischievous.” When I relay Linnen’s comments to Rizwan in the back of his car, he sits up and is palpably moved. “That Seán sees all that is beautiful,” he says. “If I had a CV, I’d put that on it.” At the top of that imagina…

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Things You Should Have Done creator Lucia Keskin talks ADHD medication, old comedies and dark humour
type: item
date: 2026-05-04T16:01:24.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: The Bafta-nominated creator, writer and star of Things You Should Have Done loves everything from Carry On to Nighty Night.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. From YouTube sensation to Bafta nomination, yours has been quite the journey. How are you enjoying it? I never go out and I’ve never done anything like this before, so it’s fine. Plus I’ve just started new ADHD medication. And how is that? I don’t feel any different yet as it takes ages to get on the right dose, but it’s the road to focusing. I really struggle with it – it takes me ages to get anything written down. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/01/BBC-comedy-96ee4bd.jpg" width="4241" height="2827" alt="A young woman stands outdoors beside a black-and-white horse, which is close to the camera and slightly out of focus in the foreground. She wears a colourful padded jacket and a scarf, with a mildly unimpressed expression, while trees and greenery fill the background." title="Things You Should Have Done Series 2" /> We hear a lot about younger generations being horrified by the political incorrectness of old comedies like the Carry On films. What do you think of them? I watch loads of old comedies like Carry On… and Hancock’s Half Hour. And unless something’s incredibly offensive to the point where it’s not funny, it doesn’t bother me. I enjoy a very dark humour, though. I love Nighty Night and I did really enjoy After Life. The Bafta Television Awards are on Sunday 11 May at 7.00pm on BBC One BAFTA Television Awards with P&O Cruises Shot at Sea Containers London Photography: Rachel Louise Brown @rachellouisebrownstudio Styling: Natalie Read @natreadstylist Set Design: Propped Up @propped_up_ltd Hair by Philipp Haug & Eden Thomson for Schwarzkopf Make-up by Armani Beauty The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. 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.

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Rivals star reveals why her new Harry Potter TV series role was a no-brainer
type: item
date: 2026-05-04T16:00:58.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Katherine Parkinson is nominated for Best Female Comedy Performance at the 2026 Bafta Television Awards.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. It has been 12 years since Katherine Parkinson won her Bafta for Best Female Comedy Performance for her role as Jen Barber in The IT Crowd. Now, ahead of this year's ceremony where she is up for the same award as matriarch Rachel Jessop in Here We Go, she shares her thoughts on the nomination, her on-screen husband, and her upcoming role in the new Harry Potter TV series. Last year, you were nominated for Lizzie in Rivals and this year for Rachel in Here We Go. What do they have in common? I knew I wasn’t going to win last year and I know I’m not going to win this year, so there’s that. The amazing Jessica Gunning won last year for Baby Reindeer, and rightly so. I’m not going to say who I think will win this year but it won’t be me and I’m totally OK with that. It means that you don’t have to prepare a “funny” speech and you can just relax. Would you say that you and Jim Howick, who plays your husband Paul and is also nominated for a Bafta, are very much a double act? Even though playing it can leave you feeling really stressed, I do really enjoy how quickly they get to such a fever pitch of being incredibly cross with each other. When we started, I remember thinking, “Is this potentially over the top?” at how hysterical I get, and then – and I hope they don’t mind me saying this – I spent time with my parents and realised that Paul and Rachel’s is a very authentic relationship. Next up, you’re playing Mrs Weasley in the new Harry Potter TV adaptation. Was it an easy decision to take the role? I’m a mother and my children would never have forgiven me if I hadn’t taken the part. So from that point of view, it was a complete no-brainer. The Bafta Television Awards are on Sunday 11 May at 7pm on BBC One. BAFTA Television Awards with P&O Cruises Shot at Sea Containers London Photography: Rachel Louise Brown @‌rachellouisebrownstudio Styling: Natalie Read @‌natreadstylist Set Design: Propped Up @‌propped_up_ltd Hair by…

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Here We Go writer teases season 4 - while star and Ghosts favourite explains secret to its success
type: item
date: 2026-05-04T16:00:16.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Here We Go is nominated for two awards at the 2026 Bafta Television Awards.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Since debuting in 2022, Here We Go and the Jessop family have gone on a three-season run, with the BBC sitcom earning two nominations at the upcoming Bafta Television Awards. Creator, writer and actor Tom Basden and star Jim Howick share what it is that has made the comedy such a success. Tom Basden Creator, writer and actor in Here We Go What’s your writing process for Here We Go? I’m actually in the middle of writing series four. I’m very, very bad at admin in general, so I have lots of notes all over the place, in notebooks or Word documents or on my phone or on random bits of paper in my bag. So the start of the process is always trying to unearth everything, to do an audit of all the ideas that I’ve ever had for Here We Go – and everything else – and then just go through them. How is writing comedy different to drama? I don’t want to generalise but in drama, the stakes are usually a lot higher, and therefore characters’ responses are usually the same. It’s like, “We’ve got to catch the murderer” or “We’ve got to keep this hospital patient alive”. It doesn’t really matter who the detective is, or who the doctor is. Whereas in a comedy, the stakes are often coming out of relationships, and quite personal. I think that’s a lot of the reason why the characters become funny – they respond to things in a way that the audience doesn’t necessarily expect them to, but completely recognises. Jim Howick Star of Here We Go Nominated for actor in a comedy Why do you think Here We Go has become such a success? It follows family dynamic tropes very well, but the stories can often be quite goofy and mad. Also, sitcoms really benefit from a sort of “open house” culture. Often, when the doorbell goes – and that’s actually a joke in the show – you know that it’s going to offer a new flavour and texture to the comedy. As part of the collective behind Ghosts and Horrible Histories, what’s the difference working with scripts you d…

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Close to home
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: From The Responder to The Cage, Tony Schumacher reveals the very personal inspiration behind his dramas – and why he’d never dream of setting them anywhere but in his hometown of Liverpool
encoded: Add The Cage to your Watchlist On the wall of Tony Schumacher’s bright, airy office in the heart of Liverpool, there hangs a collection of pictures, posters and things that tell the story of who he is. A montage of a man – a memento, trophy or talisman in every frame. There’s one of his book covers from when he wrote novels, a poster of a 1970s housing estate like the one he grew up on, his “Dad corner” full of photos and scrawly drawings. “I’ve got a five-yearold son,” he says, proudly. There’s a front page of the Liverpool Echo from when Everton won the FA Cup in 1966, a poster of his hit cop show The Responder, another for the 1938 Will Hay film Ask a Policeman (a gift from former colleagues in the police force), and a map of the Shipping Forecast. “I’ve always wanted to write something about the Shipping Forecast. It reminds me of being a taxi driver… listening at 1am and 5am.” Finally, there are two Bafta nomina - tion certificates (“I’ve got a few awards but I don’t like putting them out because it’s embarrassing”) a guitar he’s never played and never will and a poster of The Sopranos – “the ultimate in TV writing”. And in the middle of it all, there’s Schumacher’s prized possession – a sketch of Yosser Hughes from Boys from the Blackstuff as drawn by the writer of the 1982 drama, Alan Bleasdale. Holding it as if it’s a holy relic, Schumacher speaks reverentially of the inspired, inspiring Scouse writer, and later he’ll talk in similar tones about another local writing titan, Jimmy McGovern. The sketch is, of course, extraor - dinary in and of itself – a cultural artefact from Margaret Thatcher’s Britain and a time when television drama dared to be genuinely political. But it’s also significant for what it might symbolise. When Bleasdale handed Schumacher that sketch, you might surmise that he did so because he was all out of batons. If Schumacher’s life is up there on his office wall, distilled into a handful of images and objects, it’s also in his work, but …

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‘I love my work but don't identify as an actor'
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The Cage star Michael Socha gives his all to every role but remains true to himself
encoded: Add The Cage to your Watchlist You did a two-hour audition for the role of Matty in The Cage. Surely, that isn’t how long they all last? Normally you get 15 minutes to half an hour, if you’re lucky. But I’ve known [director] Al McKay since we worked together on This Is England, so we’d had a chat about the intricacies of the character beforehand, which helped me figure out who Matty was. I take every audition seriously – I make sure I’m off-book [don’t need a script], make sure I understand the character – but I worked my arse off for The Cage. So in the audition itself, I got to play, to try stuff, to mess around. It was my favourite ever audition and when I left, I knew I’d done my best. Have you ever done an audition in which you felt you didn’t do your best – but were offered the part anyway? Yeah, and I don’t understand how – and that always gives me anxiety on the first few weeks of the project, like they’ve got it wrong. That sounds like a case of imposter syndrome. Is that something you feel? I definitely have my days of insecurity and times when I’m like, “How the f*** has this happened? How am I here? How am I working with these amazing people?” Because I didn’t go to drama school, sometimes I do feel out of my depth and there have been times over the years when I’ve felt I don’t fit in. But I just have to forget about all that and get on with the job at hand. How have you stayed grounded? Being from where I’m from [Socha grew up in Derby] and having lived the life I’ve lived. I wasn’t a child actor. I was a late teen actor, so I know a life outside of work and I have a grounding there. And I live a very normal life in which I’m not Michael Socha the actor. Don’t get me wrong– I love my work. But I also really enjoy my own life outside of work. I don’t identify as An Actor. I identify as me. I’ve got other responsibilities. Your breakthrough role was in Shane Meadows’s This Is England. What was your biggest revelation from that time? I couldn’t believe tha…

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Half Man review: After Baby Reindeer, Richard Gadd faces a difficult second album
type: item
date: 2026-04-24T05:00:49.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: BBC iPlayer
subject: BBC One
subject: Review
description: Stomach-churning, unrelenting, violent... the writer and actor behind one of Netflix's biggest shows returns with a BBC drama that has a lot to admire, but not a lot to love.
encoded: If misery loves company, trauma likes an audience. With more triggers than an El Paso gun show – strong and discriminatory language, scenes of violence and underage sexual abuse, and flashbacks to late-20th-century Scottish fashion trends – Half Man is Richard Gadd’s difficult second album – the perilous next trick after the surprising runaway success of Netflix’s Baby Reindeer. That series established Gadd either as a daring writer prepared to show his vulnerability while mining the gloomier recesses of the human psyche for material… or as an emotional exhibitionist seriously lacking boundaries. Whichsoever, he won three Emmys and a Golden Globe, delivered a sensational, disturbing global hit for Netflix, and got labelled as a go-to guy for traumatic telly. The bar set high then, Half Man charts the toxic, tragic relationship, over 30-odd years, between Niall and Ruben, de facto stepbrothers who become locked into co-dependency as destructive as anything dreamt up by Tennessee Williams or Emily Brontë. Gadd’s drama could lay a persuasive claim to being about love – specifically, men’s capacity for it and their inability to express it. I cannot stress enough that this does not make it date night material. In fact, Half Man is not soothing viewing by any measure. If you’re looking for something more emollient with which to salve a bruising day, might I suggest… The Pitt? Half Man might provide the same sort of audience experience as horror movies and TV shows – feeling anxiety and fear and the related dopamine high in a safe, controlled environment – but I am early-X-Files-Scully-sceptical. In horror, the threat is neutralised as the monster is defeated. Here, the menace embodied by dangerous, damaged and charismatic Ruben (played by Gadd himself, and in younger form by Stuart Campbell who’s surely the show’s break-out star) doesn’t retreat so much as submerge. Like a crocodile, prehistoric and patient, it waits, biding its time until its next strike. This is never v…

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The Responder writer reveals the real-life personal inspirations behind his new Sheridan Smith drama
type: item
date: 2026-04-22T09:32:55.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: BBC
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Tony Schumacher reveals all about his new BBC drama, The Cage.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. On the wall of Tony Schumacher’s bright, airy office in the heart of Liverpool, there hangs a collection of pictures, posters and things that tell the story of who he is. A montage of a man – a memento, trophy or talisman in every frame. There’s one of his book covers from when he wrote novels, a poster of a 1970s housing estate like the one he grew up on, his “Dad corner” full of photos and scrawly drawings. “I’ve got a five-year-old son,” he says, proudly. There’s a front page of the Liverpool Echo from when Everton won the FA Cup in 1966, a poster of his hit cop show The Responder, another for the 1938 Will Hay film Ask a Policeman (a gift from former colleagues in the police force), and a map of the Shipping Forecast. “I’ve always wanted to write something about the Shipping Forecast. It reminds me of being a taxi driver... listening at 1am and 5am.” Finally, there are two Bafta nomination certificates (“I’ve got a few awards but I don’t like putting them out because it’s embarrassing”) a guitar he’s never played and never will and a poster of The Sopranos – “the ultimate in TV writing”. And in the middle of it all, there’s Schumacher’s prized possession – a sketch of Yosser Hughes from Boys from the Blackstuff as drawn by the writer of the 1982 drama, Alan Bleasdale. Holding it as if it’s a holy relic, Schumacher speaks reverentially of the inspired, inspiring Scouse writer, and later he’ll talk in similar tones about another local writing titan, Jimmy McGovern. The sketch is, of course, extraordinary in and of itself – a cultural artefact from Margaret Thatcher’s Britain and a time when television drama dared to be genuinely political. But it’s also significant for what it might symbolise. When Bleasdale handed Schumacher that sketch, you might surmise that he did so because he was all out of batons. If Schumacher’s life is up there on his office wall, distilled into a handful of images and objects, it’s als…

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This Is England legend talks his new Sheridan Smith drama: "I worked my arse off for The Cage"
type: item
date: 2026-04-20T16:01:26.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: The Cage star Michael Socha gives his all to every role but remains true to himself.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. You did a two-hour audition for the role of Matty in The Cage. Surely, that isn’t how long they all last? Normally you get 15 minutes to half an hour, if you’re lucky. But I’ve known [director] Al McKay since we worked together on This Is England, so we’d had a chat about the intricacies of the character beforehand, which helped me figure out who Matty was. I take every audition seriously – I make sure I’m off-book [don’t need a script], make sure I understand the character – but I worked my arse off for The Cage. So in the audition itself, I got to play, to try stuff, to mess around. It was my favourite ever audition and when I left, I knew I’d done my best. Have you ever done an audition in which you felt you didn’t do your best – but were offered the part anyway? Yeah, and I don’t understand how – and that always gives me anxiety on the first few weeks of the project, like they’ve got it wrong. That sounds like a case of imposter syndrome. Is that something you feel? I definitely have my days of insecurity and times when I’m like, “How the f*** has this happened? How am I here? How am I working with these amazing people?” Because I didn’t go to drama school, sometimes I do feel out of my depth and there have been times over the years when I’ve felt I don’t fit in. But I just have to forget about all that and get on with the job at hand. How have you stayed grounded? Being from where I’m from [Socha grew up in Derby] and having lived the life I’ve lived. I wasn’t a child actor. I was a late teen actor, so I know a life outside of work and I have a grounding there. And I live a very normal life in which I’m not Michael Socha the actor. Don’t get me wrong – I love my work. But I also really enjoy my own life outside of work. I don’t identify as An Actor. I identify as me. I’ve got other responsibilities. Your breakthrough role was in Shane Meadows’s This Is England. What was your biggest revelation from that time?…

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Mint review: A charming romantic drama for these permissive times
type: item
date: 2026-04-20T05:00:01.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: BBC
subject: Contains Trailer
subject: Review
description: The new BBC series comes from Scrapper writer and director Charlotte Regan.
encoded: There would have been a time, not so long ago, when Shannon, the luminous lead in BBC One’s Mint, would have been portrayed as a vampire. If this romantic crime drama had been made in the early 2000s – post-Twilight, when you couldn’t move for bloodsuckers and lycanthropes in the likes of Supernatural, True Blood, Being Human, Crazy Head, The Fades and The Vampire Diaries – Shannon would have been a vamp and her love interest Arran (Benjamin Coyle-Larner, otherwise known as musician Loyle Carner) would have been... oh I don’t know... a zombie? Rather than star-crossed, the lovers would be witch-cursed and some ancient beef between zombies and vampires would have been the main obstacle in the way of their love. As it was employed in so many of the shows that made the so-called supernatural boom earlier this century, a mystical element would immediately raise the stakes, if you’ll pardon the pun. Because all dramas live or die on how they answer two questions for their central characters: Is there enough at risk? Do I want to belong to this gang? As it is, creatures of the night have had their moment in the sun and it is in the criminal underworld, as opposed to the mythological one, that Charlotte Regan (the creator, writer, director and executive producer) sets Mint. The aim is the same – to make credible the idea that in these permissive times, there are near-insurmountable obstacles in the way of two single young people in love becoming a couple. That Regan achieves this aim partly, and ironically, because of Mint’s moments of magical realism is just one of the things that make the show so charming. View Green Video on the source website But then Regan achieves a lot with Mint; not least creating a thoroughly compelling, highly entertaining, deliciously rich dynamic between Shannon (Emma Laird), her romantic mother Cat (Laura Fraser) and her cynical, sexual grandmother Ollie (Lindsay Duncan). Though Coyle-Larner, Sam Riley and especially Lewis Gribben are all good…

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10 Questions with Christopher Eccleston
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The actor on the cult of television, working with Jimmy McGovern – and the ultimate interview question
encoded: Add Unchosen to your watchlist Born in Salford in 1964, Christopher Eccleston made his name in dramas like Cracker and Our Friends in the North. His films range from Shallow Grave to GI Joe, with recent TV jobs including HBO’s The Leftovers and Peter Bowker’s The A-Word. Most famously he played the ninth Doctor in Doctor Who, which he doesn’t discuss outside conventions – his “no Blue Box” rule. Next up is his role as a cult leader in the new Netflix drama Unchosen. What was the appeal of playing a cult leader? What attracted me to Mr Phillips was Unchosen’s writer, Julia Geary. There’s a great trend in drama at the moment for antagonists who are toxic, white, apparently heterosexual, late-middle-aged men. Thankfully, Julia gave him dimension and placed him in a story of tragedy involving the loss of his son and alcoholism. It’s a gift of a role because of the awkward questions it asks of our audience. Do audiences want to understand villains and their dimensions? I’ve had this argument in Hollywood regarding one-dimensional villains I’ve played. It doesn’t make the heroes look smarter taking on villains like that. It makes them look stupid. What Julia understands is something that so many people in television and film, in their arrogance, will not accept – that audiences are much brighter than we are. Is TV being dumbed down? Historically there would be programmes that I watched when I was young where I would feel patronised – Love Thy Neighbour or whatever – but there was a lot where I felt I was being respected. The likes of the Plays for Today and The Naked Civil Servant. But with the erosion of the writer’s culture to almost writing by committee, I’ve heard stories about some of the idiotic – and sometimes downright hateful – assumptions about the audience’s intelligence today. A lot of people in television think the audience is stupid. Why do cults appeal? We yearn for certainty, though we know that the tragedy and beauty of life is that there are no absolutes…

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'The sex isn't just about sex'
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
subject: TV
description: It’s about power, says Lindsay Duncan, as she plays a crime family matriarch determined to exert her influence – by any means necessary
encoded: Add Mint to your Watchlist In Mint, Charlotte Regan's leftfield love story set in central Scotland’s criminal underworld, Lindsay Duncan plays Ollie. Mistress of this mobland when her husband was master, we meet the widowed Ollie as she is transitioned/relegated/sidelined into the mother of the king, with the ascension of her son Dylan (Sam Riley) to the position of the Godfather of Grangemouth. No longer queen bee in this hive of illegal activity, Ollie spends her days assembling and reassembling firearms, doting on her granddaughter Shannon, picking on her daughter-in-law, Cat, and satisfying her not insignificant sexual appetites by bedding Dylan’s henchmen – though beds are apparently optional. In a certain light, I suggest to Duncan when we meet, Ollie looks like a psychotic sexual predator. She wrinkles her nose in disagreement. “That sort of thinking is no help to me,” she declares, which is perhaps the nicest way in ages I’ve been told I’m talking rubbish. “The sex isn’t just about the sex.” The sex is about power, says Duncan, who originated the role of the scheming Marquise de Merteuil in Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1985 at the Royal Shakespeare Company (in a production that would transfer to the Barbican, then the West End and then Broadway). “You don’t get to be as domineering and as provocative as Ollie is without the grains of that when she was young. She’d have to insinuate herself, get close to power and take it, as women have done for ever, with a whisper in the ear in bed or over drinks, sowing a seed of doubt about someone or whatever. She does have a sexual appetite, but I also think it’s absolutely linked to her stating her claim. She’s saying to people, ‘You better take me seriously because I will use all the power I have at my disposal’ – including her sexual prowess.” Ollie is also at an age, 75-year-old Duncan points out, at which some people think it’s inappropriate for a woman to have sexual desires. “So, she’s like, …

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Christopher Eccleston: "Masculinity shouldn't be contingent on other people's oppression"
type: item
date: 2026-04-13T16:00:58.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: The actor on the cult of television, working with Jimmy McGovern – and the ultimate interview question.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Born in Salford in 1964, Christopher Eccleston made his name in dramas like Cracker and Our Friends in the North. His films range from Shallow Grave to GI Joe, with recent TV jobs including HBO’s The Leftovers and Peter Bowker’s The A-Word. Most famously he played the ninth Doctor in Doctor Who, which he doesn’t discuss outside conventions – his “no Blue Box” rule. Next up is his role as a cult leader in the new Netflix drama Unchosen. What was the appeal of playing a cult leader? What attracted me to Mr Phillips was Unchosen’s writer, Julie Gearey. There’s a great trend in drama at the moment for antagonists who are toxic, white, apparently heterosexual, late-middle-aged men. Thankfully, Julie gave him dimension and placed him in a story of tragedy involving the loss of his son and alcoholism. It’s a gift of a role because of the awkward questions it asks of our audience. Do audiences want to understand villains and their dimensions? I’ve had this argument in Hollywood regarding one-dimensional villains I’ve played. It doesn’t make the heroes look smarter taking on villains like that. It makes them look stupid. What Julie understands is something that so many people in television and film, in their arrogance, will not accept – that audiences are much brighter than we are. View oEmbed on the source website Is TV being dumbed down? Historically there would be programmes that I watched when I was young where I would feel patronised – Love Thy Neighbour or whatever – but there was a lot where I felt I was being respected. The likes of the Plays for Today and The Naked Civil Servant. But with the erosion of the writer’s culture to almost writing by committee, I’ve heard stories about some of the idiotic – and sometimes downright hateful – assumptions about the audience’s intelligence today. A lot of people in television think the audience is stupid. Why do cults appeal? We yearn for certainty, though we know that the …

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British acting legend Lindsay Duncan talks "provocative" new BBC drama role – and why she'd never call herself English
type: item
date: 2026-04-13T16:00:07.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: It’s about power, says Lindsay Duncan, as she plays a crime family matriarch determined to exert her influence – by any means necessary.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. In Mint, Charlotte Regan’s leftfield love story set in central Scotland’s criminal underworld, Lindsay Duncan plays Ollie. Mistress of this mobland when her husband was master, we meet the widowed Ollie as she is transitioned/relegated/sidelined into the mother of the king, with the ascension of her son Dylan (Sam Riley) to the position of the Godfather of Grangemouth. No longer queen bee in this hive of illegal activity, Ollie spends her days assembling and reassembling firearms, doting on her granddaughter Shannon, picking on her daughter-in-law, Cat, and satisfying her not insignificant sexual appetites by bedding Dylan’s henchmen – though beds are apparently optional. In a certain light, I suggest to Duncan when we meet, Ollie looks like a psychotic sexual predator. She wrinkles her nose in disagreement. “That sort of thinking is no help to me,” she declares, which is perhaps the nicest way in ages I’ve been told I’m talking rubbish. “The sex isn’t just about the sex.” The sex is about power, says Duncan, who originated the role of the scheming Marquise de Merteuil in Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1985 at the Royal Shakespeare Company (in a production that would transfer to the Barbican, then the West End and then Broadway). “You don’t get to be as domineering and as provocative as Ollie is without the grains of that when she was young. She’d have to insinuate herself, get close to power and take it, as women have done for ever, with a whisper in the ear in bed or over drinks, sowing a seed of doubt about someone or whatever. She does have a sexual appetite, but I also think it’s absolutely linked to her stating her claim. She’s saying to people, ‘You better take me seriously because I will use all the power I have at my disposal’ – including her sexual prowess.” Ollie is also at an age, 75-year-old Duncan points out, at which some people think it’s inappropriate for a woman to have sexual …

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Frances Barber talks politics on TV and playing Margaret Thatcher: "I hated her"
type: item
date: 2026-03-30T16:00:49.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Movies
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: The versatile actor on politics, becoming Thatcher and playing a rock survivor.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. What’s the view from your sofa? I’ve got a very big television – 65 inches or something – that I’ve had for 20 years and it still works. It’s not HD or anything, but I hate looking at myself anyway, so the idea of myself in HD would just give me a breakdown. Next to that is a painting of my old bulldog Smack, to whom I was devoted, that Sir Ian McKellen gave me. Over your shoulder I can see another beautiful painting... It’s me! Very narcissistic, isn’t it? I was doing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Christian Slater years ago, in the theatre, and an artist asked if he could paint us. Initially, I thought it was a gift, but we had to pay. But I liked it so much and he was young, so I thought that was OK. What telly turns you off? Question Time. I used to be addicted and now I can’t bear it. It’s all soundbites, playing to the crowd and plants in the audience – and every discussion is so binary. Politics is much more complicated and nuanced than that. You played Margaret Thatcher in last year’s award-winning radio play When Maggie Met Larry. Were you a fan of hers? I hated her. I was in my 20s when she was prime minister and I went on demonstrations and protests against her and her policies. For the play, I did hundreds of hours of research to try and get her voice right. I kept thinking, “I still disagree, but I believe she believed in what she was saying and that it was for the good of the country,” even if it patently wasn’t. Are you a political animal? I am, but I don’t know where we go from here because it’s very hard to trust anyone. What we have now, unfortunately, is a set of politicians who do focus groups and tell us what they think we want to hear. No one believes what they say any more and all of it feels like a lie. That’s why we, as the electorate, are very depressed. I think the electorate want to hear something from the politician’s heart. You were raised on a Wolverhampton council estate. What…

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View from My Sofa: Kris Marshall
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The Beyond Paradise star is channelling Columbo, Miss Marple and Withnail and I
encoded: Add Beyond Paradise to your watchlist What’s the view from your sofa? Documentaries and sport! When you spend seven months of the year on a film set, the last thing you want to watch is something that takes place on a film set. I find it hard to suspend my disbelief so I’m not a binge watcher of anything, which is rather unfortunate for my wife. Because she wants to watch Game of Thrones? I’ve never seen Game of Thrones. We haven’t even seen Adolescence either. The greatest drama for me is in real life. What’s so special about sport? Nothing ever brings me to tears, or close to tears, like sport does. I think it’s the immediacy of it, and that the jeopardy is real. I’m all about the underdog, too, and you really get that David and Goliath thing going on in sport. Which documentaries do you like? Anything that’s “man against the elements”. Free Solo is an amazing film about Alex Honnold, who climbed El Capitan in Yosemite [3,000ft] without ropes or protective gear. In January, he climbed the Taipei 101 [1,667ft] in Taiwan on Skyscraper Live on Netflix. The Alpinist, about Canadian free solo climber Marc-André Leclerc, is great. So you enjoy watching movies? I have a pantheon that I absolutely love and will add to occasionally – Terms of Endearment, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Apocalypse Now, Withnail and I, Robert Altman’s films and, more recently, Don’t Look Up. I speak French, so Jules et Jim was a big part of my growing up. I’m a huge Truffaut fan, and I’m all for those French New Wave films. This does sound – I can hear myself as I’m saying it – incredibly esoteric. Do you ever watch your own films? Love Actually now seems to have become a Christmas TV tradition… I’ve only watched it once. Obviously, because of the cast and Richard Curtis, we knew it was going to be popular, but that it’s part of the cultural lexicon is crazy. I was listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning and they were discussing Keir Starmer refusing to let Donald Trump use…

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Beyond Paradise star Kris Marshall reveals which TV detectives helped inspire Humphrey – and that he's only watched Love Actually once
type: item
date: 2026-03-16T17:00:36.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: The Beyond Paradise star is channelling Columbo, Miss Marple and Withnail and I.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. What’s the view from your sofa? Documentaries and sport! When you spend seven months of the year on a film set, the last thing you want to watch is something that takes place on a film set. I find it hard to suspend my disbelief so I’m not a binge watcher of anything, which is rather unfortunate for my wife. Because she wants to watch Game of Thrones? I’ve never seen Game of Thrones. We haven’t even seen Adolescence either. The greatest drama for me is in real life. What’s so special about sport? Nothing ever brings me to tears, or close to tears, like sport does. I think it’s the immediacy of it, and that the jeopardy is real. I’m all about the underdog, too, and you really get that David and Goliath thing going on in sport. Which documentaries do you like? Anything that’s “man against the elements”. Free Solo is an amazing film about Alex Honnold, who climbed El Capitan in Yosemite [3,000ft] without ropes or protective gear. In January, he climbed the Taipei 101 [1,667ft] in Taiwan on Skyscraper Live on Netflix. The Alpinist, about Canadian free solo climber Marc-André Leclerc, is great. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/11/Martha-d940585.jpg" width="4284" height="2856" alt="A group of people stand together indoors at a festive gathering, clapping and smiling. A man in a navy suit and a woman in a cream satin dress are at the front, both looking happy and celebratory. Behind them, two older women also clap, surrounded by warm fairy lights, stone walls, and a decorated Christmas tree, creating a cosy holiday atmosphere." title="Beyond Paradise" /> So you enjoy watching movies? I have a pantheon that I absolutely love and will add to occasionally – Terms of Endearment, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Apocalypse Now, Withnail and I, Robert Altman’s films and, more recently, Don’t Look Up. I speak French, so Jules et Jim was a big part of my growing up. I’m a huge Truffaut fa…

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Lost in the shuffle
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Sheridan Smith and Michael Socha star in BBC One's new high-stakes thriller, The Cage
encoded: There are more than 150 local casinos across the UK (according to casino.org — “the world’s #1 guide for players looking to gamble smarter, safer and with more confidence”). And it’s in a fictional, Liverpudlian version of one such establishment that The Cage — named after the fortified area in which casino cashiers work — is set. A new thriller from The Responder’s Tony Schumacher, it stars Sheridan Smith and Michael Socha, and once again shines a light on Schumacher’s home town, though Liverpool, you may not be surprised to learn, is no Las Vegas. “Casinos are very much associated with America, in particular Vegas, but what was massively important to our show was a sense of place outside the casino, a grounded, real, character-driven world,” explains director Al Mackay. “I didn’t want sterile, glossy and characterless. I wanted it to feel as if it was new in the 80s…” Against this backdrop of faded provincial sophistication, Leanne (Smith) and Matty (Socha) each discover that the other is stealing from the safe at work. While their motives and methods differ, their desperation does not. In one scene Leanne is adamant: “We have to stop, Matty — so we stop.” Huffily, Matty agrees: “Yeah!” They’re not going to stop. Thrillers get their tension and propulsion from the plot, but it’s the characters, and how much we care about them, that determine the stakes. “A show like this is full of energy, music and colour and has two key stories,” Mackay says. “You just start weaving them faster towards the end, until it’s almost a montage. Tony is such a great writer.” Of stars Smith and Socha, he adds, “I’ve known Michael since he was a teenager, so there’s a long-term trust between us and that trust became contagious. Sheridan has incredible instincts for being in front of camera and I loved working with her. She can do a hell of a lot under the hood. You just have to make sure you capture it.” Gareth McLean The Cage is coming soon to BBC One

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Call the Midwife's Heidi Thomas on saying goodbye to Sister Monica Joan – and those secret ghost cameos
type: item
date: 2026-03-08T21:00:49.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: BBC
subject: Comment
subject: Exclusive
description: Judy Parfitt's long-serving Call the Midwife character Sister Monica Joan died in the finale of the BBC drama's 15th season.
encoded: The end, when it came, didn’t arrive with a whimper or a bang. Instead, the conclusion-for-now of Call the Midwife will have been met, in living rooms from Aberdeen to Zouch (Nottinghamshire, trivia fiends), with sobs and sighs. Certainly, it was a tearjerker of an episode in which Midwife’s, er, midwife, showrunner Heidi Thomas, had doubled the usual doses of bittersweet poignancy and shiny optimism, injecting them into proceedings like emotional steroids. From Rosalind and Cyril’s shotgun nuptials and Beryl reconciling herself to being a Sister and never a mother, to Susan Mullucks gaining an independence unimaginable when she was born a thalidomide-affected baby a decade earlier, our 133rd visit with Nonnatus’s nuns’n’nurses delivered. Well of course it did. It was never more affecting and tender than when concerned with the passing of Sister Monica Joan. Hers was a death foretold, mostly by Sister Catherine, who was two-for-two in her predictions about Monica Joan’s demise – how her condition would worsen without treatment and who would guide her to the pearly gates. (With prognostics like that, Cathy’d make a mint down Walthamstow dogs). Yet when Monica Joan died, her death still came as a shock. Death always does – though perhaps it isn’t death that’s distressing but the absence of life where once there was such vitality. “With the death of Sister Monica Joan, I was very much inspired by the death of her late Majesty the Queen,” Thomas told Radio Times in an exclusive, post-finale interview. “As early as the Platinum Jubilee, we all knew the Queen was going to pass away but there was still this visceral sense when she died that we had all lost something. My grandmother lived to be 101 and there's a different kind of shock that comes in, because you think that when somebody lives that long, they won't ever die.” Read more: Call the Midwife creator talks series hiatus: "All of a sudden everybody was really sobbing" Call the Midwife star reacts to season 15 final…

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'There's a wonderful tone of togetherness'
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Laura Main and Helen George on the Call the Midwife community
encoded: Add Call the Midwife to your watchlist Helen George and Laura Main are unanimous: they won’t miss Call the Midwife. At least not yet. “We’ve all been saying that we’ll feel it most in April because that’s when we usually start filming,” explains George, who has played midwife Trixie since episode one. “So when that comes around and we don’t, we won’t have the support network and community that work has given us.” “Apart from that first year, we’ve always known at the end of filming that we’d see each other again,” says Main, whom we first encountered as Sister Bernadette and later transitioned to Nurse Shelagh Turner. “Even that first year, we found out after the second episode that the show would be coming back. We’ve had rare and lovely stability for 15 years. We’ve never had to be upset at the end before.” “And it is just a pause because we know it’s coming back,” George adds. “But it won’t be the same, with different characters leaving and whatever.” Despite Main exclaiming brightly that “we’ve had 14 years of two Christmasses!”, there is an undeniable melancholy at Nonnatus House. “As ever with Heidi [Thomas], the art informs real life and on-screen, there has been a lot of change,” George notes. “We’re definitely all feeling that in our lives off-set, too. But in amongst the grieving, we’ve had these incredible moments of togetherness, playing charades or reminiscing about the Isle of Harris or South Africa, or guest stars that came and went.” “I’ve always felt very held, very nurtured,” Main notes. Of Jenny Agutter, Judy Parfitt and Pam Ferris, the three established actresses who launched the drama, she says: “They set this wonderful tone of collaboration and equality and togetherness that exists still. We all support one another.” “That’s the best thing about this job, it’s not competitive,” George adds. “Because Heidi writes for everybody, gives everyone a moment and something special to play, everybody gets a chance.” Why do they think that it’s resonated …

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'Everybody was really sobbing'
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Call the Midwife writer Heidi Thomas on creating one of TV’s most enduring hits –and bidding farewell to Poplar... for now
encoded: Add Call the Midwife to your watchlist Change is baked into Call the Midwife. Progress is what the drama is about. Indeed, in last Sunday’s episode there was an exchange between Nurse Crane (Linda Bassett) and Miss Higgins (Georgie Glen) on the subject of change. In it, Miss Higgins notes, “People speak of change as if they’re speaking about rats, as if change is something hiding underneath the house, attempting to get in and gnaw at all that we hold precious… Perhaps we would be better to compare change to the birds that carry twigs in their beaks, and seeds, so they build nests and sow flowers – however accidentally.” Having often voiced her thoughts through her characters, writer Heidi Thomas now says of her beloved show, “We have made 15 series in 15 years – I’ve known for a couple of years that that situation won’t go on for ever. The sets need repair. The nuns’ habits are worn out. “It takes 14 months to make every series. For two months of every year, the producer Annie Tricklebank and I work on two series simultaneously and the workload is immense. We call ourselves the Windmill Girls because for a couple of months, usually around September and October, we never close. I work until five in the morning and she gets up at five in the morning, we have an email handover, then I go to bed for a bit and she goes to the set. You can only sustain that for so long.” Almost exactly a year ago in an interview with Radio Times, Thomas first floated the idea that Call the Midwife might take a break “at some point”. Talking obliquely about “opportunities to expand our storytelling world”, Thomas said: “If we do take a break, it will be with a view to looking at other aspects of Call the Midwife.” Today, “if” has been supplanted by “when” – and when is now. Or to be more precise, this coming Sunday night when the 139th episode of Call the Midwife is broadcast, and the series as audiences know it will be paused – or as logophile Sister Monica Joan (Judy Parfitt) might say, …

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Call the Midwife creator talks series hiatus: "All of a sudden everybody was really sobbing"
type: item
date: 2026-03-04T08:00:42.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: Call the Midwife writer Heidi Thomas on creating one of TV’s most enduring hits – and bidding farewell to Poplar... for now.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Change is baked into Call the Midwife. Progress is what the drama is about. Indeed, in last Sunday’s episode there was an exchange between Nurse Crane (Linda Bassett) and Miss Higgins (Georgie Glen) on the subject of change. In it, Miss Higgins notes, “People speak of change as if they’re speaking about rats, as if change is something hiding underneath the house, attempting to get in and gnaw at all that we hold precious… Perhaps we would be better to compare change to the birds that carry twigs in their beaks, and seeds, so they build nests and sow flowers – however accidentally.” Having often voiced her thoughts through her characters, writer Heidi Thomas now says of her beloved show, “We have made 15 series in 15 years – I’ve known for a couple of years that that situation won’t go on for ever. The sets need repair. The nuns’ habits are worn out. “It takes 14 months to make every series. For two months of every year, the producer Annie Tricklebank and I work on two series simultaneously and the workload is immense. We call ourselves the Windmill Girls because for a couple of months, usually around September and October, we never close. I work until five in the morning and she gets up at five in the morning, we have an email handover, then I go to bed for a bit and she goes to the set. You can only sustain that for so long.” Almost exactly a year ago in an interview with Radio Times, Thomas first floated the idea that Call the Midwife might take a break “at some point”. Talking obliquely about “opportunities to expand our storytelling world”, Thomas said: “If we do take a break, it will be with a view to looking at other aspects of Call the Midwife". Today, “if” has been supplanted by “when” – and when is now. Or to be more precise, this coming Sunday night when the 139th episode of Call the Midwife is broadcast, and the series as audiences know it will be paused – or as logophile Sister Monica Joan (Judy Parfit…

Call the Midwife star reacts to season 15 finale: "We’ve never had to be upset at the end before"
type: item
date: 2026-03-02T17:01:58.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Call the Midwife stars Helen George and Laura Main reflect on the changes to come, the sense of community and the show's enduring truthfulness.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Helen George and Laura Main are unanimous: they won’t miss Call the Midwife. At least not yet. “We’ve all been saying that we’ll feel it most in April because that’s when we usually start filming,” explains George, who has played midwife Trixie since episode 1. “So when that comes around and we don’t, we won’t have the support network and community that work has given us.” “Apart from that first year, we’ve always known at the end of filming that we’d see each other again,” says Main, whom we first encountered as Sister Bernadette and later transitioned to Nurse Shelagh Turner. “Even that first year, we found out after the second episode that the show would be coming back. We’ve had rare and lovely stability for 15 years. We’ve never had to be upset at the end before.” “And it is just a pause because we know it’s coming back,” George adds. “But it won’t be the same, with different characters leaving and whatever.” Despite Main exclaiming brightly that “we’ve had 14 years of two Christmasses!”, there is an undeniable melancholy at Nonnatus House. “As ever with Heidi [Thomas], the art informs real life and on-screen, there has been a lot of change,” George notes. “We’re definitely all feeling that in our lives off-set, too. But in amongst the grieving, we’ve had these incredible moments of togetherness, playing charades or reminiscing about the Isle of Harris or South Africa, or guest stars that came and went.” “I’ve always felt very held, very nurtured,” Main notes. Of Jenny Agutter, Judy Parfitt and Pam Ferris, the three established actresses who launched the drama, she says: “They set this wonderful tone of collaboration and equality and togetherness that exists still. We all support one another.” 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 To…

Doctor Who legend Steven Moffat teases new TV show: "It’s the closest thing I’ve done to Press Gang"
type: item
date: 2026-03-02T17:00:03.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Moffat reflects on his 1989 series Press Gang, while also teasing his upcoming Channel 4 show, Number 10.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Press Gang, the ITV comedy drama that ran from 1989 to 1993 and followed the production of a newspaper for and by young people, was a touchstone piece of children’s television. Quick-witted, gritty when it needed to be, rarely preachy and thoroughly unsentimental, it made an established writer — and Bafta winner — out of Steven Moffat, who wrote all of its 43 episodes, a star out of its lead Julia Sawalha (who would go on to Absolutely Fabulous and Jonathan Creek) and actual journalists out of many of its devoted fans — including myself and Radio Times’s deputy editor. “The show was a self-portrait of the people making it — we were just running around being adults for the first time,” says Moffat today. “What’s fun about bumping into the cast now is that they’re starting to realise I was only slightly older than them. Julia thought I was about 50 or something. I was 26.” For inspiration, Moffat cites Cheers, Moonlighting and The Kids from Fame: “I was just channelling those shows’ wit, speed and exuberance and doing my version.” While he pooh-poohs the idea of an authorial voice — “I’ve never even thought about it. That’s just how I write” — you can hear it in Press Gang’s crackling dialogue, its inventiveness with story, and through characters like Sawalha’s ambitious, courageous but flawed editor Lynda Day. He remembers: “I was always being told, ‘We’ve got to see Lynda’s inner vulnerability,’ and I’d always say, ‘Why?’ I’ve met strong people in my life, and you know what? They’re not particularly vulnerable. When you get Doctor Who right, the Doctor is not looking for your approval and doesn’t particularly think he’s the hero.” He adds: “I’m constantly apologising my way through life. But I’m fascinated by the unrepentant and I’ve written several versions [of them] over the years.” Madeline (played by Karen Gillan) in his 2024 comedy drama, Douglas is Cancelled, is one of those versions. “Madeline’s very much t…

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A 'toxic fairy tale'
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Inside ITV's new drama about the former dresser to the once Duchess of York, The Lady
encoded: Add The Lady to your watchlist “Andrew does not feature,” writer Debbie O’Malley says emphatically of the royal formerly known as Prince and his presence, or lack thereof, in ITV1’s four-parter The Lady. The drama tells the story of Jane Andrews (former dresser to the once Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson), who killed her partner Thomas Cressman in 2000. O’Malley says The Lady isn’t “interested in the royal world because it’s very much about the female, domestic world of Sarah [Natalie Dormer] and Jane’s part in it. We only ever see the Sarah that Jane got to see.” The Lady’s attention to Andrews’s relationship with Ferguson — “a fascinating dynamic as close as friends but with a difference in status that will never go away” — forms part of what O’Malley calls Andrews’s “toxic fairy tale”. “You’ve got this girl who comes from ordinary beginnings and ends up mixing with the greatest in the land at Buckingham Palace — before things take a sad and upsetting turn. It’s an interesting way to explore one woman’s journey as well as British society at the time.” Of course, it’s not a fairy tale, though. It’s a true story, or at least based on one. “If you’re writing true crime, there are things you can never know, and we wanted to be transparent about that. So wherever possible we’ve tried to show key moments of Jane and Tommy’s relationship through the eyes of the friends that were around them. There was no way we could necessarily please everyone, but we weren’t setting out to upset anyone.” O’Malley says she takes the “enormous” responsibility involved seriously. “When you’re trying to understand a complex protagonist, it’s easy to lose sight of the victim. And that was something that was important from the beginning — to remember that a man lost his life and his family and his friends are still grieving that loss. You just have to approach it with integrity.”

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The Lady writer explains new Sarah Ferguson TV drama and how series handles Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
type: item
date: 2026-02-16T17:01:58.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Why The Lady, the new drama telling the story of Sarah Ferguson's former dresser Jane Andrews, is a "toxic fairy-tale".
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “Andrew does not feature,” writer Debbie O’Malley says emphatically of the royal formerly known as Prince and his presence, or lack thereof, in ITV1’s four-parter The Lady. The drama tells the story of Jane Andrews (former dresser to the once Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson), who killed her partner Thomas Cressman in 2000. O’Malley says The Lady isn’t “interested in the royal world because it’s very much about the female, domestic world of Sarah [Natalie Dormer] and Jane’s part in it. We only ever see the Sarah that Jane got to see.” The Lady’s attention to Andrews’s relationship with Ferguson — “a fascinating dynamic as close as friends but with a difference in status that will never go away” — forms part of what O’Malley calls Andrews’s “toxic fairy tale”. “You’ve got this girl who comes from ordinary beginnings and ends up mixing with the greatest in the land at Buckingham Palace – before things take a sad and upsetting turn. It’s an interesting way to explore one woman’s journey as well as British society at the time.” Of course, it’s not a fairy tale, though. It’s a true story, or at least based on one. “If you’re writing true crime, there are things you can never know, and we wanted to be transparent about that. So wherever possible we’ve tried to show key moments of Jane and Tommy’s relationship through the eyes of the friends that were around them. There was no way we could necessarily please everyone, but we weren’t setting out to upset anyone.” O’Malley says she takes the “enormous” responsibility involved seriously. “When you’re trying to understand a complex protagonist, it’s easy to lose sight of the victim. And that was something that was important from the beginning – to remember that a man lost his life and his family and his friends are still grieving that loss. You just have to approach it with integrity.” The Lady will launch on Sunday (22nd February) at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX. The latest issue of …

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Under Salt Marsh’s Rafe Spall talks impact of nepotism in his career: "That’s called an advantage"
type: item
date: 2026-02-16T17:00:12.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Contains Trailer
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Balancing fatherhood and a successful screen career is challenging, but he’s trying…
encoded: What’s the view from your sofa? It’s an open-plan TV area that has the TV, obviously, and a record player with lots of records beside it. And lots of baby toys, because we have an 18-month-old. You have four children. Do you enjoy being a dad? Being a father is my proudest achievement. My kids are 14, 13, 10 and 18 months, which is quite a big stretch, and sometimes the sense of responsibility is pretty crushing. But it’s what sustains me; it’s what keeps me going. It’s really defined by what you get wrong. I get a lot wrong and I find it difficult sometimes, but I show up and I try. Looking after these kids and giving them as nice a life as I can is really the only thing of any worth I’ve ever done. Eric Bull, your character in Under Salt Marsh, has entered the pantheon of British detectives. Tell us about him. He’s awkward. Brusque. Into mushrooms. He’s a gay man – or a man who happens to be gay. A lot of that stuff was on the page, but I had free rein to decide where he was from because he needed to be not from there, not Welsh, so I decided to go West Midlands. My partner [and Trying co-star] Esther Smith is from Stourbridge, and I like the idea of the Black Country. It’s geographically close to north Wales and you don’t hear the accent much on television. Given that Bull’s been conducting his murder investigation under the threat of an almighty, evidence-destroying storm that finally hits this week, how was filming Under Salt Marsh? It was one of the most difficult pieces of shooting I’ve ever done. Given that the show is, essentially, about a storm, it meant being under rain machines from November through to March in north Wales and Cardiff – and that’s physically quite demanding. There were a lot of wetsuits involved. But we’re well paid, and it beats digging a hole in the road. Trying, your Apple TV sitcom that’s now being shown on BBC One, must be a cakewalk, comparatively? When I go home after a day of Trying, I’m much more exhausted than I would be after …

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In the transcendent
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Louisa Harland plays Louisa May Alcott in a drama about a 19th-century American spiritual movement
encoded: Transcendental Wild Oats is on Saturday at 3pm on Radio 4. Add it to your collection Among Louisa Harland’s many talents, albeit not showcased in Channel 4’s Derry Girls or in BBC1’s upcoming adaptation of Marian Keyes’s The Walsh Sisters, is that she can think and breathe in cockney. “I’ve been doing accents since I was a child and a role with an accent is a dream role for me,” she says, explaining that the modulation and indeed subsuming of her own Dublin tones is just part of perfecting an accent. “How you breathe or laugh as a character with an accent is maybe not the same as how I would myself. “When I did Renegade Nell [Sally Wainwright’s period romp about a highwaywoman], I had to do old-school cockney, so I would try and think in the accent as opposed to just sending out the right sounds, because then I feel that it’s more in my body.” Harland says she loves the transformative nature of doing an accent and admits that she’d love to take on an American one in a long-running US series. “Playing anything far away from myself is my dream. I love doing animation voiceovers, too, and I’d love to do more. A Bojack Horseman or something like it would be ideal.” We’re discussing accents on account of Harland’s polished American in Radio 4’s new drama Transcendental Wild Oats, in which she plays its author and narrator, Louisa May Alcott. First published two years after Little Women, in 1873, Transcendental Wild Oatsis an account of the Alcott family’s disastrous involvement with the Transcendentalist movement in New England in the 1840s. Under the influence of dour Englishman Charles Lane, her idealistic father moved the family to a commune where veganism, celibacy and general parsimony were the order of the day. At Fruitlands, they eschewed artificial light and heat, personal property was abolished and a “consociate” family was created out of the farm’s 14 residents, replacing the pre-existing family units. The utopia lasted all of seven months. In the original vers…

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Yellowstone star Kelly Reilly reveals why she was ready for Under Salt Marsh after "violence and revenge" of Beth Dutton
type: item
date: 2026-02-06T12:20:07.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Contains Trailer
subject: Exclusive
subject: News
subject: NOW
subject: Sky Atlantic
description: "I love Beth to bits – but Beth is quite far removed from who I am and how I live my life."
encoded: Yellowstone star Kelly Reilly has said that she was “definitely ready” to play the lead in Sky Atlantic’s new thriller Under Salt Marsh after six years playing the mad, bad and dangerous to know Beth Dutton in the hit US show. “I was working on the last season of Yellowstone when I read [Under Salt Marsh] and I was really in the throes of Beth's violence and revenge. It's quite an interesting vibe to hold in yourself and it's not something that's particularly comfortable.” Reilly told Radio Times that getting into the right headspace to play Beth takes a psychological “boot camp” and exploring the psychology of Under Salt Marsh’s protagonist, Jackie Ellis, felt like a change of gear. "Jackie feels like she’s hiding, like she doesn’t want to take up space,” she explained of the character who, upon discovering the body of a murdered child three years after her own niece disappeared, starts her own covert investigation into the deaths. According to Reilly, the more contained Jackie is "more aligned to myself and easier to access than Beth”. “I love Beth to bits – I’m playing her now [in Yellowstone spin-off The Dutton Ranch, due 2027] – but Beth is quite far removed from who I am and how I live my life,” she says. “I love leaning into that aspect of myself, but I could never speak like Beth or do what Beth does.” Read more: Where was Under Salt Marsh filmed? Under Salt Marsh's Jonathan Pryce explains why thriller is "much deeper" than your average murder mystery Slow Horses' Jonathan Pryce on returning to his Welsh roots with new drama: "I left it physically, but emotionally, I've never left" As for Beth’s appeal, and her transformation from a character in a TV show into something of an iconic cultural figure complete with her own merch – you too can own a Don’t Make Me Go All Beth Dutton On Your Ass t-shirt if there’s a dearth in your wardrobe – Reilly is reflective: “I think people loved Beth's audacity. There was something about her in full ownership of herself that…

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