Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2025-10-30T18:02:37.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: View from my sofa: Rick Edwards
items: Rick Edwards reveals why fatherhood has changed his presenting work for ever - and talks his modelling past
items: All Creatures Great and Small's Anna Madeley on Mrs Hall's secret talent – and *that* Siegfried speculation
items: 'It's The Forsytes with a lot of Dallas'
items: The new Forsyte Saga is not a straight adaptation of "male-centric novels", says Poldark creator
items: View from my sofa: Amanda Holden
items: Amanda Holden: 'My daughter's not a nepo baby – her success is nothing to do with me'
items: View from My Sofa: Eric Idle
items: When life gives you lemons
items: Mawaan Rizwan on turning pain into comedy – and why Juice season 2 hits different
items: Eric Idle: "There's a reason Hitler and Trump get rid of the comedians first"
items: It's all change in Darrowby
items: All Creatures Great and Small star reveals Helen’s journey in season 6 - and how she captures the spirit of real-life figure
items: A man in freefall
items: Coldwater star Andrew Lincoln reveals one moment in life when he "lost it" - and talks filming shower scenes
items: View from my sofa: Natalie Cassidy
items: The way we were
items: EastEnders icon Natalie Cassidy reveals how leaving soap was a “natural decision” - and why weight loss DVDs were not “a good move”
items: 'I surprised myself'
items: In a class of her own
items: Katherine Kelly reveals the “most terrifying thing” in her “rip-roaring” new thriller In Flight
items: EastEnders’ Michelle Ryan reveals why she changed her mind on returning as Zoe Slater after 20 years away
items: 'We didn’t even know that people were going to watch it'
items: Meet Catherine Zeta-Jones's Morticia Addams
items: Meet Joanna Lumley's Hester Frump
items: Wednesday star Catherine Zeta-Jones reveals her scenes with Joanna Lumley are “nothing like” her relationship with her own mother
items: Wednesday’s Jenna Ortega says she was “scared s***less” when show started: “I didn’t know what I was doing”
items: Joanna Lumley reveals “I’ve had no career – I was trying to earn money to keep myself alive"
items: 30 of the best podcasts for summer 2025
items: Ten Questions with Alison Steadman

View from my sofa: Rick Edwards
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The 5 Live DJ on the joys of fatherhood, the downside of modelling — and crying on air
encoded: 5 Live Breakfast is on Monday-Friday at 6am on BBC Radio 5 Live. Add it to your collection What’s the view from your sofa? It’s a fireplace that I think I like, but I’m not completely sure about. It’s very ornate, with a wooden surround that incorporates a mirror above it. It probably dates from, and hasn’t been changed since, the 1920s. Then there’s the TV, which is small and probably temporary, and keeps tilting backwards because I mounted the little feet on it badly. Sounds like you need a TV upgrade! We left the TV that we loved in our old house because it was wall-mounted, was perfect in the space and it felt like a nice thing to do, to leave it for the next people. My wife Emer [Kenny, Karen Pirie writer and actor] and I really regret that now. You began your career as a model — when did you realise you’re handsome? I was a cute kid, I think, and then, from 10 to 16, which is the worst age for this to be the case, I was not a good-looking boy. At all. I wonder if, in those formative years, it was character-building. Then, around 17 or 18, the proportions of my face sort of settled down, and from that point, it’s been fine. It’s weird to go from being not-good-looking to, a couple of years later, getting scouted for modelling work. I did it when I was at university and just after. That was odd. I didn’t like it one bit. Aside from the models, who seemed fine, it’s an industry of a lot of not very nice people. I found it a bit grubby. What’s the best TV programme you’ve watched recently? Your Friends & Neighbours on Apple TV starring Jon Hamm. He’s great – the whole cast is good – and it has some quite interesting things to say about family. As a fairly new father, with anything that says anything at all about family and fatherhood, I am quite likely to cry. How do you juggle family life and, among other things, 5 Live Breakfast? It’s tricky, because both Emer and I work and I’m very conscious of ensuring that she still has all the time she needs to work. Trying…

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Rick Edwards reveals why fatherhood has changed his presenting work for ever - and talks his modelling past
type: item
date: 2025-10-28T00:01:44.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: audio
subject: Radio
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: The 5 Live DJ on the joys of fatherhood, the downside of modelling — and crying on air.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. What’s the view from your sofa? It’s a fireplace that I think I like, but I’m not completely sure about. It’s very ornate, with a wooden surround that incorporates a mirror above it. It probably dates from, and hasn’t been changed since, the 1920s. Then there’s the TV, which is small and probably temporary, and keeps tilting backwards because I mounted the little feet on it badly. Sounds like you need a TV upgrade! We left the TV that we loved in our old house because it was wall-mounted, was perfect in the space and it felt like a nice thing to do, to leave it for the next people. My wife Emer [Kenny, Karen Pirie writer and actor] and I really regret that now. You began your career as a model — when did you realise you’re handsome? I was a cute kid, I think, and then, from 10 to 16, which is the worst age for this to be the case, I was not a good-looking boy. At all. I wonder if, in those formative years, it was character-building. Then, around 17 or 18, the proportions of my face sort of settled down, and from that point, it’s been fine. It’s weird to go from being not-good-looking to, a couple of years later, getting scouted for modelling work. I did it when I was at university and just after. That was odd. I didn’t like it one bit. Aside from the models, who seemed fine, it’s an industry of a lot of not very nice people. I found it a bit grubby. What’s the best TV programme you’ve watched recently? Your Friends & Neighbours on Apple TV starring Jon Hamm. He’s great – the whole cast is good – and it has some quite interesting things to say about family. As a fairly new father, with anything that says anything at all about family and fatherhood, I am quite likely to cry. How do you juggle family life and, among other things, 5 Live Breakfast? It’s tricky, because both Emer and I work and I’m very conscious of ensuring that she still has all the time she needs to work. Trying to dovetail it all together is a comp…

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All Creatures Great and Small's Anna Madeley on Mrs Hall's secret talent – and *that* Siegfried speculation
type: item
date: 2025-10-23T20:40:55.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Channel 5
subject: Exclusive
description: "They do get on and they do have a lot of affection for each other. Where that will lead...?"
encoded: Anna Madeley visibly bristles when I suggest that Mrs Hall, her much beloved housekeeper from All Creatures Great and Small, might be repressed. “It’s funny,” she begins in a tone that does not indicate amusement, "putting labels on characters when one of the things I love about this show, one of the things we’ve set out to do from the get-go, is avoid tropes and archetypes". Mrs Hall, Madeley is adamant, is not your typical busybody, buttoned-up housekeeper. “We could have very easily come out with the old trope of the bossy woman telling everyone what to do, which a lot of people expect, and instead what’s really refreshing is having a character who has proper story behind her, history that informs who she is.” And who is she? “She is a woman of her time with expectations of her life that fit where she’s from. She had a difficult time with her husband and she’s come through something there. She’s had a difficult time with her son and she’s come through something there. Her life’s been tough.” Madeley is, of course, quite right to challenge my broad brush strokes’ characterisation of her character. Younger than she is in the novels and altogether warmer a character, Madeley’s Mrs Hall is a woman with hinterland, and hidden talents. Just tonight, we discovered her heretofore unknown adeptness at darts. Played with delicacy and nuance by Madeley, Mrs Hall isn’t just Skeldale House’s beacon of decency, stoicism and quiet resilience – without whom the house could not function, on a very practical level – she is also its moral centre and beating heart. Yes, there is a fortitude befitting the period and Mrs Hall’s class and position, but there is also extraordinary tenderness. As the vets of All Creatures deal with wounded animals, Mrs Hall, in her own way, heals wounded souls – including her own. “She's someone who speaks her mind, gently,” Madeley says. “She’s the person in the house who does say there's an elephant in the room and we need to talk about it.” Read more:…

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'It's The Forsytes with a lot of Dallas'
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Have Poldark’s Debbie Horsfield and Damien Timmer struck gold again with their reimagining of TVs greatest saga?
encoded: Add The Forsytes to your watchlist It began, as epic journeys often do, with a single step. It was the summer of 2021 and on Hampstead Heath – 800 acres of greenery and wild woodland in north London – writer Debbie Horsfield and producer Damien Timmer went on a walk to discuss what they might do next. Their last collaboration, Poldark, had ended two years earlier after five series and, as Timmer puts it, “Having had a rest after Poldark, we were trying to find a slab of story that Debbie could really enjoy getting her teeth into.” “I think it was Damien who first mentioned The Forsyte Saga,” says Horsfield. “I mean, I’m all for anything with ‘saga’ in the title.” Horsfield and Timmer were of course familiar with the previous dramatisations of John Galworthy’s novels, from 1967 and 2002. The former was a sprawling 26 parts from the BBC and is widely regarded as a TV classic. “It’s spoken about with hushed reverence,” Timmer notes. “And then there’s the Granada version for ITV at the turn of this century.” As Tuppence Middleton, who plays Frances Forsyte, says, “It hasn’t been done as often as some of the other big classics, but there’s still a reputation to live up to.” What Timmer intended to do was to “make a version for now. In our ever more divided society, there is a real parallel with that late Victorian era. We wanted to take a magnifying glass to this extremely wealthy family who are the one per cent.” Prior to Poldark, adapted from Winston Graham’s novels, Horsfield was known for big, messy family dramas like Making Out, The Riff Raff Element and Cutting It. “I’m from a big family and family dynamics have always fascinated me. I’ve written a lot about inter-generational conflict, and I don’t necessarily mean in a grim, serious way, but only ever my own original ideas, all contemporary and pretty much all set in Manchester, where I’m from. Then Poldark came along and it was very much new territory.” New to adaptation, Horsfield says, “Initially, I was nervous…

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The new Forsyte Saga is not a straight adaptation of "male-centric novels", says Poldark creator
type: item
date: 2025-10-13T23:01:20.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Channel 5
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Have Poldark’s Debbie Horsfield and Damien Timmer struck gold again with their reimagining of TV's greatest saga?
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. It began, as epic journeys often do, with a single step. It was the summer of 2021 and on Hampstead Heath – 800 acres of greenery and wild woodland in north London – writer Debbie Horsfield and producer Damien Timmer went on a walk to discuss what they might do next. Their last collaboration, Poldark, had ended two years earlier after five series and, as Timmer puts it, “Having had a rest after Poldark, we were trying to find a slab of story that Debbie could really enjoy getting her teeth into.” “I think it was Damien who first mentioned The Forsyte Saga,” says Horsfield. “I mean, I’m all for anything with ‘saga’ in the title.” Horsfield and Timmer were of course familiar with the previous dramatisations of John Galworthy’s novels, from 1967 and 2002. The former was a sprawling 26 parts from the BBC and is widely regarded as a TV classic. “It’s spoken about with hushed reverence,” Timmer notes. “And then there’s the Granada version for ITV at the turn of this century.” As Tuppence Middleton, who plays Frances Forsyte, says, “It hasn’t been done as often as some of the other big classics, but there’s still a reputation to live up to.” What Timmer intended to do was to “make a version for now. In our ever more divided society, there is a real parallel with that late Victorian era. We wanted to take a magnifying glass to this extremely wealthy family who are the one per cent.” Prior to Poldark, adapted from Winston Graham’s novels, Horsfield was known for big, messy family dramas like Making Out, The Riff Raff Element and Cutting It. “I’m from a big family and family dynamics have always fascinated me. I’ve written a lot about inter-generational conflict, and I don’t necessarily mean in a grim, serious way, but only ever my own original ideas, all contemporary and pretty much all set in Manchester, where I’m from. Then Poldark came along and it was very much new territory.” New to adaptation, Horsfield says, “Initia…

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View from my sofa: Amanda Holden
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: She’d love to return to acting, but for now she’s adding fizz to a new Saturday-night quiz show
encoded: Add The Inner Circle to your watchlist What’s the view from your sofa? I have a very bright, paprika orange sofa – my husband [music producer Chris Hughes] nearly had a heart attack when I got it – and the view from it is what you’d call a media wall. I found a good carpenter, who made the shelves and painted it green. Now I’ve got lots of different things on shelves – and, in the middle of them, a big telly. Who controls the remote? The kids. They’re on Netflix and YouTube and all the streamers and my algorithm is completely ruined with things like Wednesday and I Know What You Did Last Summer – or maybe it’s The Summer I Turned Pretty – which have nothing to do with my taste at all. Was there a summer you turned pretty? There was not! I had braces and a cowlick for years. Is watching television a communal activity in your house? There are certain shows that we all watch together – Strictly, Gogglebox and Modern Family. No one is allowed to watch those separately. If my mum’s here, we’ll catch Pointless. And I have to say Changing Ends, obviously, because of Alan [Carr]. The kids watch Amanda and Alan… but I don’t tend to watch things I’m in. Your daughter, Lexi, was scouted by the model agency Storm. The phrase “nepo baby” gets bandied about a lot these days… Yes, she’s related to me, but that’s nothing to do with me. The word “nepo” can be thrown around for ever but it’s unfair it’s been used in showbiz. When I was young, I got a job in a fruit ’n’ veg shop because my mum knew the fruit ’n’ veg guy. If you know someone that can help your child get in somewhere, you’ll do whatever. But they have to have talent and backbone, and work to succeed. I’m proud of my daughter, doing stuff for Storm as well as two normal jobs while at uni. She’s not going to come out with a debt. That’s amazing. Did you always want to work in showbusiness? My mum says I always wanted to act. I would do shows in the garden and make posters for them and stick them to the telegraph poles aro…

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Amanda Holden: 'My daughter's not a nepo baby – her success is nothing to do with me'
type: item
date: 2025-09-29T23:01:40.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Entertainment
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: She’d love to return to acting, but for now she’s adding fizz to a new Saturday-night quiz show.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. What’s the view from your sofa? I have a very bright, paprika orange sofa – my husband [music producer Chris Hughes] nearly had a heart attack when I got it – and the view from it is what you’d call a media wall. I found a good carpenter, who made the shelves and painted it green. Now I’ve got lots of different things on shelves – and, in the middle of them, a big telly. Who controls the remote? The kids. They’re on Netflix and YouTube and all the streamers and my algorithm is completely ruined with things like Wednesday and I Know What You Did Last Summer – or maybe it’s The Summer I Turned Pretty – which have nothing to do with my taste at all. Was there a summer you turned pretty? There was not! I had braces and a cowlick for years. Is watching television a communal activity in your house? There are certain shows that we all watch together – Strictly, Gogglebox and Modern Family. No one is allowed to watch those separately. If my mum’s here, we’ll catch Pointless. And I have to say Changing Ends, obviously, because of Alan [Carr]. The kids watch Amanda and Alan… but I don’t tend to watch things I’m in. Your daughter, Lexi, was scouted by the model agency Storm. The phrase “nepo baby” gets bandied about a lot these days… Yes, she’s related to me, but that’s nothing to do with me. The word “nepo” can be thrown around for ever but it’s unfair it’s been used in showbiz. When I was young, I got a job in a fruit ’n’ veg shop because my mum knew the fruit ’n’ veg guy. If you know someone that can help your child get in somewhere, you’ll do whatever. But they have to have talent and backbone, and work to succeed. I’m proud of my daughter, doing stuff for Storm as well as two normal jobs while at uni. She’s not going to come out with a debt. That’s amazing. Did you always want to work in showbusiness? My mum says I always wanted to act. I would do shows in the garden and make posters for them and stick them to the teleg…

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View from My Sofa: Eric Idle
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The Python on his love of language, poking fun at the powerful — and the joy of executive-free comedy
encoded: What’s the view from your sofa? Usually, it’s cricket – I love being indoors watching endless hours of cricket. I like the footie, too. I used to support Chelsea but I got tired of having my weekend ruined by 11 men in shorts. Are you watching anything else? Television now seems to be people trying to bonk each other on islands, game shows or news shows, so it’s not terribly interesting. I mean, it’s been stolen by the streamers, which is really bad news. They’ve uninvented television and it’s very sad. Do you miss watching television? Growing up, my generation – so that’s all of the Pythons – grew up without television. That’s quite a big difference, rarely observed. We grew up with radio, where the words involve your imagination much more. On radio, the Goons could set the Thames on fire. Is listening to radio where your love of language comes from? It meant we had a bias towards language; Terry Gilliam was the one putting in all the imagery. If you look at the Python sketches that are really funny, they all evolved from language – Argument Clinic, for example. Later, as we did on a couple of German shows, they were largely visual sketches. But that was because we had to learn them in German and we didn’t want to talk. When did you realise that you were on to something with Monty Python? When we were given our TV show, it was late on a Sunday night and the BBC was just trying to see if anybody was awake after 10pm and the pubs were closed. What was really lovely was that we could please ourselves, there was no one overseeing us, so it was executive-free comedy and all the funnier for it. No executive has ever improved a comedy. What makes you laugh today? What South Park is doing with Trump is heroic and I know they’ve done him a lot of damage. There’s a reason Hitler and Trump get rid of the comedians first. They hate being laughed at. So, it’s great that Governor Newsom is taking the p*** out of Trump and his hands. Comedy is saying the right thing at the wrong …

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When life gives you lemons
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Mawaan Rizwan squeezes humour from his messy moments
encoded: Add Juice to your watchlist Monetising your trauma is very trendy at the moment, isn’t it?” Mawaan Rizwan muses, pointedly. “I’m someone who struggles with boundaries, so I have to be careful.” At 34, the YouTuber-turned-stand-up comedian, actor and writer has realised that “life isn’t just fodder”. “In the early days, I’d be in a writers’ room and I’d disclose a terrible thing from my life that would get worked into the script,” he recalls. “Then I’d get a note back saying, ‘I don’t think the character should feel that’, or ‘That makes me really dislike them.’ And I’d be dying inside, feeling vulnerable and exposed, because that was the choice I made. “Sometimes you go through a traumatic thing or horrific event and there’s a part of your brain that’s like, ‘This would make a great episode.’ But you have to be careful because sometimes it’s a coping mechanism and it stops you from feeling what you need to be feeling in the moment. “You have to learn which one’s which. I’ve been learning to understand the difference between what’s for me and what’s for the art.” We are discussing the perils – and the pearls – of mining life for material because Juice, Rizwan’s glorious BBC Three comedy, has returned for a second series and concludes this week. The first, shown in 2023, earned rave reviews and won an RTS Award for best comedy drama. Rizwan, meanwhile, picked up the Bafta for best male comedy performance for his turn as Jamma, a hyper, hapless manchild whose inability – or unwillingness – to be a grown-up usually ends in disaster or humiliation. While Rizwan says that Juice is “definitely fictional”, it is undoubtedly at least semi-autobiographical. It feels authentic to be otherwise. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/09/403CKEK79-copy-6249187-e1758795912177.jpg" width="1178" height="785" alt="Week 40 Mawaan Rizwan" title="RETRANSMITTED AMENDING FIRST NAME OF SHAHNAZ (left to right) Nabham Rizwan, Emily-Lloyd-Saini, Shahnaz Rizw…

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Mawaan Rizwan on turning pain into comedy – and why Juice season 2 hits different
type: item
date: 2025-09-22T23:01:30.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: BBC Three
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Mawaan Rizwan squeezes humour from his messy moments.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “Monetising your trauma is very trendy at the moment, isn’t it?” Mawaan Rizwan muses, pointedly. “I’m someone who struggles with boundaries, so I have to be careful.” At 34, the YouTuber-turned-stand-up comedian, actor and writer has realised that “life isn’t just fodder”. “In the early days, I’d be in a writers’ room and I’d disclose a terrible thing from my life that would get worked into the script,” he recalls. “Then I’d get a note back saying, ‘I don’t think the character should feel that’, or ‘That makes me really dislike them.’ And I’d be dying inside, feeling vulnerable and exposed, because that was the choice I made. “Sometimes you go through a traumatic thing or horrific event and there’s a part of your brain that’s like, ‘This would make a great episode.’ But you have to be careful because sometimes it’s a coping mechanism and it stops you from feeling what you need to be feeling in the moment. You have to learn which one’s which. I’ve been learning to understand the difference between what’s for me and what’s for the art.” We are discussing the perils – and the pearls – of mining life for material because Juice, Rizwan’s glorious BBC Three comedy, has returned for a second series and concludes this week. The first, shown in 2023, earned rave reviews and won an RTS Award for best comedy drama. Rizwan, meanwhile, picked up the Bafta for best male comedy performance for his turn as Jamma, a hyper, hapless manchild whose inability – or unwillingness – to be a grown-up usually ends in disaster or humiliation. View oEmbed on the source website If the video above is not showing, you may need to change your privacy settings. In the Radio Times site footer, click ‘Manage Privacy Settings’. Under ‘Site Vendors’, consent to ‘YouTube’, then press Save & Exit. While Rizwan says that Juice is “definitely fictional”, it is undoubtedly at least semi-autobiographical. It feels authentic to be otherwise. Just don’t conf…

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Eric Idle: "There's a reason Hitler and Trump get rid of the comedians first"
type: item
date: 2025-09-19T14:36:09.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Going Out
subject: News
description: Idle has slammed CBS for axing Stephen Colbert, praised South Park’s savage take on Trump as “heroic”, and warned that comedy is vital for keeping power in check.
encoded: Comedian Eric Idle has criticised CBS in an interview with the Radio Times for cancelling Stephen Colbert – and praised South Park as heroic for its depiction of Donald Trump. Speaking before Jimmy Kimmel was suspended by ABC over comments about the death of right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk, but after The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was cancelled by CBS, Idle said: "There’s a reason Hitler and Trump get rid of the comedians first. They hate being laughed at. "Comedy is saying the right thing at the wrong time. It is so important. It is telling truth to power and it’s keeping people sane," he continued. Reacting to the news of Kimmel’s suspension, Trump said on social media: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. “Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers], two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT.” Describing Colbert’s sacking as “very pusillanimous” in the Radio Times interview out on Tuesday, Idle noted that the broadcaster, who recently won an Emmy as the host of The Late Show, is "on the air until May to say anything he likes". Idle, who is currently on tour in the UK, also called South Park’s recent depiction of President Donald Trump "heroic" and said that the scathing, satirical, and sometimes scatological animated series has done "a lot of damage" to the US president. The Comedy Central series has portrayed Trump as petty and petulant and he is shown as being in a sexual relationship with Satan. Spamalot writer Idle, 82, added that Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s series "connects with an undercurrent of anti-, and that’s vital". "I was in the war, we laughed at Hitler and it made a difference. It diminishes their power." For tickets to see Eric Idle on the last few dates of his tour go to ericidle.com/…

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It's all change in Darrowby
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Oscar winner Rachel Shenton is used to the limelight – but her character Helen in All Creatures Great and Small is now looking for some excitement of her own...
encoded: Add All Creatures Great and Small to your watchlist When, in 2018, Rachel Shenton won an Oscar for The Silent Child, the short film that she’d written, starred in and produced – and had taken 12 years of hard work to make – she signed her acceptance speech using British Sign Language. She was making good on the promise she’d made to the film’s six-year-old lead, Maisie Sly, who played Libby, a profoundly deaf child born into a hearing family indifferent to learning sign language. “My hands are shaking a little bit so I apologise,” Shenton began, a tremor in her voice. She then went on, with astonishing composure given that she’d just been presented with an Academy Award for the first script she’d ever written, to draw attention to real-life Libbys everywhere. “Millions of children all over the world live in silence and face communication barriers... Deafness is a silent disability – you can’t see it and it’s not life-threatening.” Then the music struck up as Shenton’s co-producer Chris Overton (her then-fiancé, now husband) was thanking their parents for making cupcakes to raise money to finance the film, and Shenton’s moment in the sun was done. It must have been a surreal, magical experience. “We’d made the film on a shoestring, it was the first thing I’d written, and we never imagined it might be eligible for, never mind win, an Oscar,” Shenton says now. “While afterwards there was immense pressure that I’m only just getting over now, I’m incredibly grateful for it.” Shenton was inspired to write the film by a life-changing event. When she was 12, her father lost his hearing after undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer. Seeing the effects on her family and her dad, who died two years later, she learnt and fell in love with sign language and became involved with the deaf community. “I’ve seen the needless struggles that deaf people and deaf children face,” she’s said. “That gave me the impetus to write.” How did the Oscar change her life? Shenton, who until …

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All Creatures Great and Small star reveals Helen’s journey in season 6 - and how she captures the spirit of real-life figure
type: item
date: 2025-09-15T23:01:55.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Channel 5
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Oscar winner Rachel Shenton is used to the limelight – but her character Helen in All Creatures Great and Small is now looking for some excitement of her own...
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. When, in 2018, Rachel Shenton won an Oscar for The Silent Child, the short film that she’d written, starred in and produced – and had taken 12 years of hard work to make – she signed her acceptance speech using British Sign Language. She was making good on the promise she’d made to the film’s six-year-old lead, Maisie Sly, who played Libby, a profoundly deaf child born into a hearing family indifferent to learning sign language. “My hands are shaking a little bit so I apologise,” Shenton began, a tremor in her voice. She then went on, with astonishing composure given that she’d just been presented with an Academy Award for the first script she’d ever written, to draw attention to real-life Libbys everywhere. “Millions of children all over the world live in silence and face communication barriers... Deafness is a silent disability – you can’t see it and it’s not life-threatening.” Then the music struck up as Shenton’s co-producer Chris Overton (her then-fiancé, now husband) was thanking their parents for making cupcakes to raise money to finance the film, and Shenton’s moment in the sun was done. It must have been a surreal, magical experience. “We’d made the film on a shoestring, it was the first thing I’d written, and we never imagined it might be eligible for, never mind win, an Oscar,” Shenton says now. “While afterwards there was immense pressure that I’m only just getting over now, I’m incredibly grateful for it.” Shenton was inspired to write the film by a life-changing event. When she was 12, her father lost his hearing after undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer. Seeing the effects on her family and her dad, who died two years later, she learnt and fell in love with sign language and became involved with the deaf community. “I’ve seen the needless struggles that deaf people and deaf children face,” she’s said. “That gave me the impetus to write.” How did the Oscar change her life? Shenton, who until…

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A man in freefall
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Andrew Lincoln stars in Coldwater, the new thriller written by David Ireland about violence, faith, masculinity and middle age
encoded: Add Coldwater to your watchlist Spoiler alert: Coldwater, the new ITV1 thriller created by Irish playwright and screenwriter David Ireland and starring Andrew Lincoln, begins with a shocking act of violence. In a London playground with his children, John (Lincoln) sees a man punch a boy in the face. Shocked, he says nothing. A woman also witnesses the assault. Appalled, she calls the man out. The man then attacks her. This time John does something — he runs from the park with his children, leaving the woman to a brutal beating. This incident propels John, his wife Fiona (Indira Varma) and children to move to Coldwater, a remote and apparently idyllic Scottish village, which John imagines will be free of monstrous characters like the playground thug. Encountering his neighbour Tommy (an unrestrained Ewan Bremner in full weirdy-beardy odd Scot mode) and his wife Rebecca (a seemingly less unhinged Eve Myles), John soon realises that he couldn’t be more wrong. As Coldwater reveals its slimy underbelly, tension gives way to violence, mayhem leads to murder, and John finds out that you can’t avoid the fight for ever. Monarch of the Glen, this is not. What’s Coldwater about? DAVID IRELAND I’m still not really sure. I’m never really sure what anything’s about. I wrote the first episode in 2020, during the lockdown. I was obsessively running and obsessively reading the Bible and obsessively reading true crime books, and my wife and I were talking about moving to the countryside. All that fed its way in, so every time I watch it, I see something different. I think it’s about faith. I think it’s about community. I think it’s about a man running away from himself and running away from God. When he runs away from London, John thinks he’s running into safety, but actually… Andrew described it as about somebody who runs into the woods and meets a monster. I think that’s probably the best description of the show, in a nutshell. What was it that appealed to you about the part? ANDRE…

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Coldwater star Andrew Lincoln reveals one moment in life when he "lost it" - and talks filming shower scenes
type: item
date: 2025-09-08T23:01:50.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: Andrew Lincoln stars in Coldwater, the new thriller written by David Ireland about violence, faith, masculinity and middle age.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Spoiler alert: Coldwater, the new ITV1 thriller created by Irish playwright and screenwriter David Ireland and starring Andrew Lincoln, begins with a shocking act of violence. In a London playground with his children, John (Lincoln) sees a man punch a boy in the face. Shocked, he says nothing. A woman also witnesses the assault. Appalled, she calls the man out. The man then attacks her. This time John does something — he runs from the park with his children, leaving the woman to a brutal beating. This incident propels John, his wife Fiona (Indira Varma) and children to move to Coldwater, a remote and apparently idyllic Scottish village, which John imagines will be free of monstrous characters like the playground thug. Encountering his neighbour Tommy (an unrestrained Ewen Bremner in full weirdy-beardy odd Scot mode) and his wife Rebecca (a seemingly less unhinged Eve Myles), John soon realises that he couldn’t be more wrong. As Coldwater reveals its slimy underbelly, tension gives way to violence, mayhem leads to murder, and John finds out that you can’t avoid the fight for ever. Monarch of the Glen, this is not. View oEmbed on the source website What’s Coldwater about? DAVID IRELAND I’m still not really sure. I’m never really sure what anything’s about. I wrote the first episode in 2020, during the lockdown. I was obsessively running and obsessively reading the Bible and obsessively reading true crime books, and my wife and I were talking about moving to the countryside. All that fed its way in, so every time I watch it, I see something different. I think it’s about faith. I think it’s about community. I think it’s about a man running away from himself and running away from God. When he runs away from London, John thinks he’s running into safety, but actually… Andrew described it as about somebody who runs into the woods and meets a monster. I think that’s probably the best description of the show, in a nutshell.…

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View from my sofa: Natalie Cassidy
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: After 32 years of being Sonia in Albert Square she’s ready for gardening leave
encoded: Add Cooking with the Stars to your watchlist What’s the view from your sofa? There are two sofas. From one, you can watch telly; the other looks out on to lovely fields. I was a town girl growing up [around Islington, north London], but I made the choice to move out to the countryside. For my two daughters, it really makes a difference. What do you like about living in the countryside? We go out for nice walks. Having the country pub and the village hall, it’s very Vicar of Dibley. There’s a sense of everybody looking out for each other, which is sometimes missing in a city. What have you enjoyed watching? The whole of Glastonbury. We had family over and it felt like our own mini festival at home. I like to switch off and just watch nice, easy things like Gardeners’ World, University Challenge or Grand Designs. The older I get, the more I just like gentle television. If you’re a Gardeners’ World fan, does that mean you like gardening? My other half, Marc [Humphreys, a cameraman] is more of the gardener. Having two kids and a full-time job, I feel like it’s something you do when you’ve got a bit more time. I do enjoy it when I can, though. It can be a very meditative thing – potting plants, looking at your seeds, even watering the garden in the evening when it’s been really hot. You’re a contestant on Cooking with the Stars. Do you enjoy cooking? I’d say cooking is probably my favourite hobby. Being in the kitchen, putting the radio on… it’s all about having the time to do it. That’s why I love Sundays – they’re all about making a roast dinner. It’s a bit like a religion for me. It sounds as if food isn’t just fuel to you, as it is for some people. I love food. I love cooking and going for meals. Cooking for people and watching them enjoy what you’ve cooked, it brings me joy. I just think it’s the heart of family and friendship. You released weight-loss DVDs in 2007 and 2013. Is there a tension between loving food and the scrutiny your body is subject to as a woman? …

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The way we were
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Photographer Martin Parr shows us his singular vision of Britain
encoded: Add I Am Martin Parr to your watchlist “Yellow card!” Martin Parr admonishes. “You’re intellectualising these things a bit too much for my liking.” I have earned his reproach for suggesting that the razing of the Lido in New Brighton — as featured in The Last Resort, the series of photographs that made his name — could be seen as a metaphor for the hollowing-out of Britain’s working-class communities over the past 40 years. “There’s politics in my images if you want to find it, but I don’t push it down people’s throats,” Parr proclaims. “People should just sit back and enjoy the images, really.” People certainly do enjoy Parr’s photography. As well as chronicling changing life in Britain, Parr’s work has transformed photography itself, with his garish but gritty signature style influencing everything from fashion editorials to war-zone reportage. Why does he take photographs? “It’s just what I do naturally,” he says. “I have a desire to go out and capture these images, and the crazier the scene in front of me, the happier I am.” The subject of a BBC4 documentary and co-author of an upcoming memoir, Utterly Lazy and Inattentive, which looks at his life by reflecting on 150 of his best-known photographs, Parr says that of the hundreds of thousands of photographs he’s taken, not one of them has been perfect — though he’s got close. “You know when you’re out shooting that most pictures you take aren’t going to be perfect or great. But you keep shooting to have that momentum so, as and when, things start to fall into place.” Parr ponders. “It’s just the luck of finding a scene.” Mayor of Todmorden’s Inaugural Banquet, West Yorkshire 1977 “Between 1975 and 1980, I lived in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire and would attend all the different social events that were going on. This photograph was taken at the inauguration of the mayor of Todmorden, and it’s the best buffet scene I’ve ever managed to shoot. I’ve done buffet scenes many times since, but I’ve never managed to equal it…

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EastEnders icon Natalie Cassidy reveals how leaving soap was a “natural decision” - and why weight loss DVDs were not “a good move”
type: item
date: 2025-08-25T23:01:56.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Entertainment
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: After 32 years as Sonia in EastEnders, Cassidy is relishing life beyond Albert Square.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. What’s the view from your sofa? There are two sofas. From one, you can watch telly; the other looks out on to lovely fields. I was a town girl growing up [around Islington, north London], but I made the choice to move out to the countryside. For my two daughters, it really makes a difference. What do you like about living in the countryside? We go out for nice walks. Having the country pub and the village hall, it’s very Vicar of Dibley. There’s a sense of everybody looking out for each other, which is sometimes missing in a city. What have you enjoyed watching? The whole of Glastonbury. We had family over and it felt like our own mini festival at home. I like to switch off and just watch nice, easy things like Gardeners’ World, University Challenge or Grand Designs. The older I get, the more I just like gentle television. If you’re a Gardeners’ World fan, does that mean you like gardening? My other half, Marc [Humphreys, a cameraman] is more of the gardener. Having two kids and a full-time job, I feel like it’s something you do when you’ve got a bit more time. I do enjoy it when I can, though. It can be a very meditative thing – potting plants, looking at your seeds, even watering the garden in the evening when it’s been really hot. You’re a contestant on Cooking with the Stars. Do you enjoy cooking? I’d say cooking is probably my favourite hobby. Being in the kitchen, putting the radio on… it’s all about having the time to do it. That’s why I love Sundays – they’re all about making a roast dinner. It’s a bit like a religion for me. It sounds as if food isn’t just fuel to you, as it is for some people. I love food. I love cooking and going for meals. Cooking for people and watching them enjoy what you’ve cooked, it brings me joy. I just think it’s the heart of family and friendship. You released weight-loss DVDs in 2007 and 2013. Is there a tension between loving food and the scrutiny your body is subject to as a…

'I surprised myself'
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Michelle Ryan on why she's returned to Albert Square
encoded: Add EastEnders to your watchlist It is one of soap’s most memorable moments. On a chilly October night in Walford, in the heat of a blazing row, a frantic Kat and Zoe Slater traded two lines of dialogue that are probably the most famous ever uttered in EastEnders. Today, they still resonate with the British viewing public to such an extent that the last time Jessie Wallace, who plays Kat, had them parroted back at her by a member of the aforementioned public was the morning of her interview with Radio Times – despite the dialogue being almost 25 years old. ZOE: You ain’t my mother! Beat. KAT: Yes I am! Watched by an audience of some 19 million, that moment in late 2001 when Kat revealed to a stroppy Zoe (Michelle Ryan) that they were not sisters, as Zoe had thought, as indeed Zoe had been told by her whole family for her entire life, cemented the Slaters as a cornerstone clan of Albert Square. They arrived in Walford in September 2000, a shower of shrieking banshees, causing a commotion on the day of Ethel Skinner’s funeral. It was a carefully considered collision of old and new, a changing of the guard moment for the BBC soap. Like the Battersbys in Coronation Street and the Dingles in Emmerdale, the Slaters were disruptors who generated stories by antagonising, or seducing, their neighbours. Audiences were divided between Slater fans and Slater haters, but there was one thing everyone agreed upon: you couldn’t ignore them. The confrontation between Kat and Zoe had been the culmination of years of planning. We the audience had known that Kat was Zoe’s mum since Kat and her dad Charlie’s heart-to-heart six months prior, in which she shared how hard it was treating her child like her sister. The “big reveal” on that autumn night was only really news to Zoe. The shock for the audience was discovering the exact nature of Zoe’s parentage – that, at 13, Kat had been raped by her uncle Harry and that she’d carried the resulting pregnancy to term with the baby then raised …

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In a class of her own
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Katherine Kelly has come a long way from pulling pints in the Rovers – now she’s flying high on screen and behind the scenes
encoded: Add In Flight to your watchlist In the 13 years since Katherine Kelly left Coronation Street, in which she played the self-sabotaging, cider-swilling barmaid Becky, she has played a lady of the realm, a newspaper editor, a call centre manager, an academic, a senior Post Office executive, at least three police officers – two of them DCIs – a housewife turned part-time sex-worker, a psychologist, two high-ranking civil servants – one of whom was definitely a spy – a mental health counsellor, and a physics teacher (although technically speaking, she was an alien masquerading as a physics teacher). In any given year, the only similarity shared by the characters that Kelly plays is that they are completely different from each other. In every role, blue-collar or upper-crust, she’s thoroughly convincing; as credible downtrodden as she is haughty. Impossible to typecast, perhaps Kelly’s neatest trick is that she transcends class. “That is a big compliment,” she says, a little thrown. “It’s one of the biggest barriers on and off-screen and I made a real conscious effort, very early in my career, to prove that I can play both. I’m a working-class girl from Yorkshire, but I went to Rada and didn’t do anything in my own accent until the last play I did. That’s why it was so important to me to play Lady Mae in Mr Selfridge after Corrie, because she was right at the top of the food chain in that show. Because of that, it’s never been an issue – although sometimes I do have to remind people that I am actually happier in a tracksuit than I am in a suit.” Class is on Kelly’s mind a lot these days. With her partner, award-winning writer Tony Pitts, she has established her own production company Make Me Films, to spot and nurture working-class talent. Later, Pitts will join us and tell me that it’s harder now for working-class kids to get into the arts than it was when he started out more than 40 years ago. Kelly agrees, “Getting your foot in the door is harder than ever and I find i…

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Katherine Kelly reveals the “most terrifying thing” in her “rip-roaring” new thriller In Flight
type: item
date: 2025-08-04T23:01:43.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Channel 4
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: She's come a long way from pulling pints in the Rovers – now she’s flying high on screen and behind the scenes
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. In the 13 years since Katherine Kelly left Coronation Street, in which she played the self-sabotaging, cider-swilling barmaid Becky, she has played a lady of the realm, a newspaper editor, a call centre manager, an academic, a senior Post Office executive, at least three police officers – two of them DCIs – a housewife turned part-time sex-worker, a psychologist, two high-ranking civil servants – one of whom was definitely a spy – a mental health counsellor and a physics teacher (although technically speaking, she was an alien masquerading as a physics teacher). In any given year, the only similarity shared by the characters that Kelly plays is that they are completely different from each other. In every role, blue-collar or upper-crust, she’s thoroughly convincing; as credible downtrodden as she is haughty. Impossible to typecast, perhaps Kelly’s neatest trick is that she transcends class. “That is a big compliment,” she says, a little thrown. “It’s one of the biggest barriers on and off-screen and I made a real conscious effort, very early in my career, to prove that I can play both. I’m a working-class girl from Yorkshire, but I went to Rada and didn’t do anything in my own accent until the last play I did. "That’s why it was so important to me to play Lady Mae in Mr Selfridge after Corrie, because she was right at the top of the food chain in that show. Because of that, it’s never been an issue – although sometimes I do have to remind people that I am actually happier in a tracksuit than I am in a suit.” Class is on Kelly’s mind a lot these days. With her partner, award-winning writer Tony Pitts, she has established her own production company Make Me Films, to spot and nurture working-class talent. Later, Pitts will join us and tell me that it’s harder now for working-class kids to get into the arts than it was when he started out more than 40 years ago. Kelly agrees, “Getting your foot in the door is harder t…

EastEnders’ Michelle Ryan reveals why she changed her mind on returning as Zoe Slater after 20 years away
type: item
date: 2025-08-04T23:01:14.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: EastEnders
subject: Soaps
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: 20 years after their teary goodbye, Albert Square’s fiery mother-daughter duo are back together. Now Michelle Ryan reveals the secrets behind soap’s biggest reunion.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. It is one of soap’s most memorable moments. On a chilly October night in Walford, in the heat of a blazing row, a frantic Kat and Zoe Slater traded two lines of dialogue that are probably the most famous ever uttered in EastEnders. Today, they still resonate with the British viewing public to such an extent that the last time Jessie Wallace, who plays Kat, had them parroted back at her by a member of the aforementioned public was the morning of her interview with Radio Times – despite the dialogue being almost 25 years old. ZOE: You ain’t my mother! Beat. KAT: Yes I am! Watched by an audience of some 19 million, that moment in late 2001 when Kat revealed to a stroppy Zoe (Michelle Ryan) that they were not sisters, as Zoe had thought, as indeed Zoe had been told by her whole family for her entire life, cemented the Slaters as a cornerstone clan of Albert Square. They arrived in Walford in September 2000, a shower of shrieking banshees, causing a commotion on the day of Ethel Skinner’s funeral. It was a carefully considered collision of old and new, a changing of the guard moment for the BBC soap. Like the Battersbys in Coronation Street and the Dingles in Emmerdale, the Slaters were disruptors who generated stories by antagonising, or seducing, their neighbours. Audiences were divided between Slater fans and Slater haters, but there was one thing everyone agreed upon: you couldn’t ignore them. The confrontation between Kat and Zoe had been the culmination of years of planning. We the audience had known that Kat was Zoe’s mum since Kat and her dad Charlie’s heart-to-heart six months prior, in which she shared how hard it was treating her child like her sister. The “big reveal” on that autumn night was only really news to Zoe. The shock for the audience was discovering the exact nature of Zoe’s parentage – that, at 13, Kat had been raped by her uncle Harry and that she’d carried the resulting pregnancy to term with t…

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height: 1398

'We didn’t even know that people were going to watch it'
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The first season of Netflix hit Wednesday smashed records and made a huge star of Jenna Ortega. But here the rising star says success was never guaranteed…
encoded: Add Wednesday to your watchlist Jenna Ortega remembers exactly how she felt before the first-season launch of Wednesday, director/producer Tim Burton’s Addams Family reboot for Netflix, in which she plays the titular Wednesday, a brilliant but dour world-weary teen with psychic powers, the gloomiest of outlooks, a font of acid putdowns and a near-homicidal misanthropy. Woe is she. “I was scared s***less,” she says, plainly. “I didn’t know what I was doing, I met Tim once before starting to create the character. There was just an obscene amount of pressure and worry and I wasn’t sleeping… We didn’t even know that people were going to watch it.” It sounds awful and, perhaps mindful that it sounds awful, Ortega pivots. “I mean that in an exciting way. I love being able to sink my teeth into something and give it my all.” And Ortega did give Wednesday her all. She wanted to do justice to the character, she explains. As such, her research was extensive and forensic. Rather poetically, she describes it as a search to find the character as if Wednesday was out there somewhere, lost in the woods. Surprisingly, it was a quest that began with Buster Keaton and involved a lot of trial and error. “Because a lot of what you hear of Wednesday speaking is in her head, I watched a lot of silent films when the actors’ eyes are telling the story,” Ortega explains. “And because she’s not allowed to give a lot of expression, I landed on Buster Keaton because he was known as the deadpan man.” From there, she went on to explore Wednesday’s physicality. “So much of it was spending as much time as I could outside of work trying to physically become her. To walk like you’ve got teacups on your head and without swinging your arms too much – because when you swing your arms too much, you feel stupid for some reason. To not blink, as blinking feels like a sign of weakness and she doesn’t want to be caught off guard. When people stare at you, it can be intimidating and uncomfortable – and that’…

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Meet Catherine Zeta-Jones's Morticia Addams
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: ‘The Addams family is the ultimate model family — it encourages the difference and nurtures the quirkiness’
encoded: Add Wednesday to your watchlist Having children is one of the most amazing joys of my life,” Catherine Zeta-Jones says emphatically – which is to say, sounding a little more Welsh than usual – on a balmy June afternoon from Bilbao. Did she always want children? “I’ve always wanted kids, yeah. Though not like my cousin. She was always saying she wanted babies. Baby mad! And she did. Though she only had one in the end.” Not that motherhood was all sunshine and lollipops. When I ask Zeta-Jones if she was ever a bit of a gloomy Wednesday, she announces, “Absolutely not!” and says she was much more of an Enid, Wednesday’s bubbly best friend (played by Emma Myers) who always looks on the bright side: “I saw the rainbows more than the dark.” Motherhood, though, changed all that. “All of a sudden, I saw doom and gloom everywhere. My husband would be throwing them up in the air and I’d be thinking, ‘We have ceiling fans! They’ll be decapitated!’ I started to see the worst-case scenarios everywhere. But I think that’s just getting older and thinking ‘Ooh, what if?’” Catastrophising aside, Zeta-Jones says, “the world is terrifying for grown-ups and children alike. Me and my husband say to our kids, ‘Sorry, but it’s up to you guys. Your generation has a lot of strong views, strong values and strong opinions and you have to get out and vote to make changes, to be the change and try and put us back on an equilibrium.” Did becoming a parent make her re-evaluate her own parents? “Definitely. My mother brought up three kids. She had no help. My brother was judo, my other brother was swimming, I was dancing. I was part of the amateur dramatics, the Dylan Thomas Theatre, I’m sure there was gymnastics thrown in there at some point… Just taking us to all of that, as a parent you think, ‘Oh my gosh,’ whereas as a kid you’re p****d off that she was five minutes late in picking you up that one time.” Zeta-Jones says she loves the relationship that her children have with her own parents. “I…

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Meet Joanna Lumley's Hester Frump
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: ‘It is spectacular — I’ve never seen such attention to detail and beauty and extravagance. I get to wear many, many huge wigs’
encoded: Add Wednesday to your watchlist Joanna Lumley loves a good wig. “A lot of actors, as opposed to actresses, say that the shoes make them feel a certain way – ‘Oh that’s how he would walk!’ – and they get into the character from there,” she explains, enthused. “But women change their shoes so often, I have never found shoes to be useful. But I have found hair to be useful. How women do their hair is terribly useful. I like to get that straight and I can feel myself slipping into character.” The look of a character’s hair equates to the cut of her jib? “I love to have a wig or something, something that stops me looking like I look like in front of you now – particularly because I do travel shows as myself and people know that this is me, Joanna. So, if I have a wig, I look different and it brings a different feeling. You feel different and then I think you can give a different performance. You hope you’ll be so different in a part that people will go, ‘Who can that be? Oh my goodness, it’s Joanna!’ but that’s not always the case.” She sounds almost rueful, before declaring, “Laurence Olivier used to say he loved a good nose.” A good nose? “Transformative,” Lumley nods. “All acting is hoping you’ll get a break from your own face.” Lumley must, to a certain extent, live in hope. Over a career that began when she became a model in swinging 60s London, she has rarely had a break from her own face. From early roles as a Bond girl, a part in Christopher Lee’s last Hammer Horror Dracula film and a brief appearance in Coronation Street as a girlfriend who dumps Ken Barlow, through her big break as Purdey in The New Avengers, to the role that began her career’s second act – Absolutely Fabulous’s Patsy Stone – Joanna Lumley is now almost always on TV playing Joanna Lumley or a Joanna Lumley-esque character. The only attribute more recognisable than Lumley’s face is her voice. She’s at a level of fame when she’s booked because they want “Joanna Lumley” for the part. Lumley isn’t …

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Wednesday star Catherine Zeta-Jones reveals her scenes with Joanna Lumley are “nothing like” her relationship with her own mother
type: item
date: 2025-07-28T23:01:50.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Fantasy
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
description: "The Addams family is the ultimate model family," says the Wednesday actor. "It encourages the difference and nurtures the quirkiness."
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Having children is one of the most amazing joys of my life,” Catherine Zeta-Jones says emphatically – which is to say, sounding a little more Welsh than usual – on a balmy June afternoon from Bilbao. Did she always want children? “I’ve always wanted kids, yeah. Though not like my cousin. She was always saying she wanted babies. Baby mad! And she did. Though she only had one in the end.” Not that motherhood was all sunshine and lollipops. When I ask Zeta-Jones if she was ever a bit of a gloomy Wednesday, she announces, “Absolutely not!” and says she was much more of an Enid, Wednesday’s bubbly best friend (played by Emma Myers) who always looks on the bright side: “I saw the rainbows more than the dark.” Motherhood, though, changed all that. “All of a sudden, I saw doom and gloom everywhere. My husband would be throwing them up in the air and I’d be thinking, ‘We have ceiling fans! They’ll be decapitated!’ I started to see the worst-case scenarios everywhere. But I think that’s just getting older and thinking ‘Ooh, what if?’” Catastrophising aside, Zeta-Jones says, “the world is terrifying for grown-ups and children alike. Me and my husband say to our kids, ‘Sorry, but it’s up to you guys. Your generation has a lot of strong views, strong values and strong opinions and you have to get out and vote to make changes, to be the change and try and put us back on an equilibrium.” Did becoming a parent make her re-evaluate her own parents? “Definitely. My mother brought up three kids. She had no help. My brother was judo, my other brother was swimming, I was dancing. I was part of the amateur dramatics, the Dylan Thomas Theatre, I’m sure there was gymnastics thrown in there at some point… Just taking us to all of that, as a parent you think, ‘Oh my gosh,’ whereas as a kid you’re p****d off that she was five minutes late in picking you up that one time.” Zeta-Jones says she loves the relationship that her children have wit…

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Wednesday’s Jenna Ortega says she was “scared s***less” when show started: “I didn’t know what I was doing”
type: item
date: 2025-07-28T23:01:43.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Fantasy
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
description: The first season of Netflix hit Wednesday smashed records and made a huge star of Jenna Ortega. Now she’s back in season two with Catherine Zeta-Jones and new co-star Joanna Lumley
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Jenna Ortega remembers exactly how she felt before the first-season launch of Wednesday, director/producer Tim Burton’s Addams Family reboot for Netflix, in which she plays the titular Wednesday, a brilliant but dour world-weary teen with psychic powers, the gloomiest of outlooks, a font of acid putdowns and a near-homicidal misanthropy. Woe is she. “I was scared s***less,” she says, plainly. “I didn’t know what I was doing, I met Tim once before starting to create the character. There was just an obscene amount of pressure and worry and I wasn’t sleeping… We didn’t even know that people were going to watch it.” It sounds awful and, perhaps mindful that it sounds awful, Ortega pivots. “I mean that in an exciting way. I love being able to sink my teeth into something and give it my all.” And Ortega did give Wednesday her all. She wanted to do justice to the character, she explains. As such, her research was extensive and forensic. Rather poetically, she describes it as a search to find the character as if Wednesday was out there somewhere, lost in the woods. Surprisingly, it was a quest that began with Buster Keaton and involved a lot of trial and error. “Because a lot of what you hear of Wednesday speaking is in her head, I watched a lot of silent films when the actors’ eyes are telling the story,” Ortega explains. “And because she’s not allowed to give a lot of expression, I landed on Buster Keaton because he was known as the deadpan man.” From there, she went on to explore Wednesday’s physicality. “So much of it was spending as much time as I could outside of work trying to physically become her. To walk like you’ve got teacups on your head and without swinging your arms too much – because when you swing your arms too much, you feel stupid for some reason. To not blink, as blinking feels like a sign of weakness and she doesn’t want to be caught off guard. When people stare at you, it can be intimidating and unco…

Joanna Lumley reveals “I’ve had no career – I was trying to earn money to keep myself alive"
type: item
date: 2025-07-28T23:01:00.000Z
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: Fantasy
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
description: "It is spectacular – I’ve never seen such attention to detail and beauty and extravagance," says the Wednesday actor. "I get to wear many, many huge wigs."
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Joanna Lumley loves a good wig. “A lot of actors, as opposed to actresses, say that the shoes make them feel a certain way – ‘Oh that’s how he would walk!’ – and they get into the character from there,” she explains, enthused. “But women change their shoes so often, I have never found shoes to be useful. But I have found hair to be useful. How women do their hair is terribly useful. I like to get that straight and I can feel myself slipping into character.” The look of a character’s hair equates to the cut of her jib? “I love to have a wig or something, something that stops me looking like I look like in front of you now – particularly because I do travel shows as myself and people know that this is me, Joanna. So, if I have a wig, I look different and it brings a different feeling. You feel different and then I think you can give a different performance. You hope you’ll be so different in a part that people will go, ‘Who can that be? Oh my goodness, it’s Joanna!’ but that’s not always the case.” She sounds almost rueful, before declaring, “Laurence Olivier used to say he loved a good nose.” A good nose? “Transformative,” Lumley nods. “All acting is hoping you’ll get a break from your own face.” Lumley must, to a certain extent, live in hope. Over a career that began when she became a model in swinging 60s London, she has rarely had a break from her own face. From early roles as a Bond girl, a part in Christopher Lee’s last Hammer Horror Dracula film and a brief appearance in Coronation Street as a girlfriend who dumps Ken Barlow, through her big break as Purdey in The New Avengers, to the role that began her career’s second act – Absolutely Fabulous’s Patsy Stone – Joanna Lumley is now almost always on TV playing Joanna Lumley or a Joanna Lumley-esque character. The only attribute more recognisable than Lumley’s face is her voice. She’s at a level of fame when she’s booked because they want “Joanna Lumley” for th…

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30 of the best podcasts for summer 2025
type: item
date: 2025-07-25T06:00:48.000Z
creator: Caroline Frost
subject: audio
subject: Podcasts
subject: Magazine
description: From Alan Partridge's latest comedy offering to political insights and gripping true crime, these are the podcasts to get into this summer.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Whether you're in need of a laugh, looking to catch up on the latest political goings-on, or hoping to improve your general health and wellbeing, podcasts have become a big part of daily life for many of us. Here, Radio Times runs down the 30 best podcasts of summer 2025 – from the worlds of entertainment, current affairs, history, crime, wellness and sport. Best podcasts for summer 2025 Entertainment 1. Alan Partridge: Tales from the Oasthouse Some 34 years after Partridge hatched, fully-formed, as the unwittingly naff and desperately insecure golf sweater-wearing sports reporter on BBC Radio 4 comedy On the Hour, Steve Coogan’s excruciating creation shows no signs of getting tired. Male vanity is, as far as comedy is concerned, the gift that keep on giving but it is testament to Coogan’s precision and nimbleness as an actor that he also delivers moments in which your heart goes out to his petty, resentful and un-self-aware character. Gareth McLean Steve Coogan: "The only threat to Alan Partridge is reality" 2. Heavyweight In the first episode of Heavyweight, a show in which Jonathan Goldstein seeks to bring closure and/or reconciliation to his guests whose lives are marked by rifts and estrangements, the American-Canadian humourist tried to heal the decades-long division between his father and his uncle. Poignant, bittersweet, funny, it set the tone for this extraordinary, often tender, occasionally horrendously awkward, pod. GM 3. The Teen Commandments Radio 2 presenter Sara Cox and her longtime BFF Clare Hamilton discuss the often-messy reality of parenting teenagers as well as reminiscing about their own teenage misdemeanours in the 1980s. A refreshing and rare beast amid a sea of parenting pods focused on babies and young children, the result is, Cox says, “not an advice pod”. “We thoroughly encourage people to do the opposite of what we do with our parenting. People call it more of a parental panic group.” …

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Ten Questions with Alison Steadman
type: item
creator: Gareth McLean
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The actress on badgers, broken bones, the birth of the Beatles — and the debt she will always owe to Beverly…
encoded: Add Here We Go to your watchlist Born in Liverpool, Alison Steadman is best known for her roles in Gavin & Stacey and The Singing Detective, as well as the unforgettable Beverly in the Mike Leigh play Abigail’s Party and the subsequent TV adaptation. Now she’s back on television playing ebullient matriarch Sue in the third series of Tom Basden’s very modern family sitcom Here We Go. View Green Video on the source website How does Sue fit into the pantheon of formidable women that you’ve played? Although she’s pushy, she’s not nasty. And I love working with Jim [Howick] who plays my son. It feels so easy and natural, and that’s down to the writing. If you haven’t got a decent script, you can’t do a decent part. Tom is such a good writer. With every series we’ve done, he brings more fun to it. Everything comes from the writer – or the writers, as it was on Gavin & Stacey with Ruth Jones and James Corden. Didn’t Jones and Corden write Pam, Gavin’s melodramatic mother, with you in mind? They sent me the first episode and said “Would you consider playing this part?” So I read the first scene where she’s lying on the couch with cucumbers on her eyes and Gavin goes, “All right, mum?” She says, “No, I’m not actually. I’ve been crying because I just saw these little badgers on the television that had died and the mother was crying.” And he goes “Mum – badgers don’t cry”. And she says, “Gavin, I know what I saw”. Then she gets up and does the evening meal. I love that scene. In 1974, you were one half of the first lesbian kiss on British TV — in the BBC play, Girl by James Robson. Did it feel daring then? I don’t think I realised at the time what a big deal it was. It was within the first two or three years of me doing television, but I was most concerned for my parents, really. They were from a small community in Liverpool where everybody knew everybody and suddenly their daughter was on television doing a lesbian kiss! But they were so good about it. Were your parents alway…

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