Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2026-03-25T17:27:19.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: 'Doctors say the show hits hard'
items: Just what the doctor ordered
items: The Pitt star Noah Wyle talks his seminal show as UK premiere arrives – and his reaction to Robby and Whitaker fan art
items: Ludwig star talks exit from the show ahead of season 2: "I hope the door is still open"
items: His guiding star
items: Close to home
items: Harry Potter TV series star Johnny Flynn on how his new film role compares to playing Lucius Malfoy
items: Kate Winslet reveals why her film Goodbye June is so personal for her "brilliant, clever" screenwriting son
items: Jokers wild
items: 'It's no laughing matter'
items: David Mitchell and Robert Webb talk reviving their sketch show and why Peep Show is a no-go for Webb’s daughters
items: 'Why should I apologise for being working class?'
items: Danny Dyer: ‘My hero Harold Pinter turned down a knighthood – and I’d do the same’
items: The Buddha of comedy
items: Lee Mack on the future of Not Going Out – and his hopes to join Last One Laughing for season 2
items: Last year's winner
items: Music is the key
items: Claudia Winkleman, Mika and Jon Batiste on The Piano – and the stories that stay with them
items: He's got soul...
items: Blood, sweat and TV
items: Stacey Dooley on proving the critics wrong and her powerful new documentaries: "This is a gift"
items: 'It was fanboy catnip!'
items: 'Work just gets better'
items: 'It's a rite of passage'
items: Anjelica Huston on Towards Zero, fleeing the LA fires and childhood memories of Marlon Brando
items: Matthew Rhys on Towards Zero and why working with its all-star cast was "fanboy catnip"
items: Paradise found
items: Don Gilet on Death in Paradise: 'Watching Kris do the Poirot speech, I thought… how would I do that?'
items: How Eurovision became the TV music event of the year, as Olly Alexander takes centre stage

'Doctors say the show hits hard'
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: After 254 episodes of treating patients on ER, Noah Wyle scrubs up again for HBO Max’s Emmy-winning drama The Pitt – a show so realistic, it’s certified by medical professionals, including his mum
encoded: Add The Pitt to your watchlist It’s perhaps unprecedented for a Golden Globe-nominated actor to travel to the ceremony with the award already in his luggage. However, such was the concern of Noah Wyle’s 10-year-old daughter Frances that she took matters into her own hands. In January, with her father’s limo waiting outside their Los Angeles home, she handed him a tin foil and sticky tape replica of the prestigious prize. At its base, it read, “Noah Wyle: Best Dad”. Wyle’s features soften at the recollection: “She’s an empath and the prospect of me not winning was… Well, it was something she felt she could do something about.” The Golden Globes doesn’t do a Best Dad Award, so 54-year-old Wyle had to make do with winning the award for best actor in a TV drama, to sit alongside his tin-foil trophy on the shelf. Here in the UK, Wyle (pronounced “Wy-Lee”) is still best-known for his portrayal of Dr John Carter in the long-running medical drama ER. However, that’s set to change when we finally get to see his return to the emergency room in the medical drama The Pitt – which parachutes viewers in real time, hour by hour, into a single day at the (barely) fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Centre. It came out in the States last year, and now comes to the UK as the launch title for new streaming service HBO Max (all episodes of series one are available now, with episodes of the second series released week-to-week). It’s not a usual release model – you know you’ve landed a hit when the network that makes your show decides to build its entire European launch around it. Which explains why, this afternoon, we find the rangy Wyle in his Berlin hotel room in an armchair that seems slightly too small for him, attempting to make sense of how he got here. Back in 2009, when he finished work on his 254th and final episode of ER, he had no reason to imagine he’d ever don scrubs again. So what changed? “Good question,” replies Wyle, who also doubles up as the show’s executive producer.…

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Just what the doctor ordered
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Why George Clooney referred Gerran Howell to The Pitt
encoded: Add The Pitt to your watchlist The Pitt has gripped America. Does it feel to you that there will be a similar reaction here? We’ll see! Right now it’s comforting to come back to the UK and not really have to think about The Pitt and everything that goes with it. Over here, I’m obviously more associated with Ludwig. The Pitt has taken over your life, so you’re not doing any more Ludwig? Unfortunately not, no. I hope the door is still open, because I really love that show. Noah Wyle told us that one of the reasons you got the part in The Pitt was that George Clooney recommended you. Well, that’s the first time I’ve heard about that. That’s very cool if that’s the case. I sometimes wonder if he still remembers my name! Would you agree that The Pitt is an emotional watch? A hundred per cent! I can tell when people have binged it. You can see the weight of it on their faces. The medical student you play, Whitaker, is very relatable. In season one, it’s his first day in the emergency room. As a British actor trying to retain a fair amount of medical information yourself, how much acting was involved? It was nice to be able to let some of those fears and insecurities come out in the character. I remember my head being full of medical terms, because we had to go through this boot camp process which lasted a week. Some people must have thrived in that situation… Supriya Ganesh [who plays Dr Samira Mohan] did. Before she went into acting, she was thinking of going into the medical profession. She was the most knowledgeable. Noah was also with us during the medical boot camp. So he was eager to be the first to put his hand up. What real-life medical things are you able to do? Can you intubate someone? Or do CPR? I can do a lot. I dread the day someone says, “Is there a doctor present?” when I’m in the room and there are no actual doctors. But going from season one to season two, I was surprised by the things that did stick. In the show, there’s this mentor/mentee dynamic betwe…

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The Pitt star Noah Wyle talks his seminal show as UK premiere arrives – and his reaction to Robby and Whitaker fan art
type: item
date: 2026-03-23T17:01:43.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Contains Trailer
subject: HBO Max
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: After 254 episodes of treating patients on ER, Noah Wyle scrubs up again for HBO Max’s Emmy-winning drama The Pitt – a show so realistic, it’s certified by medical professionals, including his mum.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. It’s perhaps unprecedented for a Golden Globe-nominated actor to travel to the ceremony with the award already in his luggage. However, such was the concern of Noah Wyle’s 10-year-old daughter Frances that she took matters into her own hands. In January, with her father’s limo waiting outside their Los Angeles home, she handed him a tin foil and sticky tape replica of the prestigious prize. At its base, it read, “Noah Wyle: Best Dad”. Wyle’s features soften at the recollection: “She’s an empath and the prospect of me not winning was… Well, it was something she felt she could do something about.” The Golden Globes doesn’t do a Best Dad Award, so 54-year-old Wyle had to make do with winning the award for best actor in a TV drama, to sit alongside his tin-foil trophy on the shelf. Here in the UK, Wyle (pronounced “Wy-Lee”) is still best-known for his portrayal of Dr John Carter in the long-running medical drama ER. However, that’s set to change when we finally get to see his return to the emergency room in the medical drama The Pitt – which parachutes viewers in real time, hour by hour, into a single day at the (barely) fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Centre. It came out in the States last year, and now comes to the UK as the launch title for new streaming service HBO Max (all episodes of series one are available from Thursday 26 March, with episodes of the second series released week-to-week). It’s not a usual release model – you know you’ve landed a hit when the network that makes your show decides to build its entire European launch around it. Which explains why, this afternoon, we find the rangy Wyle in his Berlin hotel room in an armchair that seems slightly too small for him, attempting to make sense of how he got here. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/01/er-season-1-cast-clooney-9d15b54.jpg" width="3000" height="2001" alt="(L-R) Anthony Edwards as Doctor Mark Greene…

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Ludwig star talks exit from the show ahead of season 2: "I hope the door is still open"
type: item
date: 2026-03-23T17:01:04.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Contains Trailer
subject: HBO Max
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Why George Clooney referred Gerran Howell to The Pitt.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. The Pitt has gripped America. Does it feel to you that there will be a similar reaction here? We’ll see! Right now it’s comforting to come back to the UK and not really have to think about The Pitt and everything that goes with it. Over here, I’m obviously more associated with Ludwig. The Pitt has taken over your life, so you’re not doing any more Ludwig? Unfortunately not, no. I hope the door is still open, because I really love that show. Noah Wyle told us that one of the reasons you got the part in The Pitt was that George Clooney recommended you. Well, that’s the first time I’ve heard about that. That’s very cool if that’s the case. I sometimes wonder if he still remembers my name! Would you agree that The Pitt is an emotional watch? A hundred per cent! I can tell when people have binged it. You can see the weight of it on their faces. The medical student you play, Whitaker, is very relatable. In season one, it’s his first day in the emergency room. As a British actor trying to retain a fair amount of medical information yourself, how much acting was involved? It was nice to be able to let some of those fears and insecurities come out in the character. I remember my head being full of medical terms, because we had to go through this boot camp process which lasted a week. Some people must have thrived in that situation… Supriya Ganesh [who plays Dr Samira Mohan] did. Before she went into acting, she was thinking of going into the medical profession. She was the most knowledgeable. Noah was also with us during the medical boot camp. So he was eager to be the first to put his hand up. What real-life medical things are you able to do? Can you intubate someone? Or do CPR? I can do a lot. I dread the day someone says, “Is there a doctor present?” when I’m in the room and there are no actual doctors. But going from season one to season two, I was surprised by the things that did stick. View Green Video on the source …

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His guiding star
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Johnny Flynn drew on his own past – and anxieties – to play Goodbye June’s Connor
encoded: Goodbye June is in cinemas from 12 December and on Netflix from Christmas Eve On the day we meet, Johnny Flynn confesses to feelings of anxiety about the prospect of his family attending the premiere of Goodbye June, in which the 42-year-old turns in a quietly devastating performance as youngest brother Connor, who simply cannot cope with his mother’s terminal illness. As Flynn sees it, “This is somebody who doesn’t have a mask to put on in those situations. His mum is his guiding star, whereas his sisters have their kids and families.” Which brings us back to Flynn’s anxieties about the premiere. In attendance will be his own mother — “and for anyone of that generation, you know this is something that’s not far away”. This feels like new territory for Flynn, perhaps best known for his roles as Ian Fleming in Operation Mincemeat and Mr Knightley in the 2020 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, as well as his parallel career as an acclaimed singer/songwriter who’s made six albums. And as he felt his way into the role, he inevitably ended up drawing on memories of the passing of his own father when he was 18. “It totally brought back memories of waiting in hospital corridors and that hushed atmosphere that a family comes to around the death of a loved one. There was also a lot of me in moments when I’m thinking I haven’t got my s**t together. Like many people in my profession, I grapple with imposter syndrome.” And what did starring in a film alongside Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall and Toni Collette do for his imposter syndrome? “Well, it went through the roof, of course,” he says with a sheepish smile. “This is literally a bunch of names who would all be in my top ten favourite actors. But what can you do? You just have to go, ‘If this is it and I mess this up and this is the only chance I get to be with these wonderful people, then so be it.’” All of which couldn’t be more different to the job he’s just finished, playing Lucius Malfoy in…

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Close to home
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: When Kate Winslet read a screenplay written by her son Joe, her first instinct was to share it with close friend Andrea Riseborough. They reveal how it became Winslet’s directorial debut
encoded: Goodbye June is in cinemas from 12 December and on Netflix from Christmas Eve. Add it to your watchlist "I promise you, I didn’t plan it this way,” exclaims Kate Winslet, and for a second, her slightly brisk response leads me to wonder if she has taken umbrage at my suggestion that, as Christmas approaches, she seems to have achieved full omnipresence. As we speak, a TikTok trend to land her the coveted Christmas number one spot is well under way, thanks to hundreds of clips of millennial Winslet fans miming to What If, the ballad featured on the soundtrack of her 2001 animated film Christmas Carol: the Movie. Another milestone from her past that looms large at this time of year is her 2006 romcom The Holiday, whose wholesome succour has turned it into something of a cult classic. Meanwhile, in cinemas from 19 December, you can catch her in the long-awaited third instalment of the Avatar franchise, Fire and Ash. Oh, and if you tune in to Radio 4 as you wrap your presents on 21 December, you can hear her selections on Desert Island Discs. But the reason she’s set aside a chunk of her afternoon to speak with Radio Times is a project that’s clearly closer to her heart. The film Goodbye June marks two significant firsts for Winslet and her family. The script was written by her 22- year-old son Joe Anders. And, as well as producing the film and starring in it, the movie also marks her directorial debut. If you’ve never found yourself blubbing at a film trailer, it might also mark a first for you. The sight of a dying Helen Mirren in a hospital bed, with her screen family – Winslet, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall, Johnny Flynn and Toni Collette – all trying to come to terms with their imminent loss should just about do it. Winslet brightens at such an outcome. She’s fine with all of it, of course – even the revival of What If, which her husband, Edward Abel Smith, sometimes plays “for a laugh when we’re on family holidays and I least want him to do it.” She beams. “I’m…

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Harry Potter TV series star Johnny Flynn on how his new film role compares to playing Lucius Malfoy
type: item
date: 2025-12-09T17:01:55.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Movies
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
description: The Goodbye June star has a very different role lined up next.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. On the day we meet, Johnny Flynn confesses to feelings of anxiety about the prospect of his family attending the premiere of Goodbye June, in which the 42-year-old turns in a quietly devastating performance as youngest brother Connor, who simply cannot cope with his mother’s terminal illness. As Flynn sees it, “This is somebody who doesn’t have a mask to put on in those situations. His mum is his guiding star, whereas his sisters have their kids and families.” Which brings us back to Flynn’s anxieties about the premiere. In attendance will be his own mother — “and for anyone of that generation, you know this is something that not far away”. This feels like new territory for Flynn, perhaps best known for his roles as Ian Fleming in Operation Mincemeat and Mr Knightley in the 2020 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, as well as his parallel career as an acclaimed singer/songwriter who’s made six albums. And as he felt his way into the role, he inevitably ended up drawing on memories of the passing of his own father when he was 18. “It totally brought back memories of waiting in hospital corridors and that hushed atmosphere that a family comes to around the death of a loved one. There was also a lot of me in moments when I’m thinking I haven’t got my s**t together. Like many people in my profession, I grapple with imposter syndrome.” And what did starring in a film alongside Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall and Toni Collette do for his imposter syndrome? “Well, it went through the roof, of course,” he says with a sheepish smile. “This is literally a bunch of names who would all be in my top ten favourite actors. But what can you do? You just have to go, ‘If this is it and I mess this up and this is the only chance I get to be with these wonderful people, then so be it.’” All of which couldn’t be more different to the job he’s just finished, playing Lucius Malfoy in the first instalment of th…

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Kate Winslet reveals why her film Goodbye June is so personal for her "brilliant, clever" screenwriting son
type: item
date: 2025-12-09T17:01:17.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Movies
subject: Contains Trailer
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
description: How Kate Winslet turned her son’s script into a moving family drama – and found a new creative calling.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “I promise you, I didn’t plan it this way,” exclaims Kate Winslet, and for a second, her slightly brisk response leads me to wonder if she has taken umbrage at my suggestion that, as Christmas approaches, she seems to have achieved full omnipresence. As we speak, a TikTok trend to land her the coveted Christmas number one spot is well under way, thanks to hundreds of clips of millennial Winslet fans miming to What If, the ballad featured on the soundtrack of her 2001 animated film Christmas Carol: the Movie. Another milestone from her past that looms large at this time of year is her 2006 romcom The Holiday, whose wholesome succour has turned it into something of a cult classic. Meanwhile, in cinemas from 19 December, you can catch her in the long-awaited third instalment of the Avatar franchise, Fire and Ash. Oh, and if you tune in to Radio 4 as you wrap your presents on 21 December, you can hear her selections on Desert Island Discs. But the reason she’s set aside a chunk of her afternoon to speak with Radio Times is a project that’s clearly closer to her heart. The film Goodbye June marks two significant firsts for Winslet and her family. The script was written by her 22- year-old son Joe Anders. And, as well as producing the film and starring in it, the movie also marks her directorial debut. If you’ve never found yourself blubbing at a film trailer, it might also mark a first for you. The sight of a dying Helen Mirren in a hospital bed, with her screen family – Winslet, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall, Johnny Flynn and Toni Collette – all trying to come to terms with their imminent loss should just about do it. Winslet brightens at such an outcome. She’s fine with all of it, of course – even the revival of What If, which her husband, Edward Abel Smith, sometimes plays “for a laugh when we’re on family holidays and I least want him to do it.” She beams. “I’m lucky that I got to be across all of these things.…

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Jokers wild
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Meet Mitchell and Webb’s band of quick-witted co-writers and stars
encoded: Add Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping to your watchlist Kiell Smyth-Bynoe You’ve hosted The Great British Sewing Bee and starred in Ghosts, Man like Mobeen and Stath Lets Flats, so this should be a walk in the park, right? Well, it’s Mitchell and Webb – which, in comedy terms, is next-level. It’s like getting to sit at the grown-ups’ table. Then you realise the grown-ups are just as funny and silly, and they’ll let you have a sip of advocaat. Given your TV ubiquity, did you get to bypass the audition stage? I’d worked with David before, when I did Would I Lie to You? I did an on-screen chemistry test with Rob. I’d also written with Stevie Martin before. I’ve never worked with Krystal, so that was really fun. And Lara’s pretty much all the things I find funniest of all in human form. You’re no stranger to sketch comedy. Your 2022 pilot sketch show Red Flag was a viral hit, and yet Channel 4 didn’t pick up the option. Does this make up for it? Everybody wanted Red Flag apart from those people who were in a position to make it. But the return of Mitchell and Webb after such a long absence makes you realise that, sometimes, you just need to be patient. Krystal Evans You’re from Washington state, a long way from the world of British sketch comedy. How did you end up here for Mitchell and Webb? Long before I even summoned the courage to try my hand at stand-up, I would have told you that Mitchell and Webb would be the two people I’d want to work with more than anyone else in the UK. Did that make the audition process nerve-racking? They gave me the option to do it over Zoom, because I live in Edinburgh. They said, “Don’t make a special trip.” Needless to say, I made a special trip. I was so nervous, I tipped over to the point of being numb. I was genuinely thinking, “How will my legs carry me into the room?” It all gets a bit meta in this series with sketches set in the writers’ room, which play off David and Robert’s public personas. Why were those sketches included? In …

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'It's no laughing matter'
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Robert Webb and David Mitchell are delighted to be back working together in their first sketch show for 15 years. So why the long faces?
encoded: Add Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping to your watchlist Hellos have barely been traded before David Mitchell and Robert Webb race straight to the point. “Have you seen it? You have?” asks Webb. It’s flattering, and a little endearing, how keenly they seek out feedback for their return to sketch comedy (of which, more later). But for now, walking into the sunlit loft of a photographer’s studio in north London, seeing this pair seated side by side – and visibly delighting in each other’s company – is as low-key reassuring as the sight of a salt grinder next to a peppermill, or Anita Dobson linking arms with Brian May.Mitchell in corduroy and wool; Webb in more weather-appropriate T-shirt and shorts. Side by side is still how we usually see these two comics in our mind’s eye, thanks to reruns of That Mitchell and Webb Look and Peep Show (Mitchell: “a sitcom so perfect that it scuppered all chances of us ever writing one ourselves”). In TV terms, though, the last time we glimpsed them in the same room was in 2021, when Mitchell sat in the front row of the Strictly Come Dancing studio audience and cheered on Webb as he danced to The Muppet Show theme tune dressed as Kermit the Frog. At that point, 11 years had elapsed since their sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look ran its course, a decision that the pair are keen to emphasise was out of their hands. Webb casts his mind back to the lunch where BBC commissioning editor for comedy Cheryl Taylor told them that their show wouldn’t get another series: “She talked for about 40 minutes about, ‘Various other projects that you might be interested in and where do you want to go from here,’ and blah-blah-blah, while I sat there like an eight-year-old boy. Finally she said, ‘So what would you like to do?’ And I went, ‘I’d like to do series five of That Mitchell and Webb Look, please.’” They can laugh about it now because (a) getting some sort of punchline out of tricky situations seems to be their default mode; and (b) however a…

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David Mitchell and Robert Webb talk reviving their sketch show and why Peep Show is a no-go for Webb’s daughters
type: item
date: 2025-08-25T23:01:35.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Channel 4
subject: Magazine
description: Mitchell and Webb on their unlikely internet afterlife, new collaborators, and why seriousness is just a setup for the next big laugh.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Hellos have barely been traded before David Mitchell and Robert Webb race straight to the point. "Have you seen it? You have?" asks Webb. It’s flattering, and a little endearing, how keenly they seek out feedback for their return to sketch comedy (of which, more later). But for now, walking into the sunlit loft of a photographer’s studio in north London, seeing this pair seated side by side – and visibly delighting in each other’s company – is as low-key reassuring as the sight of a salt grinder next to a peppermill, or Anita Dobson linking arms with Brian May. Mitchell in corduroy and wool; Webb in more weather-appropriate T-shirt and shorts. Side by side is still how we usually see these two comics in our mind’s eye, thanks to reruns of That Mitchell and Webb Look and Peep Show (Mitchell: "a sitcom so perfect that it scuppered all chances of us ever writing one ourselves"). In TV terms, though, the last time we glimpsed them in the same room was in 2021, when Mitchell sat in the front row of the Strictly Come Dancing studio audience and cheered on Webb as he danced to The Muppet Show theme tune dressed as Kermit the Frog. At that point, 11 years had elapsed since their sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look ran its course, a decision that the pair are keen to emphasise was out of their hands. Webb casts his mind back to the lunch where BBC commissioning editor for comedy Cheryl Taylor told them that their show wouldn’t get another series: "She talked for about 40 minutes about, 'Various other projects that you might be interested in and where do you want to go from here,' and blah-blah-blah, while I sat there like an eight-year-old boy. Finally she said, 'So what would you like to do?' And I went, 'I’d like to do series five of That Mitchell and Webb Look, please.'" They can laugh about it now because (a) getting some sort of punchline out of tricky situations seems to be their default mode; and (b) however awk…

'Why should I apologise for being working class?'
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Pinter protégé, soap star, Rivals heart-throb, Bafta winner, rat-catcher, Lego lover – Danny Dyer is the master of all he touches and never fails to surprise
encoded: Add Mr Bigstuff to your watchlist We all think we know what it’s like to spend an hour in the company of Danny Dyer, but sometimes things don’t pan out the way you expect. On this sunny Friday morning, the Dyer that greets Radio Times seems distracted and, at times, prickly. Immediately after our chat, he’ll be boarding a train to go and watch Oasis opening their feverishly anticipated reunion tour. “It’s a shame it’s up in Cardiff,” he says. “It’s a bit of a mission for me, but I know Noel Gallagher and he invited me up there, so I thought, ‘I’ve got to see what the vibe is.’” The vibe, as it turns out, will be just fine. Later that night, Dyer’s pal, wrestler and Two Doors Down actor Graeme “Grado” Stevely, will post a selfie of the pair of them at the gig, and those images will end up on the websites of all the usual tabloids – more of the clickbait that seems to be getting him down on the morning of our encounter. “I find with journalism now, what even is it any more? It’s getting people to click a button and then you go on it and go, ‘Actually, that headline’s nothing like the article.’” It’s only natural, listening to the grouches of this weary national treasure – and at a mere 47 years old already a grandfather of three – to show sympathy, perhaps even want to help in some way. But, of course, you can’t control the internet any more than he can. So, what to do? Try and make our encounter sound tedious beyond belief? Well, the truth is you have to really go out of your way to make a Danny Dyer interview boring. Case in point: within seconds, he’s bringing his unfiltered energy to bear upon another aspect of online life, the algorithmically-tailored stream of content he finds it almost impossible to resist. Popping up in his feed the other day was a video of a rat catcher and his dog. “A geezer with a Jack Russell, and there was a rat stuck behind a television set. He comes in and his little dog can’t wait to go and get this f***ing rat.” That this is the onlin…

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Danny Dyer: ‘My hero Harold Pinter turned down a knighthood – and I’d do the same’
type: item
date: 2025-07-14T23:01:30.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Pinter protégé, soap star, Rivals heart-throb, BAFTA winner, rat-catcher, Lego lover... Danny Dyer is the master of all he touches and never fails to surprise.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. We all think we know what it’s like to spend an hour in the company of Danny Dyer, but sometimes things don’t pan out the way you expect. On this sunny Friday morning, the Dyer that greets Radio Times seems distracted and, at times, prickly. Immediately after our chat, he’ll be boarding a train to go and watch Oasis opening their feverishly anticipated reunion tour. “It’s a shame it’s up in Cardiff,” he says. “It’s a bit of a mission for me, but I know Noel Gallagher and he invited me up there, so I thought, ‘I’ve got to see what the vibe is.’” The vibe, as it turns out, will be just fine. Later that night, Dyer’s pal, wrestler and Two Doors Down actor Graeme “Grado” Stevely, will post a selfie of the pair of them at the gig, and those images will end up on the websites of all the usual tabloids – more of the clickbait that seems to be getting him down on the morning of our encounter. “I find with journalism now, what even is it any more? It’s getting people to click a button and then you go on it and go, ‘Actually, that headline’s nothing like the article.’” It’s only natural, listening to the grouches of this weary national treasure – and at a mere 47 years old already a grandfather of three – to show sympathy, perhaps even want to help in some way. But, of course, you can’t control the internet any more than he can. So, what to do? Try and make our encounter sound tedious beyond belief? Well, the truth is you have to really go out of your way to make a Danny Dyer interview boring. Case in point: within seconds, he’s bringing his unfiltered energy to bear upon another aspect of online life, the algorithmically-tailored stream of content he finds it almost impossible to resist. Popping up in his feed the other day was a video of a rat catcher and his dog. “A geezer with a Jack Russell, and there was a rat stuck behind a television set. He comes in and his little dog can’t wait to go and get this f***ing rat.” Tha…

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The Buddha of comedy
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Lee Mack is Britain’s wittiest man and creator of the longest-running sitcom currently on TV. But is the secret of his success down to comedy genes, the hyperfocus of ADHD – or meditation and sobriety?
encoded: Add the new series of Not Going Out to your watchlist “Sorry, everyone! I had a prang!” announces Lee Mack on arrival at the studio where Radio Times is preparing to photograph him. He’s barely late, but by way of proof he unzips his bag and produces his wing mirror, the casualty of a misjudged reverse at his local station. As he explains, on hearing the clunk, he started to leave his details on the windscreen of the other car, only to realise it was his own vehicle he’d damaged. Because this is Lee Mack, mere seconds elapse before he’s exploring the comedic possibilities: in this case, the urban myths of motorists who seem to be doing the right thing, only for those notes to say, “I’m pretending to leave my details so that no one watching thinks I did a runner.” It’s precisely the sort of scenario you can imagine percolating into a future episode of Not Going Out – which returns to BBC1 this week for its 14th series with episode 101. And if the 56-year-old comic is to narrow the gap between his creation and Last of the Summer Wine’s record for sitcom longevity (295 episodes across 31 series), he’ll need to keep replenishing the pot. As it happens, the longer you spend with him, the more you realise that the everyday business of living is a constant source of fresh material. Last August, like millions of others, Mack found himself trying – and ultimately failing – to get tickets for the Oasis reunion gigs, when he realised “the one silver lining to this could be an episode about me trying to get tickets.” The result, four episodes into the new run, is Oasis, which finds Mack’s fictional namesake in the virtual queue to buy tickets for the Wembley shows. Desperate for the loo, Lee asks his wife Lucy (Sally Bretton) to make sure she doesn’t refresh the browser while he’s gone. Much of what ensues is exquisitely guessable, a gag-studded rumination on mid-life nostalgia for our carefree youth – and, in this case, a chance for Mack to pick up a guitar and unleash his pre…

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Lee Mack on the future of Not Going Out – and his hopes to join Last One Laughing for season 2
type: item
date: 2025-06-02T23:01:54.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: With Not Going Out returning to BBC One this week for its 14th season, Radio Times magazine caught up with creator Lee Mack.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. "Sorry, everyone! I had a prang!" announces Lee Mack on arrival at the studio where Radio Times is preparing to photograph him. He’s barely late, but by way of proof he unzips his bag and produces his wing mirror, the casualty of a misjudged reverse at his local station. As he explains, on hearing the clunk, he started to leave his details on the windscreen of the other car, only to realise it was his own vehicle he’d damaged. Because this is Lee Mack, mere seconds elapse before he’s exploring the comedic possibilities: in this case, the urban myths of motorists who seem to be doing the right thing, only for those notes to say: “I’m pretending to leave my details so that no one watching thinks I did a runner.” It’s precisely the sort of scenario you can imagine percolating into a future episode of Not Going Out – which returns to BBC One this week for its 14th season with episode 101. And if the 56-year-old comic is to narrow the gap between his creation and Last of the Summer Wine’s record for sitcom longevity (295 episodes across 31 seasons), he’ll need to keep replenishing the pot. As it happens, the longer you spend with him, the more you realise that the everyday business of living is a constant source of fresh material. Last August, like millions of others, Mack found hi mself trying – and ultimately failing – to get tickets for the Oasis reunion gigs, when he realised "the one silver lining to this could be an episode about me trying to get tickets". The result, four episodes into the new run, is Oasis, which finds Mack’s fictional namesake in the virtual queue to buy tickets for the Wembley shows. Desperate for the loo, Lee asks his wife Lucy (Sally Bretton) to make sure she doesn’t refresh the browser while he’s gone. Much of what ensues is exquisitely guessable, a gag-studded rumination on mid-life nostalgia for our carefree youth – and, in this case, a chance for Mack to pick up a guitar and unleash his…

Last year's winner
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Brad Kella shares what he's been up to since The Piano
encoded: Add The Piano: the Final to your watchlist Fiddling with the zip of his grey hoodie, Brad Kella sits in his front room, recounting the call he got from America’s Got Talent after his first appearance on The Piano. “They wanted to fly me over to tell my story,” he says, “but the funny thing is that when I was 17, I had already tried to get on Britain’s Got Talent and I got knocked back. Basically, if I wasn’t playing the piano with one hand and juggling with the other, they weren’t going to accept me.” There’s no hint of rancour in the way he tells the story; more mild confusion at the idea that, to some people, the sight of someone playing a beautiful piece of music on the piano isn’t enough. Subsequent events justify his confusion. Since becoming the breakout star of series two of The Piano, life for the 23-year-old Liverpudlian has been a series of doors opening to increasingly spectacular opportunities. Next month, after completing an arena tour where he supports headliner Gary Barlow, he releases his album Phoebe’s Melody. Named after his two daughters, Phoebe and Melody, the record is made up of original pieces, many inspired by the struggles that he has faced. The one constant throughout it is the instrument that landed in his life six years after he and his twin, Aron, were fostered by Frank and Evelyn Kilmartin. Understandably, there are details concerning his mother’s situation (she died when Brad was a teenager) and “the rough council estate” where he grew up that he’d rather not revisit. In a sense, he doesn’t need to. The dispatches of devastation that make up his songs Shelter and Reverie of Isolation tell their own story. When Kella details the period leading up to the day The Piano contacted him (based on a YouTube video he’d made), the details sketch out a bleaker picture than anything that was in the show. Aged 17, he moved out of his foster parents’ house to live at the house of his girlfriend Abbie’s grandmother. But with Abbie expecting their fir…

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Music is the key
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: As series three of The Piano reaches its moving crescendo, Mika, Jon and Claudia reveal their highs, lows and audition pieces
encoded: This article was first published in Radio Times magazine in May 2025. Add The Piano: the Final to your watchlist "Giant button? Giant button? Giant button?” In her long and storied TV life, Claudia Winkleman has yet to establish a catchphrase. But the way things are going, that may change. Three hours before the series finale of The Piano, she scuttles between the crew with chocolate treats to top up everyone’s energy levels. Her flared trousers extend over her shoes, giving the impression that she’s gliding on tiny wheels around the huge Glasshouse International Centre for Music in Gateshead, like Doctor Who’s Davros or the robot Metal Mickey. She is, it ought to be said, measurably less terrifying than the former, and slightly shinier than the latter. View Green Video on the source website “You might wonder, throughout the course of today, whether I do anything other than hand out sweets and biscuits. And the answer is, very little.” Winkleman then links arms with me and pulls me over to a partitioned section where New Orleans piano polymath Jon Batiste and chart-topping pop star Mika are seated. “Have you met my little brothers?” she beams. The mood is celebratory and with good reason. Three years after first appearing on our screens, The Piano continues to defy the downturn in viewer demand for talent contests. Five weeks ago, over 2.5 million viewers tuned in to watch Mika and Batiste (who replaced outgoing mentor Lang Lang) gaze on from their secret vantage point as seven amateur pianists walked across the concourse at London’s Liverpool Street station to share their stories. That’s an increase of over half a million viewers on the number who watched the beginning of series two, which saw 23-year-old Liverpudlian Brad Kella ink a record deal on the back of an original composition dedicated to his foster parents, Eve and Frank. Viewers tuning into the finale of series three will no doubt be rooting for the pianist they want to see go on to similar success. Coul…

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Claudia Winkleman, Mika and Jon Batiste on The Piano – and the stories that stay with them
type: item
date: 2025-05-19T23:01:29.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Entertainment
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: The season 3 finale is fast approaching.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. "Giant button? Giant button? Giant button?" In her long and storied TV life, Claudia Winkleman has yet to establish a catchphrase. But the way things are going, that may change. Three hours before the series finale of The Piano, she scuttles between the crew with chocolate treats to top up everyone's energy levels. Her flared trousers extend over her shoes, giving the impression that she's gliding on tiny wheels around the huge Glasshouse International Centre for Music in Gateshead, like Doctor Who's Davros or the robot Metal Mickey. She is, it ought to be said, measurably less terrifying than the former, and slightly shinier than the latter. "You might wonder, throughout the course of today, whether I do anything other than hand out sweets and biscuits. And the answer is, very little." Winkleman then links arms with me and pulls me over to a partitioned section where New Orleans piano polymath Jon Batiste and chart-topping pop star Mika are seated. "Have you met my little brothers?" she beams. The mood is celebratory and with good reason. Three years after first appearing on our screens, The Piano continues to defy the downturn in viewer demand for talent contests. Five weeks ago, over 2.5 million viewers tuned in to watch Mika and Batiste (who replaced outgoing mentor Lang Lang) gaze on from their secret vantage point as seven amateur pianists walked across the concourse at London’s Liverpool Street station to share their stories. That’s an increase of over half a million viewers on the number who watched the beginning of series two, which saw 23-year-old Liverpudlian Brad Kella ink a record deal on the back of an original composition dedicated to his foster parents, Eve and Frank. Viewers tuning into the finale of series three will no doubt be rooting for the pianist they want to see go on to similar success. Could it be Zak from Chapeltown in Leeds – known for its history of social deprivation and race riots –…

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He's got soul...
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
subject: App archive 100
description: Jon Batiste, the new judge on The Piano, says he can spot a winner just from the way they walk
encoded: This article was first published in Radio Times magazine in April 2025. Add The Piano to your watchlist It’s not hard to tell when Jon Batiste is excited. As he rocks back on his chair, his long legs rear up and, as they do so, his even longer arms follow suit. Watch it on television and you imagine, just out of shot, his limbs being controlled by a giant puppeteer. And, as he joins the third season of Channel 4’s The Piano as a new judge, the sight of an excited Jon Batiste is about to become a pleasingly frequent one. View Green Video on the source website The 38-year-old American singer/songwriter and virtuoso pianist says the prospect of replacing classical legend Lang Lang to join fellow judge Mika and host Claudia Winkleman on the hugely successful show was “a total no-brainer” – so much so that he didn’t watch a single episode before agreeing to participate. This afternoon, he’s speaking from the basement studio of the Brooklyn home he shares with his wife, the writer Suleika Jaouad – whose Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times movingly chronicled her fight against leukaemia – and their dog Lentil. Various Grammys (he has seven in total) and the Oscar and Bafta for his work on the Pixar animated film Soul can be seen in spaces not already taken up by crockery, “thrifted” ornaments and vinyl records. To Batiste’s long-time fans, his arrival on a show in which unknown musicians are let loose on pianos in train stations across the country won’t seem like quite such a left-field development. “I come from a family where music is something that happens in public locations – on the street, in the subway, you name it.” What Batiste modestly calls a family, others might term a dynasty. His grandfather was the avant-garde clarinettist Alvin Batiste, who taught many of the most celebrated American jazz musicians of the past hundred years. The younger Batiste grew up in the shadow of New Orleans brass bands, whose ranks were dotted with several musicians from hi…

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Blood, sweat and TV
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Since making her debut aged 20, Stacey Dooley has never shied away from a challenge – but after making a documentary about rape, would she report it, if it happened to her?
encoded: Add Stacey Dooley: Rape on Trial to your watchlist "Beauty spot?! What are you talking about?” chimes Stacey Dooley. Using the camera on her phone as a mirror, she peers into the screen and laughs before wiping her face and informing RT’s stylist that it’s actually balsamic glaze from the salad she wolfed down in the taxi on the way here. It is, she volunteers, “evidence” for anyone seeking to confirm that she’s no longer the working-class ingénue who first appeared on our screens 17 years ago – the breakout star of BBC documentary series Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts, in which six young fashion consumers were flown to India to see the conditions in which their clothes were manufactured. Of course, the other thing confirmed by Dooley’s hasty consumption of fancy salads in taxis is that when she’s in work mode, she simply doesn’t stop. Returning last night after a day of interviews and last-minute voiceovers ahead of her latest series of documentaries, she made the mistake of calling home for a pre-bedtime chat with her two-year-old daughter, Minnie. “I thought I’d catch her before my mum took her up for her bath, but I rang at the wrong time, because it reminded her that I wasn’t there to do bath time. And so she’s crying and then I’m crying. Everyone’s like…” Dooley slips into an impersonation of the startled commuters at her table trying to avert their gaze, only to emphasise that this scenario is “no different to what any working mum has to deal with.” Over the past 17 years, Dooley has placed ordinary women in extraordinary situations at the centre of her investigations. She’s shadowed battalions of female Kurdish soldiers fighting Isis in northern Iraq; she’s been detained by Tokyo police while investigating child exploitation; and she’s interviewed women like Heydi in Honduras, whose husband hacked off her feet with a machete to stop her leaving him. For all of that, Dooley’s latest series of documentaries (available on iPlayer from 13 March) reminds us that there…

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Stacey Dooley on proving the critics wrong and her powerful new documentaries: "This is a gift"
type: item
date: 2025-03-11T00:01:52.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: Dooley spoke with Radio Times magazine about her new set of BBC Three documentaries.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. "Beauty spot?! What are you talking about?" chimes Stacey Dooley. Using the camera on her phone as a mirror, she peers into the screen and laughs before wiping her face and informing RT’s stylist that it’s actually balsamic glaze from the salad she wolfed down in the taxi on the way here. It is, she volunteers, “evidence” for anyone seeking to confirm that she’s no longer the working-class ingénue who first appeared on our screens 17 years ago – the breakout star of BBC documentary series Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts, in which six young fashion consumers were flown to India to see the conditions in which their clothes were manufactured. Of course, the other thing confirmed by Dooley’s hasty consumption of fancy salads in taxis is that when she’s in work mode, she simply doesn’t stop. Returning last night after a day of interviews and last-minute voiceovers ahead of her latest series of documentaries, she made the mistake of calling home for a pre-bedtime chat with her two-year-old daughter, Minnie. “I thought I’d catch her before my mum took her up for her bath, but I rang at the wrong time, because it reminded her that I wasn’t there to do bath time. And so she’s crying and then I’m crying. Everyone’s like…” Dooley slips into an impersonation of the startled commuters at her table trying to avert their gaze, only to emphasise that this scenario is “no different to what any working mum has to deal with.” Over the past 17 years, Dooley has placed ordinary women in extraordinary situations at the centre of her investigations. She’s shadowed battalions of female Kurdish soldiers fighting Isis in northern Iraq; she’s been detained by Tokyo police while investigating child exploitation; and she’s interviewed women like Heydi in Honduras, whose husband hacked off her feet with a machete to stop her leaving him. For all of that, Dooley’s latest series of documentaries (available on iPlayer from 13 March) reminds us that the…

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'It was fanboy catnip!'
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Despite a glittering career, Matthew Rhys can’t escape his impostor syndrome
encoded: Add Towards Zero to your watchlist It’s a clean-shaven and toned Matthew Rhys, taking time out from a family holiday in Mexico, who pops up via Zoom to speak with Radio Times. The star of HBO smash Perry Mason, who won an Emmy in 2018 for his role opposite his wife Keri Russell in espionage drama series The Americans, appears to be in rather better condition than his character in Towards Zero, Inspector Leach, who is racing against time to identify a murderer at Gull’s Point. The complexities of Leach, an ex-soldier with suicidal tendencies medicating his own survivor’s guilt with an ever-present bottle, were enough to attract Rhys to the role: “As an actor, you zone in on the cracks in a character’s personality because that’s also where the life is.” It isn’t hard to warm to Cardiff-raised Rhys, whose default mode when talking about his work is that of a competition winner who has won the chance to live his life for a day. The big-ticket jobs keep coming — a just-finished series for Netflix with Claire Danes called The Beast in Me, and an upcoming Apple TV+ project entitled Widow’s Bay. Impostor syndrome never quite leaves you, he says, but you have to keep it in check. It’s something he learnt the hard way, when he “over-prepared” for his role in the BBC’s 2012 Dickens’s adaptation, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. “I read the book religiously,” he recalls. “When it came to filming, I found myself saying things that weren’t in the script. So, ultimately, it messed me around.” Working with Anjelica Huston and Clarke Peters was, he adds, “fanboy catnip”. Upon meeting the latter for the first time: “I said, ‘I remember you playing Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre in 1996’. It was like he exploded onto the stage, a performance that stays with you for life.” Of Huston, Rhys says he is reminded of Kathleen Turner, with whom he starred on stage in The Graduate in 2000: “They both have a tenacity, a work ethic, they have ambition. You realise very quickl…

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'Work just gets better'
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: New Yorker Clarke Peters was a fan of British acting long before making London his home
encoded: Add Towards Zero to your watchlist It falls to Clarke Peters, as Mr Treves, to deliver the line from which Towards Zero gets its name. “Every murder has its point of origin,” he gravely intones, “its point zero.” By the time he does so, we’re into the second episode of Agatha Christie’s 1944 murder mystery. The Tressilians’ family solicitor is forced to draw on hitherto untapped depths of duty, as the internecine love interests of the occupants of Gull’s Point start to claim lives. For all of that, when he read the part, the American actor — best known as Lester Freamon in The Wire and, more recently, for his acclaimed portrayal of Ken in Channel 4 drama Truelove — quickly connected with “a man who has been in the service of his adopted family for a long time”. It helps, he says, when it’s a costume drama, “because the very act of putting on that costume takes you out of yourself”. It’s a process that bears unlikely comparison to that undergone by a namesake from a very different world. “Well, yes, when Clark Kent removes his glasses, the metamorphosis to Superman starts straight away. And, you know, those 1940s costumes, when you’re all trussed up and suited… it changes the way you speak.” Peters, 72, says he had “no earthly reason to believe the work would keep getting better and better,” and yet, here he is. Although working with Anjelica Huston was “a dream”, bonding opportunities were thwarted by the fact that they needed to spend every free hour with voice coaches, finessing their British accents. To speak with a dressed-down Peters from the New Mexico dressing room where he has just wrapped on Netflix sci-fi series The Boroughs is to be reminded anew just how dramatically he differs from the buttoned-up Treves. It’s surprising to hear the actor talk about how getting the role made him “feel like the culture here has embraced me”. After all, as far back as 1990, his musical love letter to bandleader Louis Jordan, Five Guys Named Moe, started what was to become…

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'It's a rite of passage'
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: For Oscar-winner Anjelica Huston, starring in an Agatha Christie adaptation is a highlight in a career full of bespoke roles
encoded: Add Towards Zero to your watchlist “Nice work if you can get it!” laughs Anjelica Huston, as she reflects upon the job that brought her to British shores last summer. For the best part of a month, she would take breakfast in her hotel and then get into a waiting car that took her to the neo-Gothic pile of Tyntesfield, near Bristol. Once there, she would get back into bed for the rest of the day as she assumed the guise of Lady Tressilian in Towards Zero, the latest BBC Agatha Christie adaptation to hit our television screens. “Rather like my bed, this was a role that was made for me,” she says, and she isn’t wrong. It’s been 40 years since she stepped into the shoes of a mobster moll for her Oscar-winning turn in Prizzi’s Honor, a role that she still singles out as a “career highlight”. Since then, the actor’s best-bits montage has featured a malignant stepmother in Ever After: a Cinderella Story, a homicidal confidence trickster in Grifters, Morticia Addams in The Addams Family films and, more recently, a murderous “director” in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. If Huston, 73, is no less exquisitely formidable in Towards Zero, it ought to be added that the woman you get in person is almost the polar opposite. Twenty minutes into our conversation, when I fumble on one of my questions, she suddenly morphs into an encouraging aunt: “You’re doing very well!” she pipes supportively. It’s the first time she’s “done” Agatha Christie. It felt, she says, like both “a rite of passage and a privilege, because [Christie] wrote for women in a way that most writers don’t. Which means that almost a century later, it’s impossible for us to watch these events unfold and not notice how little things have changed.” For “events”, read the emotional toll exacted upon the women in the life of tennis star Nevile Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who heads off to spend the summer at the country manor of his bedroom-bound great aunt Lady Tressilian, accompanied by his ex-wife Audrey (Ella L…

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Anjelica Huston on Towards Zero, fleeing the LA fires and childhood memories of Marlon Brando
type: item
date: 2025-02-25T00:01:51.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: The legendary actor spoke to Radio Times about her new Agatha Christie adaptation.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. "Nice work if you can get it!" laughs Anjelica Huston, as she reflects upon the job that brought her to British shores last summer. For the best part of a month, she would take breakfast in her hotel and then get into a waiting car that took her to Neston Park in Wiltshire. Once there, she would get back into bed for the rest of the day as she assumed the guise of Lady Tressilian in Towards Zero, the latest BBC Agatha Christie adaptation to hit our television screens. "Rather like my bed, this was a role that was made for me," she says, and she isn’t wrong. It’s been 40 years since she stepped into the shoes of a mobster moll for her Oscar-winning turn in Prizzi’s Honor, a role that she still singles out as a "career highlight". Since then, the actor’s best-bits montage has featured a malignant stepmother in Ever After: a Cinderella Story, a homicidal confidence trickster in Grifters, Morticia Addams in The Addams Family films and, more recently, a murderous "director" in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. If Huston, 73, is no less exquisitely formidable in Towards Zero, it ought to be added that the woman you get in person is almost the polar opposite. Twenty minutes into our conversation, when I fumble on one of my questions, she suddenly morphs into an encouraging aunt: "You’re doing very well!" she pipes supportively. It’s the first time she’s "done" Agatha Christie. It felt, she says, like both "a rite of passage and a privilege, because [Christie] wrote for women in a way that most writers don’t. Which means that almost a century later, it’s impossible for us to watch these events unfold and not notice how little things have changed." For "events", read the emotional toll exacted upon the women in the life of tennis star Nevile Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who heads off to spend the summer at the country manor of his bedroom-bound great aunt Lady Tressilian, accompanied by his ex-wife Audrey (Ella Lily Hy…

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Matthew Rhys on Towards Zero and why working with its all-star cast was "fanboy catnip"
type: item
date: 2025-02-25T00:01:05.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: The Perry Mason star speaks to Radio Times about his latest project – a racy Agatha Christie adaptation.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. It’s a clean-shaven and toned Matthew Rhys, taking time out from a family holiday in Mexico, who pops up via Zoom to speak with Radio Times. The star of HBO smash Perry Mason, who won an Emmy in 2018 for his role opposite his wife Keri Russell in espionage drama series The Americans, appears to be in rather better condition than his character in Towards Zero, Inspector Leach, who is racing against time to identify a murderer at Gull’s Point. The complexities of Leach, an ex-soldier with suicidal tendencies medicating his own survivor’s guilt with an ever-present bottle, were enough to attract Rhys to the role: "As an actor, you zone in on the cracks in a character’s personality because that’s also where the life is." It isn’t hard to warm to Cardiff-raised Rhys, whose default mode when talking about his work is that of a competition winner who has won the chance to live his life for a day. The big-ticket jobs keep coming — a just-finished series for Netflix with Claire Danes called The Beast in Me, and an upcoming Apple TV+ project entitled Widow’s Bay. Impostor syndrome never quite leaves you, he says, but you have to keep it in check. It’s something he learnt the hard way, when he "over-prepared" for his role in the BBC’s 2012 Dickens’s adaptation, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. "I read the book religiously," he recalls. "When it came to filming, I found myself saying things that weren’t in the script. So, ultimately, it messed me around." Working with Anjelica Huston and Clarke Peters was, he adds, "fanboy catnip". Upon meeting the latter for the first time: "I said, ‘I remember you playing Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre in 1996’. It was like he exploded onto the stage, a performance that stays with you for life." Of Huston, Rhys says he is reminded of Kathleen Turner, with whom he starred on stage in The Graduate in 2000: "They both have a tenacity, a work ethic, they have ambition. "You …

Paradise found
type: item
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: App
subject: App features
description: It’s going to be a Christmas to remember for Saint Marie newbie Don Gilet
encoded: Add Death in Paradise to your watchlist “You’re probing, Pete, you’re probing into my life,” exclaims Don Gilet. The tone of voice, while ostensibly upbeat, comes with a slight undercurrent of three strikes and you’re out. The question that seems to have raised his defences? I wanted to know who’s cooking the Christmas dinner chez Gilet this year. Thankfully, there are other aspects of the coming holiday that the small-screen veteran is happier to enthuse about. Christmas brings with it our first chance to see him as Detective Inspector Mervin Wilson in a special feature-length episode of Death in Paradise, taking over from Ralf Little as the new lead detective on Saint Marie, the Caribbean island where mysterious murders seem to arrive with the clockwork regularity of Japanese bullet trains. It’s a massive deal and, to the former EastEnders and Holby City actor’s credit, he’s anything but coy about it. He says he would be lying if he said he hadn’t imagined himself as the show’s lead when he guest-starred alongside Kris Marshall in 2015. Back then, he was Andre Morgan, an employee of a murdered rum distillery owner: “Oh, of course. You’re watching Kris do the Poirot speech, where [Marshall’s DI] Humphrey is piecing it all together, and you can’t help but wonder, ‘How would I do that?’ I mean, that’s a huge amount of information and, as an actor, you have to get to that point where it stops being a memory test and you’re actually expressing yourself as a character.” Given that even the knottiest cases in Saint Marie are never left unsolved, it’s no great spoiler to reveal that Gilet is nothing short of electric tackling his first case, as he finally figures out how expat celebrity songwriter Tony Hurst (Steven Hartley), a holidaymaker called Stuart (Marcus Brigstocke) and luckless local Tyrus (Michael Salami) could all have been shot by the same gun at the same time. Yet, unlike the actor bringing him to life, Mervin Wilson doesn’t see much of a future for himself i…

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Don Gilet on Death in Paradise: 'Watching Kris do the Poirot speech, I thought… how would I do that?'
type: item
date: 2024-12-10T00:01:12.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: BBC iPlayer
subject: BBC One
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Gilet lifts the lid on DI Mervin Wilson.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “You’re probing, Pete, you’re probing into my life,” exclaims Don Gilet. The tone of voice, while ostensibly upbeat, comes with a slight undercurrent of three strikes and you’re out. The question that seems to have raised his defences? I wanted to know who’s cooking the Christmas dinner chez Gilet this year. Thankfully, there are other aspects of the coming holiday that the small-screen veteran is happier to enthuse about. Christmas brings with it our first chance to see him as Detective Inspector Mervin Wilson in a special feature-length episode of Death in Paradise, taking over from Ralf Little as the new lead detective on Saint Marie, the Caribbean island where mysterious murders seem to arrive with the clockwork regularity of Japanese bullet trains. It’s a massive deal and, to the former EastEnders and Holby City actor’s credit, he’s anything but coy about it. He says he would be lying if he said he hadn’t imagined himself as the show’s lead when he guest-starred alongside Kris Marshall in 2015. Back then, he was Andre Morgan, an employee of a murdered rum distillery owner: “Oh, of course. You’re watching Kris do the Poirot speech, where [Marshall’s DI] Humphrey is piecing it all together, and you can’t help but wonder, ‘How would I do that?’ “I mean, that’s a huge amount of information and, as an actor, you have to get to that point where it stops being a memory test and you’re actually expressing yourself as a character.” Given that even the knottiest cases in Saint Marie are never left unsolved, it’s no great spoiler to reveal that Gilet is nothing short of electric tackling his first case, as he finally figures out how expat celebrity songwriter Tony Hurst (Steven Hartley), a holidaymaker called Stuart (Marcus Brigstocke) and luckless local Tyrus (Michael Salami) could all have been shot by the same gun at the same time. Yet, unlike the actor bringing him to life, Mervin Wilson doesn’t see much of a future…

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height: 2000

How Eurovision became the TV music event of the year, as Olly Alexander takes centre stage
type: item
date: 2024-05-08T15:09:02.000Z
creator: Pete Paphides
subject: Entertainment
subject: TV
subject: Eurovision
description: This year's Eurovision Song Contest promises to be wilder than ever – just as well the UK is pinning its hopes on a proper pop star, writes Pete Paphides.
encoded: This article was originally published in Radio Times magazine. Britain for the win? Could it be Olly this year? It doesn't take a genius to figure out why the BBC Eurovision selection committee almost bit off Olly Alexander's hand when he dropped them a line last summer. Lest we forget, these past decades, the Chernobyl Tourist Board has had more luck filling charter flights than we've had at getting actual pop stars to compete in the event. Former pop stars? Well, that's a different story. Blue sang I Can in 2011, only to find that, actually, when it came to landing a top ten placing, they couldn’t. Bonnie Tyler spent much of the 2013 final holding out for something more than a zero, finally scraping a paltry 23 points. Future pop stars? Sure, Sam Ryder became a household name in 2022 thanks to his cosmological cri de coeur, Space Man. But when newly solo Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander takes to the stage in Malmo this Saturday to sing Dizzy, he will do so as someone whose band's most-recent album, Night Call, landed at number one in the first of its 23-week run in the UK charts. To understand why Eurovision can now attract a pop star at the top of his game, we need to step back and look at what, almost by stealth, Eurovision has become over the past 25 years. A tournament that was once a byword for naffness, synonymous with sexless balladeering, baffling schlager ditties and cabaret corn, has become the music television event of the year. In the UK last year, it secured its highest audience share since records began, while over in Sweden almost a third of the population saw their country triumph with Loreen's pneumatic power ballad, Tattoo. The staging of the event has evolved to mirror its growing importance, with this year's production designers having worked on Beyoncé's Renaissance tour and Abba Voyage. What you’ll see when you tune in is the most ambitious presentation the contest has ever seen: a cross-shaped stage positioned in the middle of the Malmo…

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