Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2025-03-27T08:01:11.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Douglas Adams predicted our digital world – AI and all – but "found life extraordinarily difficult"
items: Chiming Eleven
items: Creatures of habit
items: All Creatures Great and Small stars share Christmas traditions – and which character is the wisest
items: Inside the festive finale
items: 'I'm not like Pam at all!'
items: 'The fishing trip with Bryn is the great mystery of Gavin & Stacey'
items: Alison Steadman: 'I don’t know if Gavin & Stacey would be made today'
items: View from my sofa: Simon Bird
items: "I'm an OAP zombie!"
items: Simon Bird: 'People will shout briefcase w**ker at me until the day I die'
items: Generation Z stars: "We are growing old quite disgracefully"
items: View from my sofa: Jessica Raine
items: Jessica Raine on The Devil's Hour and Call the Midwife exit: "I get bored very quickly"
items: View from my sofa: Sophie Willan
items: Sophie Willan on the return of Alma's Not Normal, Taskmaster silliness and painting her home pink
items: View from my sofa: Callum Woodhouse
items: Callum Woodhouse on returning to All Creatures: 'One episode is like Breaking Bad'
items: Is the sitcom dead? Not Going Out's Lee Mack and TV comedy bosses weigh in
items: Not Going Out's Lee Mack and Sally Bretton reflect on 100 episodes
items: 63 behind-the-scenes facts you didn't know about Call the Midwife
items: James Norton on McMafia, death threats and acting with his dad
items: McMafia star Juliet Rylance on playing a strong female role in a gangster drama
items: Call the Midwife star Jack Ashton on how the show transformed his life
items: University Challenge stars Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull: 'I wish I'd invented that...'
items: Meet the disabled man who dreamt of snowboarding again - and the inventor who made it possible
items: The Crown season 2: Where was it filmed?
items: The Staircase on Netflix: the history behind the original true crime TV hit
items: Eddie Braben put Morecambe and Wise in bed – and created the legend of Eric and Ernie
items: Feud star Susan Sarandon: "Actors are disposable. Women are even more disposable"

Douglas Adams predicted our digital world – AI and all – but "found life extraordinarily difficult"
type: item
date: 2025-03-27T08:00:54.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
subject: NOW
subject: Sky
description: John Lloyd on his friend, the satirical writer and tech visionary Douglas Adams.
encoded: Douglas Adams was not just a science fiction writer. As the new Sky Arts documentary The Man Who Imagined Our Future shows, he was a sometimes reluctant, often accidental visionary whose satirical radio show-cum-novel-cum-TV series-cum-movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy spiralled from breakout comedy to Silicon Valley inspiration. Elon Musk placed a copy of the book – and a towel – in his test flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, Google’s AI company DeepMind is similar in name to Deep Thought, a supercomputer in the story, and his famous answer to the meaning of life – 42 – is referenced in TV programmes from Doctor Who to The Kumars at No 42. And yet, as the film shows, Adams was often unhappy and found it very hard to write anything. We spoke to John Lloyd, his former flatmate and the creator, writer or producer of Not the Nine O’Clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder, QI and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, about why Adams may be the last great sci-fi satirist. John, why is Douglas Adams still so influential 24 years after his death, in 2001, aged only 49? "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy takes its name from an electronic 'book' in the story that is an iPhone crossed with Wikipedia. Douglas imagined this in 1978, many years before the internet. He imagined AI, lifts that talk to us and many of the things we live with today, when they didn’t exist at the time. And he predicted them in a funny and imaginative way. For people like [Apple’s] Steve Jobs and [Microsoft’s] Paul Allen, it was huge. He became friends with them and because they were a bit younger than him, they idolised his prescience." You don't mention this in the programme, but you are credited as co-writer on Hitchhiker's. "Douglas was my best friend. After writing four episodes of Hitchhiker’s, which took him 11 months, he was desperate. Eventually he said, 'Can you help me out?' We wrote the last two episodes in three weeks. It was fun. Then when the series went out, it was an in…

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Chiming Eleven
type: item
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: App
subject: App features
subject: App Doctor Who 20
description: RT catches a ride with Matt Smith as he prepares to say goodbye to Doctor Who
encoded: This article was published in RT in December 2013 and is part of our digital Doctor Who anniversary bookazine — click here to download it for free. Matt Smith is sitting in a BMW on his way to the ExCeL Centre in London’s Docklands. He’s sporting a neatly cut crop, jeans a jumper from Acne, a leather jacket from D&G, a scarf from Marc Jacobs and some slightly alarming socks. We’re conducting this exit interview the day before his barnstorming performance in the 50th birthday episode. He only has what remains of the year as the official Doctor. While we’re talking, you can almost feel him moving on. What’s it like playing the Doctor? “Everything changed. It’s all consuming — and that affects the rhythm of your life. Now, however, it’s settling down a little.” What can we expect from his final episode? “I can’t tell you. It was a great shoot — a sad one for me, but I think it’ll be a fitting send-off and a fitting introduction for Peter [Capaldi].” Any regrets? “None. I think if I was going to choose to spend a couple of years in anyone’s body, why not live it as the Doctor? He’s going to have more fun than almost anyone else alive.” The rest of the team is going to miss him desperately. “You will not find anyone with a negative story about Matt,” the show’s writer Steven Moffat tells us. “The producer, Marcus Wilson, gets him on set as quickly as possible because the crew literally works faster when he’s there. He’s the life and soul, greeting the guest actors like the perfect host, even when he’s feeling broody, unhappy, tired or sulky.” Moffat thinks Smith is the most successful actor yet when it comes to capturing the enormous age of the Doctor. “Matt is a youthful envelope but he has an old soul,” he muses. “In real life Matt is very cool. The Doctor would like to think he’s cool, but he isn’t.” It being the time of his passing as the Doctor — of a little death no matter how the character lives on in another body — we feel it appropriate to ask Matt if he’s had a…

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Creatures of habit
type: item
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The three wise men of Darrowby on great gifts, Christmas traditions and missing the ones you love
encoded: Add All Creatures Great and Small to your watchlist Who is the wisest in All Creatures — Siegfried, James or Tristan? Samuel West Siegfried thinks he’s the wisest and he is the oldest. But I think probably James is the wisest. He has had to grow up quickly recently because he’s become a dad, which Siegfried never did. Nicholas Ralph James is very studious and great with the veterinary side of things, but Tristan is better with the social interactions. Callum Woodhouse The diplomatic answer is that they balance each other out very well. Who is the wisest actor? Callum That’s probably Sam. Nicholas Me and Callum make one fairly wise actor between us. Samuel I may have helped Nicholas with where to stand when we started filming All Creatures, but he hit the ground running, so I wouldn’t presume to offer him any advice. We’re a wise ensemble! This year, James is trying to think of the best gift for his son’s first birthday. What were the best gifts you received as a child? Callum I used to be really into my comic-book action figures. The first X-Men film ends with them on the Statue of Liberty and I got a model Statue of Liberty you could put Wolverine on. I still have it somewhere. Nicholas My brother and I got a Nintendo 64 and that was all our Christmasses at once. We’re chalk and cheese, but that unified us. Samuel A chemistry set, back when you could still poison yourself. It had a conical flask and a little spirit burner for heating things. I wanted to be a chemistry professor just for the crucibles and blowing things up. What’s your Christmas Day like? Callum At home in Teesside for games of charades, Pass the Bomb and Articulate. We’ll have breakfast with Buck’s fizz, then do presents and – you probably won’t print this – we basically start drinking early and stop drinking once we’ve all passed out, at roughly 6pm. The British way! Nicholas Mine’s very similar. Buck’s fizz in the morning, Christmas music, a great singalong, open the presents, then just eating an…

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All Creatures Great and Small stars share Christmas traditions – and which character is the wisest
type: item
date: 2024-12-10T00:01:09.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Channel 5
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: "The diplomatic answer is that they balance each other out very well."
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Ahead of another heartwarming festive special, the cast of All Creatures Great and Small talk to Radio Times all about what to expect – and how they're spending their own Christmases. Who is the wisest in All Creatures — Siegfried, James or Tristan? Samuel West Siegfried thinks he’s the wisest and he is the oldest. But I think probably James is the wisest. He has had to grow up quickly recently because he’s become a dad, which Siegfried never did. Nicholas Ralph James is very studious and great with the veterinary side of things, but Tristan is better with the social interactions. Callum Woodhouse The diplomatic answer is that they balance each other out very well. Who is the wisest actor? Callum That’s probably Sam. Nicholas Me and Callum make one fairly wise actor between us. Samuel I may have helped Nicholas with where to stand when we started filming All Creatures, but he hit the ground running, so I wouldn’t presume to offer him any advice. We’re a wise ensemble! This year, James is trying to think of the best gift for his son’s first birthday. What were the best gifts you received as a child? Callum I used to be really into my comic book action figures. The first X-Men film ends with them on the Statue of Liberty and I got a model Statue of Liberty you could put Wolverine on. I still have it somewhere. Nicholas My brother and I got a Nintendo 64 and that was all our Christmasses at once. We’re chalk and cheese, but that unified us. Samuel A chemistry set, back when you could still poison yourself. It had a conical flask and a little spirit burner for heating things. I wanted to be a chemistry professor just for the crucibles and blowing things up. What’s your Christmas Day like? Callum At home in Teesside for games of charades, Pass the Bomb and Articulate. We’ll have breakfast with Buck’s fizz, then do presents and – you probably won’t print this – we basically start drinking early and stop drinking once we…

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Inside the festive finale
type: item
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: App
subject: App features
subject: Collections
description: Gavin & Stacey director Christine Gernon reflects on the moment she called “Cut” for the last time — and Larry Lamb, Alison Steadman, Melanie Walters and Robert Wilfort discuss the tearful reunion.
encoded: Add Gavin & Stacey to your watchlist The last time James Corden and Ruth Jones wrote a Christmas Day special of Gavin & Stacey in 2019, 17.1 million people tuned in. It was the most-viewed non-sporting event in years and the most-watched comedy in 17 years, long after its original, three-series heyday in 2007–9. Which means that this year’s 90-minute special – officially the last ever episode of the Welsh-girl-meets-English-boy romcom – comes with some high expectations. “I am slightly terrified,” confesses Christine Gernon, the show’s director since the very first episode. “I’m feeling pressure like I’ve never felt before.” And that’s saying something, given Gernon’s CV also boasts Absolutely Fabulous, One Foot in the Grave, The Catherine Tate Show and Jonathan Creek. In fact, she was so successful in UK comedy that for the last decade she’s been working in America on shows like Black-ish, New Girl and the US remake of Ghosts. Gavin & Stacey is the only UK show she comes back for – because it’s a labour of love. “When Ruth first gave it to me in 2006 I thought, I’ll try the first few pages. Suddenly I’d read the whole thing and I was on the phone begging her to let me direct,” she laughs. “I think fundamentally, it’s a show that’s about love and people who love each other. I’m doing the editing on the Christmas show now and sat there basking in the friendships. “Those friendships are absolutely real,” she adds. “They’re laughing, they’re chatting, they’re invariably hanging out in each other’s trailers, and Ruth and James delight in getting as many of the cast as possible into every single scene. I often have to beg them to all shut up so we can shoot.” She has to remain tight-lipped about the plot of the feature-length special – the BBC will only reveal that Bryn (Rob Brydon) is packing the Picasso for a trip to Essex; Gavin and Stacey (Mathew Horne and Joanna Page) are looking for new ways to spice up their 17-year marriage; Nessa (Jones) has started a new busine…

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'I'm not like Pam at all!'
type: item
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Alison Steadman plays Pam
encoded: Add Gavin & Stacey to your watchlist How did you feel when you found out this would be the last ever episode? Pretty sad – we do feel a bit like a family, and we’ve all grown very fond of each other. I knew James and Ruth all the way back from doing Fat Friends, and they wrote Pam for me. How lucky is that? How similar to Pam are you? I’m not like Pam at all! But that’s what I enjoy about acting – becoming somebody else. The first scene I read was Gavin coming home from work, Pam lying on the couch with cucumbers on her eyes after crying watching little badgers on TV. She says, “The mother badger was crying because all the little cubs died.” He says, “Mum, I don’t think badgers can cry.” Then Pam says, “I know what I saw.” As soon as I read it, I could hear her voice. Would you like them to keep going? Nothing goes on for ever, and it’s inevitable that Ruth and James just cannot keep coming up with these amazing stories. Why are Pam and Mick so special? Me and Larry just click. I love the moments when they have a row, then within minutes, she falls into his arms. I think that’s why the audience love it, because there’s that warmth. Of all the work you’ve done, is this the show you get approached the most about? Other parts get talked about, but young people particularly love Gavin & Stacey. They stop me for selfies all the time, and ask me about the Christmas finale, but we are sworn to secrecy… It’s a different world for sitcoms now — would Gavin & Stacey be made today? I don’t know. There used to be a single producer coming up with ideas, now there’s meetings with five or six producers chipping in their two penn’orth. When we did Abigail’s Party [1977], a BBC producer saw us on stage at the Hampstead Theatre and within a fortnight of finishing, we were filming it. That would never happen now. Pam loves Christmas — are you the same? I’ve had a bit of sadness in my life because my eldest sister died in October. It’s been a tough time. I used to host but last Christm…

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height: 1335

'The fishing trip with Bryn is the great mystery of Gavin & Stacey'
type: item
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Robert Wilfort plays Jason
encoded: Add Gavin & Stacey to your watchlist How did you get the role of Jason? I had worked with James on a film and we got on well, so he invited me to audition. They asked me to read for Jason and a ticket inspector. A week later, James rang up and said I hadn’t got the ticket inspector… How similar are you to Jason? Quite similar. I left home to go away to work. Those scenes when Jason comes back feel like me returning to Porthcawl. But Jason’s more stylish than me, so I was pleased when they let me keep his wardrobe. You’ve been in everything from Sex Education to Harry Potter, but is Gavin & Stacey what you’re recognised for most? I don’t have glasses, I don’t have a beard and I rarely tan so it’s normally only proper fans who spot me. But if I’ve got the beard, that’s different. Does everyone ask about that fishing trip with Uncle Bryn? Almost invariably. People have their own versions of what they think happened. It’s the great mystery of Gavin & Stacey! You never quite get to find out what happened… but I can’t say any more, because it’s possible you’ll learn something if you watch the finale. Why do you think the show has grown so much in popularity? It has, hasn’t it? I’m amazed the number of people who say their children love it. I’ve been watching it again with my daughter and realised it’s actually quite rude. Families argue, laugh and make up. People see themselves in that. How did it feel knowing this was the finale? It was emotional, but I thought we finished ten years ago so this is a bonus. The last day was a rollercoaster. When they called cut, everyone was in tears.

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Alison Steadman: 'I don’t know if Gavin & Stacey would be made today'
type: item
date: 2024-11-26T00:01:22.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: The star spoke to Radio Times about the return of the legendary sitcom.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. How did you feel when you found out this would be the last ever episode? Pretty sad – we do feel a bit like a family, and we’ve all grown very fond of each other. I knew James and Ruth all the way back from doing Fat Friends, and they wrote Pam for me. How lucky is that? How similar to Pam are you? I’m not like Pam at all! But that’s what I enjoy about acting – becoming somebody else. The first scene I read was Gavin coming home from work, Pam lying on the couch with cucumbers on her eyes after crying watching little badgers on TV. She says, 'The mother badger was crying because all the little cubs died'. He says, 'Mum, I don’t think badgers can cry'. Then Pam says, 'I know what I saw'. As soon as I read it, I could hear her voice. Would you like them to keep going? Nothing goes on for ever, and it’s inevitable that Ruth and James just cannot keep coming up with these amazing stories. Why are Pam and Mick so special? Me and Larry just click. I love the moments when they have a row, then within minutes, she falls into his arms. I think that’s why the audience love it, because there’s that warmth. Of all the work you've done, is this the show you get approached the most about? Other parts get talked about, but young people particularly love Gavin & Stacey. They stop me for selfies all the time, and ask me about the Christmas finale, but we are sworn to secrecy… It’s a different world for sitcoms now – would Gavin & Stacey be made today? I don’t know. There used to be a single producer coming up with ideas, now there’s meetings with five or six producers chipping in their two penn'orth. When we did Abigail’s Party [1977], a BBC producer saw us on stage at the Hampstead Theatre and within a fortnight of finishing, we were filming it. That would never happen now. Pam loves Christmas – are you the same? I’ve had a bit of sadness in my life because my eldest sister died in October. It's been a tough time. I used to host …

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height: 2000

View from my sofa: Simon Bird
type: item
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The Inbetweeners star says being subversive in middle age is a pain in the back
encoded: Add Everyone Else Burns to your watchlist What’s the view from your sofa? I wish I knew. My wife and I tend to watch TV in bed, hunched over my tiny laptop, sharing a set of primitive, fraying earphones, so we don’t wake the kids [Bird has an eight- and six-year-old with author Lisa Owens]. It’s a bleak and tragic image. Which perhaps answers the second question: who controls the TV remote? It depends on who wins the daily and increasingly violent fight between my son and daughter. My daughter has the advantage in terms of height and reach, but my son’s not afraid to play dirty, so it’s impossible to call. We try and find stuff the whole family would like – I’m talking Bluey, Gladiators, Race across the World, all the classics. View oEmbed on the source website What have you enjoyed watching recently on the laptop? At the risk of sounding full centrist dad and quasi-nostalgic, emotionally manipulative sports documentaries like The Last Dance and 99. My wife and I are also in pretty deep with Couples Therapy on iPlayer. It’s a documentary following couples through relationship counselling. We identify with opposing members of each couple, and the rush of satisfaction when the therapist sides with my member of the couple gives me a spring in my step for days. Any TV turn-offs? I find it hard to watch comedy now, partly because it feels like a busman’s holiday, but primarily because I’m at heart an intensely competitive and jealous person, and if it’s good I want to be in it. What was your biggest TV influence? The Office. It felt like an unprecedented comedy that didn’t rely on punchlines or farcical plots, just satirising the way people talk and behave in the real world. I found that electrifying as a teenager. There was a time I could have recited the Christmas specials word for word. Did that inspire you to start acting? I don’t think so. I never had ambitions to be an actor. I joined Footlights at university for a laugh. We took a show to the Edinburgh Fringe, and…

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"I'm an OAP zombie!"
type: item
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Prepare to be scared… Anita Dobson, Sue Johnston and Robert Lindsay are up to their eyes in blood, guts and prosthetics
encoded: Add Generation Z to your watchlist Call it what you like – the generation gap, boomers v millennials or even the culture wars – but the battle between the smashed avocado on toast-eating youngsters and the mortgage-free boomers has been blamed for everything from Brexit to the housing crisis. Now imagine what would happen if the boomers became zombies overnight. “They would get rid of their children,” Robert Lindsay grins in delight. “The young are in the way. They’re good for the appetite. Very good protein!” He laughs out loud. Lindsay is speaking from experience. He’s one of the stars of Generation Z, a new horror comedy on Channel 4 from cult director Ben Wheatley. In the series an experimental bio-weapon literally falls off the back of a military lorry in the fictional town of Dambury, creating a plague that turns the old into monsters but leaves the young unscathed. Or rather, initially unscathed. The old are hungry and angry; the young are bemused, irritated and then… dead. View oEmbed on the source website The cast spans the generations. Lindsay is joined in the upper-age bracket by, among others, Anita Dobson and Sue Johnston; the Gen Xers are led by Johnny Vegas and Rebecca Humphries alongside a host of rising stars like Lewis Gribben and Viola Prettejohn. Dobson and Johnston, both of whom play zombies, still seem surprised at their roles. “I’d just done an episode of Inside No. 9, which was a bit of a departure for me in itself,” Dobson recalls. “When I first spoke to Ben and I said to him, ‘It’s very dark…’ he said, ‘Anita, if we don’t have fun with it, if we don’t make them laugh, we can’t do it.’ Which was what sold me.” Were they fans of the genre? “Not really, no,” Dobson laughs. “Bloody gore is not really on my go-to list. It’s a whole new world. Suddenly you get asked to do things like FearFest – who knew there was a FearFest? And who knows what a FearFest is? But Comic Con will embrace this wholeheartedly. And so we’ll go along to do the signings,…

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Simon Bird: 'People will shout briefcase w**ker at me until the day I die'
type: item
date: 2024-10-22T11:28:42.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Channel 4
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: The impact of The Inbetweeners lives on...
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Known by many as Will from The Inbetweeners, Simon Bird has since gone on to star in several beloved series across comedy and beyond. That hasn't stopped people from shouting Inbetweeners references at him, though... Speaking in the latest Radio Times magazine, he discusses his view from the sofa, TV turn-offs and more. What's the view from your sofa? I wish I knew. My wife and I tend to watch TV in bed, hunched over my tiny laptop, sharing a set of primitive, fraying earphones, so we don’t wake the kids [Bird has an eight- and six-year-old with author Lisa Owens]. It’s a bleak and tragic image. Which perhaps answers the second question: who controls the TV remote? It depends on who wins the daily and increasingly violent fight between my son and daughter. My daughter has the advantage in terms of height and reach, but my son’s not afraid to play dirty, so it’s impossible to call. We try and find stuff the whole family would like – I’m talking Bluey, Gladiators, Race Across the World, all the classics. What have you enjoyed watching recently on the laptop? At the risk of sounding full centrist dad and quasi-nostalgic, emotionally manipulative sports documentaries like The Last Dance and 99. My wife and I are also in pretty deep with Couples Therapy on iPlayer. It’s a documentary following couples through relationship counselling. We identify with opposing members of each couple, and the rush of satisfaction when the therapist sides with my member of the couple gives me a spring in my step for days. Any TV turn-offs? I find it hard to watch comedy now, partly because it feels like a busman’s holiday, but primarily because I’m at heart an intensely competitive and jealous person, and if it’s good I want to be in it. What was your biggest TV influence? The Office. It felt like an unprecedented comedy that didn’t rely on punchlines or farcical plots, just satirising the way people talk and behave in the real world. I …

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height: 413

Generation Z stars: "We are growing old quite disgracefully"
type: item
date: 2024-10-22T11:27:45.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Sci-fi
subject: TV
subject: Channel 4
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: "I was never so aware of the generation gap as I was when I joined Generation Z."
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Call it what you like – the generation gap, Boomers v Millennials or even the culture wars – but the battle between the smashed avocado on toast-eating youngsters and the mortgage-free boomers has been blamed for everything from Brexit to the housing crisis. Now imagine what would happen if the boomers became zombies overnight. "They would get rid of their children," Robert Lindsay grins in delight. "The young are in the way. They’re good for the appetite. Very good protein!" He laughs out loud. Lindsay is speaking from experience. He’s one of the stars of Generation Z, a new horror comedy on Channel 4 from cult director Ben Wheatley. In the series, an experimental bio-weapon literally falls off the back of a military lorry in the fictional town of Dambury, creating a plague that turns the old into monsters but leaves the young unscathed. Or rather, initially unscathed. The old are hungry and angry; the young are bemused, irritated, and then… dead. The cast spans the generations. Lindsay is joined in the upper-age bracket by, among others, Anita Dobson and Sue Johnston; the Gen Xers are led by Johnny Vegas and Rebecca Humphries alongside a host of rising stars like Lewis Gribben and Viola Prettejohn. Dobson and Johnston, both of whom play zombies, still seem surprised at their roles. "I’d just done an episode of Inside No. 9, which was a bit of a departure for me in itself," Dobson recalls. "When I first spoke to Ben and I said to him, 'It’s very dark…' he said, 'Anita, if we don’t have fun with it, if we don’t make them laugh, we can’t do it.' Which was what sold me." Were they fans of the genre? "Not really, no," Dobson laughs. "Bloody gore is not really on my go-to list. It’s a whole new world. Suddenly you get asked to do things like FearFest – who knew there was a FearFest? And who knows what a FearFest is? But Comic-Con will embrace this wholeheartedly. And so we’ll go along to do the signings, and there wil…

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View from my sofa: Jessica Raine
type: item
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The Devil’s Hour star got bored playing a midwife — she’s a bad girl at heart
encoded: Add The Devil's Hour to your watchlist What’s the view from your sofa? Well, I’m often horizontal, not a sitter upper. I normally have a bar of Tony’s Chocolonely on the coffee table, one of the cats with me and a big TV – I’m happy! And who controls the remote? My son, when he’s watching, or Tom [Goodman-Hill, Raine’s husband, who is also an actor] when it’s just us. This isn’t about the gender politics of our relationship. I’m genuinely a technophobe – and I fall asleep anyway. View oEmbed on the source website What have you enjoyed recently? I’m very, very keen on Severance. And Hacks – I’m absolutely livid that I can’t see season three right now in the UK. And Colin from Accounts. We met Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer at the Emmys, and they were everything I wanted them to be. I love comedy even though I feel like I’ve been put into a trauma role box. Your Wikipedia page says you’ve been acting from the age of 13. What was your first role? The page also says I danced in Beyond Ballets Russes at London’s Coliseum, and I didn’t, but I like people thinking I did. The acting was amateur, village hall stuff. I wasn’t one of those kids who wanted an agent at age seven. I didn’t even know you could do it as a profession. I grew up on a farm and knew no one in the industry. I just wanted to keep on playing for a living. Wikipedia also says your family were bonesetters. That can’t be true. It is true. If you had a bad back, you’d come to see the bonesetter. In Victorian times, we had one ancestor who got paid in silver, so he was called Silver John. The legend is that he was robbed, murdered, thrown into a lake, the lake froze over, and he disappeared until someone was ice skating and saw him under the ice. It’s a good story. I love all the myths of the countryside. There’s a lot of darkness, and you’re living with the cycle of the seasons and livestock. It’s very rooted. And I was a real tomboy. Were you helping on the farm at dawn? We were always on the farm, but no…

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Jessica Raine on The Devil's Hour and Call the Midwife exit: "I get bored very quickly"
type: item
date: 2024-10-15T10:30:37.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Amazon Prime Video
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: On demand
description: "I love comedy, even though I feel like I've been put into a trauma role box."
encoded: Jessica Raine chats to Radio Times about three-season runs, errors on Wikipedia and what she's currently watching on TV... What's the view from your sofa? Well, I’m often horizontal, not a sitter-upper. I normally have a bar of Tony’s Chocolonely on the coffee table, one of the cats with me and a big TV – I’m happy! And who controls the remote? My son, when he’s watching, or Tom [Goodman-Hill, Raine’s husband, who is also an actor] when it’s just us. This isn’t about the gender politics of our relationship. I’m genuinely a technophobe – and I fall asleep anyway. What have you enjoyed recently? I’m very, very keen on Severance. And Hacks – I’m absolutely livid that I can’t see season 3 right now in the UK. And Colin from Accounts. We met Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer at the Emmys, and they were everything I wanted them to be. I love comedy, even though I feel like I’ve been put into a trauma role box. Your Wikipedia page says you've been acting from the age of 13. What was your first role? The page also says I danced in Beyond Ballets Russes at London’s Coliseum, and I didn’t, but I like people thinking I did. The acting was amateur, village hall stuff. I wasn’t one of those kids who wanted an agent at age seven. I didn’t even know you could do it as a profession. I grew up on a farm and knew no one in the industry. I just wanted to keep on playing for a living. Wikipedia also says your family were bonesetters. That can't be true. It is true. If you had a bad back, you’d come to see the bonesetter. In Victorian times, we had one ancestor who got paid in silver, so he was called Silver John. The legend is that he was robbed, murdered, thrown into a lake, the lake froze over, and he disappeared until someone was ice skating and saw him under the ice. It’s a good story. I love all the myths of the countryside. There’s a lot of darkness, and you’re living with the cycle of the seasons and livestock. It’s very rooted. And I was a real tomboy. Were you helping on the f…

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View from my sofa: Sophie Willan
type: item
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The writer and comedian on winning Baftas, weird pop stars and life in the pink
encoded: Add Alma's Not Normal to your watchlist What’s the view from your sofa? My telly – I’ve got a big flatscreen smart TV plus one in my bedroom for when I’m ill or hungover. And my Bafta is on the fireplace. I know some people put them in the toilet, but I think that’s a bit arrogant. Although someone did tell me they put theirs in the toilet by the mirror so that when people are having a private moment, they can hold it up and do their own speech. I like that. What have you been watching recently? I just watched Big Boys on Channel 4. It’s a brilliant queer comedy drama from Jack Rooke about friendship with bitchy jokes that are full of heart. And Such Brave Girls on BBC3 about these really messy women. Very acidic wit. Any TV you turn off? I still won’t watch Have I Got News for You. They bullied Paula Yates so viciously and it’s still the same people and still the same culture. It’s not for me. View oEmbed on the source website Who controls the remote in your house? Me, because I live alone. I am a big fan of it. You’ve got your own set of rules. I do my own decorating. My house is so pink it’s like I’m living in a bowl of Gaviscon. Your series, Alma’s Not Normal, is quasi-autobiographical and in series two (starting this week), Alma is trying to get her acting going again. How did you get into acting? I went to a little drama club in Bolton and wanted to write and perform from then. When I was 19, I joined Contact Theatre [in Manchester], trained up in how to be a producer, set up a theatre company, got Arts Council funding, went solo, wrote shows, booked tours, moved into stand-up… The difficulty was giving up control to a manager. How much of your life is in the depiction of Alma? It’s funny that question… People ask me it a lot. I don’t know how often people ask Phoebe Waller-Bridge how much of her is in Fleabag. I know things are changing, but still the headlines about my show, even the positive ones, talk about harshness and brutality. I am a care leaver [loos…

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Sophie Willan on the return of Alma's Not Normal, Taskmaster silliness and painting her home pink
type: item
date: 2024-10-01T09:00:17.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: "I know things are changing, but still the headlines about my show, even the positive ones, talk about harshness and brutality."
encoded: Alma's Not Normal returns for a second run this month, three years since we last saw Sophie Willan's comic creation on screen. To mark the return of the BAFTA-winning sitcom, Radio Times spoke to the writer and comedian about weird pop stars, her Taskmaster WhatsApp group and life in the pink. What’s the view from your sofa? My telly – I’ve got a big flatscreen smart TV plus one in my bedroom for when I’m ill or hungover. And my BAFTA is on the fireplace. I know some people put them in the toilet, but I think that’s a bit arrogant. Although someone did tell me they put theirs in the toilet by the mirror so that when people are having a private moment, they can hold it up and do their own speech. I like that. What have you been watching recently? I just watched Big Boys on Channel 4. It’s a brilliant queer comedy drama from Jack Rooke about friendship with bitchy jokes that are full of heart. And Such Brave Girls on BBC Three about these really messy women. Very acidic wit. Any TV you turn off? I still won’t watch Have I Got News for You. They bullied Paula Yates so viciously and it’s still the same people and still the same culture. It’s not for me. Who controls the remote in your house? Me, because I live alone. I am a big fan of it. You’ve got your own set of rules. I do my own decorating. My house is so pink it’s like I’m living in a bowl of Gaviscon. Your series, Alma’s Not Normal, is quasi-autobiographical and in series 2 (starting this week), Alma is trying to get her acting going again. How did you get into acting? I went to a little drama club in Bolton and wanted to write and perform from then. When I was 19, I joined Contact Theatre [in Manchester], trained up in how to be a producer, set up a theatre company, got Arts Council funding, went solo, wrote shows, booked tours, moved into stand-up... The difficulty was giving up control to a manager. How much of your life is in the depiction of Alma? It’s funny, that question… People ask me it a lot. I don’t kn…

View from my sofa: Callum Woodhouse
type: item
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: App
subject: App features
subject: App archive 100
description: The All Creatures actor would love to wield a lightsaber, but a trowel will do for now...
encoded: This article was first published in Radio Times magazine in October 2024. Add All Creatures Great and Small to your watchlist What is the view from your sofa? A fireplace underneath the telly, and on either side there are bookshelves. On the left, I’ve got graphic novels divided from actual novels by a Marvel figure of Dr Doom on a throne. On the right I’ve got a record player and a DVD of a Dexys Midnight Runners gig at the Duke of York’s Theatre. My favourite band. In front of that I’ve got Tristan from All Creatures Great and Small’s vet bag. Who controls the remote in your household? Very much me, but that’s because I’ve got three separate remotes – one for the telly, one for the Firestick, and one for the sound bar. My girlfriend is, like, “Can you just do it?” And by then, I’m choosing what we’re watching. What have you enjoyed recently? The Acolyte. It didn’t do very well in reviews, but I love anything Star Wars. You put on eight hours of paint drying in the Star Wars universe and I’d watch. If even paint drying is watchable, what are your TV turn-offs? There are things that I really don’t like. Bridgerton is one of the worst shows ever, but I would absolutely take a role on it, because then I could just choose whatever job I wanted. Have you ever auditioned for Star Wars? No, that’s my dream. If I got to wield a lightsaber on TV or film, I could die the next day a happy man. Were your parents supportive when you told them you wanted to act? My dad is an engineer in the oil business and my mum is a nurse. I said, “Folks, this is what I want to do.” They were completely baffled but supported me. My dad wanted me to have a Plan B, but I thought if I didn’t then acting had to work out. You left drama school, going straight into The Durrells and were then cast in All Creatures — have you always been an animal lover? It’s weird. At drama school I got dark roles like Hotspur in Henry IV and Stanhope in Journey’s End… then I got Leslie in The Durrells! I thought ho…

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Callum Woodhouse on returning to All Creatures: 'One episode is like Breaking Bad'
type: item
date: 2024-09-24T08:00:48.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Drama
subject: TV
subject: Channel 5
subject: Interview
description: The All Creatures Great and Small actor spoke to Radio Times about his love of Star Wars and the Netflix series he thinks is "one of the worst shows ever".
encoded: With the new season of All Creatures Great and Small returning to our screens at long last, there's one fan-favourite character that viewers couldn't wait to see make a comeback – Callum Woodhouse's Tristan Farnon. Last seen in the Channel 5 series leaving to serve in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, it's set to be a welcome return for Woodhouse back into the All Creatures fold. To mark the new episodes, the actor spoke to Radio Times about what he likes watching in his downtime, his unapologetic love of Star Wars and why he deems Bridgerton to be "one of the worst shows ever". He also teases what's to come in this season of All Creatures, including an episode that has stark similarities to hit Netflix series Breaking Bad... What is the view from your sofa? A fireplace underneath the telly, and on either side there are bookshelves. On the left, I’ve got graphic novels divided from actual novels by a Marvel figure of Dr Doom on a throne. On the right I’ve got a record player and a DVD of a Dexys Midnight Runners gig at the Duke of York’s Theatre. My favourite band. In front of that I’ve got Tristan from All Creatures Great and Small’s vet bag. Who controls the remote in your household? Very much me, but that’s because I’ve got three separate remotes – one for the telly, one for the Firestick, and one for the sound bar. My girlfriend is, like, “Can you just do it?” And by then, I’m choosing what we’re watching. What have you enjoyed recently? The Acolyte. It didn’t do very well in reviews, but I love anything Star Wars. You put on eight hours of paint drying in the Star Wars universe and I’d watch. If even paint drying is watchable, what are your TV turn-offs? There are things that I really don’t like. Bridgerton is one of the worst shows ever, but I would absolutely take a role on it, because then I could just choose whatever job I wanted. Have you ever auditioned for Star Wars? No, that’s my dream. If I got to wield a lightsaber on TV or film, I could die the next d…

Is the sitcom dead? Not Going Out's Lee Mack and TV comedy bosses weigh in
type: item
date: 2024-07-01T23:01:11.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
description: They're expensive, risky and tricky to write, but if you get them right, there's a big audience wanting a laugh.
encoded: With a season of classic sitcom repeats under way on BBC Two, you might find yourself wondering: what is the funniest British sitcom of all time? Well, the polls are… confusing. In 2004, the public voted for Only Fools and Horses. In 2015, Mrs Brown’s Boys was deemed the best of the 21st century. In 2019, Radio Times readers voted Fawlty Towers the greatest of all time. While in 2022, another poll’s top three was The Office, The Inbetweeners and Are You Being Served? But whatever the victor, such rankings always lead to anguished think-pieces about how the situation comedy is dead – that these days, we just don’t make them like we used to. In May, the BBC’s director of comedy Jon Petrie seemed to confirm this. Talking to producers, he cited last year’s Radio Times Screen Test survey showing that comedy increases viewers’ happiness levels. “Audiences are telling us they want a laugh to combat the gloom,” he said. And to serve that, he made a plea – “Send us fewer shows that are ‘an exploration’ of something and more that know where their funny bones are.” Does he think the sitcom is, if not dead, then in grave peril? “Mainstream sitcom is hard,” he explains when we catch up with him again. “It’s a lot of pressure to make ten million people laugh. It needs a consistent joke level, clear comic characters and big set-pieces but no convoluted plot – so much of the humour in a great sitcom comes from character. We feel that we’ve skewed too much into comedy drama recently. It’s time to push back.” Channel 4’s head of comedy Charlie Perkins agrees. She’s looking for “a long-running sitcom, an ensemble show with gangs of characters like Ghosts”. So if there’s so much demand from channel bosses, why aren’t we in a golden era of sitcoms? “There’s definitely a big audience,” says comedian Lee Mack – and he should know. His sitcom Not Going Out is the second longest-running in British TV history (after Last of the Summer Wine), and it’s been commissioned for a 14th season. “But…

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Not Going Out's Lee Mack and Sally Bretton reflect on 100 episodes
type: item
date: 2023-12-24T09:00:55.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Comedy
subject: TV
subject: Christmas
subject: Interview
description: The 100th special will air on Christmas Eve.
encoded: Remarkably, Not Going Out will be celebrating its 100th episode, and it's set to be a glorious affair. To celebrate the landmark achievement, the sitcom fronted by Lee Mack and Sally Bretton will air on Christmas Eve at 10pm. Speaking to Radio Times magazine, Mack and Bretton reflect on 100 episodes of the beloved sitcom. Lee Mack Not many sitcoms make it to 100 episodes. Can you remember how the show began? Lee Mack: I was doing a sketch show at the Fringe in Edinburgh with Catherine Tate and Dan Antopolski. There was a thought I had that wasn’t even a joke – me looking out of a window with a telescope, my wife walks in and I suddenly look up to the stars. In other words, what the hell was I looking at? At best mildly amusing, not a sketch but an idea, so I parked it. Then I had another and another and the sketch grew into a quarter of the show and then became a pilot. You had a couple of leading women before Sally Bretton joined the cast as Lucy — what made her your perfect foil? LM: Catherine was in the pilot, but she was so busy – we were shooting next to a school and all the kids in the playground were shouting, "Am I bothered?" Megan [Dodds] was great in series one, but she felt it wasn’t her thing. Studio-based sitcom isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Sally can deliver a gag. Plus, she’s got bucket-loads of likeability. Looking back over 100 episodes, what have been the highs and lows? LM: Bobby Ball [who played Lee’s dad] was both the high and the low. Bob passing away was a big low, but it was a big high when he turned up in the first place. He was one of my comedy heroes as a kid. He was just pure funny. My first performance was impersonating him to get laughs at a new school. Did you plan the 100th episode to be something special? Why do it at Christmas? LM: The fact that it’s arrived at Christmas is a coincidence. We wanted to celebrate the 100th with my 100-year-old aunt coming round on her birthday and having a nasty mishap. Then, when we realised it was Ch…

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63 behind-the-scenes facts you didn't know about Call the Midwife
type: item
date: 2019-12-25T19:00:29.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: From tales of Helen George’s dog Charlie, to the time the BBC drama shared a set with Star Wars, here are the biggest secrets of the show as the story reaches 1963
encoded: 1. It takes 120 days over a six-month period to film a complete series of Call the Midwife. Over that time, the show’s caterers serve around 30,000 meals to cast and crew. 2. The show always starts filming in April, so by the time it comes to the Christmas special — which usually features snow — it’s boiling hot outside. Laura Main and Stephen McGann (who play Shelagh and Patrick Turner) regularly appear on set in big coats with bathing costumes worn underneath. 3. When temperatures soar, Helen George, who plays Trixie, hires an ice cream van to serve the cast and crew frozen treats. Will Helen George’s Nurse Trixie Franklin return to Call the Midwife? Helen George takes break from Call the Midwife – to have her baby Here’s how Helen George disguised her baby bump in Call the Midwife 4. It takes several days to prepare the backdrop for winter scenes, with wooden frames, fabric, fake snow and plastic icicles hanging from lampposts. View oEmbed on the source website 5. Nonnatus House was named after St Raymond Nonnatus, who was born by caesarean section and is the patron saint of childbirth and pregnant women. Non natus is Latin for “not born”. 6. The nuns are based on sisters from the Anglican Community of St John the Divine. The order is still active, though the remaining sisters left the East End in 1976 and now work with the homeless in Birmingham. Before she died, Jennifer Worth, whose memoirs inspired the series, set up a trust for the order so they receive an income from the profits of the books and the show. 7 .Jennifer Worth’s books only provided one-and-a-half series worth of material. After series one, the team hired a researcher to interview people who’d written into the show with their own stories. Heidi Thomas (the series’ creator and writer) calls it oral testimony, and it has provided her with roughly half the stories for the drama. View oEmbed on the source website 8. Heidi was inspired to bring Call the Midwife to the screen after she suffered a seri…

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James Norton on McMafia, death threats and acting with his dad
type: item
date: 2019-03-12T11:47:34.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: “There’s something about the mafia that is quite compelling… with money and fast cars and yachts and beautiful women”
encoded: “Some people have asked me if I’m worried about getting death threats for exposing how the Russian mafia works,” James Norton says casually over dinner. “That would be nothing new. Playing Tommy Lee Royce, I’d get death threats buying milk in my local shop.” Happy Valley’s dangerous psychopath has been one of Britain’s favourite baddies of the past few years, so it’s exciting to imagine Norton, 32, suiting up to play Alex Godman – the British-raised son of Russian mafia exiles who is dragged into the criminal underworld. View oEmbed on the source website McMafia co-creator Hossein Amini: Modern-day gangsters don’t have blood on their hands, they’re corporate high-fliers Meet the cast of McMafia Where is McMafia filmed? Godman is the complicated hero of McMafia, the BBC’s big-budget crime drama that started on New Year’s Day, starring Norton and Juliet Rylance alongside a host of Russian, Israeli and Serbian actors playing mob bosses from their home territories. It’s based on journalist Misha Glenny’s 2008 book of that name – a forensic account of how the end of the Cold War produced a trans-national criminal class that effectively franchised out its cigarette, drugs and people smuggling businesses. That illegal trade may account for up to 15 per cent of the world’s GDP. (Hence the title – nothing to do with the Scots and all to do with the franchise model.) The TV drama, on the other hand, is a brooding international thriller that blends The Night Manager’s stylish globetrotting with The Sopranos’ take on family values. “We took the book as a backdrop,” explains the show’s co-creator, Hossein Amini, who was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for The Wings of a Dove and whose other credits include the films Drive and Snow White and the Huntsman. “For Alex Godman I mixed in a little of my background – I came to London as an Iranian just after the revolution – and a bit of Michael Corleone in The Godfather… the innocent trying to escape his family’s past.” Norto…

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McMafia star Juliet Rylance on playing a strong female role in a gangster drama
type: item
date: 2019-02-12T12:57:45.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: “I’m starting to feel comfortable in front of the camera... but it’s taken a long time”
encoded: “You don’t usually get good female parts in gangster scripts — or any scripts really,” says Juliet Rylance. “You’re vulnerable and weak, or sexualised, or you’ll be the strong one — but real women are all of those and more. Screenwriters need to wake up to that.” Rylance jumped at the chance to play McMafia's Rebecca Harper — Norton’s upstanding, campaigning girlfriend — as “she’s all of those things.” Meet the cast of McMafia McMafia co-creator Hossein Amini: Modern-day gangsters don’t have blood on their hands, they’re corporate high-fliers The 38-year-old certainly has a rich theatre CV, as befits the stepdaughter of one of Britain’s finest stage actors, Mark Rylance. She’s played many of Shakespeare’s heroines – including Juliet, Desdemona, Miranda and Rosalind, for which she won an American Obie award. She’s also notching up an impressive range of roles on US TV, from Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick to serial killer drama American Gothic. While keen to avoid comparisons with her stepdad, she concedes it was growing up in the Globe Theatre when Rylance was artistic director that steered her towards acting. “We’d go straight from school to the Globe, have dinner in the office, sleep in the attic and it really became home. But my parents were having trouble making ends meet so I was scared to say I wanted to be actor. I secretly auditioned for Rada and only told everyone once I’d got in.” View oEmbed on the source website She brings a stillness to Rebecca that many Rada-trained Brits struggle with on film. “I’m starting to feel comfortable in front of the camera,” she says, “but it’s taken a long time.” It may reflect the peace she’s finding after the shocking death of her sister Nataasha van Kampen, who suffered a suspected brain haemorrhage on a flight from New York when she was just 28, back in 2012. “I think how you deal with people not being here any more has a lot to do with the way they lived their life,” she says softly. “With my sister, she was so full of l…

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Call the Midwife star Jack Ashton on how the show transformed his life
type: item
date: 2019-02-04T12:57:43.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: When the BBC drama cast him as a vicar, it turned Ashton’s career around – and delivered him his partner and baby
encoded: SPOILERS! Do not read on unless you have seen series seven, episode seven Call the Midwife’s devoted fans have had their hearts tossed up and down throughout the show’s six-year history – but few storylines have had more dramatic highs and lows than that of newlyweds Tom and Barbara. They returned to Poplar more than halfway through this series, seemingly for good, only for Barbara to catch meningitis and die. It has been a time of highs and lows, too, for Jack Ashton, 35, who plays Call the Midwife’s vicar, Tom Hereward. In real life he couldn’t be happier, after his partner Helen George took a break from playing Nurse Trixie Franklin to give birth to their daughter last autumn. Wren Ivy had only just been born when Ashton filmed last week’s heartbreaking episode. Call the Midwife: Nurse Barbara actress Charlotte Ritchie discusses her heartbreaking storyline 63 behind the scenes facts you didn’t know about Call the Midwife “We did all Barbara’s deathbed scenes in the hospital two days after Wren was born and I hadn’t slept, so finding the delirium and the madness was quite easy,” he explains, noting that it’s been exactly a year since the Radio Times cover celebrating Tom and Barbara’s wedding. View oEmbed on the source website “Filming those scenes was emotional because we all love Charlotte [Ritchie, who plays Barbara]. We knew we were acting – but we also knew we were saying goodbye…” He pauses. “It’s emotional thinking about it now… I was lamenting the loss of someone I care about and I’d just had a baby, so I started sobbing… with snot and tears everywhere. The director asked if I could stop and cry for the next take, but I didn’t think I could stop crying at all – I definitely couldn’t stop and start again – so I said, ‘You might have to see what you can do with that take’.” After last Sunday’s episode, viewers were stunned – they’d been telling Ashton on Twitter how pleased they were that Ritchie was back. But even the cast hadn’t had a huge amount of time t…

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University Challenge stars Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull: 'I wish I'd invented that...'
type: item
date: 2018-09-17T13:20:44.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Documentaries
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Last year's University Challenge stars pick their favourite examples of British ingenuity
encoded: The first time Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull met was at a quiz. Naturally. The duo shot to fame on University Challenge last year, when both captained their respective Cambridge colleges to the final stages. But Cambridge University prepares its University Challenge teams with highbrow quiz nights, so the pair met and became friends at that quiz, long before the TV show went out. Since then they have become the darlings of social media, book publishers – and television producers in search of new ideas. They make their TV hosting debut this week in Monkman and Seagull’s Genius Guide to Britain, setting out on a road trip to hunt down the nation’s most remarkable inventions. Are you smart enough for this University Challenge quiz? Eric Monkman reveals the truth about his bellowing voice on University Challenge It was, for both, an education. “My interests are quite broad – I’ll watch University Challenge but I’ll also watch Love Island,” says Bobby Seagull, the East Ender from a London comprehensive who won a scholarship to Eton. “That’s what my family has always been like – but Eric is more focused and academic.” View oEmbed on the source website “A lot of the conversations that you see on camera we didn’t even know would make it into the show,” adds Eric Monkman, with his trademark insistent delivery and Canadian accent. “How you see us on screen is how we always are – sharing facts and the things we think about. Seeing an aqueduct in Wales, I was fascinated by the economics, Bobby more interested in the engineering – but we taught each other.” Such is the way with restless, enquiring minds. But RT couldn’t let this pair of brainboxes embark on the latest instalment in their unlikely rise to fame without quizzing them afresh. So, what works of genius do the pair wish they’d thought of? Eric Monkman's best inventions View oEmbed on the source website Gladstone’s library Britain’s only prime-ministerial library is in Hawarden, Wales. Gladstone had more than 30,000 bo…

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Meet the disabled man who dreamt of snowboarding again - and the inventor who made it possible
type: item
date: 2018-07-26T10:38:05.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Documentaries
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Graham Naylor, who suffered a life-changing accident, sought the help of BBC2's Inventing the Impossible: The Big Life Fix to help him get back on a board
encoded: The stakes are high in episode one of Inventing the Impossible: The Big Life Fix. “You realise there’s a proper, genuine, one hundred per cent risk of death in this?” engineer Ryan White says to product design engineer Yusuf Muhammad. Last year’s debut series, fronted by Simon Reeve, in which a team of inventors created solutions for people with apparently insurmountable problems, was intriguing and heart-warming – but rarely terrifying. In series two, they’re sending a brain-damaged man down a mountain on a snowboard. The man in question is 46-year-old Graham Naylor, an extreme-sports enthusiast who lost the use of his legs after being caught in an avalanche in 2012. He was buried so deep in snow that the oxygen to his brain was cut off, leading to ‘action myoclonus’, an injury to the part of the brain that controls motor functions, swallowing, speech and limb movement. View oEmbed on the source website Channel 4's documentary Sex Clinic: Artist in Residence is wise and life affirming What’s new on Netflix: the TV shows and films to watch now Sign up for the free RadioTimes.com newsletter “I remember it being very sunny, perfect conditions,” Naylor explains when I meet him and Muhammad at home in his London flat. “Then cracks appeared all over the mountain like crazy paving and a torrent of snow rushed down. It looked like waves rather than snow. I tried my best to keep the front end of my board up – after that, I don’t remember anything. No pain, just having the most crazy dreams. It took more than 30 minutes to find me. Then I woke up in a hospital bed, surrounded by machines.” He types his words into his smartphone, which then “speaks” his quotes in a slightly monotonous tone. Naylor now relies on his carer round-the-clock: “Roy has to chop up anything I eat and I have to smother everything in oil and sauces to help food slide down without choking, I look like a seal swallowing mackerel. Everything is a bit of a battle, but I try to stay positive and I still bel…

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The Crown season 2: Where was it filmed?
type: item
date: 2018-07-24T10:57:44.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Travel
description: South Africa had a starring role in the second series of the Netflix drama
encoded: Season one of Netflix royal drama The Crown was the TV equivalent of comfort food. The elegant palaces, ancient churches and dusty schoolrooms brought 1950s Britain to life for a global audience. But just like Queen Elizabeth, there’s only so much time the show can spend in Blighty, so for season two The Crown went out into the world. UPDATE: Read more about where The Crown was filmed in our latest location guide for 2020 Covering the years 1956 to 1963 – essentially the years that Anthony Eden and then Harold Macmillan were Prime Minister – season two’s storylines take in the Suez Crisis, Prince Philip on a rollicking six-month global flirtfest and the Queen’s state visit to Ghana. It’s a globetrotting extravaganza, but it was mainly shot in just one country: South Africa. “South Africa is a gift of a place because it can be so many different countries in one,” says the show’s production designer, Martin Childs. “We filmed a lot of Philip’s world tour there, except for Antarctica, which was a quarry near London. There was one moment when we were taken up the Keurbooms River really early in the morning and we were able to see the sun come up. It felt like we were going into the heart of darkness, like Apocalypse Now. I’ve never been anywhere that’s felt so alien.” Philip’s tour – in effect a brief exile amid rumours of an affair with a ballet dancer – sees him take the royal yacht Britannia through Bermuda, Tonga, up the Amazon, across Antarctica and to the Melbourne Olympics, where he’s honeytrapped by an attractive Australian journalist for a one-to-one interview. Cape Town doubled as Melbourne, while further up the coast the wide sands and crystal waters of the Western Cape’s Kogel Bay became a Tongan beach, where the crew of the yacht challenged locals to various sports. From there, Britannia sails to Bermuda – while the cast merely drove 40 miles to Hermanus, where 1920s fishing port New Harbour became the King’s Wharf dock, and the Arabella Hotel golf course a…

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The Staircase on Netflix: the history behind the original true crime TV hit
type: item
date: 2018-06-08T15:20:56.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Documentaries
subject: News
subject: TV
subject: Netflix
subject: On demand
description: Michael Peterson is at the centre of a 16-year murder mystery – and filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade has been there every step of the way
encoded: Were they pushed or did they fall? It’s a well-worn whodunnit formula, too corny for today’s drama writers – but when it happens in real life, you’ve got something truly gripping. In December 2001, businesswoman Kathleen Peterson was found dead at the foot of the stairs in her North Carolina home. Her husband, crime novelist Michael Peterson, insisted he’d been out by the pool and walked in to find her there. The police had other ideas and arrested him – which would have been the last the world outside North Carolina would have heard of the case if it hadn’t been for French documentary film-maker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, who was so intrigued by certain inconsistencies that the death obsessed him for years. It also helped him invent the new style of real-life crime story-telling picked up on by the likes of Making a Murderer, Serial and The Jinx. Since the original trial back in 2003, de Lestrade has returned to the story again and again – documenting the twists and turns in the case, adding fresh episodes to the first ground-breaking series, which aired in 2004. “I’ve spent 16 years of my life on this story,” de Lestrade explains. “And while that isn’t full-time filming and editing across the years, there’s not really been a day when it hasn’t been in my head.” New on Netflix: the best movies and TV shows released every day Top Netflix TV series Stay up to date with the RadioTimes.com newsletter So as Netflix airs 13 episodes, which span the full 16-year investigation, it’s worth rewinding to see how this small-town crime became a global TV hit. The facts of the case are simple: in December 2001, Peterson called 911, saying he’d found his wife Kathleen collapsed at the bottom of the stairs; grim police photos from the crime scene show her terrible injuries. It didn’t take long for the local Durham police to decide this was a murder rather than an accident. As they moved in to arrest Peterson, de Lestrade arrived on the scene. He’d just made Murder on a Sunday Mornin…

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Eddie Braben put Morecambe and Wise in bed – and created the legend of Eric and Ernie
type: item
date: 2017-12-29T10:00:16.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Comedy
subject: News
subject: TV
description: He's the man behind the magic
encoded: Morecambe and Wise, Eric and Ernie. However you describe them they remain our greatest ever comedy duo. But the man who has penned an absorbing new drama about them would add a little bit of qualification to that description. “Most people think they wrote the shows themselves, or made it up as they went along. In fact, this was a triple act, not a double act,” says Neil Forsyth. “It was Eddie Braben who made them famous – and who paid the price.” Forsyth, who read Braben’s autobiography last Christmas, says, “I was struck by the conflict between the life-affirming comedy he wrote and the tortuous writing process he put himself through on a daily basis to create it,” he explains. The result is Eric, Ernie and Me, a biopic about Braben who’s played by Stephen Tompkinson, with Eric played by Mark Bonnar and Ernie by Neil Maskell. It shows how, after national service in the RAF, Braben worked on a fruit and veg stall in St John’s market, Liverpool, writing jokes in his spare time and sending them to local comedians like Ken Dodd. He ended up writing for Dodd for 12 years before Bill Cotton, BBC head of light entertainment, invited him to meet Morecambe and Wise. They were looking for new writers; Cotton wanted a new hit comedy. The seminal Morecambe and Wise Show was the result. Meet the Cast of Eric, Ernie and Me What time is Eric, Ernie and Me on TV this Christmas? What’s inside the Radio Times Christmas double issue 2017? The key scene in the drama is an almost literal version of that first meeting in 1969. Having professed himself not a fan, Braben watched the childhood friends riff and joke, finishing each other’s stories and take warm swipes at each other. “Boys,” Tompkinson’s Braben observes, “why isn’t this the act?” “It was an epiphany,” Forsyth explains. “Eddie saw the humanity and their real-life warmth and innate understanding. That shorthand wasn’t being portrayed in their act – which was still very music-hall. They had lots of ticks and tricks that worked …

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Feud star Susan Sarandon: "Actors are disposable. Women are even more disposable"
type: item
date: 2017-12-16T08:00:11.000Z
creator: Stephen Armstrong
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
subject: Christmas
description: The Feud star talks Bette Davis, battles at work and being a woman in Hollywood
encoded: What’s the view from your sofa? A big plasma screen TV? Not at all. The view from my sofa is another sofa. I don’t really watch much TV, or at least, not on an actual TV. I just watch on my iPad unless I’m in a hotel, and then every night is some kind of breakthrough where I find something I never knew existed. What viewing breakthroughs have hotels given you recently? The Handmaid’s Tale – it reminded me a tiny bit of Thelma & Louise, which I think would struggle to get made for the cinema today. My kids also keep me abreast. What have they recommended? The new season of Mr Robot – I’ve just been finishing that – and I’m a big fan of Nathan for You, which is a very interesting comedy. It’s by Nathan Fielder, who’s a genius. I went on Conan [a US talk show hosted by Conan O’Brien] to sit on the couch with him while he was being interviewed. What time is Feud: Bette and Joan on TV? Susan Sarandon is a godsend in our youth-obsessed society BBC2 swoops for Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon series about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford Any films you’ve loved recently? The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s film. It was everything in the cinema that can’t be done anywhere else. I guess it’s kind of warped, but I felt it was a very romantic, surreal fantasy. You’re playing Bette Davis in Feud: Bette and Joan. What do you have in common? We’re both Yankees, value our gay following and we’ve got foul mouths. View oEmbed on the source website What was it like to play her? I met her. She actually approached me when I was really just a kid. Her daughter’s book came out and she wanted to do a film, but there wasn’t any script. I saw her interviews at festivals and on TV and that’s when I got more of a sense of the person. She was a strong performer; she did uglify herself and she didn’t mind seeming unsympathetic, which was unusual for that time. Feud is about power – Joan and Bette fighting for power, as well as Hollywood’s power over them. Have things changed? Actors are dispos…

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