Despite her Bafta, the actor says that every role she gets is still like winning the lottery
Add Black Ops to your watchlist What’s the view from your sofa? I used to have a small TV because I was against letting it dominate the room, but my partner is a massive film geek and viewing is very important to him. So, I doubled the size of my TV, but it doesn’t dominate the room. We have a corner suite that we watch it from. What have you been watching on your room-appropriate TV recently? I’m drawn to documentaries, and I’ve just watched Sean Combs: the Reckoning on Netflix. I’m also enjoying The Beast in Me. Who controls the remote at home? We share it. If I walk into the room and my partner is watching a programme, he will stop to talk to me. He doesn’t just continue watching, which is incredible, isn’t it? You recently starred as a crime boss in the drama Blue Lights, and you play the head of MI6 in the comedy Black Ops. Which genre do you prefer? I like immersing myself in characters and I’m fascinated by good writing. As long as my mind is engaged, I’m a happy bunny. I just try to make things interesting and bring some humanity to even the baddies I play – they were kids once, too. But being around people who do a lot of comedy is always lovely. Black Ops also makes pertinent points about racism and corruption. Do you think comedy is an effective medium to explore difficult topics? Yes, and I think it gets overlooked. Even though I’m not employed in a lot of comedic roles, I’m still aware of the need. I revere comedy and I don’t think it gets the respect it deserves, budget-wise, as well as the kudos. Your breakout role was as a sex worker, Simone, in the 1986 film Mona Lisa, and you played another one in the 1990s TV drama Band of Gold. What’s your opinion on how TV series and films represent that occupation? In the area of sex workers, there are still loads of stories to be told from a realistic point of view. When Band of Gold came out, hearing and seeing these women at home, it was revolutionary. I let go of my prejudices of sex workers on that job, because I met them in person for research – the prejudices were there, but I thought, “I’ve got to drop them before I play this part.” I’ve heard that the film Anora [starring Mikey Madison as a sex worker from Brooklyn] is exploitative, not that it shouldn’t be, but the way it was done was exploitative. However, I do want to watch it. Were you offered a lot of similar parts after Band of Gold? Yes, so I veered away from them. Kay Mellor [the series creator] asked me and the other cast members if we wanted to do a fourth series, and because of my desire to do something different – and even though I didn’t have a lot of money back then – I said no. I thought, why not leave on a high, because I know things can be watered down. Is having variety as an actor important to you? I became an actor for variety, but I don’t make a judgement on other people if they’re happy in what they do. If you want to be in a situation for 20 years, the security and the feeling of family that brings is absolutely fantastic. When you finish a job, it’s like a death every time, so I can understand why people would want to avoid that. You won the Bafta for best supporting actress in 2022 for the Channel 4 drama Help. How did that feel? When you get a nomination, that’s an honour in itself. Every job I get is like winning the lottery. Help was a very small part, and the other people in my category had a lot more screen time, so I didn’t expect it. Sometimes you think, “I can stop acting now. I’ve done what I’ve needed, so if you want to retire, you can.” But when I look at it, it reminds me to be a good actor, to work hard and to still have aspirations.
Blue Lights star argues that there are still so many realistic stories to tell about sex workers
Despite her BAFTA, the actor says that every role she gets is still like winning the lottery.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. What’s the view from your sofa? I used to have a small TV because I was against letting it dominate the room, but my partner is a massive film geek and viewing is very important to him. So, I doubled the size of my TV, but it doesn’t dominate the room. We have a corner suite that we watch it from. What have you been watching on your room-appropriate TV recently? I’m drawn to documentaries, and I’ve just watched Sean Combs: the Reckoning on Netflix. I’m also enjoying The Beast in Me. Who controls the remote at home? We share it. If I walk into the room and my partner is watching a programme, he will stop to talk to me. He doesn’t just continue watching, which is incredible, isn’t it? You recently starred as a crime boss in the drama Blue Lights, and you play the head of MI6 in the comedy Black Ops. Which genre do you prefer? I like immersing myself in characters and I’m fascinated by good writing. As long as my mind is engaged, I’m a happy bunny. I just try to make things interesting and bring some humanity to even the baddies I play – they were kids once, too. But being around people who do a lot of comedy is always lovely. Black Ops also makes pertinent points about racism and corruption. Do you think comedy is an effective medium to explore difficult topics? Yes, and I think it gets overlooked. Even though I’m not employed in a lot of comedic roles, I’m still aware of the need. I revere comedy and I don’t think it gets the respect it deserves, budget-wise, as well as the kudos. Your breakout role was as a sex worker, Simone, in the 1986 film Mona Lisa, and you played another one in the 1990s TV drama Band of Gold. What’s your opinion on how TV series and films represent that occupation? In the area of sex workers, there are still loads of stories to be told from a realistic point of view. When Band of Gold came out, hearing and seeing these women at home, it was revolutionary. I let go of my prejudices of sex workers on that job, because I met them in person for research – the prejudices were there, but I thought, “I’ve got to drop them before I play this part.” I’ve heard that the film Anora [starring Mikey Madison as a sex worker from Brooklyn] is exploitative, not that it shouldn’t be, but the way it was done was exploitative. However, I do want to watch it. Were you offered a lot of similar parts after Band of Gold? Yes, so I veered away from them. Kay Mellor [the series creator] asked me and the other cast members if we wanted to do a fourth series, and because of my desire to do something different – and even though I didn’t have a lot of money back then – I said no. I thought, why not leave on a high, because I know things can be watered down. Add Radio Times as a Preferred Source on Google Keep up to date on what’s worth watching with your favourite entertainment news from Radio Times – see more of our exclusive news and interviews featured prominently in Top Stories when using Google. Is having variety as an actor important to you? I became an actor for variety, but I don’t make a judgement on other people if they’re happy in what they do. If you want to be in a situation for 20 years, the security and the feeling of family that brings is absolutely fantastic. When you finish a job, it’s like a death every time, so I can understand why people would want to avoid that. You won the BAFTA for best supporting actress in 2022 for the Channel 4 drama Help. How did that feel? When you get a nomination, that’s an honour in itself. Every job I get is like winning the lottery. Help was a very small part, and the other people in my category had a lot more screen time, so I didn’t expect it. Sometimes you think, “I can stop acting now. I’ve done what I’ve needed, so if you want to retire, you can.” But when I look at it, it reminds me to be a good actor, to work hard and to still have aspirations. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
The Inbetweeners' James Buckley reveals hopes for Jay in his 30s as a comeback is rumoured
The Inbetweeners actor James Buckley on festive fatherhood – and the happiest fellow he’s ever met.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Tell us a little bit about your character in Finding Father Christmas. I play the father of Chris, played by Lenny Rush. The mum’s no longer in the picture, and it’s got to a point where my character, who’s just called “Dad” in the script, feels that his son’s at an age where he should talk to him about Father Christmas. But it doesn’t go exactly as planned, and they end up on this Christmas adventure together. How was it working with Lenny Rush? As someone who was a child actor as well, did you offer him any advice? I don’t think he needs any advice from me; he’s a clever lad who knows what he’s doing. I’d say if Christmas was a person, it’d be Lenny – he’s the happiest fellow I’ve ever met in my life, and a really good laugh. Greg Davies is in the film, too. Did you have a mini Inbetweeners reunion on set? Greg shot all his stuff in one day, but I wasn’t there, so I missed him. That was a shame, because it would have been lovely to have a little catch-up with him. What’s the latest on the rumoured Inbetweeners comeback? I’ve not had any kind of offer – when I do, I’ll spend a long time thinking about it, but I’m not going to bother until I have some idea of what’s going on. Do you ever think about what Jay would be up to now, in his 30s? I’d like to think he’s become a bit more normal. I think all boys are weird when they get to those teenage years, then they seem to straighten out. What does your family Christmas look like? Our Christmases are great, but now our two boys are 14 and 12, I’m worried this Christmas might feel a bit grown-up. When you stop being a kid yourself the magic goes for a few years, then when you have kids of your own, it’s even more exciting. But I think those days are numbered, which is quite sad. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Finding Father Christmas is coming to Channel 4 this Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Corned beef hash, sheep’s testicle mousse and more – Grace Dent recalls the dishes that have defined her as she becomes the new co-host of Celebrity MasterChef
Add Celebrity MasterChef to your watchlist I’m over the moon about presenting the new series of Celebrity MasterChef. I was utterly surprised to be asked. For me, this was taking on the mantle of a show that I’ve watched religiously from the moment it began in 1990. In this country, we treat food very seriously. Yes, it’s an entertainment show but, at the heart of it, it’s about the joy of food, the science of food, the precision of food… I think when you ask people who work in television what it’s like, they always say the same things about how thrilled they are, but I genuinely am – I’ve lived and breathed this show for ever, and now I’m front and centre! I'm reminded of home by... corned beef hash Specifically corned beef hash made in a pressure cooker. I remember standing in our kitchen on Harold Street in Currock, Carlisle, in the north west of England in 1978 and my mother opening up the pressure cooker and spooning this corned beef hash with carrots, onions, peas and potatoes into bowls. If it wasn’t runny enough, we’d have it with ketchup. Now, when I’m with Anna Haugh [Dent is presenting this series with JohnTorode, but from next year Haugh will be her MasterChef co-host], every time someone uses a pressure cooker, I turn to her and say, “1970s childhood!” The first dish I learnt to cook was... asparagus risotto I’ve cooked since I was a child, but the first fancy thing I learnt to cook was an asparagus champagne risotto with aged Parmesan — which was very, very glamorous in 1998. Back then I was living in Camden, in a big, shared house with five incredibly ambitious women who all worked in the media. Whenever I had a date night, I would try to woo whoever was coming round for dinner with my risotto. When I cooked on the MasterChef Battleof the Critics Christmas special in 2023, I made this dish. I knew two things — firstly, that if you can master that risotto with depth and manage to get it out on the plate, people are always impressed. And secondly, I knew it was possible in that amount of time, because I’d done it with rollers in while trying to choose a dress. My debut as a restaurant critic was reviewing... curried goat and jerk chicken It was 1996 and I was working at Marie Claire. They allowed me to edit a page called The London Section and it was the first time I’d written a restaurant review. I ate curried goat and jerk chicken at Mango Room in Camden. At that time, I hadn’t actually eaten much Caribbean food. I’d lived in Carlisle, and then Scotland, so to come down to London was incredible. It was like I was suddenly living in technicolor. I loved it, but that’s when I realised how hard it was to be a critic. I really liked people like Michael Winner who did Winner’s Dinners in The Sunday Times. I thought he had a wonderful job, because all you do is go and eat dinner and then say what you think — but writing that review made me realise that you go into a place like Mango Room and it’s a small, independent restaurant and the staff’s heart and soul. The money you spend pays for people’s children’s food, so you have to take it seriously. I'll never forget the taste of... sheep's testicle mousse How did it taste? Exactly as it sounds. The restaurant world celebrates nose-to-tail eating, and I often have to eat things I don’t like — they want me to eat part of the spleen or the duodenum canal and it’s, “Isn’t this delicious, it’s part of the bowel?” It happens all the time, so I spend my life faintly smiling at valves that have been stewed in wine. Part of my job is to be adventurous, but I do spend a lot of my time thinking, “Are we being serious here?” The bit I will never be OK with is the amount of money that needs to be spent in some restaurants. When I pay £650 for two people, there will always be a part of me that thinks, “I could have given that money to [youth club charity] the Rock Youth Project in Currock.” My MasterChef highlight is... saucy steak with potatoes and buttery vegetables I didn’t have time for emotion during filming — I was too busy presenting to think about home or my family or anything else. Then one of the celebrities brought up this venison dish that was autumnal, and I just cried. But all of them were amazing — they all brought their personalities. I remember one celebrity coming on and I don’t think she’d really cooked that much until she arrived. She completely lacked confidence in herself. Everything she did cook was mega-healthy, I don’t think she ever allowed herself butter and sugar. But we got her cooking incredible steak and potatoes with sauces and buttery vegetables. From that moment, you could see her just come to life.
I’m the new MasterChef judge and I was utterly surprised to be asked to take over
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. I'm over the moon about presenting the new series of Celebrity MasterChef. I was utterly surprised to be asked. For me, this was taking on the mantle of a show that I've watched religiously from the moment it began in 1990. In this country, we treat food very seriously. Yes, it's an entertainment show but, at the heart of it, it's about the joy of food, the science of food, the precision of food… I think when you ask people who work in television what it's like, they always say the same things about how thrilled they are, but I genuinely am – I've lived and breathed this show for ever, and now I’m front and centre! I'm reminded of home by… corned beef hash Specifically corned beef hash made in a pressure cooker. I remember standing in our kitchen on Harold Street in Currock, Carlisle, in the north west of England in 1978 and my mother opening up the pressure cooker and spooning this corned beef hash with carrots, onions, peas and potatoes into bowls. If it wasn’t runny enough, we’d have it with ketchup. Now, when I'm with Anna Haugh [Dent is presenting this series with JohnTorode, but from next year Haugh will be her MasterChef co-host], every time someone uses a pressure cooker, I turn to her and say, "1970s childhood"! The first dish I learnt to cook was… asparagus risotto I've cooked since I was a child, but the first fancy thing I learnt to cook was an asparagus champagne risotto with aged Parmesan — which was very, very glamorous in 1998. Back then I was living in Camden, in a big, shared house with five incredibly ambitious women who all worked in the media. Whenever I had a date night, I would try to woo whoever was coming round for dinner with my risotto. When I cooked on the MasterChef Battle of the Critics Christmas special in 2023, I made this dish. I knew two things – firstly, that if you can master that risotto with depth and manage to get it out on the plate, people are always impressed. And secondly, I knew it was possible in that amount of time, because I’d done it with rollers in while trying to choose a dress. My debut as a restaurant critic was reviewing… curried goat and jerk chicken It was 1996 and I was working at Marie Claire. They allowed me to edit a page called The London Section and it was the first time I’d written a restaurant review. I ate curried goat and jerk chicken at Mango Room in Camden. At that time, I hadn’t actually eaten much Caribbean food. I’d lived in Carlisle, and then Scotland, so to come down to London was incredible. It was like I was suddenly living in technicolor. I loved it, but that’s when I realised how hard it was to be a critic. I really liked people like Michael Winner who did Winner’s Dinners in The Sunday Times. I thought he had a wonderful job, because all you do is go and eat dinner and then say what you think — but writing that review made me realise that you go into a place like Mango Room and it’s a small, independent restaurant and the staff’s heart and soul. The money you spend pays for people’s children’s food, so you have to take it seriously. I’ll never forget the taste of… sheep's testicle mousse How did it taste? Exactly as it sounds. The restaurant world celebrates nose-to-tail eating, and I often have to eat things I don’t like — they want me to eat part of the spleen or the duodenum canal and it’s, "Isn’t this delicious, it’s part of the bowel?" It happens all the time, so I spend my life faintly smiling at valves that have been stewed in wine. Part of my job is to be adventurous, but I do spend a lot of my time thinking, "Are we being serious here?" The bit I will never be OK with is the amount of money that needs to be spent in some restaurants. When I pay £650 for two people, there will always be a part of me that thinks, "I could have given that money to [youth club charity] the Rock Youth Project in Currock." My MasterChef highlight is… Saucy steak with potatoes and buttery vegetables I didn’t have time for emotion during filming – I was too busy presenting to think about home or my family or anything else. Then one of the celebrities brought up this venison dish that was autumnal, and I just cried. But all of them were amazing — they all brought their personalities. I remember one celebrity coming on and I don’t think she’d really cooked that much until she arrived. She completely lacked confidence in herself. Everything she did cook was mega-healthy, I don’t think she ever allowed herself butter and sugar. But we got her cooking incredible steak and potatoes with sauces and buttery vegetables. From that moment, you could see her just come to life. As told to Steve O’Brien. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Celebrity MasterChef will air on Monday 17th November at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer. Add Celebrity MasterChef to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Could AI breathe new life into vintage Doctor Who?
AI has been used as a force for good and evil in the show - but what about its real-life use?
Doctor Who has been exploring the ideas behind artificial intelligence almost from the moment it began. From WOTAN to K9 to the Cyberium to the TARDIS herself, AI has been both a force for good and for bad in the show. But while Doctor Who has been talking about artificial intelligence for more than 60 years, it's only recently that we've begun to ask the question: what does its real-world possibilities offer the show itself? There are, of course, ethics issues with many of the opportunities AI provides – using the tech to generate first-draft scripts, deepfaking long-dead actors, etc – but one area which may well benefit, without too much controversy, is the classic, i.e. pre-revival series. We've all seen those AI apps that can sharpen up a foggy old photograph or add a splash of colour to a vintage black and white image, but can that or similar tech be applied to classic television? Part of the queasiness that schedulers and streamers have about TV from the dim and distant is how poor the picture quality is compared to the needle-sharp HD and 4K programmes we've become accustomed to. Most TV of the 1950s and '60s – in the UK anyway – was recorded on 405-line cameras, later upgrading through the late '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and much of the '00s, to 625-line (or 576i) – that's far less visual information than the 1080p of High Definition or 4320p (4k) of Ultra HD, hence the much blearier, fuzzier picture. Older shows made on film, such as Star Trek or The Avengers, don't have this problem, as celluloid can be upscaled much easier. But can AI offer a way of extending the shelf life of these pre-HD programmes? Peter Crocker is a member of the Doctor Who Restoration Team, and is in charge of sprucing up those older episodes for Blu-ray release. Speaking to Radio Times in 2023, he told us that he already used AI "appropriately and sparingly" but cautioned that the technology isn't currently there to upscale, say, an old William Hartnell episode into eye-wowing UHD. "At present, the benefits for any vintage TV made on old, non-digital equipment are relatively minor," he told RadioTimes.com. "All of the programs for upscaling images have been developed primarily for the movie industry. The vast majority of films recently have been shot or post-produced at 2K resolution and for cinemas, upscaled to 4K. "That process is very good because the source is typically clean and 'digital'. Old TV is inherently noisy and smeary, with lots of artefacts. The AI programs just don't know what to do when pixels are present that might be picture detail but are actually just noise in the image." Part of the problem, Crocker said, is that the jump from a 405-line picture to even standard definition, let alone HD and 4K, is just too big. "Going from 405-line to SD is a 250% increase in pixel number and SD to HD is 400%, HD to 4K is 400%, and so on," he said. "Another factor is the range of brightness and colour that can be displayed. One reason modern productions look so much better is the high dynamic range that just isn't there in recordings from the first few decades of TV. In future, AI might be able to guess what detail might be present hidden in the bright whites or dark shadows that are currently just white or black. "We have to be realistic, though, and for old TV like Doctor Who or Dad's Army, the aim should be to make the programmes look acceptable on modern huge flat TV screens which would be horribly unforgiving if fed raw, unrestored recordings." Without any kind of a slick-up, there's a danger that older television will become hard to find, the preserve of cultural scholars and cult TV devotees only. But Crocker believes that the technology will one day be there to digitally recreate vintage TV episodes. "My Tomorrow's World prediction is that eventually image and data processing will be fast enough for software to assess a TV programme, identify the elements within the pictures – people, faces, costumes, sets, props, lighting, etc – and create a full 3D library of those elements which can be replaced with HD versions generated piecemeal from other matching details and textures," he explained. "High quality photos of the sets and actors if they exist could help. The movements will be tracked and reproduced and the elements will be mapped back to produce what is effectively a photo-real, high-resolution computer animation based on the original production. "That technology is there now, in high-budget movies for quite limited use. I think in another 10 years it might be feasible for short, easy clips, but really it'll be 20-30 years before it would be achievable to an acceptable standard on the sort of budgets – and material – I work on." So while we shouldn't necessarily expect Evil of the Daleks to look as piercingly clear as Eve of the Daleks anytime soon, there are, and will be, AI-assisted ways of smartening up those older stories. "It could certainly give old shows a bit of spit and polish, but it's not a magic wand." Doctor Who is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. Add Doctor Who to your watchlist on the <a id="OWA8b702c45-bee9-94e4-f018-57518e78041b" class="x_OWAAutoLink" title="https://www.radiotimes.com/download-the-app/?af_xp=custom&pid=website&c=editorial_content&is_retargeting=true&af_reengagement_window=30d" href="https://www.radiotimes.com/download-the-app/?af_xp=custom&pid=website&c=editorial_content&is_retargeting=true&af_reengagement_window=30d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-outlook-id="449c28d9-909e-4aab-b6b8-153454f55d5e" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="0">Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Dive into our Doctor Who story guide: reviews of every episode since 1963, plus cast & crew listings, production trivia, and exclusive material from the Radio Times archive. Check out more of our Sci-fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
The Line of Duty star loves nothing more than a good crime drama — and clandestine curry club dates…
Add Ridley to your watchlist Famous for his role as the steely Superintendent Ted Hastings, head of AC-12 in BBC1’s Line of Duty, Adrian Dunbar took a demotion of sorts to play a retired Detective Inspector in the ITV1 crime drama Ridley. But the series, which returns this week, gave the actor his first ever lead as the grief-stricken Alex Ridley, who found himself returning to the force as a consultant. “Police procedurals give you a chance to develop character and backstory,” the 67-year-old actor tells us. “They’re the bread and butter of TV.” It’s been three years since the last series of Ridley. What can we expect from this second run? With a series like this, it kind of finds its feet the second time round, it starts to know more about what it is. Alex was two years on from his wife and child dying in the first series, and now it’s another two years on. We don’t lean so heavily into him being isolated and grieving – I think it’s important for the audience to see that people can move on from grief. What makes Ridley different, do you think, from your average crime drama? It sets up its own niche. It’s not cosy crime by any means, and yet it’s occupying that Sunday-night slot where you can’t be too visceral. So you have the serious police procedural that we devote time and thought to, and then there’s the family aspect. I was insistent that we needed somewhere else to go, and that’s the jazz club and the musical element. As well as being an actor, you’re also a singer. So, was it your idea to have Ridley sing in each episode? Yes, I was thinking back to cop shows that I enjoyed when I was growing up, like The Rockford Files, Columbo and Kojak where they all had these quirks that made you really interested in the central character and the mise-en-scène. This is your first show as a lead. Is there more pressure being first on the call sheet, as opposed to being part of an ensemble, as Line of Duty? There is extra pressure, yes. With Ridley, it’s no secret that I’m working on the scripts myself as they come in, and I do a lot of work tidying up and suggesting things. There is pressure in holding something together and there’s physical pressure too, because you’re in nearly every scene. So it’s physically demanding as well as creatively. Talking of Line of Duty, are you still in regular contact with your co-stars, Martin Compston and Vicky McClure? Is the WhatsApp group still active? Myself, Martin and Vicky talk all the time, but Jed [Mercurio, the series creator], not so much, because he’s working on a project in the US at the minute. So yeah, we’re very tight, and we’ll meet up and have a curry, then the internet goes mad if we’re all seen together. What’s the latest news on a seventh series of Line of Duty? There were rumours last year that an official announcement was imminent, but we’ve heard nothing since… There were signs that we were going to be doing something next year. We’re all waiting for the BBC to say, “Yeah, it’s happening”. An official confirmation is what we’re waiting on, but all the signs are very good. Jed hasn’t given us any updates – he’s beavering away, I suspect. He very rarely tells us anything – we’re going to have to get hold of him and find out what’s going on! You guys must be as excited about reading the scripts as we are about watching it? We’re desperately keen to hear what the story is. God knows what’s going to happen to any of us. If this is to be the last of it, then you suspect that something dramatic is coming. One of the shocking things that I realised after series two or three was the writer can just do away with you. Vicky usually gets the scripts first, and she’s a very quick reader, so she will start sending us cryptic messages that’ll really unnerve me and Martin. Like, “Oh my God, episode three – what happens to you!” You guys have talked about wanting to do a project together away from Line of Duty. Do you have anything planned? Sadly, nobody’s ever approached us. Maybe we should try and think of something ourselves. We could do a travel show, if we could manage to keep Martin in check… What’s it like to find major success relatively late in your acting career? It must be satisfying to be able to have your pick of jobs now? Even when the work wasn’t coming in, I’ve always turned my hand to something else – writing, directing, producing. But the landscape has changed, you’re absolutely right. For someone like me who devoured British television from the 1960s and 70s, to then go and create this iconic character with the help of my good friend Jed, that’s the top of the tree for me. It provided me with the stuff I needed to go and do a series on my own. If you’re a vintage TV aficianado, are there any series from the past you would have loved to have been a part of? The Sweeney – that was great, wasn’t it? I love all that London-based gangster stuff. Those shows were the ones you really wanted to be in because you just had the feeling that everybody was having such a good time!
Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar offers another season 7 update - and argues Ridley isn’t a “cosy crime” drama
The Line of Duty star loves nothing more than a good crime drama – and clandestine curry club dates…
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Famous for his role as the steely Superintendent Ted Hastings, head of AC-12 in BBC1’s Line of Duty, Adrian Dunbar took a demotion of sorts to play a retired Detective Inspector in the ITV1 crime drama Ridley. But the series, which returns this week, gave the actor his first ever lead as the grief-stricken Alex Ridley, who found himself returning to the force as a consultant. “Police procedurals give you a chance to develop character and backstory,” the 67-year-old actor tells us. “They’re the bread and butter of TV.” It’s been three years since the last series of Ridley. What can we expect from this second run? With a series like this, it kind of finds its feet the second time round, it starts to know more about what it is. Alex was two years on from his wife and child dying in the first series, and now it’s another two years on. We don’t lean so heavily into him being isolated and grieving – I think it’s important for the audience to see that people can move on from grief. What makes Ridley different, do you think, from your average crime drama? It sets up its own niche. It’s not cosy crime by any means, and yet it’s occupying that Sunday-night slot where you can’t be too visceral. So you have the serious police procedural that we devote time and thought to, and then there’s the family aspect. I was insistent that we needed somewhere else to go, and that’s the jazz club and the musical element. As well as being an actor, you’re also a singer. So, was it your idea to have Ridley sing in each episode? Yes, I was thinking back to cop shows that I enjoyed when I was growing up, like The Rockford Files, Columbo and Kojak where they all had these quirks that made you really interested in the central character and the mise-en-scène. This is your first show as a lead. Is there more pressure being first on the call sheet, as opposed to being part of an ensemble, as Line of Duty? There is extra pressure, yes. With Ridley, it’s no secret that I’m working on the scripts myself as they come in, and I do a lot of work tidying up and suggesting things. There is pressure in holding something together and there’s physical pressure too, because you’re in nearly every scene. So it’s physically demanding as well as creatively. Talking of Line of Duty, are you still in regular contact with your co-stars, Martin Compston and Vicky McClure? Is the WhatsApp group still active? Myself, Martin and Vicky talk all the time, but Jed [Mercurio, the series creator], not so much, because he’s working on a project in the US at the minute. So yeah, we’re very tight, and we’ll meet up and have a curry, then the internet goes mad if we’re all seen together. What’s the latest news on a seventh series of Line of Duty? There were rumours last year that an official announcement was imminent, but we’ve heard nothing since… There were signs that we were going to be doing something next year. We’re all waiting for the BBC to say, “Yeah, it’s happening”. An official confirmation is what we’re waiting on, but all the signs are very good. Jed hasn’t given us any updates – he’s beavering away, I suspect. He very rarely tells us anything – we’re going to have to get hold of him and find out what’s going on! You guys must be as excited about reading the scripts as we are about watching it? We’re desperately keen to hear what the story is. God knows what’s going to happen to any of us. If this is to be the last of it, then you suspect that something dramatic is coming. One of the shocking things that I realised after series two or three was the writer can just do away with you. Vicky usually gets the scripts first, and she’s a very quick reader, so she will start sending us cryptic messages that’ll really unnerve me and Martin. Like, “Oh my God, episode three – what happens to you!” You guys have talked about wanting to do a project together away from Line of Duty. Do you have anything planned? Sadly, nobody’s ever approached us. Maybe we should try and think of something ourselves. We could do a travel show, if we could manage to keep Martin in check… What’s it like to find major success relatively late in your acting career? It must be satisfying to be able to have your pick of jobs now? Even when the work wasn’t coming in, I’ve always turned my hand to something else – writing, directing, producing. But the landscape has changed, you’re absolutely right. For someone like me who devoured British television from the 1960s and 70s, to then go and create this iconic character with the help of my good friend Jed, that’s the top of the tree for me. It provided me with the stuff I needed to go and do a series on my own. If you’re a vintage TV aficianado, are there any series from the past you would have loved to have been a part of? The Sweeney – that was great, wasn’t it? I love all that London-based gangster stuff. Those shows were the ones you really wanted to be in because you just had the feeling that everybody was having such a good time! The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Ridley season 2 premieres on Sunday 10th August at 8pm on ITV1 and ITVX. Add Ridley to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
'I can't hide beneath my top hat this time'
Tom Hughes is stepping into the modern day in his new drama, but he won’t be leaving behind the frock coats for ever…
Add Malpractice to your watchlist Over the years, viewers have become used to seeing Tom Hughes decked out in frock coats, Balmoral boots and periwigs. From Victoria, in which he starred as Prince Albert, to The English, to Franklin and Those about to Die, he has become the go-to actor for all things period – which is why, he says, his latest role in ITV medical drama Malpractice provides a welcome change of scene. “It’s very refreshing,” says the actor who recently turned 40. “With it being a present-day thing, there’s no veneer there – you can’t hide beneath a top hat. Me and [my character] James are incredibly different people, but there’s a rhythm that’s not radically far from mine.” In 2023, the first series of Malpractice (created by writer and former NHS doctor Grace Ofori-Attah) was gripping, edge-of-your-seat telly, becoming ITV1’s most-watched new drama debut that year. Imagine Holby City meets Line of Duty, with a doctor accused of wrongdoing coming under investigation and the truth about their actions left ambiguous until the end. In series one it was Niamh Algar’s Dr Lucinda Edwards in the frame, but this time its Hughes’s psychiatric registrar Dr James Ford who is accused of negligence, with medical investigators Dr Norma Callahan and Dr George Adjei (played by Helen Behan and Jordan Kouamé) returning to put him under the microscope. Exactly what they find is still a mystery. “It’s the kind of show where, broadly speaking, you don’t want to give too much away,” Hughes says, warily. “You just hope that people go along on the rollercoaster, cat-and-mouse ride that it is.” What he does share is that the series takes time to fully unmask Ford and his – let’s say – complicated private life. On the face of it, he’s a good person who, in the opening episode, possibly does a bad thing. But, like Hughes, there are many more sides to the character. “There are no archetypes in this show,” he says. “All the characters feel very relatable and tangible because they’re so multifaceted. There are a million layers to James. I knew Grace’s writing was fantastic, but then you see the twists and turns, things that I didn’t see coming and I just thought, ‘This is it, I’m in – where do I sign?’” Malpractice could be a game-changer for Hughes. Though he headlined alongside his former girlfriend Jenna Coleman in three series of Victoria, he says he’s rarely recognised either for that role, or indeed his more recent turns. Maybe it’s because, when viewers see Hughes gussied up as Prince Albert, or Titus Flavianus in Those about to Die, or poet Robert Graves in The Laureate, they don’t expect to see him shopping in Tesco? “I like that, though,” he says, “because it means you can just crack on with your day. But, you know, I don’t think about any of that stuff. Maybe that’s a bit naive, because it’s an industry where you’re supposed to go on the telly when you’re putting a film out, or whatever. I understand that, but it’s just not my focus.” While some actors talk up their dreams of anonymity while privately craving the spotlight, Hughes seems to mean it. He’s not on social media – no X, Instagram or Facebook accounts (“It’s not for me”). He swerves personal questions – including those about his one-time status as a TV heart-throb – and, while friendly enough, it’s clear he’s not entirely comfortable talking about himself in interviews. There’s an argument that he might have found a more comfortable fit in another creative profession – music, which he suggests is his real passion. “I know this is shocking, but I’m not the biggest TV watcher,” he admits. “I didn’t really grow up watching a ton of films and TV. I absolutely love my job, but when I’m not doing it, I lean more into music. That’s the thing that allows me to step off the world a bit.” Though he has managed to combine his day job and his paramount passion in one of his films, playing the Blockheads’ Chaz Jankel in 2010’s Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, there’s one part he would have loved to have tried out for. At the time of our interview, the cast for Sam Mendes’s four separate Beatles movies was being announced, with Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Barry Keoghan and Joseph Quinn set to play the celebrated quartet. Hughes, who grew up in and around Liverpool in the 90s, says it would have been his dream gig. “I’m definitely too old now,” he winces. “But if I was in my 20s, I would have been finding any door that I could knock on to try and be involved in it. I’m a massive Beatles fan.” Which of the Fab Four would he be auditioning to play? “If it’s about bringing to life very complex characters, it’s John Lennon every day of the week,” he grins. Hughes has also talked before about his love of Oasis – so will he be in the mosh pit for the Gallagher brothers’ hotly anticipated reunion this summer? “Actually, we were on the set of Malpractice, shooting this really important scene on the Saturday when the tickets were released,” he recalls of that internet-breaking day in August 2024. “It was unbelievable. It was like a little window into what was happening nationally. People on set were setting up lights with their phone in their hands, trying to get a ticket. It felt like it was the dominant thought in everyone’s minds, and quite rightly. I’m a big Oasis fan, so in terms of the tickets, I mean, it would be remiss not to, wouldn’t it?” Beyond the gig tickets, there are no future plans for Hughes after this role. He admits he finds it hard to think ahead. “I let other people do that for me,” he laughs. But could we at least say this is a new era for present-day Tom Hughes? Are the days of seeing him brood beneath a top hat truly behind us? Don’t be so sure. “I’ve never chosen a job because of the time it’s set in,” he stresses. “To me, it’s always about the script, the people that I’ll be fortunate to work with and, most importantly, character – that’s what guides me. And if that happens to be set in 1329 or 2025, that’s a secondary thought.”
Tom Hughes on Malpractice season 2 – and the twists he didn't see coming
The actor speaks to Radio Times magazine about his latest series – and the role he wishes he could have played.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Over the years, viewers have become used to seeing Tom Hughes decked out in frock coats, Balmoral boots and periwigs. From Victoria, in which he starred as Prince Albert, to The English, to Franklin and Those About to Die, he has become the go-to actor for all things period – which is why, he says, his latest role in ITV medical drama Malpractice provides a welcome change of scene. “It’s very refreshing,” says the actor who recently turned 40. “With it being a present-day thing, there’s no veneer there – you can’t hide beneath a top hat. Me and [my character] James are incredibly different people, but there’s a rhythm that’s not radically far from mine.” In 2023, the first series of Malpractice (created by writer and former NHS doctor Grace Ofori-Attah) was gripping, edge-of-your-seat telly, becoming ITV1’s most-watched new drama debut that year. Imagine Holby City meets Line of Duty, with a doctor accused of wrongdoing coming under investigation and the truth about their actions left ambiguous until the end. In series one it was Niamh Algar’s Dr Lucinda Edwards in the frame, but this time its Hughes’s psychiatric registrar Dr James Ford who is accused of negligence, with medical investigators Dr Norma Callahan and Dr George Adjei (played by Helen Behan and Jordan Kouamé) returning to put him under the microscope. Exactly what they find is still a mystery. “It’s the kind of show where, broadly speaking, you don’t want to give too much away,” Hughes says, warily. “You just hope that people go along on the rollercoaster, cat-and-mouse ride that it is.” What he does share is that the series takes time to fully unmask Ford and his – let’s say – complicated private life. On the face of it, he’s a good person who, in the opening episode, possibly does a bad thing. But, like Hughes, there are many more sides to the character. “There are no archetypes in this show,” he says. “All the characters feel very relatable and tangible because they’re so multifaceted. There are a million layers to James. I knew Grace’s writing was fantastic, but then you see the twists and turns, things that I didn’t see coming and I just thought, ‘This is it, I’m in – where do I sign?’” Malpractice could be a game-changer for Hughes. Though he headlined alongside his former girlfriend Jenna Coleman in three series of Victoria, he says he’s rarely recognised either for that role, or indeed his more recent turns. Maybe it’s because, when viewers see Hughes gussied up as Prince Albert, or Titus Flavianus in Those about to Die, or poet Robert Graves in The Laureate, they don’t expect to see him shopping in Tesco? “I like that, though,” he says, “because it means you can just crack on with your day. But, you know, I don’t think about any of that stuff. Maybe that’s a bit naive, because it’s an industry where you’re supposed to go on the telly when you’re putting a film out, or whatever. I understand that, but it’s just not my focus.” While some actors talk up their dreams of anonymity while privately craving the spotlight, Hughes seems to mean it. He’s not on social media – no X, Instagram or Facebook accounts (“It’s not for me”). He swerves personal questions – including those about his one-time status as a TV heart-throb – and, while friendly enough, it’s clear he’s not entirely comfortable talking about himself in interviews. There’s an argument that he might have found a more comfortable fit in another creative profession – music, which he suggests is his real passion. “I know this is shocking, but I’m not the biggest TV watcher,” he admits. “I didn’t really grow up watching a ton of films and TV. I absolutely love my job, but when I’m not doing it, I lean more into music. That’s the thing that allows me to step off the world a bit.” Though he has managed to combine his day job and his paramount passion in one of his films, playing the Blockheads’ Chaz Jankel in 2010’s Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, there’s one part he would have loved to have tried out for. At the time of our interview, the cast for Sam Mendes’s four separate Beatles movies was being announced, with Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Barry Keoghan and Joseph Quinn set to play the celebrated quartet. Hughes, who grew up in and around Liverpool in the 90s, says it would have been his dream gig. “I’m definitely too old now,” he winces. “But if I was in my 20s, I would have been finding any door that I could knock on to try and be involved in it. I’m a massive Beatles fan.” Which of the Fab Four would he be auditioning to play? “If it’s about bringing to life very complex characters, it’s John Lennon every day of the week,” he grins. Hughes has also talked before about his love of Oasis – so will he be in the mosh pit for the Gallagher brothers’ hotly anticipated reunion this summer? “Actually, we were on the set of Malpractice, shooting this really important scene on the Saturday when the tickets were released,” he recalls of that internet-breaking day in August 2024. “It was unbelievable. It was like a little window into what was happening nationally. People on set were setting up lights with their phone in their hands, trying to get a ticket. It felt like it was the dominant thought in everyone’s minds, and quite rightly. I’m a big Oasis fan, so in terms of the tickets, I mean, it would be remiss not to, wouldn’t it?” Beyond the gig tickets, there are no future plans for Hughes after this role. He admits he finds it hard to think ahead. “I let other people do that for me,” he laughs. But could we at least say this is a new era for present-day Tom Hughes? Are the days of seeing him brood beneath a top hat truly behind us? Don’t be so sure. “I’ve never chosen a job because of the time it’s set in,” he stresses. “To me, it’s always about the script, the people that I’ll be fortunate to work with and, most importantly, character – that’s what guides me. And if that happens to be set in 1329 or 2025, that’s a secondary thought.” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Malpractice returns 9pm on Sunday 4th May on ITV1 and ITVX. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Lucy Punch returns to play Amanda, the bitchy queen bee from Motherland in a sitcom spin-off – with Joanna Lumley as her even bitchier mum in tow
Add Amandaland to your watchlist When BBC1’s cult parenting sitcom Motherland aired its final episode at the end of 2022, it felt like a definite full stop on the story of middle-class mums in well-to-do west London. No one, it seems, not even Lucy Punch, who played the infuriatingly ritzy Amanda, expected to be back. But, while filming in the middle of Arkansas in America, the actor received a call out of the blue. “They asked if I’d be interested in a series based around Amanda,” 47-year-old London-born Punch recalls from her home in LA (which was, she says, mercifully untouched by the recent fires). “I mean, it was an instant yes!” The pitch for the series was that Amanda has been forced to move from Chiswick to the less Amanda-y environs of south Harlesden (around Wormwood Scrubs prison, to be precise), and has to navigate a new life, where she isn’t the alpha mum or success story that she was in W4. “Amanda was the obvious candidate,” co-writer Holly Walsh says of all the spin-off/sequel options available to them. “To see somebody who thinks they’ve made it in life fall is a fun story to write. South Harlesden is only about five miles away from Chiswick, but for Amanda that’s huge, as she’s so postcode-obsessed.” Walsh adds that another part of the appeal of telling more stories in the “Motherverse”, as she calls it, was to deal with the singular stresses of coping with teenage children, so the new series is set a few years later. In real life, Punch’s kids are just three and nine, so she still has those headaches to come. “Most of my friends have older children, and it seems like a minefield,” she grimaces. “Almost every episode of Amandaland covers some sort of teenage situation: boys or drinking or whatever… But then, Amanda’s sort of a teenager herself. Now that they’ve reached the teen years, it’s a teenager parenting other teenagers.” Talking to Radio Times on location for episode four at an old people’s home in Croydon, south London, Walsh explains it’s here that Amanda, having followed her mother Felicity, discovers her long-absent father, played by Shaun Scott. “She hasn’t seen him for ages because he abandoned them,” Dame Joanna Lumley, who plays Amanda’s narcissistic mum, says in a break from filming. “But he’s in a care home now and doesn’t remember things, so Felicity goes to meet him out of pity.” A series regular in Amandaland, Lumley’s character popped up in just two episodes of Motherland but she was a reliably scene-stealing presence, and someone whose casual cruelty to her own daughter made Amanda a much more sympathetic character. Punch couldn’t be happier she’s now working with Lumley on a full-time basis – after all, the two of them go way back. Lumley was friends with one of Punch’s best friends’ mums while she was growing up, and the two actors have actually played mother and daughter before, co-starring 21 years ago in the Anne Hathaway movie Ella Enchanted. “She’s been sprinkled through my life,” Punch says, though she’s keen to note that the real Lumley is about as far from waspish Felicity as she is from the social- climbing Amanda. “She’s an absolute dream, and just as charming and lovely as you hope she will be. I adore her.” For her part, Lumley was thrilled to be asked back. “There are a few different notes this series, but I wouldn’t say she’s wildly varied. Like a lot of those people, they’re quite fixed in their ways – you’re not going to suddenly get her shopping at Poundland. “Felicity’s just kind of a bitch, really,” she laughs, adding that the root of her character’s belittlement of Amanda is down to envy. “Quite a lot of women who were once pretty, when they’ve got a very pretty daughter, are jealous.” Punch hopes that this new series will help explain quite why Amanda is what she is: “You get to know more of where her bitchiness has come from. She’s basically been bullied all her life by her mother and people who have been bullied in their life often end up being the bully.” Aside from Amanda and Felicity, there’s one more face from Motherland carried over – Anne, played by Philippa Dunne, who has been Amanda-free for a year when she bumps into her former hero-figure at the school gates in south Harlesden and finds herself once more under Amanda’s spell. Despite her presence, “It felt very odd the first few days,” Punch admits about making the series without most of her old Motherland buddies Anna Maxwell Martin, Diane Morgan, Paul Ready and Tanya Moodie. “But my character was always a bit removed from them all. I still have Philippa and Joanna and it’s this whole new gang whose voices are distinct, specific and funny, and it clicked very quickly. I missed everyone else, but it just felt right.” The new gang consists of Amanda’s neighbour Mal, played by Samuel Anderson (Trollied and Doctor Who), hipster chef Della (Derry Girls’ Siobhán McSweeney) and her interior designer partner Fi (Line of Duty’s Rochenda Sandall). Though there’s no word yet on whether Amandaland will be going to a second series, Punch believes there’s much more scope, certainly to delve into the new side characters. “The show isn’t just about Amanda, it’s taking us into another world with a lot of other brilliant and interesting characters,” she says excitedly. “If it goes to another series, we’ll hopefully go more into their lives.” For the moment, though, Punch is relishing her most famous character taking centre stage. Having played Amanda for ten years now, she’s loving discovering new sides to her and says that, in an increasingly cynical age, it’s Amanda’s imperishable positivity that people respond to. “She’s very hopeful and quite energised, if somewhat delusional, about getting her life back,” Punch says. “She’s certainly not passive. She was kind of the villain in Motherland but the writers have found a way to make her much more relatable and warmer.” In fact, Punch, who moved to Los Angeles nearly 20 years ago, adds that she’s encountered lots of Amandas since taking on the role and having kids, so she won’t be short of insight should she get the opportunity to revisit her again in a second series. “In British schools there’s maybe one Amanda, but here…” she leans in and whispers, “…there are loads! At my son’s school there are übermoms and super-moms, I mean a lot of Amandas. I guess her sensibility is quite American, and she would aspire to all of that. I think she’d be in absolute heaven if she came out here!”
Amanda was "the obvious candidate" for a Motherland spin-off, says writer
Holly Walsh, Lucy Punch and Joanna Lumley give Radio Times a tour of Amandaland.
When BBC One's cult parenting sitcom Motherland aired its final episode at the end of 2022, it felt like a definite full stop on the story of middle-class mums in well-to-do west London. No one, it seems, not even Lucy Punch, who played the infuriatingly ritzy Amanda, expected to be back. But, while filming in the middle of Arkansas in America, the actor received a call out of the blue. "They asked if I’d be interested in a series based around Amanda," 47-year-old London-born Punch recalls from her home in LA (which was, she says, mercifully untouched by the recent fires). "I mean, it was an instant yes!" The pitch for the series was that Amanda has been forced to move from Chiswick to the less Amanda-y environs of south Harlesden (around Wormwood Scrubs prison, to be precise), and has to navigate a new life, where she isn’t the alpha mum or success story that she was in W4. "Amanda was the obvious candidate," co-writer Holly Walsh says of all the spin-off/sequel options available to them. "To see somebody who thinks they’ve made it in life fall is a fun story to write. South Harlesden is only about five miles away from Chiswick, but for Amanda that’s huge, as she’s so postcode-obsessed." Walsh adds that another part of the appeal of telling more stories in the 'Motherverse', as she calls it, was to deal with the singular stresses of coping with teenage children, so the new series is set a few years later. In real life, Punch's kids are just three and nine, so she still has those headaches to come. "Most of my friends have older children, and it seems like a minefield," she grimaces. "Almost every episode of Amandaland covers some sort of teenage situation: boys or drinking or whatever… But then, Amanda’s sort of a teenager herself. Now that they’ve reached the teen years, it’s a teenager parenting other teenagers." Talking to Radio Times on location for episode four at an old people's home in Croydon, south London, Walsh explains it's here that Amanda, having followed her mother Felicity, discovers her long-absent father, played by Shaun Scott. "She hasn’t seen him for ages because he abandoned them," Dame Joanna Lumley, who plays Amanda’s narcissistic mum, says in a break from filming. "But he’s in a care home now and doesn’t remember things, so Felicity goes to meet him out of pity." A series regular in Amandaland, Lumley’s character popped up in just two episodes of Motherland but she was a reliably scene-stealing presence, and someone whose casual cruelty to her own daughter made Amanda a much more sympathetic character. Punch couldn’t be happier she’s now working with Lumley on a full-time basis – after all, the two of them go way back. Lumley was friends with one of Punch’s best friends’ mums while she was growing up, and the two actors have actually played mother and daughter before, co-starring 21 years ago in the Anne Hathaway movie Ella Enchanted. "She’s been sprinkled through my life," Punch says, though she’s keen to note that the real Lumley is about as far from waspish Felicity as she is from the social- climbing Amanda. "She’s an absolute dream, and just as charming and lovely as you hope she will be. I adore her." For her part, Lumley was thrilled to be asked back. "There are a few different notes this series, but I wouldn’t say she’s wildly varied. Like a lot of those people, they’re quite fixed in their ways – you’re not going to suddenly get her shopping at Poundland. "Felicity’s just kind of a bitch, really," she laughs, adding that the root of her character’s belittlement of Amanda is down to envy. "Quite a lot of women who were once pretty, when they’ve got a very pretty daughter, are jealous." Punch hopes that this new series will help explain quite why Amanda is what she is: "You get to know more of where her bitchiness has come from. She’s basically been bullied all her life by her mother and people who have been bullied in their life often end up being the bully." Aside from Amanda and Felicity, there’s one more face from Motherland carried over – Anne, played by Philippa Dunne, who has been Amanda-free for a year when she bumps into her former hero-figure at the school gates in south Harlesden and finds herself once more under Amanda’s spell. Despite her presence, "It felt very odd the first few days," Punch admits about making the series without most of her old Motherland buddies Anna Maxwell Martin, Diane Morgan, Paul Ready and Tanya Moodie. "But my character was always a bit removed from them all. I still have Philippa and Joanna and it’s this whole new gang whose voices are distinct, specific and funny, and it clicked very quickly. I missed everyone else, but it just felt right." The new gang consists of Amanda’s neighbour Mal, played by Samuel Anderson (Trollied and Doctor Who), hipster chef Della (Derry Girls’ Siobhán McSweeney) and her interior designer partner Fi (Line of Duty’s Rochenda Sandall). Though there’s no word yet on whether Amandaland will be going to a second series, Punch believes there’s much more scope, certainly to delve into the new side characters. "The show isn’t just about Amanda, it’s taking us into another world with a lot of other brilliant and interesting characters," she says excitedly. "If it goes to another series, we’ll hopefully go more into their lives." For the moment, though, Punch is relishing her most famous character taking centre stage. Having played Amanda for ten years now, she’s loving discovering new sides to her and says that, in an increasingly cynical age, it’s Amanda’s imperishable positivity that people respond to. "She’s very hopeful and quite energised, if somewhat delusional, about getting her life back," Punch says. "She’s certainly not passive. She was kind of the villain in Motherland but the writers have found a way to make her much more relatable and warmer." In fact, Punch, who moved to Los Angeles nearly 20 years ago, adds that she’s encountered lots of Amandas since taking on the role and having kids, so she won’t be short of insight should she get the opportunity to revisit her again in a second series. "In British schools there’s maybe one Amanda, but here…" she leans in and whispers, "…there are loads! At my son’s school there are übermoms and super-moms, I mean a lot of Amandas. I guess her sensibility is quite American, and she would aspire to all of that. I think she’d be in absolute heaven if she came out here!" The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Amandaland premieres on BBC One and iPlayer on Wednesday 5th February 2025. Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
After winning in 2019, Scottish chef Lorna McNee takes her seat on the Great British Menu judging panel
Add Great British Menu to your watchlist While it’s become routine over the years for past winners of BBC2’s Great British Menu to return to oversee heats and mentor their fellow chefs, none of them has ever been asked to join the show’s illustrious judging panel before. Enter Scottish chef Lorna McNee… “It’s just amazing,” beams McNee, who in 2019 won the competition with her Wham!-inspired dessert, Lime & Sunshine: There’s Enough for Everyone, and now returns to the show, alongside chef Tom Kerridge and comedian Ed Gamble. “To go from being a competitor all the way to being a judge, it’s unbelievable.” Talking from her home in Glasgow, the 37-year-old is clearly thrilled to be taking the place of restaurateur Nisha Katona. “My first day was pretty nerve-racking,” she admits. “When you’ve competed in the show, you know how it feels, and it is intimidating. I was nervous for myself – but I was feeling the nerves for them as well.” The contestants will, of course, be looking at the show’s newest judge as an example of what winning the Great British Menu can do for your career. After McNee’s triumph in 2019, she was offered the job of head chef at Glasgow’s prestigious Cail Bruich, helping to win the restaurant a Michelin star in 2021. She clearly has the chef skills required, but what kind of judge will McNee be? She bristles at the suggestion that, as a former competitor, she might pull any punches when critiquing the dishes. “Tom Kerridge and I are both Michelin-starred chefs, but we’re very different in our styles,” she says. “We both understand how things should be cooked, but we’re possibly looking for different things from people’s dishes. “I understand what the contestants are going through, but it’s a competition,” she insists. “I’m tough in the way that I judge, because I would expect the best from myself, and I know that they expect the best from themselves as well.” This year, the theme is “Great Britons”, with chefs drawing inspiration from notable figures, from their areas of the country. Asked who she would pick if she were a contestant, McNee offers up “True Scotsmen!” William Wallace and Rabbie Burns, as well as her personal hero, the late Andrew Fairlie. It was in 2007 that McNee plucked up the courage to tap the celebrated Scottish chef on the shoulder and ask for a job – a moment of bravery that led to her working in his double Michelin-starred restaurant, Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles, for 12 years. “He did a lot for the Scottish food scene,” she says of the man she refers to as her mentor, “and he trained me to be the type of chef that I am today. He’s a true hero, and was sadly taken too early from us.” But before Fairlie, it was TV that inspired McNee to become a chef, watching Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver. Now, she says, we’re in a golden age of cookery television. “Food has become a massive focus in people’s lives, not just in terms of it being fuel,” she explains. “People enjoy food and understand it a lot more, and it’s great for the hospitality industry – it helps get people’s faces out there and helps them get business into their restaurants.” This explosion of cooking shows has, of course, made rock stars out of certain chefs, and various former Great British Menu competitors have made the leap from contestant to presenter. So, does more TV feature in the ambitions of Lorna McNee? “If it’s applicable, then yeah. Being a chef, you go to all these different environments and you always learn something new from them. So, if anything else came my way, and I thought it was a good show, I’d definitely be up for it.” For the moment, though, there’s no more telly planned, no move to London, not even a book in the offing. Her attention, she says, is exclusively on Cail Bruich and making it “better and better”. “I want to achieve more, I want to get more accolades and I want to make sure my team is strong – that’s what it’s about,” she says. “I mean, I’d love to be on James Martin’s Saturday Morning – he’s a hero of mine. But as it stands for me, it’s focusing on the restaurant.” And presumably gaining a second Michelin star? “That would be nice,” she smiles. “It’s great to have these aims and these places to push to. Though I think we’re a while away yet!”
She shot to fame by bending a ball like Beckham — now she’s telling it like it is as Brummie detective DI Ray
Add DI Ray to your watchlist Parminder Nagra got her big break in 2001 aged 26, when she was cast as the football-mad teen Jess in Bend It like Beckham. After moving to the US, she joined ER as Dr Neela Rasgotra, a role she played until the final episode in 2009, becoming its longest-serving cast member. Since then, she’s appeared in Agents of SHIELD, Fortitude, Intergalactic and Maternal, and in 2022 made her debut as DI Rachita Ray in ITV1’s police drama DI Ray, which is now in its second series. It’s been 23 years since Bend It like Beckham, which helped launch yours and Keira Knightley’s careers. Has there ever been any talk of a sequel? I heard Gurinder [Chadha, director] had said somewhere she’d got an idea of where a sequel would go, but I don’t know – sequels can be tricky. The expectation is so up there, especially with something so beloved. Can you imagine if Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or The Breakfast Club had sequels? Some things need to be left alone. View oEmbed on the source website So you don’t ever wonder what Jess would be doing now? I don’t know what she’d be up to. Would she be coaching? Would she have a daughter who was getting into football? I almost don’t recognise that girl that was in Bend It. I know it’s me, but it feels like I’m watching someone else. Have you been able to play football since then, or does everyone get their cameras out if you go near a ball? When friends’ children are kicking a ball around, I think there’s an expectation that I’m suddenly going to bust out some moves. The training for that film was intense, and I do sometimes think, what if I’d have carried that on? I’d probably be a lot fitter! There’s a second series of DI Ray currently on ITV1 — was the character easy to get back into? I felt more settled with her this time, even though she’s unsettled at the start of series two. I get who she is – fundamentally, she’s someone who wants to do the right thing and get to the truth, even if it ruffles a few feathers. But in season two, it’s about playing the politics a little bit more, so I’m just nodding my head and saying yes, then doing what I want anyway! What reaction did you have to series one? I had so many texts saying it was lovely to see a south Indian person on screen that just isn’t stereotypical. But ultimately, it’s a numbers game, because it’s show-business. In terms of audience, it felt like it had been received well and people stayed to the final episode. But it’s all a work in progress, so when you’re going back to do a second series, you’re asking what are the things that worked? What didn’t quite work? How do we make it better? I mean, we got to do series two, they ordered six this time, and they’re longer episodes, too. Would you get on with DI Ray, do you think? I probably wouldn’t say some of the things she says – she’s very bold. Especially some of those interview scenes, they were very exciting to play. She just goes there, to get to the truth of the matter. I’d be friends with her for that: “Oh, you say it like it is, you’re cool!” It’s filmed in Birmingham, but you’re still based in LA. How does that work for you? My son goes to school in Los Angeles, but I’ve been lucky because filming DI Ray overlaps with the holidays, so I go from being a mum to being a crime-fighter! Is there any other series you’ve done or character you’ve played that you’d like to return to? Alcatraz was a big one [she played Dr Lucy Banerjee in JJ Abrams’ one-season 2012 sci-fi show]. That series was like a good meal – it was just so sumptuous. My character existed in the present and also in the 60s, so she was straddling timelines. And then it finished, so we never got to find out what was going on with her! We had an amazing cast, it was ridiculous – Sam Neill, Mahershala Ali, Rami Malek… Similarly, how disappointed were you when ITV’s Maternal didn’t get a second series? Oh we were all gutted! I loved straddling that line between comedy and drama. When we took a deep dive in terms of emotion, we really went there. I’d love to do something with that tone again. And finally… you spent your 30th birthday with George Clooney — who starred in ER before you joined the cast — having bumped into him at the restaurant you were celebrating in. Any starry plans for your 50th next year? I’d need Tom Cruise at the next one! My 30th birthday was the most surreal experience of my life. At the end, I went to take care of the bill because I’d been with all of my friends and they said no, George had taken care of it. It was nuts!
This Country’s Charlie Cooper now delves deep into UK folklore
Add Charlie Cooper's Myth Country to your watchlist Rural myths and legends have always bewitched Charlie Cooper. “I’m a country bumpkin at heart,” the writer and actor laughs from his cottage in Gloucestershire. “I love history and nature – and folklore, in all its forms, just combines those things.” There weren’t any mythical beasts or pagan sacrifices in This Country, the pastoral sitcom he co-created and starred in with his sister Daisy May Cooper, but there’s definitely some connective tissue between that show and his latest documentary series for BBC3. Charlie Cooper’s Myth Country (get it?) sees the 35-year-old Bafta-winner exploring some of the UK’s more eccentric myths and legends, from Black Shuck, a giant dog that’s said to roam the hills of East Anglia, to UFOs over Wiltshire. Though he’d always had an interest in all things folkloric, Cooper reveals that it was the making of This Country that really fuelled his passion for these agrarian myths. “I came across so many peculiar rituals and traditions, and it just opened my eyes to a whole new world,” he says. “We were really analysing our upbringing and the characters around us and the stuff we did, and that’s all folklore, really.” For this series the actor travels the UK in his converted AA camper van to visit, in his words, “weird little historical places”. The documentary, made up of three half-hour episodes, is clearly a labour of love for the actor, and he’s an endearingly wide-eyed host, talking to everyone from Black Shuck eye-witnesses to crop circle devotees. Anyone, he says, “with a strong connection to our pagan past”. It’s a timely series. In recent years, there’s been an explosion of folk horror movies and TV dramas, stories that plug into ancient traditions and the mystery and menace of the British countryside. Cooper believes this resurgence of interest in folklore and our far-away past has a lot to do with us wanting to break free from an increasingly hurried and noisy world. “Everything’s so hyper-connected now and we spend most hours indoors watching screens,” he says. “We’ve disconnected from our environment, and folklore helps us go back to what it means to be human. We’re so lucky to live in a country that’s so rich in history, and there are so many weird little folk traditions and rituals. And if this encourages people to visit the places we went to, I’d love that.” There’s a scene in the opening episode where Cooper attempts to film a meeting of the Norfolk Folklore Society. The group is wary at first, but soon charmed by Cooper’s unfeigned passion, and the show itself approaches all these stories with an open mind, however fanciful or far-fetched. “There have probably been TV crews that have taken advantage and shown these people as cranks and nutters,” Cooper admits. “But I think we do live in a world where, because there is such a folk revival, we’re talking about paranormal stuff more. So it feels like we’ve created more of a safe space in recent years for different voices. With this series, we didn’t want it to be where you got loads of celebrity friends on board and you go to weird, haunted places – I want it to be authentic.” That said, Cooper’s famous sibling Daisy May does pop up, gently poking fun at her brother over Zoom. It may not be the full Cooper reunion This Country fans have been waiting for, but Charlie does let slip that he and his sister do have another project in the offing. “I can’t talk about it too much, but it’ll be an unscripted thing,” he teases. “It’s a good way of getting back to working together again. What’s nice, since This Country finished, is that now we have a relationship outside of work. She had a baby a few months ago, so we go around to hers every Sunday for a roast, and the kids play together. It’s nice not having that external pressure. We’re not talking about work, we’re talking about stupid stuff, and I really cherish that.” But what of This Country itself? Though the Cotswolds-set mockumentary aired its last episode in 2020, it didn’t definitively close the door on cousins Kerry and Kurtan Mucklowe. “You can never say never,” Cooper says now. “It often crosses my mind; what Kurtan would be doing now. What would they have done during Covid? Would he be a big germaphobe now? Kurtan is such a big part of me, and as I’ve had two kids since This Country ended, I’m always wondering what he would be like as a dad. It would be criminal not to revisit it.”
Charlie Cooper: "It would be criminal not to revisit This Country"
The writer and actor talks to Radio Times about exploring the UK's most fascinating folklore in new BBC Three documentary Myth Country and working with sister Daisy May Cooper on a new project.
Rural myths and legends have always bewitched Charlie Cooper. "I'm a country bumpkin at heart," the writer and actor laughs from his cottage in Gloucestershire. "I love history and nature – and folklore, in all its forms, just combines those things." There weren’t any mythical beasts or pagan sacrifices in This Country, the pastoral sitcom he co-created and starred in with his sister Daisy May Cooper, but there's definitely some connective tissue between that show and his latest documentary series for BBC Three. Charlie Cooper's Myth Country (get it?) sees the 35-year-old BAFTA-winner exploring some of the UK's more eccentric myths and legends, from Black Shuck, a giant dog that's said to roam the hills of East Anglia, to UFOs over Wiltshire. Though he'd always had an interest in all things folkloric, Cooper reveals that it was the making of This Country that really fuelled his passion for these agrarian myths. "I came across so many peculiar rituals and traditions, and it just opened my eyes to a whole new world," he says. "We were really analysing our upbringing and the characters around us and the stuff we did, and that's all folklore, really." For this series the actor travels the UK in his converted AA camper van to visit, in his words, "weird little historical places". The documentary, made up of three half-hour episodes, is clearly a labour of love for the actor, and he's an endearingly wide-eyed host, talking to everyone from Black Shuck eye-witnesses to crop circle devotees. Anyone, he says, "with a strong connection to our pagan past". It’s a timely series. In recent years, there's been an explosion of folk horror movies and TV dramas, stories that plug into ancient traditions and the mystery and menace of the British countryside. Cooper believes this resurgence of interest in folklore and our far-away past has a lot to do with us wanting to break free from an increasingly hurried and noisy world. "Everything's so hyper-connected now and we spend most hours indoors watching screens," he says. "We've disconnected from our environment, and folklore helps us go back to what it means to be human. We're so lucky to live in a country that's so rich in history, and there are so many weird little folk traditions and rituals. And if this encourages people to visit the places we went to, I'd love that." There's a scene in the opening episode where Cooper attempts to film a meeting of the Norfolk Folklore Society. The group is wary at first, but soon charmed by Cooper's unfeigned passion, and the show itself approaches all these stories with an open mind, however fanciful or far-fetched. "There have probably been TV crews that have taken advantage and shown these people as cranks and nutters," Cooper admits. "But I think we do live in a world where, because there is such a folk revival, we’re talking about paranormal stuff more. So it feels like we've created more of a safe space in recent years for different voices. With this series, we didn’t want it to be where you got loads of celebrity friends on board and you go to weird, haunted places – I want it to be authentic." Read more: Michael Palin on parting ways with the BBC, turning down Strictly and plans to keep travelling David Mitchell on new detective series Ludwig, his career so far and what irritates him That said, Cooper's famous sibling Daisy May does pop up, gently poking fun at her brother over Zoom. It may not be the full Cooper reunion This Country fans have been waiting for, but Charlie does let slip that he and his sister do have another project in the offing. "I can't talk about it too much, but it'll be an unscripted thing," he teases. "It's a good way of getting back to working together again. What's nice, since This Country finished, is that now we have a relationship outside of work. She had a baby a few months ago, so we go around to hers every Sunday for a roast, and the kids play together. It's nice not having that external pressure. We're not talking about work, we're talking about stupid stuff, and I really cherish that." But what of This Country itself? Though the Cotswolds-set mockumentary aired its last episode in 2020, it didn't definitively close the door on cousins Kerry and Kurtan Mucklowe. "You can never say never," Cooper says now. "It often crosses my mind; what Kurtan would be doing now. What would they have done during Covid? Would he be a big germaphobe now? Kurtan is such a big part of me, and as I've had two kids since This Country ended, I'm always wondering what he would be like as a dad. It would be criminal not to revisit it." The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Charlie Cooper's Myth Country begins at 9pm on Friday 4th October on BBC Three. Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Colourising classic Doctor Who shouldn't be sacrilege
The BBC is reportedly revamping old episodes for the 60th anniversary.
To colourise or not to colourise – that is the question. It’s a thought at the forefront of Doctor Who fans’ minds at the moment, after reports that the BBC are looking into colourising old black-and-white episodes as part of the series’ 60th anniversary celebrations. But why now? If this idea had been floated 30 years ago there would have been uproar, such as in the 1980s when the company Color Systems Technology screen tested 10 minutes of colourised footage from Orson Welles’ monochrome masterpiece Citizen Kane. There was similar spluttering when festive fave It’s a Wonderful Life was given a digital paint job, with one of its surviving stars, Jimmy Hawkins, saying, "I like the black-and-white version, because that's the way it was shot and meant to be. The depths of the black and the white, a lot of work went into getting that look." Of course, the technology that was available then is a universe away from what’s around now. Where some of those colourised films from the '80s looked like a child with a crayon set had gone to work on the negative, recent colourisations, such as the WWI footage from Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old documentary, have been stunning in their verisimilitude. But it’s not just the technology. There seems to be an acceptance now that these colourised versions won’t oust or eclipse the black-and-white originals. When it was announced that Gold would be colourising two episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour, there was barely a whiff of outrage from the comedian’s fanbase. If you want to see The Blood Donor and Twelve Angry Men in their original grey tones, they’re not going away. But if there’s a chance that some monochrome-phobes might give these freshly painted episodes a try, then surely it’s worth a shot? Those black-and-white Doctor Who stories that we have now are already far from the versions that were first put out on VHS in the 1990s. Now, software can restore the original video look to these smudgy old tele-recordings. With our televisions getting bigger and the resolution becoming sharper, these vintage episodes from the '60s are beginning to look ever more anachronistic, like listening to a scratchy Noel Coward 78 next to Kendrick Lamar’s latest. It’s difficult to find any black-and-white movie or TV show on Netflix and even BritBox seems wary. While it welcomes plenty of antique TV, it has precious few non-colour series in its vast archive. Not that colourising old black-and-white Doctor Who is entirely new. Some Jon Pertwee episodes, first broadcast in colour, for years existed only as black and white tele-recordings (the original colour tapes having been junked). Until 2013, the only copy of The Mind Of Evil that survived was in black-and-white, until it was discovered that it was possible to recover the original colour by decoding chroma dot signals within the picture. Only when it was being readied for DVD release was it discovered that episode one didn’t have any chroma dot information, which meant it had to be colourised from scratch. SVS Resources and Stuart Humphryes, who uses the alias Babelcolour, were entrusted with the job, with Humphryes painting – over an 18-month period – 7,000 frames, while motion-estimation software interpolated the colour into the intervening frames. View oEmbed on the source website Humphryes tells RadioTimes.com: "When working on re-colourising footage, I’d adhere as closely as possible to authentic colours for settings and costumes and lighting. It’s important to match any surviving extant colour footage in the serial." He believes adding a splash of colour to an older story can give it a fresh lease of life. "I think, if done with artistic merit, colourisation can be a positive transformative process which brings a new life and perspective to an old work. The originals should always be freely available, too, in tandem with any enhancements, but these stories have been watched and re-watched innumerable times over the last 60 years and fans know them backwards. Seeing them in colour can be like experiencing them for the very first time, seeing something new in an old friend." Humphryes reveals that, back in 2013 for the show’s 50th anniversary, soundings were made from within the BBC about colourising the very first Doctor Who episode, An Unearthly Child, only he and SVS Resources were too busy on The Mind Of Evil to commit to it. "The deadlines would have been too impractical to meet in time for the anniversary," he says. RadioTimes.com has contacted the BBC and BBC Studios for comment. View Green Video on the source website Humphryes says he hasn’t been approached to work on anything for the 60th anniversary festivities, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Advances in technology and in AI software colourisation are becoming quicker and cheaper, and if Gold can cough up the cash for two episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour, then surely the BBC colourising something with the international and commercial clout of Doctor Who doesn’t seem so fanciful. 1960s black and white Doctor Who isn’t Nosferatu or Citizen Kane – it never won gongs for its dynamic expressionist cinematography. Is it really so profane to present it as the camera crew of 1963 saw William Hartnell and co? It’s simply an alternative way of looking at the show and, providing the BBC don’t do a George Lucas and squirrel the original away, that can only be a good thing, right? Doctor Who is available to stream on BBC iPlayer with episodes of the classic series also available on BritBox – you can sign up for a 7-day free trial here. For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or visit our full TV Guide and Streaming Guide. 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Doctor Who monster spin-offs would be a scary gamble for the show
Are Weeping Angel, Cybermen and Dalek spin-offs a great idea or a terrible one?
Before Russell T Davies was announced as the returning showrunner of Doctor Who, he floated the idea of a vast ecosystem of small screen spin-offs that would, in an ideal world, orbit the mothership show. "We should be sitting here announcing The Nyssa Adventures or The Return of Donna Noble," he told Paul Kirkley (who writes for Doctor Who Magazine and RadioTimes.com). "The whole science fiction world is so creative and so money-making right now, I think your wildest dreams can come true." Since then, we’ve had no official news on spin-offs, but if recent tabloid scuttlebutt is to be believed, the folks at Bad Wolf have a number of offshoots in the planning stages, including shows centring on some of Doctor Who's most iconic baddies. “Fans can expect to see Sontarans, Weeping Angels and Sea Devils in separate series showing what they get up to when the Doctor isn’t there to stop them, along with Daleks and Cybermen," a source told The Mirror. If true, this is a pretty radical plan. Every Doctor Who spin-off before now – on TV at least – has focused on the good guys of the Whoniverse, whether it’s K-9 (K-9 & Company), Sarah-Jane Smith (The Sarah-Jane Adventures), Captain Jack Harkness (Torchwood) or, er, the pupils of Coal Hill School (Class). Yet over at Big Finish – the audio company who, since 1999, has been producing officially licensed Doctor Who stories – villain-centric ranges have been a mainstay of its output for years. Dalek Empire was one of the company’s first offshoots, yet crucially it wasn’t told from the Daleks’ point of view, instead zeroing in on a fresh set of protagonists. Ditto its Cyberman series of plays. Even though their TV voice, Nicholas Briggs, was in charge of these ranges, he was savvy enough to know that an hour of Daleks or Cybermen talking among themselves is likely to send even the most devoted fan crazy. “Showing what they get up to when the Doctor isn’t there” is the slightly concerning detail. These spin-offs don’t necessarily need the Doctor to pivot round, but they do need protagonists, a person or persons that we can identify and empathise with, that the monsters can pit themselves against. Is there really potential in a Sea Devils show showing us what they do when they’re just hanging out with each other, shooting the breeze? And if we’re getting a Weeping Angels series that’s going to show us what they do when no one’s watching (darting about all over the place, presumably), isn’t that going to tarnish some of their carefully cultivated mystery? Back in the 1960s, Dalek creator Terry Nation attempted to launch a series based around his fascistic pepperpots in the US. He didn’t get far. But the fact that, even with their titanic popularity and Nation’s not inconsiderable wealth, we’ve never had a small-screen Dalek spin-off tells you something about their limitations as characters. The short-lived Daleks! web series from 2020 arguably only worked because of its relative brevity (it consisted of just five 13-15 minute episodes). The trouble with a series focused tightly on those monsters named by The Mirror is that any show would be blighted by an aural and visual sameness. A bunch of Daleks or Cybermen talking monotonously amongst themselves, each character indistinguishable from the next, does not good telly make. That’s presumably why Star Trek has never considered a Borg or Klingon-focused series and why Disney isn’t planning any Star Wars shows based around the Hutts. None of these potential WhoCU series necessarily need the Doctor, but they do require some kind of human character for us to lock onto, however speciesist that sounds. Of course, this is all wild speculation. The newspapers have got it wrong before, and may well have done so again. For all we know, The Nyssa Adventures may be in its final stages of planning, and who knows, maybe she’ll be fighting Sea Devils and Weeping Angels as part of it. And if RTD and Bad Wolf really are planning an avalanche of new shows and spin-offs, maybe one featuring the Daleks and the Sontarans really are a small part of it. But, according to social media, villain-centric spin-offs are not what fans want. When RadioTimes.com asked what spin-off fans would most want to see, the overwhelming response was calls for a return for Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor. View oEmbed on the source website Whether it’s The Polly Adventures, The UNIT Files or Turlough & Co, it’s the good guys the fandom wants to see more of, not the private life of General Staal or a Dalek version of The West Wing. But wait and see, because if anyone can make a Sea Devils or Weeping Angels series work, however implausibly, it’s Russell T Davies. Best Doctor Who merchandise and gifts to buy for Christmas 2022 Doctor Who is available to stream on BBC iPlayer with episodes of the classic series also available on BritBox – you can sign up for a 7-day free trial here. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or find more to watch with our TV Guide and Streaming Guide. The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times View From My Sofa podcast.
What does the Disney Plus deal really mean for Doctor Who?
The House of Mouse will now act as a distribution partner overseas – but how will this impact the BBC series we know and love?
"This is the best of both worlds," Russell T Davies said when the news dropped that Disney Plus would be the new home for Doctor Who internationally, "with the vision and joy of the BBC and Disney Plus together we can launch the TARDIS all around the planet, reaching a new generation of fans while keeping our traditional home firmly on the BBC in the UK." The message was meant to excite and reassure. Yes, Disney Plus would – from November 2023 – be the platform on which the rest of the world could watch Doctor Who, but this wasn’t a takeover by the Mouse House, oh no. Doctor Who, to UK viewers, would still be a BBC programme, screened on BBC One, as it has been for the past 59, soon to be 60 years. Even Charlotte Moore, the BBC's Chief Content Officer, went out of her way to refer to Doctor Who as "this very British show" when talking up the deal. "Joining forces with Disney..." she said. "...will elevate the show to even greater heights and reach new audiences so it's an extremely exciting time for fans in the UK and across the world." Doctor Who 'is critical to the BBC', says boss Charlotte Moore This, then, is a very different proposition to when George Lucas sold Star Wars to the Walt Disney Company in 2012. Yet the fear then was similar to some of the more hysterical reactions to last week’s Who news, that it would lead to Star Wars’ rougher edges being smoothed out, and that somehow Disney’s parentage would end up ‘kid-ifying’ Star Wars (not like it was ever Solaris to begin with, mind). Of course, that never happened. Under Disney’s auspices, we’ve had Rogue One (surely the bleakest Star Wars movie ever), the risk-taking The Last Jedi and the adult-skewed Andor. So much for Luke Skywalker suddenly adopting a wisecracking womp rat. So, let’s be clear, Disney don’t now own Doctor Who. Instead, it’s a deal between the BBC and Disney Branded Television, one that will provide a platform for the series overseas, and one that should, in all likelihood, bring in a lot more dough for the programme. "There's certainly a lot more hands on the show now one way or another, with the BBC, [production company] Bad Wolf in which Sony has a stake, and Disney all having a seat at the table," says The Guardian’s Martin Belam. "Where I think the show will benefit most of all is from a global uniform publicity drive with the heft of Disney Plus behind it. "It should simplify the simultaneous launch windows for the show, and see marketing done in a more coherent way than perhaps it was done when the BBC and the production team were dealing with multiple broadcast partners." "I think the main benefit of the Disney Plus deal, without wanting to sound too crass, is the increase in budget,” adds Heat magazine’s TV Editor, Boyd Hilton. "Doctor Who has always been a show of big ideas and vast scope but, as brilliantly as recent showrunners and producers have coped with budgetary limitations, the more money they have the less their resources will be visibly stretched. "So expect more crowd scenes populated by huge gatherings of extras. Those guys cost money! Doctor Who is the ultimate concept for a sci-fi show and now it can proudly enter the global streaming space where it undoubtedly deserves to be." Before Russell T Davies signed on for his second stint as showrunner, he mused about what he might do with the programme should he ever be in charge again, and that meant a vast ecosystem of Who-related spinoffs. "There should be a Doctor Who channel now,” he said. “You look at those Disney announcements, of all those new Star Wars and Marvel shows, you think, we should be sitting here announcing The Nyssa Adventures or The Return of Donna Noble, and you should have the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors together in a 10-part series." It’s looking likely that, if Doctor Who is to expand its on-screen universe with a suite of spin-offs (come on, The Nyssa Adventures!), Disney Plus will be the international home for them too, in the way that the streamer is the go-to platform for everything Star Wars and Marvel. But what of the fears that the series will be neutered in some way because of the House of Mouse’s family-friendly branding, or even, ahem, 'American-ised'? In the days after the announcement, memes were cropping up everywhere, most in jest it must be said, such as the one that depicted Mickey Mouse’s head’s silhouette as part of the new Doctor Who logo. View oEmbed on the source website Hilton, though, thinks fans have little to worry about from this commercial buddy-up. "As for fears about how the show might be affected, I too might worry about this were it not for the key factor that genius writer and ultimate Whovian Russell T Davies is back as showrunner," he says. "He would never compromise the integrity of the show and his vision for its future. In fact the Disney Plus deal is clearly going to help him execute his ideas. It's all part of his master (sorry) plan!" Read more about Doctor Who: Doctor Who star says William Hartnell was "furious" over cast changes Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor ratings revealed Peter Purves reveals idea for Doctor Who character to return as villain Doctor Who companions in order: From Susan Foreman to Donna Noble (again!) Doctor Who is coming to Fall Guys – dress up as your favourite Doctor Doctor Who is available to stream on BBC iPlayer with episodes of the classic series also available on BritBox – you can sign up for a 7-day free trial here. Sign up to Disney Plus for £7.99 a month or £79.90 for a year. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight. The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now – subscribe now and get the next 12 issues for only £1. or more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times View From My Sofa podcast.
So what the hell is going on with Ncuti Gatwa in Doctor Who?
“Will somebody tell me what the hell is going on here?” That may have been the Fourteenth... sorry, Fifteenth Doctor’s single line in that agonisingly brief Doctor Who trailer that aired on Sunday, but it was also the question we were asking at home. What. The. Hell. Is. Going. On. Here? Of course, the first surprise occurred in those closing seconds of The Power of the Doctor, when David Tennant’s perfectly coiffured Doctor emerged from that gush of regeneration energy. There had been fan speculation that it might be Tennant’s face that appeared in those final moments, ever since he was announced as returning to Doctor Who back in May. At the time, incoming showrunner Russell T Davies teased: “What on earth is happening? Maybe this is a missing story. Or a parallel world. Or a dream, or a trick, or a flashback.” Well, within minutes of this latest regeneration, the BBC confirmed that, crazily, David Tennant was officially the **Fourteenth** Doctor (that’s on top of being the Tenth). “The path to Ncuti's Fifteenth Doctor is laden with mystery, horror, robots, puppets, danger and fun,” RTD said in a statement. “And how is it connected to the return of the wonderful Donna Noble? How, what, why? We’re giving you a year to speculate, and then all hell lets loose!" So, who is this latest Doctor and why did his clothes regenerate with him? OK, so the Time Lord’s togs changed in between the First and Second Doctors and his boots inexplicably transformed into shoes during the Fourth Doctor’s regeneration into Five, but that was more of a continuity screw-up than something vital to the story. This was actually intentional, with the new Doctor even patting down his new threads. So why has the Doctor regenerated into an already-used body? We know that the Doctor can subconsciously affect who he or she regenerates into. In The Girl Who Died, the Twelfth Doctor finally remembers where he’s seen himself before. “I know where I got this face, and I know what it’s for,” he says, recalling Lobus Caecilius (also played by Peter Capaldi), whom he’d saved from the fires of Pompeii. “To remind me, to hold me to the mark. I’m the Doctor and I save people!” Is this another example of the Doctor sending himself a message from his subconscious? Is it that there’s unfinished business with Donna Noble that only this “long streak of alien nothing” can sort out? Maybe it has something to do with the 'Time Lord Victorious', that short-lived title the Tenth Doctor gave himself at the end of The Waters of Mars? Or maybe it’s as simple as just wanting to revisit “an old favourite”, as the Curator (Tom Baker) might say? Conversely, there’s much scuttlebutt online that this has nothing to do with the Doctor’s subconscious and that this is all the Celestial Toymaker’s doing. Course, it hasn’t even been confirmed that Neil Patrick Harris’s character in the upcoming special(s) *is* the Toymaker, so this is conjecture upon conjecture, but that might explain why the Doctor’s costume changed as well. And so where does Ncuti Gatwa fit into all of this? The word from Who HQ is that the new Doctor’s “first official Doctor Who episode is due to air over the festive period in 2023”. Is that short clip of him in the trailer from that “first official episode” or a tease from one of the David Tennant-centred specials? And where exactly is Ncuti’s Doctor in that shot and in the only photo of him so far in character? Is it the Doctor’s ‘mind palace’ or some version of the ‘edge of existence’ as seen in The Power of the Doctor? That’s definitely the Tenth… sorry, the Fourteenth’s tie and shirt there, so is this post-regeneration or is the Fifteenth Doctor stuck in limbo somewhere, until the Toymaker is done with his David Tennant-shaped experiment? View Riddle on the source website Whether it’s the Toymaker – or someone else entirely – who’s responsible for this latest regeneration, we know it’s a bona fide incarnation. It’s official now that David Tennant is the Fourteenth Doctor and Ncuti Gatwa is the Fifteenth. But this isn’t a regeneration like we’ve ever seen before. Will the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Doctors even have a moment between themselves, as one passes the baton to the other? It’s never happened before, but neither has the Doctor ever regenerated into a former body, so all bets are off. The only thing we know for certain is we’ve got a tortuously long wait to find out what the hell is going on here. Read more about Doctor Who: Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill open to Doctor Who returns after exit Doctor Who brings back classic Doctors for centenary special Jodie Whittaker’s final words in Doctor Who were changed at last minute Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor review Doctor Who revisits old companions in touching scene Doctor Who’s classic companions on their return: "It was a total joy" Doctor Who is available to stream on BBC iPlayer with episodes of the classic series also available on BritBox – you can sign up for a 7-day free trial here. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight. The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now – subscribe now and get the next 12 issues for only £1. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times View From My Sofa podcast.
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power review – Dazzling prequel doesn't let Tolkien fans down
Amazon's ambitious new series is a worthy successor to Peter Jackson's original big-screen trilogy.
It’s been 21 years now since that first Lord of the Rings film and eight since the last Hobbit movie, and, truth be told, none of us really expected another tour of Middle-earth. After 2014’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, some even wisecracked about Peter Jackson directing a version of the famously unadaptable The Silmarillion. Sadly, save for any scavenging of the appendices for The Lord of the Rings, it seemed like there was nowhere else to go, screen-wise, in JRR Tolkien’s mythology-rich land. But that was then and this is now. Who could have predicted that the Tolkien Estate, who for so many years had been ferociously protective of the late scholar’s work, would agree to new stories being created in his world? When Amazon Studios scooped the rights to The Lord of the Rings and its appendices (a chunky part of the final book that details the Second Age of Middle-earth) in November 2017, it was billed as the priciest TV deal in history. But the agreement wasn’t for a remake of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, it was to create fresh stories in this densely-detailed world. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power arrives as one of the most anticipated TV shows of all time, then. Not that it’s guaranteed an easy ride. Not only is it likely to be compared, rightly or wrongly, to Jackson’s Oscar-hoovering trilogy, but there’s also an army of Tolkien loyalists to deal with, many of whom are deeply suspicious of anyone but their favourite author playing in the Middle-earth sandpit. Its timing though, is unfortunate. When Game of Thrones debuted in 2011 it couldn’t escape being judged next to Lord of the Rings. And with spin-off House of the Dragon having premiered just two weeks before the first two episodes of The Rings of Power drop, it’s inevitable they're going to pitted against each other. In many ways, though, it’s an unfair comparison. Game of Thrones was always the Rolling Stones to The Lord of the Rings’ Beatles – darker, edgier, lustier. JRR’s world, in the books and in Jackson’s movies, was warmer and more optimistic, and that’s a tone carried through into The Rings of Power. While sword and sorcery series of late have gotten bloodier and more savage, this show is refreshingly family-friendly. Though Peter Jackson’s shadow hangs over this series as much as Tolkien’s (it lifts much of the design aesthetic from both trilogies), it differs from the films in that it lacks a central protagonist. Though Nori the Harfoot (a breed of Hobbit we’ve not yet met on-screen before) is the closest we get to Frodo (“Haven’t you ever wondered what else is out there?” she asks her mother. “I can’t help but feel that there are wonders in this world beyond our wandering”), she’s just one among a throng of characters, both old (Galadriel, Elrond) and new (everyone else). This is a bona fide ensemble piece, in a way that the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films never were. That means, however, that the series consists of a patchwork of plotlines. Whereas The Lord of the Rings’ central story was the classic ‘hero’s journey’, there’s no such narrative thrust to The Rings of Power, at least not that we can glean from its first two episodes. These opening salvos then juggle a variety of storylines. There’s Galadriel, a younger, feistier version of the regal elf queen we know from Jackson’s films, in this series Commander of the northern armies and, as Elrond calls her, “warrior of the wastelands”. She’s the only elf to believe that, after defeating Morgoth and the orcs centuries ago, his “most devoted servant” Sauron is still alive. With the war now a distant memory for most, she’s but a lone voice in believing the threat to be real. Meanwhile, in Rhovanion, two Harfoots are trying to discover the identity of a mysterious, naked man (discreetly nude, we must add, this ain’t House of the Dragon), while in the world of Men, elf watcher Arondir is exploring a cavernous hole in the ground that he discovers after an entire village is wiped out. At the same time, Elrond has been asked to approach the Dwarves for help in building a structure that fans of the film series will instantly recognise. It’s not easy to see yet how these disparate narratives will eventually coalesce, but at the moment, the storytelling feels frustratingly bitty. What the series does offer, however, is a much more expansive look at Tolkien’s vast fictional world. Middle-earth is just one of the realms on show here, with Valinor, the Sundering Seas, Forodwaith, Rhovanion, Lindon, Eregion and Khazad-Dum all getting a look-in. The eye-wowing New Zealand locations not only offer a multitude of wildly different terrains and vistas, but also provide some extra connective tissue to the Jackson films. In some ways, The Rings of Power feel more of a kin to the Lord of the Rings trilogy than the Hobbit films do. By those later movies, Jackson was leaning even more heavily into CGI (just look at the orcs in those films compared to his first trilogy) and greenscreen. The Rings of Power, like The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers especially, looks and feels thrillingly organic. If the first episode, by zeroing in so tightly on the Elves (as great as they are in small doses, their slow, mannered, portentous delivery can grate), feels a little frosty and formal, know that it does get warmer and funnier, as the Harfoots and Dwarves (who are all now Scottish, it seems) are given more airtime. It’s said that showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay have a five-year plan for this series and already have its closing shot in their heads. Although the first two episodes take a while to get moving, there’s a lot to love here. The casting is almost uniformly on target and director JA Bayona makes the most of his record-busting budget. And we haven’t even mentioned Howard Shore’s stirring theme tune (which makes its debut in episode 2). It’s a newly-composed piece that doesn’t riff on any of his work on the LOTR and Hobbit movies, but manages to nostalgically evoke them. It’s just another element of the series that echoes that run of films. If you were burned by Jackson’s bloated, CGI-drenched Hobbit movies, this is the prequel the original Lord of the Rings trilogy really deserves. Read more on The Rings of Power: Rings of Power release schedule: When are Lord of the Rings episodes out? How to watch The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies in order Meet the cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power What is Valinor in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power? Who is Halbrand in The Rings of Power? Theories for Charlie Vickers’s character What are Harfoots? The Rings of Power Hobbits and history explained Who is Morgoth in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power? Who is The Stranger in The Rings of Power? Daniel Weyman role theories Who is Galadriel’s brother? Meet Finrod actor Will Fletcher Who is Galadriel actress Morfydd Clark in The Rings of Power? Who is Elrond actor Robert Aramayo in The Rings of Power? What is the Second Age of Middle-earth? Rings of Power timeline explained The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power episodes 1 and 2 arrive on Amazon Prime Video in the UK on Friday 2nd September 2022 – you can sign up now for a free 30-day Prime Video trial. If you’re looking for something else to watch in the meantime, check out our TV Guide or visit our dedicated Fantasy and Sci-Fi hub. The latest issue of Radio Times is on sale now – subscribe now to get each issue delivered to your door. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times podcast with Jane Garvey.
How Bernard Cribbins brought magic and warmth to the world of Doctor Who
Following the sad news of Bernard Cribbins' death, Steve O'Brien looks back on what made him - and his character Wilf - a Doctor Who legend.
The words 'national treasure' are often overused, but there are few people who would argue against them being applied to describe the late Bernard Cribbins OBE, who sadly passed away this week. It was only a few weeks ago that Doctor Who fans’ hearts swelled upon seeing paparazzi shots of the at-that-time 92-year-old actor, back as fan-favourite character Wilfred Mott, alongside David Tennant and Catherine Tate for the upcoming Who 60th anniversary special. When we last saw Wilf at the end of 2010’s The End of Time Part 2, tears in his eyes, saluting the regenerating Doctor, we were bidding adieu to him as much as to David Tennant. Then, lo and behold, 12 years later, we discover that Bernard Cribbins and Wilfred Mott are coming back – only this time it really will be goodbye. Of course, Cribbins’ relationship with Doctor Who stretches back further than Wilf. In 1966’s feature film Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD he starred as the bumbling police officer Tom Campbell in the sequel to the previous year’s Dr Who and the Daleks. He was already a familiar face by then, from movies such as Two-Way Stretch (1960) and The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963) along with a couple of Carry Ons, 1963’s Jack and 1964’s Spying. He’d also been something of a success in the pop charts too, having scored with a trinity of comedy songs overseen by The Beatles producer George Martin – 'The Hole In The Ground' (UK No.9), 'Right Said Fred' (No.10) and 'Gossip Calypso' (No.25). Cribbins’ return to Doctor Who 41 years later was never intended to be permanent. In 2007’s Kylie Minogue-headlining Christmas special Voyage of the Damned, the actor cameoed as a newspaper seller, still fearlessly manning his stand even when everyone else has stayed at home ("London at Christmas?" he tells the Doctor, "Not safe, is it!"), but that character was only retroactively ID’d as the grandfather of Donna Noble. View oEmbed on the source website It was when Howard Attfield, who’d played Donna’s dad in The Runaway Bride, passed away before his scenes could be completed on 2008 episode Partners in Crime that Russell T Davies hit upon the idea of bringing in Cribbins as Donna’s gramps (Cribbins re-filmed the scenes that Attfield had already completed). With any other actor it would have taken fans time to fall in love, but RTD was clearly banking on 40-plus years’ worth of affection for Cribbins. And it’s testament to how scene-stealing the actor was in that episode that Wilf pops up more and more as the 2008 series goes on. He’s heartbreaking in alternate reality episode Turn Left, as he watches immigrants being forcefully taken away by the army. "Labour camps, that’s what they called them last time," he says, tearfully. "It’s happening again." By The Stolen Earth he’s even going toe to toe with Daleks armed with a paint gun (Cribbins’ own idea, according to Russell T Davies on Instagram). At 80 years old, he was more of a bad-ass against Skaro’s pepperpots than he was when he was 38. When it came to David Tennant’s closing run of specials, RTD announced that each would have their own companion, flagged up in the opening titles. But few expected that final companion, in the two-part End of Time, to be Wilfred Mott. It’s a thrilling moment, to see an "and Bernard Cribbins" credit fly up after David Tennant’s name. In fact, Cribbins anchors those episodes with a tour de force performance. When the Tenth Doctor was told, about his imminent regeneration, "he will knock three times", none of us expected those knocks to come from Wilfred Mott. But it’s Wilf who the Doctor sacrifices himself for. "Just leave me," he tells the Doctor. "I'm an old man. I've had my time." Looking death in the face, Wilf is willing to die to save his friend. But when the Doctor tells him, "Wilfred, it's my honour," before opening the door to the nuclear-flooded control booth to allow Wilf to escape, it packs one of the hardest emotional punches in Doctor Who’s history. There are few people you’d find it easy to forgive for killing the Doctor, but Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred Mott was one of them. As Wilf, Bernard Cribbins made us laugh and he broke our hearts. And come the 60th anniversary he’ll likely do so again, but for even sadder reasons. "The stars are going out," Donna Noble told her grandad in Journey’s End. On 28th July 2022, one of the brightest went out forever. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight. The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now – subscribe now and get the next 12 issues for only £1. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times podcast with Jane Garvey.
Doctor Who: Is Beep the Meep David Tennant's new nemesis?
Rumour has it that Russell T Davies is drawing from Doctor Who comics for David Tennant's next foe - and it wouldn't be the first time he's taken inspiration from these kinds of sources.
Until the last few weeks, Beep the Meep was a name known only to the most hardcore of Doctor Who fans. A character first witnessed in the pages of the nascent Doctor Who Weekly in 1980, he w​​as, at first glance anyway, a furry, eyelash-fluttering ball of heart-melting cuteness. It was only later in that story – penned by the writing duo that created Judge Dredd, Pat Mills and John Wagner (and drawn, fact fans, by future Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons) – that we discovered that Beep wasn’t quite the adorable saucer-eyed critter that we thought he was, instead being a merciless, gun-toting killer on the run from the Wrarth Warriors. So why are we suddenly talking about Beep the Meep and that strip, ‘The Star Beast’, all these years later? Well, it’s because something looking very like it has been recently spotted in Cardiff, leading to fevered talk that the currently lensing David Tennant episode (or episodes) may be some kind of adaptation of that comic strip classic. What gives some weight to this theory is that aliens that look somewhat like the Wrarth Warriors (a sort of biologically constructed police force bred specifically to deal with the dreaded Meeps) have been papped clomping down a residential road in Cardiff. In the original story, Beep crash lands on Earth and is befriended by two school kids, Sharon and Fudge, before the Doctor, in the shape of Tom Baker, turns up. Could this Russell T Davies-penned episode be substituting Sharon and Fudge for the Noble clan and could it be David Tennant’s Doctor who will be facing off against this homicidal furball? This, of course, is all highly speculative. Nothing’s been confirmed by Bad Wolf or the Beeb, but if it is the case, then this isn’t the first time RTD has cribbed from a Doctor Who story from another medium. Series one’s Dalek was very much a small screen rewrite of writer Rob Shearman’s own Jubilee, from the Big Finish range of audio stories. Similarly, the Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel two-parter owed a chunky debt to Marc Platt’s Spare Parts play from 2002. Series three’s Human Nature/The Family of Blood, meanwhile, was an unapologetic adaptation of Paul Cornell’s 1995 Doctor Who novel, Human Nature. Even Steven Moffat’s Blink was based on a short story written for the 2006 Doctor Who Annual, titled ‘What I Did on My Christmas Holidays By Sally Sparrow’. And if this episode is some kind of big-budget riff on ‘The Star Beast’, it also won’t be the first time that Doctor Who has leaned into the comic world for inspiration. That strip that started in issue 1 of Doctor Who Weekly is still roaring now, in the since remonikered Doctor Who Magazine, and there are various instances where eagle-eyed and eared TV viewers will have clocked some reference to comic Who. View oEmbed on the source website Remember the kronkburgers from season 1’s The Long Game? Old-time readers would have known those from ‘Doctor Who and the Iron Legion’ from that first issue in ‘79. Abslom Daak (nickname: ‘Dalek Killer’), meanwhile, popped up on a computer screen in Time Heist, while season 5’s The Lodger was sourced from a strip penned by Gareth Roberts in issue 368 of Doctor Who Magazine, though the original story had the Tenth Doctor, not the 11th, crashing at Mickey Smith’s flat, not Craig Owen’s. Weird as it is to see Beep the Meep suddenly being referenced in Daily Mirror and MailOnline news stories, it’s cheering to see the press getting so stoked about Doctor Who once more. And (centenary special excepted) it looks like we’ve got 16 or 17 months of this kind of thing to look forward to – it could well be that long before we know for certain if that really is Beep the Meep, if those are Wrarth Warriors, and if the recently announced Neil Patrick Harris really is playing the Celestial Toymaker. View oEmbed on the source website And talking of the Toymaker, yes, even he turned up in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip – several times in fact. So if we really want to get a handle on what the RTD2 era is likely to look and feel like, maybe it’s best to pull out a few old Doctor Who Weeklys just to see what he’s got planned. Doctor Who is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight. The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now – subscribe now and get the next 12 issues for only £1. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times podcast with Jane Garvey.
Doctor Who has a bright future of potential spin-offs
Russell T Davies once wished for a shared universe of Doctor Who spin-offs - but now he's back in charge, is this plan already in motion?
Before he was revealed as the returning showrunner in September 2021, Russell T Davies pondered Doctor Who’s future with Paul Kirkley (sometimes of this parish). "There should be a Doctor Who channel now,” he told Waitrose Magazine. “You look at those Disney announcements, of all those new Star Wars and Marvel shows, you think, we should be sitting here announcing The Nyssa Adventures or The Return of Donna Noble, and you should have the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors together in a 10-part series. Genuinely." Did Russell know then, in January 2021, that he’d be handed back the keys to the TV show he helped relaunch back in 2005? Have his plans for RTD2 been hiding in plain sight all this time? Eight months on from that September news bomb, we know Donna Noble is indeed back, alongside the Tenth Doctor, Wilf, Sylvia and hubby Shaun Temple. How many episodes are the class of 2008 back for, though? Is it one special? Is it three? Might it even be a limited series of its own? Don’t expect clarification anytime soon, as one thing RTD is brilliant at is teasing his audience. All that talk of spinoffs, though... is there anything in that? Doctor Who has a patchy history with offshoots. Disregarding the Dalek TV series that Terry Nation valiantly tried to launch in America in the 1960s, the first actual show to be spun off from Who was 1981’s K9 and Company. Producer John Nathan-Turner clearly intended this 50-minute special, which buddied up Doctor Who’s shooty dog thing with one-time companion Sarah Jane Smith, to kickstart a full series, only episode 2 never came. It would take another 25 years before Doctor Who’s first long-run spinoff, the adult-skewed Torchwood. The next year, The Sarah Jane Adventures debuted, and RTD’s master plan was clear. There was Sarah Jane over on CBBC for the kiddies, Torchwood on BBC Three for the older teens and grown-ups, and BBC One’s Doctor Who sitting comfortably in the middle. Sadly, both programmes failed to survive for long after RTD’s exit from the mother show. Sarah-Jane was put to bed in 2011 after its star Elisabeth Sladen sadly died from cancer, while Torchwood bowed out the same year with Miracle Day, an ambitious, if flawed, co-production between the BBC and Starz in America. The only small-screen spinoff to launch during Steven Moffat’s stewardship was the late and unlamented Class, a Patrick Ness-authored, Buffy-aping teen show centred around the remonikered Coal Hill Academy in East London. Class may have been canned after just eight episodes, but, like Torchwood, it had an afterlife of sorts over at Big Finish, the company that has, since 1999, been producing official audio-only Doctor Who dramas. If you look at what Disney is doing with its Marvel and Star Wars titles, as well as what Paramount is executing with Star Trek, that is creating a tapestry of shows and movies, often with characters and narratives that bleed into each other – well, Big Finish has been doing this for yonks. Outside of its centrepiece range, there have been spinoffs featuring Jago and Litefoot, the Paternoster Gang, the War Doctor, the Counter-Measures team, the Doctor’s daughter, Lady Christina de Souza, UNIT and River Song, and that’s before we’ve even got to its soon-to-launch runs for Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor and Sacha Dhawan’s Master. Is this model, or a more modest version of it anyway, similar to what Russell has mapped out for television Who? He may have been joshing when he posited The Nyssa Adventures but can we expect any off-shoots featuring characters from the ‘63-’89 era? We know two (at least!) legacy companions that are back for Jodie Whittaker's farewell this autumn, and maybe, just maybe, that episode will act as a backdoor pilot for a standalone series... Tegan & Ace: Defenders of the Earth maybe? What about Ian Chesterton: OAP at Large or Jo Grant Investigates? CSI: Pease Pottage, anyone? We’ve endured some agonisingly long waits between seasons these past years. How boss would it have been to have those months filled with a glut of series and specials set in the Whoniverse? Heck, they don’t even need to be tethered to the continuity of the TV show. Have a bottle episode featuring Paul McGann’s Doctor set before he regenerated on Karn. Bring Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie and Matt Lucas back for a six-part event series set during season 10. Make that Matt Smith TV movie to show us what he got up to on Trenzalore. Fans hate waiting, we’re not built for it. Trekkies in the US might have shed a tear when Discovery season 4 signed off on 17th March, but hey, there was little time for blubbing, because Strange New Worlds was little under two months away. Likewise, if you’re an MCU junkie disappointed that Moon Knight is over, don’t be, because there’s Ms Marvel and She-Hulk on the horizon. Sad that The Book of Boba Fett is done? Cheer up, here’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, and have some Andor while you’re at it. Russell T Davies and the BBC clearly want Doctor Who to tickle that cultural G-spot like it did in the late '00s. Compared to its sci-fi stablemates, Doctor Who’s status as a brand without a family of inter-connected series around it has looked rather archaic of late. Russell has surely been hired as much for his business and marketing nous as for his hotshot skills at the keyboard. He knows that for Doctor Who to be relevant again it needs an ecosystem of shows of various shapes and sizes to pack some muscle onto that faltering brand. Course, we’re not just talking about the small screen here. The BBC Sounds-produced Redacted has shown how Doctor Who can be bent into new, exciting shapes after 59 years as a (mostly) TV-only programme. There’s room for all manner of Who in this brave new broadcasting world – podcast stories, animated Who (Paramount has recently targeted younger audiences with Star Trek: Prodigy), one-shot movies, limited run serials, series with multi-season arcs… Something for every corner of Doctor Who’s fanbase. And who knows? Maybe there’s a planning document somewhere in the depths of Bad Wolf with ‘The Nyssa Adventures’ scrawled on the front. Anybody know what Sarah Sutton’s plans are for the rest of the year? Doctor Who returns to BBC One this autumn and is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide. The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now – subscribe now and get the next 12 issues for only £1. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times podcast with Jane Garvey.
Is it time for Doctor Who to embrace the multiverse?
Multiverse movies are all the rage in 2022, but what could the concept of different universes mean for Doctor Who?
The multiverse, the OED dependably informs us, is “a hypothetical space or realm consisting of a number of universes, of which our own universe is only one". Of course, we barely need telling that now. These days, we’re all multiverse experts. We’ve had Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, where a gaggle of Spider-Men, Spider-Women and, erm, a Spider-Pig from different universes bunch up to save our reality from the Kingpin. Then there was last month’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, which deftly retconned Sam Raimi’s and Marc Webb’s Spidey movies into the MCU. And arriving later this year is Andy Muschietti’s The Flash, which will introduce Ben Affleck’s Batman to Michael Keaton’s Caped Crusader, forging some connective tissue between the DCEU and Tim Burton’s duplet of Bat movies. Add to that, Marvel’s upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Michelle Yeoh starring as a woman who exists across multiple realities in March’s Everything Everywhere All at Once and 2022, it seems, is shaping up as the year of the multiverse. With that in mind, and given that the most recent series hinted at the possibility of other universes, is Doctor Who ready to embrace its own limitless possibilities? Despite its lengthy TV life, the show has only dabbled with parallel universes, as this multiverse thing used to be called. Third Doctor story Inferno had the Doctor and Liz shifted to a parallel Earth where the normally homey UNIT is now a fascistic military force headed up by the murderous Brigade Leader, while 2006’s Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel had the TARDIS materialising in a Britain where zeppelins pepper the sky, and Jackie Tyler is a moneyed fashionista with a Yorkshire Terrier named Rose. As the Tenth Doctor mused a few episodes later, “There are billions of parallel universes all stacked up against each other.” It’s odd then that the show has had so little time for these billions of alternate universes. If, as the Doctor told Jackie, "every single decision we make creates a parallel existence", it’s probably safe to say there’s a universe where Sarah Jane Smith decided against investigating the disappearance of those scientists in The Time Warrior, so never met the Doctor and was never gifted K9 or adopted Luke. There’s likely a universe where the Hartnell Doc never did quit Gallifrey and graduated instead into one of those handsomely-collared Time Lord bureaucrats our Doctor loathed so much. Maybe there’s even one where there’s a Brigadier John Benton calling the shots at UNIT. The multiverse concept opens up a myriad of storytelling possibilities for Doctor Who. Just as the MCU-attached Tom Holland Spider-Man films have now made the previously unconnected Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield movies part of the same Marvel Studios continuity, could TV Doctor Who somehow find a way to make the 1960s Dalek movies canon? After all, Jennie Linden and Roberta Tovey are both still with us. Could our Doctor meet an older Barbara and Susan and be told about a universe where an old man named Dr Who independently invented a time travelling machine he named TARDIS? Could Peter Cushing’s Doctor finally be made legit? With No Way Home positing that characters with the same name and same basic destiny don’t necessarily have to look alike (or indeed be played by the same actor), this could open the door to recasting classic era characters, without it upsetting continuity nuts. Nu Who has often resorted to clunky justifications to explain any physical differences when heritage characters have turned up. 2007’s Time Crash explained away the Fifth Doctor looking 20 years older because, as the Tenth says, “the two of us together… shorted out the time differential.” Twice Upon A Time, meanwhile, rationalises David Bradley not looking completely like William Hartnell by having the Twelfth Doctor tell him: “You're mid-regeneration, aren't you? Your face, it's all over the place!” Yet a multiverse would allow Doctor Who to tell stories with a brand new First, Second, Third, or whatever Doctor, without needing contorted explanations as to why they don’t look exactly like they used to. It would give the show freedom to cast a fresh Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, a new Sarah Jane Smith, a different Vislor Turlough, and allow its makers to radically reimagine some of those classic era characters. And with actors who are still alive, there’s the chance to welcome them back into the Doctor Who fold. If Russell T Davies ever has the 14th Doctor popping in on Rose and the metacrisis Doctor in that parallel reality, who else could he people that universe with? Is there a nonagenarian Ian Chesterton out there, one who didn’t follow Susan home that night in 1963? Could there be a Tegan Jovanka whose car didn’t break down in 1981 and is still asking passengers if they want “chicken or beef”? Consider a Polly Wright who, after getting out of the secretarial game in the 1960s, became one of the world’s most celebrated fashion designers… And maybe there’s an Ace somewhere who didn’t create a time storm in her bedroom, and escaped Perivale in a far less dramatic manner. What kind of life would she have had if she hadn’t crossed paths with the Doctor on Svartos? When fans talk of what makes Doctor Who great, they often refer to the “flexibility of the format”. Imagine how much more narratively limber Doctor Who could be by exploring the unending potential of the multiverse. It means nagging continuity slips can be explained away (three explanations for the destruction of Atlantis? Hey, it was three different universes!), and it means old Doctors can theoretically return without some convoluted reason as to why they look x amount of years older. Hell, we could totally buy it that the Curator was a parallel universe version of the Fourth Doctor, who never did fall from Jodrell Bank. Doctor Who’s mythology is already immense after close to 60 years – but embracing the multiverse could make it infinitely bigger. Doctor Who: Legend of the Sea Devils comes to BBC One this Spring. For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide.
Superman & Lois review: Full of sincerity and old-world optimism
Despite an awkward title, this charming superhero story is a great acquisition by the BBC.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a proper Superman TV series. Sure, there was Smallville, but it was only in that show’s closing episodes that Tom Welling finally donned the blue and red, so it barely counts. No, we have to go all the way back to 1993 for the last show to feature all those classic Supes tropes, from flowing capes to heat vision to Perry White slamming his fist on a desk. The CW’s latest entry in the now-seven show-strong Arrowverse shares a near-title with that ABC series, though Lois & Clark trips off the tongue somewhat easier than the clunky Superman & Lois. But where that gleefully campy classic refashioned Superman as a Hallmark movie dream date, this latest Super-series defines itself by its sincerity and old-world optimism. Though it nods to the present day (The Daily Planet, once a muscular force for good in the world of journalism, has been stripped bare by its new owner Morgan Edge, while Smallville is now the kind of decimated rust belt town that powered Trump’s rise), its unironic, earnest tone feels like it’s been beamed in from another decade. Whereas Zack Snyder’s movies forever struggled to find a way of making their Man of Steel relevant in the 21st century, this series, developed by Arrowverse titans Greg Berlanti and Todd Helbing, posits the question: what if Superman’s greatest challenge wasn’t defeating Lex Luthor or Brainiac, but simply how to be a good father? It’s one thing to put on a klutzy mask for your work colleagues, but something else entirely to pretend to your teenage twins that you’re an unremarkable, milquetoast parent, 24/7. "Dad can’t put up a Christmas tree without falling off the ladder," scoffs Jonathan, the quarterback brother who Lois and Clark quietly think may have inherited his pa’s powers. They’re not looking at all at poor Jordan (why, we wonder, didn’t the Arrowverse bigwigs name the brothers Joe and Jerry, after Superman’s famously ill-treated creators?) whose social anxiety and all-round geekiness make him more Jimmy Olsen than Kal-El. It’s all misdirection, of course – it’s not the strapping, square-jawed Jonathan who was born with the Krypton gene, but his introverted, sports-hating twin. The brothers uncover their dad’s real identity by discovering the ship that brought him to Earth all those years ago hidden beneath the Kent farm. While the series slightly fluffs their reaction to this reality-rocking revelation (one foot-stamping burst of 'why didn’t you tell us?!' before they’re off partying like nothing’s happened), it’s fun to see Jordan’s goggle-eyed reactions to his father’s secret life, including being taken to the Fortress of Solitude and being introduced to his Kryptonian gramps (or rather a fuzzy AI version of him). If all this sounds terribly homespun and grounded, then, well, it mostly is. Although the series sits in the same universe as Legends Of Tomorrow and The Flash, Superman & Lois wears its fantasy clothes more lightly. It could prove a little too cute for some fans, while those that have been tempted in by its folksy naturalism may find the scenes where it goes full Snyder a bit of a turn off. Where Superman & Lois surprises is that the B-plot – which involves a mysterious, metal-clad big bad sabotaging nuclear power plants – would, in any other superhero series, be the headline act. But it’s the seemingly smaller stakes drama of Smallville being targeted by the same man who asset stripped The Daily Planet that’s the primary focus of these early episodes. And that storyline, as yet anyway, doesn’t require Clark to scoot to the nearest phone box. Of course, it’s been five years since Tyler Hoechlin first debuted as the Man of Steel in sister series Supergirl, so this has been a long time coming. He may lack Christopher Reeve’s boyish twinkle, but there’s a warm, Golden Age Hollywood quality about him that’s perfect for Clark. Get the tone wrong, and Superman can come across as cheesy and anachronous, but Hoechlin manages to nail the character’s decency and virtuousness without it becoming too cornball. If the series has a failing, it’s that it sometimes struggles to reconcile its generally measured pace and grounded tone with those high-octane, CGI-blitzed moments. It’s kinda like getting a blast of Blink 182 in the middle of a Norah Jones number. Hopefully, as the series goes on, it’ll manage to marry those disparate plotlines a bit more, because at the moment it feels like those scenes with metal suit man belong to a totally different series.After nearly 84 years and 60 years after the first Superman telly show, Superman & Lois has managed what seemed almost almost impossible, to find a new and invigorating context for DC’s most iconic superhero. It’s still got a terrible title though. Superman and Lois airs on BBC One on Saturday nights, and the entire series is available as a box set on BBC iPlayer after the first episode debuts on Saturday 4th December. For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page and our full TV Guide.
As the Robinsons face off with SAR and try to save Alpha Centauri, here's our recap of every big moment. **CONTAINS SPOILERS**
So it’s finally over. Three seasons, 28 episodes, and a truckload of peril. It’s satisfying to be able to write that Lost in Space got to conclude its story, as that’s not something the original series ever managed. The 1960s version lasted three seasons, too, but was retired before its makers had a chance to finish off the Robinsons’ tale. Luckily, that’s not the case this time. "From the beginning, we've always viewed this particular story of the Robinsons as a trilogy," showrunner Zack Estrin said last year. "A three-part epic family adventure with a clear beginning, middle and end.” Whether it really was always the case that Lost in Space would climax with its third season, there’s little to suggest that its makers have had to rush to tie things up. It’s been a largely successful season and its final episode, ‘Trust’, packs a decent emotional punch. Sure, a few characters feel desperately underserved, but that’s a problem inherent for a show with a cast as overspilling as this one. The episode kicks off with Alpha Centauri already under attack from the robots, while Smith is stalking the hospital with the aim of murdering her old nemesis, Captain Radic, who’s there in a medically-induced coma. That’s the plan, anyway, until Robot interrupts her with a “Help, Dr Smith”. “Help who?” she asks, but it becomes clear Robot means her as he reaches out to take the syringe from her. Meanwhile, Will, Penny and Judy have been sent away to the planet’s copper mine, for safety, supposedly. But the convoy of chariots is stopped when an army of robots land in front of them. It’s then that Will figures out what the invaders are after – it’s the engine from SAR’s ship, which the robots plan to use as a bomb. An incapacitated Will (he’s still recovering from his heart transplant) tells Penny she must keep the engine away from the robots. “It’s got to be you,” he tells his sister. “You’re smart, brave, and you’re stronger than you think.” Penny saves an injured robot, names it Sally (“You look like a Sally,” she tells it, though it really doesn’t) and faces up to SAR and his army, with a gaggle of newly emancipated robots behind them. Will travels on the Jupiter 2 with Dr Smith, but his new artificial heart begins to fail him. Robot saves Will, apparently destroying itself in the process. Later, Dr Smith confides in Will that the Robot saved her when she was about “to do something you can’t come back from”. John and Maureen face the remaining robots, including SAR, but fail to kill him. At the last minute, the others arrive, including Will, whom SAR attempts to stab. “He knew you’d go for my heart again,” Robinson Jr says, and with that, Robot’s data is transferred, killing SAR and reviving Robot in the process. The final moments of the episode show life after that dramatic showdown. Maureen and Don are spending most of their time, it seems, in orbit, constructing a new ship to replace the Resolute, while John is just chilling on Alpha Centauri (“they say soldiers, more than anyone else, appreciate the value of peace,” Penny tells us in a voiceover). Judy is working in the medical facility now and Dr Smith is finally in custody after delivering a confession to a now-awake Radic. The episode's final scene takes place around the Robinsons’ dinner table, with the family (plus Don) tucking in to a hearty meal while Will tells them of his plan to explore the galaxy, with Robot by his side. View oEmbed on the source website Given the sheer weight of characters in this show, it’s only to be expected that some feel neglected in this final episode. Judy, so prominent in the early part of this season, has little to do here, while Don, although allowed a few hero moments, is still Mr Comic Relief. In fact, Will aside, it’s Penny who has the greatest arc here, having come the farthest from the timid, bookish creature we first met back in season one. Apart from Penny adding ‘Of Chapter One’ after ‘The End’ in her book, this appears to be the final full stop on the Lost in Space story. Not that there’s no spin-off potential here - that tantalising closing shot of Will and Robot looking out over an exotic alien world suggests there’s mileage in a smaller Robinson story, should Netflix ever decide to greenlight Chapter Two. Heck, we’d even take a Don West sitcom sequel. Even if there is no spin-off, let’s applaud Lost in Space for actually getting the Robinsons home. Neither the original series, nor the 1998 movie managed that. Lost in Space season three is streaming on Netflix now. For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide.
Lost in Space season 3 review: Netflix sci-fi's final outing is the show at its best
As the Robinsons and Robot face their final challenge, it's a strong end for the Netflix sci-fi series. **CONTAINS FULL SEASON 3 SPOILERS**
Well, this has been a long time coming. Sadly, we on Earth didn’t have the option of going into cryogenic suspension after the cliffhanger ending of Lost in Space season two in 2019, so it’s been an agonising two-year wait to find out what happened after the robots’ attack on the Resolute and after the Jupiter escaped through that rift. Given that two years is a long wait in production time and that child actors grow up fast, season three picks up some time after that season two closer. It’s Will (played by the ever-excellent Maxwell Jenkins) who’s aged the most noticeably, with a newly broken voice and having shot up a good few inches (even Dr Smith acknowledges he’s now taller than she is). Having the 97 children parted from the adults for a full year means these kids have matured a lot in that time, and it’s been Judy who’s been keeping them together. With the adults elsewhere and much of the first few episodes here focusing on the teens, much of season three has more of a YA vibe than ever before. And be warned because this is a full spoiler review. It takes a few episodes for the Robinsons to be reunited, and by mid-season, season three Lost in Space feels much like season one Lost in Space. It’s here that the gang speculate why the robots have recently scanned, but not killed Don (“like they were trying to guess my price at a supermarket,” he quips). It turns out that the human body is, at an atomic level, regularly impacted by its environment (“some scientists think this makes our bodies like a point on the map of the universe,” points out Maureen) and that by following these cosmic breadcrumbs anyone with the right technology can travel to wherever that person has visited. And Don has been to Alpha Centauri. Desperate to stop the Robots from setting off to the humans’ new home, Will confronts SAR and is stabbed through the heart. With the teenager close to death, the Jupiter sets off to alert the colonists of the imminent attack. While there, Will is given an artificial heart, while John and Maureen are told, to their horror, that the planet has no defence system. Later, it turns out there **is** one, and it’s Hastings (a wonderfully oily Douglas Hodge) who knows how to access it. The downside is that it can only be activated with a list of random words spoken out loud by just one man – the deceased Ben Adler. Compiling an audio file of the command words, extracted from various voicemails and videos of Adler before he died, the colonists manage to trigger the planet’s defence system, but the Robots still manage to get through. It’s Will who works out what they’re after – it’s the alien engine from SAR’s ship, which the robots plan to use as a bomb. With Will’s health failing, Robot repairs his artificial heart, seemingly destroying himself in the process. But when Will confronts SAR, the robot attempts once again to kill him, stabbing him in the chest. “He knew you’d go for my heart again,” Will says, and with that, Robot’s data is transferred, killing SAR and reviving Robot in the process. An epilogue tells us that the robots that escaped their programming left Alpha Centauri, not telling the humans where they were going. “Now they’re writing their own commands, they’re all different,” Penny writes in her book. “Just like we are.” And so that’s it. Three seasons and 28 episodes of Lost in Space finally wrapped up. While never being one of Netflix’s premiere-league series, it was a solidly unpretentious and broad-appeal sci-fi show and this final season has shown it at its best. There’s some truly jaw-slackening special effects work here, particularly in the closing showdown between the humans and the robots – CGI work that wouldn’t shame the final reel of an MCU movie. Sure, the dialogue has often been cheesier than a Dairylea triangle and Robot generally had more depth than many of the show’s flesh and blood characters (hello John Robinson), but it’s been a fun ride these past three and a half years, and showrunner Zack Estrin always managed to make each season distinct. Though the ending doesn’t specifically point to a sequel or spinoff (aside from Penny’s adding of ‘Of Chapter One’ after writing ‘The End’ in her book), it’d be good to catch up with the Robinsons a few years, or even decades, down the line. Its warm, feel-good heart is something that’s missing in much small screen sci-fi – and in that way, Lost in Space will be sorely missed. Lost in Space season three is now streaming on Netflix. For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide.
Who Killed Sara season 2's ending explained: What did that final scene mean?
The Netflix drama's season two finale had a twist at the end – which may be game-changing.
So, after 18 episodes, the answer to ‘who killed Sara?’ is… well, we’re still not sure. For a while in season two’s dramatic, fiery finale, it looked like we’d been gifted an answer – it was Marifer who slashed the rope that led to Sara’s death 18 years before. Certainly she believes she was to blame, confessing all to Álex and Elisa before being hit by a falling piece of casino ceiling. Then, in a last minute twist, we cut to Nicandro rifling through a filing cabinet in an undisclosed location. As he opens one of its files, we see a picture of Dr Alanis, Sara’s psychiatrist, and then a photo of Sara with the words ‘SG - First patient of the project’ written on the back. “Dr Alanis,” we hear Nicandro say, “the money is in your bank account, just like my father promised. I’m very glad you accepted the money, instead of risking your life.” He goes to tell him, “Let [Álex] believe that [Marifer] is the murderer. No one can know that we were behind it. There’s too much at stake. Is that clear, doctor?” Of course, the big question now is: what is this mysterious project and what does or did Sara have to do with it? We know that Sara was, in Dr Alanis’ words, a “paranoid schizophrenic”, so was the ‘project’ she was a part of something to do with that? And what is Nicandro’s role in all this? He mentions his father in that closing voiceover, but – as far as we know – we haven’t met him yet. In fact, Nicandro’s role in this season, as in season one, has been pretty minimal. In the first season, even in the flashback scenes, he seemed a character on the peripheries of the action, and his role in season two looked to be fairly straightforward – he was a street-level drug dealer who got screwed over by Sara who then tried to kill him by cutting the brakes on his motorbike. But it appears something even more sinister was going on… Of course, this wasn’t the only cliffhanger for season two. We also saw Chema hand himself in, confessing to the murder of Moncho and – somewhat bizarrely – Sara’s father Abel from 18 years before (even though we know it was Cesar who committed that crime). With both witnesses to Moncho’s killing – Lorenzo and Clare – now dead, it appears that Chema (who still looks like Bradley Cooper playing Matthew McConaughey) might be in for a lengthy stretch. It’s difficult to know how he can get out of this one. We’re certainly in a different place, storywise, now than we were at the beginning of the season. For the latest news and expert tips on getting the best deals this year, take a look at our Black Friday 2021 and Cyber Monday 2021 guides. Cesar is legally dead, and living it up on some sun-kissed island somewhere, Rodolfo has, despite losing his wife and stepson, finally found some balls, Elisa has burned down the casino in an act of defiance against her family and Alex believes he’s solved the mystery of Sara’s murder. On top of that, Lorenzo, Clara, Sergio, Elroy and (possibly) Marifer are all dead, Mariana has been left sobbing in her mansion, while torturing herself for her many sins with a cilice that she wears round her leg, and Sara, we’ve learned, was a homicidal sociopath with a different father to Álex (but the same father as Marifer). With so many cliffhangers and rug-pulls, this season finale has proved considerably more game-changing than season one’s closer. When Nicandro tells Dr Alanis, “No one can know that we were behind it,” it’s a puzzler – we certainly saw Marifer cut the rope, or at least *start* cutting it, so in what way was Nicandro involved? And what does he mean by ‘we’, unless Dr Alanis somehow ordered her death? Also, what clues can we glean from the Medusa logo on the front of the file Nicandro was looking at…? Whatever the answers are, we’ve come a long way from how this series started just two months ago, when the only thing we were asking was ‘who killed Sara?’. Eighteen episodes on, that almost seems like the least important question of all. Roll on season three. Who Killed Sara? season two is streaming now on Netflix, check out our guides to the best series on Netflix and best movies on Netflix, visit our Drama hub for more coverage, or find something to watch tonight with our TV Guide.
Jared Leto's Joker wasn't the problem – it's DC's Extended Universe that's the real failure
Leto's days playing the Clown Prince of Crime are reportedly "over" – but is he really to blame?
How many Jokers are too many? That’s the question Warner Bros. was no doubt asking when it green-lit Todd Phillips’ Joker origin movie, mere months after the release of David Ayers’ Suicide Squad misfire. Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is the third big-screen take on the character in just 11 years. And those 11 years have given us three very different interpretations of Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson’s Clown Prince of Crime. In many ways, Suicide Squad's Jared Leto had an impossible and unenviable task - to step into the clown shoes of an actor whose portrayal of the character won him critical acclaim, as well as a posthumous Oscar. Said actor, The Dark Knight's Heath Ledger, had it noticeably less hard. The previous big screen Joker had been in 1989 when a portly and clearly-past-his-prime Jack Nicholson had breathed three-dimensional life into Batman’s most famous foe. (How good would Nicholson have been if that Batman movie had been made around the time of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest?). As impressive as Nicholson was, Ledger’s deranged, origin-less Joker was soon labelled definitive. The first question marks over Suicide Squad’s take on the Joker came with those first released pictures. That tattoo reading ‘damaged’ on his forehead and that fluorescent green hair made him look more like a member of a rubbish punk band than a crazed criminal mastermind. In the event, Leto’s Joker had just 10 minutes of screen time in 2016's Suicide Squad. Both Leto and Ayer confirmed that much more footage was shot, suggesting that the Joker played a much more crucial role in earlier versions of the film. Despite this, Leto – who, it’s said, became completely absorbed by his character on the film, gifting a live rat to Harley Quinn actress Margot Robbie, bullets to Deadshot actor Will Smith and a dead pig to the rest of the cast – appeared to have been looking forward to future outings as the Joker. But Suicide Squad’s critical drubbing (the sequel, helmed by Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn, is said to be a soft reboot of the franchise, keeping all but a few of the first movie’s characters) and the poor audience reaction to Leto’s street hoodlum-like interpretation appears to have put the kibosh on further appearances. (He’s noticeably absent too from Warner’s forthcoming Harley Quinn-fronted Birds Of Prey movie). The Hollywood Reporter’s recent news story about Leto’s attempts to shut down production of Todd Phillips’ film suggests that Leto didn’t want a rival Joker out there – and, in many ways, it’s easy to understand his hurt. Recasting a role that he’d won just a year or so before looked to the world that Leto’s performance had in some ways failed. But the real failure, more than any individual performance in any of those movies, remains the concept of the DCEU (DC Extended Universe) itself. A run of critically derided, and commercially underperforming movies had forced Warner and DC to rethink its big-screen strategy and Joker would become the first DC Comics-inspired film to be green-lit outside of the continuity-driven DCEU. It was clearly never on the cards to drop Leto in Phillips’ origin movie. Had he been cast, not only would it have officially aligned Phillips’ splinter tale to a set of movies Warner was wishing away, but Joker’s reading of the character differed so greatly from the Suicide Squad interpretation that it would never have made sense to share an actor. In the comics, the Joker has been through various incarnations, with different writers reshaping him and his origin. Joker is a great film, but it’s got little in common with any DC iteration of the character. Hell, Joaquin Phoenix only appears in full Joker get-up for the final 15 minutes of the movie. It’s more an Arthur Fleck film than it is a Joker one. If Matt Reeves’ forthcoming Batman flick decides to cast its own Joker, that’s fine too. If the film was tonally and stylistically distinct from Joker, then there’s no reason that a new actor can’t come in and make the character his own. Because if Joker's epic box office has proven anything, it's that this new, more experimental approach works better for DC than attempting to ape Marvel's MCU. So whether he's to blame or not, Leto’s time as the clown prince of crime is most probably over. He’ll now be seen as the George Lazenby of Jokers, the one who didn’t quite cut the mustard. There’ll be other Jokers, for sure. And they’ll be as different from Joaquin Phoenix as he was from Jack Nicholson and as different as Jared Leto was from Heath Ledger. The Joker hasn't had his last laugh yet, not by a long chalk.