‘Henry VIII is a serial killer and abuser’: why is Britain still so obsessed with the Tudors?
England has long adopted the version of events informed by the Victorians’ biases and neuroses. But what is behind the flood of 21st-century retellings, including the new TV series The Mirror and the Light?
Zoe Williams
Tuesday 12 November 2024
The TV adaptation of the third of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall novels – The Mirror and the Light – arrived on Sunday on BBC One to rave reviews. “Six hours of magic” was the Guardian’s verdict. The series had been eagerly awaited, but nothing like as eagerly as the book itself. Mantel’s legions of fans waited eight years from the publication of Bring Up the Bodies for the finale to arrive in 2020.
How James Gandolfini’s addictions to alcohol and drugs caused chaos during filming of ‘The Sopranos’
In a new book, the locations manager on the emblematic HBO series reveals the difficulty of working with the actor who, despite everything, was a beloved presence on set
Emma D’Arcy in ‘House of the Dragon’ and Morfydd Clark in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’
‘Rings of Power’ vs ‘House of the Dragon’: Which show is winning the popularity battle?
Audience and social media data give a sense of the results of the confrontation between the two epic fantasies
NATALIA MARCOS
Madrid, 3 November 2022
It wasn’t a battle, but it was. It wasn’t, because there didn’t have to be a victor and a loser – both could have triumphed (and lost). But the simultaneous release ofHouse of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powerinevitably pitted them against one another. Now that the voyages back to Middle Earth and to Westeros have ended, and the first seasons are over, which has won in terms of popularity.
Harry Collett, Emma D'Arcy and Oscar Eskinazi, in a scene from the second season of 'House of the Dragon.'THEO WHITEMAN
War comes to ‘House of the Dragon’: ‘It’s a story about two women and it will continue to be until the end’
The second season of the ‘Game of Thrones’ spinoff delves into the confrontation between two sides of the Targaryen house. ‘We want to reward the audience for sticking with us,’ says showrunner Ryan Condal
NATALIA MARCOS Paris, 18 June 2024
The Dance of Dragons is about to begin. On one side, the Black Council, with Rhaenyra claiming her place on the Iron Throne. On the other, the Green Council, with Aegon on the throne, backed by his mother, Alicent Hightower. The rifts within the very broken Targaryen family have turned into gaping divides, accentuated by painful deaths. Tragedy struck at the end of the first season of House of the Dragon, the series that has returned to the phenomenon that was Game of Thrones to tell the past of this saga of dragon riders. The Dance of Dragons, the civil war in the Targaryen, is imminent and inevitable.
Jennifer Lopez in The Mother.Photograph: Eric Milner
What can we learn from Netflix’s biggest viewership data reveal ever?
The streaming platform has shared its most in-depth look at what their many subscribers have been watching
Jesse Hassenger
Wednesday 13 December 2013
I
n news that will excite anyone who spent a substantial chunk of their youth poring over the purple “Life” section of USA Today for Nielsen ratings and box office reports, Netflix has released a large chunk of its often-secret viewership data. The streaming service has long displayed shifting top 10 lists on its homepage, showing what’s currently most watched among their film and TV offerings. But this new data dump is an 18,000-row preadsheet cataloging data for just about any movie or TV show over the course of January through June of this year.
Pandora’s Box by Peter Biskind review – essential viewing
A sweeping but gossipy behind-the-scenes look at the off-screen dramas that made prestige TV
Rebeca Nicholson
Friday 24 November 2023
Peter Biskind is a cinema man. Best known for 1998’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and other books about the meaty, macho movie business, he has turned his attentions to the growth of streaming services and what might be the end of the current golden age of TV. The swaggering Pandora’s Box attempts to wrangle a complex tale into some sort of order, from the early days of prestige TV, to the high-stakes and seemingly bottomless business of “content creation”. But in the acknowledgments that conclude the book, Biskind still offers a secular prayer for the return of his preferred medium. “Movies, I hope, will one day make a comeback,” he writes. For now, television will have to do.
Retired actor David Caruso has resurfaced after stepping away from the Hollywood spotlight following his hit show “CSI: Miami.”
The 67-year-old was photographed out and about in a rare appearance on Nov. 15.
During the rare spotting, the “NYPD Blue” alum sported a denim jacket, a black tee and gray sweatpants as he pumped gas and took a walk in San Fernando Valley, California.
‘He was crippled by shame’ … Jason Isaacs as Cary Grant and Laura Aikman as Dyan Cannon in Archie.
‘Cary Grant’s whole life was a civil war’: the TV drama unmasking Hollywood’s permatanned icon
The mansion-dwelling megastar was born Archibald Leach and grew up in a squalid Bristol terrace believing his mother was dead. The stars and writer of Archie talk about his rise, shame and redemption
Mark Lawson Monday 13 November 2023
Freezing rain is lashing the roof of the movie-set trailer. Even with the heating on full, the conditions are still shivery. But Jason Isaacs is sporting the sort of deep tan that suggests months spent under fierce sun. Appropriately, given the role he’s playing, it’s fake. “They spray-paint me every single day,” the actor explains. “At the place I’m staying, I don’t know what the laundry thinks has been going on, with these dark brown sheets every morning.”
The graffiti on the left says: ‘Freedom … now in 3D’. The one on the right says: ‘Homeland is watermelon’ (which is slang for not to be taken seriously).
Photograph: Courtesy of the artists
'Homeland is racist': artists sneak subversive graffiti on to TV show
Street artists say they were asked to add authenticity to scenes of Syrian refugee camp, but took chance to air criticisms of show’s depiction of Muslim world
Three graffiti artists hired to add authenticity to refugee camp scenes in this week’s episode of Homeland have said they instead used their artwork to accuse the TV programme of racism.
In the second episode of the fifth season, which aired in the US and Australia earlier this week, and will be shown in the UK on Sunday, lead character Carrie Mathison, played by Claire Danes, can be seen striding past a wall daubed with Arabic script reading: “Homeland is racist.”
The mastermind casting director behind Peaky Blinders
By Emma Brown
October 30, 2017
If you are a fan of contemporary British film and television—not the lace and pomp PBS period pieces, but those gritty, award-dominating independent dramas—you’re almost definitely a fan of Shaheen Baig. Originally from Birmingham, smack dab in the middle of England, Baig is the casting director behind all four seasons of Peaky Blinders and films like Control (2007), Lady Macbeth (2016), and God’s Own Country (2017).
Best friends: Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kristin Davis in And Just Like That. Photograph: HBO Max
And Just Like That: first trailer for Sex and the City sequel series
The return of the beloved HBO comedy drama will see the friends navigate a brave new world – but Kim Cattrall will not be there
Benjamin Lee Friday 12 November 2021
The first look at the much-anticipated Sex and the City follow-up has arrived, a 10-part series called And Just Like That.
The latest installment of the hit franchise follows six seasons and two movies, telling the story of women dealing with sex, work and romance in New York, breaking new ground when it started back in 1998. And Just Like That reunites Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis, but their fellow co-star Kim Cattrall decided not to return.
Joan Bakewell tells her side of the story about her affair with Harold Pinter
In response to Pinter’s hit 1978 play Betrayal, which chronicled their relationship, Bakewell wrote Keeping in Touch – which is to be aired on Radio 4
Published:
When Joan Bakewell embarked on an eight-year affair with the playwright Harold Pinter in the 1960s, she never suspected he would make a play out of it. But then he wrote Betrayal and sent it to Bakewell for her comments. Her first response was horror.
Dame Joan Bakewell has been a leading broadcaster, journalist and author since the 1960s, when comedian Frank Muir dubbed her “the thinking man’s crumpet”. Now 86, she was awarded a life peerage in 2011 and took the title Baroness Bakewell of Stockport to reflect her Northern upbringing. She has been married twice and famously had an eight-year affair from 1962 with playwright Harold Pinter, which inspired his 1978 play Betrayal. Bakewell lives alone in Primrose Hill, North London, and has two children from her first marriage, Harriet, 59, and Matthew, 57 and six grandchildren, aged 18-26.
24 MARCH 20019
My day begins with a rigid routine that gradually gets ragged as the day continues. The alarm goes off at 6.50am, which gives me time to fetch a cup of tea and come back to bed to listen to the Radio 4 news at 7am. I have Earl Grey – always decaffeinated because I have a lot of adrenaline of my own. I’ve not had caffein for at least ten years, so if I ever have it these days without knowing I’m as high as a kite.
He was the terrifying stick-up man who loved his gran, shopped in his pyjamas and tenderly kissed his boyfriend. We remember Omar’s great scenes – and pay tribute to Michael K Williams, the actor who brought him to life
Paul Owen
Tuesday 7 September 2021
P
laying stick-up man Omar Little on The Wire, Michael K Williams was tough, frightening and brutal – his face scarred, his smile wide, toting a shotgun and wearing a long trenchcoat. So viewers of David Simon’s intricate TV portrait of Baltimore’s streets, docks, schools and politics felt the rug pulled from under them when they first saw him kiss his boyfriend in episode four of season one.
Translating Game of Thrones into Turkish: The Man who Brought Jon Snow to Turkey
POSTED ON MAY 4, 2016
Asher Kohn
Asher was born in Indiana and raised in Chicago, so he thought he understood the concept of “flat” before he landed in Ashgabat in 2007. He did not. Time as an exchange student at Bogazici University made him fall in love with the Turkic world; a love that not even law school could shutter. Asher focuses his research on land use and disuse in West and Central Asia. If that sounds broad, you should hear about his other interests.
Novelist Julie Myerson seen in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK 16/09/2003 COPYRIGHT PHOTO BY MURDO MACLEOD All Rights Reserved Tel + 44 131 669 9659 Mobile +44 7831 504 531 Email: m@murdophoto.com STANDARD TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY see for details: www.murdophoto.com No syndication, no redistrubution, Murdo Macleod's repro fees apply international book writers author books Edinburgh myerson fiction julie Photograph: Murdo Macleod
The Cuban missile crisis stalks the close of series 2. As Sterling Cooper's staff – unsure that the world will still be there on Monday – hurry home to be with loved ones, Pete is touched to find Peggy "still here", and offers her a drink.
They sit there on the sofa, knee to knee, her coat clutched on her lap, whisky tumblers in their hands and – emboldened by the apocalyptic atmosphere – he asks her why "you never let me talk about what I want to talk about?" She does the Peggy Face – amused, intelligent, mistrustful. He takes a risk then and tells her that she's "perfect", and that he loves her. And you can't help it, your heart jumps. It's what we've wanted him to tell her for a long time.
Peggy replies that she's not perfect. Then she shuts her eyes and tells him the truth. That she could have had him in her life, could have shamed him into being with her. She tells him that she had his baby "and gave it away" because she "wanted other things".
Pete's face is a picture of terror and bewilderment. Peggy tries to explain further, but Pete can't, or won't, take it in. "Why would you tell me this?" he wonders. He means it. Before she leaves, Peggy touches him briefly on the shoulder. You glimpse a single tear standing in his eye.
The scene is crushing. Part of its power lies in what has preceded it – the atmosphere of quiet panic as the world waits for darkness to descend. But it's also Pete. Self-seeking, self-loathing, supremely ill at ease with himself, and on a perpetual quest for something he does not understand, he's by far the most compelling character in the show.
He knows he used Peggy when he slept with her, but he's paid an unexpected price by falling in love with her. He recognises her worth (and we like him for that) but you sense that she will remain mysterious to him for ever.
When I first watched this episode, I didn't know what moved me most: Pete's loss, Peggy's loss – because it is a loss – or the helplessness of the whole world. Or maybe just those brisk, empty and forlorn brown spaces which are the Mad Men offices – evoking passions unspoken, truths denied and the loneliness and futility of so many frustrated lives and hearts.
