What's On
Quills at the ready!
The year in television, like the last few years in television before it, can best be summed up by the word “fragmentation”. There were so many shows, spread across so many platforms, that almost nobody watched exactly the same thing. As such, a quiz...
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‘There is more blood this time, I promise!’
For Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, making the K-drama’s mega-hit debut season was like pulling teeth. Literally. The stress of single-handedly writing and directing the global phenomenon caused him to lose six gnashers. With the feverishly...
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Cracking gnome, Gromit!
Ihave eyes just like Gromit’s. They’re in the palm of my hand. For the last hour, I’ve been trying to create a replica of the Wrong Trousers star’s head as part of a behind-the-scenes tour of his creators’ studio – Bristol’s Aardman. I’ve rolled white...
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The power and the glory Welcome back to the mad, bad and terrifying chaos of war
It is 1943 and Major Paddy Mayne is about to find himself in charge of the Special Air Services, soon to be renamed the Special Raiding Squadron, as they push on to Europe. But first he must smash up a hotel bar in Cairo, before instigating a massive...
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‘If you’re angry with your relatives, this is the show to go for’
It has happened almost by stealth, and so incrementally that it might easily have passed without comment, but at last the truth can be revealed: Keira Knightley is out to monopolise Christmas. “Yes, I am planning to take it over,” she confirms...
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‘A great bunch of huns!’
Most sitcoms don’t imply that the lead character has died twice in the first 15 minutes. Most sitcoms don’t have an entire episode spoofing the film Titanic. And, even if they did, most sitcoms would not dress one of the main characters as the...
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‘To live shamelessly is how I want to be’
When the Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill moved to London in 2016, it was the week after the EU referendum. “For my partner at the time, who was British, it was a devastating kind of discombobulation,” Tannahill says. “It shattered not just his...
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‘It’s like Pringles – once you pop you can’t stop!’
It was the vase moment that did it. The first series of short-form romcom Cheaters truly took off when undersexed Zack, played by Jack Fox, overheard his wife in bed with another man. Surprised to find himself becoming aroused, he began pleasuring...
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‘Children don’t naturally respect me’
At one point in the first episode of Junior Taskmaster, a child takes a felt-tip pen to Mike Wozniak’s face. It’s quite the feat, seeing as they’re standing 6ft away, using a long-handled litter picker to grip the marker. But what’s even more...
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‘This one’s much darker’
It is a treacherous landscape, the set of Wolf Hall, which sits under grey clouds beside Wells Cathedral. Outside in the field, production vans spin their wheels and horses kick up mud. Inside, the Bishop’s Palace is mined with cables, scaffold and...
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‘She still sleeps in the bed she was tied to’
Nick Stevens is remembering the first time he met Delia Balmer, the only known survivor of serial killer John Sweeney, whose story he wanted to dramatise. The meeting went very badly. “She was half an hour late,” recalls the screenwriter. “She wouldn’t...
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‘It’s a bit like Trump – how do you satirise something so ludicrous?’
As the man behind some of the greatest comedies of all time (The Day Today, I’m Alan Partridge, The Thick of It), it’s safe to say Armando Iannucci knows his way around a TV set. But even he was left bewildered by his latest project. The Franchise –...
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‘Three years I wore the same trousers!’
‘It’s been a while since I’ve had a suit made for me and it’s a real difference,” says Lennie James. “I can see why fellas do it.” He’s not actually wearing a suit; he’s dressed almost anonymously casual when we meet. But in his new BBC drama Mr...
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