Viewers have been kept waiting for a second outing of Back, David Mitchell and Robert Webb’s bitingly funny Channel 4 sitcom, which returned to our screens at the end of last month.
The delay had nothing to do with a lack of commissioning courage – how could anyone find fault with the filth and comic fury of Simon Blackwell’s scripts, the ever-watchable Mitchell and Webb or the fantastic ensemble cast?
As a movement director, Polly Bennett has carved out a niche recreating famous figures in productions such as Bohemian Rhapsody, Stan & Ollie and The Crown. But the remit of the role is very broad.
What does the job involve?
The Receipts Podcast presenter Tolani Shoneye joins co-host and friend Gena-mour Barrett – who works for Netflix – on the streaming service’s rebranded podcast, previously called What to Watch on Netflix.
The duo trawl through 32,600 hours of content on Netflix (though they may have fast-forwarded parts of the catalogue…) to the must-see shows for ultimate escapism, from big hitters to the hidden gems.
There is, surely, no more fitting comfort comedy for lockdown than The Good Life, a tale of stay-at-home self-sufficiency. Tom and Barbara Good were the original artisan couple: sowing spuds, brewing booze and weaving wool.
The 1970s BBC sitcom was created by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, friends since their Clapham schooldays, who had already created one comedy classic, ITV’s Please Sir!. That starred John Alderton as an idealistic English teacher at a tough secondary school.
Almost every minute of every day used to be very different. Now, what I’m doing might still vary all the time, but each day starts pretty much the same as they have done since last March: heading to my home office after wrangling the kids to start their home schooling.
Television glitter should lift many spirits brought low by this year’s Christmas comedown as RuPaul’s Drag Race UK returns for a second series in January. Good news for fans of the raucous and rude BBC Three show – and for the people that make it.
Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey met at NYU film school in the mid-1980s, performed as a gloriously camp electro-pop duo, The Fabulous Pop Tarts, and went on to found World of Wonder Productions in 1991.
"This is my perfect job.” During more than 40 years in television, Gary Davey has worked across the board – from taking charge of all content and creative services at Sky Germany, to being the CEO of Hong Kong-based Star TV.
But it is only now, as CEO of Sky Studios, that he feels like he is in his dream role: as “the gamekeeper turned poacher – having been a broadcaster all my life and now being a supplier”.
As this RTS exploration of powerful moments in TV political interviews unfolded, it quickly became clear just how extraordinary 2020 has been, even in an era of jaw-dropping statements from politicians and startling TV encounters.
At first glance, the outlook looks less than sunny for traditional broadcasters faced with competition from Netflix and the other streamers. Dig a little deeper and the situation looks a lot more nuanced.
That was the main takeaway from the second of two Steve Hewlett Scholarship debates, “British broadcasting in crisis?”, organised jointly by the RTS and Media Society.
On the eve of the publication of Ofcom’s much-anticipated review of public service broadcasting (PSB), big names from the BBC and Channel 4, past and present, discussed whether British broadcasting was in crisis.
Ofcom warned that PSB is unlikely to survive in the online world without an overhaul of broadcasting regulation. It said that the public service broadcasters – the BBC, ITV, STV, Channel 4, S4C and Channel 5 – could also fulfil their obligations online, and that the public service remit could be extended to the big streamers.
