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Jj Abrams: the man who boldly goes… | profile
13 hours ago
The director has covered most genres in his wildly successful work in the cinema and on TV. But it is as king of the blockbuster that he will reign with the release of the new Star Trek, before he turns his talents to the latest Star Wars movie
Hollywood loves to categorise people. As every actor and director knows, it is all too easy to get pigeonholed on the back of a single successful film or an early role taken purely to pay the bills. Inside many daytime soap stars are Shakespeareans longing to play Hamlet. Perhaps some of the best action film directors, in their dark moments of the soul, will be kept awake at night by a gnawing urge to direct a low-budget independent film of deep artistic worth.
This is, after all, the industry that developed the star system, whose scripts are ruthlessly fine-tuned to appeal to »
- Paul Harris
Nottingham fame academy behind success of BBC hit show The Village
13 hours ago
Many of the talented child actors in The Village learned their craft at the Television Workshop, which doesn't have the kudos of the big London stage schools but is enjoying a golden moment
For years, pupils from well-known London stage schools have bagged many of the meatiest television roles for children. Now boys and girls from a low-key Saturday-morning acting workshop in Nottingham are redressing the balance.
When the second episode of The Village is screened tonight on BBC1, it will be watched with particular interest by many in Nottingham and the east Midlands. Alongside the stars – Maxine Peake, John Simm and Juliet Stevenson – in this grand epic about a century of rural life, the cast includes five members of the area's unofficial fame academy, the Television Workshop.
Aged eight to 19, they are headed by Bill Jones, 12, who in his first TV role plays Bert Middleton, a bullied and poverty-stricken farmer's son. »
- Maggie Brown
Rewind TV: The Village; Jonathan Creek; Game of Thrones – review
13 hours ago
The Village proved an antidote to Downton while Jonathan Creek was an all-star treat and Game of Thrones topped off a perfect week for drama
The Village (BBC1) | iPlayer
Jonathan Creek (BBC1) | iPlayer
Game of Thrones (Sky Atlantic)
I must admit, this was a good week for Tony Hall to arrive at/ return to the BBC. It could have been worse. Any week involving the word Pudsey or royal or featuring endless "creative meetings" showcasing depressively derivative suggestions on how to compete against – meaning limply copy – Downton, The Cube or The X Factor. But last Monday he must surely have sauntered in, after finally getting clearance from the doorman who refused to believe him, smacked his hands together happily, suggested they hold off the latest Savile tawdries or corporate nonsenses for an hour and said, simply: can we just talk about what we allegedly do, make programmes, and specifically about last night, »
- Euan Ferguson
YouTube UK: 20 of Britain's most popular online video bloggers
13 hours ago
From the creators of the Tyler Lautner six-pack workout and sunny pop promos to a cheerful consumer of roadkill
1 Ninebrassmonkeys
Stats 106,000 subscribers, 1.7m views
Who is he? The 30-year-old Cook only posted his first YouTube video on his Ninebrassmonkeys channel in December last year, but his multi-part documentary series, Becoming YouTube, has already become a sensation. Featuring interviews with many of the individuals in this list – Charlie McDonnell, Alex Day and so on – it entertainingly captures the spirit of the movement. "The first YouTuber I discovered was a guy called crabstickz and it was just a whole treasure trove of awesome," he says.
Pitch The official chronicler of Britain's YouTube generation. His style owes a debt to Charlie Brooker, but this is intelligent and professional film-making. His project will ultimately amount to 12 episodes and more than three hours of video content.
Signature video Anatomy of a YouTuber, Cook's debut video, »
- Killian Fox, Tim Lewis
YouTube superstars: the generation taking on TV – and winning
13 hours ago
The revolution will not be televised but who cares? It's already online, as a new wave of young 'YouTubers' threaten traditional TV with their sharp video blogs and direct interaction with their millions of mostly teenage fans
The moment I realised I was middle-aged came at 4.25pm on a Monday a month or so ago. I was at the BFI on London's Southbank and had just watched a 15-minute documentary called Becoming YouTube, made by a young film-maker called Benjamin Cook. Cook, who has postbox-red hair and a painful-looking piercing in his lower lip, was now on stage in discussion with four fellow YouTubers, all in their early 20s. I had no idea who they were but I was in a minority of one. Among them, the five have almost 4m registered fans ('subscribers' to their YouTube channels) around the world, and millions more are intimately familiar with their work and lives. »
- Tim Lewis
Doctor Who: The Rings of Akhaten – series 33, episode seven
18 hours ago
This was a blockbusting episode, but there was something warm and familiar about it, including Clara's first trip to an alien world
Spoiler Alert: This weekly blog is for those who have been watching the new series of Doctor Who. Don't read ahead if you haven't seen episode seven – The Rings of Akhaten.
Catch up with Dan Martin's Christmas special and episode six blogs.
'You like to think you're a God. You're not a God, you're a parasite, full of jealousy and envy and longing for the lives of others.'
Rose Tyler went to the year five billion to witness the decommissioning of Earth. Martha Jones helped William Shakespeare with his writer's block. Donna Noble went on a mercy mission to volcanic Pompeii. And Amy Pond got to dangle into space by her leg, wearing her nightie – because, frankly, the less else said about that episode, the better. But »
- Dan Martin
Andrew Wakefield: autism inc
6 April 2013 1:00 AM, PDT
Andrew Wakefield's 'dishonest and irresponsible' research into the causes of autism led to his being struck off by the General Medical Council. That would have ended most doctors' careers. Instead, the Mmr 'martyr' moved to the Us – and into reality TV
For three days at the end of January, the Renaissance hotel in Washington DC fills up with television executives from around the world. The Realscreen Summit is where the makers of reality TV gather to discuss ideas, negotiate deals and discover the next Apprentice or I'm A Celebrity. Among the estimated 2,200 people who had paid up to $1,600 (£1,050) this year to try to snag face time with an exec from Freemantle, TLC, Discovery or National Geographic was an Englishman in his mid-50s wearing jeans, a crisp, white shirt and loafers, and carrying a MacBook. On his badge were the words "Autism Team".
This man's pitch was a reality TV series about autism, »
- Alex Hannaford
In praise of kids' television
5 April 2013 11:00 PM, PDT
Critics claim TV damages our children's social skills and their health. Instead, we should be celebrating the wealth of good entertainment it offers them
When my first child was tiny, I grew to love CBeebies. Being woken up too early, coming down to a cold, empty sitting-room, there was nothing nicer than the stroke of 6am and the start of the BBC children's day – usually with Tikkabilla, inheritor of the round, square and arched windows remembered by everyone who grew up watching Play School on television in the 1970s.
In the Night Garden, aimed like Teletubbies at the very youngest audiences, began when she was 18 months. From these toddler shows, big on repetition, talking creatures and songs and dances, she moved on to dramas such as Grandpa in my Pocket, science show Nina and the Neurons and Numberjacks, in which a gang of cartoon detective digits living down the back »
- Susanna Rustin
What I see in the mirror: Jo Frost
5 April 2013 11:00 PM, PDT
'I'm a larger lady, a plus size with a bit of belly fat, but I know what suits me, clothes-wise'
I fly a lot, particularly to and from the Us, so I take extra care to hydrate my skin: moisturiser, eye cream, hydrating masks, Evian spritzer. The different climates across America play havoc with my skin, too – flying from a hot, steamy state to New York in winter is quite harsh.
I'm a larger lady, a plus size with a bit of belly fat, but I know what suits me, clothes-wise: blouses, tailored jackets and pencil skirts. One of my favourite outfits is jeans, riding boots and a fitted velvet jacket.
I don't dislike any of my features – they're what make me me, and I'm confident in who I am. I see my mum in my lips and I've got my dad's eyes.
I take care of myself, try to »
The new Carlsberg advert, yet more sexism from a beer company
5 April 2013 10:00 PM, PDT
'Adverts spend practically all their time telling us how to attract the opposite sex, and when we do, we're doomed to live a joyless coexistence'
Reading this on mobile? Click here to view
In the world of advertising all women think their boyfriends are saps and lunkheads. They don't trust them, they laugh at their penis size and they like to emasculate them for fun. In Carlsberg's newest ad, a hapless, lightly stubbled chinstrap – we'll call him Benji – is dragged off to a spa for the day by his other half. Benji doesn't want to be here, with its sour, man-hating staff who stare death at him just for having gonads. So instead of telling his girlfriend, he hatches a plan to tunnel out for beer. The Great Escape music whistles in the background as Benji and some other guys (they definitely call each other "The Guys") dig a furtive tunnel, »
- Julia Raeside
The Voice is back, let the sanging begin
5 April 2013 10:00 PM, PDT
• Sarah Dempster's TV Od: Britain's second favourite Saturday night pop competition returns with more of the same
"There's a difference between singing and sanging", intoned Jessie J, narrowing her eyes at tremulous Welshman Ash. "And you … sang." Ash gasped with relief. All he'd ever wanted to do was sang. And now here was a woman in a pleather gilet confirming that he could sang. "Wow," he panted, nigh-on winded by glee as the ensuing gales of applause played havoc with his side-parting. "Yeah."
It was an intriguing start to the yeah-based talent show/healing wellspring of tense-blurring encouragement that is The Voice UK (Saturday, 7pm, BBC1), which has returned for another three-month stint as Saturday's second most popular singing bash.
But lo, changes are afoot. There will be more "blind auditions", a new "knockout" round, and fewer of the live shows that last time saw viewers fleeing over to Simon Cowell »
- Sarah Dempster
Catch-up TV guide: from Labyrinth to Plebs
5 April 2013 10:00 PM, PDT
Labyrinth | Messy, Isn't It?: The Life And Works Of Richard Brautigan | Revolution | Barely Legal Drivers | The Flop House | Plebs
TV: Labyrinth
From the award-winning novel by Kate Mosse comes an extravagant two-part adaptation, a feast for the eyes (though perhaps not the brain). We're chucked headlong into the centre of the Albigensian French Crusades and the quest for the Holy Grail, as Alaïs, the daughter of a Grail guardian, is handed a rather important ring. Meanwhile, in a parallel present-day storyline, said important ring finds itself in the possession of her descendant Alice, who summarily lands herself at the centre of a great whopping conspiracy. Catch both episodes over on 4oD.
4oD
Radio: Messy, Isn't It?: The Life And Works Of Richard Brautigan
One–off Radio 4 doc which sees Jarvis Cocker pay tribute to the postmodern author, best known for his tough, abstract novel Trout Fishing In America. »
- Gwilym Mumford
Mad Men returns for sixth series – and an answer to Don Draper's dilemma
5 April 2013 4:09 PM, PDT
Fans of influential drama set in 1960s advertising world advised to revisit question posed in last season's finale
It is nearly a year since Mad Men fans were left wondering whether Don Draper would stay faithful to his new wife or return to a hedonistic path towards his likely self-destruction.
On Wednesday they will have their answer – albeit very possibly an opaque one – as the feted Us drama about advertising executives in 1960s New York returns to Sky Atlantic for its sixth series.
Such is its creator Matthew Weiner's determination to keep the new season under wraps, in an age when the internet "spoiler" has become common, that previewers have even been asked not to reveal the time in which the new season is set.
Series five ended in the spring of 1967 with Draper, played by Jon Hamm, drinking alone in a smoky bar, propositioned by a mystery woman »
- John Plunkett
The Good Wife, Nashville, Boss: why I love More 4 thursdays
5 April 2013 4:08 PM, PDT
Strong women and power-crazed men are the bedrock of the best Us drama imports on TV at the moment
More 4 has established itself, on a Thursday, as offering the best night of telly all week. They've just bought in three big Us drama series, and are broadcasting them back-to-back. The Good Wife features a legal firm in which Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies), has a husband running for governor. It distinguishes itself by having the best storylines about technology, and has its own fictional Google (Chum Hum), Julian Assange and Mark Zuckerburg.
Nashville features fading and rising country musicians, chief among them Rayna Jaymes (Connie Britton), whose husband is running for mayor. It distinguishes itself by having excellent original music, courtesy of T-Bone Burnett.
Boss centres on Tom Kane (Kelsey Grammer), who has won election as mayor of Chicago, but has just found out he has a terminal illness. It has »
- Deborah Orr
How to Win the Grand National – TV review
5 April 2013 4:08 PM, PDT
The Grand National is great, providing you're not in the race
It's a beautiful sight, the thoroughbred racehorse Teaforthree galloping through the shallows on a beach in South Wales. Teaforthree may die on Saturday, at Aintree. He has about a 5% – one-in-20 – chance of dying, based on the fatality statistics from the past two years. They get better if you go back further, admittedly, becoming more like one in 40. But I don't think I would have an operation with that level of risk, let alone do something that's supposed to be fun, such as sport. Teaforthree doesn't have the choice, though, being a horse.
How to Win the Grand National (Channel 4) doesn't dwell on that too much, or whether the race should or shouldn't happen. This is, after all, the beginning of Channel 4's coverage, after more than 50 years of being shown by the BBC. It needs to be stirring and upbeat. »
- Sam Wollaston
What Mad Men says about women
5 April 2013 4:05 PM, PDT
The 60s advertising drama takes place during a time of social upheaval, not least for its female characters. We track their progress with the actors who play them
With all the recent talk about the end of men and the rise of women, it's tempting to imagine that male anxiety in the face of women's increasing demands is a new phenomenon. If you watch Mad Men, you'll know these tensions have been around for decades. The show begins its sixth season without any characters mentioning the word 'feminism', but the pressures of shifting gender roles affect all characters, from the aspiring businesswomen to the happy homemakers, and, of course, their male counterparts, who don't know how to handle the erosion of male dominance. Despite its title, Mad Men is as much a show about the dramatic changes in women's lives in the 1960s as it is about those men. Unusually for the television industry, »
- Amanda Marcotte
The Walking Dead: season three, episode 16
5 April 2013 3:00 PM, PDT
Another season of zombie slaughter ends. Did you keep faith through all the inconsistencies and about-turns? And did the final episode live up to your blood-spattered expectations?
Spoiler Alert: This blog is for people watching season three of The Walking Dead on FX. Don't read on if you haven't seen episode 15 – and if you've seen later episodes, please do not leave spoilers.
Catch up with Phelim O'Neill's episode 15 blog
Welcome to the Tombs
So, this generally improved third season ends not with a bang but with a … well, what did that ending do really? The expected showdown didn't really materialise, even though in the runup to tonight's episode, news leaked that there would be 27 deaths; I don't think anyone predicted who would fo or how it would happen.
We started off in Woodbury as the Governor tortured Milton, who then had to prove his loyalty by killing Andrea. He couldn't do it, »
- Phelim O'Neill
Nick Hewer gets serious on Sierra Leone
5 April 2013 10:49 AM, PDT
Documentaries could do without celebrities, says Mark Lawson. It is the televisual equivalent of tourists travelling with Pot Noodles because of concerns about the local nosh
Although it hasn't achieved the highest television honour of being declared a Sierra Leone Theme Night, Sunday is still a big day in the schedules for the west African state. Suddenly, in schedules where the main foreign presences are American and Scandanavian, this country gets two hours of peak-time: Toughest Place To Be ... (BBC2, 9pm) follows a Cornish fisherman to the coast of Sierra Leone shortly after Nick Hewer: Countdown to Freetown (Channel 4, 7pm) sends the Sugar sidekick and word-game host to the nation's capital with the aim of delivering an industrial saw and generator to a teenage carpenter trying to set up a business.
And it's not just the location that the shows have in common: the two programmes nicely highlight »
- Mark Lawson
Shain Gandee's death: do reality shows need a reality check?
5 April 2013 8:07 AM, PDT
After the star of MTV's Buckwild died earlier this week, should the show really have gone on?
The shocking "reality" of reality TV came crashing to earth earlier this week with the death of Shain Gandee, star of MTV's Buckwild. The show, disingenuously described by its makers as "an authentic comedic series following an outrageous group of childhood friends from the rural foothills of West Virginia" (for this read: "Deliverance Gone Wild with Some of Jackass's Unused Props"), has finally suspended production. But production of the show did go on after the tragedy came to light, reigniting the debate about reality shows and moral culpability.
Plenty of these shows walk a fine line between "entertainment" and "playing human chess with pieces that have slightly pathological behavioural issues", and everyone agrees the makers have some responsibility for the welfare of their stars – it's just a question of working out how much. »
- Priya Elan
BBC's John Humphrys: I'm not planning to pack it in just yet
5 April 2013 5:55 AM, PDT
Presenter signs nine-month extension to Radio 4 Today contract and will also front BBC1's Mastermind for another three years
John Humphrys, the presenter of Radio 4's Today programme, has said he has no intention of stepping down after signing a nine-month extension to his contract, which expires at the end of the year.
Humphrys, who has been a presenter on Radio 4's flagship news programme since 1987, has also signed a new three-year deal to continue fronting BBC2 quizshow Mastermind.
Humphrys, who turns 70 in August, said: "I'm not planning to pack it in just yet. I'm rather enjoying the job. I've no plans to shuffle off this mortal coil."
The short-term extension to his current two-year Today contract, which has just expired, is understood to be a result of the BBC's review of the way it pays its highest-paid stars following controversy over tax avoidance and the use of personal service companies. »
- John Plunkett
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