Four centuries on from the publication of the First Folio, is there anything new to be said about William Shakespeare?
Well, the fact that there is nothing old to be said about him (very little is known about the life of the glover’s son from Stratford) means that there’s always something new, as the evidence to gainsay any claim is minimal. Tedious conspiracy theories aside, it’s the kind of paradox the man himself might have appreciated.
The question they’re all asking is, can Shetland survive the loss of Douglas Henshall as DI Jimmy Perez? After all, it was Henshall’s shrewd and quietly anguished performance which gave the show much of its allure. And now there’s no Mark Bonnar either, who could always be relied on to add a soupçon of angst.
If you thought being a pop star might be fun, this four-part voyage around the tortured soul of Robbie Williams may convince you otherwise. He has sold 75 million records and historic numbers of concert tickets, scored 13 Number One albums and seven Number One singles in the UK, and has a shed full of gongs including 18 Brit Awards. But even so, now three months short of his 50th birthday, he still seems to feel that it could suddenly all end tomorrow, or possibly even this afternoon.
Derived from the similarly-titled novel by Thomas Mallon and directed by Ron Nyswaner, Fellow Travellers tracks the course of its protagonists through several decades of 20th Century American history. It’s also an account of changing attitudes to homosexuality, and how gay culture emerged from the shadows and went mainstream.
When the Oscar-winning documentary-maker Errol Morris sat David Cornwell down before his Interrotron camera in 2019, the first salvo of the chat came, not from the interviewer, but from his subject: “Who are you?”
F. Scott Fitzgerald said there were no second acts in American lives, but here’s Frasier Crane coming back for his third. Frasier first appeared on TV in the third series of Cheers in 1984. After Cheers bit the dust in 1993, Frasier was transported from Boston to Seattle and reborn in his own show, which ran until 2004 and stands as one of the most revered comedies in TV history (alongside, it must be said, Cheers).
The problem with star casting is that the viewer can’t escape what it is: a very well known face pretending to be another very well known face.
The problem facing any chef series is that its daily dramas are essentially rooted in the same small, sweaty space. It’s like one of the reductions prepared there, all the flavours compressed into an intense spoonful of sauce.
Now that earnings from the John Wick movie franchise have topped a billion dollars, it’s no surprise that there should be moves afoot to cash in by developing a “John Wick Universe”.
Jenna Coleman has had a mostly upbeat acting CV to date, notably playing Clara in Doctor Who and the young Queen in ITV’s Victoria. The mood darkened with her excellent turn as the French-Canadian girlfriend of the mass murderer in The Serpent; now it turns to pitch with Wilderness.