PLUS Lord Of The Flies

0:07Boyd Hilton:Welcome to Pilot Plus, your extended guide to every show that matters and a special international edition of Pilot Plus, specifically because Boyd is coming to us live from his intergalactic jolly to Santa Monica. How is the Santa Monica sun, Boydy? Well, it's dark at the moment because it's one in the morning. It's five past nine in the morning. Oh, I see. Right. And you're not at the beach. I'm not at the beach, no. That would be madness. Boydy did you go to sleep and then get up for this record No Oh you've just stayed up I've stayed up because if you go to sleep That way madness lies Because you're just going to wake up groggy Or you're going to miss the alarm But yeah I've battled through Steph Because I'm that kind of hero Oh honey you're so good I try and stay up till 10 Like when I go to LA I don't normally do a 1am But then you don't really need sleep being as you are a vampire Well, it'd be nice to have a couple of hours because the thing is we've got this big presentation tomorrow, which is the reason I'm here.

1:04And that's we have to be out of the door at 8.15am, which means I have to have breakfast before that about 7am. So it's all, you know, but I can't complain, because I am on a massive freebie to LA, courtesy of the Apple people. You're going to get what, like four hours sleep, if that? That's a line for Boydie. I think five. I think I can do a solid five, yeah. Four and a half five. It'll all be fine. You're so good for doing this. You're such a good boy. Should we power through, Boidy?

1:34Boyd Hilton:Once we do this, should we just record the regular podcast and then should we maybe just do the Night Manager Spoiler Special straight after that and just do like a four-hour back? But pull an all-nighter. Just all-night podcast. Let's do it. Be kind. Be nice. No. Boyd gets no niceness for his jolly. Should we press on with this? Look at notes. Please, God. Podcast. So we're here to discuss a TV show, as is our plan. and it's going to be Lord of the Flies which is the new BBC adaptation of the 1954 William Golding novel of the same name written by Jack Thorne who, you know, had some free time in between doing 15 ,000 other shows this year and it follows a group of prepuessent boys who crash land on a desert island and go full feral.

2:14Boyd Hilton:This book, I think it's fairly safe to say is the bane of GCSE English students everywhere because I'm fairly certain it's been on the national curriculum for about the past 40 years if not longer. Did both of you study this at school? yes i did and i but i also did a midsummer night's dream so i think i was kind of it was i didn't do loads of it but i definitely did i definitely did it but i didn't do it as much as that this is you don't need that information i did it what sorry my what was the reference to a midsummer night's dream i did a midsummer night's dream so you did like lord of the flies and a midsummer night's dream and then you went and did one of them yeah what were you doing for Because I did English, because I did like English literature.

2:54But most of us did like four or five books.

2:56Boyd Hilton:Yeah, exactly. Did you only do two? At least you did two things. No, because you did English language and English language. English language. What do you sissy? It clearly worked. English language and English literature, didn't you? You know, I'm going to sound slightly younger than you, so I think it changed a bit. Well, clearly. You only had to read two books. Hold on a minute. Oh my God, I've remembered what else I did. I did Z for Zachariah, which I hated, which is why I don't really like dystopian things. Oh, wow. This has turned into an impromptu therapy session. We're getting to the root of your TV trauma.

3:27Boyd Hilton:Yeah. I absolutely studied it and really, really loved it. And among many other books and plays that I read when I was doing English literature in school. You know, like when you do a GCSE, you only do a couple of books for your GCSE? No, no, no. Totally. way more than that what kind of gps are you doing where did you go to school yeah i got i got an a star so i'm not surprised you only had two books yeah oh my god uh i do think about this yeah i did henry the fourth part one i did the general prologue to the canterbury tales i can't remember now which books were a level which books for gcse so i can't uh i can't tell you which one i did the wife of barth f4 but yeah anyway we've got sidetracked again we are talking about lord of the flies which was it turns out and i know this because i may have looked it up on wikipedia but william golding wrote this as a kind of counterpoint to the coral island which was like a british colonial propaganda thing about how it's all in the blood and upper class people will do fine and we're all terribly civilized and so his idea was you send a bunch of let's be honest quite posh prepubescent boys and he was showing that put in a completely societyless boundaryless lawless environment they will go full feral and start killing each other regardless of whether they are a british or b posh uh and that's essentially the moral of this particular story um the one thing that's always troubled me about this so from my original reading of the book uh i think there've been at least two films i've seen both of them uh and now this series i've never understood how there is a plane crash with a bunch of boys on it and yet none of them apart from the choir seem to have met each other before I'm like, what kind of school do you go to that you don't know the names of any of the other pupils?

5:11Boyd Hilton:However, it turns out the backstory to this, which is not explored, well, certainly not in the beginning of the show, and to the best of my knowledge, it's not explored in the films either. Because obviously it was written in 1954. It's a wartime evacuation thing. So they are evacuees. So they're all of a similar age, but they genuinely don't know each other because they're all from different schools. And you can tell it in this show because they're all wearing slightly different uniforms. They're wearing different colored shirts. but there is a there is a um a group of them that know each other yeah so the choir in particular yeah jack's choir are obviously all from there's apparently a choir randomly being evacuated yeah which is completely wild here's another thing i found out the book originally started with them they're actually it's not a world war ii evacuation it was supposed to be fleeing some sort of world war iii nuclear war is what they're what they're fleeing um but also there was a supernatural aspect to it now there is a there's a kind of the boys imagine this beast on the island uh in the actual novel as it published but there was a weird supernatural thing with a demon and all sorts of stuff which his publisher was like yeah william mate no bill bill bill yeah let's lose that shall we steph's not going to read this if it's gone kay is definitely not going to read this if it's got ghosts and goblins in it so let's keep it quite basic let's scale it back take out the supernatural uh and he got quite fed up with the whole thing and washed his hands at the novel i think by the end but it all it all uh it all turned out well i think but crucially did the...

6:30Boyd Hilton:Well done, William Golding. Well done, William Golding. Well done, William Golding. You continue to torment GCSE students in perpetuity. What did you think of Jack Thorne's adaptation? Well, I went to the screening of this at the BFI. Was it on an island? It was not on an island. It was in the cinema. Did you all go feral at the BFI? Well, here's the thing. I mentioned this on a previous episode, but I'll just, in case people didn't listen, I can't remember I can't remember whether it was on Plus or regular pod. But anyway, there were about 25 kids in this show. Yes, I remember. And I think there's about like seven, eight, nine main speaking roles, and then the rest are kind of mostly non-speaking roles.

7:15But nevertheless, 25 people had to be corralled by the absolutely heroic producers and people, casting directors, et cetera, and the director, Mark Munden. and all of them were at the screening clearly and there except various families and siblings and stuff and it was pandemonium. It was so funny. I've never seen anything like it, a screening like it with a young cast of a show all gathered to see the thing and they were, they just, you know, they're just not following the rules of normal screenings of shows, etc. So there was all shouting and screaming. It was delightful, but they were very dramatic.

7:52Yeah, it was about to say. It wasn't really a reach for them. Yeah, as to your question, did they go fair? Not as bad as they do in the actual story in the show. But I think this is a brilliant, absolutely brilliant adaptation. And, of course, it's Jack Thorne. And he was saying, he did the Q &A. He took part in the Q &A with Mark Munder, the director. And he was saying how they made this at roughly the same time as Adolescence. And he actually went from one set to the other. This was filmed in Malaysia. And Adolescence was not filmed in Malaysia. It was filmed in, you know, Alpington or wherever it was.

8:30And, yeah, he went from one set to the other, and he was kind of like not overseeing because there are other people who were showrunners, et cetera, or the director. He definitely was heavily involved in both, and he kind of almost wrote them at the same time as well. So they're both very intense stories about adolescent boys. And I think it is a subject, you know, he was, without wanting to sound glib, he absolutely was like, yeah, I am, you know, I think he's got a son. who's reaching, you know, early teens. So it's a particular worry or interest to him. And he's really, and you can tell how, just how passionate he is about, you know, we mustn't let kids, particularly boys, go wrong and pick the wrong path when they're this age.

9:14It's a crucial age. And I found it, I remember, obviously the book is quite distressing. It's full on. You know, it's a very visceral book. And I think he's captured that tone. Mark Munden the director and him the writer Jack Thorne the writer it's incredibly powerful and quite shocking when bad things happen shall we say it's not soft soaked in any way this is not a kids show it's a show about kids you know quite rightly it's on 9 o 'clock BBC 1 and I think I was kind of watching it thinking you know what there was quite young kids in it you know like 8, 9, 10 years I was sitting there thinking what do they think of this obviously for them who were in it it was more of like an adventure to be in a big thing like this but oh my god it's really it's really harsh stuff happens and like and the full-on disintegration of civilization is brilliantly dramatized and their little touches which under the director brought to it which i think worked brilliantly so he does this thing whereby he just has big close-ups of the kids faces um kind of intercut with the action at various moments at various and and at first you're like why is he doing that but then you're like because i think these huge close-ups of these boys, when they're just standing there looking into the camera, you're kind of wondering what's going to happen to them.

10:33And it just really worked. I thought it was such an ingenious thing to do because you're thinking about what is the face of that innocence of them, if you like, just staring to camera before the pandemonium that ensues later. Yes, Steph, you've got your finger up. Because you're just on that point about those close-ups, do you know the photographer Martin Scholar? Very incredibly famous photographer and what he does and if you look up Martin Scholar you'll go oh him. He almost exclusively does these shots which are the close-ups of people's face. So he's done Obama, he's done every famous person and I so loved that about this adaptation that he, I'm not saying he's stolen that technique, I'm just saying he utilized that technique of just the full face close up.

11:24And it was beautiful. And you're thinking, oh, God, this, like, exactly as you said, this beautiful innocence completely lit so wonderfully, like a photograph. And if you look up Martin Schoeder, you'll see it's, sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you, but just to that point, that's exactly what that is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He said, by the way, he said he kind of, he knew he should take these shots of the boys looking into the camera, but he himself didn't really know why he did it when he first decided to do it. And then it turned out it was key because they're actually used as transition points as well as the story developed.

12:02Anyway, that's one directorial innovation. I think as far as the scripts are concerned, Jack Thorne's absolutely brilliant innovation is each of the four episodes is told from the different point of view of a different one of the boys, the characters. So the first one is from Piggy's point of view. Famously, the young guy is called Piggy by the bullies at his school, and he's betrayed early on in this first episode by... By the quote-unquote hero. Exactly, by the quote-unquote hero who initially says he won't tell the other boys that he's called Piggy, but then of course does. And it's full of those horrible moments of betrayal.

12:44It's heart-rending. It really is heartbreaking. So that decision to tell each episode from a different point of view is, again, works so well. I've only seen the first two, but it's really clever. And it's just – because the book is fairly linear, as far as I can remember. But just to kind of show things from different points of view and to kind of create this – and to underline the unreliability of these kids and to show what different personalities they go through and what's happening to their brains at this stage. It's all there in Jack Thorne's adaptation. So I think it's – it's one of those shows where you watch it And you think they've set out to capture a absolute all-time classic book, and they could not have done a better job.

13:33I don't see how this could be improved upon in terms of what they're trying to do and what they're trying to convey as to the original themes and ideas of the novel. And I think it's just extraordinary, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I could not agree more. I think what makes this also such an exceptional adaptation is the score that really underpins the whole narrative of this with incredible accuracy. And obviously it's Hans Zimmer. It's such a beautiful kind of descent into madness that happened with these boys. I found as well that the silence in between the narrative was really powerful. And obviously, juxtaposing this incredibly beautiful island with these grubby little gits running around, you know, going mad, it is such a perfect, it really reminded me, it felt incredibly, it felt it has a very cinematic feel to it.

14:36The score has a big screen feel to it. Oh, the score's brilliant. It's unbelievable, the score. It's incredibly beautiful. And it felt to me like, it reminded me of Dunkirk the way it was shot it had that kind of Christopher Nolan feel to it I don't know about you guys yeah I really enjoyed those intimate shots those close-up intimate shots even I really enjoyed the intimate shots of just nature in it um I think anybody if they're still doing Lord of Flies now this is such this is such a delight this is a delightful way to access this text. It's amazing. But yeah, I just, the desecration of youth and innocence on this lush, beautiful island is just, it's magnificent.

15:18This is really, it feels big screen to me. It really did. I felt like when I was watching, I was like, God, I'd love to have watched this at the BFR. I'd love to have watched this on a bigger screen because it felt like it had that kind of spectacle. And yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. I thought it was an incredible

15:37Boyd Hilton:adaptation yeah it looked brilliant on the big screen yeah i like the fact that he hasn't felt the need to update it for modern times the most recent film which i think was in the 90s did um instead it's it's pretty much it kind of still feels like it could easily have been the 1950s you don't really know because a they're wearing school uniform and b it's a desert island so there's no real way of dating it except for the fact that they've managed to maintain the kind of the speech patterns from the book which obviously are very 1950s and also that very very sort of like posh post-war almost rp speaking you know demeanor that they all have which actually i think is kind of integral you'd have to retool a lot of the book to kind of adapt it for shall we say modern pre-adolescent sensibilities like i like the fact that they feel slightly out of time as well as out of place i also think and it's been so long since i've read the book um so i cannot remember how much of this is in there but even from the first episode of this he takes pains to reveal jack in a way that again it may be in the book as well but but showing you why he is the way he is like he's not a you know a black and white villain like the stuff about his father though he's clearly lying about who his father is his relationship with his father is obviously problematic like again it feels like in the same way as adolescence like this isn't some you know born villain he is someone who is the product of his upbringing and neglect and i think that comes across quite early on in this story that jack is quite damaged and he lashes out and there's a scene with a pig and with piggy with piggy and a pig uh where jack hesitates to kill a pig and then he turns and essentially gaslights piggy and saying it was his fault and he's desperate need to save and you can almost see like the shadow of his disapproving father looming over him as he does it and it's actually heartbreaking he's so desperate to be something while constantly feeling that he's not enough and so that's why he's constantly trying to dominate and this power struggle that emerges between him and ralph for the boys it has a lot to do with that and i really like that they don't paint him as just oh he's a problem child like no there's there's sort of there's an underlying sort of psychological uh background going which i thought was was good but yeah it's i mean it's beautifully shot it's very cinematic and that book is very very powerful weirdly it kind of it froze into to my mind into really sort of like how much yellow jackets has kind of gone off the boil do you know i mean because obviously that that tackles a very similar subject matter um and one of the things that kind of interested me looking at this again i didn't really think about it when i read the book when i was a teenager but it's not just a study of you know human nature and you know anti-colonialism to a certain extent and uh it's also a study of masculinity and emerging masculinity because these are prepubescent boys struggling for dominance in an all-male environment and i thought actually weirdly having now sort of like seen that and kind of appreciated it more uh now that i'm slightly older now going back to yellow jack and seeing what they've tried to do with an all-female group or a largely female group is actually quite interesting as well but see i think i think it's not just yellow just i think there's so many films that have been influenced by it i mean i think the whole you know you know the hunger games is influenced by it um the uh battle royale the the legendary um film they're all i don't i think without this i don't think you have any of those it's such an influential um not like such an incredibly smart idea to to kind of show society and psychology and everything through the eyes of these kids that i think it's had massive impact culturally and i think i agree well squid game as well all of that kind of stuff it's the idea that we live bound by a very flimsy set of rules and social constructs and if someone suddenly decides to not adhere to that contract they're a criminal they're a terrorist they're whatever they want to be but if those rules are suddenly withdrawn everything falls apart and people basically turn into animals because it's it's a very thin layer that kind of layer of civilization those rules that we all kind of mutually agree to live by.

19:35Boyd Hilton:They're very, very thin. And I find it fascinating, that kind of exploration. But yes, it's great. Did you say, Boyd, is it Jack Thorne who has a teenage son or is it Mark Munden? He does. See, that to me, I love that detail. I didn't realise that. That makes that, it seems all the more special to me that he's doing that. That's really interesting. Wow. Okay. He said lots of interesting stuff. It was a really good Q &A, actually. They're brilliant at talking about it. The producer was in it as well. They're really interesting talking about the whole, can you think about the whole, the logistics of this, by the way, that's the other thing.

20:10You've got to, as I say, you've got to corral 25 kids of varying ages, some of them really quite young. They will have to be looked after by their various, you know, help. I mean, their families were there most as well, but you know, it still have to be, they have to be taken to this genuinely remote part of Malaysia. They have to wheel in all the equipment, you know, all the cameras, everything. It was a massive, massive operation. They pulled it off, yeah. Yeah, and they probably all just wanted to fucking make sandcastles. Do you know what I mean? It looked amazing. Oh, they had a brilliant time, by the way.

20:41That was quite interesting as well. It's Malaysia, isn't it? Yeah, they turned it into like a kind of, you know, a special trip, like a special, you know, treat for them all rather than – and they kept it very light between the heaviness of the actual takes, which I thought was interesting. So, you know, they made sure they weren't distressed by the whole thing, if you like. How long did it take for them? do you know how long they filmed for? Quite a long, considering it's only four episodes, I think it was quite a long time, like a few months, yeah, I think, from what they said. A few months on a Malaysian island.

21:12Boyd Hilton:Yeah. How traumatic. Massive jolly, but you wouldn't know anything about that, Boydie. No. Yes. We should mention, obviously, from a score point of view, it's actually unclear, because Hans Zimmer is credited, but Christopher Tapia de Vere is also credited, who did the brilliant score to Utopia. Yeah. But he did oversee it. Yeah. I think he particularly worked on the theme tune, which is great. Hans Zimmer. Yes, he did. And I think they co-created, co-worked on the soundtrack in general. Wow. Lord of the Flies then, which airs on the BBC, Boydie, BBC One, I'm saying. When? Sundays. Sunday, the first one would have just started after we, I think.

21:53Yeah, it starts, when does this come out? Well prepared then,

21:57Boyd Hilton:that's good. To be fair, it is like 1.30 in the morning for Boydie. Yeah, exactly. I think it is on this Sunday. Okay, it might be on this Sunday. We're not really sure, but turn it on to see what happens. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you'll find it. Is it drop at once? Is it all on the iPlayer? Sorry, I don't know why I'm asking you questions. You're in LA. I genuinely don't know whether it drops at once. That's what I'm saying. Steph, he doesn't even know when it's on. Why are you arguing these things? Yeah, exactly. Exactly, yeah. Okay, now it's time for the post bag.

22:40Boyd Hilton:okay now i should i should qualify this by saying that you notice that i've actually been much more on top of the triage system i've been looking at stuff in advance and i've been getting this week is an exception i've not had a chance to pre-triage the post bag unfortunately uh because it's been a very i was up till very late last night doing homework uh for a course that begins in half an hour so i didn't get a chance so i'm doing a machine learning and ai course for work it's unclear why for sure machine learning yeah we did neural networks last night it's basically this course which began as foundation of ai has jumped up to machine learning and data science and neural networks overnight and the difficulty has magnified and i thought i'll do the homework last night and i went on and it said the homework will take you approximately five hours i was like fire and it literally took all evening oh my god at the end of this are you going to be like a robot possibly yeah i'm aiming to i'm aiming to be like a cyborg by the end of it that's you know in la among other it's like being in a future city and being in la because they have delivery robots walking around the city so i was walking up sunset boulevard today and honestly this little robot thing was approaching me with a with a and it's a delivery robot and yeah you get those here like the delivery robots from Tesco's yeah the little square little and you see them sometimes going along the street and you can get you know Doritos or whatever you want I promise you guys Luton they have them everywhere they all sit outside they have little robots and they drive along the street and they come to your door and drop off your stuff that is I have no idea that's it this country well they probably because they probably don't have them in London because it would just be the traffic would be a fucking nightmare.

24:28That's true. But like round here, you can get a delivery robot. Oh, little robots toddling up and down sides of the building. Quite shocked me, I have to say. And then on top of that, you've got the driverless fucking cars, which are everywhere. that's mad. I mean, they are terrifying as well. So yeah. And those enormous Elon Musk, like tank type things, which look like, it's a vehicle out of Batman. Anyway, the whole thing is insane. So yeah, I'm glad James is learning all about it.

24:52Boyd Hilton:All right. So I'm going to delve into the post bag and we're going to take it as, it's going to be a tombola situation. So we're just going to see what happens. We're going to start with the first one, and this comes from Geoffrey, Geoffrey Card. And it's titled British Police Shows. Geoff says, last episode, Steph said that when police characters have an American accent, she expects a low standard of behaviour from them. And I laughed out loud. As an American, I found that to be both cutting and hilariously, tragically true. American cops and media are always depicted heroically, struggling against the strictures of their job and succeeding in spite of them, often by skirting the rules.

25:27Boyd Hilton:On the other hand, I've noticed that British police shows go well out of their way to show cops carefully and deliberately adhering to all the necessary standards because that is how a heroic cop ensures that their quarry actually ends up in prison. Everyone is always cautioned, they always find an appropriate adult, and if there's a gun, there's always a shout of, on police, because in the UK that's actually a special case. British hero cops are shown purposefully handicapping themselves so as to make sure there is no abuse of power, and as an american i find that refreshing and cool and i'm sorry gunslinging american cops but there is nothing more badass than a british constable facing an unknown enemy and whipping out their telescopic billy club oh god i'm sorry i didn't mean to offend you i think that's genuinely hilarious because it is absolutely true that like in like a police drama they get one of the little asp battens and like right you're in for it now i'm gonna give you a right good drubbing oh god yeah it is it is genuinely funny uh our police are not the same as your police they're not no they are not right okay message here from richard waller and richard says hi james boyd k and steph knowing how you all have mixed views on soaps i'd love to hear what you make of vertical dramas as you may or may not be aware vertical dramas are short scripted series made specifically for phones in a vertical 916 format with episodes lasting typically around one to three minutes they emerged in china around 2019 and later spread to america and the uk and are known for fast-paced highly dramatic storytelling with strong hooks and cliffhangers the target audience is primarily gen z and younger millennials viewers who want quick bingeable content that fit easily into short breaks and scrolling habits have you seen any of these if not i'd love you all james especially to watch one and feed back they're akin to spanish telly novellas or 80s porn in the way that they're so heightened over the top and cheesy but they have to get the emotion across instantly to keep the viewer engaged and since there's no time to develop the character due to the episode length believe it or not it's not actually bad acting it's the format and genre are these the next big thing is this the way tv is going will james become addicted to the dragon master's pleasure slave good god boyd to hidden billionaire colon in first class okay swimming my way back to you or steph my husband murdered me or perhaps just reruns of last of the summer wine keep up the great work you're still the only pod i pay for richard richard i've never heard of these that is fascinating he said they can all be found on the real shorts app slash daily motion yeah i've heard of them that they were talked about on that other podcast that I often refer to.

28:10Which we are not going to plug here. No, I'm not going to. I must stop plugging it, yeah. But yeah, it's a massive phenomenon. Incredible, particularly in like Japan and... Hilariously, though. I've never heard of them.

28:20Boyd Hilton:This was the entire business model for Queeby, wasn't it? Yes. Which died on its arse. Now, it could be that Queeby was just a little bit ahead of its time. Yeah, I think, well, I think the difference is that these are very soapy, yeah. It's very kind of heightened. And we had Rachel Brosnahan with a golden arm yeah that's true yeah but they were all over the place weren't they those things they were some of them were wildly bizarre like that others were kind of you know like i don't know intense dramas comedy they just varied it was a mishmash of all kinds of things where these this new genre effectively is is its own thing i think um and it but but i think it will eventually have an impact they haven't i don't think many people know about it here yet, no, about them here yet, about these things, but they're so big in different parts of the world that I think it's inevitable they'll come here, yeah.

29:13Were they described as a Spanish novella crossed with porn?

29:18Boyd Hilton:Yeah, basically. Just in the way they're very heightened and melodramatic, because obviously they only have a short amount of time. Okay, that sounds fantastic. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Punchy, sounds good. I don't think this is the future of television for a great many reasons, but first of all, fundamentally if you are watching these if they're designed for your phone if you're watching it on your phone you cannot dual screen and i think fundamentally that's going to be a problem for gen z audiences in the long term because you can't look at your phone while you're watching something on your phone unless you do it in picture in picture but i don't see that's going to work so do you know i mean so i just i just don't see that working because i know it's only three minutes but it's three minutes they have to give it their full attention because there is no distraction because you literally can't do anything else because you're holding your phone so i don't say that But I feel like loads of people just have two phones now.

30:03Boyd Hilton:I see it all the time. Do you think people are dual screening, but they're watching it on one phone and then they're scrolling Twitter on the other phone? Honestly, they do. This has been a revelation after revelation. You've got robots walking the streets of Luton. Everyone's got two phones. Two phones ceiling over here. I'm just saying, I think a lot of people have two phones because they have like business phone and then like fun phone. Do you have a burner and a regular phone? One for your drug dealer and another one for your, you know. I have like a phone which I have for like childcare phone.

30:30That's why I call childcare phone, which, you know, has all the apps on it for when Gracie's being unruly. And then, you know, I have my phone phone. Wow. So I think, you know, didn't you say the other day that you didn't think Netflix was going to be a thing when that guy came in and look at Netflix now.

30:43Boyd Hilton:Yeah, I am not the bellwether for these things. You should not by any means take, I've dismissed variously Netflix, Spotify and TikTok. I've had meetings with all three of these companies. They've all pitched me what they want to do and I'd be like, I don't see anything. There's a running theme here. Yeah, there is. It really is. Whatever I dismiss, you should invest all of your savings in is what we're saying. I'm putting some money down on these novella porn things. It's happening. Sounds great. I bet you are. No, I'm sorry. I can't. But also, like, Queeby died on its arse, lest we forget. So, I don't know.

31:16Boyd Hilton:We'll see. I really hope not because it feels like, because you're crowbarring into this format, it feels like they're taking out everything I like about TV. Like, you know, realism, plot. screenwriting acting things like that okay well you know what we should just watch some and then we should then we should feedback let's do that yeah okay that that is possible we could we could maybe look at doing that let me let me uh let me note down some of the names of these things i believe um richard that i can spare three minutes for your experiment uh next question oh this is jeff again jeffrey carr jeff says by the way in the wake of your discussion of silent witness i just wanted to point out that over here in the states mariska harkotay mariska harkotay has been playing Olivia Benson for 27 seasons on Law & Order SVU.

32:01Boyd Hilton:Before the turn of the millennium, I think she may hold the record outside of soaps. Yes, she is a different kettle of fish because also her mother is Jane Mansfield. So she is, yeah. Nepo baby. Yeah, she, I mean, I mean, Amelia Fox is kind of a Nepo baby as well, actually, isn't she? But I, she captivates the screen in an unbelievable way. I love her a lot. but yes that's a very good point and of course Olivia Benson is the name of one of Taylor Swift's cats yes named after her, named after her character of course of course Terry White formerly of this part was obsessed with Law and Order SVU and indeed her yes so the cats though since Terry is afraid of all living things what?