Box Office Battle: Spielberg vs Nolan

18:49I'm not going to go, but maybe I'm going to go. Project Hail Mary. Ryan Gosling, for some reason, a middle school teacher, is for some reason, I've watched the trailer about six times, the only guy who can go to space and save Earth. And he meets an alien out there. I don't know. I can't, I can't help. Oh, really? Yeah.

19:05Richard Osman:Well, that sounds fun. Yeah. And is it based on a true story? I think so. And the drama, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, they're like a couple, that's another O24, they're getting married, and there's some sort of secret is discovered, and they can't, it's a sort of comedy drama. So I'm looking forward to that one because I love both those performers. Can I just talk to you about something called Whalefall? Called what, sorry? Whalefall. Whalefall? Josh Whalefall. I didn't say Whale 3. Whalefall. Whalefall? Tell me the plot of Whalefall. A man, Josh Brolin, dies. Oh, come on, man. Yeah, I know. I've seen that movie.

19:42Yeah, and they're trying to look for his, his son is trying to look for his remains, to Austin Abrams, who was actually in Weapons with Josh Brolin, and gets swallowed by a sperm whale.

19:54Richard Osman:I presume he's looking for his remains underwater. Yeah, you'd hope so. Otherwise, it's a hell of a different picture than I'm imagining. And it gets swallowed by a sperm whale. Can he think of a way to escape before his oxygen runs out? I can't. Listen. I'm there on day one, Richard. I'm there on day one. I can think of two ways to escape. I know which one I prefer, but I can think of two ways. Actually, three if you count the blowhole. I would not call that movie whale fall. I would call it don't discount the blowhole. And Peaky Blinders, The Immortal Man, Stephen Knight. So that will be... That's exciting.

20:26I mean, there are lots of other small ones. There's lots of good horror coming and there's lots of interesting things like that. But I hope it all works out. And there certainly is more to watch with quite obvious plays for massive multiplex, big things that people actually want to see. So I hope it works out because plenty of other things aren't.

20:46Richard Osman:Exactly. And I'd say the same for television, actually. There's lots of good. I'm going to give you a top five. And they're actually all based on how much I like the writers of those things. But there's all sorts of big things coming out. Heated Rivalry is about to drop in the UK, which is this ice hockey love affair. I'm watching it. It's been absolutely massive in the States based on some books as well. So that's been absolutely huge. We're going to have a new euphoria as well. The Pit is finally going to come to UK TV. It's been a huge hit in America. People absolutely adore it. And for lots of reasons, I think because of the delay of the hospital drama.

21:21Richard Osman:Russell T Davies has got a new show, Tiptoe, on Channel 4. Jimmy McGovern is bringing back Time, which always has a different cast. David Tennant's in it this time. Richard Gad, a baby reindeer, has his new show, Half Man. That would be a very, very interesting thing to watch. Exactly, about the two brothers. Dear England, the Gareth Southgate drama is coming to TV. George Kay, one of my favourite writers, has got a show called War, where Dominic West plays a tech titan and Sienna Miller plays a film star. You think, yeah, count me in. George Kay's writing on those two. But the five things, Rivals is coming back.

21:56Richard Osman:Can't wait for that. Line of Duty is coming back for a seventh series. So there's loads and loads of good things to come out. Fine, we'll do another ending. Yeah, exactly. Here are the five things. I love that they're doing that, by the way. thank you for serving the audiences the gibbons brothers neil and rob gibbons who write all the partry stuff have got a sitcom uh with lenny rush called the reluctant vampire and that feels like if that's as good as everybody involved is then it's going to be a huge hit i'm going to give you five shows all of which come from writers i love stephan godaszewski who wrote mum is back with a called babies so i'm with papa essie adieu is in that and he's an unbelievably great writer Tony Schumacher, who wrote The Responder, and that was his first ever TV show, and there's some people who watch that will tell you how great it is.

22:39Richard Osman:He's back with a show called The Cage, which is Sheridan Smith and Michael Sokja working in a Liverpool casino, and they both want to rob it. And you're like, okay. Then, in which case, I will be watching your show. We have Michaela Cole is back with First Day on Earth. Lisa McGee is back. Lisa McGee, the writer of the wonderful Derry Girls. We had a lot of people, family over there for Christmas, and a couple of them had not watched Derry Girls. They absolutely blitzed the whole lot. They were like, this is unbelievable. And it is unbelievable. You forget how brilliant Derry Girls is. So to have Lisa McGee back is brilliant.

23:11Richard Osman:It's called How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, which is on Netflix in February. The show genuinely, I think, is going to be an amazing show because I absolutely love her. Daisy Haggard, who did Back to Life, which was, I think, a wonderful bit of television, she has written a show about witness protection where she plays Bella Ramsey's mother. And it's called Maya. It's written the whole thing, directed the whole thing. It's on Channel 4. Channel 4 got a bunch of really, really good things coming out this year. So it feels like all of our best writers have got something new coming out for us this year.

23:45Richard Osman:So I know there's lots of good movies coming up and it's important to go to the cinemas and watch that. But it feels like there's BBC, there's Channel 4, there's the streamers as well. But so many good bits of telly coming up for us to be able to talk about. Some of them will be disappointments, I'm certain, but some of them won't. And that's the thing I love about the entertainment industry is, you know, however much you want to sort of, you know, bemoan things. Every year someone does something where you just go, oh my God. Yeah. I mean, this didn't exist before and now it exists forever. And there's a huge potential in both of those particular mediums this year, I really do think.

24:20Richard Osman:Exactly that. I think at the top end with the high-end stuff, things are very, very, very healthy. a huge problem in the middle of television. You know, there's not kind of 100 other commissions and daytime commissions and quiz commissions and entertainment commissions. Yeah, exactly. There's not kind of a huge groundswell of telly, but the stuff that is being done at least seems like it's going to be a treat. Shall we have some ads? And after that, we're going to be talking about our very, very low stakes WhatsApp celebrity drama. We've all had WhatsApp dramas, all of us, but this one's better than all of ours because it involves some very, very low-rent celebrities.

25:00And we're also going to talk about the traitors. So it is wall-to-wall drama after the break.

25:05Richard Osman:Yeah, it's all fun. No one's getting stuck in a whale.

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26:46Richard Osman:Welcome back, everybody. Now, I am going to make an admission to you. Yeah. Before this week, I did not know who Ashley Tisdale was. Okay. You know that I would have known who she was. Now I barely know who she was. But she's in the middle of a huge WhatsApp drama. Can you fill us in? Yeah, I can. I'll tell you who she was. Of course you can. Oh, you know I can. She played Sharpay. She was a bit of a drama queen. So big, big stretch there. In High School Musical. So she was part of the whole, you know, Disney, the mouses, Childhood Raising Factory, which involved countless other stars, some of whom we'll end up mentioning.

27:30Anyway, she was in a group chat, a new mums group chat.

27:35Richard Osman:Or new mums. New mums. Because they were all American. Yeah, they're all American. I'm going to speak in English for this, I think. But she was in a group chat with various others. The admin of this group chat was Hilary Duff, who used to be in Lizzie McGuire and other Disney shows. See, her I had heard of. You had heard of her. I mean, I couldn't pick her out of a lineup. No. If she was married to Jacob Elordi and I walked past him in the street, I wouldn't know who that couple was. Well, she is married to somebody who gets a part in this story. So hang on. Hold on to your hats. Mandy Moore, who's a singer.

28:04Richard Osman:Yes. Meghan Trainor, who's an alleged singer. I know Meghan Trainor. This is the funniest thing since she got a Grammy. Seriously, I've loved this so much. This story is my favourite thing. I can't. It's the best group chat story since that one about bombing Yemen, but that was real. It's more destructive, this one, in some ways. hillary duff and ashley tisdale must have met on the disney channel in the noughties it's like anything you know people have been on a reality show you know whatever it is you meet you have your group and you know yeah things go back and forth memes they put a lot of stuff on instagram hanging out they were exchanging sourdough really yeah exactly i mean there's you don't even have to care about these people because they exchange sourdough on instagram so that's it for me so So it's quite performative.

28:45Yeah. Anyway, on January the 5th, The Cut, which is one part of New York magazine, published an essay based on Ashley's blog. Yeah. You know it's the noughties because she's still got our blog. And she called it Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group. And she said, I thought I found my village. Instead, I was back in high school. Like real high school, not East High School, which was, I always want to say the word, fictional alma mater. her fictional alma mater at East High School, wherever they were, I think it was set in Albuquerque or something. Anyway, she says she was, Ashley said she was left out of a couple of group hangs.

29:23She seems to have been frozen out in some way via the medium of a dinner party plasma. And she started to say, maybe I'm not cool enough. Anyway, so she says in this essay, so I texted the group, this is too high school for me, and I don't want to take part in it anymore. And saying, you know, people were talking about each other derogatory when they weren't there. I wasn't included in things, blah, blah, blah. The other thing she said was, this has also made some wannabe online sleuths try to do some investigating like they're on CSI. Please don't even try. Whatever you think is true isn't even close.

29:56For clarification, what everyone thinks is true is true. Because Hilary Duff's husband's now dialed into this. In a really funny way. So we now know it is true. But actually, she did deny it once it was spinning out of control. And her agent said there is zero truth in it. You can imagine on their actual group chat, our agent saying, you've done what now? You've written an essay for the New York Magazine about a really easily identifiable group chat.

30:23Richard Osman:She did brilliantly straight afterwards, said, no, this is about a different group of moms who I'm in a group chat with. Okay. Are you like, okay? Okay. Are they in the room with us now? She said that this is where it becomes deeply relatable, though. she says the whole reason she wrote this essay she felt alienated and like nobody took her questions to heart since other moms wouldn't reply to her links and memes oh my god we've all been there haven't we you know if you like if you're in like a particularly active whatsapp group and you you post a little like a little joke or something and no one comes back for 10 minutes you just think oh great i'm gonna have to emigrate that's it everyone hates me now this is and the first person who breaks the ceiling comes back with a like a little cry laugh or something And you just think, oh, my God, thank you so much.

31:08Richard Osman:Thank you so much. Do you want to meet up? Yeah, exactly. But that's where Ashley was. She'd obviously done some meme, which for her was either heartfelt or hilarious. And everyone's like, oh, Ashley has done a meme. I don't know. She did a Charlie Kirk tribute, which I don't think they loved. Yeah. I think that might be more of a heart of it. Once again, America's toxic politics just gets everywhere. Yeah. And so the queen bee of this group was the sort of Regina George book was Daphne Hilary Duff. Who's Regina George? She's the mean girl in Mean Girls. She's the head of Mean Girls. There you go.

31:38Do you know what?

31:38Richard Osman:I did know that. Yeah. Thank you. And her husband, she said, I'd had children before and they were all on their first babies. Oh, right. Wow. I really want to be in this group. All right. All right, Yoda. Right. Hilary Duff's husband, Matthew Comer. Bear in mind that everyone's saying like, Ashley Tisdale's like, this couldn't be further from the truth. He's posted a picture of his own head superimposed onto the picture they used for Ashley Tisdale in the Cut magazine. and he's written, when you're the most self-obsessed tone-deaf person on earth, other mums tend to shift focus to their actual toddlers.

32:11Richard Osman:I mean, should we go through that again? Read that again because it's great. When you're the most self-obsessed tone-deaf person on earth, other mums tend to shift focus to their actual toddlers. I mean, they're in Hollywood. To be called tone-deaf and self-obsessed in Hollywood. That means something. Wow. And I'll tell you what, Hilary Duff, not only that, Hilary Duff's in the middle of a comeback. Oh no, how unfortunate. She's got a new album. Hilary Duff sounds like a Coronation Street character. She does, completely. She'd be in the snug with her overs. I mean, her name, not her accent. She's not a doll like that, Hilary Duff.

32:43So there's all this other stuff about why they iced her out. But the stuff that's coming in anonymous, but obviously very pointed briefings from all the other people in the group are, she shared a Charlie Kirk tribute. She didn't help enough in the wildfires. I tell you what, Hilary Duff was housed by Mandy Moore all the other way around. I can't remember, and I'm not going to look it up. So let's just assume. And the phrase misalignment of values has been used. Okay.

33:10Richard Osman:I mean, there are WhatsApp groups where a meme comes through. You're like, oh, that's interesting because it assumes a complicity of everybody on that WhatsApp group. Can you imagine the side group chat, though, about this group chat? Oh, that's the group chat I'd be interested in. There must have been a non-Ashley Tisdale WhatsApp group before Ashley Tisdale was phrased. And she would have obviously had abortive attempts to create her own side chats that didn't work out. I want a reunion show. I want it televised. Yeah. This matters. Yeah. I'd like it to be on one of the major news channels instead of some of the awful news for at least an hour.

33:44Yeah, that's a really good idea. There are lots of famous group chats and I know the Avengers have got one. And Chris Evans actually once left it because it all got too much. They had lots of roasting, whatever. But Scarlett Johansson says sometimes people post box office numbers on it, which I quite like. Maybe that's why Chris Evans left. No offence. But Taylor's squad, can you imagine how many group chats she's got?

34:07Richard Osman:Oh, God. You would be so if you had... I mean, that's an MVP in your group chat, isn't it? It is. You'd love to have Taylor. You'd be worried about the side chats. All the Spider-Men have got one. All the Spider-Men have got one? Yeah, well, not, I mean, you know, but Andrew Garfield, You think they just go on the web? Yeah. Very good. Do you know what? Is it... I think that, you know, sometimes people say there's nowhere as lonely as a marriage that isn't working. I think being frozen out of some group chats can be as lonely as that maybe. Because we didn't have these things a few years ago. And now it's sort of run the world.

34:42And when I say they run the world, they really do literally run the world. Because as I say, the U.S. National Security Advisor added accidentally, the former U.S. National Security Advisor, added accidentally a journalist to a group chat about bombing Yemen while it was happening. So we know they run. Group chats are on the world now. You can't map them and no one knows what's happening with them, but they know they're there.

35:04Richard Osman:And the whole point of WhatsApp was it's supposed to have some privacy to it. And as soon as something's opened up to friends of friends of friends of friends, you think, I don't think there's a lot of privacy here. I don't think it takes a lot, especially if you've got a famous mom's WhatsApp group. That doesn't feel private to me. No, you need to have a very, very, very strong initiation process, a bit like those racists in one battle after another, when it takes absolute ages to be sure that this person is a really proper, completely cast iron, bona fide racist who you can be in your little clan.

35:40And I'm using a K version. And if there's any possibility that they're not fully, if there's a misalignment of values, Richard, then you can't have them. But they do think that all groups settle into characters. So you've got the admin, the comedian, the person who is an emotional manager, the one that everyone goes to for side chats. And it's actually, despite being a relatively new thing, has settled into something almost like pantomime.

36:08Richard Osman:The side chat WhatsApp group is much, much bigger. I mean, almost any big WhatsApp group is fairly quiet. But the side chat WhatsApp groups are absolutely on fire. Well, that's what all these podcasts are. They're like the side chat of the broadcast. They became the side chat of TV things. And what people wanted was the things that you would say that you wouldn't say in a more conventional setting. But they've sort of become, they do run the world, I think. I've spoken before about every single reality show that's ever been made. They set up a WhatsApp group afterwards or the celebs who've been on it because they're like, I really think I've met my best friends since I've been in here.

36:47Richard Osman:And I've seen various people who've been on various shows in their various WhatsApp groups. And just the way it peters out breaks your heart. It honestly breaks your heart. You know, the last, I would love someone to do a book, which is the last post on every single failed WhatsApp group. Just the final thing that was said, the last cry, the last echo into the darkness before everyone just went, let me just leave it there, shall we? And just do it as a coffee table book. That would be amazing, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And I call it, everybody has left the group. I feel like I have to segue into our next subject matter because the WhatsApp group for this year's traitors wouldn't be interesting.

37:34Richard Osman:Wouldn't it just? It's the midpoint of the series. It has been some absolutely epic TV. if you haven't watched it stop listening now because if you haven't watched episode 6 this is going to talk about things that happened in episode 6 or anything up to and including episode 6 yeah so not this week's ones we're not talking about that last week's ones no now Richard when Fiona departed yes it was interesting people saying what a woman what an amazing woman were they watching a different Fiona to me I did not experience her as a wonderful person first of all my conversations to the whatever Welsh local government office because that is a colleague and a half the drama of that was she played it like an american yes nihilist like kate from below deck in season one of the u.s traitors i just a complete she had she had a sort of in some ways to me she represented boomerism as an idea within the game given every single possible advantage unprecedented really squandered it all and probably ruined it for everyone coming after her i mean sorry and took none of the blame Yeah, should be given the executive producer credit on this series.

38:45Richard Osman:It is fairly extraordinary. Every time you think, I wonder what's going to happen in this series of traitors, you go, oh, okay. Something I've never seen before. Worth noting that the ratings for this series are higher even than the celebrity traitors' ratings. I think some of that is to do with putting it at eight o 'clock, which has opened it up to a younger audience. Even though a lot of people aren't watching it at eight o 'clock, it just means that it's bringing more people into the tent. we spoke on our first reaction video about the secret traitor being a thing that you put in very early just because we've all worked out that nothing is really happening in the first few episodes and saying we said they would end it quite early they ended it very early yeah in the end because they found a traitor so it just i think the the maths of the whole thing was not working so they brought fiona in i mean i've never seen an episode like it and it all stems it It absolutely stems.

39:39Richard Osman:It doesn't stem from, you know, a suspicion or anything. It stems from jealousy that somebody else was told something that you were not told. The whole thing. And that's why Traitors is such an amazing television program. Because one person feels jealous that somebody else has shared a secret with someone that they think they should have shared with them. And so rather than kind of going, okay, maybe I'll think about who I am as a human being. and they go, I'm going to blow this whole thing up. Not only am I going to blow it up, I am going to win. She has picked on the wrong person. She picked on the right person, I think.

40:15Yeah. My most terrifying older woman this year since Aunt Gladys in weapons, if you've seen it, you know. But there was an element of like, you know, oh, you want a president kidnapped? You want me to invade like a country for some minerals? I'll do that. Yeah, she had a huge main character energy.

40:32Richard Osman:Yeah. And it was interesting that when people say young people are self-obsessed, I thought, okay, give her a chance. Amazing TV though, Fiona, you have to say. Like I said, just give her an EP credit. It's worth remembering always on these shows that people come across differently on television than they might do if you meet them in real life. Their place in those situations, bits of their character might not be exactly who they actually are. But in terms of the narrative of this programme, oh my god she's been absolutely extraordinary chaos which is what you want controlled chaos if you stayed in can you imagine if on that round table they had voted out sam and steven who don't forget voted for fiona steven and rachel and fiona had all gone back into that turret i mean i i would not have been able to watch i would not have been able to watch i would have had to just go like england in a penalty shootout and you know i have to go in the other room you have to tell me when it's all over but she has that right reality distortion feat she said i couldn't put rachel down because she deserves to win okay is that what you're already telling yourself because because also by the way you put and quite rightly you put sam down because he's the only person who had any heat on him at that round table so your only chance of surviving is that sam gets more votes that's why you put sam down because no one was going to vote for rachel i agree and sam it's quite unfair they're voting you know what you know what it reminded me of there's always been people in american politics where people and by the way they don't often make it but people look at them and say, yeah, but he looks like a president.

42:01Like Mitt Romney, like Paul Ryan, John Kerry, there's kind of slightly patrician or kind of clean cut, those kind of guys. The problem with Sam is he just looks like a traitor.

42:11Richard Osman:Yes, he really does. He really does. What can I tell you? Yeah, yeah. I don't make the rules. It's hard. He just looks like a traitor. And he's one of the few standout people from that large blob of kind of 30-year-old men who are in the show this week. He was the sort of first one to put his head above the parapet. But, you know, every week they seem to have introduced a new man that we haven't seen before. Like Matthew. You're like, oh, hello. Well, hello. I asked Matthew. Well, they were giving him. What they did with him is that they gave him an entrance, really. Because there are sometimes that you think, oh, I haven't really seen much of them.

42:41And then it means so much more when he walked into the church and was like, I'm ready to do a deal with you.

42:46Richard Osman:Yes. And you're like, oh, I've sort of seen this guy on the round table. Have I seen this guy? Yeah, he's one of the guys who sit at the round table. Oh, and now he's, okay, so oftentimes you will go light on someone in the edit because you know that... There'll be more coming. They're a big player later on. So, yes, he's been, he looks, by the way, exactly like Owen McLove from Father Ted. You know, the little kid who all the grannies love, the singer. He looks exactly like him. Harriet. Can we get on to Harriet? Yes, we must. Okay, they have to... The stand-up star of the piece so far, I think.

43:22Yeah, probably the best faithful we've seen, although Jessie's very good, but she's good on one tack. But Harriet knows it all. The trouble is, she's right about lots of things. She thought it was traitor on traitor. And there is something, there is a peculiar energy to a confrontation, isn't there? There just has been, after you've seen a certain number of series, you just know that it's, even if you didn't know much about it, you think there's a strange energy here. And I guess the assumption is this is because it's traitor on traitor.

43:46Richard Osman:It's two friends having a row and you think, oh, I've missed something. I have missed something. Something has happened when I haven't been in the room. And in the traitors, nothing happens when you haven't been in the room unless it happens in the turret. But is she going to be the ultimate victim of the stupidity premium, which we've talked about before? Harriet. Harriet, because either they recruit her or they murder her now in the next episode. Well, she seems to be hinting that she will keep Rachel close, which would be the smart thing to do. You know, if I were her, you know, the next play is to say to Rachel, here are the two people I know for a fact are faithfuls, is you and choose anyone else.

44:19Richard Osman:doesn't matter who else you choose but just so Rachel's like oh okay I've got Harriet on board that's good I think it's too dangerous that why do you not just murder her if you if you think that she is of use to you if you think that you can have little you know don't forget you can murder people but you know you can't banish people but if you've got a very strong player like Harriet if you're Rachel you can say oh okay we can't murder person x because it looks too obvious however Harriet might be able to banish them for us so she becomes like an adjunct to the turret if you if you trust her but i ultimately think that rachel is intrinsically a lone wolf person and actually the traitor's position is very strong if there's a team of at least two and you can have one liability within that turret well i mean i love steven but he's just he's just a reaction meme he's 65 reaction memes per show okay there's only a 60 minute show but he's got because i didn't think anyone would ever go redder and look more guilty than anon carr but every time you're like Stephen, it's sort of, you know it's sort of showing.

45:21But you've got to say something so you just say are we going to discuss this? Bless him but listen, it helps if there are two who are really tight but Rachel has never had that, she's never acted that tight with him within the turret even and felt like they're a total unit and they're going together you don't get that vibe off her and I wonder whether she's intrinsically just too

45:42Richard Osman:Well, they haven't had the chance to coalesce at all really when there were three of them you had the secret traitor so that was an issue then we had hugo who's a liability hugo left so that's difficult then suddenly then you got mega liability coming in the the ashley tisdale of the piece and so they haven't really had the chance to be proper traitors and to formulate a plan or you have you have to formulate a bond and i don't think they have that bond i found it absolutely i felt like did i miss something when everyone when Stephen kept saying, I'm so close to Fiona. Yeah. Because I hadn't necessarily got that vibe either.

46:18But obviously they have to just kind of, there's only a limited amount of time.

46:21Richard Osman:But anyway, so Harriet we were talking about, which is interesting. I just think you have to murder her. I think that there is a route through, but that route through is at Rachel's side. I don't think there is another route through or being recruited. She's got the ability to go into the church and... Ask questions. I don't know what questions I would ask, even Matt's question. it was because they can lie they can say whatever they want so his question was sort of his questions made which is who are you going to get rid of next and you know if you you know would you like to recruit me uh they make great television as questions i think as a traitor i don't know if they particularly i think i'd say who would you like most like me to go after at the round table because then they're most likely going to give you the name of at least you'll know that the one piece of information you'll get is that that person is it's vanishing unlikely that person's a traitor and that they're doing a double bluff so at least you know that that person was a faithful yeah i guess i don't know wouldn't you i mean just for some one piece of information you've got two questions you could get one you could know for sure about one person with one of the questions oh by the way an absolute absolute textbook thing that they missed this time around which happens a lot is when the four of them were in cages sam and stephen and reese and maz and Sam went first, then Stephen went.

47:39Richard Osman:And so it was Rhys and Maz left in the cages. And everyone's like, well, I'm suspicious of Rhys. I think it's Rhys. You know for a fact, they wouldn't put this in the edit, but you know for a fact that if there are two people left in the edit, one of them cannot be a traitor because you know who's going. So you know for a fact that Rhys is a faithful. You know for an absolute fact that Rhys is a faithful. nobody picked up on it if I was in there the one thing I'd know is oh okay I know somebody is a faithful that's someone I can take aside and say look I absolutely know for a fact you're a faithful but of course as is the way of these things they uh they they got rid of him there so it was a mercy killing and then he's like oh my god I literally was just excited that I could finally go back in there and do nice things and they got rid of me so I don't think it was a mercy no no that was that was some more reality distortion yes yeah exactly I'm going to vote you off a show you want to stay on that's not a no um harriet here's here's an interesting thing that everyone is everyone in the book trade is talking about okay so harriet is a real deal novelist right so like you know is she writes crime absolutely top of her game blood orange which is her first book was a big bestseller everyone knows that everyone in the industry knows harriet and there is a question which is what does this show do for book sales so publishing is an industry that's in sort of perma crisis about how to reach people how to get anyone to find authors how to get people to find their books and suddenly you have an author who is on far and away the biggest tv show in the country i mean like crazy and not only is on far and away the biggest tv show in the country but is sort of the standout star of it in terms of what you would want a crime novelist to be yes exactly which is absolutely getting people's motivations brand It could not be more on brand.

49:34Richard Osman:And there was a thing in the bookseller saying that her book sales had gone up 93 % in the previous week, which sounds impressive, but they'd gone up from 181 to 343. Okay, that was a number they were talking about. Now, there was enormous opportunity for her and for her publishers now. Maybe in that first week, you know, people, you don't necessarily going to read a book just because you like someone on TV. However, if you're a publisher, this feels like your Instagram game. Do you understand publishing, Richard? Well, no. You know what? Increasingly, no. Nor do I. Jesus. Harriet has a new book coming out called Witch Trials.

50:08Richard Osman:And so I was looking up the date that it's out. And it's out on February the 26th. Oh, well done. And this show finishes on January the 23rd. Now, there's lots of different reasons why it's very hard to bring books forward. You know, supermarket slots and things like that have to be booked kind of sometimes six months in advance. But this show was finished a long time ago. Harriet would have known that she'd done a pretty good job a long time ago. You would think you would move heaven and earth to get that hardback to come out in the week that Traitors finishes. To give you an idea of the economics of these things, so she's going to sell a lot of her backlist.

50:44Richard Osman:She's got four novels already, and they're already doing good numbers. That's not really where the money is going to come. You make like a pound per paperback. On a hardback, it's very, very, very, very hard to sell hardbacks. I think her last book sold 3 ,000 hardbacks, which is absolutely not bad at all. But if you bring out witch trials in the week that she comes out of that castle, and every single chat show in the land will book her in that week. They all will. She's shown what it is that she does, who it is that she is. You can go onto Amazon and read reviews of her books and see, oh, she's the real deal.

51:24Richard Osman:like people really really love what she does and people who've read advanced copies of which trial say it's terrific as well you've got an opportunity to sell 100 000 hardbacks for that author and you know and the money side of you get four pound a hardback or something like that it's it's like it's it's for a publisher to have an opportunity to break a great author and to put them into that next level is it happens so rarely and it's absolutely come along here and by the way maybe they will trying to be kind to that business is it possible that she's the the i've never seen the a copy of the the agreement they have to sign is it possible that the nda is just so limiting that you can't say that you to anyone that you've been on it or can you just quietly break that and you're not saying you know can you keep you can say you've been on it i think people I've spoken to knew that she was on it before it was announced.

52:23Richard Osman:Yeah, for sure. In that case, I've got nothing. And also, if you are Harriet, Harriet is not someone who's backwards and coming forward in terms of her views and she represents herself very well. You know, she can, even if she's not telling her publisher she's on it, she can say I think there's a strong argument to say that we move this forward a little bit. Again, she wouldn't know exactly when Traitors is being scheduled but she knows it's not going to finish at the end of February. So yes, you have to plan these things a long time ahead, and bookshops have certain space for certain things. But as an industry, in publishing, we're trying to get people to read.

53:00Richard Osman:We're trying to get more and more people into bookshops. We're trying to get more and more people to get into great authors. There's this huge opportunity here, absolutely staring us in the face. And maybe everyone will step up, and maybe at the end of Feb when this comes out, it'll do huge numbers and maybe they'll have a campaign in place to deal with it. I don't know if they would or not, but that's something I'm going to keep a very, very close eye on because what an opportunity. And by the way, for someone like Harriet, this is not a friend of mine's daughter was talking to me about traitors.

53:34Richard Osman:And she said, you know, on Love Island, you know, a lot of people go on Love Island just to boost their OnlyFans and their Insta following. So she's saying would Harriet be more interested in the prize money or would she be more interested in book sales and certainly in terms of money I mean I think it's a bit very widely reported I think she's in a fairly comfortable position anyway I don't I don't imagine the money would go to anywhere other than charity but as an author there's one thing you want and that's for people to read your books yeah because they're really hard to write you know you pour so much of yourself into it and the one thing you want is for people to read your books so the one thing Harriet will want out of this doesn't matter what it is prize money winning none of that will be as important to her as people finding her books loving her books recommending her books and that next time she writes a book more and more people read it and just to find a readership and that i think will be the most powerful takeaway for harriet tice and i think for the book industry i think it'll be a reckoning can we take advantage of it how do we take advantage of it can we move at speed can we turn a super tanker around quicker than we normally do and it's very possible that they will be able to it's very possible they won't be able to but uh the answer either way will will tell us a lot about the publishing industry and where it has to go next just before we wind up can i ask you about this fan theory that everyone has a connection some kind of connection with everybody else because there's that family tree in the castle we already know that Judy was Roxy's mother and that Ellie and Ross were each other, were boyfriend and girlfriend.

55:08And there is this sort of fan theory. There's a thing that happens on Uncloaked when you get these two parchments or they call them scrolls or whatever. It's not a scroll actually, it's a parchment, but it's fine. And they say open the first one and that's the one that tells you who the traitors were that you don't know. And if there's two, are they not waiting? is there not going to be something they're filming and that they're gathering all the reaction shots and that we haven't yet seen that and they're going to say, and also, and then that will detail all the, or maybe I'm just being a complete conspiracy theorist.

55:42Richard Osman:No, you would certainly assume so. Yeah, okay. That's what I would say about that. Right. But again, hats off to Studio Lambert and the whole team making that show. You know, to follow up Celebritators, which was so huge, and to put together this show, which is so compelling in a completely different way. Bear in mind, they're filmed back to back. They've been filmed back to back last summer. I mean, it's absolutely extraordinary. And to innovate within the game in these kind of completely unexpected ways. It is so easy to mess this show up. I cannot begin to tell you how simple to be. And by the way, they will at some point.

56:20Richard Osman:But God, they haven't yet. They haven't, no way. And that's very, very impressive. I can't wait. Is it Wednesday the next one? Wednesday. Wow. Have you got any recommendations? A couple, yes. I usually recommend the Harlan Coben show that comes out on New Year's Day. And this one I think is his best yet. It's called Runaway. I'd really recommend that. Eight episodes, twisty turny as always. And I want to recommend a book. I mentioned at the top that I was reading an amazing book. My mum recommended it to me. It is called When the Cranes Fly South, which sounds like the sort of name I would make up if I had to pretend I'm writing a Booker Prize winner.

56:55Richard Osman:But it's called When the Cranes Fly South. So don't let that put you off it. By Lisa Ridsson, who's a Swedish author. And it is about, if it doesn't sound like your sort of thing, I would say don't read it or listen to it. But it's about a guy in his 80s in Sweden and his family. And his son is, he's getting increasingly infirm and they want to take his dog off him. And you're like, oh. It is so heartbreaking and funny and beautiful and wise. and I just think it's an absolutely extraordinary book. As I say, my mum read it and she said, you have to read this book. And if you do have relatives in their 80s or if you're in their 80s, it's very, very truthful about life and living.

57:43Richard Osman:I won't say anything more about it other than I'm finding it very, very beautiful and it's punctuated by the notes that his carers leave when they come and visit him each day. So it's a huge swathe of stuff of him and then just these little kind of notes about, you know, their visits. But it's really, really good called When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridsson. So thank you to my mum who has absolutely exemplary taste in books. And this is a case in point. So Runaway, the Harlem Coven show on Netflix I love. And When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridsson. How about you? I'm going to recommend Heated Rivalry.

58:18Ah, I see you've actually seen it. Okay, yeah. I love it when something like this happens. I love it when something that doesn't really have massive hype at all. This is the gay hockey romance. It's on Sky or Now. It's been out in the States and Canada beforehand, and it's just come out now in the UK, and it's been this huge hit over there. And I'm not going to talk too much about it because I definitely want to talk about it. I know there's been so many questions about it. We'll definitely talk about this on the Q &A. I think it's really interesting. I like romances anyway, but I love it when, I just find it when there's a cultural phenomenon.

58:51And I just want, I'm desperate to like see it. What's everyone talking about? I will talk more about my thoughts about it in the Q &A, but I'll recommend that because it's, if there's something that big, I always think if you get a chance, have a look and just see what everyone's talking about. Not everyone, but many.

59:06Richard Osman:Excellent. Thank you so much. So we will do a Q &A on Thursday. Oh yeah, we're doing it. So much. And yes, to everyone at home, thank you so much for listening. If you want to become a member, don't forget wrestlersentertainment.com. You can do that if you wish, add free listening, all of that stuff. We've got a bonus episode about Popeye the movie, and this means something, the most cocaine-fuelled set in movie history on Friday for our members. But other than that... We'll see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.

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