Has Morrissey Become Noel Edmonds?

0:00This episode is brought to you by our good friends at Sky. Some things were just made to be together. Salt and vinegar, Holmes and Watson, Tommy Shelby and a tailor who asked no questions, preferably while pouring the whiskey. Oh, salt and vinegar, definitely. Now you can add to the list of those dynamic duos Sky and Netflix. Now together on the Sky Essential TV package for just£15 a month. One place, one bill, one less thing to think about. Two entertainment heavyweights under one roof with shows like The Last of Us, Gangs of London and Squid Game, plus Sky Atlantic, Discovery Plus and over 90 other channels.

0:35It's your evening neatly stacked by someone with impeccable taste. You. Serious value for a front row pass to the shows everyone's talking about. Lined up, turning your sofa into the hottest ticket in town. Minus the dress code. Get Sky TV and Netflix for£15 a month. The best entertainment in one place. Ready whenever you are. Visit sky.com to start. Requires relevant Sky TV and third-party subscriptions, Sky Central TV includes a selection of Sky Channels, 18 Plus, UK, Channel Islands and I Love Man only.

1:11Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osman. Hello everybody. Hello Marina. Hello Richard, how are you? I'm alright. I normally ask what sort of week you've had but I'm not going to ask you that this time. I'm going to ask you a different question, which is what sort of week are you about to have listeners take a little listen at this? It's pretty low-key, pretty low-key, Richard. I, tomorrow, will be boarding a flight for the cursed city of Los Angeles. What could force you to go there, Marina? I can't think. You might say, I'm just going to go and talk to Glen Powell.

1:44Holy moly. I mean, a friend of the podcast doesn't do him justice. I don't think he knows he's a friend of the podcast. He's about to. By the way, I'm doing this for an interview for The Guardian. Don't worry, when it comes out, you will have every cough and spit. But that's what I'm doing this week. By the way, if anyone has any questions, I'm not really legally allowed to do it, but send them in to therestlessentertainment.com and you never know, Marina might be able to slip one of those in. I might well do. Can you match it, Richard? Are you doing anything on that scale of gravitas perhaps this week?

2:14We're still waiting. I mean, it really depends that the M &S in Chiswick, as you know, is being extended. and they said it was going to be reopening in September. So is that going to happen this week? I walked past it the other day, it doesn't look like it is. Can I get it over the line? So listen, again, if you've got any questions for the team behind the M &S extension in Chiswick, wrestlersentertainment.com, so it's either Glenn Powell or M &S. Could you put it in the subject line in case we muddle them up? Can I just say though, and listen, I know you'd never admit to this, the only reason you're going is because of the podcast and because of our love for Glenn Powell.

2:48you got asked to interview all sorts of people and I bet the second this came in your inbox you thought oh okay this I can do I haven't done an interview for about 15 years so anyway I'm very excited to do this for The Guardian and we'll let's just wait and see if it lives up to every single one of my enormous expectations love it doing it for The Guardian sure, sure I am Richard, that's where it's going to appear but of course we will discuss it further when the time comes now what are we actually discussing in greater detail this week Morrissey has released a statement whenever someone releases a statement Released toys from his pram once more Yes, he goes there are so many toys in this pram anytime somebody releases a statement on their own website we know that's an item for us he's released a statement we'll talk about what it is and we'll talk about why all bands end up suing each other They're not the only ones suing each other There are another band actually much bigger but much less newsworthy who are also suing each other at the moment which we'll get on to We are also going to talk about the paper the new sitcom sitcom which is you can see on sky and now here or in nbc in the estates which is a spin-off of the office and we're going to talk about what that means also i think a little bit what things like this get right and wrong about newspapers oh that's fun because it's essentially the biggest sitcom launch in i would say five years oh yeah so a lot a lot hangs on it but yeah i'd be interested to know if it accurately reflects a newsroom i suspect it doesn't but uh you know i don't imagine that a paper office is like The Office, and I enjoyed that.

4:12We're also going to talk about Dan Brown's new book is out this week, first one in eight years. All the big books have started coming out now, all the Christmas books. So it's going to take you through the runners and riders there and talk you through why they're released, when they are, and who might do the best. I'm dying for that. There's a lot of muscular male fiction coming, Richard. Yes, in an era where we're constantly told that men don't write books anymore, this list would suggest otherwise. For our many, many younger listeners or viewers, Morrissey, he was the least singer of the Smiths, he's from Manchester, he sort of has a reputation as a poet, he's certainly an iconoclast, he will always write about quite dark issues, very interesting issues, write about things you wouldn't necessarily normally hear in pop songs, had a reputation for being miserable when they came out, just because the voice has a certain timbre to it, which suggests a miserableness.

5:02But the Smiths and Morrissey himself had such a hugely devoted fan base. Impossible to sort of overestimate quite how much the Smiths were loved by people who loved them. How he reached into teenage bedrooms and hearts and just spoke what was inside them. Yeah, and a creature that probably couldn't exist in any other era than the 80s. You know, Joy Division passed it on to the Smiths, but the Smiths happened to have this genius guitarist, Johnny Marr, who could write incredible pop songs as well. So he had the tortured poet who was a very, very interesting imagery, the incredibly melodic guitarist and this band kind of exploded out of nowhere.

5:35So at that time, you know, he was a militant vegetarian, very happy to speak his mind about everything, very happy to go on the record and slag people off. And just, you know, he spoke his mind long before speaking one's mind was a red flag. Let's talk about bands. Let's talk about Morrissey, shall we? Morrissey has put his business interests in the Smiths up for sale. Yes. He's actually headlined it a soul for sale. Yeah. A soul for sale. Morrissey's soul. Okay. These comprise, according to Morrissey, the name the Smiths as created by Morrissey. By the way, these are Morrissey's words, not yours.

6:07Yes, oh yeah. And every time we say as created by Morrissey, Morrissey himself has written that. I'll type that onto his website himself. All Smith's artwork as created by Morrissey. Every time he's doing it, he's thinking, is it double R, double S? He probably finds it easier than I do. Yeah, he's got a keyboard shortcut for it now, I think. All Smith's merchandising rights, all Smith's songs lyrically and musically, all synchronisation rights, all Smith's recordings, and all contractual rights for Smith's publishing. The reason he's doing it, he says, I am burnt out by any and all connections to Mar, Rourke, Joyce, his three erstwhile bandmates.

6:40One of whom is deceased. Yes. Andy Rourke is deceased. Yeah, and interestingly, one of whom, Mike Joyce, is just about to release a book, but entirely coincidental. Yeah. He says, I've had enough of malicious associations. With my entire life, I have paid my rightful dues to these songs and these images. I would now like to live dissociated from those who wish me nothing but ill will and destruction. And this is the only resolution. The songs are me. They are no one else. It's like this podcast, isn't it? It's all Marina. But they bring with them business communications that go to excessive lengths to create as much dread and spite year after year.

7:13I must now protect myself, especially my health. Any serious investors should make contact. And I read out that email address because if you send something to it, which I've done, it just bounces back. It doesn't appear to work. Okay, there's a lot to unpack. a lot of toys to unpack or pick off the ground. To put back into the ground. The bit that seems to be really getting to him is that they bring with them business communications. I mean, the admin of artistry does make me laugh a lot. I mean, it's really interesting. Actually, a lot of people much further down the tree who've never had anything approaching the success the Smiths have had say, you know, obviously you're in a band because you love making music and you love performing and you love all of those things.

7:56But just a huge amount is spent getting from A to B. you know booking venues dealing with the admin just dealing with the admin have we paid vat on our german royalties yeah and there's a huge amount of admin and it reminds me of various things it reminds me of things like we've talked about before that even if you're a really big time actor a tiny amount of your schedule of the pie chart really could be you in front of a camera actually acting all of the rest of it in case of mark warburg as we frequently say is praying having a lot of showers turning down selfies it's a huge amount and actually the thing that you're in it for is just a tiny amount of the day I think even if you're in just a small band that kind of has a few gigs people say oh it's eight hours a week they did actually a study of up and coming Dutch musicians did they?

8:43yeah no it's really interesting ok who's doing that who's getting paid for that? I don't know but it's quite a fun thing to do to talk to them and say was it was it was it funded by Dutch musicians mums? I don't know I think Dutch Musicians Mums, maybe at that stage, are probably helping them out with the admin. By the way, great name for a band. Dutch Musicians Mums. And they found that quite a large percentage of the week was spent on that. And obviously, most people, as we discussed last week, have other jobs. Morrissey has one job, which is being Morrissey at all times. Yeah, that's a full-time job.

9:16By the way, that needs 150 % of anyone else. But the admin of it all seems to really get to him. I think what you're hitting upon there is exactly right, which is when you start a band, I mean, I started with the question, why do bands all end up suing each other? And most bands form in the sort of teens and twenties. And it's usually quite a random collection of individuals. There's absolutely no reason why it's Ma, Morrissey, Ralk and Joyce. It could have been any number. And when you look into the history of all of these bands, you know, there's various people who sort of drifted in and out.

9:44So it's quite a random collection of people you're with. And you're with them in the Smith case. And in the case of the Salaband, we're going to talk about five years tops, something like that. and almost all your time is spent writing songs, being fated for those songs, touring those songs, people going absolutely crazy about those songs. Also some arguing in the pie chart. Oh yeah, of course, of course. And towards the end, more and more arguing. As you get more and more successful and the pie gets bigger and bigger, more arguments about who gets what chunk of that pie. When you split up, of course, and when the phone stops ringing quite so much, your spirit is still exactly the same.

10:16Your love for what you do is exactly the same. Your love for your art is the same. the feelings that you have and of the fandom remain the same but there is less and less and less to do you know you're not going into the studio every day with your mates you know you're doing solo albums or you know solo tours that are slightly smaller you're doing all those things and so suddenly that idea of your legacy starts to rear its head and if you are the smiths there's lots of money there as well and you know reunion tours and things like that but that's when you get to the point of but these are three random guys i met in my 20s you know if you think back listeners to just a random group of people that you used to hang out with in your 20s and imagine now you've got 100 million to spread out between you and it's it all comes down to which of you is the most talented you know that's uh that's a heady brew it's not like these are the three musketeers and they'll never be split they're all bands by and large are made up of incredibly disparate individuals and the adrenaline of being in a gang when you're in your 20s is so enormous and the fanfare and all of those things is so enormous but when you were in your 40s and you know you've got a you just bought a home in LA and you've got a home in Tuscany and you've got still got a house in Manchester and you actually need a bit more money or maybe you were the drummer and you're not getting as much money as the others that starts to focus the mind into oh actually it was fun and I do love the art but there was a lot of money and I don't appear to have an awful lot of it and the singer he does appear to have an awful lot of it so the smith years ago mike joyce and andy rourke sued uh morrissey and mar for a bigger share of songwriting duties and and mike mike joyce got a payoff andy rourke who's sadly no longer with us took an 80 000 pound payoff because i think he was desperate for the money at the time mike joyce um held out a bit longer and got a bit more money but this happens to so many bands as i say mike joyce has got his book about to come out it's called the drums and it'll be brilliant everyone you talk to about mike joy says he's just the nicest man in the business just a just an absolutely rock solid guy unrelated news unrelated unrelated news is it also is now is now is now in the headlines is this current news also unrelated to the fact that morrissey suggested doing a reunion tour and johnny marr didn't want to do it he didn't feel the vibe was right which puts it quite mildly I think.

12:34Johnny Marr, who again, everyone you talk to, because you do sometimes think with this thing, you think, oh, everyone's anti-Morrissey, everyone's pro-Marr. But is that true? So I tried to speak to lots of people who've been in their orbit. And Marr comes up with a pretty clean bit of health as well. People love him. And yeah, he absolutely turned down the tour, which would have been a lot of money because he would have felt compromised. It would have been a huge amount of money. The other thing which relates back to something we have often said, particularly last is that the money now comes from touring.

13:00And so you have to actually be back in the same place together. I mean, you have to say that Spinal Tap, the new Spinal Tap reunion thing, is so in the wheelhouse of Contempo culture because they are all... I mean, in the old days, you'd say, what band that old would have gone out on the road? Of course they wouldn't. But it's now like, oh, all of them. They will all do this unless they literally want to kill each other. I mean, the money that Oasis are making, and very few bands can make that money by the way and the smiths wouldn't make that money oasis have a particular place in the heart of our culture and even in america that they're able to do that but the smiths would be making a lot certainly more than morrissey and mar have now so morrissey i think weirdly his story reminds me of when we were talking about noel edmonds which is morrissey is unable to let go what he was in the 80s and how he was seen in the 80s and he was seen as counter-cultural he was seen was incredibly intelligent he was seen as you know somehow Now kicking, you know, swimming against the tides and doing so in an incredibly artistic way.

14:01That was that was that's the that's the legend of Morrissey. And that is not how he's seen anymore. And he continues to swim against the tide. But, you know, he's flirted with the far right and things like that. He might be surfing the tide now. He is. I don't know what he's doing. He's certainly doing something. So he recorded an album in 2021, Morrissey. It's called Bonfire of Teenagers. And it's about the Manchester Arena bombing. That's the lead track. It was about the Manchester Arena bombing. And nobody will release it. So no one will release this album. And when he talks about it, you do think there's a touch of the Edmonds about it.

14:41He was dropped by his label, BMG, because he said he blamed that split on the labels. New plans for diversity. That's what he said about that. He said he's taken this new album to every major label in London. Now, every major label in London has reviewed this album, quotes, while also admitting that it is a masterpiece. And listen, I get it. He's called the record the best album of my life. And he says, the madly insane efforts to silence the album are somehow indications of its power. Otherwise, who would bother to get so overheated about an inconspicuous recluse? So that's what he's saying about this.

15:20he's had it every way in that particular just in those three sentences more unbelievably on one of the songs I Am Veronica the backing vocals were done by Miley Cyrus because she was a huge Morrissey and Smiths fan so she did that she then asked for her vocals to be taken off and again you know can you retroactively make vocals off the record? I'm not sure you can really do but for that Morrissey blamed the legacy press so the legacy press had something to say but so listen we've heard that playbook played many many many times before but the reason he really reminds me of Noel Edmonds is if you listen to the songs from this album if you listen to Bonfire of Teenagers it's one of his best one of the best things he's done in his career genuinely I mean wherever it comes from it is a great song and anything that's on the album that is publicly available it's absolute prime vintage Morrissey if you don't like prime vintage Morrissey you won't like it if you do like prime vintage Morrissey this is music that is absolutely up there with anything else that he's ever done interesting intriguing agree or disagree musically it's absolutely a morrissey album and it is interesting that nobody will release it i do find that interesting that no one will release it and i'm aware that he comes across as an old man shouting at clouds and i'm sure there is a part of that but also he is a guy just going to the studio doing what he's always done and making this stuff and suddenly he he's in a world where nobody wants to release it.

16:46Well, do you think he might be in a different world now? Because as we've said, there has been a sort of cultural sea change or the sort of end of what feels like a sort of cultural decade, a direction. Is Morrissey now not more likely to get a hearing? Certainly, there is a fandom out there for him. And if he wanted to, it's perfectly possible to, you know, self-release these things and there's money in that. But I think what Morrissey wants is to be significant. I think that's what he wants. and because he was significant. And I think that there's a certain type of personality that if they feel they're not being as heard by as many people as they used to, they don't go, oh, okay, that's the way life is.

17:25Instead, they shout louder. Because they thought, oh, I must not be shouting loud enough because it used to be like everybody listened. And now almost nobody is listening to me. And this is an example of that, this thing that he released, The Soul for Sale. That is him shouting as loudly as he possibly can. And now he has got a reaction. People are going, oh, yeah, Morrissey. Yeah, I remember Morrissey. he is in a very interesting that just that nold edmunds thing because both sort of children of the 80s both children of a monoculture you know the smiths i can't believe this is the first time i've heard them yoke together i really can't richard edmunds and morrissey yeah this is my favorite take but yeah you know what i get it you know i love it they are beasts from a different jungle and now they look around them and go i well i don't understand this i kind of get the kind of primal yell of the thing but as i say everyone i speak to if you talk to them about ma or mike joyce or the late andy rourke have nothing but good things to say about them and there would have been a lot of money for a reading unit tour and they would have had their reasons for not doing that tour which we can imagine one way or another johnny mara's influence a million guitarists yes that's for sure but whether whether the smiths have that place in pop culture i don't know but a band that are much much bigger were the police i hate the police wow let's let's cut that out out of context no would you defund the police i hate the police you hate the police yeah i think they're really like emotionally hollow and just it's very polished and i think that you know it's not it's not insignificant that the most emotionally deep song really is all about power and control.

19:03Every breath you take. I believe we're going to be talking about it today. Well, yes, because that's also what the lawsuit is to do with. So, Sting takes a large proportion of the royalties for police songs, but you've got Stuart Copeland, who's the drummer, and you've got Andy Summers, who is the guitarist, and they are now suing Sting. 42 years after Every Breath You Take. 42 years? It seems longer. They have opened up the wound again. Sting sold his back catalogue for 300 million back Sony. There's a lot of money. Andy Summers is older than the others and Andy Summers said, I did the guitar riff.

19:37That's one of the reasons this is one of the biggest selling songs of all time. I agree with him. I agree with him that the guitar riff, because he bought a... Because this, I believe, is now the court of law for such things. Sting wanted to do it on a sort of Hammond organ or something and they were like, no, we're a guitar band. And without that, Without the guitar, I mean, I think it is quite different. He also wanted to do the drums with a drum machine. Honestly, Sting, what does Sting know? It came off synchronicity, this, and they are really in the final, you know, his God complex by this stage.

20:09But it's their last album. Yeah. As a band. It's their last album as a band. Yeah. As you say, everybody falls out in the end. But they do. Or sooner rather than later. So again, let's see how the police formed. And this is not three people who met at school and, you know, lifelong friends and all this. The police form in the 70s in London, just where sort of prog rock was on its way out and punk was on its way in. And Sting was in like a jazz fusion band called Last Exit. He saw Stuart Copeland playing drums in the prog rock band Curved Air in Newcastle and gave him his number. And they hooked up when he went down to London.

20:44And then they were both asked to join a band by an ex-member of Gong called Strontium 90. And the guitarist in Strontium 90 was Andy Summers. so they thought, well let's get Andy Summers in and he by the way is in his 30s, he's much older than the others but essentially they're kind of three jazz fusion prog rock musicians all of whom are quite interested in punk and funnily enough when they at least two of them have a god complex and when they turn up in the public consciousness, it's with that bleach blonde hair that short bleach blonde hair and sort of punk look and that is entirely due to a Wrigley's commercial, a chewing gum commercial that Tony Scott was directing and he needed someone to play a punk band so they cut their hair short, dyed their hair and it never aired this advert but somewhere there's the three of them with a six foot pack of Wrigley's chewing gum being carried around.

21:30Styling by Tony Scott Styling by Tony Scott. So that was the police. So they are three people from very different places who got together and I think genuinely because Sting is an unbelievably great songwriter became the biggest band in the world By 1993 Rolling Stone is saying this is the biggest band in the world. So it's all well and good being the smiths this is the biggest band uh even they did one ill-fated reunion tour in 2007 2008 and in 2008 they have played together on they've got together for nights and various things like that benefits no doubt there's a bit about them that makes you think they haven't fallen out with each other i think sting slightly regretted the reunion tour he certainly said that he had but they were the highest earning musicians in the world in 2008 and that was the highest grossing tour of all time when they reformed and and yeah he'll still do your oligarch's wedding for a million dollars stink just in case he's yet to answer the question how how much money is enough well i guess we'll find out in the high court fairly soon so uh yeah and andy summers and stewart copeland are after this money now stewart copeland is someone you would not want to be sued by i this is why i would never say i hate the police you know who you know who his dad is no tell me you don't know who stewart copeland's dad is wow okay you're about to regret saying you hate the police.

22:43His dad is Miles Copeland, who was a very, very, very senior member of the CIA. He was one of America's top spies. I do remember reading this. Yeah. Anything about, you know, Philby and the Cambridge spies and all that. Miles Copeland is always somewhere in the background, in the Middle East, in Lebanon. But also his mum was a spy, a Scottish woman. She was also a spy. So he comes from a family of spies, Stuart Copeland, and is a tough nut. That's for sure. so he's taking Sting to court that's why if I was Sting I'd just pay up immediately he's got his brother I'm so glad you're not Sting yeah we'll be doing this podcast let me put it that way his brother who is another Miles Copeland managed the police went on to manage Sting for many years as well so this is a band that there shouldn't be all that much acrimony but there appears to be but they found him so controlling that it was beyond well he said again you team up with people in your 20s you're all musicians and you all have different musicianships but if you're a creative and you're in a room with three people all of whom want to be doing their own thing and it isn't the thing that you want to do there comes a point where you go I just have to be me I have to go and do what it is that I want to do so actually if you are controlling then the only thing to do is become Sting you know and leave the band which is which is what he did and he certainly has become Sting hasn't he he certainly has but yeah it's all really about every breath you take almost all of it is about which it's interesting that it almost telescopes onto one song Which is one of the very few, you know, we talked about touring being the only place to make money.

24:14Every Beth You Take is one of the few songs you can still make money out of. It's one of the sort of 10 biggest radio played songs in the history of the world. And of course, with the sample in the P. Diddy song as well. It was in, when Phyllis gets married in the US office, it's played at her wedding by Kevin's band, which is called Scrantonicity. Oh, yeah. so they're in the high court at the moment that's only today's first mention of Dunder Mifflin by the way Stuart Copeland's other brother Andy Copeland also worked in the music business but I think might be the only person in history this is a sidebar, this is the ultimate sidebar might be the only person in music history ever to have dated both Marianne Faithfull and Courtney Cox ooh that's an intergenerational that's a Venn diagram isn't it just so Morrissey is clearly trying to divert attention from this Mike Joyce book, which will be brilliant, The Drums.

25:10I mean, even if it doesn't settle scores, which I don't think it will, knowing how mild-mannered he is, but I think it will be an incredibly interesting read. I think so. The police are in the high court as well, but so many bands end up in court because when they are young, they have the energy and the adrenaline that they're with people who, you know, in an ordinary bit of life, they'd move offices and they wouldn't be friends with them 10 years' time, but they are yoked together forever creatively and they have people who talk to them about that other person forever creatively. Meanwhile, there is a huge pot of money somewhere which could be somehow sliced up between all of them.

25:45There'll always be someone coming along saying, you know they got a bit too much there, you know they got a little bit too much. And so I think that's why all bands end up suing each other. If you don't sue your manager, it's much better to have it siphoned away into suing the manager. And, you know, the Rolling Stones have just got that litany of managers who ripped them off about 65p. But there's certain people in bands who will always be more of the record-keeping persuasion. And Jagger's definitely like that. And McCartney, when people say, oh, he sued the Beatles. He was trying to get rid of Alan Klein, exactly who was the manager.

26:16And that all seemed to end well for everyone. Journey, the Don't Stop Believing band, they went to court because one of them wouldn't let the other one use the band credit card. Hall and Oates have been in... And there's only two of them. and they've been in court cases forever. And again, because in our popular imagination, those two are like best friends and they're just two guys who met each other and now they've got half a billion pounds to share out between them. And so what else are you going to do? No one really wants you to go back in the studio, so you might as well go into the courtroom.

26:49It made me think, I was fortunate, I went to go see Coldplay and I want to write a pamphlet called In Defence of Coldplay because I think they're much more. I think your pamphleteering is, are you're just coming into them well he's even chris martin at the end just said well done for tolerating two hours of cold play i think it's a real achievement that's him at wembley you think but uh again you talk to people about cold play and nobody has a bad word to say about them they say everyone who works for them has worked with them forever they pay their crew properly there have been charities that have been in trouble that have been bailed out by cold play and told, do not say a word about this.

27:29Everyone, you know, you go see, I mean, there's an awful lot of we all love each other and all this at the gig. My favourite line in We Solve Murders is actually quite negative about Coldplay. Which I feel bad about. Which made me laugh so much when I read it. Yeah, there's a gangster in St. Lucia who's wearing a Coldplay T-shirt and when someone was asked about shooting him, he said, well, the Coldplay T-shirt made it easier. So Chris Martin, if you're listening, that was, I just, listen, you know, it's a useful joke. and it's all money. But yeah, that's a band who I think have been equitable about where the money goes for a very long time and seem to actually like each other and look after each other.

28:05But it's very, very, very rare that you see that. So what's this space for Morrissey and the police developments? Right, well, after the break we're going to talk about some thrusting, quite old guys who've got some very, very big books out in the run up to Christmas. And we're going to talk about the future of sitcom.

28:25This episode is brought to you by Sky, home of Atomic, the new Sky original series. Max, a free-spirited drug smuggler, is forced into an unlikely partnership with JJ, an enigmatic fugitive seemingly allergic to eye contact. They're involuntarily trafficking life-threatening uranium. If it ends up in the wrong hands, the fallout will be nuclear. They're being tracked by covert operatives led by Cassie, a highly skilled scientist, an undercover CIA officer who will do everything in her power to stop a potential Armageddon. Thanks, Cassie. Conspiracies, car chases and morally grey zones. Atomic stars Alf Yallin, Shahzad Latif and Samira Wiley.

29:01It's high stakes, offbeat and somehow still full of heart like Thelma and Louise if they were carrying uranium and everyone has sand in their eyes. Watch Atomic. Brand new episodes every Thursday on Sky. Requires Sky TV subscription.

29:17Welcome back, everybody. Marina, the paper has just come out. It is a semi-spinoff of The Office, which means everyone's got incredibly excited about it. Greg Daniels, who's the guy who adapted The Office for American TV, amongst a very, very big team of people, he's behind this as well. There are, well, certainly there's one. Along with Michael Komen, who's behind Nathan For You, one of the co-creators of Nathan For You. It has one of the stars of The Office in it. There are other site connections, which we won't say if people have not seen it yet. But because this is seen as the first real spinoff from The Office, there's been a huge bet on this show to be the thing that really revitalizes sitcom in the States.