The Most Dangerous Job in TV

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1:28Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman and we have a whole plethora of questions lined up. We do. We actually have something really nice at the start, which Richard, I'm afraid this one is for you. This is from Phoebe, who's going to be a maid of honour. She says, my best friend's getting married on Saturday and I want to impart some wisdom from three famous people. one of whom is you, that have had a special place in our lives. Do you know why that you've had a special place in their lives? Because when they were at university, they tweeted you saying, you're the type of man who would go to the shop and get milk and come back with a bottle of champagne.

2:02Which, by the way, I think is the nicest thing that you could say about anyone. And it's lovely. Yes, you are like that. And you replied quite simply by saying, absolutely. So you mean a lot to them. And now there's a wedding on Saturday. Are you saying I'm like their Nelson Mandela? Yeah, I think she doesn't want to say it in so many words. I get it, Phoebe. I get it. British but yeah I think that's pretty much what we're saying now the question is what advice would you give a newlywed couple to keep the conversation interesting gosh marriage advice I always remember there's that funny story of that couple who'd been married 70 years so they're both in their 90s and the guy gets up and makes a speech you can find this on YouTube and he says people often ask what's the secret of a long and happy marriage and he said well it's this he said right from the beginning of our marriage 70 years ago my wife deals with all the small problems and I I deal with all the big problems in 70 years of course because my wife deals with all the small problems there have yet to be any big problems I thought that was I thought that was a oh that's lovely okay well Phoebe I hope that's a very that's a good one for you and your friend and congratulations to you yes please please wish them my congratulations as well can I just say that the Very nice guy, Pete, he took away some of my moving boxes, is a giant fan of the podcast, also said, there's never been an argument you've been on the wrong side of me.

3:18And you can imagine how much I hated that, Richard. But he made me do the A-list game we played last week on my doorstep. He said, I want to see if you can actually do this. And literally was just standing on my doorstep shouting like, Cate Blanchett, Tony Collette. Tony Collette, don't be stupid. Did he say you've never been on the wrong side of an argument? Oh, yeah, I've said it wrong again. I've done that thing where I've said it wrong. Well, there you go. No, but so he thinks you're right about things. He thinks I'm right about things on the right... I know. And you're letting this guy move valuables.

3:48That seems incredible. He took my boxes and he's going to come back to take some more boxes. Empty boxes. Oh, klutzy Pete. He's not a klutz. Not yet. And it was quite fun playing the game on my doorstep. He was like, I just wanted to see if you could do it. I was like, I can do this anywhere. I mean, he's a phenomenally poor judge of character. Anyway, we must... Sorry, we must get some questions. Yes, let's do some questions. We'll never get anywhere. Let me ask you something. Yes. Andrew Bothwell, thanks for the surname. Andrew Bothwell asks, when do you think we will see the end of some or all of the print versions of UK newspapers?

4:18I like that question. Coming from Scotland, I'm drawn to see the demise of the Daily Record, as it was the main daily paper you saw everyone with when growing up. The average February figure was just over 43 ,000. Surely they cannot survive much longer. That's a question I've thought of a lot. You see so many fewer papers. You can go to towns where you can't buy a newspaper anymore. On our WhatsApp group where we live, people were talking about the paper they got. And when I was reading it, I thought, this feels quite old-fashioned. I don't remember the last time I heard of someone having a paper being delivered.

4:49I'm sorry, I work for a newspaper and I don't get print newspapers. So 10 years ago, the sort of combined newspaper market, daily market was 9 million. And it's now barely two and a half, I think. That's in 10 years. When I worked at The Sun, they sold more than 4 million a day. They now sell 630 ,000. Which is still a lot, by the way. The money comes from this, which is why it is dying slowly. The Mail is the biggest seller at 652 ,000. Some of these figures are quite hard to, you can't be quite sure. And The Sunday Times, 290 ,000, Times, 160 ,000. A lot of people just take their titles out and say, we're not going to submit our figures anymore, which tells you that it's, I mean, the Mirror used to sell millions and it's now on 196 ,000.

5:33Maybe it is. I don't know. But you say they do actually make money on prints. So much money comes from print. And what's that? Because of advertising? Because they've got the presses anywhere. You can sell it. You're selling it. Yes, of course. Online, you know, it's really interesting. It's a little bit like a Spotify stream. For a page with a million views online, you honestly get pence. Whereas if someone's buying your paper for three quid a day or whatever, depending on whatever you're charging for it. You'll get, yeah. But it's sort of mad. People even thinking about print and how it used to work is sort of mad, you know, that you would have the first editions and they'd go to places in the north of Scotland.

6:11So they'd have, if you were covering a football match where lots of things happened at the last minute, you might get, in 1999, some of those people thought that Man United had lost the Champions League because you had to file and it's got to get on a lorry and it's got to go far. The reason it's hanging around is because they haven't worked out fully the form of transformation to better revenue streams. It used to be such virulent competition between all the papers. You know, and the idea of printing with a rival title, you couldn't have because, you know, your brilliant stories might be seen and lifted for later editions.

6:44Now, you know, the Daily Mail and News, which is the Sun and Times and all of that, they print together. So there's lots and lots of collaboration. And is that A, to save the money and B, because printing presses are closing down? Yes. And, you know, the idea of hauling multiple editions all the way around to different parts of the country just seems, you know, something from the past. However, as I say, they haven't worked out how to replace lots of that income. You see now, obviously, there's subscription, there's people are doing podcasts, there are YouTube shows. If you look at what the mail is getting into and doing all sorts of lots of those different things, and everyone's doing it, by the way.

7:18I'm just using them as an example. Some things are thriving in print. So something like Private Eye is doing really, really well. I mean, Condé Nast, it is a disaster. Look at the magazines. Look what they sell. Look at their denuded cultural influence because magazines have been replaced by Instagram and the kind of long reads you can get any day you like online. Print will survive, by the way, in some form as an artisan sort of thing. And there are lots of these kind of small circulation magazines. I've talked about The Fence, which I love. Critic Magazine, which is, again, these tiny circulation things.

7:50Blizzard, the football magazine, things like that. Yes, exactly. There are still blacksmiths. There are these artisan things that people like and they become quite expensive and they're for a dedicated but smaller audience. Five years' time, ten years' time, are we still going to the newsagent and seeing the selection of daily newspapers? I can't believe. The age of people who are buying them is... People are just ageing out and, sorry to say, dying. And they're not buying those things anymore. I don't think you'll be seeing barely any of the dailies. Maybe you'll see the mail, I don't know. But I'm really not sure you'll see a lot of it in 10 years time.

8:25I don't think you'll see any dailies at all. I'm even more worried about news agents. But a lot of news agents are closed down. That's another problem. That's another part of the whole problem. Yes, the industry in itself has got to come up with these other ways of getting subscription or payment that isn't based on advertising. I was on the train this morning and I just looked around every single person had headphones. Yeah. Every single person. Podcasts, isn't it? Yeah. That's why the newspapers are getting into podcasts. Yes. Thank you for that question, Andrew, because I wanted to know the answer to that one too.

8:56Well, this can only be for you about the Armstrong-Osman effect, Richard. James Stevenson would like to know, why are more and more shows featuring multiple hosts or host-adjacent guests, even in cases where they don't have much to do, like Rasheen on Last One Laughing, or the format seems to have been tuned in part to force two presenters, e.g. the finish line? Are producers receiving viewer feedback that makes the extra paychecks worth it when one host would do? I've always preferred two hosts to one host America it's almost always one host over here all the big shows really are joint hosted funnily enough Ant and Dec probably had a huge amount to do with it you've got Ant and Dec then Strictly you know was Bruce and Tess and now is Claudia and Tess Bake Off's always been more than one host as you say you know Countdown always had its dictionary corner I have a sort of the dictionary corner thing of pointless the finish line is a BBC daytime quiz with Roman Kemp and the brilliant Sarah Green plays the Susie Dent figure on that show.

9:53I think that it is just more fun to watch when two people are talking to each other. You've got dynamics. You've got dynamics and you don't feel quite so sold to. If you're just hosting a show by yourself, it's actually quite difficult to do because you're looking down the camera and you're talking to someone. You sort of have to read a script. So if I do House of Games, for example, or you watch Lee Mack doing the 1 % Club, very, very, very quickly, I will and he will use the contestants on the show to become co-hosts with them. You immediately co-opt everyone else to do that. And that's not how shows used to be presented.

10:29Shows used to be very much front and centre. Here is this show. Here are the rules to this show. Let's meet our contestants. You were like the priest and they were just congregants. Exactly. Handing down the tablets. But the moment, you know, Anton Deck really showed it to everyone, which is if you've got two people who are enjoying each other's company and two people who can team up with each other sometimes and sometimes can have a go at each other, it's just everything you do is heightened. If you watch Bake Off, it is more fun to have two hosts mucking about with each other. You've got two hosts of two slightly different personalities who can go through the tent and talk to different people about different things.

11:07Like if someone walks into a room and you talk to them, of course you make a value judgment on them. and we all do, if a couple walks into a room, your value judgment is kind of tripled because you're like, firstly, what's he like? Secondly, what's she like? Secondly, that's an interesting couple, isn't it? What they like together. Exactly. But also, doesn't it give you scope when you've got two for things to be a bit more undone? Very kind of, as I said, that sort of priestly, sort of everything's managed. As people have become more media literate, they quite like to see the workings a little bit more and you can sort of laugh about the meta of the show, like how it's playing out.

11:41or you can talk about that much more when you've got two. And I think people, there's something quite old-fashioned in a weird way about pretending it's all just a completely normal thing to be happening in a studio in a weird way. Exactly. And often when you're a solo host, the idea is to make hosting look very natural. But there's a lot of business to be taken care of on any show. Particularly if you're doing a quiz show, there's a lot of business introducing people, asking the questions, all of those things. And on Strictly, there's a lot of business to be done. You're introducing VTs, you're introducing the judges, you're introducing the panel.

12:09Someone has got to do that. And if that's one person, it's quite hard then for that person to keep breaking out of that and to be natural. Whereas if you've got two people, usually one person will be taking care of that sort of business. So when we did Pointless, Zander would by and large take care of the mechanics of the show. I would take care of the facts, but I would have much more freedom to muck around in the meantime. And on Strictly, test make sure that the trains run on time and that we're always where we need to be. And, you know, the VTs are always lined up properly. which gives Claudia an enormous amount of freedom to muck about a little bit more because there is an anchor there.

12:46I'm the trains running on time person in this podcast, aren't I? Very, very, very, very much so. It's why podcasts have become so huge. And solo podcasts are slightly harder to listen to because you're really relying on liking that person. And that person cannot really riff because what are you riffing off? You're not really riffing off anything. whereas if someone's given you information and someone else can, you know, if you listen to The Rest is History and Dominic Sandbrook's talking about something, Tom Holland can ask a question. Or Tom Holland's in the middle of something, Dominic Sandbrook can say, no, but hold on a minute because what does that mean?

13:20And you can't do that to yourself. It makes you much less of a salesperson just going front and centre to camera. And as a producer, it gives you so many more avenues. So in America, they don't really do it particularly. In America, we've still got solo hosts and it's certainly a particular way of presenting the shows. But over here, it's very, very rare to have a new show now that just has one host. All the big shows. So that Roman Kemp show, The Finish Line, a perfectly good example. He could be presenting that by himself and 10 years ago would have done. They all wanted to work with Sarah Green.

13:51What can we do with Sarah Green? We can watch Roman host it. We can watch Sarah give some information. But we can also watch Roman and Sarah talk to each other. Possibly an accidental thing. And Anton Deck really, really, really sped the whole process up. but I've always as a producer if you said I could have two presenters I'd always say yes please I'd always rather have two presenters than one presenter very few two presenter chat shows very hard to think of a very high profile two presenter chat show which would be a fun thing we must talk by the way about the assembly at some point the brilliant interview show on ITV maybe we'll talk about it on the main show next week thank you very much for that question OK, I love that, but we must now go to a break.

14:58up-tongued drifter with an instinct for knowing when something or someone doesn't quite add up. She also has an unfortunate tendency to gravitate towards murder wherever she goes each episode. It's a standalone investigation, very much in the spirit of Columbo. It's like a real homage to Columbo, even with the same graphics and all sorts of things. It's full of twists, dodgy characters and strange corners of America. It really has been every new episode she turns out somewhere new. You think, oh yeah, this is going to be great. There's always been huge guest stars on it as well. This series, they've got Cynthia Erivo is on it.

15:26John Mulaney is on it. Katie Holmes. Gianluca Esposito, they're all making appearances this season. Catch up on season one now before the brand new season of Poker Face premieres on 8th of May, only on Sky. This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, real United Airlines customers. We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew. I got to sit in the driver's seat. I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age. That's Andrew. A real united pilot. These small interactions can shape a kid's future.

16:02It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever. That's how good leads the way.

16:16Welcome back, everybody. Marina Rachel Blythe has a question for you. Thank you, Rachel. By the way, if you want to send in a question, it is the rest is entertainment at goalhanger.com. Keep them coming. Rachel Blythe asks, I just took two of my teenage children to the pictures as an Easter treat. To the pictures. To the pictures as an Easter treat. Thank you. I like it. To the pictures. You've just taken me back in time and I love it, Rachel. We went to the flicks and we had a Kia ora. Anyway, on the drive home, they were driving an Austin Maxi, we wondered if Juan Salvador, the excellent Penguin star of the Penguin Lessons, was the only Penguin.

16:47We thought his markings were the same throughout and it didn't look like CGI. Any info on this matter would be greatly received. Penguins in films. Steve Coogan is actually biologically a Penguin, so he was also... No, no, no. They were real-life penguins. I assume he's in that film. Yeah. OK, good. He looks like a penguin. He's playing a penguin. He's so good at the imitations, you see, that you just can't tell. No, the film didn't use CGI but it had two real-life penguins named Richard and Baba. No way. Yes. Now, when Peter Caterno, who is the director, he started filming, apparently he very quickly realised that loads of the stuff that was suggested in the script where the penguin has a very significant role.

17:25I mean, you know, I can see the line up there in the title. There were all these things that the penguins had to do, like nod their heads and flap their wings, and they were just thinking, okay, this isn't going to be possible. Apparently when the animal handlers, which I'm going to come on to, first met the crew, they just had highlighter pens over the whole script saying, yeah, no, we don't know how we're going to do this. We just, you know, have you tried working with one of these? Richard the calmer, sorry, I'm not speaking to you, I'm mentioning the name of the penguin. Richard the calmer, more mellow penguin.

17:49Yeah, that sounds about right. Was used, yeah, was used more often in scenes than the other, who was uncontrollable and maybe not very professional and couldn't make the trains run on time. So what was the other one called? Marine? The other one was called Baba. Yeah, okay. Occasionally, though, they did use a puppet penguin or a robot penguin if something has to happen without getting into the whole plot elements. But it does have some drawbacks working with the penguins because you have to carry around small fish, sprats, sardines, in order to bribe them into action. It's actually a lot like that, working with many of the major stars in Hollywood.

18:20Glenn works like that. Steve Coogan does. You just have a couple of sprouts or sardines in your pocket at all times. And there's a load of strict rules about making noise on set because you can't make a... They're nervous. They're nervous. Of course they are. Because they're acting with Steve Coogan. Of course they are. The other thing is, much like Steve Coogan, it has to take place filming between molting and mating season. I mean, that's a narrow window for Steve Coogan, isn't it? It's a very, very tight schedule. So you have to mate your days. Yeah, that's like one Wednesday in May. Anyway, so molting season, they look very tall and impressive, but they're very difficult.

18:58Again, I'm talking about the penguins. And mating season, they're very, very feisty and unpredictable. Again, still on the birds. Now, the other thing was the penguins had to be introduced to the crew. So they filmed actually in Spain and they had a rented villa in the hills above Barcelona. I mean, this is what you're dealing with when you're dealing with a movie animal. And the actors had to go and slowly introduce themselves. I hope they had to leave a sort of silver card on a silver salvo Steve Cugelan's call I'm not taking visitors this afternoon Anyhow, we actually had a goat in the franchise And my god The list of stuff that you couldn't do with a goat Don't touch the goat Don't talk to the goat Don't look at the goat It was like, oh my god It's like one of those absolutely biggest divas in Hollywood Do not make eye contact with Miss Chaconne or whatever it is It was ridiculous It had so many things that you couldn't do It can work for sort of 40 minutes a day Again, I'm just no one else on the cast.

19:51And they have these incredible rules. I mean, don't worry about animals. If it's a reputable film thing, it's so organised how much work they can do. I know we've talked about insects, which I think is rather more unregulated. But so two penguins, one of them, calm as you like, absolutely held the film together, called Richard. And Baba the Maverick. Baba the Maverick. Listen, you need both. Yeah. Yeah, the Val Kilmer of the piece. Oh, I want to know this. Paul Bonetto says this, and you must answer this, Richard, There are two episodes in the new Black Mirror series where a room full of people are frozen and the main characters walk around them.

20:24How do they film that? I mean, the amazing stuff you can do with technology these days. The very famous way of filming weird things like that is they started calling it bullet time after the Matrix. You know, when essentially everything slows down and the bullet is in slow motion, but the camera still seemed to be moving around. And there's all sorts of ways of doing that, all of which are ludicrously expensive, sort of huge rigs. you know this is by the way tricks that people were doing you know back in the 19th century when photography was very new is setting up lots of different cameras sort of and shutter speeds going at the same time and splicing them together in weird ways to make something either slow motion or to make it look like you could go around an object in slow motion it's essentially just a much more complex and much more technical version of that and time slices is sort of the official name for this technology if you do it it's incredibly time consuming it's incredibly expensive now on black mirror there's two episodes eulogy the paul giamity one hotel reverie they pull this trick a couple of times and i can exclusively reveal that they use a slightly different technology they didn't use time size they didn't use bullet time what they do so you can go back and pull and watch both of these and see if you can spot it what they did is to tell all the actors in the scene to stand still.

21:43And that's it. And that was it. No way! A couple of tiny little tweaks in the edit just for, you know, blinks or sort of slight moves. But no. I've got to re-watch. All that's happening in both of those things is all the actors are standing still. Well, that's earning your money, isn't it? That is craft. Yeah, exactly that. Well, well, well. Isn't that great? Yes. I mean, that technique, that thing, or they sometimes used to call it flow-mo. I think I've said this before. But I remember seeing it in The Matrix and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. but then I did see it honestly two years later in a centre box advert which shows you how quickly things come downstream.

22:15But yes, obviously very expensive. Very expensive but asking actors to stand still, much, much, much cheaper. I'm definitely re-watching now. Isn't that brilliant? Here's one for you Marina from Simon Young. Thank you Simon. Simon says, I wanted to watch Peep Show and put it on Netflix to watch it but should I have done this or should I have watched it on 4OD? And what about BBC produced programmes? So essentially if you've got stuff that has come from a terrestrial TV channel funded by Terrestrial TV Channel. Should you seek out a way to watch that on the Terrestrial Channel or are you allowed to watch it on other streaming services?

22:46It's Simon's question. OK, Simon, you're a very nice person to be thinking about this at all. To cut to my ultimate answer, just you do you. It doesn't matter. But it is interesting that this has happened a lot, obviously when lots of broadcasters and networks in the US have licensed their stuff to streamers and something like, very famously, Suits, which, by the way, you can still watch fully on Peacock NBC's service, but nobody does because it became a massive hit on Netflix. Oh, my God, I think the one on Netflix, they've got a sort of the opening episode is nine minutes longer. I mean, the director's cut off suits, kill me now.

23:19But anyway, there's things like that. Sometimes they retain one series so that you do go back into the broadcaster service at one point. But to be honest, you're the viewer, Simon. Just watch whatever is best for you. And that basically means where there aren't any ads. And therefore, you would be watching this one on Netflix. You can't be worrying about the decisions that broadcasters have made. And if Channel 4 have made their decision to license it to Netflix, eventually it is providing value to Channel 4 indirectly, I guess. And, you know, if people don't watch it on Netflix, then they'll stop getting that revenue stream from Netflix because people will say, oh, people don't watch this on.

23:53So it all sort of ends up in the same place. I mean, the BBC is obviously different because different kettle of fish to that. But let the broadcasters take care of this. I mean, there was something I was seeing recently, that Russell T Davies series. Did you ever watch that? Years and years. Now they obviously think that's been, had everything wrung out of it as possible on iPlayer and that's gone to Netflix. And I saw people writing news stories about, you know, all this, if you've liked, you know, whatever dystopian this or that, then you might love this series. And I thought, gosh, that's interesting because it really wasn't done that long ago.