The Secrets Of Channel 4’s Hunted

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1:49Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment Questions and Answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond. Lots of questions for you. Although something terrible just happened, which is our producer, Joey, was just on the phone saying, oh, you've got the pizzas, have you? Oh, yeah, no, just send them in. And we thought we were getting pizza, but actually it was on like a ring doorbell for the goal hanger offices and they're getting pizza. I've been crushed really quite badly in the last few minutes. So I want to apologise if I just sound a bit morose in this episode.

2:15You are listening to two people who thought briefly they were about to get some pizza. We could get an unexpected pizza. We were so excited. Anyway, listen, that's by the by, isn't it? It is by the by. Many have written in with suggestions of other things that are annoying them that they're seeing in TV dramas or movies. Or after your movie cliches. answer of last week. And TV cliches, because there are quite a few of these ones. This is a good one. Luke Anderson says, over-enthusiastic throngs of reporters caring about relatively mundane crime cases. Yes, there's not even enough money to cover anything other than the most high-profile crime cases.

2:47Ben has written, and this is an adjunct to that, but he's 100 % right. He says, main characters answering the phone, saying, are you watching this? Finding the remote immediately, switching on the TV directly to the news and catching the story developing at an important part of the exact same bulletin or report that the caller is talking about. That's a really good one. And that's been going on for years. I mean, you sort of, I mean, you slightly have to a little bit, you know, you have to put your exposition somewhere. And, you know, if you can get Krishnan Guru Murthy to stand in front of the courts of justice and do it for you, then why not?

3:19But yeah, yeah. Or like local news. And they're literally just talking about, you know, someone's lockup garage. Have you seen that? Have you seen that? Yeah, it's on the news about, hmm. Yes. I get it. Although the local news is obviously by far and away the top rated show on the whole of British television. Oh, 100%. But by a million miles. That's another thing we should always talk about. I'm just saying they wouldn't do a thing about a lock-up garage. Yeah, no, they wouldn't. They've got more important things to be talking about, which is why their ratings are so high. They absolutely are.

3:46OK, Alice Emanuel says, curtains always open at night time. This is a big one. I always feel very odd when I'm watching that. You feel like, well, of course, you are supposed to feel slightly like the criminal voyeur as you're looking through. Yeah, I remember walking down a row of houses once, five or six years ago. It must have been winter. It was dark. And there were three or four different houses that I could see their curtains weren't closed. And they were all watching pointless. And I thought, I'm going to go up and just bang on the window. But of course I didn't. But people do leave their curtains open, I think.

4:17I think people don't think that they can be seen because they can't see out. No. But that's not how physics works. No. Is it physics? Yeah, it's physics, isn't it? Light and stuff. Yes. Yes. I mean, we'll probably hold off doing the science spin-off of this show. Okay. Shall we get on to some questions? Catherine Thompson has a question for you, Marina. Do people still create DVD commentaries for movies, or has that drifted off along with DVD sales? Can you watch a film with Glenn Powell narrating what it was really like to be in a twister? Well, you know how to get my attention, Catherine. That's so clever, mentioning Glenn Powell in a question.

4:51Just put Glenn Powell in any question, in case I haven't mentioned him that week. It's interesting. DVD sales are not doing as badly as you think they are. And there are a number of reasons for this. And certainly things like Blu-ray and special editions 4K stuff. I'm beginning with a bit of a sidebar, which isn't right. But people really don't like in lots of ways how the platforms serve up these films and they've been edited or the sound's been messed up. We've talked about the sound mixing before and how they kind of mess it up when they put it on the platforms. So people really like, if they're going to watch it lots and lots of times, you were told it was going to be infinite choice.

5:20But actually people don't like the versions of the films that are often on the streaming platforms. And so lots of people actually do still buy Blu-ray and 4K. And they also like to own it, right? Yeah, and in video download and in digital rental, that's actually had an uptick last year. However, however, there is a however. It does take a certain amount of the actor's time and the director's time. And the studios used to pay people to pay the actors and the directors to do this. But the DVD commentary was really big because don't forget, they made so much money off DVD sales. And movies could not be successful, really.

5:52And then you make it all back off the DVDs. There was a period of very... Films were making, the money that comedians were making. Oh, my God. Or people like The Office, Ricky and Stephen Merchant doing... Millions upon millions upon millions. It was an absolute gold rush. There was a very short boom time where if you sold the sale of DVDs, people just became incredibly rich. If you were Peter Kay or, as you say, Ricky or Stephen or something, in those years, it was an absolute bonanza. Or even if you were like a bit part player on The Office, that absolutely kept you in houses for the next 10 years.

6:23failed at the box office it didn't matter because you always made it back on the dvds anyway so they used to pay the talent to do them basically but so i'm watching goodfellas on i don't know where it's streaming currently in the uk but they don't have any of that director's commentary they don't have any of those things that they used to have the streaming platforms don't buy those things and you can't get them and the thing about this they were really popular they're sort of lost they will become lost artifacts because people absolutely love them i actually spoke to a couple of people who work, one person who works in cinematography and one person who is a director who said, I couldn't afford to go to film school and I learnt on the job, but I learnt so much from watching DVD commentaries.

7:03100%. And I learnt such a lot, you know, because there were lots of bits that you or I, if we might not be hugely interested in cinematography, didn't watch, but people did watch those bits. Yeah, and if you hear Martin Scorsese or Edgar Wright or somebody talking you through a shot, you will learn more than it's just, it's priceless So some directors really understood this because they understood that so many people in their industry didn't have the money to go to film schools and things like that and learn a lot from these things and started putting them on personal websites and telling you when to hit play so you can watch the DVD commentary you know, like a really analogue version of sort of dimming it But the studios don't give those things to Netflix or whoever's streaming them because they still sell DVDs and it's interesting actually The sales of DVDs is down, but it's still very, very strong.

7:52I went to a shop, but not in London recently, and they had miles and miles of all the series you've just seen on TV in DVD form. And they sell well. I think they went down sort of two or three or four percent last year, but they still sell very well and they do make money off them. But I do think those commentaries are slightly becoming lost artifacts and people are trying to sort of save them in any way they can because you learnt a lot from them and you learnt a lot about the film. And the time that they used to spend doing those sorts of things, it was always like you'd film something and then you'd know that a month afterwards you'd go in and do the director's commentary or, you know, the fifth anniversary one came out and you did a different director's commentary.

8:31Now, if you go on to any film set, any TV set, pretty much any time you've got 10 minutes, someone from the socials... I was just about to say, yeah. ...is coming along and saying, could you do a little thing where Timothee Chalamet is going to read out tweets and they're either about you or him and the two of you have to guess or Glenn Powell has got some American snacks and Tom Hardy's got some British snacks and they're going to try this. Can you just try the snacks, the two of you? It's just for socials. So your entire life is spent having to do short little clips for TikTok or Instagram. And, you know, the days when you had...

9:02And that takes all the oxygen of the time that you would have talked about other things. Yeah, the craft. Where you could be talking about the craft of your movie. And, you know, it works pretty well when it works, but that's the real sort of lake of mediocrity that's going to be dredged in 10, 20 years' time is all of those social media stunts for films that didn't work. Yeah. And you'll look back and just go, wow, just the sort of hope in the eyes of these people who are eating a banana for the first time. The waste of human endeavour. The absolute waste of human endeavour. Well, it's just two actors thinking, I could be in my Winnebago now, and instead I'm having to eat Watsits.

9:38Yeah, but the stuff that's on Blu-ray and special edition DVDs, it's still there, and it's still really, really good. And directors are particularly good at it and like doing it as well because, you know, there's lots of decisions and compromises they've had to make or there's reasons why shots look in a certain way. And they love to be able to give that behind the scenes chat about it as well. And to sort of pay it forward because they watch so many themselves. Exactly. Here's a question for you, Richard. I have some views on this. Sean Grant, why don't we have our own version of Saturday Night Live?

10:06Yeah, people often ask that in the same way, you know, why don't we have our own version of, you know, Jimmy Fallon or those sorts of things. something not very funny like SNL we just have a you're not a fan? Oh my god we did have it in the 80s we had Saturday Live and then became Friday Night Live and Ben Elton was on it and Rick and Aid and people on it it's an amazing group of people attempts to recreate those sort of American things like the Daily Show or whatever they just often don't translate. They often don't translate and you can't pay people enough to sort of keep them on retainer for five years to do the same show in the way they can with Americans.

10:44You know, if you're Rick and Aid, then of course you'll do a couple of sketches for them, but then you're immediately off doing your sitcom and something else because you have to make money, whereas actually you can make a lot of money being on SNL for a few seasons. So we don't have that same repertory company idea because we don't have the money. We have lots more... And all those endless improv troops that they come up via, we don't have those places like Second City in Chicago, all those places where they... There's a big sort of proving ground for them. People in the UK tend to come up via the clubs and via stand-up and things like that, or as you say, via sketch shows, whereas the improv thing in America is absolutely huge.

11:18And you can see, I have some affection for Saturday Night Live, and there's some wonderful documentaries you can see now on Peacock, I think, about the 50th anniversary, and you can see all the original audition tapes and lots and lots of different things. I like the history of it all. There's a good James Andrew Miller, really good one called Live from New York, which is an oral history of Saturday Night Live that's really good as a book. And I really recommend that. But the show itself, I can't get behind. I also love the film Saturday Night, which has just come out as well, which is a really, really good watch.

11:52And listen, it's made for clips, isn't it? That's why actually it's been going 50 years, because just as it was running out of steam, we get to the stage where if you've got a series of clippable things with very famous people, then there's a home for them. you know it's also where people go when they're promoting things so you get big names you get big stars hosting it it has a very clever thing of having different hosts each week which you know in the same way that fire got news for you over here does but yeah we don't have that culture we have a culture of panel shows we have a culture of stand-ups doing things on tv and they have a culture of sketch and troops and things like that and so it's just you know one of those things in the same way we don't have late night shows they don't have a massive writing staffs which is what huge writing stuff but all of that all of that is money i mean channel 4 did you know the 11 o 'clock show and yeah the 11 o 'clock show is a perfect example of why we don't have snl over here because it launched jimmy carl sasha baron cohen and ricky gervais all of whom have gone on to enormous success but they all went on to enormous success immediately because they just had other places they could go on television and the other places they can make money and they weren't making money from this thing that's on all day, every day.

13:02And so they went and did other stuff. Whereas in America, the three of them, if they'd stuck around for five years on this show, if they'd had someone like Lorne Michaels in charge of that, if they'd had a huge budget, if they'd had a golden handcuffs deal and been paid$3 million a year, they probably would have stuck around for five years and that would have established itself as a big show. But they didn't. They would have got paid a few grand at the show. Immediately, there were other opportunities for them and they took those opportunities and went and did other things. And primarily I just don't think it's culturally, not everything is culturally transplantable.

13:33Lots of things are, but then certain things are not. And those kind of late night comedy things, there's really been a kind of never the twain shall meet thing in many different attempts doing American formats. And by the way, in their taking some of our formats and trying to do them over there, it's just been something about it that hasn't quite gelled. ITV had their nightly show as well, which they tried to do with different hosts each week. People keep trying to do it. is just not something we feel that we lack over here. And now, of course, we're never going to get it because these things are topical and there's absolutely zero money in topical comedy anymore.

14:06And, you know, never underestimate as well the power of an individual. And Lorne Michaels, who saw that show right through from the beginning and all the books about it will tell you all sorts of things about him. He's certainly an acquired taste and, you know, he's a hard taskmaster, obviously very talented as well. But his force of personality probably saw that over a few humps. Oh, yeah. which in the UK probably would have been taken off air, I suspect. And actually he did it for long enough that a next generation of comics who grew up watching it all wanted to be on it, and then a next generation of comics all wanted to be on it.

14:38And so it's a combination of an awful lot more money than over here, a combination of the individual personality of Lorne Michaels, and also that our stand-ups immediately look for money elsewhere. And you can't just rely on one show. You can't rely on a contract for a year or two years with one show. We don't have the infrastructure. Right. Shall we now go to a break? Oh, my God. I absolutely love that. Let's do it. As we mentioned earlier in the show, we're delighted that Sky are once again proud partners of The Restless Entertainment. Sky is full of unmissable shows, including the brand new series, Season 3 of The White Lotus, which we have enjoyed very much indeed.

15:15We've spoken about it before on the show. We love The White Lotus. And our regular listeners will remember we have talked about it on the main show before. following the massive success of the first two seasons. The White Lotus Series 3 is already one of the most talked about TV events of the year. Jason Isaacs is in this new one. Amy Lee Wood from Sex Education is in it. Walton Goggins. Walton Goggins is amazing in it. I love him so much. Patrick Schwarzenegger. Patrick Schwarzenegger who plays the single most annoying character ever in the history of television. It's so brilliant. In the history of White Lotus means something, but in the history of television, I agree.

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16:21Welcome back, everybody. A question for you about sources, Marina. Not that sort of source. No. A journalistic source from C. Wiley begins, I was going to say he. Might be a lady. It could be a lady. She slash he says, you've spoken before about when newspapers preface a quote with, a source close to it is usually made up. We know that. But journalists also have legitimate sources. And C. Wiley's question is about that. With legitimate sources, is it the journalist's discretion if the source is kept anonymous? And for how long? I was watching the Boyzone documentary and Rav Singh declined to identify his Stephen Gately source from 25 years ago.

16:55You're quite right. There is a difference between like sources close to a close pal, whatever. That's all made up, as I've said before, and it just because it looks good to have a bit of reporter speech. It looks like someone has told you this. The actual source of a story is different and it could be anyone. You could get a story for all sorts of different channels. But the number one obligation a journalist is supposed to have is to never reveal their sources. This is absolutely drummed into. Your source should be able to tell you something and you never reveal who they are. It's the point of a free press.

17:22That is the point. And your contract should persist to even when, by the way, you may be taken to court. You're supposed to even be willing to go to prison rather than reveal your source. There's no sort of legal protection but for having a source. Say a source tells me something and I write a story and then I get sued over it. Now, I can go back to my source and say, will you go on the record if I believe it to be true? Maybe I've been given false information, in which case, bad luck. We're going to have to pay a lot to the person who's been libeled. You could say, will you go on the record? Most sources don't want to do that.

17:55They don't want to go to court. They don't want to become part of it all. There's a reason they were anonymous in the first place. Yeah, exactly. There's an injustice or an interesting story. They want it to be out there. They do not want the backlash. We all know if you cause trouble at work or something, it's an enormous pain for you. but what are you going to do if someone's behaving in a certain way? Yeah, or you're someone's assistant and you're selling stories on them. Not very nice, but it happens and that's whatever. There's whistleblowers and there's moneymakers. And then there's moneymakers.

18:20Okay, but you should never reveal your source. You have an obligation to them. Now, you're supposed to have a duty of care. Now, that doesn't always happen. There's a journalist called Isabel Oakeshott, who as far as I can work out, she's failed her sources twice. There was Vicky Price who was married to a cabinet minister called Chris Hewn. How soon we forget. Yeah, how soon we forget. They had this story where, you know, he'd got some speeding points on his licence and because he was up to nine points or whatever, she had said, I was driving the car and I took them. This is an illegal thing to do.

18:50She told us about Lokeshot this and the story was written in, I think, the Sunday Times. And because it was an illegal act and he was a cabinet minister, they were asked to reveal their sources. And they say, I think I remember saying, we were forced by a judge to give up our correspondence, along with our agreement with Vicky. So they revealed her as the source. They didn't actually even go to the appeal court, by the way. They said they were going to, but they folded before and they certainly didn't go to prison. And then Vicky Price ended up going to prison because of this. Why did she tell Isabel Oakeshott though?

19:21Well, this is the next person who we were thinking, why did they tell Isabel Oakeshott is Matt Hancock, who for some reason did his pandemic diaries with Isabel Oakeshott, a journalist who, as far as I can work out, is implacably imposed to the whole of lockdown. So for whatever reason, he gave her all his texts and all his WhatsApp and all his everything. And she sort of ghost wrote the pandemic diaries. And then shortly afterwards, just gave all of that stuff from her source to the Telegraph. So twice as far as I can work out. She hasn't been responsible to her sources. But even if you think that what Rav Singh wrote was very bad and the Stephen Gatley story, you know, I have a huge amount of sympathy with that.

19:59But you nonetheless should not reveal your source. because otherwise it all falls apart if you don't have a duty of care to the people who reveal things. And it's supposed to be that you'll just go to the wall for these people. But as I have just illustrated, people don't always. Some people don't, but some people do. Is there also, I was wondering when I watched that, and I've recommended that documentary before, it's brilliant. And I'm not saying this about Rav Singh, but in that generation when the source was often an illegally hacked phone, do you then say, I cannot reveal my source because to reveal your source essentially is to say there was a private...

20:32You can say that about anything. But if you get sued, and this was a story which you were not going to get sued on, if you get sued, you are going to have to produce some evidence or you're going to have to pay out. So you can always say, I won't reveal my sources. And maybe it was just something you heard on the grapevine or everybody knew it was an open secret or whatever people say about all sorts of things. But if required to defend it in court, you're going to have to have something better than that. Otherwise, you're going to be paying out a libel settlement or in some cases, if you really did have a source and you're protecting them, you're supposed to, if necessary, go to prison rather than say who they were.

21:05But that said, there is often genuinely a real public interest thing in a journalist saying, I'm not going to disclose my source. It's been slightly sullied by, as you say, people who will reveal their source or people whose source was illegally obtained. But there is a large group of journalists who absolutely rely on whistleblowers or people inside organisations or people in countries where there's not freedom of press, who get information, write that information and their job is to protect that source it's the number one rule from deep throat from watergate downwards you just you don't say who it was so if you hear that do not dismiss it as someone you know being mealy mouthed it is the single most important thing that a lot of journalists do but a source close to that's like the close pal and the onlooker yeah that's just that's an invented thing that's like critics say uh when it's critics say someone from twitter Yeah.

21:58Oh, this is one for you, Richard, from Matthew G. Having watched the final episode of Celebrity Hunted last night, we were wondering how much production support the hunters get. Are they given pointers to ensure they capture people regularly enough or they're left alone to find them like they would in real life? People often ask about Hunted. I think it's the most interestingly produced show on television. In a funny kind of way. It's an intriguing thing. If you've not watched it, a group of people, always in pairs, go off on the run and have to evade a series of hunters. and the hunters have essentially everything at their disposal that the British state would have, which is number plate recognition, which is CCTV, which is the ability to go into people's social media, all of those things, the ability to interview people's friends and associates.

22:41So they have essentially the powers of the state but copied. They do not actually have access to CCTV. They do not actually have access to number plate recognition. but if the people who are on the run would have tripped those things in the course of what it is they're doing then the producers are allowed to say to the hunters by the way they're in a car registration whatever yes exactly and they were on this road and you know you can recreate all of those things in post so no one is cheating at any point the producers are not going tipping the wink and saying, oh, by the way, they're on the A1.