What we'll be glued to in 2024 and why do some shows never return to our screens?

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1:14Hello and welcome to the first episode of 2024 of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Happy New Year, everybody. Happy New Year. May it be a wonderful one for all of you. Happy New Year, Marina. and to you Richard we have an exciting journey ahead of us this year oh my goodness can you imagine where are we going to go where aren't we going to go where aren't we going to go I was thinking when you talked about Star Wars Christmas in the Boxing Day episode it's a very good episode if you haven't heard it I'd really like to be a Wookie I think maybe that's what 2024 holds to me I've got the hype for it and you know who knows you can wail incomprehensibly oh I can wail incomprehensibly if you're looking for someone to wail incomprehensibly it's me or Bradley Walsh Will he somehow still be very appealing?

1:58Is he six foot seven? I don't think so. Now, today we are going to talk about things that we have loved over the last year, but also that we are very much looking forward to in 2024. Yes, I thought we might start with television, because there's actually, you know, the first week of any new year, there's an awful lot of new stuff that comes out. Belter after belter. Banger after banger. No one's going out, no one can afford to go out, and everyone is sat down waiting for the streamers and the channels to unleash their best fare. I once did a show on Radio 2 and they said you can't describe a song as a banger because the bosses at Radio 2 don't like it.

2:37Really? Yeah, I had a feature called Unexploded Bangers, which was like a song that should have been a massive hit. Yes. And they said, no, you can't call anything a banger. It's banned on Radio 2, the word banger. They do it very seriously. Yeah. Right, well, quite obviously, the thing I'm most immediately looking forward to is Traitors. Oh, I mean... Season two. Wow. UK and US. Traitors is the format where 12-ish non-celebrities in the UK version are sequestered to a Scottish castle where they must backstab and betray each other, form alliances, and ultimately kind of scheme and double-cross their way to the prize.

3:16Some of them are Traitors and some of them are the faithful and they have to do a few tasks and then they have to sit around this round table at the end of every episode, which is by far the best thing of it. That's amazing. Unpick those alliances, suspect each other, point the finger, indulge in incredible herd behaviour, and it's an unbelievably brilliant format. I was talking to the exec producer of it recently, and we were talking about the first series, and I was saying exactly that. The bit at the end when they're around the table is so compelling when you can tell... Because we at home know who the traitors are, which is the absolute genius of the format.

3:53So you're rooting for them or not rooting for them and you know if the faithfuls are making a mistake or if they're not making a mistake and so that roundtable can be incredibly compelling. And he said, look, the channel was slightly worried that that would be boring television so we put quite a lot of the challenges in and the kind of tests they do and actually I think they worked out in that first series that that is incredible television. It's so well cast again because it's not... We'll talk about the American one in a moment, but the British one is people that you genuinely can root for. They're not celebrities at all.

4:29They actually cast, I remember finding out from somebody who was also involved in it, that they cast people who play a lot of those kind of strategy games. They maybe, just for fun, they do escape rooms. They do sort of tactical games. So they're kind of well-versed in the double dealing and skullduggery and all those sort of things. they need to be a good contestant on that show so they are highly watchable and they understand the game which is sounds really obvious but it's so important it's so important as a digression i'm terrible at escape rooms i always think i'll be good at them i always think i'll be good at poker i'm terrible at that but anyway i can't do either of those things but no it's all about tactics and gameplay but human beings as well because you get these alliances formed and if you're a traitor you have to form an alliance with faithfuls and people get very very close and you sort of know at some point that they're going to have to betray somebody else.

5:21Oh my God, I've watched all the show. They then did a US version of The Traitors, which I think is less successful because it mixes celebrities and civilians. And when I say celebrities, people who've mainly been on other reality formats. But I just didn't understand the point of that and I didn't like that. I don't know whether Americans feel like you have to have some people you've seen before. I think it's much more fun if you don't know who any of these people are. although John Bercow former Speaker of the House of Commons will be entering the US version of this show. Exactly that which will be fascinating I don't mind the American one because as you say there are people from American reality shows but I don't know who they are so there was a woman last year from Below Deck who was so brilliant.

6:01She was called Kate, she was one of the all time reality TV monsters and that's a tough field isn't it Justin, there's lots of real housewives on this show So listen, I get it. And it's, you know, it's a different thing. We've said before on this podcast, the absolute sine qua non of Traitors is the Australian Traitors season one. But I think they've cancelled Australian Traitors. Why? I think it wasn't doing great business. Oh, that's ridiculous. Okay, well, they certainly haven't cancelled Traitors in the UK because it was an unbelievable hit last year. And people sort of caught on and caught on and then they caught up on catch up.

6:34And it sort of became a hit right by the end. And it's presented by the absolutely wonderful Claudia Winkleman who does a superb job on it so that is something I'm looking forward to interestingly by the way it's that thing of the overnights that used to rule television and actually the overnights were terrible for the traitors at first it looked like it was a flop but absolutely on catch up and on iPlay just everybody started watching and people watching it like as a box set they were watching it like a succession that's something I'd like to see next year is not lots of misreporting about ratings because reporters have not worked out that catch up is something different to the overnights so they sometimes will look at a a TV show and say, oh, this did much worse than last year.

7:11But in fact, it's all being made up on catch-up. So that can be quite deceptive. Catch-up's obviously bigger and bigger all the time. It's all catch-up these days, isn't it? It's all catch-up. It's all catch-up. So yeah, that is starting this week. Also starting this week on BBC One, Gladiators is back. So Gladiators is back. Hosted by Bradley Walsh and his son Barney. They're the host of a whole new group of gladiators. Dan Baldwin, the producer, were saying that they had to stop filming the first episode because one woman got so excited when the gladiators came out, she went into labour. Her waters broke, she had to be rushed to hospital.

7:48She was in the audience? No, she was one of the gladiators. Oh, didn't you? No, she was in the audience. She was in the audience. She was absolutely fine. A bonny baby child. I was going to say bonny baby boy, then I realised I hadn't been given that information. Has it been given a gladiator style name I wanted? Yes, it's called Blaze. it's called Blaze it's lovely isn't it they've got some Olympians as the gladiators Harry Akin Zerite is one of the fastest runners we've ever had in the UK gold medalist he's Nitro Montel Douglas who has been Winter Olympian and Summer Olympian a sprinter and bobslayer she's fire there is a guy on it who is one of Britain's tallest bodybuilders and he's called Giant and he is two inches shorter than me so come on guys Giant is a bit I think that's a bit of a phoned in name, but I'll wait to be persuaded when I'm watching this one night.

8:39Yeah, he might as well be called Tool. I'll tell you what he should be called. Wookiee. Don't you think? It's going to be me and Giant as Wookiees in the next Star Wars film. They don't really do Star Wars films. There's like a million Star Wars things. I'd be a Wookiee, but in something that no one's ever going to watch on Disney. Okay, speaking of things that will perform well, curb your enthusiasm. The final season. Final season. Larry David's done a really funny press release saying, I just want to go back to being a lovely person and not this Larry David character. You can find me at Doctors Without Borders.

9:14Well, I mean, obviously that has changed so much TV comedy. I will be bereft beyond belief when that disappears, but we've got one more season to go. That sort of spring that's coming out, but also season four of Hacks. Ah, yes. Which I absolutely loved. Another HBO classic. Another HBO classic. So loads of good telly coming up this year, I'd say. Also, here's an interesting one. And this week, Jeopardy starts on ITV. Daytime Jeopardy. So Jeopardy is pretty much the biggest format ever in the States. It's run for 48 years or something ridiculous. Quiz format. Quiz format, yeah. And they've tried it over here a few times.

9:51It hasn't worked. But this time they've got Stephen Fry hosting it in daytime. He said that he loved Jeopardy and he just wrote a note to his agent saying, why doesn't someone do Jeopardy in the UK? and two days later his agent said, oh yeah, just talk to ITV. They said they'd love you to do it. You're doing Jeopardy in the UK. And he's like, oh, okay. That's interesting. But if anyone can make that show a hit, I suspect it's Stephen Fry. But it's one of those shows where Pointless is the same. Pointless doesn't really work anywhere else apart from the UK. So it's just something about the genesis of it and where it is in the schedule and that sort of thing.

10:26And Jeopardy is the same. It's not like a Rolls-Royce format. But if you give it to a great presenter, which Stephen Fry is, maybe ITV will have a big hit on the sound. I'm certainly very much looking forward to it. That's a show I would do the celebrity version of. Oh yeah, definitely. Absolutely, definitely. I've got a drama, which it will be funny as well, a drama with jokes, which is The Regime, which is an HBO thing, which is written by a guy called Will Tracy, who's one of the senior writers on Succession. He also wrote The Menu, the movie The Menu. Oh, I like The Menu. Yeah, it's fantastic.

10:55It's directed by Stephen Frears, The Legend, and it stars Kate Winslet as the dictator in a fictional Eastern European republic. And I think it will be absolutely, it's a limited series. So it'll be, I think it's six one hours. And I think that will be really exceptional. Is it called again? The Regime. The Regime with Kate Winslet and me as a wookie. And you as a wookie. And by the way, I wanted to do my favourite things of 2023. You're less interested in ranking things, but I want to say my favourite television show of 2023, which we've not talked about before, was Poker Face. So if anybody is a fan of Columbo, you've got 10 episodes of this amazing thing with Natasha Lyonne, it's sort of an homage to Columbo and the Lissalist Hobo, with like kind of a villain of the week, but it's so beautifully done it even has the same font as Columbo, so my favourite TV show of 2033 was Poker Face do you have one?

11:45You're not going to do one are you? You refuse to set things against each other No, I don't like ranking things I feel like there's something quite sort of male about it no offence to anybody, but it's I sort of feel why can't they all be? There's lots of things I absolutely loved yeah um and I I mean obviously I loved Succession I thought that was quite extraordinary that's two of the greatest episodes of television that I've seen written with a funeral and the um people love the final episode but I think the episode where uh Logan died was extraordinary um but there were so many things I loved um Nathan Fielder I loved Nathan for you which I only discovered this year which I strongly recommend people go into on you can find I think on Amazon Prime in the UK.

12:30There were so many great shows, so I don't particularly want to rank them all. One thing I will say is moving on to movies, I think there are lots of fun things coming. Obviously, Ryan Gosling in The Fall Guy, I will be there for that one. Ah, yeah, that's going to be a cracker. There's a welcome absence of Marvel releases from my point of view, even though I'm writing a show about superhero franchises. Something that I have seen an advanced screening of, and which is absolutely incredible, which comes out in February, is a movie called The Zone of Interest. Oh, I'm looking forward to it. It is extraordinary.

13:09This is directed by Jonathan Glazer, who's actually an amazing person. He's only made four movies in the last 20-something years, which are sexy beasts. They're all completely different, by the way. Birth, Under the Skin, and now this. and this is about a couple who have a house that they absolutely adore. She particularly loves this house and she's really nothing. She's a huge home improver. His job is he is the camp commandant of Auschwitz and the garden wall in this garden that she's built and it's made kind of like some Adilic paradise for their children. The wall is on the other side of the wall is the Auschwitz camp.

13:48It is absolutely extraordinary as a film. This I can't recommend it. And I would like to talk about it more in the week of release because there's another interesting movie, which is about the Holocaust, which comes out at a similar time. And I think it's really worth talking about those together. So we will try and do that. But that's the zone of interest. And that's based on Martin Amos' novel. It is. It's very loosely based on it. Amazing, isn't it? Okay. That's a wonderful novel. Yeah, it is. I'm over to you now. I'm looking forward. There's lots of sequels this year. So there is a Marvel thing, which is Deadpool 3, of course.

14:15Oh, yes, of course. Sorry, I forgot. Beverly Hills Cop is coming back on Netflix. Be still my beating heart. The gerontocracy is real. I mean, is he 62 now, Eddie Murphy? Yeah, he can still be a cop. Really? I thought you would have retired on police pension after three years on the sick. No, because he loves the work. You know, he loves catching bad guys. Okay, I'll watch it, of course. Yeah, of course you'll watch it. I'll watch it. But Gladiator 2 is coming out, which has had a very interesting... So not Gladiators, Gladiator. so after the original one they were immediately going to do a sequel I think I think it slightly fell apart because Russell Crowe wanted to be in it like in the sort of dream sequence and Ridley Scott slightly didn't want him to be in it so it slightly faltered over the years all sorts of people have worked on scripts for it Nick Cave worked on a script, he did a draft of the script and his draft it was called Christ Killer and it was set in Roman times but But then it was also set in World War II and Vietnam and in present day where someone was a member of the Pentagon.

15:23It did not get made. But it sounds like, honestly, I bet they probably just asked him to do a draft because they thought, oh, what's he going to come up with? I bet they were delighted. Great unproduced scripts of our time. Yeah, it's not going to be called Christ Killer. And it's about Lucius from the original one, who was the child in the original one, played, of course, by Paul Mescal, as everything is. If it hasn't got Paul Mescal in, I'm not watching it. Exactly. That's lucky because he's in everything. And I think Paramount loved him already from normal people and stuff, but they went to see him in Streetcar Named Desire, and they're quoted as saying, when we heard all the whoops when he took his top off, we knew he was the man for Gladiator.

16:02So Paul Mescal is in it. But, you know, I think it's going to be great. Ridley Scott's not going to let us down. It's got an amazing cast. Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal is in it. Connie Nielsen, Derek Jacoby's coming back. no Russell Crowe of course but yeah I'm very much looking forward to Gladiator 2 we'll talk about it when it comes out okay and Drive Away Dolls that's Ethan Coen not the Coen brothers but that sounds really fun and I'm really looking for it sounds like a real Coen brothers movie even though it's not the two of them so Drive Away Dolls I think will be fun and my favourite film of 2023 was Rye Lane have you seen it which is the sort of rom-com set in Peckham 90 minutes full of jokes Looks brilliantly directed.

16:45Looks beautiful. And it's just one of those rare British movies that is just, that charms absolutely everybody. Rye Lane, R-Y-E Lane. Do you have a favourite film? You're not going to do, you're not going to rank anything. By the way, I'll tell you what, I have a favourite star of 2023, which is Margot Robbie, because she promoted that Barbie movie. It's sort of amazing. The whole story of the Barbie movie, they didn't want anyone to know the story of the movie. they really were careful that no one found out that it had this kind of feminist text because they thought in the old culture war age, it would just get completely piled on by everyone from Fox News to everyone beforehand.

17:22So the stuff that happened, the leaks of the stuff, which was deliberate when you saw them kind of in their funny outfits, roller skating and everyone's like, oh, what is this crazy movie? They look absolutely ridiculous. And then it was such a kind of like stealth putting through. And then it came out. But also because she did not just drag that movie over the$1 billion mark. she dragged Christopher Nolan's movie, Oppenheimer, which I'm sorry, I know it's Christopher Nolan, but the fact that it sprung up completely natively on Twitter, people were calling it Barbenheimer, and they went on all social media, and they thought they had to see both, where it couldn't be more different.

17:57She single-handedly, in my view, dragged that movie over the line as well. So hats off to you, Margot Robbie. You are a true star. Yeah, she's essentially responsible for over$2 billion worth of box office. Isn't that amazing? and that's why it's hard to be PR sometimes because that is not something you would ever think of. You wouldn't go, I'll tell you what we'll do with Oppenheimer. Why don't we do a portmanteau word with Barbie and I think that's going to do good business for us. If you pitch that in a room, people would think you're an absolute lunatic. But it seemed to work. I presume there'll be a Barbie 2 in the...

18:28Oh, God. Well, we've talked about toy movies. There's every toy movie. Yes, everybody's going to get a spin-off. Oppenheimer 2? Yeah. Love the first one. Let's take a little break. Probably an advert for Oppenheimer 2. Yeah. eczema isn't always obvious but it's real and so is the relief from ebglis after an initial dosing phase about four in ten people taking ebglis achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing ebglis librikizumab lbkz a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

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20:42Welcome back. Thank you. You're most welcome, Richard. As you remember, we were discussing our recommendations for 2024 and looking back a little at 2023. Yes, it's sort of, we haven't quite worked out the format. No. But I think it's okay. Yeah. I can tell you some, let me tell you that the theatre, I'm giving you two things I'm looking forward to very much in the theatre. the first one Armando Iannucci is doing Doctor Strangelove on stage Steve Coogan is going to star and it's written with Sean Foley who's absolutely a most wonderful person he you might remember the play what I wrote he was one of the two guys in that and I used to see these guys right from back from when they did shows in Edinburgh he I remember one about two guys who fall down the back of the sofa and they were called it was called Stop Calling Me Vernon and it was absolutely wonderful.

21:30Anyway, they are doing Dr. Strange Love on the London stage, which I think will be a giant event and very funny and dark and brilliant. So that's one of mine. I don't know about theatre, just because of the leg rim. Okay, I know what you mean. I like the ice cream. Yeah, very good. Don't get me wrong, I really like the ice cream. We haven't seen the Layman trilogy, that's got two intervals. It is long. Yeah, it's long, but two ice creams. Two ice creams. Speaking of which. I call it a two ice cream play. Directed by Sam Mendes, The Lame and Trinity. This one is also going to be directed by Sam Mendes.

22:03It's called The Hills of California and it's Jez Butterworth who did Jerusalem and who is obviously, and actually they have worked together on The Ferryman before but he I'm really looking forward to that. I think that's going to be a big, big event. I might be doing a little theatre thing this year. Might you? Yeah, might be. Please tell us. Well, it's completely secret. Are you allowed to say anything? No. But I tell you now, there'll be Legram. Yeah. It's called Ice Cream and Legram. Ice Cream and Legram. Yeah. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Myself and another writer, we had a tour of one of the London theatres.

22:36And you know when you go to a nightclub during the day, it's the most depressing place in the world. But a theatre during the day, it's kind of magical. They should do tours. They're so beautiful. The fact that they haven't changed for so long and they've got all the little boxes under the stage. I've done one myself and a tour of it and it really is incredible. I think they should do tours of it. It's a lot more interesting than plenty of stately homes I've ever been to. And because we were talking about doing something possibly, they sort of had to show us everything. So I even asked where the ice creams are kept.

23:04And they showed me. There's like a big trunk full of ice creams just off the bar. There's a locked room with a code. And they let us in. So that's my theatre tip for this year is go to something that does mint choc chip. It's interesting actually with theatre because regional theatre, we've just come off the sort of season of pantomime. And pantomime is where regional theatre makes almost all of its money. You can make like kind of 25 % of your money in three weeks. So if you haven't been to your local pantomime, we've still got about three or four days left. Really worth doing. Supports loads of local people, loads of local actors, loads of local kind of craftspeople, and really supports your local theatre.

23:43And it's very hard to explain to people, though, from other countries. An American screenwriter was saying to me, sorry, pantomime, what is it? Is it miming? And I was like, oh, I mean, I don't know where I start with this one. And it's a really old sort of British tradition. I was reading something from absolutely ages ago. It was a critic in the Daily Star in 1900 said, only a great nation could have done such a thing as invent panto. Only an undisciplined nation would have done it. Wow, that pretty much sums it up. I mean, a hundred years of just thinking, what on earth is this that I'm watching?

24:17I always try and see who's in panto because I find it interesting. You can make quite a lot of money in panto. If you're one of the big names, you can make a quarter of a million for three weeks. And the big companies that run it make absolutely enormous amounts of money. And you sort of need to have a selection of five of the following people. An actor, possibly alcoholic relapsing. A puppet, not in this age of CGI world. Fun fur, some original fun fur. Sadly, you have to have the puppeteer as well. They're always lovely people. I saw Basil Brushes in two separate pantomimes this year. How's he doing it?

24:54How does that work? How is he doing? How is Brush doing? If anyone can do it, Brush can. I guess someone's got two hands. One of my favourite ones was when Linda Lissardi, a former Patriot Girl, who's made that transition from playing Cinderella to the Wicked Queen. We all have to do that in our lives as women. Yeah, I listen to that happens to everyone. And then you give an interview to the local paper saying, it's so much more fun playing a baddie. Anyhow, she was once late for a panto, and she actually rang 999 and said, Can I use the hard shoulder? And the emergency services weren't thrilled about this.