When Celebrities Become Cops

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0:34Love the idea of ballads hitting harder. It couldn't hit harder. Just say, hello Sky Wicked, and it's showtime. Enjoy the enchanting sights and sounds of Oz in full 4K picture quality on Sky Glass from the best seat in the house, your own. And if you want a smarter TV without lifting more than an impressed brow, head to sky.com. Requires relevant Sky TV subscriptions, broadband recommended minimum speed, 30 megabits per second, 18 plus, UK Channel Islands and Island Ban only. Hello and welcome to this. No, I don't say that. You do. Can we, Joey, can we leave this in as the opening? Can we do a cold open?

1:13Please, please. Just so people understand what it is I put up with. I know, I know. Honestly, I walk down the street, people go, do you know what, Marina, she's so smart. She's so brilliant. And I'm like, yeah. She fucking can't do an intro.

1:28Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osman. Hello Richard. Hello, how are you? I'm very well, how are you? Yeah, I'm not too bad. Can I give a couple of updates on, we talked about what's going to be the new traitors last week. Destination X and the box and all sorts of things. Destination X, I've got to say, I'm now really enjoying. Doing not insane numbers in terms of, it's not doing super badly, so I suspect it might come back. But I'm enjoying it now. Episode 2 was better, I agreed with you on that. And episode 3 and 4 are even better than those.

1:56although it is quite easy to guess where you are at any given time. The Box, which is ITV's version, they announced their host. I saw that. Who is your boss and mine, Gary Lineker. Yeah. He'll do one, I think. I'm looking forward to that one. Also, keeps him out of the country. It's probably good for us, right? Do you know what I mean? Because he's very, very hands-on on this show. He's heavily hands-on in this podcast. And yeah, it's probably best that he's unboxing celebrities. Yeah, he's always like, please do a deep dive on Joe Pasquale. But I guess we have to. That's on its way. The Inheritance, Liz Hurley did turn up with Billy Ray Cyrus at the press conference.

2:30So that's exciting. That's exciting. Yes, I saw the pictures. Yeah. People who are working on shows, there's a show called Nobody's Fall with Danny Dyer and Emily Atak for ITV, which is supposed to be an awful lot of fun. And the Bond show that they have, which, you know, 007 Race to a Million on Amazon Prime, the first series of which I have to say didn't seem to have been touched by entertainment hands. Apparently, the next series is very good. Oh, really? Yeah, apparently. We're going to have to return to Bond because there have been many developments in the Bond. So let's, over the next few weeks, return to Bond and one of our episodes.

2:59What should we talk about this week? No, what are we going to talk about? Let's not pretend we're just making it up. We're going to talk about a different form of law enforcement, less covert than James Bond. Dean Cain from Superman has announced he's going to be an Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE agent in the US. So we'll have a look at that. The history of celebrity law enforcement, which is surprisingly rich. Oh my gosh, there's a lot of it. Yeah. We're going to talk about AI slop in books. I just noticed how many AI versions there are of Thursday Murder Club and things like that and talk to lots of other people.

3:31And it is extraordinary. It's a huge, huge industry. So we're going to talk through some of that to these things. You know, people are just, you know, making money from Amazon and Amazon. I think I find it almost impossible to stop the slop. And we're also going to talk about anime, which is another enormous industry. And it's huge with Gen Z. and it's by some accounts bigger than some of the biggest sports in the US with Gen Z. So we're going to talk about what that means and how everybody is trying to get in on the act because it's such a gateway to kind of keeping those eyeballs. Law enforcement, celebrity law enforcement, our friend Dean Cain.

4:08So Dean Cain has said that he would like to sign up as an ICE agent, immigration and customs enforcement in the US. They're on a massive recruitment drive at the moment because they feel that there's going to be much more work. And I think that they have actually said that they're very interested in having his application. So he was, of course, Superman in Lois and Clark, The New Adventures of Superman, which ran for a few years in the mid-90s, but has assumed a sort of outsized cultural importance for reasons I can't fully put my finger on. I don't know why, but... He was very handsome. Yes. At the time.

4:40Yeah, in that kind of Superman way. As Superman often is. Yeah. He's no David Correns sweat. How is he allowed that name? It's amazing, isn't it? You can't have that name. I'm so sorry. If he existed in old Hollywood, he would have just been called David Diesel. He'd have been refitted and it would have been simple. You can't be called David Correns sweat and be a movie star. But anyway, Dean Cain, not his real name. Is he not? No, he's got a Japanese surname because he's got Japanese heritage. He's been one of those celebrities, a bit like Kevin Sorbo, who used to be in Hercules, those ones who exist, the sort of out right-wing celebrities.

5:18So, you know, he's occasionally on Fox News. But acting-wise, I would say that he can't get arrested. But he may now be able to arrest people. Oh, that's good. Because he wants to sign up, you know, this big drive. When I say that's good, I mean your point is good. Not Dean Cain being allowed to arrest people. No. Anyway, there is quite a rich history of this in entertainment, not of ICE agents, by the way. Funnily enough, Jack Osborne did train as a reserve police officer. He did it for a show called Armed and Famous, but I think he was the only celebrity that, after the cameras stopped rolling, thought, I'm actually going to complete this training.

5:53And then, not so long ago, a few years ago, he was forced to clarify that although he was working near the border, he was not a border agent. Jack Osborne. Yeah, I'm not a border agent. I am, you know, a reserve police officer. I love it. Every week he brings in like a massive stash of drugs. He goes, I found some more. Where's he getting this stuff from? This guy. But he's not a border agent. And as we can see, there has been a sort of historic thing where celebrities now wouldn't want to associate themselves with that kind of thing. Some, but there are these kind of out right wing celebrities who suddenly exist in like the Fox News ecosystem, if not any longer the Hollywood ecosystem.

6:31But there were people who were cops first. Dennis Farina, who was in Law and Order famously, he was a cop for something like 20 years in Chicago. And then Chuck Norris, I think, when he was in the Air Force, he was in the Air Force police. But the history of celebrities becoming reserve police officers, which is something that you can't, you know, sometimes it's for PR, sometimes it's for community engagement. It's very attention grabby. I always think the only two things anyone will ever slow down for on the street is a film crew or a police unit. But I do think those two things go hand in hand.

7:07And so I wonder if when the bright lights of Hollywood are perhaps not knocking quite as loudly as they have been, you go, oh, I'm going to do something else that will grab me some attention. Stop, look at me. No, I mean, literally, you have to look at me because I'm pointing something at you. Yeah, and it's a gun. So people who did it for community engagement, people like Lou Ferrino, The Incredible Hulk, Shaquille O 'Neal has done it in loads and loads of cities. He was sort of community - How's he getting a uniform? I would worry. That's my worry about being a, it's not my only worry about being a police officer, but I would worry about the uniform.

7:37I think they'd specially make one for you, you see. But Eric Estrada, punch and chips, he became a reserve police officer and he was sort of interested in protecting children online. We talked about her last week, Pamela Anderson. Yeah, the great Pamela Anderson. Yeah, the great Pamela. They're still together. Yeah, they're still together. When she was on Baywatch, she did proper sort of criminology training and I think she did do reserve police officer training, but she was sort of busy filming and she never took up the role. Steve Guttenberg, of course, went to Police Academy. Yeah, but not for real.

8:09But Dan Aykroyd, by the way, he was one of those honorary ones, a bit like Elvis, where Dan Aykroyd was a huge supporter of sort of Blue Lives groups, as it were. I mean, again, now you would not imagine that celebrities want to get involved in any of those kind of things, and we'll come to that in a minute. But Dean Cain has himself been a reserve officer since 2018. In our country, Penny Lancaster, Rod Stewart's wife, she and Loose Woman, etc. Where is she getting all these drugs from? Well, she did the Queen's Funeral policing arrangements on that day and lots of other things besides. Are you thinking of Penny Mordaunt?

8:45No, I'm not. No, it is Penny Lancaster. She was involved in Fighting Crime and Famous, or famous and fighting crime, which would be our version of armed and famous. And she was on that. Jamie Leng was on that. He was really, really good. Jamie Leng's great on anything you put him on. And essentially they're arresting this guy. He's very, very drunk and very, very angry. And he's just shouting at everyone. And then he turns and goes, aren't you the guy from Made in Chelsea? And the guy goes, I am. And we can talk about it if you go quietly into the back of the van. And the guy goes, sure. And in he goes.

9:18He's just going to anecdote him into submission. that's that you know that's actually a form of restraint that's in my view totally fine my favorite ever um obviously for obvious reasons who was a reserve officer is mr stephen seagal oh my goodness if you are a member of our club you might have heard my uh two-part eulogy uh to renaissance man career uh steven seagal this got plenty of life left in it he claimed to have been a reserve deputy sheriff in new mexico excuse me for 20 years at the time that he was and this is the point we're looking at his career not the time when he was making um under siege when he was a straight dark territory when he was um this time it's a train when he was a straight to dvd star by that point and but he was also a philanthropist you'll remember he's a tibetan llama an energy drink retailer um a fragrance um entrepreneur um i think what was it called it's got scent of action he was the lead singer and lead guitarist in a band called thunderbox Thunderbox yeah okay Thunderbox is actually the word for the field latrine if I can put it that way that's used by one of the characters in Men at Arms the Evelyn Ward that's sort of on it yes the Thunderbox it was the old army name for a toilet I don't think Steven Seagal knew that when he when he started his blues band I've heard him I think he did anyhow but he wanted to be involved in reality television so they thought okay let's do a show about it thus was born Steven Seagal Lawman which ran across sort of five years on the A &E network in America.

10:51But it was, by the way, it was the biggest show, it had their biggest opening numbers ever when it came out. I had to go back and look at it because obviously I watched the whole thing. The opening voiceover says, it all began 20 years ago when Steven Seagal, a world-renowned seventh-degree Aikido expert, was shooting a movie in Jefferson Parish. The sheriff asked him to teach his men some self-defense and weapons skills. The training was so successful that Seagal was deputized. Okay, so maybe. I mean okay sure he is an asset in certain situations I mean maybe not obviously he's an asset to Putin quite lip-y he's a Russian asset he's a Russian asset I meant an asset in a more more Briseic way he's both sorts of assets if you take his film persona he would be unplayable in any bar fight setting simply unplayable if the police are called to a bar fight he can improvise a weapon out of anything a bar towel a beer mat whatever it is and he will defuse that fact or simply overpower the miscreants.

11:50Yeah. Were I a miscreant in a bar and Steve was a girl, I'd just go, come on. Just like Jamie Lange has turned up, I'd be like, I'm going into the back of the van. There's no point in me fighting on. Well, he does that speech. He might say, what does it take to change the essence of a man? Which is a speech he does do in a bar fight in, I think, On Deadly Ground. Sorry? In the middle of a bar fight, he says, what does it take to change the essence of a man? and by basically speechifying his way before beating this guy up. And then the guy just sort of goes away because Seagal has actually improvised a speech for once.

12:23He hasn't used a microwave as an improvised weapon. He's just improvised a speech and he just overpowers this guy. He should have called his fragrance the essence of a man. Yeah, I know. It was right there. Was it Steve? It was right there. That was actually a tagline, I think, for Calvin Klein Eternity. The essence of a man. The essence of a man, the right man. No, the Helena Christensen voiceover. I can remember. It's coming out of a memory hole, this. Okay. The essence of a man, the right man, he must be a little bit mysterious, but so alive. That must be a Calvin Klein. What's it like inside your head, just out of interest?

12:50This is a really rubbish memory palace. I want to get rid of a lot of this stuff. It's like a hoarder's memory palace. I don't want it. It's a memory mall. I don't want it. It's like an out-of-town mall. It's a real off-brand stuff. Okay, sorry, where were we? Okay, so Stephen Segar, Lawman. Episode one was called The Way of the Gun. It's America. Also a good name for a fragrance. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Again, that is a good one. Of course, he always has to bring in the Eastern bullshit. And he's saying, the Zen masters in archery did not pull the arrow. They used to push the arrow. It's the same with his pistol.

13:26It's like, I don't think that's physics, by the way. But anyway, there was one of those very controversial sheriffs, Joe Arpaio. And I can't remember what. He sort of reinstated chain gangs, I think, and made them do it in pink uniforms. He went the other way, didn't he? He was a lawman who became a celebrity or a course celebrity, at least. Yeah, he became one of those big Fox News figures, like a hard-nought sheriff. He eventually overstepped the laws. He was enrolled to serve. And I think he ended up getting pardoned by Trump back in 2010. Pardoned by Trump, by the way. An amazing name for a fragrance.

13:59And a reality show. Yeah. Yeah, by Trump. Actually, why doesn't he do it? Because he's got some ridiculous ones. Like, undefeated Trump. We've done all his fragrances, didn't we? Anyway, and then Stephen S. Gal became a volunteer posse member for Joe Arpaio at one point. And he was in an armed SWAT raid. And actually, at this point, people started to say, this is really weird. They dug in more into the training. They thought, I don't really buy half of this stuff. Can anyone say they're a reserve police officer? And to bring it full circle back to Dean Cain, I think you kind of can. And it feels a little bit like one of those online modules that I never do, supposedly mandatory training models that I never actually complete.

14:42I think you can kind of get away with not doing it. You have to complete the mandatory training models. I love mandatory training models where it says, you find£5 on the desk in the head of HR. Do you tell HR that there's£5 on the desk? Steal the money. Go, right, I'm going to go steal the money. Why don't you have another go at this question? tell HR congratulations you have passed anyway sorry that's a side I was speaking I remember speaking to someone who worked on um Marvel films who's a very very significant producer on Marvel films and said ever since that all this kind of workplace culture had been um changed so radically she was constantly having to do these training modules constantly and they were real sit-up ones where you couldn't just sort of leave it on while you did your actual job and they would say you know you're going to be locked out of all computer systems unless you've completed this and she'd think i'm in the middle of a shoot and i've now got to go and do some sort of training about how not to hit someone at work or whatever it is is it good to hit someone at work or not good to hit someone at work and you must sit up and be present and you know anyway i wonder whether he will get a reality show out of it because as we keep saying people are looking for content that will draw back in people who perhaps have been put off in recent years by thinking that a network or a channel or whatever only appeals to one type of person yeah certainly if you were cbs or nbc or anyone you know the idea of doing an ice reality show but being on the side of ice is something that would appeal to trump and to that administration it i mean it would be absolutely in terms of you know the tide of history it would be paramount will just do it yeah exactly of course we'll do it it would be a terrible stain which would last for hundreds of years but uh listen for the next six months.

16:24It's a smart move. So let's talk then about copaganda, as they call it, which is the idea of cops being heroes, which until relatively recently didn't even cross anybody's mind. Cops were always heroes in almost everything, apart from every now and then you'd get some left field, like art house movie, like Bad Lieutenant. But in general, when we watched television, the cops were the heroes. Yeah, and if there was a cop who wasn't a hero, the hero Cots brought that cop down. That was the idea of it. No, it's fascinating in the world of literature because there's so many long-running detective series.

17:02So Michael Connolly, who writes the Bosch series, is very interesting. There's a Michael Connolly series, which is all set in LA. And Michael Connolly started as a reporter in LA. He was a crime reporter. And there's Harry Bosch series, and there's TV bits of it as well. They're probably one of the best written police procedurals you'll ever read. If you love a police procedural and you're interested in LA at all, it's really, really worth reading. His first two books were absolutely, oh, I'm going to do this traditional kind of cop as hero, knew everyone in the LAPD, knew everything about it because that was his beat.

17:35And then between the second and third book, you had the Rodney King incident. And you can see from then on, Michael Conley's books changed very, very, very quickly. They changed when that happened. They changed when OJ happened. And almost all crime writers now after George Floyd have started writing very differently. The new Mark Billingham books, and Mark Billingham writes these brilliant novels about Tom Thorne, who's sort of like a London Harry Bosch. He writes brilliantly about London, Mark. Funny books, but very, very real, quite gory. But he always writes about cops, and he always writes about the Met.

18:08And again, you always hint at things that do go wrong in the Met. But his new book, which is called What the Night Brings, is he absolutely takes head on the fact that the public, it seems, no longer trust the police and after Sarah Everard and after all of these things. And he really, really takes it head on. It's got a brilliant, inciting incident, this book, and it's really, really interesting. But it is impossible now to write a simple cop as hero book. And no one was writing, by the way, cops as heroes, but you would write a book and the assumption was that the police investigating were the good guys.

18:42Well, police are such useful characters in the whole of fiction going right the way back to Dickens because in something like Bleak House where the inspector is obviously in a way the only character who can sort of move between all the echelons and tie the supposedly disparate bits together so they're a very useful character in so many ways especially if you're writing big kind of things about the state of the nation the state of the city they're incredibly useful as well in terms of you know your plot can just happen you know if you if you have amateur detectives it's actually slightly harder because you have to go something has to happen in your world which drags you into a crime whereas if you if your daily job is i work in a police station and every half an hour like a phone rings and something happens there's your plot straight away so so writing police officers is is the easiest way to write crime fiction crime fiction i think really does represent the world as it is in in a very very interesting way and crime fiction writers are very quick to understand that the game has changed.

19:44So there's, you know, you can write kind of, you know, there's no coincidence that Morse went back to his, you know, the kind of 50s and 60s when they did that series. It is harder now to write about police officers without showing quite how compromised various police forces have become. It actually makes crime fiction better, is the truth. It makes it more truthful and, you know, it actually gives you more plots. But look at Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which, you know, in its final season, And absolutely, we've had such joy of showing these heroes this whole time. And now we're going to show that they're not heroes.

20:17Yeah. In 2020, how many people who are involved in the absolute mega industry, which is American TV police procedures, even comic or serious, all of them sort of felt they had to come out and say something about Black Lives Matter, about George Floyd or whatever. and I think Brooklyn Nine-Nine, they all started donating to like bail services and things like that. There's a sort of collective showrunner and cast and whatever. We did move through the kind of anti-hero phase of cops. One of the best things I think that's ever been on TV is The Shield, which is absolutely incredible. And that was real, you know, that's part of that golden era of TV that started with The Sopranos, that particular phase that were sort of terrible, terrible people, terrible men particularly, were anti-heroes were the heroes you saw that transition but now as you say it's hard to imagine it on yet and then i'm thinking but is it because everything swings around very quickly and i don't think it's particularly hard to imagine somebody thinking well we've got to cater to a different audience now or clearly the vibe has shifted and maybe we'll follow dean kane as an ice agent and lots of people will actually watch this well there are things you know night coppers which I love on Channel 4.

21:32And it genuinely shows the reality of most police officers' lives, which is 90 % mental health work, 90 % sort of trying to just help people. Being able to show both of those sides, being able to write books like Mark's book that talks about the rotten side of the Met in a really, really, really serious way. But also having something like Night Coppers, which shows, you know, we do need law enforcement. It is important. It's important for vulnerable people that there are strong people and good people. and finding a way in our culture that we can have both of those seems to be seems to be the uh the way forward talking of um corrupt cops i think i don't know if i talked about this before if i have it's a long time ago i think my favorite documentary of all time is precinct 75 or it's also called the precinct which is about a corrupt cop in brooklyn in the 80s i want to say it is so good it's so brilliant and all the people involved are sort of a bit you know have kind of come out the other side of it now so they all talk and they all tell you this incredible story of police I mean I've seen it it's very very very very good not be more corrupt yeah that was a magnificent thing but I think that tv and film worked out a long time ago that they can show police officers as villains as well as heroes but it's fascinating now that the world of books as well you you cannot write a straight police procedural now without tackling this absolutely head-on so a few recommendations there.

22:55Honestly, Mark Billingham's book I'd really recommend. Any of Michael Connolly's books, Precinct 75 and perhaps not The New Adventures of Superman, but the Steven Seagal documentary. Lawman. Steven Seagal, Lawman. Lawman. I mean, he's a preposterous figure. Shall we do some adverts? Let's please do that.

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23:58Fulham may not be up for best performance in a leading role, but I'll prepare an acceptance speech, you know, just in case. Upgrade today to take the best seat in the house. All the highs, lows and controversial in-betweens unfolding live chapter by chaotic chapter. Search Sky Sports Premier League or go to sky.com. Terms apply. Hello, I'm William Durimple. And I'm Anita Arnand, and we're the hosts of another goal hanger show, Empire. And we are here to tell you about a recent series we've done on partition. On the 14th and 15th of August 1947, Pakistan and India announced their independence from the British Empire.

24:35But as these nations gained their freedom, their rushed and violent division resulted in the deaths of well over a million people and the forced migration of over 14 million more. It's a piece of South Asian history that many people are familiar with. But in this series, we want to explore it alongside four less well-known partitions, which continue to affect the region in monumental ways. Yeah, you're quite right. In one episode, we dissect how Dubai almost became part of modern India. And in another, we're going to unpack the history behind the headlines about the conflict in Kashmir. We also explore how the separation of Burma from India is linked to the origin of the Rohingya genocide and how East and West Pakistan separated in 1971 to create Bangladesh.

25:23So if you'd like to hear more about the five partitions that completely transformed modern Asia and how the weight of the memory of partition has been passed down through the generations, we've left a clip of the series at the end of this episode for you to listen to.

25:45welcome back everybody now one of the biggest industries in the world and it may leave some people completely untouched so we thought might be an interesting thing to talk about give an overview and that is anime what is anime and what does it mean that anime is enormous where does it take us anime is a style of japanese animation um really crucially it is not a genre um it's just like a medium so it can be an epic it can be a comedy it can be sci-fi it can be whatever you like and it used to be a sort of niche interest um like they had dedicated special fandom it's part of otaku you know geek culture in japan during the pandemic it became a streaming hit um and And like lots of things, which is run by people who are rather older, it might not have been clear to people that that was going to happen.

26:34But Japanese anime is now this massive growth market. They think that anime's market value will double by 2030. And there are a lot of surveys. There are surveys, many of them are very large, so you have to treat them with caution, that suggest it's more popular among Gen Z than the biggest US sports and that more people in Gen Z watch it than watch the NFL. Yeah, it's bigger than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Bigger than anything you could mention, really. And as I say, that's not necessarily complete sort of pure statistics, but the fact that it can even be said suggests such a big cultural shift.