Will The Harry Potter Reboot Fail?

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1:01You're not. On October 10th. What are you? My world is coming to destroy yours. But I can help you. The war for our world begins in IMAX. Tron Aries. Rated PG-13. Maybe inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theatres October 10th. Get tickets now. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment Questions and Answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. Hi, Marina. And lots and lots of our wonderful listeners. hello listeners have asked us questions and they have and what they've done is they've asked us at the old email address because we've gone official we've got a new email address we have it's the rest is entertainment at goal hanger.com i had no idea we work for gary lineker but anyhow wow so does gary lineker know we work for him i look it's so unclear the angles are all unclear at the moment but that is the new email address should you wish to send us more of your brilliant questions the rest is entertainment at goal hanger.com ask us what's gary lineker like we've we've never met him occasionally he appears as like a hologram floating over the the desk doesn't he and he goes you are all doing terrifically well in your podcast that's the only thing we ever have to do with gary yeah occasionally alan shearer will pop in like an enforcer just to check that everything's going okay and he goes good podcast be a shame if anything happened to it i can i can see shearer he's pressing his like he's pressing his face up against the window of the thing oh And he's doing like a slit throat.

2:29Come on, Shearer. Maybe he's just saying he's got a sore throat. Have you got a sore... Oh, yeah, he's having a strep sore. Everything is fine. Should we get on to some questions? Let's hit each other with some questions. I've got one that I have to begin with you. It relates to deal or no deal. Jonathan Hindley says there's an urban legend that a contestant on opening the last box between 250k and 1p sadly opened their final box and got 1p. Then an anonymous donor called in and gave them the 250k. The anonymous donor was allegedly George Michael. Is this true? If so, how do acts such as this work?

3:05It's not an urban legend I'd heard. Isn't it interesting how things work? Because it is definitely based on a truth. That's for sure. And that is there was somebody who was playing a deal on Odile many years ago and Noel at various points says, what do you want the money for? And she was using it for a final round of IVF. I think she did three rounds and she wanted to do a final round. Anyone who's done IVF knows it's very, very expensive. Can't remember how much she needed, 18 ,000, something like that. Anyway, she crashed and burned on the show, won£500 or something like that. And the morning after it came out, there's a call at Endemol into my good pal Tim Hinks, who we used to run Endemol with.

3:42And the person said, I was watching the woman on Deal or No Deal who needed£18 ,000 for IVF. I'd like to pay that£18 ,000, please. And Tim goes, OK, we can do that. He said there's one condition that you must never tell her who has paid this money. And Tim goes, okay, but who is paying this money? And it was George Michael. So George Michael had been sitting watching this thing. He said, and also there was a guy last week, he had to go to vet school, something like that, and I'd like to pay his as well. But again, you mustn't tell him. So he did that. She got the money. And when George passed away, I put this on Twitter.

4:20I said that he had done that. and the woman got in touch and she said, do you know what? Never forgotten the fact that I got that money. I never knew who it was from. She said the IVF, it didn't work. And now to find out it was George as well is an extraordinary thing. So yeah, he was essentially just sitting watching at home and decided he wanted to give. The actual version of the urban legend isn't true, but the heart of the urban legend, which was George Michael was an extraordinary human being and an extraordinary kind man is absolutely true. Isn't that lovely? That is such a lovely story.

4:51I knew that he used to do things like that, but you do slightly feel like, are they urban legends? And it's not really clear. Sad to be able to tell the story because we're going to tell the story because he's no longer with us. Because he was absolutely adamant, no one finds out, no one knows I'm doing this. And that's the true meaning of selflessness, isn't it? It's not, oh, this would make me feel good about myself, or this is going to look good for me. It's a truly selfless good deed. And also, you know, he just used to sit around watching daytime TV, which makes you want him even more. so yeah if you ever feature someone who needs money on a television show someone will always ring up someone will always message and say has that been taken care of and almost always it has almost always there's been 10, 12, 15, 20 people who've all emailed in have all rung in just saying is there anything I can do to help is there any money I can give it's not always George Michael but it's just people who are watching TV and have that money I mean at the end of the last season of Traitors when Alexander didn't when they banished him because they weren't sure if he was a traitor or not and he wanted to start a charity in his late brother's name and so many people there was a sort of crowd funder for that wasn't there and it went way above what he would have ever even won on the show almost immediately so people do kind of step in and he's now got his own show on Classic FM right he's a real media mover and shaker isn't he I have a question for you Marina from John Gill John says is it just me?

6:10oh I like it you never know where this is going is it just me says John Gill oh John what if it is? oh no should I read on? Is it just me, or is there far less romance on screen nowadays? I know Marina suggested that Twisters was loveless, but is this a growing problem? By the way, what happens at the end of Twisters? Sorry, this is not a major plot point. I want to say that Glenn Powell asks the Daisy Edgar-Jones character for her informed consent to phone her after the credits. Genuinely, it couldn't be more sexless. I do think, well, first of all, my opinions, let's back it up with some statistics first.

6:44yes the number of romantic movies is definitely definitely falling in 2000 nearly 35 percent of films um that were made were listed as romance it's now something like eight percent really and it's on the imdb where everything's put into various categories but that's happened before they um it had a sort of there was a bit of a drop in romance until the 60s and then it kind of recovered now it's on it seem i don't want to say it's on a permanent decline because everything comes in and out of fashion, but it really is. I really think comedy, and I mean, obviously, in romantic comedy, romance and comedy, by the way, are the two genres in biggest trouble.

7:20The streamers are trying to revive romantic comedies, and obviously they had a big success, Netflix had a big success with Nobody Wants This. So in general, both of those genres are in a lot of trouble, really. Cinema, romance, and sex in general is kind of weird because movies have been definitely de-sexed in recent years, and there's lots of different reasons for this. Gen Z don't particularly love it and they're always trying to get them in. They're much more interested in things like about self-care, relationships, self-love, I don't mean masturbation. You know, when you look at Marvel films, as I've said before, they were almost entirely sexist.

7:54There's one guy who has sex and he has to be fired into the sun quite soon afterwards. It's very hard to get out of the suits. It's very hard to get out of the suits. But what you have is people who are in beyond peak physical fitness. They're like Olympic athletes. Big motives, really, are sort of sex, money and revenge. and if you remove one of them, then you're sort of slightly contracting the possibilities of storytelling. Money or revenge. But the motive is always I want to take over the world for unspecified reasons. And I want to fight you for that glowy thing to stop you. Yes. And I don't just want to bang someone.

8:26Yeah. But the British Board of Film Classification, there's fewer films rated 18 for sex, far fewer. The ubiquity of porn has changed a lot of stuff. I remember in newspapers when they used to do Kiss and Tells which you know Sunday tabloid would be Kiss and Tell and someone would expose their affair with a politician there would always be a few paragraphs of description of the sex in it you know you could just buy that in the newsagent but now you can just have anything you want to extreme levels on your phone we don't need to read about David Merle anymore we don't actually need to get turned on vicariously by what David Merle did or didn't do as Hollywood has become more and more sexless the porn industry has got bigger and bigger I think it's become more sexual porn really now That was very, very sexual.

9:07This is the rest is adult entertainment. For the reasons I explained in terms of storytelling, if you remove kind of romance and sex and things like that, you are contracting the possibilities. The idea that cinema was a kind of boundary pushing out form in lots of ways and you could see things in the cinema that you couldn't necessarily see elsewhere, I think that has receded slightly as well. You don't really feel that... But also books, you know, have gone crazy for romance. You know, books are absolutely huge. You know, romanticy and romance itself, you know, Colleen Hoover, the biggest selling books in the world are romance books now and a lot of those are being adapted there is a whole industry that has gone very romance heavy and perhaps that will drip feed back into movies so not sex heavy maybe but maybe romance heavy I feel that everything swings around and it must come round again that's sex for you but the good news John Gill is it is not just you it's everyone a puzzles question Richard meaning it is by law for you That's for me.

10:05Lizzie Conaghy. You do sex, I do puzzles. That makes it sound a lot more interesting than it is. Lizzie Conaghy. I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that well. How are the New York Times games created, Richard? Are they made by people or is there some kind of AI involved? They are made by people. The New York Times games section is one of the single most successful and profitable creative endeavours of the 21st century. It's a huge thing. It's played by a huge amount of people. And, you know, most people who do the New York Times games are, you know, absolutely evangelical about them. I'll tell you the order they do them in, the order I do them in.

10:42Spelling Bee, always first. Me and England always play Spelling Bee and we race to get to Genius. And whoever gets to Genius first is the winner and crows about it. And then we team up to try and get to Queen Bee. That's what we try and do on Spelling Bee. then the crossword the new york times um crossword is is not a cryptic one but it's very cleverly gridded then there's strands which is this sort of word puzzle these are sort of high-end versions of other people's games then there's connections oh yeah which we will get on to because that's a very very interesting one but no they are they are definitively not ai led which is why they're so good i think so spelling bee is a really interesting one so spelling bee is absolutely huge it's enormous created by a guy called frank longo and spelling bee if you don't know it it's sort of one of those word things you know where you've got letters around the middle letter and you have to make words it's got a very very simple trick which is you can use the letters more than once so long as you use the one in the middle you can use letters more than once which makes it incredibly addictive and it has a very clever scoring system you know if you start you get to solid then you're on nice then you're on great and you're on amazing then you're on genius and then you can get to to queen bee so it's incredibly addictive but no every single day made by real people sam mezerski is the guy who puts those together it's interesting to answer this question this week because something happened on spelling bee last week that's never happened before i felt a disturbance in the force for the 2500th spelling bee yeah a letter was on the grid that has never been on for the first 2499 spelling bees there had never before then been a letter s in a spelling bee ever ever in the history because Sam Mazersky thinks it sort of makes it too complicated slash easy when you've got plurals.

12:23Because it was the 2 ,500th one and the pan ground was fabulous. It's the first time ever there's been an S. It hasn't been one since either. So it's the only S of all time. Wow. People love playing those games and they take exactly the right amount of time. And you can always test yourself against other people. You can go back and play the archive. The crossword is extraordinary. because it has these incredibly dense grids. Will Shorts was the great genius behind most of the MIT crosswords and Sam Ozeski does lots of those as well. But Connections is the one I want to talk about. Yeah. So Connections is the one, you know.

12:58You haven't talked about editing apps at this point. Connections is a thing. There's 16 words and you have to put them into four groups of four, four sets of four. And if you do that, you win. And they launched it a couple of years ago, 18 months ago maybe, and said we've got this brand new game. called Connections. You have to connect four groups of four. And the whole of Britain went, oh, you've invented that, have you? I'm sorry, New York Times, because by the way, we love the New York Times puzzles page and we love the people involved. But sorry, wonderful news to hear that you invented this game, which is you've got a, let's say like a wall of 16 clues and you have to put them into four subgroups and we put them together and then we score points.

13:41This is amazing. It's called Connections. You say Connections. That's interesting. What does that remind me of? Connections, connections, connections. Oh, because we have a show called Only Connect, which has been doing The Wall for about 12 years. And when they brought Connections out, everyone told them this. Vicky Corrin told them. Everyone was saying, oh, you know that you haven't invented this. You know you haven't invented this. And they have publicly never said anything about it and still going, this is our great new game, Connections. And listen, I play it. I get it. Have they not said anything?

14:13No. grow up America I know sometimes it always oh no because they're names of Reese's Pieces products but we don't have them over here so I just have to wait to the end I don't know what connects them like stuff from the real world I can do but they always oh no they're all Canadian ice hockey teams if you think about it they're all in the lucky charms box are they and you know when you get to because you can usually isolate the last group and you're going I have no idea what that is this is going to be something from American pop culture and they go and of course it was all nicknames from leave it to beaver and you go oh yeah it was so listen i bow to very few people in my love of the new york times puzzles page and the people behind it are love it they they lovingly curate these things which is why they're so good all done by human beings not done by ai but they definitely definitely whipped off the only connect wall for connections uh and uh listen i look forward to the puzzle wars in the future.

15:08In 40 years' time. What will I have done for a puzzle? When the world... I'm shocked what moral compromises I've made. We'll look back and go, it's funny, isn't it? Because we thought that the Third World War would come from, you know, be like Trump or it'd be Putin or it'd be something like Musk would have done something. And you go, no, you look back and it all came down to only Connect fans against Connections fans. And that's why the world is a wasteland. And that's my view of what's going to happen. On that dystopian note, perhaps we should go to the adverts. Yeah, should we? This episode is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch unmissable shows such as the new season of Gangs of London, the BAFTA-winning Emmy-nominated series starring Joe Cole, Michelle Fairley and Chopin D 'Arisu.

15:51Now, Richard, in season three, chaos erupts after a spiked drugs shipment floods the streets, killing hundreds of civilians. But here is the twist. I mean, it sounds like a big enough twist already, but you know I love a twist. I know you love a twist. Despite shipment, it wasn't an accident. It was a planned and calculated attack. Oh, my God. Knowing what I do about TV crime and writing, all that sort of stuff, I suspect this is just the beginning. Correct-a-mundo. I love your catchphrase. So bring me and maybe anyone listening up to speed who hasn't seen the first two seasons of Gangs of London.

16:21People absolutely love this show. In the first two seasons, we saw the battle for power between Sean and Elliot. Let's not forget he's an undercover cop. Oh, man. Yeah, it came to a climactic head, with Sean's now in prison at the start of season three. Now, the aftermath of all of that has sparked a brutal power struggle right across the capital's underworld. We're talking tested loyalties, shifting alliances, unexpected betrayals. Who can be trusted? Elliot, who we've seen fight very hard to obtain power, struggles to hold on to it, while behind bars, Sean is still able to wield influence and affect events outside the prison walls, meaning the various gangs are looking over their shoulders, not knowing who to trust.

16:58In my books, I have a drug dealer called Connie Johnson, who's always in prison, but she's always got like a Nespresso machine and her Wi-Fi is absolutely sensational. I cannot wait to see what unfolds. Genuinely, so many people have told me about this show. Watch season three of the BAFTA winning Sky original Gangs of London on Sky right now.

17:21This part of today's show is brought to you by the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra show's product. now if you're a fan of the show you will know that samsung have been sponsoring us and we've been lucky enough to be given the new galaxy tab s10 ultra to try i have it in my hands right here now it's got some great features this uh and i'm going to test you out on one of them this uses ai this is one of the good things about ai how would you say marina how would you rate your artistic skills they're not too dreadful i have previously mentioned that i've been trying to renovate some chairs i've completed my chairs actually and also i've been teaching myself calligraphy i wonder if you could renovate a chair on your tablet now no i'm joking i wonder if you could do a drawing for me is there a drawing you're any good at do something that you think i might recognize any drawing can you do that what like a who like a character a person yeah okay i can i can i like the sound that okay i'm gonna do it and see if you can recognize okay i'll do it i'll do an edit on this and wipe it so it looks like you did it in like 20 seconds now are you done yes i am i told you you could do it in 20 seconds it's the magic of editing now with the galaxy tab s10 ultra it can turn anyone into a modern day picasso um why don't you show me your picture i will show you my picture now here is my picture that's not bad an iconic character is it my old art teacher mr tiller in the top left hand corner you have something which is called the sketch to image tool which you can have on this tablet if you press it something extraordinary will happen to that drawing that you just did sketch the image and ai will turn your drawing into something even more impressive there we go now the famous dear silker slightly better than my rendering i think we'll have to say um he appears to be in a sort of brooks brother's shirt this is when he went to welcome wall street after he'd finished doing it's a bit like fireman sound but that's because you that's what you drew yeah i mean there's there's a limit to what it can do but that was instant as well yeah that was instant there we go oh my god you can honestly just show off to your kids all day long another one whoa see is it a sherlock holmes to you yeah it is it's sort of hipsterish sherlock holmes but then i think there was in my original drawing i thought your original drawing is not bad thank you so much i thank you the samson drawing is better yeah but you know it should be but yours isn't bad i think you've got a future I mean, it did take, listen, I don't want to give away any edits or anything like that.

19:50It took you about seven minutes and it took the AI about 0.1 seconds. Yeah, it's very, very quick. And all the family will have endless fun with this because you can do all sorts of different things, seeing what you can create, fun cartoons all the way through. That wraps up this special section of the show, which was brought to us by Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra, where you can both watch your favourite shows and draw them at the same time.

20:18Welcome back, everybody. Marina, I have a question. Chris Shipp was saying, I was wondering if when you see that shot of a plane taking off a landing at an airport to signify a character has departed or arrived, there has to be a second unit to go down to the airport and get some shots, or is there just a big vault of these shots slash different planes slash airports, etc.? Yes, there is. There are airport-establishing shots you can just get. There are banks of these things, because it is expensive, and obviously you have to have a load of permits to film at an airport, and it does sometimes happen.

20:47but not in general. One of the other things Chris has actually said was that I'm sure there'll be people watching a film and saying that's definitely not Albuquerque Airport because they don't have those runway lights. Oh my God, please. Plane nerds, please don't write in, are some of the, they can't watch anything. They notice every single little thing. There are people who say, I can't possibly watch Top Gun because the Russian MiGs have just re-sprayed F5s. Yeah, same. Because how would the American Air Force have got them? marina would be my question how yeah it's an absurdity think of the geopolitical things that would have had to go on so that mr tom cruise could win world war iii okay any form of hardware particularly military stuff is the stuff that has people lighting up the internet to say sorry how's that plane got a gun that particular model of aircraft doesn't have a sorry a route master bus in 1959 but it's a mark iii yeah what tank are you now using interesting mr scorsese the film is ruined.

21:44As you know, I'm a franchise completist on the Fast franchise and I think it's Fast and Furious 6 where there's a fight on the run. You know, the plane is approaching takeoff and it's going really quite fast because it's about to approach takeoff speed. And it goes on for something like four minutes. At that speed, I think the runway, people were working out it was going to be like, is this a 25, 26 mile runway? I mean, it's literally bigger than the English Channel so that they can have this fight. And was that a shot that was just in a bank, or did they have to film that themselves? I joke, I jest.

22:17I'm so sorry. There's no archive of those, Richard. Every one of those is a true original. One of the most famous shots in lots of ways, which is a really great story, and it's from The Devil's Candy, which was written by a woman called Junie Salomon. I might have mentioned it before, but it's all about the filming of Bonfire of the Vanities, which is a huge 80s movie that they spend a lot of money on, and it's a complete flop. It's based on a massive sort of hit Tom Wolfe book that starts the series. One of the best books of all time. Which is brilliant, yeah. And again, magazine, in fact, originally is an Esquire magazine series.

22:47Anyhow, it's directed by Brian De Palma. There's this guy called Eric Schwab who's the second unit director to Brian De Palma. He's been second unit on lots of Brian De Palma's films and continue to be. And second unit, they'll send you off to, you know, sometimes you're filming two things at the same time and you'll send someone off to do that. Often action or sort of background or something like that. and the director's filming with the main actors and what have you. He had this idea that, you know, it's all about sort of 80s excess and Wall Street and whatever. And there's a shot where Concord kind of comes down.

23:17He wanted Concord to be landing at sunset with the Empire State Building in the background. And Brian De Palma says, I bet you, okay, fine, do what you like, but it might not even be in the movie. And I bet you$100 you can't get it. He spends literally so many months. he works out that there's only 30 seconds of the year where the sunset and the Empire State Building are in the right place for the runway. I mean, they meticulously planned this shot. This is by one of the only things in the movie that works. Bit of a spoiler here. They hire a Concorde and they have it landing and he pulls off the shot.

23:49It's amazing. And you hover down out of a shimmering orange sky. It's amazing. It's 10 seconds. It cost them 80 grand in the 80s, which is a huge amount of money for one shot because they got the Concorde to land and take off. And anyway, it all works. He puts it in the film and it's one of those famous, but the film is still a flop. It's really interesting because he wanted, you see, Eric Schwab really wanted to be a director but De Palme was his mentor and he really wants to impress him. And actually, I recently was looking at Eric Schwab's, he never, he's always been on second unit all the way.

24:19Yeah, he's done millions of, you know, second unit for Brian De Palme on Mission Impossible. That's pretty good. He's done lots and lots of things. You know, he was a sort of artist. He wanted to be a creator and he had this vision of this shot. so that's my kind of favorite plane shot but sorry to land that plane as it were Chris yes they do often use stock shots and people do complain that it's the wrong thing Richard here's one that I feel both of us might have something to say about Rob Master says what are the execs of HBO thinking by green lighting Harry Potter as a TV series we know exactly what's going to happen it's going to take an entire decade to finish why not spend the money on an original Harry Potter spin-off same universe, same draw to Potter fans but with the ability to actually create something fresh and exciting something that gets people talking.

25:02I mean, that's the easiest question to answer in the whole world, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, of course you've got to remake it. I mean, if you were 12 when that first book came out, when the first Harry Potter book came out, you are 40 now. Okay, you know, you are old. Firstly, it's been a long time since those movies came out. The thing that people love are the sacred texts, and the sacred texts are the books. I mean, that just happens to be the case. You can do a million spinoffs, and we know how spinoffs go. And they've done a few. They've done fantastic. but you know those are people people find them quite controversial and they're not huge you know they might do well but they've they've done slightly diminishing returns yeah but i'm afraid this ip is very very old and if you grew up with it you are you are old yeah and therefore it's a tale that's going to need retelling it's a tale that huge and masses like three or four generations have grown up since these books came out um you know two generations have grown up since the films came out there is a huge market here for a new generation to watch this exact same story and there's a huge market of everyone who loved the books and who loved the films who just want to see exactly the same story again if much greater length yeah it is the this is the closest thing i can think of in the whole of the entertainment industry that is an utter banker yeah i mean beyond that's what they said about snow white the live action snow white i i actually don't think that they would say this is they're going to spend hbo by the way francesca gardner who worked and succession in his dark materials who's brilliant she's going to be the showrunner of it they say it's going to be 10 years I would say it will be at least 12 they'll be doing something like 200 million dollars a season and each season by the way is going to be I think maybe 10 episodes and it's for one book I'll give you an example of how big a mark it is I've seen more stories just about speculative casting for this show that hasn't even started shooting yet than I have about many of the biggest shows currently on TV there's such fever about this always and as i say this is as close as to a bank as you can possibly get it's interesting you know i have to say that hbo are scaling back lots of things perhaps that they did before you know there are fewer limited dramas being made because returning things and so much is being funneled into this show uh but that's because it will be unbelievably hugely successful and there is just no possible way they wouldn't do this i mean it is one of those things that we often think things are a lot more recent than they are and think why are you making this really recent film and you want to go no it's it's it's really really not recent and obviously i've been working with chris columbus who made the first two movies uh and who you know has amazing stories about the making of those two movies but even he would say oh no i think it's time you can you can now do a different version of that tv they're doing it totally different and as you say instead of you know seven films you've got 70 80 hour-long episodes that are gonna last forever if you're the accountant looking after harry potter and there will be a team of accountants you can see how much money the books are making they still make really good money you can see how much uh money the films are making they still do okay but neither of those is going up you know the numbers are not going up whereas this will turbo charge absolutely everything it's 12 years of almost certainly guaranteed profits for everyone involved in that industry exciting for everyone who loves the books a fun gig for loads of actors and making them all in the uk at leaveston yeah employing huge amounts of uh of uk talent in front of the camera and behind the camera you know mozart wrote his symphonies many many years ago but people keep playing them this this this ip now lasts forever and they're going to remake this every 15 20 years until the end of history it is as we've said before show business yeah john lithgow's dumbledore see immediately you're You know, you want to recast it.

28:46Janet Matera as Professor McGonagall, I think. You know, come on. Cap Estudia maybe as Snape. Who knows? I mean, as I say, just the speculation is getting more kind of pull on the discourse, as it were, than a lot of the bigger shows currently airing. There'll be some point in kind of season four where there'll be an old professor who just pokes his head around the door and you go, hold on a minute, that's Rupert Grint. And you're like, there's just a million little things like that which will delight everyone. so yeah what are the hbo execs thinking they are thinking exactly the right thing this will be a good business yeah this will be enormously profitable business that everybody will love and will keep us in a job for a really long time i think is what they're thinking marina terry wilson terry with an i so a lady terry lady terry um steven spielberg's press officer it's called terry press is she actually that's cool i mean she's more than a press officer she's marketing she's a million things but yeah her name is terry press that's great isn't it incredible That's like Ronald Reagan's spokesman used to be called Larry Speaks.

29:46Anyway, I digress. Terry Wilson says, which shows which have been critically panned, publicly trashed and cancelled early, have you loved and wish could return? Okay, this is a bit of an irisist one which I feel bad about, but it just did make me laugh so much. And I've since found a community of people who also regarded it as a sort of ridiculous watch classic. You know, Aaron Sorkin is amazing. it's really bad when you have to start like that, isn't it? Aaron Sorkin is amazing. The West Wing is incredible. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which ran for one season. How can I explain this if you haven't seen it?

30:23It was made by NBC, and it was effectively about Saturday Night Live, an NBC show that I also don't love. And have never, you know, like lots of British people just think, oh, well done, America. We don't love this. Tina Fey also had that same season out, 30 Rock which was basically a half hour comedy version of something about SNL so it's like possibly the greatest sitcom of all time by the way oh it's just so good it's so good I love 30 Rock so much it's definitely going to be in the argument we should do we should do best sitcom of all time as a bonus episode one day oh please yeah well I mean that would be that would be a long one Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford Bradley Whitford are kind of like a pair of writers who are given the reins of SNL not SNL you know whatever it's called maybe it's called Studio 60 on the Sunset Network.

31:09Never, ever, ever have TV programs about stand-up comedians or writers because then you have to try and make them sound funny and it's, you know, it's impossible. It is so ridiculous. It's like, oh no, the show's in the doldrums. We're given the, we have to decide what to do. And they have to, the whole one is called The Cold Open. When you know that this is episode one, okay, by the way, the show where you're like, what the hell am I watching? So they've got to try to get back the American viewer and they can't think of a cold open until like almost the last minute. and then they think of doing a musical number which is called We'll Be The Very Model Of A Modern Network Show.

31:44Everything about this is just a massive miss. And I feel so bad because, you know, I see people laughing at Aaron Sorkin for bits of dialogue. You're like, oh my God, okay, here's Aaron Sorkin. What have you ever done? Yeah, so also he's... And I realise I'm doing a version of that now and I'm sorry. No, but listen, let's go on the record now and saying if he's ever written bad dialogue it's because he's written more dialogue than anyone else and almost all of it is better than anyone else's. Yes, most of this isn't in it. But as just a sort of myth, it is, and I've watched the whole series more than once, and it's like 12 on hours, or maybe more than that.