The Rest Is Entertainment - Corpses, Quizzes & Newsrooms

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Who sits where in the hierarchy of a newsroom? How does scoring on panel shows actually work? What are the secrets of acting like a corpse? More of your questions answered on this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with Richard Osman and Marina Hyde. Twitter: @restisents Instagram: @restisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, it's Tom Holland here from the Goldhanger sister show, The Rest Is History, and I'm here to tell you about a very exciting episode. It's out today. It's all about the men who walked on the moon, the Apollo missions, the space race, and it features a very exciting special guest, none other than Tom Hanks. So that is out today. And here is a little teaser. The interesting personalities of all of these crews I think comes out in Apollo 11 because I don't think you could have two individuals that are more different than Neil Armstrong was from Buzz Aldrin and you chucked Michael Collins in there and you have honestly. I'm not sure those guys would have volunteered to you know drive to the beach to get, had they not been assigned to it. Search the Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts to listen now.

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Rest is Entertainment Questions edition. Hello, and you are? And I'm Marina High. I like you always forget to introduce yourself. I almost forgot to introduce myself there. Hello and you are? And I'm Marina High. I likely always forget to introduce yourself. I almost forgot to introduce myself there. Hello everyone I'm Richard Osman, question and answers edition of The Rest is Entertainment. This is so professional the top of this show. Do you know why? This is actually liquid. I mean no notes for myself. Hold on I'm getting a call from Gary Lineker saying. Now with loads and loads of

questions this week about The Apprentice, I think perhaps we'll leave The Apprentice until that series is finished, because there's a few things I want to know about The Apprentice as well. The main one being, why do they keep getting up at four in the morning and then saying you've got to be in the car in 20 minutes and then they get in the car and it's absolute daylight. So I'm going to find that out for you. But, let's start with something else. Pam Grater X has written in, brilliant name. I still work with a Barry Grater X, but Pam Grater X, good luck everyone, I was beating that as a name, as the name of the week. She says, every time I see a dead body on film or television,

keep it light Pam, especially on a stainless steel mortuary table, I wonder how the actor stays so still. Sometimes there'll be an extended shot of the corpse and there is no sign of a pulse or a breath. How are these scenes filmed? Pam, this is a very good question and I spoke to a producer of a show about forensic pathology about this this week. The casting of a corpse is a thing. They don't just say like, okay, get that person, they'll be able to lie still because people can't and some people do freak out and they, so you have to sort of audition by lying still. It's like potentially doing an MRI or something. Now, they used to not linger on the chest for those reasons that you say, Pam, which is that it's really hard to stay still.

But now, this is like one of the big routine instances of VFX. They capture it at rest, the chest at one moment, and then they layer that still in the rest of the footage. Now, something else he told me, which I found really, they toured the LA City morgue, they toured quite a few morgues. One thing I will say actually just as a sidebar on this is that people are generally, when you're making shows like that, are incredibly helpful and will give you access and it's really quite extraordinary obviously to have access to a morgue. He said, I mean, it will never leave him. He said one of the most interesting things

he discovered was those drawers where the corpses are in a morgue, I'm afraid, unless you're in a hospital, are completely a TV conceit for, I suppose, for... In the big city morgues, there were open racks. It's just a giant fridge with open racks. Like a Benetton of death. Yes. I mean, yes.

I'm sorry to say. Oh no. And he said it was just extraordinary. And the smell, of course, which people will always talk to you about, the formaldehyde and things like that, is that he says he thinks about it probably every day. I love Pam, Pam is sitting at home now going, do you know what? I wish I hadn't asked. I wish I hadn't asked, yes. In hospitals, they do have the drawers with the caucuses, but in the big city morgues across America, it's all large rooms and everybody is just on open racks.

Wow. But essentially, there are some actors who are very, very good at being still and now they cheat the not breathing. Yeah, well they can do, yeah, it's a VFX job. But also it's quite a big gig that isn't it? You have to lie very still and also usually heavily made up either looking dead or with injuries or... Well for those ones where, you know, it's an open eye corpse, the VFX is particularly helpful because as you know, I mean obviously how long was being a blink and especially someone's telling you not to do it so that that is all you know this is why

you can have a my once but it's also part of the reason why you can spend longer now around these tables and looking at the courts because they are able to use VFX thanks Pam definitely one for you Richard it's quiz show scoring oh that sounds a bit lighter. Yes. Jordan Cracknell says, I love quiz shows like Have I Got News for You and Would I Lie to You but one thing that's always baffled me is that only a subset of questions make the edit, hence the extended versions of the shows, and yet the final scores get read out at the end.

Do they? One, know which questions will make the final cut when filming. Two, film the host reading the final scores for every possible combination of edits. Wow. Three, assume no normal person will actually care about the scores for these shows and therefore not care about the discontinuity. It's a good question, Jordan. And also, by the way, your one, two and three are very insightful because it's sort of a mixture of all of those. So with shows like Have I Got News and Would I Lie To You, et cetera, et cetera, people think, oh, their scores

don't matter. But actually they sort of do in a way. If you're making a format, the fact that there's a competition and someone wins at the end, it just means you're sort of cradled throughout. So you can enjoy it. You know, I would always say in a format, ask a question in the first minute that's answered in the last minute. And all those shows are, it's Ian against Paul, who's going to win? And so we're just in safe hands, we've got somewhere to return to. So the points sort of do matter in a way for the format, but of course don't matter in another way. Paul and Ian are not spending the whole week kind of boning up on the news because, you know, Paul's 3-2 down.

I would find it incredibly hard to override to just want to get the most points. It's like fully misunderstanding every single thing about the show, but there's just an aspect to me that would want to get the most points. Occasionally you get guests on, have I got news for you? And you know the vibe there, you know if someone says, oh and what's this story in Scotland this week and it's about Nicola Sturgeon? And you'll get sometimes a politician or something who will just buzz in and go, this is the Nicola Sturgeon story. I really can see myself in this, I'm cringing at my... Let's move on, let's move on because I think I've got the point there.

And then you kind of go, okay, maybe we'll talk around it a tiny bit more before we get to the... and then I'll give you the point. We can't just do it, it's not mastermind. The show would be over in 15 minutes if we didn't do some jokes. So you do have that sometimes. What you would do ordinarily, as you say, if you're making... Let's say, would I lie to you, because it's an interesting one, which is you've got four guests, the two team captains, everyone's probably got two stories. There's too much to put in the

show, but not by much. You'll lose two or three stories. And it's one of the few shows, would I lie to you, where the compilation thing of stuff that gets cut out is one of the best shows you'll ever see, because they're cutting out good stuff. So on that show, Jordan's absolutely right. Two things. Firstly, up in the gallery, you're watching and as you go along, you're doing a paper edit. That story's definitely staying in. That one's definitely staying in. This one, oh, I don't know, it's interesting. That bit was brilliant, but that person's already got a good story in this week. But by the end of the show, you'll have a rough idea

of which stories you want in. So you will know what the scores would be as per your paper edit. But Jordan is also correct that occasionally you'll also go, oh, I'm not sure about that one or that one, which one we're losing. And in which case is either going to be four, three to Lee or it's going to be four all. So you then just get Rob to say it's a win for Lee or it's four, three to Lee. Or, oh, and this week it's a draw because you just want to cover yourself in the edit. So, you know, everything you're watching is the stuff that happened, but just occasionally you kind of go, are we definitely keeping that story in?

Or you just think, oh, that story was great, but it was really long. Is that going to fit with the rest? Same with If I Got News For You, you're sitting in the gallery, you're paper editing as you go, which you always do with those shows. You record for a couple of hours and you know you've only got half an hour. And when you produce those shows, you get very experienced experienced about what's gonna make it in and what's not gonna make it in and you have to lose some really anyone has ever been to a recording of those shows goes oh my god there was that unbelievably funny bit

you didn't put it in you think yeah because if we put that in we'd have to it was referencing something in the previous round which was referencing something at the beginning which happened off camera also and so you kind of go you can't put everything in. So you're constantly doing a paper edit in the gallery and then thinking, what would that do to the score if we lost that? Occasionally, I've got these views, you might do a kind of quick fire high point scoring round and if it doesn't go very well, you think, okay, well, the points now don't make

any sense, so you change them. So it's a bit of everything is the truth. And it's not really TV fakery. It's kind of a nice cradle to have scores and you just want to make sure they make some sense Yeah But certainly if you went back over every single episode of all of those shows and added up the actual scores There'd be the odd inconsistency whose lines are anyway, which I used to do We just write the beginning we just say all the scores don't matter

So on that Clive would just say oh, there's a million points to Ryan It's 40 points to Colin and at the end they say the winner is Greg Pruitts You think you just gave a million points to Ryan. It's 40 points to Colin. And at the end, they say the winner is Greg Proops. You think you just gave a million points to Ryan. So how's Greg winning? And so on that show, it was just foregrounded as absurdity. Yeah. But yeah, by and large, people are trying to play fair. It's the truth. While corpses and quiz show scoring, you can't say we don't run the gamut on this show. Marina Rod Hutchison asks, following on from your discussion of the media and Princess Kate, what is the hierarchy of reporters in a newsroom?

I always imagine the royal correspondents being seen as a bit of a joke by other reporters and the war correspondents at the top of the tree. I love this question so much. I've got a lot to divulge and a lot to get off my chest. It's really interesting. It would depend on the title and it would depend on the times, as in the era of the whatever. I mean, when I first started, I worked at the Sun. I was the secretary on the Sun Shaper's desk. There was this royal guy, Charlie Wray, I mean, a real sea monster. And he, yeah, but they had immense self-regard. You just feel like that Royal B. They've got a real load of the photographers that always used to do the royal photography. I will get onto the hierarchy in a minute because I've got a lot.

One of the things the royal correspondents do is that they think that the royal family like them. First of all, they've become quite grand, as in they might accept a few poses themselves and bouquets from well-wishers. And second of all, they reckon that, oh, you know, we used to have such a lot... Harry used to love us. It's like, it should be patently obvious to you by now that he never liked you He regards you as complicit in a machine of death and he really really hates you but they're all now like he's changed He used to have a laugh with him and it's like, oh my god, it's really okay So it just depends when there's a lot of royal stories and if you can get the splash

You know the front page of the paper which obviously now and most people read things online and it doesn't mean so much But there are periods in newsrooms where showbiz is really big. I don't think showbiz is as big as it used to be. Now most of the stories, I think, you know, it's stuff that's happened on Instagram or things that people put in the public domain themselves. Politics in, say, tabloids used to be nothing. You used to get nothing at all. And then over the last few years, you know, politics has been really in the ascendancy

because of all the convulsions after Brexit and all of that. So you could really get the splash There's been some big storylines. There's been some big plot lines Then there are hierarchies within hierarchies. Okay, like the sports guys never come in the office But first tournament I did I went to the World Cup in 2006 There was no women I was in Barden, Barden some of the stuff that was said to me genuinely. It's like hey guys You know, we're in the 21st century I mean it was really

Unreconstructed and I wondered whether they were just like on tour the whole time. They kind of lived in hotel rooms quite a lot. They just hadn't actually realized that society had moved on about 30 years beyond. But they have hierarchies within hierarchies, the sports reporters. I was interested to discover that somebody had at some point sort of created this system where they would refer to the chief sports writers, not all of the chief sports writers, by the way, but most of them, as the Dukes. So there was the Dukes.

Then there was the football number ones, then there's a football numbers two, and then there were the scufflers. Now the scufflers were just the ones like trying to go and get little quotes in the mix though, which is basically the equivalent of a sort of tunnel after the game. I would say that the Dukes to scufflers system

was semi-ironic, but honestly, the way that a lot of the people behaved, it was like, you felt the way that a lot of the people behaved, it was like, you felt like it was a sort of hierarchy that you might have seen in a failing minor public school clinging onto the cliffs in like the 1950s. I did feel that to a large extent football was kind of like that. Let me think about the rest of it in the newsroom. If you get any brackets in your job title, you've massively farked up. Special projects, hi, you're being farked over probably because of a mistake you've

made. I mean, what is special projects? Nobody knows. It could be anything. It's just that you're not doing the job you were doing before because you were doing it badly. Yeah. It's like in TV when they sent you to online. I think that's going to be huge. Back in the days when it wasn't going to be huge. I was going, do you know what? Some of those genuinely, some of those people you bump into them now and they're the billionaires. Oh, that's brilliant. They were sent there as a sort of punishment meeting. The lobby also don't come in. So again, there are sort of- That's the political journalists.

Yeah, that's the political. They mainly work in parliament, there's a sort of lobby corridor and other places. So they don't come in. So again, those are sort of little communities that form that are not really part of the office life as it were. But then, I mean, the columnists, in my view, which often they're coming, I mean, the columnists are the worst. A lot of people don't come in, but now they've tried to bring people back to the office. The columnists are the worst. I mean, you guys probably know because, you know, we elected one to run the country. But newspaper columnists, oh dear me. I mean, I have always tried to be, around the country. But newspaper columnists, oh dear me, I mean, I have always tried to be, they can be pretty high maintenance. I have to say, I try to be the lowest maintenance possible, except in salary negotiations. So if you're going to save your difficulty or

something, I think that's the one to save it for. But I try to be as ultra, I've got this fantastic commentator, a guy called Hugh Meor at The Guardian, he's great. But I try to be as super low maintenance. But in general, you've got your show ponies and they're the columnists. So in terms of the hierarchy, it is shifting. As you say, war correspondents, they don't come in, there's a particular type. I remember my agent once saying to me, I mean, I used to be able to drink so well, I could drink like a foreign correspondent. And there's a certain tourism to that. Investigations, which when you get an amazing investigation, I always think those are people

that are sort of rock stars. And there are some papers that really sort of pride themselves on having those great investigations. I mean, The Guardian's got a great investigations editor. The Sunday Times obviously have always had their insight team and it's a big thing. If you get a big one of those, that's a terrific thing. And you are a bit of a rock star when you bring one of those in. But in general, you're kind of toiling away on things that are very, very expensive form of journalism to run because you can go for so long and it will need so much legal and it may never, never come to fruition because you can't get people to talk. So they're sort of quiet rock stars in lots of ways, but the hierarchy is shifting, but I don't know really what to say

about rock correspondents. They're so grand themselves, I honestly can't tell you. It's a great question. Also, by the way, I don't want us to lose at the end of that answer, that you gave one of the greatest piece of advice to anyone who's starting out in any industry, which is be low maintenance,

except for in salary negotiations. And that sounds like a perfect place to go for a break. After this, I think we're gonna to talk about the secrets of TV critics and the secrets of TV theme music as well. Two sets of secrets that I want to know about. Okay, welcome back everybody. Immediate question for you on TV theme tunes, Richard from Katie Green. Now she says, there are many timeless TV theme tunes.

Shows I would watch on a Saturday night decades ago I can still clearly remember the theme tune. There are also modern shows like The Traitors that have really well produced theme music. Three questions, how much budget is allocated to this? At which point in the production process is it made or composed? And three, have you Richard ever rejected a theme for not suiting the show? Yeah, my brother did the theme for 8 out of 10 Cats. Did he? I didn't know that. Yeah, he was like a super group.

There's like someone from Supergrass and someone. There's like, it's like really the people behind that. Wow. It's amazing. I saw that question. I spoke to a guy called Paul Farrah, who is the absolute don of TV theme music. So he did Weakest Link, The Chase, The Wheel is one of his, and I put some of Katie's questions to him. By the way, he gave me so much other information

that if you have any questions about TV theme music, I already have the answers. I don't know anyone else who's got another one. From a TV producer's point of view, there's a series of things when you get a format off the ground, set being one of them, theme music, all these things that kind of make a show feel, you know, professional and real. So, but by and large, you wouldn't have theme music until it's been commissioned and then you go out and do it. And sometimes you just buy library music, but you have people you work with. We work with a guy called Mark Sylvan, who's great as well, but Paul is sort of the king of the industry. And the producer will have ideas. Paul Farrar said the worst thing is sometimes you get producers who go,

and they ask me to deal with you Paul because I DJ in my spare time. And Paul's like, oh, okay. Oh, we got a live one here. Yeah, exactly. Now, the role of a TV theme composer is interesting. We just think of the theme music and actually if you watch any show, watch Weakest Think, watch The Wheel, for example, which are both Paul's and you'll see, of course, there's theme music, but there are also music beds throughout the show. So when you're talking in transition between rounds, we have a thing called stings, which

is the transition. So literally, let's play round one. And the composer is doing all of those things. They're producing all those sort of sound effects and things for the show, buzzers and things like that. Often the composer would do as well if you wanted to be a sort of sound collage. And so it's a huge job essentially scoring a television program. So the theme tune has to do one job, which is it's really catchy, here's the show, but especially these days also then has to bleed into

10 seconds, 5 seconds, 2 seconds, 1 second, all these different versions of it. So something like if you watch The Wheel, this is why I love working in television. Like one of the many reasons I love working in television, I've talked to Paul about The Wheel. See that's a catchy theme tune. The Wheel. The Wheel. And Paul says I don't really remember composing it, but he said I really like it. He said, but what I do remember is so much of my time was, and this is why things are never ever simple, so much of my time was, you've got the wheel going round and round and round and it slows down. And he said, and I need music that can speed up and slow down and keep time with the wheel. This is the thing

I need to do. He said, so a lot of my time was sitting in a room with the engineers who are making the wheel and they were actually timing it with them making it go round. And so our job is we sit down and work out, you tell me the speed it's going to go, you tell me the speed it can go, you tell me the rate at which it declines, all of that stuff. And I then compose to that. It's all maths. Yeah. But me as a producer, I'm thinking about Michael McIntyre and the questions and stuff like that. And meanwhile, in a room somewhere across the country, there is a composer and

an engineer making my show better for me by both being brilliant at their jobs. So, you know, the role of a composer is a complicated one in that regard. So obviously you want the music to be catchy, but then they have to design all sorts of other things for you. In terms of when it is done, by and large someone like Paul you would get in very early in a show because you want the graphic identity of the show and the music to all fit each other. But he says that at times he says he remembers two specific occasions. He remembers a live morning television show ringing him and saying, we need a new music for the end of the show. And he's thinking, okay, when do you need it by? I go, oh, it's for the

end of the show. So he had to compose something, send it through to them by the end of the show. I was like doing a match report, but harder. Yeah, exactly. And he's also the music director on Michael McIntyre's big show. And Aded Jones is on Send to All. And Michael's just had an idea, he wants to do a version of Walking in the Air with Aled. And Paul's like, oh, but when do you need it? Because they go, well, the theatre doors have opened, but not that many people in yet. So essentially he's got like kind of half an hour,

45 minutes to do that. Which some are like, but you know, any creative love, you love that sort of challenge. Or really understand the deadline. So in many ways it doesn't matter. That's probably where you just started it anyway. But by and large, if you have a big show like that, the wheel or something like that,

the composer has to be part of the team very, very early on. And if you are interested in sound design and music and stuff like that, if it's a career you want to go into, sit and watch an episode of The Weakest Link or The Wheel and see where the beds are and see where the stings are and see how they relate to the music and what have you. And it's really fascinating and incredibly lucrative as well. And so Paul will do what, weakest link, that music goes around the world. He was saying, oh, I'm in China and I put the TV on and literally the first thing I hear is my music. And it's an incredible job,

but you don't notice a lot of what they do. So theme tunes is an interesting question, but actually there's so much more to a theme tune than meets the eye. But thank you, a lovely question. And also thank you to Paul Farrah. Paul Farrah also, by the way, said, if you ever want me to remix your theme tune, I would happily do it for free because I love the podcast. Oh, thank you.

And he's like the best in the business. Yes, please. So maybe we'll set him that challenge. Okay. Also, maybe when we talked about Disney on the regular show this week, we're going to have a cartoon cat becoming the CEO. Perhaps the cartoon cat needs a little kind of theme tune every time he walks into the room. Yeah, like Steamboat Willie, the only bit of Disney stuff that has actually fallen out

of copy right now, the little mouse doing the original Mickey Mouse before he became. I'll get Paul on that as well. Yeah. Marina, Alison Barton has a question for you. Can TV critics choose for themselves the programs they will review each week? Also, if they don't have full editorial control, can they refuse to review a specific programme if there are personal reasons why they would not be comfortable doing so? Would the approach be the same for film and book critics? Okay, good one, Alison. I would say that in general, if you are a TV critic, you're going

to want to do the big things of the week. It doesn't mean like every week you're doing The Apprentice every week because it happens to be big at the time, but you're going to want to cover that one and you'll probably cover off the series launch. So I don't want to say there's a herd mentality because they all may have completely different views about it. But if a big show comes out like Traitors or whatever, you're all going to be writing about it because it's the big show of the week. Don't try and sort of be one of those people who says, oh, I'm not going to cover that. I'm too ground for it. If you've got a sort of whole page and you come once a week as some of the tabloid TV critics do, or if you do, there's a TV review every day as there is in some of the broadsheets, you can do quite a sort of whole page and you come once a week as some of the tabloid TV critics do or if you do

There's a TV review every day as there isn't some of the broadsheets you can do quite a lot of things You'll hopefully cover quite a lot of different shows and if you're any good at your job You'll be watching a huge amount of television anyway, but in terms of saying I won't review it my god I mean, I would really think you're in the wrong job But I do hear in newsrooms now of some younger reporters saying, you know, I don't want to cover this story. I, you know, I didn't agree with J.K. Rowling. It's like, well, so what? I mean, it's a news story. I don't agree with Donald Trump. You can write about him. I have heard that there's a more, is a bigger sort of movement to people saying, I'm not

really comfortable writing a story, which to me is like, well, then you're in the wrong job because your job is to write news stories. And it doesn't matter what the news is about. Critics, I don't know. Sometimes I do know that some film critics, you've asked about whether it extends to film, I do know some film critics who may have connections within the business or they may know people. If that person is behind a smaller film that's not very good, then you can just think, well, that's good, I don't have to review it. I'm just not going to review that because I could probably only give it a kick in because it's not very good. You know, if that's one of the big releases of the week, you're not going to not review,

I don't know, Killers of the Flower Moon or whatever it is, you're going to review all of those things. And often part of the job of critics is sort of managing those relationships because you're going to see the people at the theatre, you know, theatres know you and if you've, so you really have to think very hard, obviously, about what you're writing. Something that does happen, I was about to say not be excluded, because I'm afraid that something that does happen, and it's happened also within football reporting, things like that, people saying, we don't like this thing you've written about us,

because you're not allowed to come to our press conferences anymore. You know, we don't like the review you gave us. You now will not come to... We're not going to send you Warner's films or something, not to slight Warner's, I'm just naming a film company, but they might do that. And that is obviously very bad and you can't have that. We have to have freedom of speech

and we have to have freedom of criticism and people should be able to write whatever they want and you have to allow people into your press conferences and things like that. But it must be said, there's been an increase in that. And in those situations, what I would always hope to try and do, and there's been mixed success on this, is say, if you don't let my colleagues into even, I mean, sometimes politicians might exclude such as, if you don't let us all in, none of us will do it. And I think you really

have to sort of quickly form a little sort of cross title union saying, we're not going to do this. We're all going to sort of put our pens down or whatever if you don't let us in. All of these relate to stories of criticism in some way or another, whether you're criticizing a football club or a movie or whatever. But I think you have to sort of band together and say we must have the right to disagree with something or to report unfavorably on you and then you have to sort of unionise in the moment. And also, as you say, so critics always have to do the big releases, big TV shows, big films, but then the good ones will find little nuggets that you won't have seen and they'll put that on the same page and they'll say... That's the beauty of the job, to be able to say, you need to watch this and you can surface things that otherwise might, in this huge age of content, people might not hear about.

I always remember, like, back in the sort of heyday of the newspapers, so every day every TV page would have the picks of the day. And that, by and large, was just everything that was new on that day. But you get some producers who obviously never read the papers, because they would go, oh my god, we're pick of the day, okay, we've done it, we've done it again. You go, no, you're pick of the day because you're a new show, they've literally just given you one star, and said, what is this show doing on television? Pick of the Day is not a recommendation.

It's not saying, oh my goodness, this is what I've really picked. It's not the cream of the crop. It's literally, here are some new shows that are on today. But yeah, people come in and say, Pick of the Day. You go, oh, you haven't read it, have you? I must say that one of my favorite things about it, if you're the best TV critics, film critics, book critics, whatever, you should really feel that you do not have to have seen the show. Yeah.

They'll tell you a little bit about it, but I'm there for the writing. And you know, there are people like, I don't know, obviously Clive James, Victor Lewis Smith, back in the day where you'd be like, I have no, I couldn't care less for I've seen the show. I just, Nancy Banks Smith, I just want to read this writing. And that's, I think, the mark of a sort of great critic. And there just simply isn't time to read all these books and watch all these films and do all those things. So this is one of the reasons I love the London Review of Books, because they've got these really in-depth articles. Finally, we're onto the London Review of Books.

Yeah, the London Review of Books. But they've got these sort of brilliant, and you think, I would love to read this sort of extraordinary history of, I don't know, costume in something or, but I'm honestly not going to have time. And then someone has done a really in-depth but beautifully written review with lots of their own outside knowledge in and you think, great, I haven't actually read the book, but I have done the next best thing. But ideally also, and I have to say this because there is a sense with some critics that they do not actually like the thing they're writing about. Also, I think TV criticism is one of those things where, certainly in the broadsheet

sometimes, they will give TV criticism to someone who doesn't know a great deal about TV in a way that would be unthinkable in music or in film or anything like that. Or covering the city or sport, you know. I don't really know much about money. I just turn up to a shareholders meeting. And you read stuff and go, you fundamentally haven't understood how that programme is made or why they've done that. And that's bad. Tabloids, weirdly, have always been rather good at reviewing television and understanding it. But yeah, occasionally, there's some great broadsheet TV critics, but occasionally they'll give someone like a piece and you just think, this

doesn't seem right. Yes, you must not put someone in charge of that who is not an expert in the medium. Which seems very obvious. Or who doesn't like it. Yeah, or who doesn't like it. And care for it. Yeah. Have we got a lot covered there, didn't we?

Yes, we did, but there are so many questions we haven't got around to. There's a good one on sex scenes, but I think we're going to have to do that one next week. There's also, there's some interesting cancel culture questions, which we both have strong opinions on. We should do something more fully on that. Yes, exactly. Okay, well please keep sending them in. I had a follow-up last week, someone was asking, you know, do they think they'd ever bring

back This Is Your Life? And I got a message from a very big name TV presenter saying they'd just been offered a reboot of This Is Your Life, so having said it would never come back. This person turned it down, by the way, I think for the same reasons that we said it wouldn't work, but interesting in it, so it's all out there. But if you do have, you know, stuff about specific shows and shows you used to watch and stuff, questions like that are always fascinating. I can do a tight 20 on Blockbusters, for example. But yeah, but we got some, mean, there's so many questions. There are so many questions.

People like the entertainment business. Yes, they do, and they want to know how it works. Okay, therestisentertainmentatgmail.com is the address. And we will see you for the main show on Tuesday. On Tuesday. See you everybody. Take care, Bye bye. Sherlock, where are you going? Grab your microphone now.

Where are you? Are going to Dartmoor. Hello, please. What's your emergency? I found a... I found a body on Dartmoor. Early reports from Dartmoor coming to us now regarding a potential murder inquiry. Very sad news now regarding the horse trainer, June Straker. This was the home of June Straker. Devastating news. horse trainer June Straker. This was the home of June Straker. June was an exceptional trainer

but the biggest question now is where is Silver Blaze? Where is Silver Blaze? I want to know how a multi-million pound racehorse can go missing. That's not like... The empty stable of Silver Blaze. You've got a Grand National favourite, overwhelming favourite, week before the Grand National goes missing and a trainer gets killed. That statement there from Colonel. Racing stables urging calm, urging respect. But you're saying that the disappearance of Silver Blaze is political?

No, no, no, no, Robert. I'm absolutely not saying... Racing horses, false stop, is inhumane. A little explainer maybe for our international listeners. Silver Blaze is a very successful British racehorse. June Straker and Silver Blaze is an example of animal rights activism to the absolute extreme. That is such nonsense, Ian. How is that nonsense? That is nonsense.

The horse is missing and a woman is dead. But it's gambling money at the arms of it and it's the companies that have the blood on their hands. Shame on you! Shame on you! Get back! Justice with silver blades! This is an actual police investigation! Get back! It's a sick, twisted industry, with sick, twisted... We look in a racing yard and see how horses are looked after.

And the rights activists in England have to stop. Let's do it! I am the right honourable member for Darmond. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Our hearts are broken. Strager was found dead on the forest. Our community is wounded. Justice for Silverblaze!

But the people of Dartmoor will not give up our search for Silver Blaze. Force Racing stakeholders believe the sport is at a critical junction. We'll begin a fight first. Prime Minister's backbone, our Silver Blaze. Silver Blaze! Silver Blaze! Silver Blaze! Silver Blaze! Silver Blaze! Silver Blaze! Silver Blaze! Sherlock, are you trying to draw my attention to something? Yes. To the curious incident of the dog in the night time. Sherlock and Co. The Adventure of Silver Blaze begins 9th of April. Search Sherlock and Co. wherever you get your podcasts.