The Rest Is Entertainment - Did SNL UK Defy The Critics?

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Did Saturday Night Live UK flop or not? Are we in a golden age of British comedy? And why has Netflix parted ways with Harry and Meghan? SNL made its UK debut on Saturday night after weeks of scepticism from critics - but was it any good? And who was responsible for a freakishly good Princess Di impression? Netflix has announced it’s divesting from the lifestyle brand it helped Meghan Markle build, amidst damning reports about the couple. So what’s really going on, and were Sussex’s entertainment dreams doomed from the start? Last One Laughing returns to our screens - is this blockbuster comedy at its best? Richard and Marina discuss the filming secrets and big budget behind the hit reality show. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Joey McCarthy & Charlie Rodwell Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, remember, Octopus Energy do something really great. If they've got your birthday, when you call in for whatever reason to Octopus, the whole music is the number one selling single from that year, the year of your 14th birthday. And we discover, didn't we, that yours was the only way is up by Yaz on the plastic population. We're going to discover mine now. Now, yours is, I just called to Say I Love You by.

Stevie Wonder. Okay. Listen, I prefer yours. Do you think it's weird to have whole music, which is I just call to say I love you? Because, listen, and you know that I love Octopus Energy, but I will rarely ring them to tell them I love them. Yeah. Yeah, I would usually, but, you know, I'd just want to chat to them about something to do with my energy. Yeah.

And I don't mean that sort of energy. Well, look, they can but surface the number one single of that year for you. And you can always choose not to have the music. You can choose for, no, but I think only animals do that, as I've said, and I want to go on the record as saying that. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Resters Entertainment with me, Marina, hi. And me, Richard Osmond.

Hello, listen to, hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm okay. The sun has been. out, sort of spring is in the air. 100%. That's nice, isn't it? People listen to the podcast on lovely long walks through the country.

Is that how you imagine it? Gambling through daffodils. I would have thought so, yeah. Yeah, I would have thought so, too. And just looking directly at their feet instead of at the nature. Yeah. I don't really like a walk through the countryside. Do you know what I'm?

I know I'm supposed to enjoy it. Right, Kemi. I don't like sandwiches. I don't like walks through the country. But I do. I like the idea of being out there and fresh air is nice. Yeah. But you know when people say, oh my God, it's amazing.

communing with nature. I'm not, what are you, I guess there's trees. Would you do it in a golf cart? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. I saw Project Hell Mary. Yeah. Listen, I'm happy, okay. It's done good business. It's done amazing. I'm really happy that a film, I mean, it's not entirely an original, is it? Because it's based on a book, which, by the way, people are obsessed with this book. You know, it's a big swing and people have, and people have turned out for it. I have to say, you know, there's a lot of things that I've found wrong with it, but equally, there were lots of great bits about it. And to be honest, if you don't, you know, people watch 20 hours of absolute rubbish at home. And if you don't turn out for a couple in the cinema, then there

aren't going to be cinema. So it's the biggest film of the year so far. And I think going and have a look and just seeing what the biggest film of the year so far is to me always a valuable of exercise if your local tickets aren't exorbitant. And Ryan Gosling is in it. But we're not talking about that, are we? What are we talking about? Well, no, good times for comedy question, Mark, Because SNL, UK, launched on Saturday night. Last One Laughing. LOL, UK. We're going to talk about that and the world of comedy.

We're also talking about... Netflix appears to have divested themselves of runaway business success as ever, which is, as you know, is Megan's retail brand attached to her show with Love, Megan. And we're going to have a look at the state of the Sussex's media and content empire. and also what happened with Netflix and talk a little bit about Netflix and retail, which is quite interesting, I think. And I think you've spoken to somebody

who has some quite interesting information about it. About retail and Netflix, which is interesting. Let's start with comedy. Comedy, S&L, UK. We've spoken before about that happening, and I was very much a booster of it. There was a huge amount of sort of toxicity around it and negativity around it.

And oh, this is going to be awful. S&L America is awful and all this stuff. And, you know, my view has always been, I think your view as well, they are spending a load of money on comedy here. And when the cast came out, I was like, they've got some really good people here. Oh, this is younger. This is interesting.

This is different. So I had very, very high hopes for it. Of course, it's seen all of the press telling me how awful it was going to be. We haven't talked about what you think about it. I'll go on record as saying, I don't think it could have been better. I thought it was magnificent. James Longman, who produced it. Listen, we'll talk about writers and we'll talk about performers and we'll talk about formats and all of those things.

To take that show with the pressure that was on it with, and I know this doesn't sound like a pressure, but sometimes it's the money that was behind it, to have landed that plane in a way that I just thought there was last from start to finish. I thought, I genuinely thought it was a magnificent achievement. I mean, I've said before that I don't like SNL, the US thing. I don't like, by the way, I love reading about it. I've read every book about it. For some reason, I love the law around it. Yeah. But the thing itself, it's not my thing.

But if it is your thing, it's such a successfully done transfer. I see it didn't please all the TV critics. One of the things I would say about TV criticism in this country is it's a sort of gentleman, and I mean gentlemen and gentle lady, amissor sort of thing, isn't it? We so often, there's a lot of TV criticism country who are given the job. It's like, oh, you know, you're good at writing. you've got opinions, why not have them about this thing? Yeah.

We don't really do it with the city or, you know, with business or with, or with, or with, but we somehow, for some reason, there's this whole tradition of saying, you don't really know anything about TV. Why don't you write about TV? Yeah. And there's a little bit, I did think that there was a little bit of that in some of it, that just simply didn't understand what had happened. Bits of it I'm reading.

I think you have no idea or understanding of why this format is over here. Yeah. How it got made, who these people are. If you're saying these people are, you know, new faces, then you shouldn't be writing about television because almost all of these people. You know, if you're even vaguely online, you're no half of them. One of them called it shockingly competent. I think they were quite surprised that they didn't hate it. I think they couldn't work out what to say because they could see it wasn't bad, but they couldn't work out if it was good.

They didn't have the confidence of actually saying, oh, okay, oh, actually. And, you know, the first episodes of comedies famously are very, very poor. reviewed in both senses the word poor. I remember the first reviews of the office, which were just saying... People didn't understand what it was. Yeah. I mean, just saying this is a disgrace. This is where's all the money gone? Ricky Javais can't write. He might be, you know, the reason you do need SNL is this, is you can take all of those people. But Lorne Michaels, and you have the format of the show, and you have the history of the show. And as a performer, that gives you something bigger than you that exists out there. So it's very, very, very, very useful.

to have something that gives you those limits. If you're a writer in that writer's room, if you're a performer as well, to know that it has to be X minutes long, it has to have X amount of sketches. There will be two songs in the middle of it. There will be an over-enthusiastic live audience in the middle of it. You'll be reading from cue cards,

all of these things that come from somewhere else. It has a brand and a name that you can fall back on. It just gives you extraordinary freedom. And for this young group of performers, good on Sky for taking a big swing. It's their big swing. Is their most expensive unscripted ever? Everyone told them they were idiots. Everyone says this is going to be terrible. It's going to be the same old faces. It's going to be this. It's going to be that. By the way, Trump has already shared the cold open. So in which Starm has sort of shown sucking up to him in a voice note or whatever. So it's already part of the global cultural conversation. He's finally found an SNL he likes Trump. So that's good. It does illustrate something about this show, which is. by the way, the same for the US.

I mean, the US ones are on later. It's on at 11.30. This is on at 10. Is it clippable? You get the cultural relevance, actually, from the clips that go viral. Things have changed, and it's not that, you know, Lord Michaels always used to say it was like sport and that, you know, some weeks your team has a bad game and then you just come back next week because you're invested in the whole production, as it were.

It got 226,000 viewers live. Okay. Here's where we are television guys. But there was something I found slightly cringe whether we in one of the trails for the thing was saying, you know, if you're not getting laid on Saturday night. And it was sort of almost as bad as saying you're going to be watching it hungover on a Sunday morning. But actually what really needs to happen is that the sketches go viral on social media. That's where you get the cultural relevance now is from those kind of things. But you can't just make clips.

That's the point. And that's the point of why it's SNL. The point of why it's live on television is you can't clip something from nothing. You know what I mean? It has to have the mothership before you send these little pods off into the universe. The Princess Die impression in that, Jack Shep's Princess Die impression,

I'm so sorry, it wiped the floor with both Emma Corrin and Elizabeth Debicki in the crown. That's the best Princess Dye impression I've ever seen. And by the way. The end. I know she died 30 years ago, so we can talk about the relevance.

But it was... And that's an eight-minute sketch. But right in the middle of it, you have like a three-second meme which goes around the world. Yeah. I mean, again... Quite frankly, Richard, was, you know, put it in the Louvre.

It's such a good impression. It's, as I say, it's wiped the floor with the crowd. One thing I would say about it, and I do think that this is significant, we know it costs a lot, the six episode order. It's eight now. Yeah, they've gone to eight in the middle of the last week before it launches. And even eight is like in the US, it's 20. It's very, very difficult to have such small portions if you're trying to bed.

in cast, bed in ideas, bed in the whole sort of thing. That is going to be the thing of which it is the biggest victim in my view, because it's just hard to kind of say, oh, this is part of our kind of cultural conversation and everything, but there's six or eight episodes of it now. Yeah, but nothing's part of our cultural conversation anymore, you know, so it's, I think it's okay. And I think, you know, what does that take? Nothing is part of our culture. What are we talking about then? I just mean, some things must be, we must be, we're not in that thing anymore. We go, oh, let's put Wogan on every night. and then people get juice,

and then the whole of Britain will watch it all the time. No, but you know that we live in an always-on culture. And, you know, there's something, the reason we do, this podcast every week, the reason artists are doing little drops of things, music artists all the time, is because if you are not on all the time, then you fall away.

And people are like, and actually, you know, even SNL, people are saying, that does 20 episodes a year. Doing eight is very, very small. I don't know it's possible. If it's very successful, they'll bring it back in sooner, and we'll have two runs of it a year or something like that.

I don't know. They can do anything they like. Why, I might just keep it going? You think they'll keep it going? No, I think they could keep it going. I mean, they can do anything. That's the point. You know, Sky has the money.

If they have something that's paying off for them, they can do anything they want. The thing they shouldn't do is go, we're going to immediately go into 20. Because they didn't know it would be good. I agree that they can. You want it to be good. You hope it's going to be good.

And I think it's safe to say, it is good. It won't be for everyone and there'll be, you know, hits and misses and stuff like that. But it is the thing that they ordered with this new generation of talent doing something interesting. But you're not immediately going to say let's do 26 of these. I know you're not. But, well, I mean, I think people will have other bookings. People will have other things.

You have to be relatively organized. You can't just say, this is what we're, and okay, now we're always on. I think it's difficult in an always-on world to do that short an order. And that's something I think will be a stumbling book. Having said, the mothership is the live show. and the clips come off it. So long as your branding stuff, SNL, you can have little satellite offshoots of this program on all year round.

And then, you know, the main show comes back. But, you know, if you're Sky, you've now got this thing and this group of performers who are attached to this thing, who are a stable for you. And of course, some of them will be off doing movies and some of them are doing sitcoms and this, the other. But not all of them all the time.

So it's getting a stable of people, a stable of talent who people are hungry to see, and you have some ownership over them and they have some loyalty to you and that's what you want with this show. You want the show itself and then you want the group of people who come through that show.

If they successfully buy ITV which I don't see why they wouldn't, do you put this on Saturday on ITV, don't you on Saturday night? I don't think it matters where it goes. Okay, it would be getting more than $226,000. Do you ever see what? It would be getting 400.

I mean, not to, I mean, not a lot more. And that doesn't make any difference to the return on investment for Sky. It doesn't make any difference to Lorne Michaels. Why would the economics not change? Well, because if you, listen, the difference between getting 250,000 viewers and getting 7 million viewers is significant because the ad rates are much, much bigger. The difference between 250,000 and 400,000 are not massive.

It's a bit. But really, the money they're going to make from the show is the ancillary stuff. It is the clipping it. It is building the careers of those people and building projects. It's off the back of then. So, you know, the basic economics of this is a stable of people making this stuff. And actually, another 100,000 people watching it live will make a tiny bit of difference. But not enough that that's your business model.

You know, no one's going to get rich off that extra 100,000 viewers. Okay, let's talk about last one laughing. Yeah. And then maybe something about both of them together because I think it's interesting. Yeah. So last one, Lafick. So we've been talking about SNL and we've been talking about the reviews. And it is a cultural phenomenon.

but it is not something that the mainstream of Great Britain is watching or talking about. Again, the clips will start to get on their radar, but it'll take people a long time before they work out that SNL, UK even exists. Last one, laughing, however, is a different Catholic. It's a genuine phenomenon. I mean, you know, within its first sort of two or three days, it's over two and a half million people watching it. And that just grows and grows and grows and grows and grows. I had so much laughter over this last weekend, thanks to all these incredible people. But so last one, laughing.

It's a totally different thing. I mean, it's totally different thing. It's one day's work. Yeah, it's one day's work. But is what happens 15 years after you give people their break. As always, just like we always say, the minute a format in your, we know this format's been around the world for a very long time. But the minute format sort of ages or gets to it second generation within your country,

you can see now the gameplay is different from last series. I'm fascinated by it. Everyone's got their face. Everyone's got their face. but the stakes now that they know that Bob Mortimer has come back to defend the title. Talent fees on this show are insane. I mean, they're like, for many, you know, some will be getting north of quarter of a million quid and it's a day, okay?

And obviously, they're all, you know, Rommis is going to be on a lot more than, I don't know, Sam Campbell or something, even though they're all, but it's so it's all a bit different. Now you think, oh, hang on, I could come back and get one of the, the best appearance fee in television. Again. Again, if I win this thing. So the gameplay, to me, maybe I'm just suggestible, but people have told me this in advance

from people who connected with the production and saying, oh yeah, no, they're really playing it this time. And you are starting to realize that there are sort of skills, which is you realize that it's sort of an endurance game and the skill that when you have the micas it were, not necessarily when you're playing a joke, but when you're just talking to someone, is to be able to do that Bob Mortimer thing

and to just derail so completely that it's just like a broadside from nowhere that you didn't expect and people just can't stop laughing. Can I say the absolute standout for me, and all comedy fans will know him already, and he's been on House of Games, and I've seen him live so many times, Sam Campbell,

I think if you have not seen Sam before, and that's the lovely thing about Last From Laughing, you get such a big audience that actually it does introduce, you know, like Bemi, who's on it, who I love, but Sam is so brilliant at it. He doesn't even seem to need a face. Yeah.

It feels like, it feels like he's Luke to Bob's Darth Vader do you know what I mean? The idea that I do think it's interesting. One thing I think is interesting about this is first of all is that we know how Amazon work whereas Netflix will

try and get a hit will spend huge amounts of money on something and try and get a global hit with one property. Amazon like to sort of replicate formats and so they've got lots of the, you know, they've got various but they also have a sort of market map as we've talked about for you don't need that many shows. They've got

Clarkson's Farm, which covers part of it. They've got Beast Games, which covers part of it. And then in the UK, they've got this, which covers part of it. It's really interesting. Last time it aired when it became this huge hit immediately. A third of the audience, to last one laughing, hadn't watched any content at all on, an Amazon prior to the month of release. They are trying to do something. I find it quite fascinating with both these shows. I know you're saying, Sky, I've got all these comedians and so on. But to some degree, I have to say, I I think Sky are sort of raging against the dying of the light. And what Amazon are doing is they want to get you in because they want to sell you shopping. They want to sell you insurance. They want to sell you services. They want to be the everything corporation. It's almost bizarre. In the old days, you know, the BBC would have a new comedy show and the ITV would have one and we'd compare it.

Now it seems to me such a category mistake that you and I, that we're even talking about these together because the companies are so, so different. And I have to say, it's sort of weird. Like the comedians are just like the fact that this both happening through some sets of comedians is sort of nuts really. But actually these two huge kind of corporate things, I fear it is a battle that has already been the comedians of the foot soldiers and it's a battle that's already been kind of won and lost. People are starting to understand they can use comedy again. I would rather these companies who are very different business models and they will take big swings on everything. I would rather they were taking big swings on comedy than say. F1, and I love F1.

Yeah. I love talking about the two of them together because they are very, very different swings because both companies need very different things. And I love that you could almost transplant the cast of SNL to last one, Laughing Series 15 years time. I agree.

I was thinking that when I was watching it. But there's something also weird about comedy, which is that it's such a kind of crazily zero-sum thing. People, you know, will watch absolutely hours of a really rubbish thriller with loads. of ridiculous plot holes and they'll be like, it was okay. I mean, you know, past the time.

30 seconds of a sketch they don't like. They lose their minds. They lose their mind. And it's so, and you just, I do feel, consider how long you will give an incredibly two and a half star thriller and then how vicious you are about 30 seconds of something

that didn't like get you immediately. Give it a break. What a joyous weekend of laughing. And it's, I just want to say thank you to all the production teams for that work. And I do think SNL, listener will have ups and downs, I'm sure of that. But I thought it landed extraordinarily

well, and I'm excited to see where they're taking it. So I just want to see more of those performers, you know, and I want to hear more from those writers. And before this happened, there wasn't a place that they could do that particularly other than individually and on TikTok and stuff like that. Now all of them are together, and I find exciting to think

what will come of it. It's a rare ray of optimism. Right. After the break, we're going to be talking about disturbances in the force within the empire of Megan and Harry, the content empire of Megan and Harry. Anyway, join us after the break. This episode is brought to you by Bumble. Now, Richard, people get very nervous before sending the first message on dating apps. Your finger hovers over the phone screen thinking, am I actually going to do this? Yeah, they debate if the person is who they say they are and if replying is going to feel comfortable or mildly stressful. But Bumble's photo number and ID verification.

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Right. Megan and Harry There's a big story in variety last with one of the show one of the show is Bibles there are three holy books saying that Netflix had fallen out with Megan and Harry really

just a little reminder of what happened when Megan and Harry left the Royal Family they set up this sort of content production company called Archwell and they did various deals big money deals most notable of which were they did a 20 million dollar deal with Spotify to produce podcast

it ended up producing one series before that fell apart. He did a book deal with Penguin Random House that was an absolute roaring success. That was the fastest selling nonfiction book of all time. He got at least $40 million. That went very well. And they did what's always pegged as a $100 million deal for Netflix. People are now sort of rowing back on that saying it's closer to 60. You would expect that because it would have been like, oh, if you create some hit,

of course different clauses would have kicked in. And I'm sure that it would have taken it to 100. But they're now saying it's maybe $60 million. So the base level would have been $60 million, which again, nice work if you can get it. Money I'd rather was being spent on comedy. So, yeah, yes, absolutely. Intentional comedy. So they did a documentary about their exit, a sort of misery documentary, which was massively

successful. I think that was the biggest ever documentary debut for Netflix. And they did ones about polo and global justice, which won't. And then their various development projects as producers have come to nothing. But they also ended up doing Megan's lifestyle show with love Megan. And what was interesting there is that Netflix became a retail partner. They basically paid to establish her brand as a retail entity. That's a real holy grail for any company.

If you can own a piece of merchandise, you can see from Mr. Beeson, because we spoke about just now about Amazon, if you can have an audience who then give you more money to buy something that you also own, that is an incredible business to be in. Yeah, Mr. Beasts is YouTube's highest paid creator by a long way and he makes all his money off chocolate. So there we go. So what was the retail business?

It was jam, famously. It was sort of dried flowers to sprinkle on food. It was some baking mixes. It was rosé. There will have been a scented candle. Anyway, so there have been all kind of stories about this retail. People were like, oh, it's a flop. Then, oh, it's a wild success because someone tried to type in how many units they could get.

and there were loads of them, so they thought, oh, right, actually they put in a huge order. The reporting one, it's been really bad. But a couple of weeks ago, we heard that they were sort of separating, and Netflix were no longer going to be part of this retail arm. Megan said she, that as ever had experienced meaningful and rapid growth. I mean, even... Her company. Yeah. Everything has to be meaningful.

Like, even your P&L is meaningful. It can't just, you know, she's creating wonder in every spreadsheet. Yeah. Then came this variety article and it was, it's quite an attack on them. And they've spoken to lots and lots of people within Netflix. And by the way, I should say that legally, this variety article is caveated all the way through with denials from the Sussex's people saying, no, this isn't the case, this isn't the case. So accept those caveats from us as well.

Yeah, so accept them here. People suggesting that Megan was very difficult in meetings that if something was said that she didn't like, the camera would go off and the microphone got. off. I think the Sussex's people have come back and said, you know, sometimes like all working parents, the children come into the room. You know, I mean, I personally always wander off my zooms for ages. But anyway, but then there are people saying. I love the idea you're on a work zoom and your child wanders in. He goes, do you know what? I'm just going to deal with that. Yeah, because they don't have really nice. They said they had no good ideas. They thought there

would be much more than in fact, it was all just lots of jam. Why did they think there was going to be good ideas? I mean, I don't know. They spend their entire life around creative people. And so they must have an idea. Why are they sitting across them? I'll tell you what they actually thought. And this is what the interesting thing is. To some degree, the sussie is kept kind of cannibalizing what they had with Netflix in that Netflix had this documentary series and then they discovered that they were

going to sit down with Oprah for CBS. So it's like, okay, they were going to do this tell-all documentary series. Then they discovered he'd done the kind of book deal and that was coming out whenever it was. And there's always this sort of sense that, you know, but don't worry. you can have with love Megan. That's all for you. So that they were getting to some degree the scraps. That's not true because the documentary was hugely successful.

Variety said they had $10 million worth of surplus stock for this. Yeah. That's a lot of jam. That's a lot of jam. As I say, you know, they've denied all sorts of things. One thing we do know is that Ted Serendos has unfollowed her and the brand on Instagram. Even though the Sussex lawyers are like they're great friends with Ted with what, you know, again, hate to say it, but I always unfollow my great friends and their brands when there's no

problem. Anyhow, why did they do it? Why did Netflix drop out of the deal? Yeah, you were just asking that. And speaking to someone who is, who understands this from within US Netflix, when Ted Serendor said, it's great discovery for us. I remember reading that quote and thinking, sorry, what? Like, people find this jam in a shop and think, oh, I must watch that Netflix I've heard

of. The retail angle, you want shoppable content one way or another. When they did the documentary, their misery memoir, leaving the royal family one, the big one, the only hit. Everything that was featured in it essentially sold out. There were no affiliate links. They didn't have partnerships with anyone. But everything from, I don't know, kitchen equipment to the shoes she was wearing, to even the Hermes baby blanket in the background, which sells for more than a thousand pounds, sold out around the world. And Netflix are making no money on that, of course.

But then they think, hang on a second. Wow, they seem pretty good for shoppable content. The reason they're trying to do this is quite interesting. They have lots of different ways of selling stuff to do with their shows. They have a direct consumer business, you know, their own website where you can buy Stranger Things or Wednesday stuff. So that's standard merchandise. But they have lots of experiential pop-ups.

They have lots and lots of retail partnerships. They had a hugely strong one with Target in the US for Stranger Things. Obviously, they do things, everything from Lego to monopoly to all the different things you can do. They do drinks brands. They did a collaboration with Lacoste. They had a lot of products. Squid Game did something massive with KFC, which was huge. Yeah.

And the live experiences of that. Bridgeton has got lots of different types from kind of quite fancy things within Liberty where they do T-Sets and things like that to lots of live different events. But stranger things to some degree is the template franchise for all of this retail stuff. And by the way, the template franchise for just like for everything at Netflix. if they could replicate that. All of that strategy is very, very heavily influenced by Disney and how that corporation has played for the last 50 years more. But they don't have the legacy that Disney has

where you can put every princess on a lunchbox and all of these things. But they're trying to build that. And they're trying to build that. Hold on a minute. We have our own princess here. Because if you build that. And she's making lunch.

Yeah. She's making her on a lunchbox. I would love actually a Megan lunchbox. But then I am an ironist. They want that visible cultural relevance. So that all the time when you're, again, it's part of always-on culture. Yeah. Your show is walking around on someone's backpack or in someone's lunchbox or wherever it is.

Well, they just announced or trying to, or suggesting a huge K-pop Demon Hunter's tour. You know, and that's, because that's foreign. Yeah. That's their kind of. Well, we know that was their huge ball drop. So they didn't have any toys for that because they didn't realize it's going to be massive. They had nothing. There will be so many toys next time, mind you won't believe it.

So the next I was reading about the deal that the people behind KAPO just signed. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. It's a big one. Honestly, it's probably the same daily rate as being on Last One, laughing what they're getting. So, yeah, but it's all of that stuff. And like we were talking about SNL earlier about how companies make their money, this is a huge version of it,

which is how can we get people who are fans of this show to pay us more and more and more money? And we keep a piece of it. So I would have said, actually, not a crazy risk to say. Not a stupid thing to say. So the discovery comment is not stupid. Yeah. People like Megan. Megan. So if a blanket in the background of the previous documentary is selling out, what if she is doing something about her life and about how she cooks and about what she uses, that stuff is going to absolutely.

And it's all incredibly affordable. The most expensive thing is going to be some rosé and it's not like a very expensive. And it's not owned by M.S. It's owned by Megan and us. And so we are literally making money from the second this show goes out, every single thing that gets sold. That if it comes off is an absolutely huge business. I mean, huge business, which is why they do it. But. It looks like maybe it didn't come off. It didn't come off. Okay. So with Love Megan, as we can all see, is an incredibly cheap show. Okay, it's not actually her kitchen. It's some other person in Montecito's kitchen. But it's an incredibly cheap show, except you've paid the presenter a ludicrous fortune.

You've paid them more than the Duffer Brothers. Okay. You've paid her so much money and she's had no hits apart from this one thing. And, you know, the ratings, I remember saying, oh, it was in the top, the UK top 10. for sort of five minutes. And there's that whole sort of Sussex squad, those online people who go, oh no, these things are really successful. No.

The tale of the tape is it performed like average lifestyle content that first series. That was 383rd watched over the six-month period. 383rd. Of Netflix's programmes. Okay, so that's average lifestyle content. And by the way, we have no dog in the fight. So we've said a million times before, Harry's hardback, which, by the way, the anti-Sussexes are going, oh, no, it's in the remainder bins.

No, no, it's the single most successful non-fiction. book of all time of all time of all time okay so the second season again which remember they fake that they were like oh we've been renewed it's like no no you've already filmed them back to back and as a holiday special which they then put on that was 1,217th so that is way below average lifestyle content and as I say also you've paid the presenter an unbelievable fortune okay and I mean put it this way if if it was the seventh or eighth biggest show on Netflix and you'd pay people that money, you'd be like, oh, I said, this is not great. And maybe it's just about okay, but anywhere below that, certainly, if you're outside the top of thousand, I didn't know they

went outside the top of thousand. Oh my God, it's it, okay. And I'll tell you why, nobody cares about watching her make, you know, lavender biscuits for her ex-hairedress. Okay, this is bullshit and it's boring, right? This is what happened with the Spotify deal. It imploded, and as Bill Simmons, who is an executive of Spotify and also runs as a ring and network of power cars said, you know, you're grifters. They're grifters. They have nothing to say apart from this one story. And by the way, I'm sure I said this thought, we're all grifters, really.

It's okay to be a grifter. I mean, you're born with what you're born with. Okay. Well, yeah. I mean, they are kind of out of fashion. Yeah. You know, they're not very talented and they have a hugely overstated idea of their cultural relevance. You know, hard relate.

But it is what it is. A guy who used to run one of the big talent, talent agencies, I think UTA said at a certain point a couple of years ago, you know, they're just not very good. And this is the reality. They had, I talk of, I've talked to a lot, you know, so how many times I've talked about persona or personal brand or whatever, that people sort of want to see a certain thing from you. And they had this, they have this one story, which is we were treated badly in the royal family, you know, and we left the royal family. That is their one story. They're like the ancient mariner, right? They've told it every possible way they can now.

But nobody cares about any of the other stuff at all. They literally don't. So what you're left with now is that they are just rich people. The victim thing worked out for them a bit. But now people just see them as extremely rich people. They find her quite exhausting. They're quite and fake. And also, I think the trouble is the audience of everything has become so media literate now. I even saw like some pictures of speaking of misery documentary series because I think Brooklyn and Nicola. peltz might do. No. Yeah, they might do again, another worldwide privacy tour. Wow. So if they do one, that will be very successful, but nothing else they do will be successful.

And I saw some pictures of David Beckham looking sad in LA last week. And all the comments were, oh, this is Bacchard, which is a paparazzi agency. Oh, the staged photo agency. These are people in normal comment sections are starting to say,

they even know the names of, you know, photography agencies, and they know that they have a reputation for staging paparazzi pictures. You're dealing with such a media literate audience. Anything that Megan and Harry do now, because people always want to seem like they're in the know and they understand the bigger narrative and they can see all the plays and all the moves.

They now say, oh, you're only coming back to do this because you want content. This is all just like a play to create more drama or more whatever so that you can have content so that we can get rinsed in some way. It's so hard. They've moved into a very difficult space, yeah. Yeah, it's hard when the product is yourself.

Yeah. If you're a comedian, or a writer or an actor or a footballer, you can go and do your job and you can get column inches for doing it. If all you have is you and you're not even an ideas person, you are just a person, that's a hard place to be. Yeah. What story do you tell now? Because really, you can't complain about anything else anymore. You've done all the complaining and they don't really have anything else. And, you know, it's not going to be jam retail. The way she's cast this is they're taking the stabilises off, I've got meaningful growth and I'm going for it on my own. We'll see.

In terms of being content producers, I will tell you one thing. And by the way, from Ted Surunders, I'm following her. Now she'd want to take this anywhere else. They still have a first look with deal with Netflix, which is a sort of a way of saying, you know, we'll take a look. I mean, it's a nothing of first look really, isn't it? People are waiting to see if further misery ensues. They will wait to see if they stay together and if they don't stay together, then believe me, then they've got another story that everybody wants to see. Still feels to me that if you don't do a $60 million deal with Netflix, if you launch this slowly and by yourself, there's enough people who are interested in that brand to sell jam.

And there's enough money in selling jam to have a nice living. And, you know, if they set their sights a little bit lower, it feels like there's a business there. It's just not a business you want to spend $60 million on. I want to spend $60 million buying Harry's autobiography. because there's a huge amount of money in it. But a jam business with Megan. If she came and asked me for 10 grand for 25% of that, I'd be like, yeah, that feels good.

But yeah, $60 million for 25% of it would be beyond me. It's not a lifestyle brand in any meaningful sense. She has to do it. But she should have gone into something like beauty. You can have eight products in beauty and sell your company for a billion like Haley Bieber has. Where do they go next, though? Because Netflix has a classiness to it,

which fits with what they want their brand to be. Unless they have a new victimhood story that really sells, for instance, they split up and Megan wants to talk about it, then there is nothing. There's money in that. There's a lot of money in that. Do you have any recommendations? I have three recommendations that are sort of pop cultural recommendations.

If you haven't read the Hollywood Reporter article about the lighting at the Vanity Fair Oscars Party that was apparently a war crime, I strongly urge you to read it. It's very funny. they always had it in one place and they've moved it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Go and look at some of the photos of the red carpet lighting. It's like they're being shot in 8K like ultra high definition. Everyone looks atrocious. Okay. I mean,

some of the most beautiful people in the world look awful. Okay. But the writing of this story is so funny because it's so camp. I absolutely loved it. There's a quote in it saying, I genuinely feel bad for some of these women. One poor actress looked like a Diane Arbus character. She was on her phone looking at her pictures and shrieking at her publicist. I heard she went home and cried herself to sleep. Nobody's heard from her since. It's like such a niche thing, but if you don't understand how much they care about lighting and how insanely angry they will be that they were made to look like that on the biggest night in the calendar, that's very funny.

That's a Hollywood reporter. Yeah. I really enjoyed a Instagram post from Vin Diesel about the burden of creating the final Fast and Furious. As you know, I'm a big fan of the franchise about muscle cars and the candy asses who drive them. They had creating the last installment in the franchise, maybe. And he said it has outlasted trends, cynics and time itself. Why, it's outlasted time itself? It's so amazing.

This is terrible news. And again, for all the iron is out there, I have to say that the Justin Timberley arrest video, the DUI arrest video, which he fought so hard to keep underwaps. There's a lot of it there. There's a lot of content. I think there's about 11 minutes 40 has been released in the station, but also on the side of the road where he's trying to explain, like, what is a world tour?

I'm on a world tour. What is one? It's very, very hard to explain. I'm Justin Timberlake, also hard to explain. I strongly urge a look at the other side of celebrity. And I would just recommend what we spoke about, which is SNL, UK. Again, you don't have to like it, but there'll be something in there for you. There'll be a sketchy like, and also last one laughing.

I just think it's so effortlessly funny. It's so rare to have something that's just so innocently stupid. And so I think, yeah, if you haven't watched both of those, I can recommend them both. I think that's about us for today. Yeah, that's us done. Join us on Thursday for a Q&A. We'll be talking about all sorts of things there. I've got questions about the Buffy, the Vampire Say reboot, which apparently is not being rebooted.

Lots of questions about the new House of Games as well, Michael Sheen's House of Games. So loads of fun things to talk about on Thursday. And for our members on Friday, we have an episode on mockbusters. What are they? It's really interesting. It's fascinating. It's really interesting. And why are they so profitable?

And why are they so often more profitable than the films that they are mocking up? If you want to join, it's the rest isentatement.com. Otherwise, we'll see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday, everyone.