The Rest Is Entertainment - Is James Bond In Crisis?

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Peter Kay is well into the final stretch of his tour but this week he made headlines for having audience members removed for heckling. Are there rules around heckling? Has it gotten worse in recent years? Where did the word come from? James Bond appears to have gone AWOL from our screens. With over four years passing since Craig's finale in No Time To Die, why can't 007's producers and their new owners (Amazon) come together and make a new film? The most beautiful, hilarious and luxurious show is back on TV. The White Lotus returns. Richard and Marina take us inside the show, the secrets to it success and why brands are seemingly draw to it. Recommendations: Richard - Boyzone - No Matter What (Sky Documentaries) Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listening and access to bonus episodes: www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hello everybody and hello Marina. Hi Richard, how are you? I'm really well. We have some really big Spotify news, which I haven't seen in any of the financial papers, I haven't seen in any of the earnings reports. But last week you went on what some would call a rant, I wouldn't, I thought it was

very considered, about the snacks that they have at Spotify, which were unusual. Last week it was like an extruded mango snack. Yeah, and then harshly air dried. The trouble is, Richard, is that I think that everything I say in the studio is like writing it in a secret diary. I'm very unclear that people hear it. And apparently my description of the snacks in a secret diary. I'm very unclear that people hear it and apparently my description of The Snacks has a war crime. A. I can't remember making and B. is obviously unacceptable. Yeah, it went right to the top. It went right to the very very top. We now walk in and There's mini Chedders. There are Kit Kats. There are, listen I've got one camera for people watching this on YouTube, Munchies.

You don't see many of those D these days, but they are sensational. They're not a war crime. I myself have self-referred to The Hague for my behaviour. I'm so sorry, thank you so much for these amazing snacks. Thanks Spotify. The SDF snack counter. Yeah, listen, it feels like a new dawn. That's what I'm saying.

In so many ways. Because no one really, either have a snack or don't have a snack would be my note. If you're gonna don't have a healthy snack, I mean have some nuts or whatever you want, but don't have something in a bright colored packet that's gone through a series of factory processes and used to be a mango. You know, just have some munchies. Oh, that'd be good advert. Just have some munchies. I can't believe you haven't done that. I mean, yeah, they could perhaps do with advertising again. And if so, I want you to be the voice of munchies. you haven't done. I mean, yeah, they could perhaps do with advertising again. And if so, I want you to be the voice of munchies.

What am I proudest of in my career? Such a good question. I think voice of munchies. Yeah. Shall we get on and talk about... On your tombstone. The voice of munchies. The voice of munchies. What are we talking about this week? There's been a lot of hoo-ha over Peter Kay throwing out some hecklers from one of his

big arena shows. We're going to talk about hecklers. What's happened to modern audiences? Are they getting worse behaved? Why that might shows. We're gonna talk about hecklers. What's happened to modern audiences? Are they getting worse behaved? Why that might be? We're gonna talk about that. We are going to talk about James Bond. Is James Bond in crisis as a sort of cinematic brand? There's somebody trying to steal away their trademarks, which is a faintly ridiculous story,

but that's interesting. Yeah, why is it taking so long essentially? Why has Bond dried up a little bit? And we are also talking about the very exciting return of White Lotus and the genius behind that Mike White and why he's very different to pretty much everyone else in the TV business. And why the show is a sort of phenomenon that's not particularly like anything else at the moment. Yeah, but no spoilers, don't worry about that.

Yeah, no spoilers, but it is now out. Shall we talk about hecklers? Please, let's do that. Peter Kay was doing a recent gig on his long tour at the Manchester AOR arena and somebody kept shouting out, a man called Philip Peters, kept shouting out Garlic Bride. Yeah, just trying to be helpful. Another woman I think shouted out, we love you Peter, at a different time, possibly at a different show, but either way. Same show.

Oh, same show. Okay. So Peter Kaye eventually had them ejected. Now, both of them, by the way, I should say, have had a bunch of outings in the press, on the news. They've certainly got their money's worth out of this particular story. Peter Kaye said that it was just going on so long. He did, he did, we should say what he said, which is that they were disrupting from the very start. I did my best to make the situation, to make light of it as any comedian would, but unfortunately their interruptions continued.

Then tried to ignore them, but when it carried on into the second half, asked the audience around if they were being bothered by the noise, they said yes. So people put their hands up saying I'm bothered by it, and he had them thrown out. And on the way out he said to the woman he had thrown out that she looked like Lisa Riley, which she seems to have taken as a personal affront. By the way, Lisa Riley has come out and said, don't be ridiculous, I love Peter Kay.

Yes, I love Peter Kay, exactly. So it's one of those age old questions of whose side do we take? Because by the way, people shout out at P2K all the time and don't get thrown out. Do you know where heckling comes from, as a word? It was a form of weaving. You're teasing out some sort of fabric, but they were particularly, some sort of thread and yarn, but they were particularly disruptive. The Dundee hecklers were really disruptive, sort of like workers' rights meeting. So heckling has come, that's where heckling comes from.

Oh really? Like heavily unionized weavers? Yeah. Oh that's quite fun isn't it and now look where we are. Oh no the hecklers are in. Yeah so I've talked about a million comedians this week about it and they all say pretty much the same thing and by the way almost every comedian I've spoken to I'm not going to quote them directly because it's not fair because they've all been incredibly frank but there are different views from different comments here. So heckling is one of those things that is always talked about in comedy and every single comedian who's ever interviewed, one of the questions would always be, the last question was, what's the best heckle you've ever heard?

And every comedian always says, I've never heard a good heckle because they haven't. So culturally we've always thought, oh yeah, comedy clubs, hecklers, that's amazing. But it was very, very, very rare. You know, most comedians say, I just never used to hear a heckle, really. You get occasional sort of funny little remark or if you're talking to someone, you know. And now there's a lot more of it.

Now, why is that? And a few reasons. I mean, we all know we've spoken before about this new development in comedy of doing crowd work and putting that crowd work up on YouTube. This is different to crowd work by the way. This is different to crowd work but crowd work makes... Yeah, has blurred a line. There's a whole generation whose experience of comedy starts on TikTok and on

Instagram and what they're seeing is the audience talking to the comedian. Because the comedian has specifically invited them to be super clear what crowd work is. Exactly that. And your first five minutes of your set will be that and you can put it online because you're not burning material that you're using tomorrow. So it sort of works for everybody. So you've got this generation who that's how they first seen stand-up comedy. They haven't the first seen stand-up comedy on panel shows or anything or live at the Apollo. They first seen it on Instagram and TikTok. You also of course have a generation who anytime anybody in the public eye says anything is able to comment. You can absolutely

comment underneath anything anybody says. The unidirectional flow of ideas or anything is even if it's a book, people will go online and can do something significant damage or significant sort of upsell to your book because it just doesn't, it's not stone tablets being handed down anymore. Yeah, you can say what you want. And by and large, actually online, it is thrown into the abyss. No one will ever read your comment, be interested in your comment, but there's a generation who have come to understand that they have the right to respond and they're taking that into certain comedy clubs. Older

comics who I talked about said, I still don't really get it. I still don't really get a lot of this stuff because they've got, you know, they've got people who've come to see them for 10, 20 years, you know? And so that's an audience who understands comedy. We've got a whole new audience that doesn't particularly, and has come into comedy from a completely different place. Now that is not to say, oh my God, this new generation, they're morons. No, not at all. Because we have this actual usual category error of we always treat outliers as representative.

Right, so the 0.001% of people who comment under people's tweets, so think they can comment when they're talking on tour, it's a tiny, tiny, tiny group of people. Of course we have to hear them because they're heckling. And there's a temptation to go, oh my God, we're going to head in a handcart and audiences can't behave. You think, no, like a couple of people can't behave.

In the same way that, you know, someone's listening to their music on a train. It's not like, oh, why does everyone listen to their music on the train? No, one person is listening to music on the train. And when we make the error of thinking that's representative. But anyway, that's what we're dealing with. We're dealing with a generation of people who've grown up a certain way and think they have, they've got that main character energy. Yeah.

Now some comics, of course, love crowd work. I spoke to Jimmy Carr and I spoke to Jimmy because he has been a master. The first 10 minutes of any Jimmy shows will be him saying what have you got? Any questions? Any heckles? What have you got? So it does three things. Firstly it shows he can extemporize, you know, he can be funny off the cuff which people absolutely love. Secondly pretty much every day the questions and heckles are the same. So actually a lot of the time he can use prewritten material and sound good. We used to call them ad fibs in the business. And thirdly, it gives him 10 minutes of material every single night that he can put on YouTube and Instagram, which is such a huge deal for

comedians. Does it extract the venom to some extent? If you've set open by saying hit me with it, then people slightly feel like he's shown willing and yes, a little bit. And maybe we'll shut up for the rest of the set, you know, and, and I get it. But that monetization of, of, of, of material is so massive. I saw Sarah Keyworth is now playing the palladium and Sarah's done loads and loads of online things and is just a brilliant comic. So it's a really, really, really useful thing for

comics. But it is slightly playing with fire because most of a comic set, there's sort of an illusion that comedians are slightly making up as they go along and that everything is off the cuff. And actually any good comic has such a crafted set. Yeah. You know, it's got a beginning, it's got a middle and an end, it's got peaks, it's got troughs. They know where they're headed, they know the rhythm of the thing and any comic will tell you, you put a word out of place and the rhythm goes. Yeah. And suddenly someone heckling does that and by and large you can absolutely deal with it because comics have dealt with it loads of times but you get to a situation if someone's constantly shouting out garlic bread. Yeah, I mean that's just, there's nothing you can do with it. There's absolutely nothing you can do with it because comments have dealt with it loads of times, but you get to a situation if someone's constantly shouting out garlic bread.

Yeah, I mean, that's just there's nothing you can do with it. There's absolutely nothing you can do with it. And you can absolutely if it's in the first half of the show, as Peter Kay says, great, we'll have a laugh with this. It's this is the bit of the show where I know I can have a laugh with the audience. Second half, you know what, I've really, really worked on this material. And in fact, as Jimmy again, he said, you know, with Peter Kay, he's got to think about the 12,000 and not the one, you know, these people have paid good money. I mean, really, really good money. It's 20,000. I think it's huge.

And they pay babysitters and they paid all of this. So every single comic I spoke to said, throw them out. You have you there is no other option than to throw them out. The way of doing it is quite interesting. I spoke to a couple who said, I always repeat it so that people, because otherwise they think, oh, that person's really got to them and now that, so I want everyone to know what I'm dealing with. But I also, you do try and get the crowd to turn on them so that they say, we don't want this. Yeah. I spoke to David O'Dohherty and he said, he gets fewer hectares than others, David again, because he's been around a long time.

You know what you're getting with David, but he said he was doing a show, I think in Edinburgh, and a guy on the front row is just being abusive all the way through. And again, for a while you deal with it because you're a comic. So they're not being snowflakes when they're throwing out hectares. They can do it, they can deal with them. So he's dealing with them, dealing with them. But it kept on going. And he said to the guy, look, you can just leave.

And the guy said, no, I'm staying. And the DOD says, David says, what if I pay you? And the guy goes, well, what would you pay me? And so David gets a pint glass, puts 20 quid in, and then passes it along the front row, and people start putting money in. And by the time it got to the guy, he got 150 quid, he took the pint glass and off he went.

But it is that thing. If you are at a comedy show, by all means interact. It's funny, you paid your ticket, but people are not there to see and watch you. You're probably not funny, you know? I spoke to some people who said that, funny enough actually, having talked to Ben Elton after his show, he said, it's really, you know,

without being pretentious, it's a sort of work of art. I've created this. It's not a conversation with a pissed guy in Roe F. And what I thought was quite interesting was that people try and have these sort of cultured war debates almost from the stalls. And also, can you just wait? I'm doing a bit. I might get that. I might flip this. It might sound like I'm going down, run really sort of conventional way of attacking X or Y, but then I might totally flip it, it might become about me. But it's a bit like that thing where again,

the nature of commenting now, people can't read a whole article before they go online to say, this is brilliant or this is rubbish. And it's that sort of impatience that they don't also listen to a full kind of comic riff. Well, cause they don't understand what comedy is. I think audience behavior is really interesting in general because there's been a whole thing since the pandemic that all people have forgotten about how to behave.

They don't know how to behave. You know, maybe we shouldn't sell, it's like they couldn't, we don't sell alcohol in football grounds or whatever it is. And theatres particularly have said, oh, you know, there was, theatres is definitely different again, there's these out, theatres is definitely different. But there were these, and as you say, there were these outlier incidents, there was some sort of fight at brawl at the bodyguard, I think, I can't remember why that was.

That is ironic. Was anyone there to break it up? Costner with a gun fight. And the Bechtu, which is the sort of theatre workers union and the Society of London Theatre, UK Theatre, they did sort of, they talked about having a respect campaign, they talked about who'd seen antisocial behaviour and it was a massive rise. But we also have seen what people call these parasocial relationships where you believe you have an

intense relationship with a star, people throwing things at recording artists, at live gigs. Harry Styles said, you know, it's okay if it's chicken nuggets, by the way, he's had everything Harry Styles. But when you, you know,'s okay if it's chicken nuggets by the way. He's had everything Harry Styles Yes, but when you said you know people throwing a phone at you people throwing really hard things that you know You have to go off stage Adele said people have completely forgotten show etiquette. Yeah, and there is that kind of Yeah But you can you can even see it in sedate thing. Normally traditionally sedate sports. Golf, like it's crazy what people shout in golf now. On the side of the tennis, people just even at Wimbledon on

centre court, someone was like, someone accused someone of being a bit drunk. But it's interesting again, we're saying people. We are saying people and almost always it is person. Almost always because we live in a culture where certain people, you know, have been given the confidence to act in that way and behave in that way. And we all have to listen to it. I do think by and large, in our culture, this is a broader point than just heckling. We have to stop responding viscerally to single people. We have to stop responding viscerally to every single time something happens, looking at the worst comment. Our politics is exactly like that. The right to absolutely weaponize the worst responses they get to everything. That's just how they do. And I think that because we didn't used to

be bombarded by reaction and comment every five seconds on everything that ever happened. We trained ourselves to listen to criticism. We trained ourselves to when someone spoke up to go, oh, what's this? And now everyone is speaking up all the time. And the noisiest is always the worst. And so we find ourselves in our culture of being driven entirely by the outliers, being driven entirely. There's a, you know, in, in when David Tennant was doing with Beth, there was someone who went out to the loo during the thing, kind of fine. But then the staff said, you can't come back in until after the interval. They said well I'm coming back in. Of course I'm coming back in,

I paid money to see this. You think okay, you just think oh my god, this is what are we coming to? Nothing. That guy is coming to something, which is that guy is an idiot and those people have always existed and just there's something about our culture which means now they feel emboldened to do that publicly. Yes, but I do think audience behaviour has changed. And that, by the way, is not necessarily a bad thing. Plato was banging on about badly behaved audiences. Here we go again.

But audiences were clearly very differently behaved in Shakespeare's time. It was just accepted. It was a convention. And what we're talking about in terms of saying, oh, something's been upended in recent years, and their behaviour in audiences is different, what we're talking about is that maybe an era in audience behaviour is coming to an end and maybe a slightly different one is starting, but they're not sort of per

se good and bad. I would say that there's something about the size of the venue in this particular case that makes things, a comedy to some extent wasn't meant to order, I don't know, maybe it is meant if it sells out then maybe it's meant, but 20,000 seat of venues is quite a lot and it's quite hard to manage and have that, you know, you can't look at someone in the eye and say, which is so easy in a comedy club as you know, you know, we've been to millions of them and you've watched it happen, you can really deal with that person right there, but it's pretty hard in an arena. And funny enough, I saw Joey Seinfeld at the O2 once, but me and my husband were in the second row. So I just

like didn't look around and just tried to pretend I was in like a little New York comedy club with an incredible sound system. Yeah. And very expensive revels. But funny enough, speaking of Seinfeld, do you remember that there is a great episode of Seinfeld? Kramer's having there is a great episode of Seinfeld? Kramer's having his coffee table book about coffee tables published, which is also a coffee table. And the person who's publishing it works with Elaine at the publishing company.

It's a woman called Toby. And Kramer brings her along to Jerry's set that night. And there's a critic in from I can't remember who it is, entertainment week or something like that. And she heckles the whole way through. She kind of thinks it's part of the fun, like whatever. There's a critic in anyway, and then the critic, they're reading, he's reading the reviews the next day,

says, you know, Seinfeld like froze like a rabbit in the headlights or whatever. And George says to him, go along to her place of work and heckle her. And he's like, yeah, the old dream, the dream of all comedians is that you then go along. Anyway, so he does do it, and he goes along to the publishing company and says, oh, you know, you're rubbish, you're whatever.

And she's like, sorry, I've got work to do. He's like, oh, am I disrupting you? Am I just, you know? And he says, I'm going to get security in a minute. He says, oh, I'm so sorry. You know what? You're not going to make it in this business if you need help like that. And anyway, then they go up to, these other comedians go up to him at the club and say, that's amazing. You're like Rosa Parks. You've done the thing that we all dreamed of doing, you know, but then I was thinking, okay, so what does maybe Peter K could go and do that to this guy? And then I was thinking, okay, what does he do? But he, this guy like is a warehouse worker. Now it's funny. I thought you were going to say he's a paramedic and I was like, oh yeah.

Yeah, no, that's difficult. Well, maybe warehouse worker is too. Toby works in like the status job in publishing, so it's funny. That's why that episode is funny, because he goes along and, you know, it's not something ridiculous about doing it at a publishing house. This guy also, we keep saying, oh,

we want different types of people to go to theater and to live performance and blah, blah, blah. This guy works in a warehouse. He's paid 155 pounds for his ticket and in some ways the people who always complain about audience behavior are complaining about people who aren't like them. No, no, I'm not having it

because I don't care about that because a lot of the people in that audience are that and a lot of people are lots of comedialists and he is ruining it for everybody. I agree in this case. I don't care what socioeconomic group you're from, don't be a twat. I agree in this case. It's't care what socioeconomic group you're from, don't be a twat. I agree in this case, but in the theatre people are much more snooty about tiny little things.

Yes, agreed on that. Someone turning, you know, a young person who happens to, on silent, look at their phone what, you know, and you get that real sort of like, I thought you wanted different people to come to the theatre. You keep saying, the tickets are insanely expensive, you keep saying you want different people to come. And I'm sorry if someone who's 21 looks at their phone for one second in a play, so what? Yeah, or whispers to someone, is that the guy from Holby? Yeah, I mean... It's okay. It's theatre, yeah. It's supposed to, yeah, it's not supposed to be absolutely silent. It's not the snooker.

They keep saying they want to get young people into theatres because the audience is almost ageing out. And then when they turn up and they do one thing they're told they've done the whole thing wrong I mean it's such a sort of exclusionist way of talking and acting about theatre it's better that young people come. That moment when you're in a theatre and someone's alarm goes off oh my god that's like I mean that's a uniquely 21st century experience isn't it and I always think what would happen if my alarm went off and you know you can switch you virtually like take your phone apart if you're at the theater I

do every time I get so paranoid it's going to happen to me but I was thinking if it did happen to me the key thing is to turn around to the person behind you right because they know the rough direction that's coming from but they can't spotlight the actual the actual seat and just go man we're at the theater I'm trying to listen to kush jumbo come on man, we're at the theatre, I'm trying to listen to Kuss Jumbo, come on man. But yeah, it's at eight o'clock when like alarms go off, like people's pills alarms go off and things like that. And you think it's okay, you know, it's not like talking to someone in the cinema.

No, which obviously would be a genuine war crime. But no, I absolutely agree with that. I think I genuinely think comedy is different because it has always had that audience and that audience has always found ways to behave. But arena tours, what do you do? Yeah, that is slightly different. By the way, if you're listening to this and you've ever shouted out at a comedy club,

if you're going to see someone doing 10 minutes in a club, absolutely go for it because it can be the lifeblood and people love doing crowd work and they're doing four gigs in a night and it's nice for them not to do the set time and time again. But if you are going to a big two hour show, respect the fact that someone has written it in the same way that if you go to see a film, they're hitting certain beats and they will deal with heckles in the first half and every comic said it's absolutely fine

But there comes a point where you think I I've got a story to tell I'm doing something I'm really really really good at this and a lot of people have paid a lot of money to come and see me and just because Again, listen booze is a thing a couple of comics I said interestingly that cocaine has been a become a big thing in comedy audiences. Like in football crowds. Like in football crowds. And it becomes a big issue because there is no speaking to that person. That person does not know they're in a dialogue. I was talking to one big comic who was saying, you used to get the thing where drunk heckler says something, you say something back. Heckler understands he's been owned.

Everyone's laughing. He's laughing. With cocaine, it's not like that. They don't understand what's happening. They don't understand that they're the butt of the joke. They think a conversation is being had, offence is taken, and that makes it much, much harder. So those are the sorts of people, I'm not saying by the way that either the Hecklers in the Peter K show were on cocaine. No, but I do think that audience, the idea that it's a bit like football crowds and a bit like everything, they reflect the society rather than, you know, they're like, oh,

this is some sort of, they reflect the wider society and not saying that like, oh, audiences have become terrible or football fans. No, they were, they reflect something that's a much wider sort of social narrative. Yeah. We absolutely pick up on things that tell us a story that we're already being told. Yes, exactly. And the heckling thing. But it is fascinating. So I'm just looking at, I think it's the Daily Mail and someone was talking to the Daily Mail. And this is the thing of talking about the outliers. We know what happened in this story.

All right, you can talk to any comedian, they'll tell you. Some people were heckling, that's fine, they heckled too much. They said to the other members of the audience shall we get rid of them? They got rid of them Absolute end of story nothing else is happening there and the Daily Mail says one woman told their website The whole thing feels very nasty and bitter his performance was poor But the way he dealt with one heckler and someone shouting we love you was ridiculous My friend and I left the show after that half an hour early others left the show as well. Do you know what? Bullshit, I agree. Didn't happen. Did not happen. Don't report it in that way. Stop infantilizing us every five seconds. Why do you think they've I've got a theory. Oh great. As to why the Sun and the Mail report on Peter Kay specifically

in this way, which they do because actually Peter Kay is doing a wildly successful comedy with something like well over a hundred dates and it's a mega thing. I believe that certain newspapers don't like people who don't play the game in the way that they are supposed to. Which he doesn't. They don't behave in a sort of prescribed celebrity way. Something happened to Peter Kay, he withdrew from the spotlight, he said it was for private family reasons and because he hasn't served up his private trauma or whatever it is, they don't like it. And they then think,

you should have done an interview, why won't you talk to us? Because I don't want to. But when they don't, when there are a few celebrities who don't do this and they know something happened, but they didn't necessarily know what it is. And there were all these things saying, you're looking painfully thin. There's all this sort of stuff, this reporting that honestly feels like it comes from the late eighties or the early nineties. It is absolutely kind of anti-delivian and gross.

And there's a certain thing that people feel about Peter Kay that whatever happened, he didn't talk about it. And they think that he's failed to maintain his half of the celebrity bargain. So even though Peter Kay is what like surely one of the most loved performers in this entire country, in fact, you know, it's not even a matter of the richest. Yeah. But they don't like it and they will go for him on things like that because he's not seen to have upheld

his half of some notional celebrity bargain that only they benefit from. Exactly. And also they, as you say, they still live in the 80s and 90s where people gave a toss about the tabloids that were just watching their Boyzone documentary, which I'm going to talk about in my recommendations, and the way they treated Stephen Gateley. And it's the same thing, which is, how dare you not talk to us about this? We know something about you, you have not told us about it. We are absolutely infuriated, and they went,

okay, well, we're just going to print stuff anyway anyway. That is why this story has had so much traction it's not I don't think because I firmly believe that you know the son and the man have done a huge amount in it and I think it's because they don't think that he's done some sort of quid pro quo. Yeah do you know what I hadn't thought about it but you are 100% right because it's one of those interesting things talking to every comic and it and people are going I'm not quite sure what this story is it's interesting hearing comics talking things talking to every comic and it, and people are going, I'm not quite sure what this story is. It's interesting hearing comics talking about heckling and talking about,

you know, and I was saying, what about this theory that post COVID audience that don't know how to behave? They go, no, don't recognise that. It's, you know, audiences are exactly the same. And unless you go to a small club where everyone's Instagram savvy and everyone's filming it. And then of course, do what you want, because that's the way that comedy is going. But most comics doing arena tours say it's the same as it ever was. If you get a heck of a...

Occasionally you have to throw them out, but not really. And suddenly this is an enormous story. And yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Why am I on day seven of it? There's a reason. There's a reason. Imagine just shouting out garlic bread like eight times in a row. I mean, I sort of admire it. If it was performers performers art that'd be great. If it won the Turner Prize.

And you know could do. Could do, yeah who knows. Right, shall we go to some ads? Yeah we should do and anyone you know listening on a dog walker in the car do not heckle the ads please. Do not heckle the ads, or heckle them once. Welcome back everybody. Munchie? Love one. Right, James Bond Richard. Yes.

It has been almost four years since the, I love the opening of Munchie as well. I'm trying to open them off mic because I'm a professional. Yeah. Quite hard to get into, that's the thing I would say to the munchies people I can't make a joke about Q right now But it has been almost four years since the last James Bond film and we don't have a new bond Thank you for the munchie At least in a second cuz I'm talking And then you eat while I talk we don't have a new bond. We obviously it's not gonna be Daniel Craig anymore

We don't have a director. We don't have a script. This is a sort of niche and silly little sidebar really but last week it emerged that a Dubai-based businessman has applied to challenge various James Bond film trademarks for merchandise. I wonder if they're somehow linked these two stories but anyway the man who it is is a man called Joseph Kleindienst. He is a former Austrian policeman turned Dubai property developer. He sounds great. What is not to love about that?

An Austrian policeman turned Dubai property developer. You know what? One of the good guys. What I like to call one of life's hecklers. He's building a development in Dubai on some reclaimed islands, no surprise there, called something like Heart of Europe or whatever. But he wants the copyright to the catchphrase things like Bond, James Bond, I can't remember what the other one was. 007. 007, all of those sorts of things and he wants them to be able to apply to various things. Now you can apply for trademark, the rights are held jointly by Eon, who we're

going to be talking about quite a lot in a minute, who are the company who have the film rights to James Bond and somewhere called Danjak, which is a sort of US based merchandising firm. If you don't use trademarks, other people can apply to have them cancelled on the base of non-use, and because they haven't been commercially exploited for five years. Now I think in this case, you know, he would, this guy who probably wants them for a cocktail lounge on his dreadful Dubai horror show development It might be a lovely development by the way. Yeah, it's not for me But you know, I'm not the audience. So He won't he wants to do that

He probably won't have much luck because they obviously will fight it beyond tooth and nail But it does come at the same time that people are beginning to say, they're sort of beginning to question, I suppose, the supposed hiatus in Bond movies. Well, that's the point, isn't it? You can only apply for these sort of copyright things if no one has used them for five years. There is a bit of a use or lose. Yes. We are now almost five years since the last Bond film, almost seven years since when it was filmed. The biggest gap ever between Bond films is six years, which is between License to Kill,

Timothy Dalton's final one and GoldenEye, which is Brosnan's first one. In the 12 years in which we'd have had two Bond films, the first nine Bond films came out. So Bond films used to be every year or every 18 months, something like that. We are now at a stage where Bond is being almost constantly delayed. And I think there's quite an interesting

story as to why that is. There definitely is. There's a bit of background. Eon, who Barbara Broccoli, the legendary Bond producer, Carbone Broccoli's daughter and her stepbrother, Michael G. Wilson, they sort of run Eon and they have the film rights to James Bond. Amazon recently and they sat under MGM. Yeah. And by the way, incredibly protective of the brand, incredibly protective of all of it. Well, there's a lot to say about that. I think it's really interesting how they protect their

brand. But they are very much in charge of it and own it. And Amazon bought MGM a few years ago, and so now everybody sits under Amazon. And there was a sort of interesting Wall Street Journal report at the end of last year that was very well sourced, which, and people who are, I've spoken to some people that are vaguely connected with the Bond franchise over the past couple of days, and they say the same sorts of things, which is that things were not in a great place. There was a meeting with Amazon Studios and with Eon,

and I think they referred to James Bond as content. Jennifer Sulker, who's the head of Amazon Studios, somebody else said, I have to be honest, I don't think James Bond's a hero. Okay, we'll come to that in a minute, shut up. Someone else on the Amazon side of things. Yeah, and another thing that they were sort of suggesting, Amazon, is that we obviously live in a franchise era where, you know, what about there's a money penny spin-off for TV, what about

there are alternate bonds. So Amazon now to be clear, because of owning MGM, have some say over where bonds might go next or more importantly anything that bond does will have to go via Amazon. So they are their stakeholders now in this but Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson still have the ultimate creative power. And they are so careful with this particular property. It's interesting you can sort of see Amazon's point of view.

Oh, for sure. Because, okay, let's look at the literary side of the Ian Fleming estate and the bond. The literary stuff is incredibly well monetised, spun off, whatever. Super classy. Exactly, to a very high quality. You've got Charlie Hicks' book. You've got... Sebastian Fawkes.

William Boyd has done a bond novel. These are very, very... Antony Horowitz's book. Antony Horowitz, yeah. She uh Kim Sherwood's 00 books um they've got Moneypenny comic books they've got Q mysteries there is actually a literary universe and Amazon can see that now in terms of sort of visual thing the only other thing there is really is that you know that thing which I didn't didn't make a huge cultural impact it was called 007 Road to a Million. Yeah. Right well that's coming back. It is coming back. It's all chump change to Amazon. It's a game show Brian Cox sort of plays a kind of putative like kind of boss type figure and people go on sort of crazy missions around the world. I will say if I'm being polite, it looked great.

If you want a big hit format, it's just gotta have a bit more to it. It was, I absolutely get why they did it. I absolutely respect the people who made it. I say, looks amazing, but who's ever heard of it? And it was huge amounts of money being spent on it. But as we've said before, they're a tech company. There's nothing to them. They want to keep, they're a tech company. It doesn't matter.

There's nothing to them. They want to keep, they're doing that for a reason. They bought that back for a reason. So they've got to make something to do with Bond. Yeah. Something. Well, that's the thing. Okay, Barbara and her stepbrother, Michael G. Wilson,

they took over during the Pierce Brosnan era, but she's really visionary. The Daniel Craig hire was incredible for their franchise. You know, getting Sam Mendes, which I mean, I think Skyfall is like an absolute masterpiece. It's so, so good. What, I'm more of a Quantum of Solace man? No one has ever said that. Quantum of Solace is like the, um, the Mango Wotsits of the Bond franchise.

I've got to, no, I've got to watch a guy, I've got to watch a super spy haul his grief around five continents. No, thank you I'm not even have attempt to have sex with Olga Kurylenko. No, thank you Mango what's it's moving the name of a baddie in the quantum of solace. Maybe okay Well, they have got as I said, they've got other things They've got a chitty-chitty bang-bang which they will sew in and I think some reboot that's going ahead with Amazon But they look after this thing so carefully I don't want to say they're out of their time because it's lovely to see someone do this.

Agree. Because in an era where if you're not growing and you're not building off 15 spin-offs, then are you actually dying? But people are starting to say, is one movie every five years enough? Now, I sort of love them for this, by the way. And the quality is, she has been labelled difficult because of this.

I love it that she doesn't really want people to refer to James Bond as content or product or whatever it is. Yeah, and she doesn't want a James Bond cinematic universe like Marvel, and she doesn't want the Star Wars thing, there's a million spin-offs. Yeah, because look at that, it's just rubbish. And it happens all the time. But if this was owned purely by Amazon or owned by a venture capital firm, just so there is an alternative universe in which every three years there's a Bond movie, but in between there is a spin-off series

every single year. It would be so big it would have replaced the actual universe. There would be so many things happening. It would be absolutely non-stop. All the different characters feel it's lighter, money penny as you say. There'd be a Q spin-off. I mean, it's almost endless the things that you could do with this. And the fact that't or Barbara and Michael G. Wilson Yeah, honestly, I love them for it Love it

And she you know the search for the bond that's you know can still it still becomes a sort of cultural talking point that person that Amazon Executive who said I don't see bond as a hero Well, okay He has always been a sort of cultural lightning rod including including by the way, when Ian Fleming was writing the books, because people had all sorts of views about him. The books by the way are insane. Yeah, and people had a lot of views about that and what this person was like. But she understands that he has to be a talking point and Barbara Bockely, I'm talking about, has to be a talking point, has to be a debate. The genius of that character is

that it's great that we don't sort of fit him, you know, into a, oh, I don't see him as a hero, William Black is a villain. It's good that it's not this kind of binary thing because he is neither good nor evil. He is an outsider. Yeah, he is essentially what's up with masculinity at this, at any given time. Yeah, but his question, which is how do I fit into the modern world, is it's a question that actually lots of us, all different types of us, different types of people ask themselves all the time. And that's the relatability of the character because it's certainly not his job or the things he can do. We relate to him for that particular reason. I think almost the crucial quality of Bond in so many

ways is that he is elusive and he leaves us wanting more. And you know, you never find out everything about him. And so in a way, you never know quite how he'll return. We're not saturated in him. People always want more of him, even his bosses or his, the women he sleeps with, whatever it is. And in a way, Barbara Boccoli's stewardship of the character is at one with the character, is that she tries to sort of, you know, to not saturate us. To hold him back. Yeah.

And I think it's so interesting. And I think she's done absolutely amazing. I think she's a sort of creative mastermind. I agree. I think I love the basic theory of less is more. I suspect that this Amazon thing maybe has made even less is more and she's thinking do you know what? I'm I was gonna start it now, but I'm gonna leave it another year or so I think there's a bit where they're digging their heels in which I absolutely get as well

I was just thinking the gap we're gonna get to the stage where After you know when Daniel Craig said he was gonna quit some people are saying well Aaron Taylor Johnson is the big favorite and people Say I think he's a bit too young and we're going to get to the stage now where he's a bit too old because there's going to be such a big gap between these movies. The movies have become more and more and more expensive so people are always trying to have these extra income streams and part of that is things like trade marking and other types of spin-off and obviously Amazon are eyeing the way that the literary side of the estate is monetized and thinking, well, why can't we do something

similar here? But it's so unusual in our culture. I love it. That someone is that classy. And Bond is fascinating Bond because it's been around for such a long time. It's such a weird part of all of our collective DNA. And I like the fact that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are standing against the times and just saying, we do not have to monetize everything

because they don't have shareholders in the way that some of the franchises do. We can shepherd this through. You know, I was dealing recently with someone who's in charge of another very big literary estate and a TV company had come to them with a reality show idea and he was asking my view on this and I looked at the idea and there wasn't a lot in it and he just said I have zero interest in doing anything that is just catching in every single thing I do is I want it to improve the legacy of these books and he said with

absolute truth, that it was not interested in a payday and would have made a lot of money from this thing. But it was, and that's the same with Barbara Broccoli. When you've got the right people in charge of something who really, really care about what it is, then our culture is enriched because we don't have to have 15 money penny spin-offs,

some of which might be great, but then some of which you just think, oh, enough, enough James Bond now. And it makes you yearn for more. I mean, nobody could be yearning for more different phases of and multiverse versions of Marvel when they reach complete sort of saturation. Yes. I wonder if we could do another Star Wars spin-off. That's what I tell you what I really fancy. Yeah. Yeah. Another Star Wars spin-off. Yeah. It's, I think hats off to them, but it'd be nice at some point to have another bond and there will be one

Yeah, yeah, and she'll make another great choice You know you have to creatively back these people and I'm sure that Amazon realized this and will try and sort of I think They've been sort of certainly public warm words to say yeah to worry But they're behind the scenes there has definitely been some friction. Shall I tell you who I'd like to be Bond? Who? Will Poulter. Yes. That'd be fun.

I think he's too sweet looking. But I think that would be the interesting thing. Barbara Broccoli has said that Bond has got to be a man and has got to be British, which will be news to George Lazenby and Pierce Brosnan. I don't think James Norton's too old. James Norton? I don't think he's too old. Oh no, James Norton's not too old. No, for sure. And Arentain the Johnsonorton's too old. James Norton? I don't think he's too old. Oh no, James Norton's not too old.

And Ayrton Taylor-Johnson is not too old. That was a bit, really. Yeah, there has to be a man and there has to be British. So No Time to Die was 2021, but actually filmed in 2019, so it's been a long time. As you say, there is currently no script, no cast, no director. Can you give us an idea of if they started today when that might start filming?

Okay, first of all, we don't know that there is no idea of a script. Someone like Sam Mendes is mega involved and basically sort of came up with a story. And so in that case, you couldn't have had the script without the director. We don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but it would be a struggle for it to come out now before, I mean, it's 2027. Even then, I think we would have an idea if there were a script being made because there's only a very small amount of people

who would be writing that script. And you would have an idea of that being one of the projects that they were doing. But yeah, that's a long process. There will be a lot happening behind the scenes, but you're not going to be seeing one before then, no. But they're so good at keeping, once someone has been chosen, that person becomes, if they thought they were famous before, they become massively more famous and their every move will be followed. And then it becomes, they've just always been very good at keeping

the period between movies the interregnum yeah keeping it all going and keeping the idea of it and the notion that it's somehow linked in some weird way to the our health as a nation i think up or down i think they've been very good at that so yes it will be a while but it's not crazy to think there might be 10 years between bond movies i don't think there will be ten years, not for a minute. They've asked you to do a punch up on the script. They certainly haven't. Are you available by the way, if they did want you to do a punch up on the next Bond? You'd be amazing at writing Bond.

No I wouldn't be. I would love that Marina Heights Bond. I would love it, but I wouldn't be. Something that is back though is White Lotus, which started last night as a third season of White Lotus, the masterpiece of Mike White. It's sort of quite an unusual show as far as US TV is concerned for lots of reasons. I remember during the pandemic, I might have told this story before, in which case apologies, I was doing, everyone was doing all their meetings by zoom and I was talking to Amy Gravitt, who's the

head of comedy at HBO and you could see she was in her house and I was in my house and I was like, oh, you can't have anything going on. She said, no, we have actually got this one thing. Mike White is doing a show that's based on, you know, it's on a sort of, it's in a luxury. I said, sorry, she told me the whole premise. I was like, sorry, there's people who are living a completely normal life in a sort of bubble, so they don't have to have any regulations because it's a bubbled island basically, in Hawaii right now. She said, yeah, I mean, the only thing is they have to make a television show, which is quite demanding. But other than that, they were in this sealed thing. But yes, the idea of the resort, which is in so many ways the perfect place. How

many times, you know, when you're writing something, do you think, how can I keep getting the back together? How can these people interact? It's like, oh, they could just be lying next to the pool. You're never going to leave because you're in paradise and it's luxury and whatever. So Mike White, who writes it, is such an unusual story in American television because he writes alone. Interestingly, another pandemic thing really, which is firstly, it's set somewhere where you can film in a pandemic. And secondly, given you can't really have writers rooms, the fact that here's a guy

just writes everything by himself and wrote it very quickly the first season was kind of was perfect for its time. And it's interesting that when the WGA recently went on strike and you know, I'm in the WGA and they have the Writers Guild of America and they had this big thing of, you know, we must be allowed writers rooms and mini rooms are bad even, even small amounts of writers, but they had to make, because it's so part of their entire culture that everything is written by lots and lots and lots of writers. And they had to make one exemption for writers who truly work alone

and everyone would just call it the Mike White rule because he's like the only one he's just on his own doing this thing but he says he would hate to be sort of scrutinized in that way and whatever he is amazing by the way he also directs it he's the showrunner I think it is complete I don't know how he does it because it is completely exhausting but the new one is in Thailand and we would you won't have any spoilers here, so don't worry. One of the things that really interests me about him is that he, and you know I've talked about this before, is that he absolutely loves reality television. He's obsessed with it. I mean even more than being obsessed with it.

He's been on it. He's been on two mega formats. He's been on Survivor and he's been on their race across the world. Amazing race. Just as a punter by the way, not as a celebrity, not as a Hollywood scriptwriter, Mike White. As a contestant. As a contestant, yeah. He came second in Survivor. He did really quite well in Amazing Race. With his dad. With his dad.

He was also an interesting character. Oh my God, please can you talk about his dad. Which we will get onto. Yeah. The dad is a very interesting story. His dad was a sort of ghostwriter for really hardcore conservative right preachers. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, he would write their scripts and they were the real fire and brimstone preachers. And then his dad came out.

Yeah. Then his dad was like, Oh, you know, I was secretly gay all of this time. So that's, that's an interesting household to grow up in, I would say. A household of secrets, definitely. As I said, there are so many writers I know who are really good writers of drama who are obsessed with reality TV and I think it is because people are put in these heightened, often very stylised situations where you're out of the norm and you're required to do things, you know, much like a holiday in lots of ways.

But also, as you say, one of the key things about being a writer is how do I contain all of my characters? How do I put them in one place? How do I find a situation where they all have to be somewhere? What's my mansion? Like, what's my island? But that's all reality TV is. Here's a group of people and they have to be in this place.

And for a writer, that's like the dream. Normal rules are suspended. It's really unclear whether people are having trivial discussions or almost sort of existential discussions. Relationships are sped up. So, you know, any relationships that would develop slowly develop very quickly in those environments. Things have to matter rather like a and in many ways, you know, like a holiday where people work all the time and then you go somewhere and you become a different version of yourself. You've got a wardrobe that you're going to wear. I might wear it on holiday women often say.

I wouldn't wear it at home,. I might wear it on holiday women often say. Yeah. I wouldn't wear it at home but I might wear it on holiday. And then you get home you're like we just do you know what I am actually gonna have a pineapple pina colada but why don't we why don't we drink pineapple pina coladas all the time. It's a heightened reality at the holiday so it's perfect for a Mike White drama. And the stakes it has to matter because it's you know it's your time off and it's anyway funnily enough Adam Curtis said something funny to me but he was he said to me people go to work all week and they do a thing and they get money for it. But their actual job is going out and spending it in the economy. And that's why when you go around a shopping mall the weekend, everyone looks so miserable because at some subconscious

level they realize that's their actual job. I actually had to go to, to Westfield, which is a big shopping mall in White City this weekend. And I thought, as I always do, of Adam's particular point, I was like, I love this take, I love your many takes. Everyone obviously incredibly depressed as they walked around, because they were at work. Yeah. They were at work.

In that, God, the queue for Westfield is always crazy. That's your commute. And you have to, you're not quite sure, but you feel like you have to do it. Anyhow, as a satire, White Lotus is really interesting because first of all, he said, I have to feel personally indicted, Mike White, because he's not like, oh, look at these rich people doing all this. He had a house on Hawaii. I think he's got two houses on Hawaii.

I bet he has now. About six houses now. But he has to feel like it works because it's not like, I hate these people are the worst people in the entire world. I mean they are quite bad. But he has to feel like they're sort of like me as well. Oh, it's you know that it's such a group. The setup, by the way, if you don't know the setup, it is essentially lots of rich Americans in a resort. But we see the underbelly of the resort, we see the people who work at the resort and we see a sort of the contempt

in which some of these rich Americans are held. It's much cleverer than that. And the contempt in which the reciprocal contempt for the people who service them and the country in some cases or the culture that they visited. So much more nuanced than that makes it sound, but that's the basic principle is the sort of engine room of a resort and the Americans who are there and the problems they bring with them into this slightly different culture. And it's essentially the sort of interaction between those two groups and between the rich Americans, which is such a great place for drama to happen. I wonder if you have, I think it's so interesting, and I should say there is a murder in every

series. It's very interesting that why does murder mystery lend itself so well to social satire or why does social satire so often make us think this is somewhere where homicide might occur? Well I think, and certainly in my books I like to write about the world and I like to write about people and if you have a murder you know where you're headed, you know that you're ending somewhere and readers and viewers like that. So the very start of all the white lotuses the white lotuses, the body turns up, you're not sure whose it is,

you're not sure what's happened, but you know at the end you are going to find out. Now, almost everything that happens in between bears no relation to it really, but as a viewer, you can sit back because you go, okay, I get it, I'm being cradled here. And if you have that cradle, you are not having to worry about anything other

than how entertaining is this journey and telling any story you want within it because you know where you're going already so you're not having to make some point, you're not having to lecture about, you know, when you watch White Lotus of course you think a lot about how you interact with the world. And which one of them you'd kill? Which one of them you'd kill. You're never ever having to be, to lecture you, you're never having to sort of ram home points. You can literally write the satire you want to write

because it's been cradled in something that makes people comfortable. But again, it is that heightened reality where you might almost feel homicidal in a ridiculous way. Often, you know, we set our murder mysteries in beautiful idyllic villages, but someone's been so insufferable in one way or another that they've had to be offed. And there's something about that particular thing. It's amazing how it has become such

a marketing opportunity, but they've all been in Four Seasons hotels. Four Seasons now have a partnership with HBO. First of all, you can get, and I really wanted to get these for you and Ingrid, HBO sell them on their website. It says one size fits most and I wonder if it'd be quite small It's a white lotus bathrobe. Oh, really? Yes. It's white lotus resorts. It's like a fluffy, you know fancy hotel thing The resorts themselves have done incredibly well out of this the one in Maui They said they had a 425 percent year-over-year increase in website visitors and they had a huge surge in bookings because people want to go to the specific Four Seasons properties, which are featured, the one in Sicily and then now one in Thailand.

And they are beautiful. It tells us something very, very interesting about our culture, that these are satires about tourism and satires about the way that tourism can suck things from an economy and satires about You know luxury lifestyle and yet they massively increase traffic for tourists and people wanting to live that luxury life So, I mean massively increase it. We all know what we're watching. We all understand a complicity We might have in it. But at the same time we go. Oh god, it looks lovely This is why satire doesn't really work. This is why, you know, like when people watch The Thick of It and are like, oh my god, this is so cool. It's like, no, you know this is about how bad politicians and, you know, spads and whatever

behaving like this. It's so aspirational. Everyone's favourite day in Westminster is when The Thick of It trends on Twitter because people think, oh it's, you know, it's just like that. People are like, oh my god, these people are so awful. This is so awful. I want to go there. I want to go back. I want to go there because I'm not awful.

I would really appreciate that swimming pool in a way that they're not appreciating it because of their backstories. Yeah, because they you know, there's why can't they just appreciate what they have? Yeah. And then you're like, hold on, maybe I've got a backstory. So Four Seasons have got this whole thing, this brand, they've now formally made a brand relationship with HBO over and they're going to do exclusive screenings in all their different hotels. They've got pop up escape cabanas in Palm Beach.

I mean, that's amazing because any any time you try and do a brand hookup on anything, brands are incredibly conservative and incredibly worried about being shown in a bad light. And you know, everything has to be absolutely above board and they'll sanitize everything and this is the absolute opposite of that. I mean the four seasons look nice but the content of the show is fairly brutal, you know satirically brutal and physically brutal and yet four seasons... But the traffic doesn't lie and the bookings didn't lie and so they saw after that first season... The traffic doesn't lie. Well, they saw off that first season in, in, in Maui that people just thought I want to go there. And so it's an incredible sort of advert for it. I'm interested as to why this era, this show, why it really grabs this era. By the way, I should say that this is a show

that is incredibly talked about. It trends on everything just after it's aired. People talk about it all the time. It's real like chatty conversation. The finale of season two, HBO said got four million viewers, which is like less than what an episode of the weekday episode of The Chase would consolidate to. I would say there's half a call the midwife. Yeah, which is really interesting. And yet it's a bit like succession.

Everybody, it gets written about everywhere. It's talked about, but it's succession again, another sort of satire on super richness. And then we talked about triangle sadness, triangle of sadness, all that sort of stuff. It's a sort of about America's place in the world. But it completely catches fire. And I think it's kind of, it's one of those things that like dominates the cultural conversation. Also, it's a library property and it's great. And lots of people go back and watch season two of White Lotus. now people who've never watched like White Lotus will watch the first two seasons Yeah, because they can I'm gonna controversially say I didn't absolutely love the first series because you could tell it was shot during lockdown

Yeah, there was a lot of interstitial stuff. So all the way through I'm like, where's the staff? Yeah, there's only like two people in this entire resort and like where are all the other guests? Where is the second series as much but there was a lot of interstitial stuff of the water, whatever, which filled it all up. But to make that during lockdown was an incredible achievement. Yeah, so I think it's interesting that there are certain shows that just catch light in a certain way. But what's interesting talking about that weird hotel deal that they've got is that the Four Seasons guy said, oh, Gen Z and Millennials are our next generation of

luxury customers and this is a way of getting them in because this is a way for us to reach them because they haven't necessarily known how to reach those audiences before. And it's really interesting, you can see why. And all you needed was a satire on the horrors of mass tourism to bring that generation into it. And luxury tourism and how there is trouble in paradise. The cast will live out there for the last seven months of filming. They're living at the Four Seasons, you know, altogether, all in luxury suites, which sounds

like an amazing job. But you know, because it's filming, you can't have the air conditioning on and stuff like that. So it was like boiling hot. But imagine, I mean, I would watch the documentary behind the scenes of the actors of White Lotus of darkness of it filming White Lotus, it'd be amazing. But they all, every interview you see with anyone who's been in any of the actors of White Lotus. The hearts of darkness of it. Filming White Lotus it'd be amazing but they all every interview you see with anyone who's been in any of the seasons and a couple of people sort of go across seasons Jennifer Coolidge isn't too but mainly it's a whole new cast but the one thing

they all seem to have in common is they all seem to love Mike White. That's all it all flows from him. They all seem to say he's a genius which is great and it's amazing that thing we talked before about where hits come from and how you never know. And Mike White's always been around. And there's a movie called Chuck and Buck, which if you like White Lotus, I'd sort of wouldn't recommend because it's very difficult to see us by the same person. But White Lotus is such a absolute the top line of it is so simple and it's got a murder. So it makes people feel comfortable. Chuck and Buck does not make you feel comfortable Did you ever watch enlightened which I love enlightened was his He also he wrote school of rock, yeah, you know, so he's I mean you wouldn't have gone

This is the guy who's going to give us the next he started on Dawson's Creek. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's there's so many different routes to success and you know, there's so many different routes to success and, you know, the fact is that he seems to have always done the thing that he wants to do. And I think that's the message, isn't it? But it's like that tone. This reminds me a little, it's a little bit like Inside Number Nine in that he just got, Jennifer Coolidge was over two seasons, but that was because they thought that they were making a limited series. It was such a hit. They thought, oh,

it can be a returning series. And so she appeared appeared across both but she's not in the third one but what she's really done is you're buying to sort of misquote Barton Fink that Mike White feeling because he is completely different new thing every series it reminds me of Inside Number Nine in that you're you're buying those two but he's not on screen which is a hard way to do it yeah but you But you love Steve Hamilton and Reshir Smith and you don't really mind. And they make you care about them all over again really quickly because the tone,

it's the tone and that feeling that you're kind of buying into. It's the fascinating thing for all creatives. And I think about it a lot because of my background in quiz and game and things like that. Is Mike White has not changed the way he writes or the things he writes about. What he's changed here is the hammock in which he writes and he's got a hammock that people feel very comfortable with and people immediately go, oh, rich people

and they're on holiday in a resort and they're worried that, you know, the person who's serving them drinks hates them. Yeah. And everyone goes, yeah, okay. Countless in. Yeah. The murder mystery goes, okay, I guess we'll get where we're going in the end. And then Mike White writes exactly everything he's always written, but it's in such a way that people feel so utterly comfortable. And they go, where's this guy been? And he go, oh, he's always been here.

He's always been writing this. But he finally found the thing that everyone at the same time just went, oh yeah, I wanna watch that. But he's always been brilliant. I think he's just a complete phenomenon and a really By the way to tie this podcast together like we produce it three actors in season two of White Lotus I love season two of White Lotus the one that's Sicily you could all be James Bond Theo James okay he's a certain type of Bond Leo Waddell who I love who's also in One Day but Will Sharp

who I think would be amazing have you seen a real pain? He's so brilliant in that. I love Will Sharp. I think Will Sharp wants to do, and he also is a creator himself and he writes, but he's amazing. I think he might find it too limiting. I think the idea of coming back repeatedly to the same things is not what Will Sharp wants to do in his career. I think he's so talented. And he gets very buff in White Lotus too as well. Oh my gosh, he's got it all. Someone who can be that buff and put in the performance he does in a real pain is someone

I'd like to see as Bond. Yeah, you're right, he doesn't want to be Bond. He's too creative and he wants to write and direct his own things as well and I think there's just not enough space within the juggernaut of being Bond. Within the juggernaut of being Bond. Sorry, that does not work as an expression at all. My apologies to everyone. So White Lotus is available right now on Sky. If you watch the first two, you're going to

be watching this one. If you didn't watch the first two, yeah, go, but I'd almost be tempted to say start on season two, but maybe watch the whole thing. But remember that first one, give them a break because it was written, filmed, the whole thing done during lockdown and you can slightly feel the emptiness of it, but you'll get the idea of what you're watching. If you want to be a completist, watch the whole lot. Any recommendations? Yes, I mentioned it briefly earlier. Talking of Sky, they've done a documentary about Boyzone called No Matter What and when someone says they've done a documentary about Boyzone,

that could go one of two ways, couldn't it? And it's gone in such a brilliant way. It is, I just thought it was extraordinary. It's an amazing story. You don't think it is, but it is. And you know, very sad with Stephen Gateley and it's just very interesting. Just these five boys whose lives were utterly changed by being chosen for this group and his lives could have gone in completely different directions. And the different ways all five of them have dealt with it and all five of them dealt with it in very, very different ways, which is the fascinating thing about it. It is really, really, really worth watching. One of the key things about it is it's not very often you see five working class guys having to really, really talk about their

feelings and find a way to come to terms with things that have happened to them as a group and as individuals and it's very very moving in that way. There's plenty of tears in it and it's a really really great documentary. I found it genuinely fascinating. Right and with that I think we will leave you until Thursday. Do you please keep sending your questions in? The rest is entertainment at gmail.com and of course if you wish to become a member of our club, you can get joined that at therestisentertainment.com

and we will have a bonus episode for you on Friday. All about Bergerac. Which is being rebooted. Which is being rebooted. I'd like to say thank you to Munchies. Not sponsored. Not sponsored. And yeah, see you on Thursday.

See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.