The Rest Is Entertainment - The Netflix Bloodbath: Explained

Episode Date: October 27, 2026

What’s gone wrong inside Netflix? Is Trump still suing the BBC? How did the Ghosts and Horrible Histories team create a global comedy success story? With mass layoffs and a plummeting share price, Netflix is in trouble. Does the streaming giant have a cinema problem? Richard and Marian discuss the film spin-off of hit BBC sitcom Ghosts, and the brilliant comedy team behind it. Donald Trump is getting cold feet in his $10bn battle with the BBC. Why does the US president keep stalling proceedings? The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Sponsored by Lloyds. Learn how to avoid scams and protect yourself. See how Darkhorse Anti-Fraud Technology helps keep you safe from fraud. Search Lloyds protect yourself from fraud. 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: Adam Thornton, Louis Mealing and Tom McCagherty Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Emma Jackson Exec Producer: Ami Bennett Filmed at ⁠www.westdigitalstudios.com⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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for virtual pods in your local grocery store today. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina. Hi. And me, Richard Osmond. Hello, everyone. Hi, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you doing? Not too bad. Heading up to Manchester this week for the Luke littler thing, which I think is going to be an awful, a lot of fun. How about you? I'm looking forward in the Q&A to you answering a number of questions. We've had a lot of questions about that, which I have questions too.

Listen, I've got a couple. Yeah. Other than that, what are we talking about? We're talking about what's going on at Netflix. Is Netflix over? And if it's not, why is everyone saying that it is? Yes. We're also talking about the ghosts movie

and the cast of ghosts in particular. There's sort of a love letter to them, if I'm honest. The final thing we're talking about is updates in Donald Trump's case against the BBC, which are looking at present there, we say it quite positive for the BBC. Who would have thought? Who would have thought? You have a plea before we start, though, I can't, if anyone has a good source for a Tung Tung Tung Tung So Her costume, this is not for me.

It's one of my children. I would love to hear it because the alternative costume being suggested is in such unbelievably bad taste that I'm, if you got a Tung Tung Tung Tung Tung Tos to Her. There we go. Now, Netflix. Yes. A few months ago, we talked a little bit about this because they'd, you know, release their figures and, you know, there was a sort of wider. assumption that they'd won the streaming wars. You remember a couple of years back.

Yet their stock price fell immediately after these figures. It's now 45% down at least on where they were a year ago. Their market capitalisation is basically half what it was. And they've just made huge changes, by which we mean layoffs, to their film and TV content teams. The two heads are out. They've got lots of other layoffs are happening 6% of their workforce. So we know the...

that what they need is hit. And they did have these huge behemoth shows that haven't really been replaced. So things like Stranger Things. Squid game. Squid game. And those things ended. And it's not completely clear.

They still have Wednesday, which needs to hit very big for them. And they still have Bridgeton. But in general, they need more than that. Exactly. And those things, you know, take years to put together. And this is a generation on an audience who are used to going on YouTube and getting whatever they want immediately.

And it's lightning in a bottle to some degree. It's really hard to say, you know, I know with the benefit of hindsight, we can all say that Stranger Things was going to be enormous and that the Squid Game was. But again, there's no particular way you can't tell these things. Nobody predicted Squid Game. No. It's interesting to see sort of what's going on.

Probably the most high profile faring is Bella Bajaria, who was the content chief, and she's hugely powerful. She's in charge of essentially everything that you see. Yeah. She's the number one. On the TV side. She has had the job for three years. She's highly visible.

Remember, this is a company that spends basically 20 billion a year on programming. There's nothing else out there like it. In terms of what happened, we will be anatomizing it. But they have definitely had a bad run of form. Q3 is probably their worst for five years. Put simply, they have not had any hits. And they didn't do well at the Emmys. You know, and they really want to be in contention for all awards now and they didn't do well.

There's obviously renewed competition from Skydance now that Paramount and Warners are kind of united under Kendall Ellison. There's a possibility. Was Casey Blois who runs HBO? People were saying was he offered her job. He is staying at HBO. He's very talented, yeah. Amazing. But yes.

And there's a sort of sense that with the layoffs, they have to offer Wall Street something. and they have to say they need a kind of change story to be happening. I mean, that's the story here. It becomes a narrative after a while. As you say, for so long, it's been Netflix. Who's going to win the streaming wars? It's Netflix. Oh, my goodness.

Netflix are getting linear television. And very, very quickly, you become the hunted rather than the hunter. And now the story is YouTube is killing Netflix. And at those moments, by the way, they had their earnings call last week. And it was sort of pretty much what everybody expected. It wasn't kind of below what it needed to be. But Wall Street needs to be. exponential growth. That's the point when you're a company like this, you need exponential

growth. And in the beginning of a company like that, that exponential growth comes really from potential, i.e., every sort of green shoot is seen as, oh my God, this is growing to something enormous. And Netflix are now at the stage where something that ITV and other companies will understand, where they are now a legacy media stock. And that does not come under the premium. It comes at the exact opposite of a premium, i.e. money gets knocked off your share price. So they released this Q3 call, which is perfectly, you know, normal and then in line with expectations, and yet the share price fell. Again, it's down at like $65 now. It was $125 odd at one point. But the underlying financial side of the business is good. They obviously have an insanely

great business, which they've grown over a very, very long period of time. But yeah, they now face that pivot where they are the established media company, probably the big media brand in the world in terms of making content. And that's a tough place to be, because where do you go from there? And all that Wall Street needs is for you to go somewhere to really, really keep growing and growing and growing. So every single thing now counts against them, and YouTube growing counts against them. And Apple and Amazon having hits counts against them.

Even though, by the way, Apple and Amazon, they're not really content players. They don't even need to make money. All that stuff is a shop front. Apple TV seems to be a not-for-profit business. But they have loads of hits and they obviously won very big at the Emmys. Oh, they did brilliant. They've got great shows. Whereas all Netflix has as business is content and subscription.

You know, that is the business. And so they find themselves at a fork in the road. And if you were to just read the papers, you go, oh, my God, they're all over. I mean, I would argue they're probably not all over. They're not all over. They've been pretty smart before. But I do think, first of all, I think that their stock was way overvalued. But that isn't their fault.

That is the financial industry. fault and I think that the potential for growth was massively overestimated. And the problem is, is that their big problem in all of this is that engagement growth has slowed down. And if you spend 20 billion on content, which is an insane amount of money and you're up 2% in engagement, that is a problem. But again, I would argue, I've been in this position before with Endemarle, 2% on top of 10, 15 years of incredible growth is still an unbelievably difficult thing to do. I mean, you have to spend that money

just to pump it up a tiny bit. They've been through the years of like double-digit growth, even more so. They've done all of that stuff. There comes a point where when you run a company, you just want to go, I mean, we built it to be massive. Why don't we just keep it massive? Why don't we just keep it where it is,

like really, really ticking along and making money for everyone? But Wall Street is in that bit, I think because it was seen as a stock, that would deliver you huge growth all the time. They're just in that transition where they go, okay, maybe this is like a, you know, a British Airways or a Coca-Cola, where we just hold this stock

and let it do its job for years and years and years. But it's making that transition from some sort of cool tech stock to, oh, okay, this has been around a long time, and it has competitors, and there are issues with the business. I think you're right on that pivot point, which depresses share prices, which is why I think there's probably a good buy. I think the share price was overvalued in the first place.

Well, let's talk about individual things that people are saying are issues because I think that's quite interesting. Dan Lynn, the film chief, has also gone. Netflix famously, Ted Surrounder said that cinema was over and he made some quite abrasive comments to the Hollywood industry about that people didn't bother driving to theatres anymore and all of this and they were giving people this experience in their own home. I have to say that I think sometimes they put things in for a while,

week to make it an awards play because it's not eligible unless it's been in cinemas. But they managed to get directors at the start over to do things with them because they paid a huge, huge amount of money way more than anybody else. And they kind of left them alone. And that resulted in my view in some films that could have benefited from a little bit more control. But because it was very, very enticing to creators because they were given more creative freedom and fewer notes.

Yeah, but you have to give them a lot of money and that creative freedom in order that their movie doesn't open the cinemas, which is where all directors want their movies to open. And you can see how angry Christopher Nolan was with Warner's during the pandemic when they seemed not committed to theatrical release and he left and went to Universal. And the biggest directors don't want to work unless they get significant theatrical release. What happened with Greta Gerwig, who's managed to negotiate this kind of really a unicorn type of deal because other people don't have. habit for Narnia is that it's going to have a 49 day theatrical window, which is really, really long. And it's completely, it's an outlier. They don't do it anywhere else. But now, because she's got it, other people want it. And I just think it's harder to get creators now, because they can see that films that don't have cinema release just have less cultural

purchase. It's just the fact of it. That you don't, when a film comes out on Netflix, it just seems like something new has come on the service. Yeah, I think that Ted Sarandas probably said that because it would have been useful for his company if that were to happen. And also he'd probably think of 50, 50, perhaps it might happen. Perhaps cinema is on the way out. It is definitely not now. I think we can definitively say that. So I think his mind would have been changed.

Yeah, you look at a movie like The Rip on Netflix, which is a great, great film, but it doesn't have cultural purchase because it didn't open in theatres. Not at all. And things that are not very good, but have had a cinematic release. Everyone's heard of. People are like, oh, it's come to the streaming now. I'll have a look at that. because I know what it is.

I've seen adverts for it on the sides of buses. I've, whatever it is, it's just got more cultural penetration. Yeah. And it seems like a bigger deal than it often is. And also so many movies open in theatres and do huge, huge, huge numbers then on the streamers. It doesn't, it doesn't affect it at all. It's like releasing a single from an album and giving it away free. It does not affect the sales of the album at all.

It's the obverse of the TV thing, which is that they've got this binge model that they still like. and I think they will struggle to let go of. But if you put everything out at once, people do do it in a weekend. And then it takes a very long time to make this type of television, as you know. And people just don't necessarily care in the same way about the second season. Yeah, it's like cooking Christmas dinner. Yeah. You know, it takes a really long time to do.

And then it's finished within 40 minutes. Very quickly, yeah. And you don't care so much about second seasons. I think that's difficult for them. Sometimes they parcel it out and they did very well with Stranger Things, where it was the biggest thing in the world, and they did it in sort of three, I think if memory serves three blocks,

and it all sort of culminated last kind of New Year's Eve. But in general, things they put out, and I think they're going to, if they go back, as we've said how often, to something more like a linear model, that's difficult for them because they haven't done it before, but they could do that.

A big problem for a lot of people is what they did with their user interface and their user experience. There's a lot of stuff like podcasts, YouTube creators, you can get somewhere else, all of that stuff being pushed forward because I think they weren't quite sure

what to do with it all and what to do with YouTube. And they changed it. And I don't think that is regarded as being a complete success because they used to have this unbelievable user experience where you got served things that you wanted. And it was sort of in the way that the TikTok algorithm is just miles ahead of everyone else is.

And therefore it's just a very, it's much more sophisticated as a platform and people are just like, what is their special source? How does this work? Netflix had that. And if they don't have that anymore, then they lose something that was very, very significant to their business. It was a real competitive advantage. Yeah, and it's hard because if you think about them sort of three years ago when the first rumblings of this were happening, again, I'll take it back to my experience, Endemol. Endemol, we grew and grew and grew through employing people and coming up with ideas, then selling those ideas. And one in ten of those ideas would hit big and set it around the world. And that's a really nice business to have.

There came a point where, as we were bought by successively bigger and bigger companies with less and less TV experience, that you had to keep growing at 15%, 20% a year. year and you could not have a year when you didn't grow that much. And sometimes you will have a year when you don't have that big hit. And so everyone started going, no, we need additional revenue sources. We need other ways of making money. And so the business would start going in different directions and, you know, distribution and, you know, marketing and all these different things. And suddenly the whole core of the business went over there and came off the creative. Now, we've said before, when we talked about Channel 4 and NetPolitics has got exactly the same issue, which is this, this. This is, despite what anybody says, a hits business. And even Wall Street cares when you have a hit. It is in a lot of ways all you need. If you're a well-run company like Netflix, you just need two shows to really, really go big. Now, the UK is absolutely putting its weight in this.

The UK is the one place is really firing on all synods. You look at adolescents and black doves and baby reindeer and all this stuff. And actually a lot of the foreign territories, the non-angosphere, are still doing great stuff. doing great stuff. Yeah. But the American product has suffered. Well, it's suffered, but again, sometimes you have a year or 18 months when you suffer because you cannot have hits all the time.

It just can't be done. It's impossible. So what you have to do, you have to trust the right people. It's like a new manager at a football club. Sometimes you go, oh, no, I understand we're not scoring any of the goals, but we're playing good football. I saw one graph, though, and since Bella Bajeri had been in the job, and it was just, it's such a steady downward step of how much in the.

Nielsen ratings, Netflix is taking of eyeballs, basically. And it is just almost like a straight down line. But again, I think a lot of that comes, because she's, you know, incredibly talented. And I think a lot of it comes from, the business starts looking elsewhere and the business starts having different priorities. And, you know, big bits of the marketing of the business and big bits of just the brain of the business are going into these peripherals, where you might find a different income stream. Because when you're making content, you know, the engagement you get in the states over here,

it's, you become saturated. There comes a point where there are, there are no more people who can afford Netflix. Yeah. They just aren't. And they brought in things like an ad tier and other things like that. Because then you kind of go, okay, we've got our hundreds of millions. How do we now monetize those hundreds of millions? And therefore the business starts looking elsewhere.

And the business, I honestly think sometimes the heart of the business goes away from content sometimes and goes into let's do deals with YouTubers for stuff we've already had. Oh, good business, by the way. Stuff you should do. but at the heart of the thing, three hits would absolutely rocket fuel that. Do you think it's a confidence story as well, though, because part of me, you know,

almost this time last, I'm trying to remember the exact dates of it when we were like, oh, hang on a second, Netflix is now in for Paramount, not for Discovery as well. And they didn't get it, and they sort of couched it at the time as it would have been a nice to have.

And so when the Ellison's just completely sort of overbid, it seemed like a win at the time that Netflix were kind of, released from having to buy it and they got that cash pay out. Two billion cash, yeah. Now people have settled on the idea that the fact they were even doing it revealed

something about Netflix, which is that they were concerned about their growth prospects and this was something they actually needed to do. I said at the time, genuinely I think they want to buy Warner Brothers because I think they want to put films in cinema because I think they understood that that was the thing to do and I think that would have been great. And there are other studios out there that could

be bought by Netflix and I think that's a, you know, they can see Cinema, weirdly, has now become this sort of tech darling, is suddenly going, oh my God, we've got all these kind of lo-fi movies that are making, you know, half a billion dollars. It's suddenly cinema movies seem to be the cool thing, and you wouldn't have predicted that three years ago. Yeah, but it is a statement of intent about an asset that you've effectively paid for, and it makes it seem more culturally important, and it still does. It still has that cachet if it's been in cinemas.

And the other thing I think you would. probably talk about in terms of the sort of familiar conversations are happening, which is things like, you know, do they put movies in theatres for longer? Do they abandon the binge model? Is do they need more regularly programmed sports? Because the thing about sport is Netflix have incredible profits because they do not pay for sports rights. And if you see how much other people in the US will pay for like the NBA or for the football, for their football, it's unbelievable. amiable amounts of money. Yeah, we'll get rid of their 20 billion content spend fairly quickly.

Oh my God. I mean, it's ridiculous. But they, because they don't pay for sports, but if you don't pay for sports, people have to buy that somewhere else. And that means they're basically buying another streamer that might have shows that you like. And in the end, you might think, well, I'll just, I'll just pay for those. So in terms of what they're actually going to do about this, we've, obviously, we've already seen the ad tier.

Live TV, this is something that people, again, we've talked about this so much. oh the thing you disrupted you were coming very like live channels channels showing one thing or in one genre you know things like Chuby and Roku who are growing really far

which are free but they have those channels they have kind of dedicated channels for this or that it's linear they can bundle things they can put other things into it they can

they might put peacock in NBC something they might get Disney or Fox to do something they want channels on their platform and in France they did this deal with TF1. TF1 has ads, but it has news, it has things that we don't expect to see on Netflix. And you can get TF1 on Netflix now in France. So they definitely are going to want more of those for sure. I think another telling thing they're doing is they are giving less and less information. They were always a bit of a black box for a long time. And then they said,

oh, hang on, we're going to, you know, once we could tell that they really had, they dominated and they felt they'd won the streaming wars. We suddenly started hearing more from the What We Watch report was every six months. Now they don't report quarterly subscriber numbers. What we watch is not going to be every six months anymore. It's going to be once a year. What we watch is that. That's the list of who's watched what one.

At the moment it's every six months, it's now going to be annual. So they're giving less and less away because they don't want people to know these things. But again, it all comes down to share price. It really all comes down to share price because it's a hugely profitable business sitting on very, very big cash reserves. But the second, that Wall Street is involved in your company, narrative is all important. And their narrative has gone from one where they're the insurgent to one where they're now the incumbent. Yes.

Everyone hates incumbents. Yes, they do. So the big question is, do Netflix have any hits coming up? Wednesday's coming back. Yeah. Which is huge. Yes. They've got Lonesome Dove coming.

They've got... I'm so excited about that. Yes. I know. I need a little. I love loans from Daughey so much. They've got a Kennedy series. They've got things coming.

The Dan Brown thing, Langdon, they've got that. Yeah, they've got, you know, and there's loads of great stuff coming out of the UK as well. It is one of those things that you just have to wait for two of those shows to hit big at the same time. And suddenly it's Netflix are fighting back against YouTube and TikTok. Because otherwise what happens is we'll have five years now of Netflix being sort of eaten away at by YouTube. and TikTok, and then in five years time, something will eat YouTube and TikTok. Just every five years, just something new will come along, which is that, oh my God, YouTube's business model is through the floor.

They're losing all that advertising to whatever this new thing is. It's just, you know what it happens. And so what you have to do is look after the fundamentals and go, okay, we want Netflix still to be a really, really big content business in 10, 15, 20 years time. The key thing here is not to kind of panic about what Wall Street tells you and listen to what your gut tells you to employ the great creative people. make great creative content that people want because there's always money in great television. Talking of hits straight after this break, we will be talking about ghosts.

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Lloyd's. Now, let's talk about movie con artists. Who are your absolute favourites? Movies, TV and book, my answer is the same. And it's Tom Ripley. I was going to say him. It's one of the greatest characters of all time. So from the talented Mr. Ripley books by Patricia Highsmith, there's five of them. So if you like talented Mr. Ripley, you are in luck. He's like one of the worst men in the world, but you absolutely root for him at all times. Now, of course, deception makes for excellent entertainment on screen.

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Now we have some housekeeping before we dive into ghosts. And it's the last week of celebrity traitors. I'll hardly need to tell most of our audience. And we will be doing reaction episodes on. Thursday and Friday. That's at 9.30, the Friday one, just immediately. And also for our members, we return to the Bond series. Bond is back.

Bond is back. And you can join at the rest isentatement.com. Add free listening, all of that. All of that jazz. Now, can we talk about ghosts? Now, plenty of people listening to this. Hopefully, may have been to see this film over the weekend or are going to see it over the half-term.

Lionsgate, who made it have very, very, very quickly turn this around after filming to put it out in exactly this week. It's half term. It's Halloween, so it's a perfect time for ghosts. I've seen it. You've seen it as well. I'll start this whole thing off by saying it is magnificent. It's so great.

It's everything you want it to be. And it's everything that makes that group of performers. They're so smart, so stupid, so it's so wise, so warm. It's just, I thought it was a beautiful piece of work. It's perfect for a feature film because they've been able to do, I was talking to Ben Wilbond, who's part of them. who I go very, very far back with. We used to do comedy together at university.

And he was saying, yeah, it's different with the future. You know, what they contrive to do in this is to get the ghosts out of the house. That's a lot of spoiler. But you couldn't really do that in the sitcom, or they wouldn't have wanted to do that because they feel like it's like an instant shark jumping. Although we'll talk about the massive global phenomenon this has become because it's in so many different territories now. And then, but for a feature, you can do something totally different.

and it really works as a future. There's a moment that involves BMXs where literally the whole cinema is in just gasped and then cheered. It's that sort of movie. So if you haven't seen it, it's a real half-term treat. So let's, should we go back to where this all began,

this gang? There's six of them, the six people who write and performing, goes to Jim Howick, Martha Howe Douglas, Matt Bainton, Simon Farnaby, Ben Wilbon and Lawrence Rickard. And they are the same six people

who started out on horrible histories, Horrible Histories, which was 2009, it was C BBC. It's one of the great TV programs of all time, and I'm not even exaggerating. It's absolutely amazing that that sits on the BBC service forever. Yeah, forever and ever. And have taught more children about history in a hilarious way than anything possible. I learned a lot of that history from it. It was pitched to the BBC by a 10-year-old, by the 10-year-old son of one of the executives.

Clever way to pitch a kid show. based on the Terry Deary books you know terrible Tudors and all of those books he sold tens of millions of books worldwide Terry Deary is obviously a bright man because when they bought the rights and said we're going to make it he just gave them three notes he said it just has to be funny horrible and accurate

yeah that's all I want this to be nailed it it looks amazing that you know it's beautifully produced Caroline Norris who produced I mean I don't know how they did it for the money I do not know I've never understood how they did it's incredible and the accuracy comes from Greg Jenner who's in a story, that's that you're dead to me podcast,

he's brilliant as well. And so he would, with his team, just do acres and acres of research, stick it in the writers room with those six and a few others, and they were,

at the other end, they come up with these sketches. Now, so that's the six of them. They did five years of that. It won BAFTAs, I mean, on comedy awards,

it won everything, and rightly so. It is a sensational piece of work. But all six of them stayed together. Yeah. When horrible histories ended, they decided to come up with a sitcom.

And that sitcom, of course, is Yonderland on Sky. Yeah. Which I think is sort of unfairly looked in all of this, because everyone loves horrible histories, everyone loves ghosts, but Sky made Yonderland three series of it. Again, it's brilliant. It's incredibly imaginative.

Martha Held Douglas is sort of the lead in that and the rest of the gang kind of play just crazy characters around her. For whatever reason, didn't have the culture. or cache of the other stuff. It's on Sky. It's the honest person. But it's hard, isn't it? Yeah, it's very hard.

Because it's definitively a great show made by very, very smart people. They then made a feature film, which I would also strongly recommend this half term, which is Bill, about William Shakespeare with Matt Bainton as William Shakespeare. And it's very, very funny. And it's just it, I mean, my God, they've got a mood, this gang. Well, it's really interesting. Before Yonderland, they had thought about a haunted, house series and thought maybe that would be cool.

And Matt Bainton said, oh, you couldn't get the jeopardy into it. We didn't understand how to get the jeopardy into it. And then what they realized was, oh, I see, this is just like a sort of forced house share sitcom. Yeah. You know, I don't know if there's a name for that trope, but like, you know, in forced roommate situations. Yeah, whatever.

And the boredom of it all would be amazing. And it's funny. I was, when I was talking to Ben about this, he was saying that. They were so lucky because what Charlotte Moore, who ran the BBC programming at the time, did, he said the best thing that ever happened to us is that we were allowed to make a 10-minute taster, not a pilot. And if you don't know what tasters are, there are a sort of proof-of-concept thing. And a pilot is very different.

Once you've made a pilot, people are going to say, yeah, yeah, I see it, I don't see it, I don't know, maybe this isn't going to work. I quite like bits of this. Yeah. But a taster, it allows you to do the proof of concept. And he said, we made all our mistakes in that 10 minute taster that no one has ever seen. And we were forced to kind of confront what it was because of that. And as a result, when we wrote the first episode, we had made all those mistakes in a thing that was loud.

So they're very grateful for that particular way of doing it, because it's so expensive. Once you've made one episode, then people have got to think, hang on a second, they're going to do six of these. I'm not sure. But to be able to make all their mistakes and to iron them all out. was hugely important. But what I find so interesting about it is that, yes, once they got the idea, it's like, oh, I see why this works.

It has been franchised, basically, to so many territories. Well, it's one of the few UK sitcoms to be really, really, really big in America. Yeah. I mean, the office obviously is a very, very good example in Sanford and Sun, but this, in recent times,

because they remake everything in the States. They'll do pilots of things. And this has run and run and run. and it's in Australia, it's in Germany. It's all over. He said all the time you're hearing, oh, they're doing one in the Czech Republic. And he said, what's amazing about it?

What's really lovely is that it allows the, I want to say local creators in other territories to say, well, hang on, our history is really, really interesting. And we can make this speak to our culture in a completely different way. So for the Americans who have, you would imagine, have less history. But, you know, there's a Viking in there. There's a, you know, they all hark back. It's interesting because, as you say, all the local territories have, you know,

culturally significant figures as their ghosts. There's one trope that pretty much has been kept in every single series across the world. Do you know what that trope is? Which one? It's Simon Farnoby not wearing trousers. It's the MP. Like the American one, he's like a finance bro. He dies with no trousers.

I think everyone just goes, you know what? That's just such a great. The international language of no trouser guys. We've all got one. Those poor actors in some kind of ways where you just go, oh, literally every day I turn up to work and I'm not wearing trousers. Okay, they must have like blankets, right? Yeah. In between tapes. Yeah.

But it's so it's one of those things that in retrospect looks obvious ghosts and absolutely wasn't. I remember talking to Ben and I was saying to him when I was talking about this, I said, I remember when we met up and you were saying to me, you know, I don't know, we're doing the show for the BBC. and I, you know, and he said, I can be quite, yeah, I can be quite eauroarish about things because nothing works, right? Yeah, nothing works. As we always say, nothing is a hit except the very few things that are. And I remember, and then it obviously has just become this, I mean, a complete phenomenon, a complete.

I think when they worked out, and because that's a group of performers and writers who have enormous heart and who really, really like human beings. And I think they worked up very quickly that, of course, a show about dead people is really show about how precious life is. Yeah. And I think they worked it out. And so the jokes they got covered because they're so incredibly funny and stupid. So that's covered.

But then it's just got this incredible heart as well, which they bring to it as just very decent human beings. I was really struck. I went to like a friends and family screening of this because Ingrid knows them well. So she got invited and I managed, I catched a ticket. And I was struck when I went there about the love in the room for them from all of their contemporaries. Some of the names you mentioned, Greg Jenner is still there. Caroline Norris was there. Jason Hazley and Joel Morris, who wrote on Yonderland, everybody who ever works with them

sticks around. That's terrific. Everybody loves them. Can I mention one performer who is not officially in their collective, but Lolli Adafoferi who was in the franchise, who I absolutely love. She is so hilariously funny. By the way, I think she's so funny that you've got to be very careful if she's in any frame because she is going to steal that frame. She is genuinely hysterical. I love her so much. I think she's absolutely brilliant. Her character in this is sort of, you couldn't really describe her,

but she is just so brilliant at all time. She's amazing. Yeah, she's incredible. So, yeah, as I say, it's this gang of six, and you never know what's going to happen. You know, this is a CBBC tender to, you know, make a history show, and suddenly this gang of brilliant people who just stick around and stick around together and just make great telly.

And then they've produced. this thing which is going to bring people such a huge amount of pleasure this half term and is, as you know, my favourite thing in the whole world, which is make something that's right in the heart of mainstream, but that it is also demonstrably, genuinely brilliant. And it's a couple of things that hadn't even occurred to me before watching the film, and I've seen a lot of ghosts, is that Fanny Button is a really rude name. I hadn't clocked that Jim Howitt's character is called Pat Butcher. I sort of did know it was called Pat Butcher.

and properly clocked it. And it's just for the stuff like that. These are people who love television, love comedy. I'm always very envious of writer-actors. Because they absolutely, writing, multiplied by acting, absolutely amplifies itself. You know, writer-actors are a rare breed and they're brilliant.

But yeah, I just honestly, just in that room for the people who've worked with them for years and years and years. And I've been in some showbiz rooms before, and I'm sure you have. And there's not always universal love in those rooms. And in this room it was universal love. And each of them has done other incredible things outside of this. And, you know, look at Simon Farnaby, he did Paddington 2.

He did the sketch with the Queen, you know, Jim Hauerkes and Here We Go. I mean, they've all done, Matt Bainton did the romance and loads of other things. So they populate British comedy. Lots of them have been on House of Games. Lolly, Lawrence, Matt, Jim, all been on, Michael Sheen's House of Games. But it's, you know what? I just thought, given we both love the film and given, I just really, really admire them as human beings, just a love letter to ghosts and what can be done with human creativity.

And just to get back to our old subject of AI, there are kids in their teens and their 20s now who are like these six, and we'll create things like these six and we'll do these extraordinary things. Just let it come through, give them time, let them muck about, let them do silly things. They will create this stuff because every generation's got these people and we're very lucky to have these six. Shall we finish with a brief little look at where Donald Trump versus the BBC currently stands? Yes. Now, this is the legal case, the $10 billion legal case, that Trump has bought against the BBC for the misleading edit in the panorama

that sort of seemed to suggest he was telling the January 6 rioters to fight, even though in a slightly different way he was. But they did a misleading edit. They've said that it was a misleading one. He brought it in Florida. The panorama was not viewable in Florida. But he's used their understanding. unfair and deceptive trade practices act.

Now, remember, he has sued a lot of media organisations. It's kind of law fair. You know, for Mr. Free speech, he doesn't half love suing them. He's won against CBS and ABC. The one against CNN was dismissed. It's interesting what he's done here, because given the BBC, he acknowledged the edit was misleading. He has since claimed that they used AI to insert words into his speech.

No. And they're currently in this lawsuit, which is happening to be fought in Florida, in the discovery process, which is when you can, you know, you request documents from each side. And it's very interesting. What the Trump side has offered is absolutely risible. Like it's just, it's incredibly slight. And the BBC have complained and said they've produced absolutely nothing of any substance. The documents they've given to the case have either been sort of stuff they've pulled off the internet

or things provided upon request by the BBC. And Trump was supposed to sit for a deposition. And that would be giving some sort of oral evidence about the case. On oath, Richard, on oath. But he missed it saying he was busy with matters of national importance. Obviously, he's quite a visible human. And they were able to see that what, in fact, he was doing was a campaign rally in Georgia and a fundraising event at Mara Lago, which, you know, I guess he could debate whether it's national importance.

But, you know, you kind of need to turn off your deposition. Certainly not national importance to the UK. No. And the judge has actually now ordered Trump to testify and said, you have to sit. And this is a US judge. This is a US judge. A Floridian judge, Richard, has said you have to sit for a deposition by the 11th of December. Trump is already saying, well, I can do it in the second or third week of January. Again, but the judge has said, you know, there are lots of sanctions, including

the case just being thrown out if you don't do this. But if you want 10 billion, I presume that something incredibly serious has happened. Yeah. So you might want to clear some time in your schedule. I would want to sit down. I would want to sit down and, you know, get my truth off my If I was suing somebody for $10 billion, I would be available right now. I would stop the podcast and I would depose right where I sit. Well, I hope that puts things into perspective for our viewers and listeners. The BBC have also successfully done something else, which is quite interesting, that they've made Mara Lago part of the discovery process. Yes, how did they do that? I couldn't work that out.

Well, they've successfully argued that details and things might be there because he uses it as part of the presidency. His side have said it's literally just a business. It's like, well, I don't think if you entertain the Ukrainian president now or any other president or you constantly use it as the winter White House or whatever you like to call it, that it isn't. The BBC basically say he's stalling. So it's the legal thing that, you know, he said obviously this damages his presidency. So actually they have a sort of not a free reign, but there's a big ambit of things that they could ask to look at and ask his thoughts on and ask for factual documents about. I mean, yes. And I slightly feel like when we're talking about this,

You know, because their legal system, I don't want to say it's sophisticated, but it is, like, highly developed. Okay. Should we say that? But, you know, defamation, that's our culture, Richard, because we have these ridiculous libel laws. So we do sort of know quite a lot about how to deal with this particular complaint. It's highly developed like that car that Homer designs in The Simpsons.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think it's interesting. He lies obviously all the time, as we know, but he is historically very nervous about testifying under oath. I mean, if that were my personality type, I simply would not testify under oath unless absolutely forced. What I would do is I would sue people until they just gave in.

Yeah. And if they didn't give in, I'd give up. Yeah. Now, who's to say whether or not this will occur? Sorry, I'm not talking about him. Just saying if it was me. This case would involve him testifying about both his finances and the January the 6th insurrection. Again, I simply would choose not to do either of those things.

But if you felt so wronged, if you felt $10 billion worth of wronged, you would fight. But the thing about the cases he's bought against American media organisations, the boot is sort of so completely on the other foot because they kind of caved CBS in the case of trying to get the paramount deal over the line, ABC for other reasons. Well he has a lot of power over the American media. There's all sorts of things he can do and legislate for that would make their lives very difficult. Less so for the BBC. It felt existential in a different way for them. Yes. In that they had other things and in my view they he didn't have proper cases against either of them at all and I think it's

dreadful, absolutely dreadful that they settle with him. And it's interesting CNN, which is run by former Director General of the BBC, didn't. And that was eventually thrown out. It's completely different for the BBC. I mean, I'm not saying it's existential, but it's very, very significant. They can't roll over for this in any way. And as I say, you know, libel is our culture. So we know how to deal with this one.

Trump is, as I say, he's saying, oh, I can't sit down and testify till second or third. week of January and the judge is saying you have to sit by the 11th of December. So I feel we will be checking in on this story within the next six weeks to see whether he did or whether they've managed to get some kind of other deferral. But I'm not sure he can use the midterms as an excuse before the 11th of December because he's going to have a whole month in which he could quite easily sit under oath and talk about how this programme that he never saw has damaged him. I mean, listen, we shall see what happens, but I'm getting good vibes. I'm getting good vibes.

I don't think the bit when he said that they used AI to put words into his speech. Yeah, that's not going to be helpful for him. I think there is quite considerable records of the things he said, and that none of them are AI. And also, I thought he doesn't call it AI anymore. I thought you called it SI. S-I, yeah. Come on, Trump. Be consistent.

So anyway, we will keep watching that one. Yep. Any recommendations this week? I've got a couple. Well, Catherine Ryan's book, First Born Daughter, I mean, it's, she writes about being that person who has all the family's passports. You know, she's the person in control. She's doing lots of the emotional labour. But she does it so funnily. I think she's totally brilliant. I really, really liked it. I think she's terrific. And the other thing I would recommend, which I sort of feel I recommend every year, but it is absolutely epic if you get a chance to see it over the next few months, is wildlife photography.

for the year at the Natural History Museum. It is the way they do it, each time, the way they light it, the pictures, the storytelling in those pictures. And some of the pictures are captured by children under 10. It's unbelievable. But some of the stories in these pictures from around the world are absolutely incredible. And it's never not amazing to go and see. You just be, it's extraordinary, every year.

Lovely. I'm going to recommend Norm, the title of Norm MacDonald on Netflix documentary about the comic who people maybe over here just know from YouTube clips I suppose he was on weekend update on SNL but if you talk to comics they all say this is the funniest comic of his generation

it's a really really beautiful stories a very very individual gentlemen with very individual views on things but by the end it's so deeply moving as well so anyone who's interested in the craft of comedy or anyone is interested in that you know the sort of heart of a comedian I really really really loved it

what's in the larder Richard well we have as you say for members this week, we have the resumption of the Bond series. We have Traders' reactions episodes on Thursday and Friday. And we have a Q&A on Thursday, so a busy week ahead. Busy week. But do go and see the ghost movie if we haven't seen it. Tim's new energy infusers, powered by Monster Energy Zero Ultra,

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