The Rest Is Entertainment - What Can TV Learn From Podcasts?

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

The double bounce of an election and the Euros has led to some very successful podcasts achieving even bigger numbers. Many of these podcast hosts are also part of the TV coverage, so how does one format bleed into the other, what can TV learn from podcasts, and should podcasts really be on TV? 'The Apprentice' (a biographical drama of Donald Trump in the 70s & 80s and 'The Last Screenwriter' (a film written by AI) are struggling to find distributors. What are the reasons for this, and what does it say about the wider movie industry? Lastly, House of Games filmed its Christmas episodes but what how do you create that festive atmosphere in the Summer? Sign-up to The Rest Is Entertainment newsletter for more insights and recommendations - www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @restisents Instagram: @restisentertainment YouTube: @therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Tom Whiter Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Recommendations: Marina - Becoming Karl Lagerfeld (Disney +) Richard - All The Colours Of The Dark - Chris Whitaker (read) 🌏 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

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of AmeriCom Express. Visit amex.ca slash ymx. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osmond. How are you Marina? I'm very well, how are you?

I'm not bad, have you had a nice week? I have had a super week thank you, because each day brings me closer to the day that the election is over. And it's really not so long now. What are we talking about this week? We are talking about, well do you know what, the Euros and the election have led to an absolute boom in an industry that was booming anyway. It's an industry you may know something about and that is podcasting. So we're going to talk a little bit about podcasting and what's happening with it and how it is affecting television. We are also going to

talk about something which we meant to talk about last week but we didn't get quite around to it. The Trump movie which is a prequel story about Trump's life not being able to get a distributor or maybe being about to get one. Donald Trump not Judd Trump. Yes, we should always be very clear on this. And we're also talking about a movie entirely written by ChatGPT that was going to have its premiere quite recently and has been pulled and is now struggling to find a new distributor. So we'll talk about that.

And I'm also going to talk about why we film Christmas Day editions of television programs in the middle of June. Christmas in June. Christmas in June. In fact, we film Christmas on the longest day of the year, June the 21st, I think it was. So we'll talk about that. But should we start with podcasts? Now, there's been this extraordinary storm of the Euros and the election at the same time. And people may know, they may not know, always right at the very top of the podcast charts are the politics shows and the football shows. So there's some in the Goalhanger stable, the rest is football, there's the rest is politics. There's the newsagents, there's the Guardian Weekly football

show, there's Stick to Football, there's the Neville and so on. And the numbers in the last couple of weeks have gone absolutely insane in a way that shows that this is an industry that has genuinely reached a very interesting maturity and that is now absolutely in every part of our life and it's where we turn to first when something big happens. And firstly, I think that's quite interesting, so we'll talk about why people are turning to podcasts. But secondly, it's really bleeding through into television and how television now cover football and how they cover more interestingly, how they cover politics. We know

our very good friend, slash boss Gary Lineker was getting in trouble for calling the England team the S word on his podcast. And that's the interesting bleed through there because the BBC presenting team is Linneke, Shearer and Micah Richards. And they also have their own thing, which is completely separate to the BBC, which is the rest is football. But the two are of course going to bleed across.

And if you want Harry Kane. And the ITV presenting team is in large part made up from stick to football with Gary Leville, with Roy King. Yeah, so it's quite interesting that those people who have such successful podcasts have sort of almost taken over the broadcast studios. They haven't taken over because they were in there before, but it's now because they have these two things that are very different mediums really. But there is bleed through and was he right to be upset about it? Funnily enough the way football has been covered in this country was the kind of precursor

to podcasts anyway because you've always had pundits, they've always been able to speak their mind, they've always sort of chatted, there's been a bit of banter. It's very, very like a podcast. You always get people who I think are sociopaths who say, honestly for the football I don't want any commentary, I don't need anyone talking about it afterwards, I just want to watch the match. You think, oh, oh really? I mean, that to me is a huge red flag. You know, I love the, if Fulham River on telly, England on telly, I'm there an hour beforehand

because I want to hear every single thing that is said. But it's absolutely the precursor to what podcasts are, which is people who are interested in the world, people who know things about a world, people who've been involved in a world, chatting to each other and having a sort of a relationship that over the weeks viewers get to know and get to understand and get to know the quirks and peculiarities. So of course football is going to bleed out into a podcast immediately. But if you're on Sky or ITV or BBC, there are certain responsibilities that you have because people are switching on, you're inside people's homes.

It's very different to a podcast, you have not specifically chosen them and want to engage with them. It is where the England game is being shown, to pick an example, and those are those kind of big national moments. There's a sense of occasion. I mean, when I first started covering football, the print writers would wear a jacket and tie when covering England games, which I found hilarious. It's like you know, no one gets... you know. There was a sort of sense of occasion thing and there is that sort of... when people... lots of people haven't asked those people necessarily into home, it's not like picking on a podcast thinking I love these guys, I'm gonna listen to them every week. They are

there because they have the broadcast rights. You have to address all the different groups. That's exactly it. I'm always saying this with comedians as well. If people buy a ticket to your show, say what you want. Say absolutely what you want. If they're offended, they can walk out whatever, but they know what they're getting because they paid their money. Whereas if you're on a Channel 4 show or a BBC 2 show, you're in somebody's living room,

so there's certain jokes that you know, just don't do, just don't do it. And podcasts is exactly the same. Gary, Alan and Micah can say exactly what they want on their podcast because people have chosen to download it. They've chosen to listen to it. They're listening to it because they love it. They listened last week, they listened the week before. Same with Stick to Football. People are getting what they want. And on the actual show, you see on the actual show, they are a little bit gentler. And if we talk a little bit about people who present the news, there was a sort of big podcast show in London maybe last month, and they had a lot of BBC presenters, news presenters who also do podcasts for the BBC as well.

And Justin Webb was particularly articulate about this saying, it's very difficult because we didn't used to broadcast like this. now we do podcasting but I also present the Today program and suddenly you're in the middle of the Today program you think hang on I've sort of this is live and I'm doing it like a podcast they may seem to lots of people like oh it's just audio isn't it's just a different form of radio it's not and they all said actually it's great what podcasting has done for broadcasting in that the worst thing about our industry is that when people talk in a way

They think they're supposed to be because they are broadcasting Yes They sort of imitate broadcasters whereas the best broadcasters who've broken all the way through are not really like that and they're their authentic selves And that's why people sort of are drawn to them and they sort of believe them and they trust them at moments of National crisis or joy or whatever. For example, that's why we always loved watching Paxman But then everyone who tried to be Paxman, that's harder to watch. That's people copying. That was a tough watch. The thing about Paxman is not be like Paxman, it's be like yourself, because he was not being like Paxman. He was Paxman. And I think also you have got a whole

generation of people coming up who have just watched YouTube and TikTok and things like that and find the formality of broadcast so bizarre and that people are and TikTok and things like that, and find the formality of broadcast so bizarre and that people are talking, nobody talks like that. And podcasting is much closer to the way that people talk. And it's much more a voice in tune with those currents that draw people to YouTube and TikTok and things like that. So it feels. So the interesting, the Justin Webb thing, and this is the thing I think sometimes people don't understand, but when you see on social media when they talk about the BBC and they

talk about news organizations and they say why are they not taking this person to task? Why are they not saying that? Why not they not saying this? I said on Twitter and you think if you had the first clue of the strictures that are placed on every single news broadcaster in this country the things they are not allowed to do not allowed to say the biases they are accused of from all sides. So the lines they have to follow, and by the way, it's a nightmare if they don't follow them. That is why the news media is like the news media is. That's why they're not asking the question that you would like them to ask, which is based on hearsay that someone else said on social media. They can't do that. You haven't

worked out if it's definitely true. You haven't followed it through. You haven't seen four different people saying, yes, no, that definitely happened. So they cannot do any of those things. If you listen to the news agents, now that's Emily Maitlis and John Sopol. And Lewis Goodall. And Lewis Goodall. The joy with which they are now able to give their opinions

and which they are now able to step over lines, which when they're at the BBC, they weren't not stepping over lines because the BBC is right-wing or fascist or the BBC is left-wing or whatever. They weren't stepping over lines because it's a nightmare if you do. Every single time you do it, there are inquiries, every time you complain to the BBC, you have to follow it through. And it's right that it's a nightmare. It's very, it's impartiality is so important and people have all sorts of views about BBC impartiality and mistakes that have been made in recent years and maybe some of those are on the money and

maybe some of them aren't. But we have a far, far less polarised as we've previously discussed news media in this country than anywhere else. The secret about football and about news podcasts in that way is by and large, and there's a caveat to this, but by and large, those podcasts are the thing that happen once the microphones are turned off in the studio. So in the studio, you'll talk about England and how they played and you have to be cautious and you have to be respectful because you do know that it has a big impact on the team and people will be hearing it and listening to it. When the microphone is switched off, you can say what you really feel and that is what happens with podcasts and the same with news ones is that once you've

interviewed the minister and you throw to the weather, the thing that you are then saying to each other by and large is what happens in podcasts. Now there's a further limit to that of course, which is like with us, this is just how we talk anyway, apart from when we libel people endlessly, which of course as soon as a microphone goes off in any studio, everyone gets libeled because if you give your opinion on someone without it being on air, you can pretty much say what you want.

But that idea that the people who you are listening to have a slightly different view of the one they are allowed to say, A, that is what should happen. We shouldn't hear their untrammeled opinion because it's a national broadcast, whether it's ITV or Channel 4 or BBC. We should not be hearing just their unfiltered opinions, even if you agree with them, because

those are people who don't agree with them and you wouldn't want to hear the unfiltered opinions of someone you disagreed with. But I think the really interesting thing is political podcasts. And I think if you look at the rest of this politics, you look news agents they are genuine phenomena yeah they are huge and they're huge in a very peculiar way because we've been told for many many years that people are not interested in politics they certainly don't want to hear dry dusty old talking heads talking about politics do you know what people do want to hear that people want to hear people who know what they're talking about talking about

politics talking about issues what they don't want to hear that. People want to hear people who know what they're talking about, talking about politics, talking about issues. What they don't want to hear is what we're currently served up on traditional news media, which is people from the different parties being asked questions, forced to defend themselves, not giving answers. Ponditory in its purest sense, perhaps. It's actual candidates, actual people running for election, arguing with each other in a way that is not illuminating to anyone. It would be exactly like if you're watching Match of the Day and someone's talking about Manchester United and saying, the thing about Manchester United is we have the best defence in Europe. And you go, well, you don't because I can, if you look at the numbers, no, no, look over, no, please don't, listen, I didn't interrupt you, Gary Neville, so please don't interrupt me. If you look over five years, actually, and, and, and, you know,

if you look at inflation, actually, we have the best defense in Europe. No one wants to watch that. See, people want disagreement rather than argument, I think. Again, like you, you have ex pros talking about football and you have ex pros talking about football for a reason, which is they can be honest and they can be sanguine and they can understand the limitations of the team that they played for and the strengths of the team, the other team play for. That's why you have ex pros talking about it rather than you have current players. If you had an actual Man United player, an actual Liverpool player on match of

the day, what can they do? They have to say, no, I love the gaffer. You can't do anything else. We all know if you work for a company and you talk in public about that company, you have to be respectful because you've got to go back there the next morning and that goes for whether it's us or whether it's you know current footballers or whether it's politicians but that is not of interest to people. The interesting thing about podcast is the market is telling the political media now what it is that people actually like.

Can I add a bit of a caveat on sort of tone because tone is one of the most fascinating things for me. It's really interesting to me how if you strike the right tone you can have absolutely nothing very much to say but people love it and then if you get the tone wrong you can have all sorts of engines. Sometimes something comes along with a tone that really speaks to the times and there's something about that type of podcasting that does and I was trying to think of something analogous that isn't podcasting and I thought when all those blogs came, Nick Denton started the Gorka blogs and he had so many different ones in the stable.

They had ones that covered Silicon Valley, one that covered showbiz, all those things, but that particular tone was so definitive in the sort of noughties and all sorts of traditional media, print media started copying it, even though that they were, these were very young people writing funny blogs and they were you know it was snark I suppose and they were posting 10 or 12 times a day. But clever snark. But clever snark and somehow was a tone that spoke to the times there is clearly something about this type of tone what I worry a little bit about is it becoming the omni tone. I slightly was watching Roy Keane after the England performance on Sunday night and

thinking, I would have listened to you on the Biden debate. I would have heard you on that, you know, and there's a temptation that it's all that kind of viral punditory moment. I think that's exactly right. I think this, I don't want The Today Show to be like a podcast, for sure. I don't want The Daily Politics to be like a podcast, but what I want the producers of that to do is feel emboldened by what they're seeing people enjoying to go maybe I don't have to do these stump bookings, maybe there are smarter bookings, maybe I can book people who are professors for goodness sake who really understand British political culture, maybe I can find a character who

people love to listen to, they can agree or disagree but they love to listen to that person, maybe that's where bookings can come from now because bookings for the last five years on political shows have come from one place only, and that's sensationalism. It is difficult though, when your day job and your podcast job perhaps map almost entirely onto each other. I can see why Harry Kane might think, I can still hear what you're saying. It's a fascinating transitional moment where both of those things for ITV and the BBC, their podcasts absolutely bleed into the TV coverage. And I think it's tough for the presenters,

I think it's tough for the producers, I think it's pretty easy for the podcasters because the numbers are going up and up and up. But it's a really, really interesting moment and it's fascinating to see what the fallout is. I think for football, the fallout would be less so because I think the two things map much more interestingly and easily. I think for politics, I think that this huge podcast revolution would be interesting to see the election coverage this time because you've got the Rest is politics guys on Channel 4, you've got Ed Balls and George Osborne on ITV. It's going to start bleeding in more and more and more because if you're not the BBC, you might as well do it like a podcast, to be honest. But a really, really interesting

time and as I say, these podcasts are genuinely doing great business and that intimacy and what have you and you hope that television learns the correct lessons from it. For example, don't put podcasts on television. They've tried that a few times and I think everyone on each side of that thinks, oh, this is a bad idea. The only one where we thought it worked and we have actually talked about this before, but not perhaps on the podcast, the Traters podcast worked very well on screen. It was like a chat show. They pretended it was a TV show. They had such a busy set and there were people sitting on sof there's a visual medium. You understand what you're watching television. There's a weird price of entry Yeah, you have to pay which is at least be lit and have a set

Oh, they're interesting the podcast version of it slightly suffers because they are different mediums I know people don't think they're different mediums, but there's a freeformness to podcasting I mean we're having a conversation here that on TV they'd have wrapped up a long time ago this to podcasting. I mean, we're having a conversation here that on TV, they'd have wrapped up a long time ago. 1986 is when I remember that. They really would have gone, yeah, so Maruina, can you just tell Richard to wind up a little bit? But you know, there's a freeformness, there's not a time constraint, whereas TV is very, you know, you're getting counts in your ear all the time, you know who you've

got to throw to. And so, you know, the podcast version of it actually didn't feel like... You're right. I watched it only as a TV show. Yeah. And so I'm talking out of my arse and I don't know what it actually sounded like. You can't have it both ways is, I guess, the answer. Yeah. They are totally different mediums. You have to respect that and not just think, oh, we'll just buy that in and treat it like it's the same.

See, on television someone would be going, should Marina really say she's talking out of her arse? Is that... There'd be like 15 people in the gallery saying, is that okay to say she's talking about out of her arse? And like 15 people in the gallery saying, is that okay to say she's talking out of her ass? And they turn around to the BBC commissioner back at the BBC commissioner, worried about their boss, they go, or maybe just get her to retake saying

she's talking out of her bottom. And I'm like, oh God. And that's why TV is different to podcasts. Because you were talking out of your ass. Yeah, and you will hear that. And listen, we can cover the economics of podcasts at some other point, but on that note, should we go to an advert?

Let's go right now to an advert. Welcome back. What next, Marina? I think we're going to talk about films. We were meant to get some of these last week, but we didn't. I would like to talk first about the Trump movie. This is called The Apprentice and it's the story, it's a sort of origin story of Trump really back when he was a kind of baby real estate mogul with this kind of

dreadful mob lawyer, a guy called Roy Cohn, who this movie would certainly suggest taught him everything he knew. And it's got Sebastian Stan, the winter soldier, Pam and Tommy, he is the young Donald Trump and Kendall Roy, Jeremy Strong is Roy Cohn. Now it had its premiere at Cannes, obviously because it's an election year and therefore it would have a lot of attention. By the way, everything gets an eight minute standing ovation at Cannes. If you open a packet of crisps, someone will give you eight minutes for applause. Okay. So having said that it was generally critically light, but it cannot find a

distributor. Now, none of the big studios or the streamers, despite the fact this movie had a lot of bars, I wonder why, wanted to go near it. Now, as soon as the film was shown at Cannes, they sent cease and desist letters. Basically, all these people are scared. And last week, it seemed as though a deal was on the point of being done with a distributor called Briarcliff, run by a guy called Tom Wattenberg and he's distributed other problematic or complicated or controversial things. Fahrenheit 9-11, the Michael Moore documentary about sort of George Bush and 9-11. Dogma, which is that Kevin Smith sort of religious satire and that the, is it called W, the Oliver Stone

George W. Bush sort of satire. So he doesn't mind a bit of controversy. He doesn't mind a bit of controversy. Quite the opposite. They've got another issue, which is that one of the people who backed the film, by the way this film has got 45 producers, which tells you a lot of something about independent film, which is that these people, by the way, have not sat there and thought, have we got the catering trucks?

Have you got this? As always, you've got to patch work together all these sources of funding in order to get this film made. That's why, like at the beginning of a film, when you sit through all the things saying a canal plus production in association with. The Norwegian film. That's why, like at the beginning of a film, when you sit through all the things saying, a canal plus production, in association with, the Norwegian film, associated with. Also thanks to, and the more of them there are, the longer the gestation period of that movie was.

The agony of trying to get that thing to the screen. Anyhow, this has clearly been the case to some extent here, but there is a Trump backer who, his company, at an arm's length, sort of backed this, or gave some of the money, quite a significant part of the money. And I think was told by the director, he's a guy called Ali Abbasi, he said, it's going to be a bit of a punk rock kind of historical movie, but it's going to be kind of down the middle. Anyway, this guy saw a sort of truncated 20 or 30 minute

cut of it and absolutely lost his mind. So they're at this sort of stalemate. So they're thinking people are trying to basically buy this firm out, but they want to get it out in an election year. Now you're probably thinking, well, why are the studios so completely wet? But Hollywood is terrified of Trump and they're probably even more terrified after Biden's disastrous debate performance last week. Trump does not want this movie released. He says it's election interference by elite Hollywood powers or something absolutely not. Anyhow, but the studios, are they right to feel afraid of Trump? But if you look at what actually happens, you think, oh, this would be

great, even if it's on Fox News all day and they're screaming about this movie, it's all publicity. But actually, what happens with these things is that they can make a lot of trouble for you, the MAGA crowd. If you see what happened with Ron DeSantis down in Florida, that don't say gay law that you weren't allowed to promote gender teaching or homosexuality teaching in school. Disney sort of belatedly opposed it. By the way, they did the worst possible thing. It had already passed, but they sort of belatedly opposed it. And DeSantis said, I'm going to go after your spe... They had a special Lord basically to be the government of all the land around that, around their parts called the Reedy Creek improvement district well let me

tell you he said I'm gonna repeal it and it no longer exists so if you're one of the big studios or a big financier essentially when that the movies been made it's ready to be distributed the costs associated with opening a movie like that across America then across the world it can be 20 30 million dollars something like that maybe a little bit more if it's opening in more cinemas. So they are going to people saying, would you give us 20, 30 million dollars to fund this movie? And they're going to say that to every single studio. So every single studio is sitting there going, well, I've seen the movie. Is it going to make us money anyway? Is it going to make my life demonstrably difficult

for the next year? Yes, it is. Maybe it will. Will someone else have the bravery to open this movie? Maybe they will. Probably they won't. Yeah. If you were sitting on a 30 million dollar fund, would you recommend financing the rest of this movie? It's made and it's ready to go.

And yes, I would. We will, by the way, will be able to see it in Europe because it's got European distributors. It's got distributors in some of Asia. It's got lots of places. Oh, that's all I care about. Yeah, that's all we care about. That's where we're going to watch it.

But if the deal gets done, they want to get distributors in some of Asia, it's got lots of places. Oh that's all I care about. Yeah, that's all we care about, that's where we get to watch it. But if the deal gets done, they want to get it out in sort of September or October, so not going to front it last minute, pre-election run. So it'd be interesting to see, but it's kind of extraordinary that a movie that's clearly good with great actors in it, giving brilliant performances and is very, you know, on the money and is interesting and is about now, cannot find a distributor because Hollywood is afraid of Trump. Yes, and that's often how censorship works.

And the way we talk about soft power, like the BBC displaying soft power across the world and the World Service being an amazing thing for the UK, the soft power of the right often shows itself here, which is coming after people in the law courts. If there was a feeling that Biden was gonna win the election, you might find some bravery, because actually you'd be sitting on a huge film.

Oh yeah, like Disney, they'd become very brave after the event. But given that I think the feeling afoot is that Trump is probably going to walk it now, yeah, I suspect they won't see it anytime soon. I'm not sure it's entirely clear he's going to walk it, but even so, we're much smaller than it would be if one of the bigger people had done it. But Trump has said, you know, I will come after all of these people. And so you think you're going to have the Department of Justice, the Commerce Department, all up in your business, and you will do.

I mean, what's in it for him not to do it? Listen, we understand, you know, with podcasts, the BBC don't want the Daily Mail coming after them. But if you're a big studio, you really don't want the president. The Department of Justice just goes through absolutely everything. No, it's going to be very difficult, but this is why they're kowtowing and they are afraid. But in other interesting distribution news, the movie we talked about recently, the Coppola Megalopolis movie, has got a distributor. I think Coppola said something like, I'm confident they will apply the same tender love and care given to Apocalypse Now, because Lionsgate distributed Apocalypse Now,

now in its 45th astounding year of revenue and appreciation. It's like, I'm not quite sure that this one's gonna go that same distance, however, and they've got to find quite odd things. They've got to find the live action actor, who at one point comes onto the stage in front of the screen and addresses the Adam Driver character for every screening. So yeah, in the screening there's literally an actor in the movie theatre or the cinema

we might call it. Yeah, who addresses the Adam Driver character through the screen. Maybe they will drop that element of the film, I don't know. Oh, I would find that awkward. Let us talk now about this AI movie, the movie that has been written by ChatGPT. It's called The Last Screenwriter and it was given a 17-word prompt, Chuck GPT, and it wrote the script in four days. And it's a story about a screenwriter called Jack who was celebrated but he's got a,

maybe he's got writer's block or something, and he gets in, he encounters a sort of state-of-the-art AI system that surpasses him and he uses it and he becomes extraordinarily successful but quite understandably he also has some sort of existential crisis. Now this has been performed by real actors, lit by real humans, all of that, but the script is by Chuck GPT and the director, who is a guy called Luisi, one word, Luisi, said that he really wanted people to see it and because he wanted to start a debate. And yet the Prince Charles Cinema in London was going to have the premiere on sort of

Sunday night a couple of weeks ago and Pulled it and there is no clear idea of when this will get a screening I would like to see it. I'd love to see it the Industrial Revolution or whatever took decades and decades to happen This is going to be incredibly quick and people keep saying yeah, you know, we should talk about it You're but you're talking about it like you've got time. Yeah, I think it's really good to show people a movie Say by the way, this is written by, and then you're forced to confront it. You may say, well, it's hopeless and it's not very good.

And it's like, don't worry, in three months it will be a lot better. Well, that's what this guy, Luis, has done. He's not just some hack who's going, I can't be bothered to make a film, I'll get AI to make it for me. So that's not what this story is. It's not a stunt.

Yes, it's a guy just going, you know what, this is what happens if you do this. The prompt that he gave was, write a plot to a feature length film where a screenwriter realises he is less good than artificial intelligence in writing. That was the thing he gave. And then four days later he gave him lots of other prompts as well as it came through and then literally just filmed exactly what came out of Jack GPT and the reviews people have seen it saying look it's you can sort of you know kind of bits of it hold together but it's it it's a nonsense and it keeps repeating itself and it's a mess and there's no structure and I think that's the point that I mean I've seen quite a lot of yes exactly but that's the point that Luisa is making is come along and watch

this because it is this is come along and watch this because this is where artificial intelligence is now. And talk now about it. Talk now about it because we can see that it's not right. We can see that it doesn't work, but we can see that there's human beings also behind various bits of it. But I think he's trying to do something interesting rather than... So do I. And I think we should see it. And I think it's a big mistake to have pulled it because that's another form of censorship. And obviously many real humans were involved in the making of this movie but I really think

people should talk about this stuff right now there is such a lot of weird displacement activity all studios just in the same way that news publishers should be working together I mean the New York Times is suing OpenAI about saying that you know you've crawled all over our content and you've done this and we can tell from our own AIs that your AIs are doing this. And that's how you have to set an AI to catch an AI. It's absolutely mad. There's a film. Yeah, exactly. Everyone should be banding together talking about it right now.

It is going to happen very quickly. You do not have decades to consider it and think, well, we've always embraced innovation in Hollywood. Well, that's the thing. So the movie is interesting because it is clearly AI currently is incapable of structuring a 90 minute two hour movie. Well I would argue that Guy Ritchie is as well. Like Guy Ritchie is real. So it's incapable of doing that at the moment as you say, it won't be for long. But it's already taken over large parts underneath the industry. You know the world of editing, the world of SFX, all this, there's lots of AI stuff. Toys R Us just released their first ever completely

AI advert. Did they? Which is, and again, they did it in a blaze of publicity. It's not one of those ones where they go, oh, let's just save a bit of money and do this by AI. They absolutely trumpeted it and say, this whole, this whole advert is done by AI. And you watch it, it's sort of, I mean, it is what it is. It's quite creepy. And obviously there have been a lot of human beings involved with it afterwards because AI cannot control everything. But it's got AI music, it's got AI voiceover, and the Chief Marketing Officer of Toys R Us. And this is the point that you're making,

which is already with us. She said, the train left the station and we just decided to be the first ones on it. Yeah. But if you don't think it'll come for chief marketing officers' jobs as well, this is the thing that all the studio executives, I think in many cases are thinking, well maybe we will use this a bit. It's like, oh, you don't think it's coming for your job as well? I mean, really, wake up, okay, wake up. Why do you think people are sticking their heads in the sand? Certainly people in creative industries are still have their heads in the sand.

Well, I think because they're really scared, rightly they don't know what to do also rightly, but I really think one word Sue. Sue sounds like a chatbot. Yes. Yes. Let's invent the chatbot who can just launch a massive class action for us. Just constantly does massive legal actions. Imagine if you had an AI lawyer to take on the AI industry, they wouldn't know what to do. That's a great idea. Also, it'd be cheaper. Hold on a minute. Hold on, just another one of your brilliant ideas given away for free. Shall we finish off with a lovely gentle topic, which is, last week on House of Games, we recorded our Christmas Day special and a lot of people were asking, when on earth are you recording

Christmas in June? And it leads into quite a lot of other interesting things about the scheduling of television shows. People, after the one thing you always get if you've got any sort of thing, the question is always, oh, when's this out? Or when can we see this? And the answer is always rather complicated and it's interesting why it's complicated. The Christmas one is easier. So literally the longest day of the year, June the 21st, we did our Christmas week of

House of Games people So I can't be very Christmasy and actually it's really rather delightfully Christmasy you go in everyone's in Christmas jumpers That's the tradition like like that's like everyone is fun. It's the law. Yeah, it's just the law All the music being played into the studio is Christmas songs Genuinely at lunchtime It was roast turkey. No, And yeah, yeah, roast turkey, because the caterers do the same thing. Everyone is like, oh, it's Christmas. And actually, it's amazing how just a bit of a shake in Stephens can make you feel.

Have a look again. It really, really is. We had a slight problem, because right at the end of the week, we had this big snowfall, right? So you have artificial snow, it's in enormous barrels and it's locked up in the lighting rig. In a studio they're very, very high and at the top there's a big grid where all the lights can kind of move and essentially to some of the lights they'd attach these big barrels of snow and we're literally, it's nine in the morning, we're about to go on set and

somebody, quite junior, but now being looked after by everybody, knocked the button with their elbow and the entire snowfall was unleashed on the studio at nine in the morning. What's supposed to be this great end to the Christmas week, the whole place. And I walk onto set and every single member of crew has a broom or a leaf blower and all they're doing is clearing up bits of snow and for the rest of that week of filming, some days were not Christmas at all, you were finding bits of snow absolutely every, oh can you imagine? Honestly those mistakes happen.

I couldn't really imagine myself doing that so yes, my deepest sympathies, I hope this person is now in TV witness protection. Exactly, they were, listen it Christmas, so they were forgiven immediately. But the reason you film Christmas at different times of the year is because television recording schedules and television transmission schedules are completely different to each other. So listen, we've got live TV shows and the show goes out when it goes out. But for something like House of Games, we record 100 episodes a year, so each year has 20 weeks of original shows. And I think there's then we have 20 weeks of repeats of like two series. Now you

record those when everyone is available and you record them all in one go. Because it's not just me and the four other people on set and the camera operators and what have you, there's a whole team of people putting that show together, writing all the questions, editing afterwards, all that stuff. And if you start doing it piecemeal, like we'll do, let's do a day here, let's do a day there, you've got to employ people, then stop employing people, but then employ them again.

So actually what you do, you do everything in a chunk, because not only is it economically the smartest way of doing it, just for people's contracts and their lives and their schedules, it's just you get every one that you want, you say, look, these are the four months that we're doing House of Games, you book them all in and you do it. Last week was the last bit of filming of House of Games for this year so we're not going back into studio this year. At any point we've knocked off all of our shows for the next year so that's when you have to do Christmas. Well I hope none of your contestants

is involved in a huge scandal in EG November. And then you'll start with someone on the Christmas special who's done something absolutely unspeakable. Don't that's absolutely, of course it's the nightmare. Anytime you ever do anything in advance, it's the complete nightmare. Cause almost all shows are done in advance. I've been in TV long enough to remember, we would always go, don't have questions about the Queen mother.

Right. That's not, that's not how long I've been around. Because you just think it's... I remember in COVID actually, this morning, I don't know why they did this, just say it's a pre-record. They had a Christmas Day episode and it was Phil and Holly at the time and they're all dressed up and it was, just say we've pre-recorded this, no one thinks you've come in on Christmas day. But then there were people walking past all the windows on the way to work. And also by that time, we were in something called a tier system. So much of COVID, I'm like, no, I can't remember that ever happened.

There was a tier system and then London was moved into tier one and that meant that you couldn't go to work or something like that. And it's like, so there were all these sorts of tells, but I mean, the main tell is no, of course they have, you know, this is, people used to think that Jules Holland on his New Year's show, that everyone, you know, all the celebrities just gave up their New Year's Eve to come and hang out with him. But no, but I have to say there is a rich tradition. You know, Merry Christmas, Merry Xmas, everybody, the Slade's now. That was recorded in New York in 1973 in the middle of a heat wave, absolutely high summer. They weren't known at all in New York and they were recording in this studio that was, apparently the acoustic was a bit odd or they didn't like the acoustic, so they wanted to

go out into the corridors of this thing which was mainly an office block, they had the sort of top floor but they went out, so there were the business people walking past wasn't he screaming, it's great, what on earth, but anyway and you know it's obviously been an absolute banker for them ever since. It's exactly that and the other interesting thing okay so obviously you record things in advance now with house of games we can play them out of order we can't play a week out of order, Monday has to be Tuesday has to flow Monday, Wednesday has to follow Tuesday but in terms of the episodes we can record them out of order we can a week out of order. Monday has to be Tuesday has to flow Monday, Wednesday has to follow Tuesday. But in terms of the episodes, we can call them out of order. We can play them out of order. Um, if you're doing something like countdown or pointless to be another one,

deal or no deal would be another one where it's returning contestants. And there's a narrative. Everything has to be done in the order that you do in it. Yes. Now countdown is always very good in that countdown knows it's on all year round. And so if you watch countdown, they will say, oh, it's the 3rd of August, it's you know National Raven week and they talk about Ravens, right, so they can absolutely root it in when the time and the place is. With this, funny enough with this House of Games Christmas week, because Christmas is

on a Wednesday the BBC are still not sure what days it's going to go out. So I'm presenting it, firstly I can't say it's Monday's House of Games, which I like to say, because it could go across a week, we don't absolutely know. But secondly, I don't know what day is Christmas Day. And I don't know if it's pre-Christmas or post-Christmas, anything like that. So that I hate, because the one thing I love

about presenting TV shows is thinking about what the viewers are doing when I'm presenting. Like where are they, are they with their family, are they sitting by themselves, and it's like they've been working, and they've made their tea, and they sitting by themselves? And it's like they've been working and this, you know, they've made their tea and this is the end of the day. I like to think of exactly how people are experiencing it.

And on this, you couldn't quite, because it might be pre-Christmas, it might be post. So there was a little kind of dancing around that. I was talking to Glenn Hugel, who used to produce Deal or No Deal. And Deal or No Deal was like countdown in that they knew what day of the week they were going to be on.

By the way, Deal or No Deal, we once recorded next Christmas's Christmas show last December. We were like a year ahead. And funny enough, John Richardson is on the Christmas House of Games, and he said they once did Cats Does Countdown Christmas in February, and he said that's the worst time to do it

because you think we literally just got over Christmas. So, you know, June is absolutely fine, February is terrible. So Deal or No Deal, you'd know where you were going and Deal or No Deal, I think we used to do 46 weeks worth of a year. So there'd always be six weeks off in the middle where they various things repeats or something else or whatever. And Jay Hunt, who was the head of Channel 4 back then, who was brilliant in every way, she during one of these six, the first week of the six week hiatus, deal on a deal was so huge then. Jay came in and looked at the figures for the previous week in terms of the overall share and go why are we down a whole point in overall share?

Someone goes well that's literally just cause Deal on No Deal is off. And she goes, well, then put it back on. And they're like, okay, well, we'll put it back on. So they ring Glen and they say, yeah, okay. Well, Jay wants Deal on No Deal to come back on for six weeks. And Glen's like, okay, very happy to do that. Just so long as she knows that does mean like our Christmas episodes will be going out in the middle of December, their date stamped.

And that's why they then started doing celebrity deal On no deal so they could have six weeks. It could stick in the middle. Yeah, exactly Because they said I'm not gonna have another day when did or no deal is not on this channel And so they had to have this emergency stopgap, you know when you when you write a book So I was I was I look back over my um notes this morning is for came in The first draft, which is not a million miles from the last draft, of Thursday Murder Club was delivered in March 2019.

I think the final draft was April 2019, and it didn't come out till September 2020. So books have a lead time of like over a year because of marketing and they want to get it out to people and they you know All that kind of stuff my books now have a lead time about two months because I'm like that's easier But books have an incredibly long lead time movies have an incredibly long lead time So the Thursday Murder Club movie which they started filming last week and you know TV shows, you know, unless it's Christmas You really never know what they're gonna come on which brings us back to why why people love podcasts so much, which is, when's the podcast out? You go, well, now.

Let's do the show right here. It's out right now. But if your favourite celebrity ever says they're on the show and you ask them when's it coming out, just so you know, they don't know. But also Merry Christmas everybody. And Merry Christmas one and all. And on that note. No, and we had a dog in the studio. Oh, lovely. Oh my God, which is always the best thing you could ever have on a TV show. We had the cutest dog

but of course it took the longest to record of absolutely anything we needed in the pack shop for the prizes because one of the prizes was a dog jumper and literally about half an hour of getting this dog to do exactly the right thing but it was an absolute cutie called Sadie. Any recommendations this week? I am very much enjoying something called Becoming Karl Lagerfeld, which is on Disney Plus, about the origin story of Karl Lagerfeld. He ended up being the chief designer at Chanel and is obviously just quite a larger than life figure. And he's played absolutely brilliantly by this guy called Daniel Bruhl, who's a wonderful actor, who's in the show that I've been doing, the franchise, who's

absolutely terrific and a really great person. And he does it brilliantly. And it is very extra. I would, I suggest you enjoy it. Well, I've been up in Stratford recently for Ingrid's play Kyoto, which I don't think you get tickets for now, but I just, that is unbelievable and I sometimes go at the end and watch the standing ovations, like people are going crazy and crying, it's brilliant, but I think it will transfer. But I also want to recommend All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker. He's British, but it's set sort of in America, serial killer-y, love story, missing person sort of thing, but he's such a brilliant writer. His

previous book was also extraordinary. And we will link to those in the newsletter if you want to sign up for that just a reminder it's therestisentertainment.com if you go there you will find our recommendations and so on and can sign up for the newsletter. Yes, there's going to be lots of other fun things coming to the newsletter as well isn't there? There are indeed. Is that us done? I think it is. Thursday though. Please join us for the Questions edition on Thursday. Lovely, see you on Thursday. See you Thursday.