The Rest Is Entertainment - What we'll be glued to in 2024 and why do some shows never return to our screens?

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Welcome to the first episode of The Rest Is Entertainment of 2024. Richard and Marina give their rundown of what their excited by in the year ahead across TV, movies, books and theatre. Richard also explains why longstanding titles such as A Question of Sport get cancelled, plus he lets us in on how the writing of his new book is coming along. Twitter: @restisents Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to the first episode of 2024 of The at Best Western. Hello and welcome to the first episode of 2024 of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Happy New Year, everybody. Happy New Year. May it be a wonderful one for all of you. Happy New Year, Marina. And to you, Richard. We have an exciting journey ahead of us this year. Oh my goodness, can you imagine? Where are we going to go? Where aren't we going to go?

Where aren't we going to go? I was thinking when you talked about Star Wars Christmas in the Boxing Day episode. It's a very good episode if you haven't heard it. I'd really like to be a Wookiee. Yes. I think maybe that's what 2024 holds for me. I've got the height for it. And, you know, who knows? You can wail incomprehensibly. Oh, I can wail incomprehensibly.

If you're looking for someone to wail incomprehensibly, it's me or Bradley Walsh. But somehow still be very appealing. Is he six foot seven? I don't think so. Now, today we are going to talk about things that we have loved over the last year, but also that we are very much looking forward to in 2024. Yes, I thought we might start with television because there's actually you know the first week of any new year there's an awful lot of new stuff that comes out. Belter after

belter. Banger after banger. No one's going out no one can afford to go out and everyone is sat down waiting for the streamers and the channels to unleash their best fare. I once did a show on Radio 2 and they said you can't describe a song as a banger because the bosses at Radio 2 don't like it. Really? Yeah, I had a feature called Unexploded Bangers, which was like a song that should have been a massive hit. Yes. And they said, no, you can't call anything

a banger. It's banned on Radio 2, the word banger. They did it very seriously. Right, well, quite obviously, the thing I'm most immediately looking forward to is Traitors. Season 2. UK and US. Right. Well, quite obviously, the thing I'm most immediately looking forward to is Traitors. Oh, I mean. Season two. Wow. UK and US.

Yeah. Traitors is the format where 12-ish non-celebrities in the UK version are sequestered to a Scottish castle where they must backstab and betray each other, form alliances and ultimately ultimately kind of scheme and double-cross their way to the prize. Some of them are traitors and some of them are the faithful, and they have to do a few tasks, and then they have to sit around this round table at the end of every episode, which is by far the best thing of it. That's amazing. Unpick those alliances, suspect each other, point the finger, indulge in incredible herd behaviour,

and it's an unbelievably brilliant format it's i was talking to the exec producer of it recently and we're talking about the first series and i was saying exactly that the bit at the end when they're around the table is so compelling when you can tell are they because we at home know who the traitors are which is the absolute genius of the format so you know you're rooting for them or not rooting for them. And you know if the faithfuls are making a mistake or if they're not making a mistake. And so that roundtable can be incredibly compelling. And he said, look, the channel was slightly worried that that would be boring television.

So we put quite a lot of the, you know, the challenges in and, you know, the kind of tests they do. And actually, I think they worked out in that first series that that is incredible television. It's so well cast, again, because it's not... We'll talk about the American one in a moment, but the British one is people that you genuinely can root for. They're not celebrities at all. They actually cast... I remember finding out from somebody who was also involved in it

that they cast people who play a lot of those kind of strategy games. They maybe, just for fun, they do escape rooms. They do sort of tactical games. So they're kind of well-versed in the double-dealing and skull-duggery and all those sort of things. They need to be a good contestant on that show. So they are highly watchable and they understand the game, which sounds really obvious, but it's so important it's so important as a digression

i'm terrible at escape rooms i always think i'll be good at them i always think i'll be good at poker i'm terrible at that but anyway i can't do either of those things but no it's all about tactics and gameplay but human beings as well because you get these alliances formed and if you're a traitor you have to form an alliance with faithfuls. And people get very, very close. And you sort of know at some point that they're going to have to betray somebody else. Oh my God, I've watched all the show.

They then did a US version of The Traitors, which I think is less successful because it mixes celebrities and civilians. And when I say celebrities, people who've mainly been on other reality formats. But I just didn't understand the point of that. And I didn't like that. I don't know whether Americans feel like you have to have some people you've seen before. I think it's much more fun if you don't know who any of these people are. Although John Bercow, former Speaker of the

House of Commons, will be entering the US version of this show. Exactly that, which will be fascinating. I don't mind the American one, because as you say, they're people from American reality shows, but I don't know who they are um so there was a woman last year from below deck who was so brilliant she was called kate she was one of the all-time reality tv monsters she was amazing that's that's a tough field yeah isn't it just and there's lots of real housewives on this show listen i get it and it's you know it's a different thing we've said before on this podcast, the absolute sine qua non of Traitors

is the Australian Traitors season one. But I think they've cancelled Australian Traitors. Why? I think it wasn't doing great business. Oh, that's ridiculous. Okay, well, they certainly haven't cancelled Traitors in the UK because it was an unbelievable hit last year. And people sort of caught on and then they caught up

on Catch Up and it sort of became a hit right by and then they caught up on catch up and it sort of became a hit right by the end and it's presented by the absolutely wonderful Claudia Winkleman who does a superb job on it so that is something I'm looking forward to yeah interestingly by the way it's that thing of the overnights it used to rule television which is the and actually the overnights were terrible for the traders at first it looked like it was a flop but absolutely on catch up and on iPlay, just everybody started watching it. People were watching it like, as a box set, they were watching it like a succession.

That's something I'd like to see next year is not lots of misreporting about ratings because reporters have not worked out that catch-up is something different to the overnights. So they sometimes will look at a TV show and say, oh, this did much worse than last year. But in fact, it's all being made up on catch-up. So that can be quite deceptive.

Catch-up's obviously bigger and bigger all the time. It's all catch-up these days, isn't it? It's all catch-up. It's all catch-up. So yeah, that is starting this week. Also starting this week on BBC One, Gladiators is back. So Gladiators is back.

Hosted by Bradley Walsh and his son Barney. They're the hosts of a whole new group of gladiators. Dan Baldwin, the producer, was saying that they had to stop filming the first episode because one woman got so excited when the gladiators came out, she went into labour. Her waters broke, she had to be rushed to hospital. I thought she was in the audience. No, she was one of the gladiators. Oh, don't be ridiculous.

No, she was in the audience. She was in the audience. I thought she was one of the gladiators. Oh, don't be ridiculous. No, she was in the audience. She was in the audience. She was absolutely fine. A bonnie baby child. I was going to say bonnie baby boy, then I realised I hadn't been given that information. Has it been given a gladiator style name, I wonder? Yes, it's called Blaze. It's called Blaze. It's lovely, isn't it? They got some

Olympians as the gladiators. Harry Akin's Arita is one of the fastest runners we've ever had in the UK gold medalist. He's nitro. Montel Douglas, who has been a winter Olympian and summer Olympian, is a sprinter and bobslayer. She's fire. There is a guy on it who is one of Britain's tallest bodybuilders.

And he's called Giant. And he is two inches shorter than me. So come on, guys. Giant is a bit of a... I think that's a bit of a phoned in name but I'll wait to be persuaded when I'm watching this one. Yeah, he might as well be called Tall. I don't know what he should be called. Wookie. Don't you think? It's going to be me and

Giant as Wookies in the next Star Wars film. They don't really do Star Wars films now, do they? There's like a million Star Wars things. I'd be a Wookie but in something that no one's ever going to watch on Disney. Speaking of things that will perform well, curb your enthusiasm. The final season.

Final season. Larry David's done a really funny press release saying I just want to go back to being a lovely person and not this Larry David character. You can find me at Doctors Without Borders. Well, I mean obviously that has changed so much TV comedy. I will be bereft beyond belief when that disappears.

But we've got one more season to go. That sort of spring that's coming out. But also season four of Hacks. Ah, yes. Which I absolutely loved. Another HBO classic. Another HBO classic. So loads of good telly coming up this year, I'd say.

Also, here's an interesting one. This week, Jeopardy starts on ITV. Daytime Jeopardy. So Jeopardy's pretty much the biggest format ever in the States. It's run for 48 years or something ridiculous. Quiz format. Quiz format, yeah. And

they've tried it over here a few times. It hasn't worked. But this time, they've got Stephen Fry hosting it in daytime. He said that he loved Jeopardy! And he just wrote a note to his agent saying, why doesn't someone do Jeopardy! in the UK? And two days later his agent said, oh yeah, just talk to ITV.

They said they'd love you to do it. You're doing Jeopardy! in the UK. And he's like, oh, OK. That's interesting. But if anyone can make that show a hit, I suspect it's Stephen Fry but it's one of those shows where Pointless is the same

Pointless doesn't really work anywhere else apart from the UK so it's just something about the genesis of it and the you know where it is

in the schedule and that sort of thing and Jeopardy is the same it's not like a Rolls Royce format but if you give it to a great presenter which Stephen Fry is

maybe ITV will have a big hit on the side I'm certainly very much looking forward to it. That's a show I would do the celebrity version of. Oh, yeah, definitely. Absolutely, definitely. I've got a drama, which it will be funny as well, a drama with jokes, which is The Regime,

which is an HBO thing, which is written by a guy called Will Tracy, who's one of the senior writers on Succession. He also wrote The Menu, the movie The Menu. Oh, I like The Menu. Yeah, it's fantastic. It's directed by Stephen Frears, the legend, and it stars Kate Winslet as the dictator

in a fictional Eastern European republic, and I think it will be absolutely... It's a limited series, so it'll be, I think, it's six one hours, and I think that will be really exceptional. Is it called again? The Regime. The Regime, with Kate Winslet and me as a wookiee.

And you as a Wookiee. And by the way, I wanted to do my favourite things of 2023. You're less interested in ranking things, but I want to say my favourite television show of 2023, which we've not talked about before, was Poker Face. So if anybody is a fan of Columbo, you've got 10 episodes of this amazing thing with Natasha Lyonne.

It's sort of an homage to Columbo and the Littlest Hobo, with like kind of a villain of the week. But it's so beautifully done. It even has the same font as Columbo. So my favourite TV show of 2023 was Poker Face. Do you have one? You're not going to do one, are you? You refuse to set things against each other.

No, I don't like ranking things. I feel like there's something quite sort of male about it. No offence to anybody, but I sort of feel, why can't they all be... There's lots of things I absolutely loved. Yeah. And I mean, obviously, I loved Succession. I thought that was quite extraordinary.

Two of the greatest episodes of television that I've seen written with a funeral and the... People love the final episode, but I think the episode where Logan died was extraordinary. But there were so many things. I loved Nathan Fielder. I loved Nathan For You, which I only discovered this year, which I strongly recommend people go into on,

you can find it, I think, on Amazon Prime in the UK. There were so many great shows, so I don't particularly want to rank them all. One thing I will say is moving on to movies, I think there are lots of fun things coming. I obviously, Ryan Gosling in The Fall Guy, I will be there for that one. Ah, yeah, that's going to be a cracker.

There's a welcome absence of Marvel releases, from my point of view, even though I'm writing a show about superhero franchises, something that I have seen an advanced screening of, and which is absolutely incredible, which is comes out in February is a movie called the zone of interest. Oh, I'm looking forward to it.

It is extraordinary. This is directed by Jonathan Glazer. Who's actually amazing person. He's only made four movies in the last 20-something years, which are sexy beasts. They're all completely different, by the way. Birth, Under the Skin, and now this. And this is about a couple who have a house that they absolutely adore. She particularly loves this house.

And she's really nothing. She's a huge home improver his job is he is the camp commandant of Auschwitz and the garden wall in this garden that she's built and it's made kind of like some idyllic paradise for the third children the wall is on the other side of the wall is the Auschwitz camp it is absolutely extraordinary as a film this I can't recommend enough I would like to talk about it more in the week of release because there's another interesting movie which

is about the Holocaust which comes out similar time and I think it's really worth talking about those together so we will try and do that but that's the zone of interest

and that's based on Martin Amis' novel which is also it's very loosely based on it that's a wonderful novel yeah it is

I'm over to you now I'm looking forward there's lots of sequels this year so there is a Marvel thing which is Deadpool 3, of course. Oh, yes, of course. Beverly Hills Cop is coming back on Netflix.

Be still my beating heart. The gerontocracy is real. I mean, is he 62 now, Eddie Murphy? Yeah, he can still be a cop. Really? I thought you would have retired on police pension after three years on sick. No, because he loves the work.

You know, he loves catching bad guys. Okay, I'll watch it, of course. Yeah, of course you'll watch it. But Gladiator 2 is coming out, which has had a very interesting... So not Gladiators, Gladiator. So after the original one, they were immediately going to do a sequel, I think.

I think it slightly fell apart because Russell Crowe wanted to be in it like in the sort of dream sequence and Ridley Scott slightly didn't want him to be in it. So it slightly faltered. Over the years all sorts of people have worked on scripts for it. Nick Cave worked on a script

he did a draft of the script. And his draft it was called Christ Killer and it was set in Roman times but then it was called Christ Killer and it was set in Roman times but then it was also set in World War II and Vietnam and in present day where someone was a member of the Pentagon.

It did not get made but it sounds like, honestly I bet they probably just asked him to do a draft because they thought what's he going to come up with? I bet they were delighted to read it. Great unproduced scripts of our time. But, yeah, it's not going to be called Christkiller. And it's about Lucius from the original one,

who was the child in the original one, played, of course, by Paul Mescal, as everything is. If it hasn't got Paul Mescal in, I'm not watching it. Exactly. And that's lucky, because he's in everything. And I think Paramount loved him already from Normal People and stuff, but they went to see him in Streetcar Named Desire, and they're quoted as saying,

when we heard all the whoops when he took his top off, we knew he was the man for Gladiator. So Paul Mescal is in it. But, you know, I think it's going to be great. Ridley Scott's not going to let us down. It's got an amazing cast. Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal is in it, Connie Nielsen, Derek Jacoby's coming back.

No Russell Crowe, of course. But yeah, I'm very much looking forward to Gladiator 2. We'll talk about it when it comes out. Okay, and Drive Away Dolls, that's Ethan Coen, not the Coen Brothers, but that sounds really fun and I'm really looking forward to it. It sounds like

a real Coen Brothers movie, even though it's not the two of them. So Drive Away Dolls, I think will be fun and my favorite film of 2023 uh was rye lane have you seen it which is the sort of rom-com set in peckham 90 minutes full of jokes brilliantly directed looks beautiful and it's just one of those rare british movies that is just that charms absolutely everybody rye lane r y R-Y-E Lane. Do you have a favourite film? You're not going to rank anything. I'll tell you what, I have a favourite star of 2023,

which is Margot Robbie, because she promoted that Barbie movie. It's sort of amazing, the whole story of the Barbie movie. They didn't want anyone to know the story of the movie. They really were careful that no one found out that it had this kind of feminist text because they thought in our culture war age, it would just get completely piled on by everyone from Fox News to everyone beforehand. So the stuff that happened, the leaks of the stuff,

which was deliberate when you saw them kind of in their funny outfits roller skating and everyone's like, oh, what is this crazy movie? They look absolutely ridiculous. And then it was such a kind of like stealth putting through and then it came out but also because she did not just drag that movie over the one billion dollar mark she dragged Christopher Nolan's because movie Oppenheimer which I'm sorry I know it's Christopher Nolan but the fact that it sprung up completely natively on Twitter people calling it Barbenheimer and they and they went went on all social media and they thought they had to see both

where they couldn't be more different. She single-handedly, in my view, dragged that movie over the line as well. So hats off to you Margot Robbie. You are a true star. Yeah, she's essentially responsible for over $2 billion worth of box office. Isn't that amazing? That's why it's hard to be PR sometimes because that is

not something you would ever think of. You wouldn't go, I'll tell you what we'll do with Oppenheimer. Why don't we do a portmanteau word with Barbie and I think that's going to do good business for us. If you pitch that in a room, people would think you're an absolute lunatic. But it seemed to work. I presume there'll be a Barbie 2 in the...

Oh God, well, we've talked about toy movies. There's every toy movie. Yes, everybody's going to get a spin-off. Oppenheimer 2? Yeah, love the first one. Let's take a a little break probably an advert for Oppenheimer 2 yeah what day of the week do you look forward to most well it should be Wednesday Wednesday why you wonder Whopper Wednesday of course when you can get a great deal on a Whopper Wednesday, of course. When you can get a great deal on a whopper. Flame grilled and made your way.

And you won't want to miss it. So make every Wednesday a Whopper Wednesday. Only at Burger King, where you rule. Welcome back. Thank you. You're most welcome, Richard. As you remember, we were discussing our recommendations for 2024 and looking back a little at 2023.

Yes, it's sort of, we haven't quite worked out the format. No. But I think it's okay. Yeah. I can tell you some, let me tell you that the theatre, I'm giving you two things I'm looking forward to very much in the theatre. The first one, Armando Iannucci is doing Doctor Strangelove on stage. Steve Coogan is going to star.

It's written with Sean Foley, who's absolutely a most wonderful person. You might remember the play what I wrote. He was one of the two guys in that, and I used to see these guys right back from when they did shows in Edinburgh. I remember one about two guys who fall down the back of the sofa and it was called Stop Calling Me Vernon and it was absolutely wonderful. Anyway, they are doing Doctor Strangelove on the London stage

which I think will be a giant event and very funny and dark and brilliant. So that's one of mine. I don't know about theatre, just because of the leg room. Okay, I know what you mean. I like the ice cream. Yeah, very good. Don't get me wrong,. I like the ice cream. Yeah, very good. Don't get me wrong, I really like the ice cream. We haven't seen the Layman Trilogy. That's got two intervals.

It is long. Yeah, it's long, but two ice creams. Two ice creams. Speaking of which... I called it a two ice cream play. Directed by Sam Mendes, the Layman Trilogy. This one is also going to be directed by Sam Mendes. It's called The Hills of California, and it's Jez Butterworth, who did Jerusalem,

and who is, and actually they have worked together on The Ferryman before, but he, I'm really looking forward to that. I think that's going to be a big, big event. I might be doing a little theatre thing this year. Might you? Yeah, might be. Please tell us.

Well, it's completely secret. Are you allowed to say anything? No, but I tell you now, there'll be Legroom. Yeah. It's called Ice Cream and Legroom. Ice Cream and Legroom, yeah. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Myself and another writer, we had a tour of one of the London theatres.

And you know when you go to a nightclub during the day, it's the most depressing place in the world. But a theatre during the day is kind of magical. They should do tours. They're so beautiful. The fact that they haven't changed for so long and they've got all the little boxes under the stage. I've done one

myself and I've done a tour of it and it really is incredible. I think they should, yeah, right, I think they should do tours of it. It's a lot more interesting than plenty of stately homes I've ever been to. And because we were talking about doing something possibly, they sort of had to show us everything. So I even asked where the ice creams are kept and they showed me. There's like a big trunk full of ice creams just off the bar there's

a locked room uh with a code they let us in so that's my theater tip for this year is go to something that does mint choc chip it's interesting actually with theater because regional theater we just come off the uh the sort of season of pantomime. And pantomime is where regional theatre makes almost all of its money. You can make like kind of 25% of your money in three weeks. So if you haven't been to your local pantomime, we've still got about three or four days left. Really worth doing. Supports loads of local people, loads of local actors,

loads of local kind of craftspeople, and really supports your local theatre. And it's very hard to explain to people, though, from other countries. An American screenwriter was saying to me, sorry, Pantomime, what is it? Is it miming? And I was like, oh, I mean, I don't know where I start with this one. And it's a really old sort of British tradition. I was reading something from absolutely ages ago.

It was a critic in the Daily Star in 1900 said, only a great nation could have done such a thing as invent Panto. Only an undisciplined nation would have done it. Wow. That pretty much sums it up. Yeah, I mean, a hundred years of just thinking, what on earth is this that I'm watching? I always try and see who's in Panto because I find it interesting.

You can make quite a lot of money in Panto. If you're one of the big names, you can make a quarter of a million for three weeks and the big companies that run it make and they make absolutely enormous amounts of money and you sort of need to have a selection of the five of the following people an actor possibly i'll call it relapsing a puppet not in this age of CGI world fun fur some original fun fur sadly you have to have

the puppeteer as well they're always lovely people I saw Basil Brush in two separate pantomimes this year how's he doing it? how does that work?

how is he doing? how is Brush doing? if anyone can do it Brush can I guess someone's got two hands one of my favourite ones was when

Linda Lissardi a former page three girl who's made that transition from playing Cinderella to the Wicked Queen. We all have to do that in our life as women. And then you give an interview to the local paper saying, it's so much more fun playing a baddie. Anyhow, she was once late for a panto and she actually rang 999 and said, can I use the hard shoulder?

And obviously emergency services weren't thrilled about this. And they asked the panto for a comment who said something like, Miss Lusardi has no comment to me, which is really like such exquisite delicacy. But anyway, in the end, Miss Lusardi did have a comment to make. And she just said, I was brought up to believe, that is always the deadly, if any celebrity starts anything with, I was brought up to believe, you know,

they're A, justifying something really bad, and B, you're not going to want to go there, that the emergency services were here to help. I did not want to disappoint the people who turned out and I'm very surprised that they wanted to do so. You know, it was absolutely brilliant. Yeah. She's a pro Lusardi. Absolute pro. Yeah. Pro something. I think she's been on Pointless Celebrities with us, do a Panto special. And I obviously Lusardi with her husband, Sam Kane. They're always there.

Podium 2. Like, absolutely doing the business. You also need someone in Panto who can be prefaced with the phrase, the hilarious. Yes, exactly. And you've got to have a local radio or a local TV presenter. And those always get the biggest laughs. They're the biggest thing.

A million percent the biggest names in any Panto. You can have, you know, Katie Price is doing panto in Liverpool, right? But Justin Fletcher, Mr. Tumble, is doing panto in Reading. And that's a bigger name for kids. That is massive. But the local radio presenters, people go absolutely wild for them. And you've got some Aussie soap star chewing a wasp because she's not getting all the big laughs.

In Bristol this year, David Suchet is in panto with Faye Tozer from Steps. Well, I mean, that's a combination. But this is the big hook-off, you see. He's Captain Hook. Boy George, also Hook, Birmingham. Sean Williamson, the legend. I love Sean.

Yeah, Portsmouth. Jennifer Saunders is Hook at the Palladium in London. Yeah, with Judy and Clary. Yeah, that's a highly, highly competitive role this year. Can I test it? I know we weren't really going to talk about Pantanova.

We'll get back to our recommendations for 2024. I have a quiz question for you. In real, Jack and the Beanstalk, Chico headlining, of course he's headlining. Of course he is. I'm guessing they do Chico Time.

I'm guessing, halfway up the beanstalk. But one of the co-stars, can you tell me who this is? Arthur Bostrom. That's a great question. It's not an American, which was considered classy to have for a while. Who is Arthur Bostrom? Arthur Bostrom is the policeman

dressed as a gendarme in Allo, Allo. I mean, this is the original long tail. He's in Pinter Mame in Rull. But that's cool, isn't it? I bet he's good as well. He'll be brilliant. I bet he knows his business.

Him and Chico together? Yes, please. I bet he calls him Choco. For a while, they had big American stars would come over. And Hasselhoff would do it and he'd get about a million a week but that's kind of tapered off they don't make the money that they used to but it was really resourceful in the pandemic they did like drive-in ones and it was written and put them online it was it's kind of like a triumph a story of hope over

experience and even though we've talked about big salaries for people to get this it's a great money spinner for local theatres. They are under pressure, local theatres. So it is such a brilliant thing to go and do. My mum never took us to a panto when we were kids. No, we didn't go to them either and I always wanted to. I went to one. I was obsessed with going.

But now, of course, you watch me go, oh, I see why you didn't want to take me to a panto. I absolutely get that. But, oh, my God god i was absolutely fuming for many many years i never went to a panto and now my kids are too old yeah grandkids yeah you'll be forcing them along yeah i need chico and arthur bostrom to stick around long enough for my grand kids to 40 youtubers i'll just be just the tiktok stars 40 youtubers and the beanstalk okay can we please return to 2024 recommendations?

I've got a book which I am absolutely dying for. It's called Caledonian Road. It's by Andrew O'Hagan. Andrew O'Hagan is already a brilliant novelist and he was most recently adapted for the BBC Mayflies. But this is a real kind of big British social novel. One man's epic fall from grace in contemporary London and all the different currents of the city and of modern life.

Look at the joy on your face. It's already been optioned and it's going to be made into a TV series. It's going to be huge. And I really, I think this is going to be an extraordinary book. He's absolutely brilliant. One of the things you get as a novelist is people send you novels early, just if you'll blurb on them. people send you novels early just if you're blurb on them and you know

sometimes I do but I read one at the end of last year which I just thought was magnificent it's a debut by a guy called Johnny Sweet who was an actor and comic and writer and it's sort of like Donna Tartt meets P.G. Woodhouse Oh my god yes please. It's just an amazing

kind of murder mystery. And his writing is just exquisite. It's his first book. I think it's going to be absolutely massive. It's called The Kellaby Code. I think it's out in the spring, but it's The Kellaby Code. And if you pre-order things,

this is what people always go, why do you need pre-order? When it comes out, it's really great for debut authors because the more you pre-order, the more bookshops and it counts in the first week of sale for them and if they get on any form of chart it makes such a difference to the success of the book so it's always worth pre-ordering any way you like um although you

know we should always say preferably from an independent bookshop exactly that we said before bookshop.org yeah you can get from any local uh bookshop but yeah, The Kellaby Code. It's so funny, but also dark. But also it's really, really, really terrific. I think it's going to be huge. Do you have a book coming out this year? Yes, I do. When I say that, I've done the first four Thursday Murder Club books. And so next year I'm doing a new series.

So I'm writing it at the moment. And is it, ask me if it's going well? Is it going well, Richard? Not great. But it never is at this stage. So yeah, it's a brand new series with a brand new detective duo. It's quite a fun thing for me to do.

I'm going to bring back the Thursday Murder Club. They're coming back. But it's quite nice having done four to strike out and do something different. But at this stage, where it's about 25,000, 30,000 words, it's so painful.

It's so difficult. Books are so long. It's so crazy. Is it the first thing you think of in the morning and the last thing at night? Some people say that. Sometimes. Right, now it is.

For the last month or so, I've been kind of going, oh, it's fine. In a dogfight with it. Yeah, exactly. But now I'm starting to panic, which is the only way I can really write properly. But you know that thing with homework, where you do it the night before, it's due in,

which of course I've always done my whole life. And with a book, the night before is sort of five months away. So I'm just getting to the stage now where it's December. I've got to give it in in May. I've got to give it in. Yeah, there we go. So I'm at the stage now where i'm thinking if i don't start doing 1500 words a day every day from now then i'm in real trouble

listen i'm trusting the process and it's fun and there's fun characters it's just i've no idea what they're going to do at the moment but uh there's murders i have a rough idea who did the murder and yeah it's coming out, it'll be September unless I don't deliver it me and the listeners will be helping you through now music, I am really big into this Colombian American pop princess

really, Carly Uchis, sorry, Carly Uchis and she's a little stealth diva in waiting and she's not really even in waiting anymore, she's got a stealth diva in waiting. She's not really even in waiting anymore. She's got a new album out which I think is either the very end of January or the start of February and she's a joy. Get into her

hilarious videos. I am a fan. If I was choosing to spell that name. K-A-L-I, Carly Uchis, which is U-C-H-I-S I believe okay gotcha

her fans call her themselves the Coochies oh that's nice of course my favourite album last year I think was the Mitski album if you don't know

I love that but the thing I'm looking forward to and again I'm afraid is family business is Suede and the Manic Street Preachers are touring together

June, July I think possibly is sold out everywhere they may add dates but Suede and the manics they tour together in america because neither of them had really quite ever made it in america they're both massive everywhere in the world and so you know they can go tour wherever they want they're

going to tour the far east and europe and all that but america they both almost sort of made it and so they teamed up and then you know they had this great tour that everyone loved but they got on so well they loved each other's company so much that now they're doing this big tour of the UK and sort of taking it in turns to headline. So the Mannix have decided they're going to headline one of the Welsh gigs. Fair enough. Suede are doing Sussex. Yeah, of course.

But it's, yeah, I think it's going to be an absolute cracker. But it's lovely because it comes from them just really getting on with each other, which is such a nice thing when they've been in the business for that long, just a group of people who just really get each other. So does your brother have a tour and a book and everything this year? Oh, yeah. My brother's super productive. Yeah, he is.

I mean, he's really productive, my brother. But my brother. Oh, yeah, not like you. I mean, you're such a slouch. My brother writes books as well. So books have to be about 90,000 words. Yeah. My last book was 90,004 words long.

Okay. Because that's how I operate. My brother's writing his new book. His last book, Ghost Theater, is out now. And he's up to about 175,000 words. I think, man, why do you do this to yourself? But he's got a work ethic. He loves it.

He's such a wonderful writer. But yeah, then he's off on tour around the world and doing festivals everywhere and what have you but he's uh he seems happy you know he's my older brother so i like he's on a pedestal yes he can do absolutely and for all of us okay just before we finish richard you have threatened to tell us about things that won't be returning in 2024 cancelled shows yes why certain shows are cancelled and certain shows aren't cancelled. So Question Sport was cancelled at the end of last year, as was Doctors.

And the truth of it is, a TV programme used to just have to get ratings on a particular day. So Question Sport would get 10 million and that's absolutely fine and Doctors would do the business that it did. But everything now has to pay its way in three different ways.

It has to pay its way in ratings, then it has to pay its way in repeatability and then it has to pay its way in three different ways it has to pay its way in ratings then it has to pay its way in repeatability and then it has to pay its way in international sales so question of sport you cannot repeat because it's sort of topical yeah it's the truth and you can't set it abroad because it's there's there's not enough there to sort of catch hold of so the second that question the sport you know starts dipping down to two million viewers or something it has to go whereas you know if you're a show like What I Lie To You that we've talked about before, What I Lie To You, you can sell everywhere in the world. You can watch a 10-year-old episode of What I Lie To You.

You know, you can sell the format. So it happens also to do rather good ratings, What I Lie To You. But even if it wasn't, even if it was doing lower ratings, it would come back. So Doctors and Father Brown, which are daytime shows. So Doctors, again, it's not really going to sell anywhere else because it's very, very British. It's a shame because so many British actors got their amazing start on that

and it is such a proving ground. Exactly right. It may seem to lots of people like, what is this ridiculous show I've never heard of that I would never watch? Well, it's where a lot of people cut their teeth and learned how to basically be a TV actor. Yeah. Directors as well, producers, all of that. It was a wonder. But, you know, it's one of lot of people cut their teeth and learn how to basically be a TV actor. Yeah. Directors as well, producers, all of that.

It was a wonder. But, you know, it's one of those things, you know, the BBC has an awful lot less money than it used to have. So some stuff has to go. Everything has to sing for its supper now. So Father Brown, which is in daytime, sells everywhere in the world. And because it's in the 50s, you can, again, you can watch an episode from 10 years ago in a way you can't watch an episode of Doctors from 10 years ago. So it's repeatable everywhere. So that's the thing, you know,

shows have to earn their way in three different ways now. Ratings, which used to be the only thing, international sales, and also that thing of being repeatable. You know, if you look at all of the cable channels, you know, they're showing stuff back to, you know, they even show pointlesses and stuff like that on cable channels.

But if you can't do that, you know, it's why Mock the Week was cancelled. Because it's expensive, because you're doing one a week. And the most expensive thing in a TV show is the studio. Yeah. And if you're only doing one show in the studio, that's like you're paying for a whole day. And you're only getting one show out of it. And it's very, very difficult to repeat it anywhere, because there's nothing worse than watching a six year old mock the week and it's very, very difficult to repeat it anywhere because there's nothing worse than watching a six-year-old mock the week and it's pre-Brexit and everyone's furious at Nick Clegg. It's too bizarre. So yeah, that's why Question of Sport and Doctors are going and other shows are continuing. But expect to see an awful lot more of that in 2024.

The BBC has pretty much run out of money. All those mid-level programs are sort of done. The shows they do have have been going for years and years and years. So Bargain Hunt has been going for 23 years. Homes Under the Hammer, 20 years. Escape to the Country, 20 years. Come Dying With Me, which you just mentioned, is 18 years. Those are the shows that are going to keep going

because they're building a library there. And new shows, it's too expensive to launch new things with the money they've got so we're going to have the same old shows for quite a long time and those more topical shows will be dropping by the wayside and actually even on um the sort of big us shows and you're in streaming shows i think they thought but that before we went into the writers and the actors' strike, this is peak TV, there were 600 scripted shows. And most people I speak to in the industry think it will come now down to 300. So that is half as many.

So your era of not being able to watch all the TV in a million miles is going away. And I think we're going to see such a big correction on that. And the interesting thing that all the networks and the streamers are all asking for is what they call hard comedy. And what they mean by that is not tough comedy. They mean by absolute, just straight down the line comedy. Friends, The Office, just these big shows, you know, two and a half men that sustained them for years,

Big Bang Theory. They need to get those shows back, these absolute massive barnstorming comedy shows, which no one's wanted to write for years. There was a good exec who said, there was a good agent who said, all of my writers, they don't want to write Two and a Half Men, they want to write Barry. But he said, you know who watches Barry? No one. You know, so it's that. They've got to get audiences back to big mainstream comedies.

They call it hard comedy. So good time to pitch a hard comedy and on that note thank you so much for listening to another episode of the rest is entertainment we will be back with you next week richard thank you very much thank you marina we're back next week with more hard comedy i'm off to be a wookiee uh i'll see you next week okay take care Bye-bye. Bye.