The Rest Is Entertainment - Why Did Tim Davie Resign?

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

Tim Davie has resigned as BBC Director General. Who could replace him, and what does this mean for the future of UK broadcasting, public trust, and the licence-fee debate? Is Kim Kardashian’s new drama All’s Fair really as bad as critics claim? What is with all the gloves? Tim Davie is stepping down from his role at the top of the BBC after 5 years. What are the power struggles, political pressures, and internal drama shaking the corporation that has led to him announcing his departure, and that of CEO of News Deborah Turness? Is the BBC entering a new era of media turmoil? Will President Trump sue? Plus, slated as “possibly the worst TV drama ever” with scathing reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, Richard and Marina break down the legal-firm storyline, the over-the-top performances, and whether the show is worth watching for the drama around it's release. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Requires relevant Sky TV and third party subscription(s). Broadband recommended min speed: 30 mbps. 18+. UK, CI, IoM only. To find out more and for full terms and conditions please visit Sky.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Charlie Rodwell + Adam Thornton Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrell Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by our good friends at Sky. From Small Talk to Sunday lunch, it seems that everyone has a take on the latest shows. With Sky's Essential TV package, you can too. Just £15 a month gets used Sky TV and Netflix together, the programmes everyone's dissecting, quoting or bluffing their way through at dinner. On Sky, you've got the Irish Affair, Atomic and the best from Sky Atlantic on Netflix, there's House of Guinness, Stranger Things and so much more. Series that start conversations more effectively than Rail Strikes or Royal Weddings.

One package, one bill, zero faf. Plentiful, reliable and considerably easier to live with than most housemates. Fifteen pound a month for Sky and Netflix, and you'll always be in the loop. So if you want all the best shows together in one place, visit Sky.com. Visit Sky.com to Sark requires relevant Sky TV and third-party subscription. Sky Essential TV includes a selection of Sky channels, 18 plus UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man only. Hello and welcome. to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde.

And me, Richard, Osmond. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm very well. Lovely to see you. Well, Richard, we were going to be talking about some other matters today, but news has broken on a Sunday. Yeah, Tim Davy, Director General of the BBC, has resigned. And Deborah Ternes, who's the head of BBC News, has also resigned. God bless them for resigning just in time for us to do the podcast, though.

Yes. That, I have to say, not everyone shows us the same respect. Same level of thought. Yeah, mentioning no names. Claudia and Tess. We're going to handle that, but it can't all be that sort of froth, of course. We have to deal with some serious service journalism. And for that reason, we will also be covering All's Fair, the new legal drama. Documentary. Starring Kim Kardashian and others. That some people have said is the worst television program ever made. We will discuss,

but we'll start, shall we, with these two resignations, what's happening at the BBC. Can I frame it in this particular way? There's the two former newspaper editors have come out, David Yelland, used to edit the Sun. He said, essentially, there has been a coup. So Tim Davy has left, Deborah Turner has left. David Yellen said, there's been a coup by people who've influenced the BBC board and they forced these people out. However, Charles Moore, who is the editor of the Daily Telegraph, says there wasn't a coup. Now between a former editor of the Sun and former editor of the Telegraph, you want them both to be wrong, but they can't both be wrong. It's the Argentina-West Germany final. You never knew it. Exactly that.

So what has happened and why do we think? As you say, two people have resigned from the only organisation in public life that people still resign from. Everyone else has to get sacked. And before we go on, by the way, I should say that my husband works at the BBC. He works in distribution and business development, so nothing to do with editorial. I actually didn't talk to him about this item at all because he was not around last night. But I did talk to other people who I don't actually have to disclose. But by way of background, last week...

Is that what you call it? Yeah. By way of background, it emerged last week that Michael Prescott, who is an adult... to the BBC on editorial standard, a former advisor, that in October he'd circulated a memo to the BBC board with serious concerns about impartiality that wasn't handled quickly. In fact, there was disagreement amongst the board. I know about how to handle it. And somehow or other, this memo was leaked to the Telegraph, who ran with it last Tuesday, I think it first came out. And there are three planks to its serious complaints about impartiality. And I'm just going to go through

them because all of them will become relevant in the discussion. So the first and the most significant for these resignations was about a panorama documentary which was broadcast in the run up to last year's presidential election in which two moments of a Trump speech was spliced together to make it appear that he had followed one statement about his MAGA supporters going to the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 by immediately telling them to fight like hell. So as we know, we all saw those scenes on the Capitol. and so it appeared much more directly that he had excited.

And those moments were, I think, 50-odd minutes apart. Yeah, I mean, he's a guy who likes to make a long speech, Richard. So they resigned on Sunday. Samir Shah has made an apology on Monday for the Panorama Edit. And on Wednesday, Michael Prescott will appear before the DCMS Select Committee in Parliament to discuss his memo and other matters. And I saw some people saying that Samir Shah has not defended the corporation correctly as well. So whether that's another scalp that people want, it feels unlikely to me.

It feels like Tim Davin, Deborah Turner. So that's a, you know, that is like Jonathan and Stephen both leaving the traitors at the same time. It feels like maybe the bloodlust has been sated. I started by saying that the former editor of the Sun had called this a coup. He talks about the BBC board and he says the elements close to it have worked with hostile newspaper editors, a former PM and Enemies of Public Service Broadcasting. So Michael Prescott, who is the guy who did this report, He has ties with Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson appointed him to advise offcom. Robbie Gibb, who is on the BBC board, was a former comms advisor to Theresa May. If you were on the side of people who suggested there is a coup, there is certainly a cader of people who've been in and around Boris Johnson, all of whom seem to be coalescing on this story. I do notice that people have said that. And I have to say that I think everybody has sort of become a citizen journalist

over the last few, you know, decade and sits on social media and makes connections in a kind of you join the dots way. And I always feel like, no, I'm terribly sorry. If you want to make that connection, you must explicitly join the dots rather than just sort of say,

well, there you go, because that is a form of conspiracy. There may be some a concerted effort here amongst these people. There have also been concerted efforts on the other side before to defend people to do different things. and I think it's probably really unhelpful to get into talking about this as some kind of coups, some kind of like war, anything like that.

Then you're playing on their turf. Once it's a war, it's something that you or they can win, and it won't be you if you're the BBC. And I think that it's much more useful to talk about it in the terms I hope I tried to talk about it as an inflection point for some of these issues which have been bubbling and festering for a long time and not actually gripped. The second problem was an institutional problem he alleged

with the suppressing of stories about the trans issue with gender critical views being stifled, negative stories or stories asking difficult questions, not being offered as balance to stories which were much more positive. And the third problem is an institutional problem with the coverage of the war in Gaza by BBC Arabic. So there were three different things. The first of those is ultimately what forced the resignations. The Trump one. Trump and his White House have crowed over the resignations already.

And I think his part in them is very, very significant. What he has shown is that he is utterly willing to sue news organizations. He's sued CBS, ABC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, those are just a few of them. ABC ended up having to settle for 15 million, CBS for 16 million. Now, that's under U.S. libel laws, which are almost in most people's view non-existent. If he were to be a libel tourist, which I don't see why he wouldn't, you can see the nature of the man. if you came to London, he would sue the BBC and given our laws would probably win. So that, I think, was a really, really significant factor in seeing how this would play out.

The other thing I would like to say before we go on, because I think it's extraordinary that we don't talk about this. And the backdrop to all of this, I read this morning. It's the front page of every single newspaper. Everyone says it's an existential crisis. Here are some facts, not alternative facts, as Donald Trump would say, but actual facts. The BBC is the most trusted news. organisation in the entire world. This is a world where 70% of countries don't even have a free press.

Its existence is the single and proven reason why we in this country do not have the damaging polarised news market that they have, say, in the United States of America. They have a huge polarised news market and a massive problem with distrust for all different news organisations because people are siloed into their different ones. No news organisation in the US gets more than 25% of people frequently consuming it. Now, in the UK, more than 60% of the population frequently consumed BBC news, okay? Primarily through the World Service, the BBC is the country's most recognised cultural export, okay? I mean, I think it's something quite good.

That's quite good. But you don't hear that now because every single sort of senior politician has said, this is a completely in crisis. It's like a lot of people would like to have that sort of crisis. Yeah, I'd like to have the BBC crisis more than I'd like to have the crisis, say, Yeah, news international. Now, all of those things are incredibly precious, okay? And they are loathed by the BBC's enemies.

And they're definitely worth fighting for more than ever in a atomized and polarized world. But that's why it really matters when things are wrong. And these are all mistakes. These are all big mistakes. And I think you've just got to say that. You have to remember that this is an organisation beset by political enemies for all sorts of reasons. Yeah, outside and inside, by the way. And worst of all is BBC News.

I think Tim Davy said it's very difficult to run the BBC in the current febrile cultural climate. And I suspect there's a fairly febrile cultural climate within BBC news as well, less so within entertainment and what have you. So Tim Davy leaves and ostensibly he's leaving, as you say, because of that Trump edit. And this was brought up earlier last week and nobody apologised. And as you say, we're trying to work out why nobody made an immediate apology because that's the simple thing to do there. Because those things definitely happen. And, you know, the simple thing to do is you put a little white... Well, I thought that was really significant all of last week that they weren't.

Yeah, exactly. No one could come together to agree a line on that. Now, the last time I saw Tim Davy, it was at an event, I'd say a couple of months ago, and it was the height of all the Gaza stuff and Bob Villain and all these things. And Tim Davy is, if nothing else, a very, very irrepressible. And a very irrepressible defender of the BBC. and will absolutely always goes to bat and always on the front foot, always positive, always making the case for the sort of things that you were talking about. And the last time I saw him in the midst of all of that, for the first time ever,

I thought, oh my God, you're there's something slightly broken about you here. I feel like you have had enough. And this feels to me, because I think that his resignation was a surprise to people, it feels like he was waiting for the next open door to just go, I do not need to do this anymore. Somebody who could, you know, there's a lot of, you know, all sorts of people who work at the BBC, but he's someone who could get pretty much any job he wanted in any industry he wanted. He's very good. He's very good at what he does. You might not want him to be the DG, but he is definitively, his market value is very high. But he's got to wake up every morning and deal with these things like constantly, as you say, people from the inside, people from the outside, people calling him all sorts of names. And there comes a point where as a human being, you just think, well, why would I put myself through this all day every day? And he's probably stayed at the BBC longer than the should have done. He's been there 20 or years in various roles, but I think he's there because he believes this is the right thing to do. You know, he took it through, you know, the end of

the last Tory government. He took it through Boris Johnson, who we'll talk about it later because his poor prints are over this as well. But, you know, took it took it through his prime ministership and since he sailed it to where we are now, I think probably he just had enough. No one will ever like you if you're the DG and program makers will never like the DG. And, you know, every program maker I know says, oh, he used to be a. Tory counsellor and this out of the other. And you just want to go, you know what, half the people in Britain are Tories, you might just have to get used to that sort of thing. And, you know, if you think Tim Davy is your enemy and the enemy of broadcasting in Britain, maybe you choose

your enemies a little bit better. So I think it's one of those things where he probably was the right person to lead the BBC into this next charter renewal, but it's impossible. The difficulty with the role is that you are two different roles. One, you have a business role in which I think people widely think he's done very well at. And then you have the editor, the editor-in-chief role. and that is where people, that is where all of the scandals in recent times have come from. But, you know, you know, whatever it is, Greg Wallace, the news, all of these new things, Bob Villain, these are sort of editorial roles. We will talk in a minute about runners and riders and why there may be on, TEN.

Yeah, I mean, who would want to do that job? I mean, literally who would want to do it? It's like being England football manager. Everyone else can do it better than you. Everyone else can tell you how to do it. And it's, yeah, you're always insin's in failure. Yes. Well, let's come to that in a minute. But I do think that Deborah Turner did want the BBC board to respond to this memo much more quickly and to respond last week, but they couldn't agree.

And this sense of drift or whatever happened. But I totally agree with you that it's one battle after another and eventually you don't want to have any more battles. One of the things Tim Davy mentioned or alluded to in his resignation letter was the sort of fact of being a director general at this time. The role of the Director General in the current era, every single mistake is yours. You don't get to stand up at the dispatch box like David Lammy to pick another example from last week and just say, oh, this is everyone else's fault, this is my predecessors for, this is, you know, blame on my opponents, and really just go back to being potentially quite an apt or whatever it is and waiting to be sacked, which is what, as I said, every single other person in public life does.

No one resigned anymore except from people from the BBC. You've got to take it if you're a Directorate General all the time. Greg Wallace is your fault. Bob Villan's your fault. This isn't the case in lots and lots of other companies. And there are some people who say, well, should he have appointed a deputy who was more front-facing in some different way or reconstituted that sort of senior thing so that you have someone who, so you're not always the lightning word for every single tiny bit. But when I hear people like Nigel Farage, who's obviously thrilled about this, saying, you know, this is an existential crisis for the BBC.

It's the most trust in the world. but okay, and saying we need to get someone from business. And Richard Tice saying, we've got to get someone from business to clear all this out. Okay, I always just think, okay, you sweet summer child. Okay, you don't understand anything about your precious business, okay? Because the only people who caught this much flack in public life are either politicians or tech bosses, right? That's it. Politicians, it's a non-political role, so you'll have to discount those people.

Tech bosses get paid literally billions for companies they effectively have ownership over. and they have shown that because of those two things, they don't actually have to care about any of the criticism they take and they're not going to do anything about it. You know, Tim Davy gets paid a lot. He gets paid £547,000 a year, okay? But in terms of how much flak you get, and yes, it's a form of public service

and it's a form of power and whatever, and I'm sure. But having to listen to Nigel Farage talk about, you know, people in business, let me explain, if Nigel Farage is the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as he keeps telling us he's going to be, there will be no BBC that will be acceptable for him other than a dead BBC. Now, he is a politician. He is a leading politician. He is a party leader who presents a knightly, and we have to call it a current affairs shows, because he knows it would be in breach of all sorts of off-com rules,

if he presents a current affairs show, which is on a channel called GB News and contains news. He doesn't think that's a conflict of interest? I mean, I've heard enough from Mr. Ethics. I have heard enough from Mr. Ethics, but there is no BBC that will satisfy him. It's very interesting who is on, who is crowing about this. Donald Trump, we've got to listen to him crowing about it. Boris Johnson, when he let down the public trust, it took 57 ministers to resign over 36 hours before he finally accepted that maybe he wasn't the public servant he was telling everybody he was. So it's rather difficult having to take it from these type of people.

And no one here has blinkers on. We're aware of wasting the BBC. We're aware of issues in the BBC, problems in the BBC. we definitively are. I think all of these things are very, very serious breaches and are big problems and they do need to be dealt with. And the fact that incredibly senior people have gone is actually, it can and should be turned into a great inflection point to deal with a number of these issues. And if people within the BBC, some of whom will have been a drag on dealing with these issues, don't wake up and realize that this is a huge moment, then that is going to be a big problem. but that will require strong leadership

and as you say it is quite difficult in the old days every time a director general resigned and you know they resign quite often because as I say they're the only people who still resign there would be immediate lists of runners and riders that really you really thought well there's lots of different people

now there are so few and I think it's so significant that people are saying what about Charlotte Moore you know Charlotte Moore is a former director program she's brilliant but she's left and she once applied for a director general job and Tim Davy got it that round. And I think that people, even when she left, felt, well, maybe in a few years she'll come

back and be direct to general because she's lots of people's hope. But are you asking me whether I think she'll don't? She's gone to a big drama company, left bank, and she's having the time for life. Because, you know what, she's not being hounded every five seconds. By the way, every single person listening to this, myself included, we make mistakes all the time. These are serious mistakes. But we all make mistakes. And the whole point of any organisation is how do you deal with mistakes, how do you move on

from mistakes, how do you learn from mistakes? and what have you. If you are Charlotte Moore, if you're anyone who's left to the BBC, look at Linneker every time you see him now. It's like he's walking on air because he can say what he wants, he can do what he wants.

And, you know, people are not, you know, firing at him all the time. But we should remember that public service must remain a kind of load star in our national life and that people should still want to put themselves forward for difficult. Public service, you wouldn't want to do it. I agree with you.

No reason to do it. You know what? You wouldn't be a politician. You would not be Director General of the BBC. You would not do any of these things. That's the true crisis. Well poisoned. That is the true crisis.

It is so much bigger than all of this is that the idea of going into public service in any of these roles. And it doesn't mean on the kind of layers below where lots of people might still. And I think that the real serious crisis is that this morning, despite full spectrum coverage of this issue, there's like these half-hearted things like maybe Charlottom or come back and do it. My God, 10, 15, 20 years ago, you'd have had a list of 10 people. I mean, listen, Director General has always, they've always, as you say, resigned, Greg Dyke, resigned over the Hutton Inquiry into David Kelly. So George Entwistle, who people might not know, but he was, Roger Mosey was talking this morning, said the problem with Tim Davey is not a journalist. You need a journalist in charge of the BBC.

And like ever, you sort of have a journalist in charge of anything. And the last time they had a journalist in charge was George Entwistle, who'd come up through the ranks at the BBC, news night, all that kind of stuff. And he lasted just under two months, and he had all the stuff about Saville, and he had the Lord McAlpine stuff on Newsnight. So they got rid of him after two months. They get rid of everybody. Every Prime Minister wants to get rid of the Director General of the BBC. Going back, going all the way back, you look at Alison Milne.

That's she tried to get rid of him for death on the rock. Well, she did. She bought in Marmaduke Hussey as the chairman of the BBC. So they got rid of him. You got Churchill and Eden. They both had run-ins with Sir Ian Jacob. I mean, this is how far back all this stuff goes. Wilson complained about Charles Curran. He complained about Huey Green.

You know, it's always the case that politicians on the left and on the right want to get rid of whoever is at the BBC. It is now. Even so, it is nothing like it is now. I genuinely believe that the only comparable flag, as I say, is like being a tech boss. Every time, you know, we see Mark Zuckerberg saying, I'm not even going to bother saying sorry anymore. These people don't care. This must be an inflection point because it's happened. It's bad. And you might as well try and make some lemonade. What's your take on BBC news? Because from my perspective, I come almost everything from the world of, you know,

entertainment and documentaries and these things. And the BBC seems to be a fairly healthy place. Certainly, you know, creatively, in terms of ratings, in terms of personnel, you know, it seems to be on a... No, I can't believe we're not talking about, like, last Thursday. This is the sadness. You're not talking about last Thursday night on BBC where you just had this unbelievable run of shows,

the new series of, like, you know, celebrity race across the world. That lovely Hamza, Yasin, show that's on the moment. I mean, they are on a, run a form. And, you know, I think Tim Davy, by and large, has always let people just run things like Charlotte Moore, like Kate Phillips. He just, that's one of the things that he was good at. Just, you're the program maker.

I will sit here and take the flack, which felt like the job that he was doing almost nonstop until now where it's got too much for him. But BBC News seems to be the thing where the real issues come up. Greg Wallace is an issue, but that's an HR issue at any company

you're at. You know, there are always going to be those things, especially when you've got hundreds of suppliers and, you know, just hundreds and hundreds of hours of content. But BBC News, there constantly seems to be this suggestion of some sort of institutional bias from one side or the other. And some kind of, and different siege mental and sometimes, you know, aggressive siege mentalities from different groups, I would say that in the case of the Trump edit, I mean, really, it's extraordinary. that it's got all the way up to the very top and those people have gone because really you should just say to the people who made the program you're not making any more programs you can't do that but because nothing was done about that in the end it got to such a pitch that the people who are going are the two most significant people I certainly think that in terms of people's perception of how the gender debate has been covered I think that there is definitely you know there are suggestions that there's a desk that people had to run stories and they weren't allowed to run gender-critical stories in any way.

Absolutely, people are furious when they see male rapists described as women simply because of what they claim is their gender identity. Now they're within the prison system. There was issue with Martine Croxor, where she refused to say, pregnant people, she said pregnant women with an eye roll, and I think that has an awful lot of sympathy from an awful lot of people. Yes. The BBC remains an organisation better capable of lacerating itself and beating itself up publicly than anyone else in the world.

And it's sort of extraordinary that, I mean, it's really interesting watching the American reaction to this. Obviously, they don't have the same type of news organisation. As I say, this is a precious treasurer and I agree that this is a big mistake. That's the point. It has to be held to a higher standards than any of their news that everyone hates and is polarised and what have you. Of course, it sort of sticks in the craw that Nigel Farage is willing to appear on Fox News all day long. even though he knows very well what those presenters did on January the 6th. And by the way, it's okay to do all that. You can be a hypocrite because he has a certain political view which he wants to prevail.

We just have to take it as what it is. We have to, that's the job. That's what he is doing. He wants to dismantle all of this stuff. That's what he wants to do. So there's no point pretending that something isn't happening that is happening or something or the other way around. That's what's happening. If there's a culture war, it's the war against culture and it's a war against the BBC and all of that stuff.

That's what he's doing. he's allowed to people are absolutely allowed to support him he's allowed to do it in whatever way he wants other people are allowed to fight back and disagree with him and you know that's a that's what we're doing here it's just saying it's it's in plain sight now those people are pointed at a at a coup and again there's a you can always point to these things but michael prescott himself was the chief political correspondent of the sunday times and i think the political editor of the sunday times robbie gib who was teresa may's press secretary he's on the board at the BBC. So there's, there are people in high places at the BBC who were you a conspiracy

theorist. You think, well, I could see why you might team together and do things. So that's the, that's, is the case against. I think it's much more complicated than that. Would you, would you agree? I certainly would. And if you were on the other side, I would say that people will say, oh, look at this. There's a sort of leftist conspiracy at the BBC. And they can point to cherry pick all sorts of different other things. And they may have a case in some of those, in some of those Funny enough, Charles Moore, the former editor of the Daily Telegraph, he said there's a metropolitan left bias at the BBC. And by the way, I'm sure there is, but there's both. As I say, that's always been the case is people arguing both ways and you can argue both ways.

All we want really is to have this incredible organisation at the heart of our culture, making great comedy, great documentary, making television that people care about and television that makes us a better country and a better. place, there are people who don't want that. And being the most trusted news brand in the world, and that is something worth hanging on to. And I do think there is no other organisation like it. It's so interesting, you just go into so many parallel worlds when you're looking at the reaction to this, because there are people, there are people like Nigel Farage saying, this is an existential crisis, I can't, you know, we've been saying for so long it's completely rotten. And there's a whole other group of people saying, well, all they've done

is serve me Nigel Farage, the BBC, for how long? So you think, or there's people. people who are saying this, the BBC is completely biased towards Israel. And then there are other people saying the BBC have taken anything Hamas says as gospel. And there are these just complete parallel worlds in even within this argument. And there is no other organisation in the world like that where all of those realities are perceived to be definitely true by different groups of people. So nonetheless, despite all of that, I think it's very unhelpful to get caught up in these kind of conspiracy things. You can cherry pick all sorts of these things. The fact is that these were mistakes and they are in probably all cases indicative of larger problems that do need

to be gripped. It's also, it's worth just keeping our eyes open as to what's happening and why who's happy about it, who's not happy about it, and where we go next. And acknowledging that the true crisis, I'm afraid, is in public service and why would anyone wish to go into it and fewer and fewer people of high calibre do? Well, I think that this is why now they're talking about the next director general having a sort of journalistic background in some way. I always used to think that the Archbishop of Canterbury,

you'd have an atheist and then like a gibbering idiot who actually believed it, then an atheist and a gibbering idiotic who actually believed it. That was the one-on-one-off principle, also applied to quality of Riddley Scott movies. But in this case, with Director-General's, they're always course-correcting as to how the last one went. Yeah, you're always dressing for yesterday's weather. Yeah, in this case, I think people are thinking that Tim Davy did absolutely brilliantly on positioning the BBC see in terms of business and the future and all those sorts of things. But in terms of as an editorial role, the fact is it is such an enormous role to do both

of those things. That's crazy. To be the only person that it's always you in front of the cameras, it's always you on the stage, it's always you at the podium, and it's always your fault, whatever happens. I think is very difficult and I wonder whether the next person will think I want to empower maybe more senior people to be a bit more front-facing in that way because I think Otherwise, it is really very, very difficult to exist in this era, which all of these resignation letters made clear that this era is something particular.

If you're an actual business person, then the first thing to do would be you would gut it for parts and set off loads of it and not worry about public service broadcasting and line your own pockets. Speaking around, I talked to all the people who, as you say, five years ago, 10 years ago would have been on the list of who would do it. And nobody seems interested. I mean, maybe Alex Mahon from Channel 4, because she's left Channel 4, but I don't know why she would want to do it. She's out in business now, but she could, you know, she'd understand the political side of it. She doesn't understand how to run an organisation. If you're any of the big creative, you know, any of the big dogs, and I don't mean Jonathan and Stephen.

But if you're any of those people, how about Joe Marla? Marla for DG? I do think it's a good way. He resigned in a, it's a good way to resign. Resigning over the Trump thing is good because he leaves no, he's not besmirched by that in any. Anyway, there's a million things you could have resigned over that, you know, would have delayed his return to lucrative work elsewhere. But if you're resigning over Trump, I think everyone. And you would hope it would head off the possibility of legal action against the BBC, which would be incredibly damaging. Now that that flighty froth is dealt with, shall we go into a break ahead of discussing Kim Kardashian's new drama?

Yeah. This episode. is brought to you by Sky, and Sky's new original film, Nuremberg, in cinemas Friday the 14th of November. Now, the trials in Nuremberg weren't just a courtroom drama. They're also the story of how Allied forces shaped the reality of international justice for generations to come. At the centre of this story is a battle of the minds between Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Kelly, an American psychiatrist played by Rami Malik, and his most infamous and formidable patient, Hitler's second in command, Herman Guring, portrayed by Russell Crowe.

And Russell Crow shows Guring as a calculator. performer playing to the gallery at all opportunities, turning every counter into a contest of psychology and ideology. Two Academy Award winners, one courtroom stage, directed by James Vanderbilt, Nuremberg's star-studied cast includes Leo Woodle, John Slattery, Richard E. Grant, Michael Shannon and Mark O'Brien. And 80 years on, the legacy of the Nuremberg trials remain unshakable, the trial that defined modern justice in many, many ways. A story of taking phenomenal risks in the pursuit of truth and justice.

original Nuremberg, only in cinemas Friday the 14th of November. Get you and your crew to the big shows with Go Transit. Go connects to all the main concert venues like TD Coliseum in Hamilton and Scotia Bank Arena in Toronto. And Go makes it affordable with special e-ticket fares. A one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. And a weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people and up to $60 for five by yours at gotransit.com slash tickets welcome back everyone lovely to have you back we've done the BBC and the Director General now for the program that's been described as the

worst program ever made it's on Disney Plus not the BBC it stars Kim Kardashian not Tim Davy and it's called All's Fair the worst program ever made marina discuss. Well, okay, this is one of 387 Ryan Murphy shows currently available via Disney Plus or on Hulu or whatever. And anyway, we actually have done a

bonus series on Ryan Murphy which delves deep into this complex man I think is the euphemism. And all's fair, right? It's described as Kim Kardashian's show. It also, it's not actually Kim Kardashian's show really because it also has an unbelievable

roster of talent, not to not put are an acting talent, although I do think it helps to be able to move your face. Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, Tiana Taylor, Sarah Paulson, and Nisi Nash. Now, all of their names are hysterical. They play divorce laws. It's an all-female divorce law team. They're all extremely rich and live in Los Angeles. And everyone is wearing gloves all the time, which I'm going to come back to just in the

hope that I might have worked out why that's significant, but they're all wearing gloves all of the time. And so far, by the way, it sounds amazing. But it is generally terrible. It has, it's got, the reason we're talking about it particularly is because it's rare that something gets a zero star review. But that was not, it's only zero star. It was when it started out, I think it was on sort of nought percent on metacritical. It is now, things have got a lot better.

It's now six percent on rotten tomatoes. Screaming up the rotten tomatoes chart on six percent. It does contain like some of the work, just genuinely appalling lines like let's put the team in teamwork. Team is already in teamwork. Yeah, that's where that comes from. Yeah. It's like saying, let's put the team in teamwork and the work. So, like, as a team, we work together.

I'm calling you a teamwork. That would have been great because that would have bladdy, bladdy, blotty. Is that okay? Oh, I forgot to say she's wearing gloves. Yeah. It's the absolute apotheosis of tell, don't show. Everyone is telling you all the time. Like, I'm aware that she's rich, but then we have to have a close-up of her

Birkin handbag on her car seat as she's driving down. It is so forth. There's a Gucci handbag in a later scene that is so foregrounded. You can barely make out anything else in the screen. But having said that, it is, and despite all of these terrible reviews, it is Hulu's most watch scripted show debut in three years. So jokes on you, cultural, please. I mean, is it, though?

But is it? Because, I mean, I mean, what's it up again? Firstly, what's it up again? Secondly, you know, its first episode is the most watched for three years on Hulu is the second episode and the third episode. We shall find out. Just to give some of the reviews, the Guardian called it fascinatingly, incomprehensibly, existentially terrible. The Telegraph called it a crime against television. It is, the idea is brilliant, right?

These three female divorce lawyers who leave one of the sort of, you know, like a blue chip company set up their own. the idea of the incredible you know they are ultra rich that's fun it's fun to see how they live you know it's about these three women it's about their personal lives you've got different cases each week but everything about it is off i would say you don't the cases themselves are unconvincing they're too easily solved i mean not you know there's what were you expecting a cinema verito look into the New York, the L.A. divorce market. Well, Ryan Murphy has made some great TV.

Yeah, but less and less. The trouble is he's diluting it more and more with less. That's the trouble. But if you look at the writers on it, so John Robin Bates, he's one of the writers on this, okay? A couple of things I know about John Robin Bates is he's been nominated for Pulitzer twice. His scripts on the West Wing

were the ones that Aaron Sorkin said, that's the one I had to do least two. I could just shoot it as was, these scripts. So this guy is no idiot. Why, Murphy is no idiot. Yeah, I had Glenn Close is good at acting as well, but not in this. But isn't it fascinating? It is.

I think they're going for something, which is a very, very high camp, which is a very, very unapologetic, different form of television. I don't think they meant to go for it. I think it turned out so bad that, yes, that they lend into it. But you can, you know, I'm listening to the lines as they come out. The scripts are not, the scripts are wiped clean. You know, the scripts, they're not trying to. delve too deeply into anything. They're trying to be all surface and all gloss and then presumably as the series goes on, sort of go, however, there is more going on.

Speaking of people who are good people who should have known, but I was so depressed to see that Teana Taylor in it, who in one battle after another is the absolute, like the absolute star of the first section of the film as the sort of revolutionary girlfriend. And now is playing some junior lawyer who's just a sort of side piece. And I genuinely think at the moment, although it's, you know, it's got great ratings for Hulu, Richard, I would say that Ryan Murphy has been the brown finger to this. Everything he's touched in this has turned to shit if I really do think everybody in this is dreadful. It's fascinating to work out why it's so bad. With so many good people involved.

But also the attempts to which they've, the lengths to which they've gone to make it a show for our era, which is. is it's going to go viral. So you're going to get all these other articles. Like there will be so many articles about like gloves are having a moment. It would be like Claudia on traitors. And now this. Now normally you need three for a trend piece. But I have to say there are so many gloves in this that you're just going to get all of those things.

So you get all of this kind of side stuff where people will write about your show, even if it's to say it's bad. As Kim said, she did a post the other day saying, you know, are you watching the most critically acclaimed show of the year? because it's a joke and it doesn't really matter. And so there's all of that. In terms of the actual aesthetic, I would say it's really interesting. In the same way that we talked a lot about the real housewives and how that franchise took these fictional worlds and dragged them back into the real world

or a version of the real world, a sort of augmented and managed reality and became the sort of biggest show on the internet. It's like, as we said, like 80% of traffic at any one point on the internet is GIFs and reaction shots from those shows which are used to gloss our entire culture, political and otherwise. This show, you've heard of straight to video, straight to DVDs, I used to call it. This is straight to gift, okay?

This show, every single thing that happens on this show is designed to be put after, you know, the next government shut down, or it's just designed to be a reaction gift for everything. So all the lines and all the everything, it's now taken the housewives and just kind of bump them back into the realm of almost fiction. But, you know, I'm looking at Kim and Kardashian and this, and she's got a crappy husband. She looks just like Kim Kardashian and everything. She's got all the same bags. That's not her fault.

No, she's driving up to a house that I think she'd think is slightly below her standards, even though it's... It's a nice answer, isn't it? The way that these shows will make money and the way they'll get audience and the way that the Kardashians make money is off the female gaze. So this is women will tune in and watch this and love to hate it, but it will be clipped for every possible reaction. You're going to be seeing reaction gifts from this. It doesn't seem to love women this show particularly. No, for a show that's literally all about women, this demeans women in every possible way, but pretends it doesn't. So there's that.

It's obviously executive produced by her momager, Chris Jenner. I find it amazing that it's bad because it's got so many exec producers. You think it would be great. Ryan Murphy, Kim Kardashian, Glenn Closey's all exec producers, Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Nisi Nash, John Robin Bates, Joe Bacon, Jamie Pacino, Lynn Green, Richard Levine, Anthony Hemingway, I'm still going, Chris Jenner, Alexis Martin Woodall,

Eric Cofton, Scott Robertson, 16 executive producers. Is that a record? That's almost a series of the traitors. And then that's not before you get to the co-executive producers. I saw in one of the press releases that said Chris Jenner has committed to exec produce. Oh, she's committed to exec producer.

That's like me committing to having a nap. you're just like I've committed to not doing anything at all but you paying me some money okay yeah do you know what I am actually going to for once in my life I'm actually going to commit I would actually sign that so presumably I don't have to do anything you're just going to yeah you just send me that yeah you've got my you've got my account details oh do you know people call me commitment phobic but look at me look at me now committed to exec produce there's a lot of executive producers and the whole thing feels like it's been a lot of Ryan murphy stuff is packaged and he does some great stuff but it feels like they've kind of

on, look, it's Kim, so we need to, can we get some heavyweights here? And you go, well, let's get Naomi Watson. I'll be amazing to get Glenn close. Well, look, Glenn, I'll do it, but it's just being an executive producer, and you have to bring her in for X, Y, Z. It feels that everyone kind of trusts, you know, he's still got money in the bank, Ryan Murphy, in terms of reputation, because, you know,

he's done some extraordinary things and, you know, made a lot of successes. So people will still take a call from Ryan Murphy and still say yes to something. So he can get this amazing cast together. But, yeah, when they got there, it feels like no one was really in charge of making it good. It could be brilliant. The aesthetic is almost right. The script is wrong.

As you say, it's all tell, don't show, all of it, all of it, all the way through it. This is who I am. This is how, you know, no, show us, show us, show us, make a decision. Because it achieves it by this. I don't know if it does achieve what it wants. Anything just now needs to be. Can it be clipped down, cut down into reaction video? needs to be funnier. It's just the script needs to do it. Well, it will be once it's applied to

events in real life as a GIF. That's, that's how it will, this thing will exist. But that's not, but you can have that and also make it brilliant. If that's the asset you're going for, you can do that, but still have a great script. The stuff in between the gifts could also, because it's just as easy, it takes just as long to write a funny, clever script as it does to write a dumb, stupid script. It's the same amount of time. No, it's not. Because you just get people who are good at it. Of course it's not. I mean, some of those are quite good, but they come up with this. Yeah, but it's...

So they must have found it hard or unless the brief changed halfway through. But what I'm saying is this would have taken them a long time to write just to write this level of inanity and to write to this sort of aesthetic that someone's trying to get at, I bet it was an incredibly painful and long process.

Well, if you take someone like John Robin Bates and Aaron Salkin says to him, write this episode, right? He can do that and I bet that takes him. I bet his best ever episode of the West Wing took him the same amount of time as an episode of this. I bet it took the same amount of time

It's just he was allowed to be good. That's interesting. Okay. Can I just say that did you see all the girls turned out from Alls Fair to a certain event this weekend, which I just have to talk about? Oh, what was it? It was Chris Jenner's 70th birthday on Saturday night, which she held at Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez's house in Beverly Hills. Oh my God, that's catnip for you. Yeah, I know.

Well, you know she's had this new facelift, Chris Jenner, that we're all supposed to talk about like it's the first actually important artwork of the early 20th century. 21st century. So that face was on show, can I just, because I was crying with laughter at the hysterical guest list, can I just read this out of you? Oh, I love this, yeah. Martha Stewart, Snoop Dog, Vin Diesel, Bill Gates, Adele, various Hilton's, Sear, Will I Am,

Oprah and Gale, obviously, Mariah Carey, baby face, Mark Zuckerberg. Oh my God. Justin Bieber, Prince Harry and Megan. What surprised me about this party, which I thought was very, to slightly bring it back to All's Fair, that kind of like it's just going to be so root one. is that they all had to get out onto the street, these people.

So all of the arrivals are people who hadn't realized they'd have to arrive on the street and fight through all the paparazzi who are outside. And then I was thinking, I mean, Jeff Bezos, you must have in and outgates, right, for wherever this place in L.A. that he lives. And, you know, my thoughts on the houses in Los Angeles. But otherwise, Beverly Hills is even more of a sort of cultural failure

than I'd imagined. So then I looked it up. He lives in Jack Warner's house, okay, which is built in the 1930s. It's basically got an internal road system. any of those people could have been dropped at the front door. So this is all by design. This is the thing about all of these things.

They want it to look like that all the time. They want it. I mean, as you say, it costs a lot of money to look that cheap as it were. They want it to look bad. And I think that is the designated aesthetic. I don't think that Ryan Murphy would admit for one second that this didn't come off in the way that he'd wanted it to be. I'm sure lots of people who worked on the show are just like,

let's get through this. But I don't think he, for one second, would admit it. in the same way that this is how they live. But my point is, you can have every single bit of that, but also make it better. There's just a stick to a couple of actual proper jokes in there. I mean, that's easily done. It can be pithy. It can be short.

The reactions can be exactly what you want. But just make it funnier. Make it a little bit more real. Make the cases a bit more real. Make the characters not more sympathetic, but make them more rounded. I mean, it's really simple little fixes. Yeah. Any episode of Royal Housewives is better and has had more thought go into it.

Can I say something controversial? Yeah. When the three of them who set up these businesses sitting around the table, Nisi Nash, Naomi Watts and Kim Kardashian, and they're chatting, there's a terrible scene right at the beginning where we see them 10 years ago and then we saw it 10 years and they go, what's been your favorite case we've done in the last 10 years? And then they used to explain a case as if the others weren't there. And they go, oh, yes, no, we know, sorry, it's our company. We weren't together? So we know you don't need to explain to us who that was. I go, I had this client.

Yeah, we all had that client. Anyway, a terrible scene. If you were to say to me, as I come down from Mars, you said of these three actors, Nisi Nash, Kim Kardashian, are Naomi Watts. One of these people is not an actor. The other two are multi-award winning actors. I would have said that Naomi Watts was the non-actor. Yeah, that's what I mean, Bram Finger.

But I didn't mind Kim Kardashian's performance. I think it's perfectly, you know, she's been sagged off and called Wooden and all this stuff. I think her performance, see, her performance, I agree is exactly what Ryan Murphy would have wanted. She gives exactly the performance she is hired. She gives the same performance that she gives in every episode of keeping up in the Kardashians. It's the same, it's the same or the Kardashians as it is now. This is the same.

I thought she was absolutely fine. I think Naomi Watts doing her British accent and really, again, one projects, really looking like she doesn't want to be there. Yeah. I'm really just almost like. Even if you got to keep all the clothes. When, you can see when... You can keep the haunting cape.

Okay, but it's still very hard for me to do this job. There's a couple of things later on where she flies solo, and you go, oh, okay, yes, you can act. She's sort of going, oh, I can just be me now. But when she's sitting in that awful, awful boardroom that looks like AI generated, you're just like, oh, my God, this is, I mean, there's no way you've won an Academy Award. I mean, it's impossibility. Is it worth watching? Yeah, it's kind of like, you can watch one episode of it. I don't think a lot of people could get out all the way through because nothing changes.

We watched the first one. and I have to say I had a perfectly enjoyable time watching it because there's lots to think about while you're watching it and you can really really have an opinion

about it the absolute the only thing in television is do you then watch the second one and I mean is there a point when you can just watch the Gifts

you know I'll just watch the like I noticed that Hallie Berry was supposed to be in it but had a scheduling conflict yeah I bet she did

and I feel I will have a scheduling conflict come up for all of the further episodes of this show but you know I'm sure I'll enjoy the GIFs every time

the next time we hear who the new director general is, we'll see a GIF from that show of Kim Kardashian going, well, how about that? On Take 39 and saying, well, how about that with a glass of champagne? Taking off a glove. Yeah. Any recommendations this week? Not all's fair.

It's not. Although, you know, dive in and see if you enjoy it. I having really struggled to find anything to watch at the cinema for the last month went and saw Bugonia, which I really liked, which is directed by Yorgas Lanthamus and written by Will Tracy and stars Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons.

And it is really weird, funny. It's different. And I really enjoyed it. So he's the same guy who directed poor things. Favorite, all sorts of things like that. And this is actually a remake of a South Korean film, but it's definitely a bit different. I saw an onion headline, which was Yorgos Lantamos. He reckons he's about three movies away from hanging out with Emma Stone outside.

work. She is brilliant. I will watch her in absolutely anything. She is mesmerising. I think she's fantastic. Very much a podcast of two halves today. Thank you so much for anyone who both of those halves fitted within your realm of interest. Yeah, because you're my spiritual twin in that case. Yeah, exactly. We will be back on Thursday with a question and answer. I'm gutted. We don't have like a bonus celebrity traitors episode this week. It's really quite good though that it's not long at all to wait

for the regular one. For the regular one. So I'm very much talking forward to that already. And I've had so many messages this week from people who've been saying, do you think I should do celebrities? What about doing celebrities? And there's some very good names. By the way, our Q&A next week is going to be with Kate Phillips, who's the BBC's

chief content officer. So she's in charge of everything that goes on The BBC, she's behind celebrity traitors, all that kind of stuff. If you've got any questions about the BBC's output, she's done everything. She's, and, you know, it's very, very, very smart. And anything you want to know about any of your favourite shows on the BBC or anything you just want to know about broadcasting in general, do send your questions to Kate.

That's the rest of entertainment at goalhanger.com for your questions, and we will put them to her. But we will be back for a Q&A episode on Thursday. We also have the second part of our history of MTV for are members as well on Friday. It's getting even wilder on that one. And you can join at the rest is entertainment.com for bonus episodes, ad-free listening. Otherwise, we will see you all on Thursday. We will see you all on Thursday unless Marina is appointed DG before then. This episode was brought to you by our good friends at Sky. The Skyglass

TV is a television that insists on dressing for the occasion, transforming your living room from background noise into a set piece premiere worthy of Sky Atlantic. As the nights get longer, it's the perfect time to settle in for a movie night with quality entertainment on Sky. Just say the name of your favourite film into your Sky Remote, like Wicked, and let the magic unfold right in your living room. And the built-in Dolby Atmos doesn't just play sound,

it performs it, think blockbuster sound, without leaving the sofa. It's cinematic quality in your own home with the Skyglass auto-adjust feature. And not sure what to watch, while Sky's curated recommendation will find something for everyone. Let's scroll or more story and the perfect way to make the most of those longer evenings. For more information, visit sky.com. Requires relevant SkyTV subscriptions, broadband recommended minimum speed, 30 megabits per second, 18 plus UK, Channel Islands and Island Man only.