The Rest Is Entertainment - Will 'Strictly' decide the General Election?

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

The UK will go to the polls this year, but what do our viewing habits tell us about who will form our next government? Margot Robbie is rolling the dice on Monopoly being the next box-office success, and reflect on Ant & Dec with the final Saturday Night Takeaway having just hit our screens. Twitter: @restisents Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Tom Whiter Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Recommendations; Richard & Marina - Race Across The World (iPlayer) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Maple syrup, we love you, but Canada is way more. It's poutine mixed with kimchi, maple syrup on hollow hollow, Montreal style bagels eaten in Brandon, Manitoba. Here, we take the best from one side of the world and mix it with the other. And you can shop that whole world right here in our aisles. Find it all here with more ways to save at Real Canadian Superstore. Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Oswun. Hi Marina.

Hello Richard, how are you? I'm okay, but you're not well today. I feel like I'm slightly coming down with something, but it will all be fine. I tell you what I have been buoyed by though. Yes. Following my comments, I felt very brief comments on the of and claims to substance of Mr. Guy Ritchie, our leading fauteur. I have received huge amounts of feedback from both within the industry,

people who've worked with him, people who've worked for him. And without the industry, and it seems there's a real community of people who shared my views. And so it was great to touch, I think we'll be returning to that well as and when. Listen, it's a big hit. I'm buoyed by the fact I was filming House of Games on Saturday, and I realized at the end of the day, that's where all the match of the day pundits

are watching all the football games. So I went along to the match of the day viewing room to watch all the football matches of all the match of the day pundits are watching all the football games so I went along to the match of the day viewing room to watch all the football matches of all the match of the day pundits. I sat next to Martin Keown on the sofa. I slightly disgraced myself by spending the entire time talking to the exec producer about what the edit schedule was like. How are you putting in this? So you're editing as you go along on all six games and everyone's trying to watch the match. I found it fascinating. Well do you know the first thing I ever wrote in a newspaper was when Des

Lyonham left the BBC Match of the Day and went to ITV and Gary, our boss, was moved up from, well, in fact he still was doing football focus, but he became the Match of the Day presenter. I worked at The Sun at the time and they said you can come and have access and I came and watched Match of the Day, started doing football focus with Gary, then went all the way through the day. I sat in, in this little room that they used to watch it where they had like nine tellies. It was Hanson, Trevor Booking and Gary. And they'd say, by the way, the only thing I'll tell you is that you will never see a goal. You'll always be looking at the wrong telly. Cause it's quite old fashioned, but you know, it's got analogue really.

They've talked about golf the entire day, obviously. They all had their fairway tans. And we had, it was really fun, but that was really, I mean, that was a long time ago. When, what am I thinking? Is it like 98 maybe? Wow. Long time ago. And there's me thinking I've done something cool.

Well, you have done something cool. I think you've done something cooler because you've been sitting there talking about the editing. I didn't really know what to say. I was on a green screen. I remember that and thinking that was kind of futuristic. That's very cool. Anyway, listen, that's Match of the Day, but we're not talking about Match of the Day. No we're not. What we are

talking about, we are talking about Margot Robbie has a new film announcement coming out. Her production company, Lucky Chap, who made Barbie and various other things, another toy movie, this time for Hasbro, not Mattel, which was Barbie, which is Monopoly. Monopoly. So we're going to talk about that and that will be interesting. Toy movies in general. We're going to talk about Saturday Night Takeaway, which finished after 20 years on Saturday and what made it such an enormous hit. And then we're also talking about some really interesting research into all our favourite television programmes and the political voting

breakdown of all their audiences. So what shows the Tories like most and what shows the Labour voters like most. So we've got an in-depth deep dive into that. And there's some fascinating stuff in there. That's right. I find that very, very interesting. Anyway, let's begin with Margot Robbie. By the way, Monopoly movie. They have been trying to make this thing for a long time because I remember 15 years ago,

I actually went and looked this up, 15 years ago, Ridley Scott was signed this up, 15 years ago Ridley Scott was signed on to direct this. Really? Genuinely, it was announced, he talked about it, they said they were going to give it, he was going to give it like a futuristic Blade Runner style sheen, I mean it was all about greed, you know, I mean exactly, you can imagine it, anyway, but they have been trying to get off the ground for a long time and Hasbro, who have had other properties that they have maybe, Battleship they did. I saw Battleships. I've seen that.

With Jesse Plemons, Rihanna is in it. Rihanna, yeah. And yeah, in the end they do sort of blow up warships by saying A4, B7. It's an alien invasion I believe. As I recall I've seen it once but yeah, I would describe it as, sorry for this one, miss. I'm afraid it was a miss. And also that sort of told its own story of where that came.

Maybe it came too soon because that was released the same day as the first Avengers movie. Oh, was it? How funny. That's a sliding doors moment for a culture. Yeah, a bit of a sliding doors moment. But anyway, they're returning to the Hasbro world and Margot Robbie, she's got this thing. It's interesting. I've heard her talk about

this sort of stuff before. One of her most early kind of eye-catching roles was she was Tonya Harding in that movie, I, Tonya. I think she felt like, sort of, a lot of people know who Tonya Harding is, and they might have very strong views one way or another. She's not really that bothered. She's got a real eye for these kind of discourse dominators,

if I can say, you know, and again, she said about Barbie, everyone knows who Barbie is. You may not, you may not like her, you may, you may, but you know who it is. And I think, I suppose in a way that's the same with this IP. And when we talk about IP, sorry to be super basic people, we talk about intellectual property and a huge number of movies are now based almost, or it's really interesting. If you look at the last, the top movies of the decade top 50 movies there's about three that are not based on existing IP so IP so a Marvel comic would be IP yeah a book would be IP exactly so one of the movies I'm telling you about there is Elvis that's not existing IP but in a way it's kind of like it's a biopic I mean to some extent

to me that feels slightly existing IP with Margot Robbie's eye for popular culture, can the air fryer movie be far away? I wonder. It's interesting. What's happened, which is that a company like Mattel, well, we'll use the example of Barbie because I suppose that's the, obviously the most runaway success. And it's kind of weird that tells its own story. It's a weird movie about a toy that was kind of quite mainstream.

You go to the Barbie headquarters, Mattel have got this place and they give you this brand immersion and there's one guy who serves as a kind of Willy Wonka type figure and shows you all the way around and there are cultural exhibits about what Barbie means or what Hot Wheels means or what by the way Hot Wheels. Don't laugh because JJ Abrams has signed on for that. Oh, by the way, I'm in. Lena Dunham's Polly Pocket. These are all things that are actually happening. Lena Dunham's Polly Pocket movie, that's happening.

There's a Magic 8-Born movie. Wow. There's a Viewmaster movie in development. There's a Uno movie. Vin Diesel is doing Rock'em Sock'em. Yeah, Uno. Yeah, but they can do Monopoly, they can do Uno. Rock'em Sock'em Robots, Vin Diesel is doing. Is that the one where you punch and then the heads go up?

I assume, it's not a toy I had so I don't know that one. Barney the Purple Dinosaur Daniel Kalu is doing. I mean. Wow. Okay, Margaret Robbie's agent did say, oh no sorry, Greta Gerwig's agent said, and I think this is quite a good quote so I'm gonna read the whole thing out.

Is it a great thing that our great creative actors and filmmakers live in a world where you can only take giant swings around consumer content and mass-produced products? I don't know, but it is the business. I think that tells you where we are. I mean, I find it quite depressing that these sort of toy movies, it's just another form of franchise.

First of all, it's existing IP. They are there to shift plastic, let's be honest. Mattel's, I don't know, I think it pushed up their sales, but they probably make about, I think they made 1.5 billion off Barbie merchandise a year. And they love these kind of movies that are what they call toyetic, which means. Toyetic?

Toyetic, it's a rather grim word used in the industry, which means it's kind of got these inbuilt merchandising opportunities. Basically, they want to sell you toys. So for all Greta's interests and Margot's interesting messages via Barbie, I still could never go over the fact that this is a movie in the service of toy IP and I do think it's quite odd that all these brilliant talents are now kind of caught up trying to sort of come up with a Magic 8-Ball movie or whatever it is and

actually the toy companies now saying oh people are coming to us wanting to tell their stories now. And I was thinking, yeah, I know where they are. They're trying to sneak a story that they want to tell, thinking, can I sort of reconstitute this around the UNO cards and tell the tale I want to tell, because that's gonna maybe get made, because people have what they, reason people love these kind of branded things

is because they feel like, oh, half the the marketing not half the marketing has been done for us because I don't know Barbie cost 145 million they spent 150 million marketing that but that's on Barbie which everyone knows what this is so marketing is hugely expensive and this has become a sort of new way of doing it people think oh they've got an inbuilt affinity they already know what this thing is they're like Hot Wheels as a kid maybe they'll see the movie by JJ Abrams. So you're saying, so if for example you are a writer and you've had, you've got an absolute passion piece for years and years, which is about the sensibility of animals and animal

consciousness and the fact that in 50 years time we'll go, how on earth did we treat animals in the way that we did? And they have an absolute equality to us. And I've got this movie about it. If you are that writer, the thing to do is go to the makers of buckaroo yeah now you've got movie but that's the interesting thing why should it carry the bucket why why should it carry any of this overloading it with all of that stuff and also shouldn't we support it when it finally rebels yes instead of going I can't believe I've lost you

should go do you know what good for you and the whole point of the game is just to wait until the donkey rebels and then support it. We're all about the donkey. We're all about the donkey. We're waiting for it to happen anyway, aren't you? It's a slightly flawed game in some ways. But I...

You think? Yeah. But... Okay, game's lost out. Yes, I'm gonna break the news that buckaroo is not that good. Let's do 20 minutes on buckaroo, shall we? I bet you've got a tight 20 days on buckaroo.

Yeah, listen, I could do the rest is buckaroo. I could be doing this all year, but the fascinating thing, so here's the thing. It's, and it's twofold. So Barbie comes out and it's a huge hit and it's a huge hit for a number of reasons. It's a huge hit because Margot Robbie got involved and got Greta Gerwig involved.

So that's an interesting, creative sort of union there. It's interesting because it speaks to what it was to be a woman in the 20th century and what that means in the 21st century. So there's lots and lots to talk about and what Barbie represented when it came out and what it represents now.

So it's genuinely, it's a fascinating area. What it's not about is people want to see films about toys. Right, that is not what it is about. It's not people going, oh my God, there's a film about a toy. Great, I'll go and see that. Oh, there's another film's a film about a toy. Great. I'll go and see that. Oh, there's another film about a toy, a Magic Ape Ball. I'll go and see that. But Hollywood immediately always take the wrong lessons from things and we do in TV as well. Something's a hit. They get it's based on IP of a toy. Let's do some films based on IP as a toy rather than thinking, Oh, why don't we do like a load more female centered films that are helmed and produced by women?

Why don't we do things about toys? And if you're a creator in that world, it's not like everyone goes Oh, we agree with you. It's for the next three years That's the only way we're gonna be able to raise finance Because the studios and the people around the studios are the only people who can get a movie off the ground So whatever direction they are sailing in for the next three years as creators You sort of have to get on board. As I say I think it is very depressing. Having said that, the Lego movie was great. I have seen quite a few of them now as a accompanying parent and once we got through the

Ninjago all the other ones I was like okay I've seen the Lego Batman now, I've seen it now. But they want to build out franchises from all these things. And as we have discussed several times on this podcast, the story of the blast, however many years has been about trying to build that franchises so that every movie either is a sort of prequel to the next movie or a sequel.

And so everything can completely be built out. But all of that is to do with familiarity and affinity. And as I was saying, I think there is something in people, people will go and see toy movies because of the toy. I'm from the world of television where familiarity is the key and getting a second series, third series, fourth series. The second series of a quiz show is a sequel to the first series. Television is completely built on sequels. The movie business has always been built on uniqueness and you know what's the great or two are coming

up with now and what's Coppola come up with now. And actually television is... That's a story. Yes, oh isn't it Jess which I'm sure will cover another point, his new movie which sounds amazing. But TV has always been you build on the same thing and you do another series and another series and you know like Saturday Night Takeaway which we're going to talk about in a bit. It's been going for 20 years so every year a new series comes out it's still Saturday Night Takeaway but no one's going I can't believe that they're doing another

Saturday Night Takeaway franchise. It's the same show, it's the repeatability so I'm quite I'm comfortable with there being you know five Mission Impossible movies and six seven eight I don't I don't really mind that. There's nothing else that's the trouble. There's nothing else. It has eaten the whole of the rest of cinema. There were no original films in the top 50 of the last decade. That's absolutely apart from, you know, Tenet and as I say, Elvis. So, you know, these are hardly any movies. And even then, if you're Hollywood, they're going to go,

OK, it has to be based on a toy or it's got to have five letters in the title. Yeah. That's what people are really going to see at the moment. Exactly. But listen, next year when we co-write Buckaroo the movie, we'll I'm sure have a different opinion of it. Now, the interesting thing about Monopoly is there is actually an interesting film to be told about the actual creation of Monopoly. So the film one assumes will be about it'll be a sort of...

Rentier capitalism. But that is what the game is based on. So the story of the game is it was invented by a man called Charles Darrow in the early thirties after the Great Depression, he was a salesman down on his luck and he came up with this thing, sold it to Parker Brothers and made millions and millions and millions first ever board game millionaire. But that's not where it comes from at all. He stole it. What it really comes from, there's a game, it was in 1905, a woman called Elizabeth McGee came up with this thing called the Landlord Game.

And it was absolutely, it was an attempt to show the evils of rentier capitalism. And it was an attempt to show that the most important thing in the world is to have a wealth tax and a property tax, which is very fashionable now as well. So she came up with this thing, the landlord game, essentially to prove the evils of capitalism. Okay. That's the, that's what the game was. Um, and you can see if you go online, you can see the original patent that she got in 1904. You can see the board. It's also one of the very first ever continuous boards, you know, which is a board where you go all the way around the outside and then you go back around again. Now it sort of fell out of favor, but a few people had played it and a few college professors took it up and started using it in economics lectures to show because it was a beautiful illustration of what is wrong with putting the wealth in the hands

of landlords and taking it from renters. And over the years, people started making their own boards and at Princeton, they were playing it and Atlantic City, they were playing it, which is where the big Monopoly board is. So they were playing it. They had these versions. Charles Darrow goes around to a neighbor's house who play their version of this game that's been passed down the generations from Elizabeth McGee. He the next day rings them said, could you type out all the rules to that game that you showed me?

What a rat. Yeah, and they were like, okay, we'll type it out. And they typed it out, by the way, with spelling mistakes that are still in the version of Monopoly, which came out. Okay, so he took that, took it to Parker Brothers. To be fair, he also created his own boards. He created a lot of the symbols we see now. He did a lot of graphic work on it, but it wasn't his. It came from Elizabeth McGee from 1904 you know a woman talking about the evils of capitalism and suddenly this guy takes it over and sells it and makes a million from it that's a movie that you think incredible what a great story I'm afraid I did not know that and I think that's I mean Elizabeth the landlord game and and the version of an office you know are

quite different but they were just over the years that had changed bit by bit by bit but it all came from from her original board game. I'd watch that. Well, I mean, the same lesson, yeah, absolutely, because the same lessons apply. And I suppose that's why I know Mattel felt that when they're not plugged into the kind of status quo, then they become less relevant and they do less in sales. So they always want Barbie to be doing things that are related to her times, or even slightly ahead of her times. When they took Greta Gerwig around, they said, oh look, you know, Barbie went to space before most women in the US had a credit card and things like that.

But really, with lots of these things, they want to become, Hasbro, you know, they want to become a pop culture company. Yeah. So she's got the rights, they're going to put something together, and we'll keep an eye on that. But it feels like a lot of those Polly Pocket major eight ball movies are gonna fall by the wayside. But you can be sure one of them will be a hit. But the Polly Pocket movie is happening. I think Lily Collins is in it. Lena Dunn's written it and is probably directing it, I'm not sure.

But it is extraordinary to have so many of the kind of best creators tied up in these kind of ridiculous IP movies in my view. That said, if Bob Iger is listening, we are absolutely on board for Buckaroo. We're very much on board for Buckaroo. Shall we move on to Ant & Dec? Oh Takeaway has finished after ITV's did a big Saturday night show for this time of year hosted by Ant & Dec who honestly you cannot find people to say a bad word about I have to say. Yeah adored by everyone inside the industry

and outside. Some of the biggest bitches and showbiz will not say anything mean about them, which I find quite surprising, but there we are. There it is. You can prod and prod and prod, but also- But there's nothing. Like you go- Nice to run us. Yeah.

You go to the heads of any department and they'll go, oh, you know, they're great. They are absolutely great to work with. And I think that's part of the success of that show. When it started out, so it's 20 years ago now, takeaway, it had no right to be a success, is the truth. They were sort of doing, well, they'd done SMTV was the thing where we all went, oh, hold on, these guys are,

these guys are great. Which was a Saturday morning show. Yeah, back in the day when we had Saturday morning shows with them and Cat Deeley. And they'd done Friends Like These on BBC, which had gone for a couple of series. They'd done Pop Idol for a couple of series, then got replaced by Kate Thornton.

So Takeaway came out 20 years ago. First series, not a huge hit is the truth, but I think you can kind of see that those guys are good at what they do, so they've given another chance and another chance. And it's turned into, I think, probably the best produced bit of Saturday night television imaginable.

It's a show that's an absolute love letter to Saturday night presented by two people who clearly were brought up watching Saturday night TV. And spoken to lots and lots of people who've been involved in it this week and just sort of asked what is it that they have and what is it that show has that has made it such an incredible success?

And yeah, the first thing that you're right in saying is everybody loves them and everyone loves them because they're incredibly collaborative. And if you're the whole idea of the show. So Saturday night takeaway, I mean, it's a big variety show with Ant and Dec at its heart, a variety show where, by the way, not presented by comedians presented by television presenters. I mean, they are funnier than most comedians and their instincts are much

better than most comedians, but that's not where they come from. They come from wanting to entertain a television audience. That's that's that's where they come from But with any TV show you have to have a hook really can't just say oh, no We're just gonna it's gonna be lots of bits put together So no Edmonds, you know, he's in a country house and people come into his house Okay, that's all the hook you need and on this it was win the ads you. You won the product for listeners who don't know, you won the products that were being advertised in the commercial break of that show. And so even then, you know, you watch the last episode on Saturday night, it begins

with the show that says, don't just watch the ads, win them. And it ended with don't just watch the ads, win them. So whatever else goes on in between, that's the hammock that we are sitting in is watch the ads. And that was come up with by a researcher, Denise Harrop. She's called and that shows an environment where everyone's comfortable talking and everyone's comfortable listening and wherever an idea comes from that's the what that's the idea that you go with and I think even two weeks out they didn't have the name Saturday Night Takeaway I think it was called 2000 AD or something 2000 ads there was some weird kind of- Ant and Dec, yeah, ads.

Yeah, yeah. Yes, Ant and Dec and ads. And so they kind of, is this something? And there's a great producer called Leon Wilde, who's still in the business now, he came up with Saturday Night Takeaway, which is perfect because people have a takeaway on a Saturday night and you're taking away the ads

and it's on Saturday night, so you know exactly where you are. And I think the point of those two stories is, the reason it's great is because it's collaborative and the reason it's collaborative is because it's got two great hosts who understand that you're made better by brilliant people being around you. And you know one of those people would be Andy Milligan who writes, he writes an awful lot, he's the sort of Eddie Braben to Ant and Dec, Eddie Braben to Morkerman Wise, he's there and you know he writes with them and I talked to Andy a bit, I talked to Morkerman Wise. He's there and he writes with them.

And I talked to Andy a bit, I talked to some of the producers and they all said, I go to them with a joke, I go to them with an idea. They look at it, I'll get, I have a list. They go down, they pick the one I knew was good, which by the way, hosts never do. Writers will take gags in and then and hosts will go down the list and you go, okay.

That's the one you want, is it? That's the one you're going with. They will pick the good idea they will then sit down and make that idea better yeah you know and that's a that's a you know testament to great you know if a presenter is also a producer and is also a comedian then that's the joy and you've got the two of them and they clearly love each other. Is there something though and I'm not to introduce a down note into this but there does feel something like the end of an era, not just the end of an era, and obviously by the way I should say that Ant and Dec still have the two

other bigger shows on ITV, which is Britain's Got Talent and they've got I'm a Celeb, also Limitless Win, which is their own format, which is not one of the biggest shows on ITV, but which is their own format. But isn't there something end of an era about this, about Saturday night shows, and you know I've talked to people in the business this weekend also, and people were saying 10 years ago, the show got 10 million and now it gets 4, 4.5, five, if you're very lucky. And that Saturday night has become that these shows are very expensive, about a million pounds an episode.

And, you know, these kinds of shiny floor shows, really the remainders are Britain's Got Talent and Strictly. Yeah. But otherwise it's very, very hard and these shows don't work anymore. And they're just even big buzz shows that you're seeing. I know it's not a Saturday night show, but even a show that gets like a massive buzz and feels like it's got a huge purchase on the discourse, if I can use that word semi-ironically,

traitors, that gets like four and a half. It's really interesting talking to people about the ITV Saturday night schedule and what works, what do you do anymore? Do you have like, and someone described to me as like, we have one main course and you're just trying to get this thing in your, that's something like the nine 30, 10 o'clock slot.

They have tried so many different things in that. And they just do know what they didn't know what to do. You know, they've tried drama in it, hard dramas they've tried, um, sort of, you know, funny things. They've tried all sorts of things in that and they just do know what they don't know what to do you know they've tried drama in it hard dramas they've tried um sort of you know funny things they've tried all sorts of things and lots of things just don't work they must have tried six different ideas it's hard to make Saturday night work now and some people I've spoke to a couple people about this actually and both of them said there needs to be some kind of genre reinvention um

as happened and one of them compared it to what he called the sort of, or someone else had called him the Lambertization after Stephen Lambert of Channel 4, back in the sort of hey day when all these kind of formatted factual shows came out. Like Wife Swap, Faking It, Supernanny, all that sort of thing. And people, it was a sort of a new, it was a bit of a mashup of genres and you weren't quite sure what you're watching, but it was really fresh and was what a and Both the people I spoke to this weekend thought I wonder just something almost needs to happen on a Saturday night That's like that where people are like hang on. What is this? But i'm into it

Uh, do you do you feel that or do you feel that that such a thing doesn't exist and that we're just chasing A past that isn't going to come back. I would say with all due respect to the people you spoke to, that's a sort of a view from five years ago, I would say, which is Saturday night is dead. We can't do anything on Saturday night anymore. That family audience is absolutely gone. We might as well give up on Saturday night. Why do we think it's any more significant? It's not more significant in most countries. American TV, Saturday night TV is not a thing. In Australia, Saturday night TV is not a thing. So it's only in Britain. And so people had thought those days when we could get 15 million are gone. Yes, they are definitely gone. But we've got to the stage now, we got to that post streaming malaise

now, where we were constantly thinking, oh, we're only getting 5 million for this. I think there is now an attitude in the television industry, in the linear television industry that goes, hold on a minute, we are getting 5 million people to watch this, the Antidepressant last night peaked at 5.6, I think. That in any of the streamers, in any bit of our culture we have

is an unbelievably huge number. It's an insane number of people and I think we now slightly are making our bed differently and saying actually if we can get four, five, six million this is amazing and occasionally strictly will hit ten and I'm a say that we'll hit nine. But it's an extraordinary number of people. Now ITV had these juggernauts for years and years on Saturday night that looked absolutely impregnable, you know, it had X Factor and Ant & Dec and all this kind of stuff. And X Factor of course has completely disappeared and now, you know, Ant & Dec has

gone as well. The thing you wouldn't have guessed five years ago is that BBC would have such a resurgence on a Saturday night. Now the BBC with the Michael McIntyre big show, which owes a lot to the DNA of Anton Deck, but is again, brilliantly made and made by people who love television. Uh, the wheel is a huge show. Bring back gladiators. That's a huge show. ITV have got the 1% club, which is a huge show.

So what they're doing now, they are taking big comedians and giving them old formats. And people love that. So Ramesh Ranganathan does Weakest Link. Michael McIntyre does a new format, The Wheel. You know, Lee Mack doing 1% Club. And it's really a shot on the arm for that Saturday night. Saturday night really was in the doldrums. Three years ago or so, really in the doldrums. And now if your friends are writing that saying we can't afford to fund this at Five million because they're very expensive But I think there's a sensibility that says if we can get four or five six million on a Saturday night That's an awful lot of people. Yeah, and so can we find formats that we can

Fund to do that one percent club is not as expensive as Saturday night takeaway and the ratings are almost on a level with it It's a huge hit the wheel is not as expensive as Saturday Night Takeaway. And the ratings are almost on a level with it. It's a huge hit. The wheel is not as expensive as Saturday Night Takeaway. And it can get five million, blankety blank with Bradley Walsh. That's not a super expensive show to make. And it's getting four and a half million. And I think we've got to the stage on Saturday night

where people are saying four and a half million people is a lot of people. And I think three or four years ago, we were saying four and a half million people is a lot of people. And I think three or four years ago, we were saying four and a half million people is a disaster. And now I think it seems to me from talking to lots of people in the industry, we're working out that actually we can build an industry on something that pulls in such an enormous amount of, and we're going to have to, because the days of, you know, I did confessions with Simon Mayer, we got 10 million.

Yeah. You know? And it's like, which is great. Yeah. But you know, it's probably not gonna happen again now. But you know, Ant and Dec are still gonna be a staple of Saturday nights, I think. And you know, everything they do,

they're just kind of a joy to watch, right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely, absolutely, completely. And as I say, they've still got the other two bigger shows on ITV. Exactly. Have I ever told the story of when I first came across them? I used to write in my very early days in television. I wrote with David Williams as was David Williams as he is now.

And there's a lovely man at some children's BBC at the time called Chris Pilkington, who's a proper old school BBC exec and was lovely. And Biker Graver just finished and he said, I think there's something in these boys and I think I'm going to give them a show and it's called the Anton Dex show on Children's BBC. And Chris said to me and David, would you go up and have a meeting with these boys? And we're like, okay. So we went up on the train to Newcastle and met them. And we must have been 22. And they said they must have been 17, something like that. And he just sat with them for half an hour. I think, Oh my God, you are great. You know, if you're any sort of a writer and you find a performer who's really got chops, you're like, Oh, this is, I can just go away and just write this forever. Now it turned out

I couldn't in the end, I couldn't do that show, but David could. So David wrote for them for like three years. He was their kind of head writer on that show. And it turned out I couldn't in the end I couldn't do that show but David could. So David wrote for them for like three years he was their kind of head writer on that show and it won BAFTAs and all sorts of things like that. But yeah from that day onwards you just think of all the I mean I think that you can do anything even just back then you can see the way they were sort of bouncing off each other. I wouldn't have predicted that David would be on the Britain's Got Talent judging panel when they were posting it. I mean that would have been a different one. Different timeline.

Exactly. But that's the other thing. Sometimes when with David's books and people say, oh, do you know? Oh, I've heard he doesn't write them. I think, well, I'll tell you this for nothing. He always was an unbelievable writer. I mean, brilliant. And for kids as well, just absolutely. The second he's in with Ant and Dec, just the stuff he would pitch, you just go, oh, kids are going to go absolutely crazy for this. So in a way you could have predicted the success of all of them in a way. But yeah, it's amazing from that day that their career is with a few little bumps in the road has just gone stratospheric. And as you say, the key thing is I've yet to meet a single person. It was a bad thing to say about them. There's

another couple of heroes who should be mentioned. I think the first couple of series it did, it took a while to find its feet. There's a producer called Ed Forsdick who is no longer with us, Ed. And he I think was what the person just said, okay, I'm going to just take this by the neck and just really kind of just absolutely kind of format it and streamline it. And he did and he worked with them for many, many years. I think he has a lot to do with the success of it and I know the producers now are brilliant as well but Andy Middigan as well who writes with them but what an amazing 20 years and

again I often talk about why I love TV but if you started watching that show when you were six years old with your mum and dad or with your mom or with your grandparents wherever you were you are now 26 and it's been absolutely a part of your life and will be a part of your life forever and Ant and Dec understand that and that's why they make television they make it for families and they make it for people and they make it for memories and that I think is that is is their great gift is understanding who is behind the camera I have a story about I have a story about Chris Pilkington, who sort of launched one. He was once, he was at Endermo, ran children's TV at Endermo

for years, Chris, and he was the loveliest man, but always in a blazer, Chris. Glasses, blazer, very, very proper. We had a company called Zepetron, with Charlie Brooker and all those boys. Chris said, I'd like to have a meeting with you. So I just wondered if there's anything you can do in the kids TV area and they were yeah of course so they're and they were super cool all those boys and so they're sitting in the room waiting for Chris and he's a bit late and he comes in five minutes late as I harried and he just goes oh my god I'm so sorry I'm late those f***** cbbs. So there you go that's kids TV for you. But anyway, listen, let's raise a glass to Ant and Dec.

Raise my coffee to Ant and Dec. 20 years of genius. I look forward to many, many more. Shall we now go to a break? We shall. Afterwards, we're going to be talking about what TV shows you watch if you vote Tory or if you vote Labour. Welcome back and now let us talk about some very interesting research which I believe

might be exclusive to us. It is, yeah. Well, there's a wonderful lobbying group, pressure group, more in common. He did wonderful stuff and they're very good with focus groups and polling and they're very good at telling us what people actually think rather than what we think they think. One of the guys there is a guy called Luke Trill, he's a very lovely, very talented man. He was talking about the polling they do. So every year they do this, at the end of the year they do their kind of who are you

voting for poll. And at the end of last year, Labour had a 15 point lead, right? So I'm chatting to him about that. He said, oh, by the way, when we do that poll, there's a question sort of underneath, which is about what TV shows do you watch? He said, would you be interested in that data? And I said, what? Take a wild guess as to whether I'd be interested in that data, Luke. And so he's given me the whole data. So he's at the UNICEF's huge poll and voting intentions, then what TV shows watch. So we can watch

which shows swing to Labour, which shows swing to the Tories, which shows have changed much, because he's also given me all the data from 2019 for the 2019 election. And so we can see which shows have lost Tory support, which shows have gained Labour support. And so to be clear, they did this poll at a time where, according to their sort of,

their kind of polar polls, Labour were 15 points ahead. 15 points ahead, yeah. So if there's a TV show at which Labour are kind of 15 points ahead in the, in the breakdown of viewers, then it's kind of tracking the general populace. It's tracking the general population. And if it's above that, it skews Labour and if it's below that, it skews Tory. Exactly.

I will say every single TV show in the poll, by the way, there is a Labour lead, every single one, because that's where, that's where we are, but some that have a much a Labour lead. Every single one, because that's where we are, but some that have a much smaller Labour lead. But there's some interesting... Dive me into the data right now. ...stories in there. The TV show that skews most Labour of all the TV shows that they did, and there's all the big shows, Taskmaster. Taskmaster. So they have a 41% lead amongst Taskmaster fans, the Labour Party. The last time I'm going to do this, Labour had the 15% lead in the polls. You can see what a big skew that is.

Yeah, exactly. So 26% more. It's also got the lowest voting attention for the Reform Party Taskmaster, which, you know, is interesting. Other huge Labour leads, so ones where it's predominantly Labour people watching, RuPaul's Drag Race. Yep. And Big Brother. Well, that's a young, that skews so much younger. So that's sort of to be expected. Tell me about EG Strictly. See, now the big headline for this, I think, is in 2019, the Tories were

winning amongst Strictly voters and they were winning amongst I'm a Celeb voters. So in 2019, they led by 7% for I'm a Celeb voters and they led by 21% amongst Strictly voters. So Strictly was very, very Tory, 21%. Now, and this is why Keir Starmer is going to win the election. Forget the rest is politics. Forget any of that stuff. Forget what you're reading.

Forget Newsnight. Forget any of this. Forget Question Time. The reason Labour are going to win the election. Forget the rest is politics. Forget any of that stuff. Forget what you're reading. Forget Newsnight. Forget any of this. Forget Question Time. The reason Labour are going to win the election is in 2019, they were losing amongst I'm a Celeb viewers by 7%. They are now winning by 19% and they were losing Strictly voters by 21%. They are now winning by 6%.

So Labour have won Strictly and I'm a Celeb. But to be clear, that show is skewing much more Tory than the mainstream as it works. To me, in some ways this isn't really strictly, sorry. This isn't sort of in some ways about Labour and Tory shows. It's sort of about the mid market, that kind of where the centre ground is. And something actually that is true,

certainly about Strictly and in some ways, going, harking back to a discussion we had just before the break, one of the reasons why it gets still very, very big viewers is because people in their seventies and eighties watch it and you cannot have a Saturday night, big, big hit without, and that's part of the reason why that is a very big hit because they're at home and they will watch it and they will watch TV

on, on Saturday night. So you would expect it, it does skew Aldrin, you would expect it, it does skew Alder and you would expect it maybe to skew Torrey. Clarkson's Farm. Yeah, well Clarkson's Farm, which you would think would be classic Torrey Heartland territory, that's had the biggest swing of any show since 2019. That is the absolute fulcrum of it though, isn't it? By the way, that show should be on terrestrial. If that show was on Terrestrial, it'd be one of the biggest

shows on television by a long, long way. I mean, it would be, it would be a massive... Well, it's a great, well, they're stopping it now, of course. I know. Yeah, it's a, listen, yeah, it's a great show, but yeah, that's the show that swung the most to the Labour Party since 2019. And it's kind of tracking, give or take, give or take, it's about 3%, but it's kind of tracking that the poll, the kind of, when they stuck the pin in and Labour were 15 points ahead. And there are a few others that generally track, and I think this is really significant.

Can I say, can I, yeah, I think, so the one that, if you were to pick one television show that absolutely matches the general polling of this country so is absolutely on the money politically to how we are as a country. Do you know what that show is? Is it I'm a celeb? No it's gonna really annoy people. It's question time. Is it? Yeah question time is almost exactly matches the figure for every single party. Despite the fact that BBC get like lambasted the entire time for the way they're handle it. I have to say though that things that generally track and I think this is really interesting,

give or take a couple of percentage points either way are I'm a celeb, Planet Earth, Corrie, Clarkson's Farm, Happy Valley, Bake Off and the Women's World Cup. Now I think that's really interesting and this is a lot of the story of the centre-ground and the way that the centre-ground moves and I think a lot of people would expect those things not necessarily to be the case but a big part of why those shows are big hits is because they kind of land somewhere in some kind of weird space and you think but they're nothing to do with politics what's the difference it doesn't matter it doesn't matter there's something about them that speaks to wherever the center ground is at the time, if they're working and if they're getting those viewers still.

Now I love all these kinds of questions about, this is a bit of a side note and I'm just putting it in because it makes me laugh, but you know, Michael Ashcroft, who does Lord Ashcroft does the polling. He always asks what he calls a daft, but revealing question. And so these things about TV shows are really sort of a fascinating way to look into politics. He did one recently saying, you know, if they were a sweet treat, who would the leaders be? And I won't bore you with it. But someone said about Rishi Sunak, this is in a polling group, normal person who's come and done a focus group, just as a normal

person employed in some industry or another. And then we'll say, Rishi Sunak, they said, they said, he'd be a Milky Way. It's all right, fairly generic. It's okay in the celebrations, but would you buy it? Probably not. Now, the way people talk about politics via those kind of prisms is so interesting and it's such a sort of like, you know, what would Keir Starmer be? He'd be an Easter egg because it's hollow inside. The way people are, they're so much better than newspaper columnists. The way they talk about all of these things is really, really interesting. And when that asked to analogize is where I think you get the most kind of telling insights

into politics and to some extent, what we were saying about these TV shows, it's, that's the same. Another thing I would say about this is this really harks back to that conversation we were having a couple of weeks ago when Tim Davie did a speech about the future of the music. Television is a unifier in our country and these big shows all on terrestrial TV are able to find some kind of middle ground. Now this is not the case in America.

Yeah. You know, television was the great unifier in the 20th century in America. They watched I Love Lucy on it, they watched the moon landings on it, whatever it was, but it has now become so much more siloed. Back in 2016, there were these amazing charts of like TV shows and where they're popular and they really divide into sort of bicoastal cities or you know, the black belt as it's sometimes called and back in 2016 when people were analyzing the post the election result, they found that if you're trying to guess how Trump did somewhere, it was far more accurate to discover how popular the show Duck Dynasty was there than how people voted for George W. Bush. You didn't know Duck Dynasty, it was like a sort of cable show about

this family who made those duck calls, you know, duck hunting, you know, whistle. Yeah, no, I've seen a couple of episodes. That's why I voted Trump. Yeah, those thing. But and then there were these other stories, you know, modern family, people would say, Oh, this is amazing show unit. It's a network comedy, but it's very, very modern. There's a gay couple who's got a daughter is a blended family in lots of different ways. It's a but actually when you look to where that show was popular, it is popular in liberal urban areas. And that they don't have those unifying things which we have we talk a lot about our rural and our metropolitan divides and we kind of overplay it to some extent in this country because people everywhere watch lots of these

shows and they are terrestrial things and they come together. Another thing that I felt after the 2016 election, which I thought was really interesting, I remember watching John Oliver last week tonight and you know, it's a brilliant show in millions of ways, but the first show after the 2016 election was kind of post-apocalyptic, he sort of blew up the year, it's a brilliant, it's a brilliant show in millions of ways. But the first show after the 2016 election was kind of post-apocalyptic. He sort of blew up the year that he was a sort of detonation. And I remember thinking, Oh, I see. You literally don't think anyone who doesn't agree with you anymore watches these shows.

Now, and late night didn't used to be like that. You look at the history of late night, you know, and I'm sort of a bit passionate about this and reading those books about this old, how it will work, Letterman, Leona, all those things. People of all different political persuasions watched those people and were brought together by them, but this isn't the case in their TV market any longer. And yet again, we're talking about a polarized market over there. Even in entertainment, these are essentially entertainment shows. They're not kind of political shows and they're not the news channels. But these shows have far more potential to bring people together and they track centre grounds and their popularity is evenly dispersed.

I mean, obviously, as you say, things like RuPaul's Drag Race or whatever it is, Big Brother, that might go Young Up and whatever. But in general, the big shows are watched all over the country. And it's fascinating that thing about soft power as well I do think the strictly thing is very very interesting because as it does slightly skew Tory It's still more labor people watch it because more labor people are watching everything at the moment But it's slightly skews Tory and it's such an incredibly socially liberal show Strictly and it tells us a very interesting story about ourselves as a country. And it tells us a really interesting story about diversity.

And we're constantly told that go woke, go broke. And we're constantly told that people don't want certain things shoved down their throat. This is a big show that is Tory skewing and that tells extraordinary stories. And yet its popularity maintains and goes up and up and up. And in terms of, you know, the battle for hearts and minds and in terms of how you change a country and how you change people's thoughts and how you change people's feelings strictly does that in a way that's far more powerful than almost anything else we have in this country strictly is telling a story. And it is not putting off viewers

and it's not putting off viewers who vote Tories because a lot of Tories are very socially liberal. And it's an enormous success, and it's showing a generation a different sort of Britain, and it's just series by series helping them accept what that is, and it's doing it in a way that it doesn't lose a single viewer, puts people on,

and I think that's a really beautiful thing, and again, a testament to the power of TV. And I do think there's something to be taken from it, because I do think, and I've always thought, in my life as a TV producer, if you can do a show that gets 15 million viewers, then that's essentially how you win an election, is to get 15 million voters.

Obviously it doesn't completely correlate, but there's something to be said for people who genuinely understand how to bring people together. What it is they understand, if you're Ant and Dex producer, Diego Rincon, who makes Takeaway, he understands how to get a huge amount of people to like the same thing.

Yeah. And talk to him. He understands a lot better than people in many of the party headquarters. Yeah. For definite. And I'll tell you what, a show that will be really influential in the election, I think,

and that is Mr. Bates. Now that ITV drama, which people wouldV drama which versus the post office, do you know last week because Alan Bates on whose story it was based was in the inquiry the director of programs at ITV Kevin Ligo thought just put it back on the front of ITVX so that when you go to the home screen you can now on that same day another 250,000 people watched it this thing is now way over 15 million it's by far the biggest show of the year that I think is going to make a massive difference in the election who would have

thought but that will make a difference it will make a big difference I think to the Liberal Democrats because I think it's going to get a bit hairy for Ed Davey when he comes to the inquiry and I think that that that's extraordinary that something like that can make a difference. Yeah, it's one of the few industries that has the same numbers as politics, television. So I do think this, listen, you can read far too much into it, but it's fascinating research. Thank you to More in Common, thank you to Luke Trill there as well. But I do think the fact that you've lost I'm a Celeb and Strictly tells you all you need to know about what's

going to happen in the next election. And just a couple of other little things. So they, they, they, they chop it down into even smaller groups. So he talks about, um, progressive activists. That that's what we would sort of, we would say, the Corbyn Easter, something that sort of group. So on the left, progressive, very, very, um, active their favorite shows, Dr. Who, blue planet and Question Time. They love that. Backbone Tories, that's the sort of right wing version of that. So that the sort

of harder right. And their favorite shows were the Rugby World Cup, The Coronation, but also the women's football. Fancy. Yeah. Red Wall voters, loyal nationals. They're the sort of people that gave the last election to the Tories that kind of what they call the red wall, which is reductive, but we know what we're talking about when we say it. Their favorite shows, I'm a Celeb and Corey, both of which have now turned labor. And the Starmorites, if you want to talk about, you know, that sort of middle ground thing, Their favorite shows, Happy Valley, Strictly, Bake Off. Yeah. There you go.

I mean, listen, what do we draw from it? I don't know, but it feels like that's the next election right there. I wonder what Rory and Alistair would have to say about that. Like they'd listen. I don't know how many of those shows they would have seen, but I would have to hand over that baton to them to tell us. Yeah, they just watched Bargain Hunt. I'd like to see them on Bargain Hunt.

Alastair and Rory? Yeah. Oh my god, that would be amazing. Yeah. Appointment to view. Let's make that happen for children in need. Yeah. Yeah, special guest director, Guy Ritchie.

I could see Rory in a Guy Ritchie movie. I could see him in The Gentleman, sort of owning a big stately home, big cannabis farm. I'm not saying that Rory is a cannabis lord. I'm not saying he isnory is a cannabis lord. I'm not saying he isn't because I have no proof that he's not. I assume that he's not. I can't see anybody in these films. Nobody exists like the people who are in Guy Ritchie things. They're not about anyone that actually exists. They're about a sort of self-contained, weird,

self-relating universe which is non-authentic but presumably very lucrative for Mr. Ritchie. universe which is non-authentic but presumably very lucrative for Mr. Ritchie. I knew we'd get back there somehow. We'll get that there every week if we have to. Recommendations? Race Across the World is back! That was going to be my recommendation. Well, whose wouldn't it be? It's such a terrific show. This time they're in Japan and Indonesia. Yes. And we've had lots of questions about it for our Q&A thing which I'm on the case with yes gosh that was an awful lot but also you didn't you didn't seem ill at all no I'm coming down with something we'll see on Thursday how you are for the question and answer that'll be something I look forward to how ill will Marina be? See you on Thursday. Thanks everyone.