All posts tagged: Frost

Caroline Frost: ‘We can’t get enough of this type of mystery, but what exactly is cosy crime?’

Caroline Frost: ‘We can’t get enough of this type of mystery, but what exactly is cosy crime?’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Add The Marlow Murder Club to your watchlist Death in Paradise mastermind Robert Thorogood has some words of advice for any actor who gets the call for a role in the drama: “If you want to have a good time on the show, be the corpse. Fly to the Caribbean, lie down for a couple of hours, then go scuba diving for a week.” To the naked viewing eye, it doesn’t look as though his job as show creator and writer was much harder: a body discovered in some glamorous villa or a beach club; wives, lovers and sulky assistants suspected then dismissed; sleuth has a Eureka! moment, murderer revealed, all in time for drinks down at Catherine’s Bar. Easy peasy? Do not be deceived, Thorogood warns us. “I’d put money on it being the hardest TV to write,” he says. “You have one hour to kill someone at the start, catch the murderer at the end, reel off the denouement, so that’s 20 pages of script spoken for before you get to the fun …

Caroline Frost: ‘Katie Price’s story tells us as much about the world of Page Three and 21st-century celebrity as it does about one person’

Caroline Frost: ‘Katie Price’s story tells us as much about the world of Page Three and 21st-century celebrity as it does about one person’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Add Katie Price: Nothing to Hide to your watchlist It’s 10 September 2005, and there isn’t a dry eye in the house as Peter Andre and Katie Price pledge their troth. Every blink, blush and eternal vow is captured on film for their reality TV show, and also for an exclusive magazine deal. The eclectic guest list at Highclere Castle includes Jennie Bond (former celebrity jungle-mate), Vanessa Feltz (don’t know why) and Gazza (the mind boggles). In their speeches, Peter thanks Katie for showing him how to love her and her amazing son Harvey. Katie thanks OK! Magazine for boosting her bank balance. ” classes=””] ” classes=””] Katie Price and ex-husband Peter Andre. Shutterstock Minutes before the ceremony, her doting stepdad has asked her, “Are you 100 per cent sure?” “It’s too late now,” she jokes. “It’s never too late,” he replies. The pair of them are in a pink pumpkin-like Cinderella carriage, pulled by horses who choose that moment to take fright from overhead paparazzi helicopters and send their blancmange on wheels crashing into a …

Caroline Frost: ‘By sharing their most vulnerable moments, these successful, proud men are offering something profound’

Caroline Frost: ‘By sharing their most vulnerable moments, these successful, proud men are offering something profound’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Add Clarkson’s Farm and Jon Snow: A Last Big Story to your watchlist We’re long used to a Jeremy Clarkson narrative arc. Whether he’s trying to beat his fellow drivers to a Vietnamese floating bar in an amphibious vehicle, or thinking he knows better than his experienced colleague when it comes to marking lines in a barley field, the schtick remains the same. A big, ambitious plan; a load of contrived, some accidental, peril to be faced with a mixture of irritated bluster and sardonic side-eye; then, finally, by the magic of TV, inspiration pulls a solution out of a hat, and it’s off to the pub. Off screen, we’ve seen it too. After the nature of his abrupt Top Gear exit that would’ve finished almost every presenter’s career, he parlayed his popularity into the Amazon behemoth of The Grand Tour, before he took his own rural life and put it on screen for Clarkson’s Farm. With a bucolic idyll, a glamorous girlfriend, loyal dogs, he appeared to be winning at life, out of trouble …

Caroline Frost: ‘Chris and Martina face a shared present-day predicament: cancer is the great leveller’

Caroline Frost: ‘Chris and Martina face a shared present-day predicament: cancer is the great leveller’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Add Chris & Martina: the Final Set and Goolagong to your watchlist Apparently, there’s a World Cup on and, while I know from the RT postbag it’s not everyone’s favourite TV treat, even for us non-sporties, there’s one headline that transcends this impenetrable game: “Messi versus Ronaldo”. We’ve had 20 years of balletic goals and Ballons d’Or, now it’s the sixth World Cup outing for both and surely the last hurrah. The excitement of both fans and pundits at this prospect is more proof that, in sport as in life, you can’t beat a rivalry. It’s a concept caught up close and personal in Chris & Martina: the Final Set, a new Netflix doc charting the parallel careers of Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, former joint queens of tennis. John McEnroe, who knows a thing or two about it, reflects: “The key to any rivalry is that you make each other better, and you make the sport better. That’s your dream.” It was certainly a commentator’s dream to have a contest between two such equals …

Nick Frost says ‘some people won’t like’ his Hagrid in new Harry Potter TV series

Nick Frost says ‘some people won’t like’ his Hagrid in new Harry Potter TV series

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Nick Frost has admitted that “some people won’t like” his performance as Rubeus Hagrid in the new Harry Potter TV series. The Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz star will succeed the late Robbie Coltrane in the role of Hagrid, Harry’s giant wizard friend, in the series of TV adaptations of JK Rowling’s bestsellers. The series launches on HBO on Christmas Day, and has been beset by intrigue and controversy since its announcement. In a new interview, Frost said that he had attempted to honour Coltrane’s performance in the role while adding his own flavour to it. “I’ve tried to take what Robbie did and honour that … but also I’ve got eight hours here each series, while Robbie had two and a half – there has to be a bit more to him,” Frost told The Times. “So: he’s …

Caroline Frost: ‘If we take the BBC for granted, we’re fools’

Caroline Frost: ‘If we take the BBC for granted, we’re fools’

Published by Daniella Wilson

25 years ago, I was on a boating holiday off the coast of Turkey. The captain spoke barely five words of English, a barrier swiftly overcome when he discovered who I worked for: now that was something he could understand. For the following week, he summoned me to meals on deck with a three-letter bellow: “Bee-Bee-Ceeee!” Times they have a-changed, at least for Brits, who no longer seem to share our overseas cousins’ fondness for our century-old national broadcaster – if we believe what we’re always being told. With charter renewal only 18 months away, newspaper headlines bark about its irrelevance, wokeness and badly behaved stars – which makes you wonder, if chief antagonists Murdoch and the Daily Mail got their way and brought down the BBC, how on earth would they then fill their pages? Meanwhile, elsewhere on the battlefield, there is the unstoppable rise of the streamers. In the past, Adolescence would have been a Channel 4 drama, instead it’s a multiple award-winner for Netflix. Previously, writer Neil Forsyth would surely have followed …

Caroline Frost: ‘I can confirm that Rebekah Vardy is pleasant company’

Caroline Frost: ‘I can confirm that Rebekah Vardy is pleasant company’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Add The Vardys to your watchlist Is there still no such thing as bad publicity? There are probably a few names in recent history who would beg to differ, however, to her credit, Rebekah Vardy – one half of 2022’s “Wagatha Christie” trial – doesn’t appear to be among them. By way of a refresher, that is Rebekah Vardy, the wife of Jamie (a real-life Roy of the Rovers fantasy figure, with his journey from non-league English football to Premiership heights), sometime reality TV star (I’m a Celeb…, Dancing on Ice) and now forever notorious in the Royal Courts of Justice after she sued Coleen Rooney over allegations she had leaked her fellow Wag’s private messages to the press. In a nutshell, Vardy lost and was ordered to cough up £1.4m in costs. Then, last September, with her husband signing to play for Italian club Cremonese, she moved her young family abroad to start a new chapter: that of a Wag in exile. Which is harder to deal with, I wonder, for such a self-respecting …

Caroline Frost: Journalists playing themselves in TV dramas doesn’t help to create a believable story

Caroline Frost: Journalists playing themselves in TV dramas doesn’t help to create a believable story

Published by Daniella Wilson

Add Secret Service to your watchlist Despite its instantly forgettable title, there’s a lot to enjoy about the ITV thriller Secret Service: pots of political intrigue as it becomes clear a Russian asset has penetrated the highest corridors of British power; Night Manager-inspired scenes of dastardly oligarchs sunning themselves in Mediterranean climes; the always excellent Gemma Arterton perfectly cast as the frazzled mum whose shooter and choice of passports in her wardrobe quickly establish her other life as a spy-running officer for MI6; and, most delightfully, as the seen-it-all chief of service, Roger Allam being Roger Allam. So I’m prepared to forgive the title, the soup of many familiar TV parts, even the fact that it’s co-adapted by Tom Bradby – yes, the Tom Bradby – from his novel of the same name (honestly, how does anybody new in TV ever get a job?) So that isn’t even my beef, but, yes, I do have one. Because not content with writing the book and turning it into primetime drama, Brady regularly turns up on screen …

Caroline Frost: ‘Half Man feels horribly real’

Caroline Frost: ‘Half Man feels horribly real’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Add Half Man to your watchlist I can’t tell you how many people, when I said I was writing about masculinity this week, replied, “Oh, yes. Toxic?” It seems you can no longer have one without the other, which is a damning indictment on the state of man, or men, before we even get started. In last week’s RT, Christopher Eccleston lamented: “Masculinity is in crisis, and it seems it’s particularly white, working-class boys who are being neglected.” Right on cue, Richard Gadd, he of the Emmy award-winning semi-autobiographical stalker tale Baby Reindeer, returned to our screens with something equally disturbing, but probably more familiar. It’s not exactly The Likely Lads, but Half Man feels horribly real Half Man, Gadd’s drama following the dysfunctional relationship between two men – meek Niall (Jamie Bell) and volatile Ruben (Gadd) – unblinkingly charts what Gadd calls “male existence and repression, internal brokenness and hardwired expectations”. He deliberately doesn’t use the word “toxic”, but it’s not exactly The Likely Lads and, with a glance at the news headlines, its …

Caroline Frost: Twenty Twenty Six proves that satire is not dead

Caroline Frost: Twenty Twenty Six proves that satire is not dead

Published by Daniella Wilson

Add Twenty Twenty Six to your watchlist It was the great Tom Lehrer who said, when Henry Kissinger was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, that “satire was dead”. This era’s professional wags were similarly minded to put down their pens after US President Donald Trump was given the inaugural Fifa Peace Prize ahead of this year’s World Cup. There is a lot that is wrong with this year’s tournament and the US’s co-hosting of it (I seem to remember writing a similar sentence in 2022 about Qatar), and I’m wary of wringing too much joy from the absurdities that have already abounded, such as US “star striker” Patrick Agyemang being ruled out through injury after pulling a hamstring for Derby County against Stoke City or, even more brow-raisingly, the nominated “Gay Pride match” being that between Iran and Egypt. What is there left for satirists to do? The answer, it transpires, is to insert some singularly British idiocy into the mix. Fourteen long years ago, in simpler days on the eve of the London …