Screen: May TV Roundup

There's been some very high-profile television over the past few months, including shows that have made global headlines, like Adolescence and the third season of The White Lotus. There have also been a few new series that are happy to simply keep us smiling, like The Four Seasons and The Studio. We need more of these at the moment! This roundup starts with four shows that came back for another season...

The White Lotus: series 3
Writer-director Mike White continues to take on major themes in unusually subtle ways, this time at a resort Thailand that's so beautiful we will all start saving up now. And the guests and staff are a terrific collection of people who are dealing with a range of issues that relate to morality and spirituality. It's so skilfully written and played that each scene worms its way into our subconscious. Standouts in the exceptional ensemble include Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey, Carrie Coon, Aimee Lou Wood, Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola, plus a blazing Sam Rockwell. There are some loose threads that feel a bit messy, but this is top-tier TV. (Max)

Hacks: series 4
With a much darker tone, this season kicks off as war rages between the imperious Deborah (Jean Smart) and the feisty Ava (Hanna Einbinder). And things get very nasty indeed in these sharply well-written and performed episodes, with various subplots helpfully providing comic relief, most notably the ongoing antics of agents Jimmy and Kayla (Paul W Downs and Megan Salter). The depiction of the world of late night television is astute, including a properly pointed look at network TV politics. But as always, it's the rollercoaster relationship between Deborah and Ava that keeps us hooked, and it's a fantastic ride this time around. (Max)

The Conners:
series 7
There are only six episodes in this show's final season, capping a span of 37 years in the life of this working class family. The writers set out to both maintain the timely, salt-of-the-earth sensibilities while providing strong arcs for each of the central characters, and they manage to do this with clever plotting and their usual hilariously barbed dialog. The focus is on the veteran cast members, who continued to deepen their roles from episode to episode. So we'll miss John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, Sara Gilbert and Lecy Goranson, and it's a little frustrating that Michael Fishman (as DJ) wasn't back for the emotional goodbye. (ABC)

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light
Based on Hilary Mantel's historical novel, Wolf Hall gripped the nation in 2015, and it's taken a decade to get Part 2. The story picks up immediately, following Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance) as he tries to navigate backchannel politics in the court of Henry VIII (Damien Lewis) and Jane Seymour (Kate Phillips). Beautifully written by Peter Straughan, and skilfully played by an excellent ensemble, this is a gorgeously made series that lives in its quieter moments. While the pacing is slow and delicate, the dialog is packed with subterfuge, as relationships are twisted by gossip and ambition. History is rarely recounted with so much introspection. (BBC)

S O M E T H I N G   N E W

Adolescence
This feels like landmark television, with four utterly unmissable episodes. It's written, directed and performed with staggering skill to tell a story that feels almost terrifyingly urgent. On the surface it's about a detective (Ashley Walters) investigating the murder of a teen girl by a 13-year-old boy (Owen Cooper), whose father (Stephen Graham) can't comprehend the situation. But the show is actually a deep dive into the impact of toxic masculinity on society, touching on a range of jaw-dropping aspects. Philip Barantini directs each episode in a single long take that ramps up the intensity and provides powerful gut punches. (Netflix)

The Studio
While this comedy is somewhat goofy, it's also so much fun that we never want it to end. Seth Rogen leads the cast (and creative team) to take us behind the chaotic scenes, playing a Hollywood studio boss who's in over his head. Each episode works as a meta-joke exploring various aspects of moviemaking with humour that's both jaggedly smart and profoundly silly. And amid the broad jokes are some knowing observations about Hollywood. The quality slips in the final few episodes, which begin to feel somewhat repetitive, but the terrific cast includes the great Catherine O'Hara, and more A-list cameos per episode than seems humanly possible. (Apple)

The Four Seasons
Loosely based on the 1981 film, this eight-part series created by Tina Fey centres on three couples who take four holidays together over the course of a year. As their relationships shift, there's plenty of sharp comedy and strong emotion thanks to first-rate actors Fey, Steve Carell, Colman Domingo, Will Forte, Kerri Kenney and Marco Calvani. Most enjoyable is the way the show is unafraid to indulge in some very silly antics alongside the much more serious storylines. So even if it all feels a bit too smart to be believable, the terrific actors find strongly grounded moments along the way. All of which makes it hugely entertaining. (Netflix)

Mid-Century Modern
Almost painfully broad, this is an old-school sitcom with a queer twist, essentially remaking The Golden Girls with three gay men in Palm Springs. Nathan Lane is the sardonic leader of the pack, Matt Bomer is the brainless himbo and Nathan Lee Graham is the wry socialite, with the great Linda Lavin as the resident house mother. This could work a treat, but the writing is almost painfully simplistic, falling back on obvious jokes and a string of starry cameos. Thankfully, the actors are excellent at providing the textures needed to make the characters likeable. But without much of interest going on, it's not easy to care if they return for more. (Disney)

Étoile
This has promise, an ensemble comedy centred around an exchange between premiere ballet companies in New York and Paris, but it's assembled in a bewilderingly uneven way. Everything is infused with slapstick, creating deliberately wacky characters who are both unsympathetic and frankly implausible. This almost works for quirky artistes like Tobias Glick's obsessively awkward choreographer, but it rings badly false with the administrators who take up the vast majority of the screen time. It seems like a crime to saddle actors like Charlotte Gainsbourg and Luke Kirby with such one-note roles. Still, it's just about watchable. (Amazon)

Mr Loverman
This is a beautifully written and directed series, based on the Bernardine Evaristo novel about a lively Afro-Caribbean family man in London (a stunningly complex role for Lennie James) who is secretly in love with his best friend Morris (Ariyon Bakare), but is still unable to come out of the closet. The show flickers back to previous times and places in their decades together, punctuated by both everyday encounters and momentous events. Most intriguing is how this sensitive, observant show traces how gay rights evolved around these two men, and their very different reactions to that. And the final episodes are powerfully moving. (BBC)

Carême
Loosely based on real historical figures, this French series centres around the very first celebrity chef Antonin Careme (Benjamin Voisin) in the early 19th century, and throws him into the middle of soapy romance and lots of political intrigue under Napoleon's turbulent rule. The food on display is fabulous, of course. And there's some fun to be had in Careme's sexual shenanigans, even if the plot badly bogs down in the more thriller-style elements that leave it little more than a quest for revenge. At least it plays out with some nice twists, and strong performances from the seductive Voisin, Lyna Khoudri, Jeremie Renier and others. (Apple)

GUILTY PLEASURES: Britain's Got Talent, Fool Us, The Traitors (Australia), Drag Race (17/Down Under), Million Dollar Secret.

NOW WATCHING: Overcompensating, Your Friends & Neighbors, Andor 2, The Last of Us 2, The Handmaid's Tale 6

COMING SOON: MurderBot, Adults, Stick, Long Way Home, And Just Like That 2, Fubar 2, Squid Game 3.

Previous roundup: MARCH 2025 > 

Critical Week: Say no more

Working long days as part of a TV series crew doesn't leave a lot of time for watching movies, so I've only seen a handful of films this week - either late at night or on days off. Alicia Vikander stars as Katherine Parr in Firebrand opposite Jude Law as a particularly corpulent Henry VIII. It's a very well made film, if a bit on the dry side for such a, ahem, beefy tale. Michael Keaton is back 35 years later for more ghostly hijinks in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, as are Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara. Tim Burton brings a robust energy to the film, although as before there's not much to it.

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Ian McKellen gleefully munches the scenery as the title character in The Critic, set in London's theatre world in 1934, with strong support from Gemma Arterton and Mark Strong. The dialog crackles, but the plot gets bogged down in corny twists. Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark are excellent as always in the British folk horror thriller Starve Acre, which is superbly creepy and very yucky, if never terribly scary. And I revisited one of my very favourite films for its 50th anniversary: Young Frankenstein is perhaps Mel Brooks' finest movie, a warm homage that's packed with classic hilarious moments featuring the ace Gene Wilder, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Peter Boyle and Madeline Kahn. I could happily watch this movie every day, forever.

This coming week, I'm watching James McAvoy in Speak No Evil, whistleblower biopic Winner, Scottish thriller Kill and teen anime Trapezium, plus anything else I can find time to watch while working long days. 

Kindness is a survival skill

An encounter with The Wild Robot
at Annecy Film Festival...

A quiet, absurdly picturesque corner of the French Alps has become the global epicentre of cinematic animation. The Annecy International Animation Film Festival is apparently now more import to studios than ComicCon for launching new projects, while its market is a buzzing hub for aspiring filmmakers from every corner of the globe. Amid a huge range of adventurous animation across the programme, big studio premieres this year included Pixar's Inside Out 2, Illumination's Despicable Me 4, Paramount's Transformers One and two from Netflix: Ultraman: Rising and The Imaginary. There was also short-format work featuring Pokemon, Snoopy & Charlie Brown, Porky Pig & Daffy Duck, Beavis & Butt-head, and Asterix & Obelix.

Sanders on-stage at Annecy

Fans in Annecy were especially delighted to see advance footage from a variety of forthcoming high-profile projects: Disney's Moana 2, Aardman's Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Roald Dahl's The Twits, Richard Curtis' That Christmas, Warner Bros' The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Nickelodeon's Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie, Netflix's In Your Dreams, Skydance's Spellbound and DreamWorks' The Wild Robot.

It was this last title that brought me to Annecy for the first time, offering a chance to spend some time with writer-director Chris Sanders and his creative team. Sanders is an animation veteran involved in writing such Disney classics as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King and Mulan. He also wrote and directed Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods. So it's fascinating to hear him and his cohorts call The Wild Robot the film of their career.

A shared passion

The Wild Robot certainly looks unlike anything we've seen before, with its delicately hand-painted brushstrokes layered together using technology. This creates a dazzling visual style that looks like an oil painting come to life.

A small group of journalists sat down to chat with the film's design team over breakfast on a sunny terrace overlooking Lake Annecy. Sanders begins by speaking warmly about the collaborative artists who have been assembled, and how they embody the spirit of this particular film. "I knew everyone's prior work," he says, "and the people we wanted were available! All of us trained as painters, so the computer is a pencil to us. And we gravitated to a story that doesn't have the obvious heroes and villains. It's about shades of emotions."

Visual effects supervisor Jeff Budsberg says this idea is reflected in the looser style of the imagery. "We wanted the endearing qualities of paintings, because they're more immersive," he says. "And it was important to let the animals be animals."

"I asked that the animals have animal eyes," Sanders notes, "because we usually default to human eyes for everything." This idea extends to using real animal skeletons to guide the structure of foxes, geese, bears, otters and more.

"The animation has to disappear, so you don't think about it," adds Jakob Hjort Jensen, head of character animation. "Because we have a lot of experience, we have more restraint. So we resisted throwing everything at the screen."

"It could have been much more stylised," agrees production designer Raymond Zibach, "but we wanted to find a balance, so we never broke the spell."

"It was important to develop a something specific for the movie," says head of look Baptiste Van Opstal, referring to how digital animation has tended to create a sameness in design and texture across many films, especially with skin, fur and water. "The image doesn't need to be a slave to the technology."

Indeed, The Wild Robot is a story about nature and technology finding a way to coexist. "But it has to be seen on a human level," notes producer Jeff Hermann. "And that's why we are all genuinely inspired by this project and Chris' vision for it."

"The crew has embraced the story completely," Sanders agrees, "and that's why the film is so good. It's thrilling to see audiences connect with the preview footage and see its differences."

"The way people react to the footage makes us know that we that we weren't crazy," says Zibach. "And those scenes still get me!"

A survival story

For a film that features few humans, the premise is unusually resonant, taken from the first in Peter Brown's trilogy of novels about the robot Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong'o), who finds herself in a very unfamiliar place, a deserted island populated by lively animals.

"I love that Roz wakes up and has no idea what's going to happen to her," Sanders says.

"The opening sequence carries so much weight," says head of story Heidi Jo Gilbert. "It has to reveal key things about her journey as well as the dog-eat-dog nature of the forest. Then she's learning to hear and understand the hate the animals have for her, as well as the violence between them."

"It's important to have bittersweetness in stories for kids," says Jensen.

"That brutality informed the design," Zibach adds. "It's aggressive and sometimes deliberately uneven. It's was a challenge to get the balance right."

"Each sequence in the book has consequences," Hermann notes. "The key message throughout the story is that kindness is a survival skill." Once Roz unlocks their languages, the critters are voiced by an impressive voice cast including Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Catherine O'Hara, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Ving Rhames, Matt Berry and Mark Hamill.

Set in the future, the time and place are intentionally vague, because they are seen through the eyes of the characters. But when they migrate, the geese see the world beyond the island. "It's just landscape to them," says Sanders. "But there are signposts for the audience about where and when this is taking place." As a teaser, one shot in the trailer reveals a submerged Golden Gate Bridge below the migrating geese.

Finding their voice

Working with Lupita to develop Roz was an art, Sanders says. "It involved experimenting, redefining and evolving," he says. "It couldn't be robotic or emotionless, but she starts more cheerful, and then changes as she begins to understand."

"It's like reverse peacocking," notes Jensen. "At the start, Roz is showing off her robotic abilities, but gradually she becomes more natural and connected."

Budsberg agrees that this shift is key to the story. "Roz changes imperceptibly from scene to scene," he says. "At first she looks like an alien metal being, then she gets more and more like the island. She is affected by the island, and she also makes an impact on it."

"They change each other," Sanders says. "It's all about being who they are and being vulnerable."

Some 20,000 people representing 103 countries attended Annecy Festival this year. The top prize went to Australia's Memoir of a Snail, directed by Adam Elliot, who previously won this award in 2009 for Mary & Max (and won an Oscar for the 2003 short Harvie Krumpet). And three other awards were presented to Flow, a feline odyssey by Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis.

For more information: ANNECY FESTIVAL >

photos by Marc Piasecki • with thanks to DreamWorks • 10-13.Jun.24

Critical Week: Movie night

With the sunshine blazing across Great Britain, cinema box office is likely to take a hit these days. Although maybe the air conditioning will lure people to escape from the heat. I've certainly enjoyed attending press screenings this week, a cool break from the sweaty sunshine. I caught up with Pixar's new animated feature Elemental, which premiered at Cannes. It's a little uneven plotwise, but the characters are terrific and it looks spectacular. And then there's the return of Chris Hemsworth in Extraction II, an even more confident thrill-ride. It's ripping entertainment, but very violent.

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Also at Cannes, Wes Anderson's new slice of whimsy is Asteroid City, in which a vast ensemble of A-listers circle around strange goings on in a desert crater. It's quirky and has moments of genius, but little resonance. Take That's songs were adapted into the British stage musical The Band, which has now become the comedy romp Greatest Days. But the laughs are undermined by several pushy dark plot points.  And I also saw two smaller films centred around addicts: God's Petting You is an offbeat, messy heist comedy about a junkie who teams up with a sex addict to rob a pornstar, while Sunlight is a likeable but contrived Irish drama about an addict trying to have a final connection with his dying sponsor.

This next week I'll be watching Harrison Ford in action in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, British drama To Nowhere, French drama Mother & Son and two documentaries: Baato from the Himalayas in Nepal and The Last Rider about the 1989 Tour de France.