On my radar: Romola Garai's cultural highlights
She's Always Hungry by Eliza Clark
I'm not usually a fan of the short story – I often find them not very fulfilling. But I really like Eliza Clark as a writer, so I was excited to read these. The stories are great and very funny: there's such weird and dark humour in them. There's one story particularly, called The King, which is about an alien living in the body of an ad executive. And at the end of the world they form a new civilisation. It's a really witty pastiche on gender relations, and quite horrific, but extremely enjoyable.
Vollmond, Sadler's Wells
I saw this about a month ago. I'm a huge fan of Pina Bausch and I always try to go when her company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, is performing. I'd not seen this piece before, and the dancing in it was unbelievably daring. There's a whole section at the end where the stage is full of water and the dancers have to run backwards and forwards through it. Quite a few of the dancers fell over – it's amazing to see people who are so committed to what they're doing that they're putting themselves in physical danger to achieve it.
Say It Like You Mean It by Sleater-Kinney
This song does something weird to me. I quite often play it when I'm running, and then I start running really fast, like I'm chasing a mugger. It makes me feel intensely euphoric. It's a really sad song – Carrie Brownstein lost her mum in a car accident in 2022, so it's about grief and saying goodbye – but very beautiful. I've loved Sleater-Kinney for many years. All the music I like is sad – I don't like any upbeat music. But this song is incredibly purifying in its expression of grief.
Yellowjackets
The glut of television makes it hard to find things I really want to watch, but this show has struck me profoundly. It's about a group of women who go through an unbelievably extreme experience early on together, and it looks at the way they recover from trauma. They try to rationalise it, react against it, commodify the experience. It's truthful and brilliant. There's a scene in which one of the younger actresses, Sophie Nélisse, gives birth in the wilderness – it's a feat of acting. I don't understand why they haven't all won the top acting awards.
The Rest Is History – The French RevolutionI'm a big history geek so I love this podcast. It's like you're sitting around a campfire. They're very good at bringing history to life in a vivid way. The one they recently did about the French Revolution was just incredible, particularly the ones on Marie Antoinette and what happened to her. They talk about revolution, and what happens to ideas when they're co-opted by the worst kinds of people, and excesses of ideology. When an ideology takes over, it's never really about the idea – the idea is to end up in charge.
Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, London
Abney Park Cemetery is a mysterious and beautiful place that's been allowed to go somewhat wild. We have lots of lovely parks in London, but not that many wild places. You can walk around and hear woodpeckers and it feels very much like it's part of nature. Because it's full of trees, you see the passing of the seasons amazingly. And you can read the headstones – your brain is constantly whirring, thinking about all the titbits you get. There's one that I love where it says: 'Died in an accident.' And always, I'm like: 'What accident?'
Le Cottage Bise, France
We stayed in this hotel on the shores of Lake Annecy in a town called Talloires. It's been there since the turn of the last century. In the morning, when you have breakfast, you sit on a terrace which looks up at the Alps. Then you can walk 50 feet and just get into the lake and swim. The lake is like Evian water – it's the most unbelievably beautiful water to swim in. They have kayaks and pedalos. It's one of the nicest places I've ever been.
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Graziadaily
13 hours ago
- Graziadaily
Kat Sadler And Lizzie Davidson On Series Two Of Such Brave Girls
Kat Sadler has only been recognised in public three times. The first time was by a man behind the till at H&M, and the second was on New Year's Eve when a drunk girl kindly told her, 'I loved your show, but my friends couldn't get through it.' The third was with her sister, co-star and co-conspirator, Lizzie Davidson, after they wrapped filming for season two of their super-hit, Such Brave Girls, in Liverpool. 'It was our Christmas Day!' they tell me in unison. Given that series one picked up the BAFTA for Scripted Comedy last year, as well as the not-to-be-scoffed-at Craft Award for Emerging Talent: Fiction, their relative anonymity is a surprise. With a belter of a second series out on BBC Three and iPlayer on 3 July, it won't last much longer either. Billie (Lizzie Davidson), Deb (Louise Brealey) and Josie (Kat Sadler) in series two. (Photo: BBC) Such Brave Girls is a self-described 'trauma sit-com', but it passes as a black comedy too. It follows the lives of Josie (Sadler), Billie (Davidson) and their mum Deb (Louise Brealey), a highly dysfunctional trio desperate to find love and financial security. They just can't seem to do either very successfully. The first series ended with Josie, who is gay, on the phone to a crisis line as she walks through the door to find her on-off schmuck of a boyfriend Seb on one knee asking to marry her. The person on the end of the phone asks, 'Are you having suicidal thoughts?', Josie says 'yes', and the rest is material for series two. The truth is Sadler and Davidson (the sisters have different surnames because Kat Sadler is a stage name) are at the helm of one of the most exciting British comedies in years. Never mind the fact it's 'female led' or that it injects comedy into dark themes like depression, abortion and narcissism with aplomb, it's also just really funny. Of course, it helps that the sisters are just as funny and dynamic in real life. We meet at a café in Covent Garden to discuss the hotly anticipated second series. Sadler, who wrote and created the show, says Such Brave Girls nearly started out as a drama. 'I was writing from an authentic place of trauma and part of me thinks I started writing a comedy and then it became a drama. It was like squeezing a spot, I needed to get all the trauma onto the page and turn it into a drama and then take off that layer and be left with a comedy.' 'You always wanted it to be a sitcom,' Davidson chimes in. 'You don't really see sitcoms anymore. We grew up watching sitcoms and they were always our favourite shows. You can just click onto any episode, and you don't need to know any context and just have a good, old laugh.' It's a job well done then. The first series was met with widespread critical acclaim – including a four-star rave review from The Guardian and a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes – even if the sisters haven't been catapulted into fame just yet. Part of the show's success is their fine-tuned understanding of what makes something funny. 'Our mum is very funny,' Sadler tells me. 'She's very acerbic. I think that's made us quite sharp with each other.' Davidson interjects: 'We're super rude.' 'We're just always taking the piss out of each other,' the show's creator goes on. 'There's no dignity in the house.' Something that evidently lends itself to collaborative work. 'I get the first read which is always amazing,' says Davidson. 'We kind of go through every line and I tell her if it's too smart or too written and we tweak it together.' 'It's really frustrating because Lizzie will say something that just unlocks an episode,' her sister adds. 'She'll have the distance to say something and it's so annoying that I didn't think of it. They're always the best things.' The two sisters in series two of Such Brave Girls. (Photo: BBC) As audiences will see from series two, there is as much comedy in the stage directions as there is in the script. 'I always think about the crew and everyone who has to read it,' Sadler explains, 'it's not just us acting. I think 'what can I give them that's a bit of fun'.' From their descriptions of the set, it sounds as though there are definitely worse places to work, especially with The Inbetweeners stalwart Simon Bird on board as director. 'He's the loveliest,' offers Sadler. 'And he's a great advocate. He's so aligned with our sense of humour. We really trust him.' It also helps that they have a formidable ensemble cast, including Benidorm 's Paul Bazley and comic actor Freddie Meredith. 'We wanted people who weren't from a comedy background who had just done straight acting because playing it with truth always makes it so much funnier,' as Davidson puts it. 'The show is so outlandish and hit or miss, so a straight performance of a funny line feels more real.' Despite having a comedy giant in the production team and a hit debut series under their belts, Davidson and Sadler are still very much in the throes of imposter syndrome. 'It was a big risk for Kat to take me on,' suggests Davidson, who was still working as Princess Fiona at Shrek's Adventure on London's Southbank after the first series aired. 'The BBC must have been like, 'she's not done anything before, that's your sister, it's a no.'' Sadler was working as a standup and comedy writer before the series was greenlit, making her slightly more 'qualified' but just as modest. 'They must have thought that about me!' she replies. 'I'd done a bit of standup and was mainly a writer. I'm sure they looked at both of us and were like, 'hmm, two newbies who have not done anything before.'' How, then, did they grab the commissioners' attention? Just as fans of Josie and Billie's irreverent humour might expect. They recorded a video of themselves and attached it to their pitch saying, 'You have to commission it or we're going to kill ourselves.' Well, it worked. They went on to shoot a pilot and then the first series, with a second series confirmed shortly after series one hit our screens. 'You think it's going to be a champagne pop, we're going to The Ritz, come on!' quipped Davidson, 'but we were completely silent, completely numb [when series two was confirmed].' For her at least, the shock quickly turned into unadulterated excitement. 'Anyone who's coming over, it's on in the background,' Davidson beams. Meanwhile Sadler hasn't watched the show back since the final edit. There was definitely a case of 'second album syndrome' with series two, they both admit. 'It's wanting to give people what they're hoping for but not wanting to try to be outrageous,' says Sadler. 'But we pushed it more this series and we're dealing with some bigger stuff.' 'Yeah, there's bigger breakdowns, bigger breakups, bigger boundaries being pushed,' echoes Davidson. 'Our tagline for this series is: 'Forgive us, please.' Forgive us for what we're about to say.' Bigger risks, bigger rewards? I reckon so. Series two is undoubtedly braver and more confident than the first, daring its audience to sit in the discomfort, lean in and laugh. My advice to the sisters, not that they need it, is to go to a shopping centre and go up and down the escalator as many times as they can. They won't be able to unrecognised for much longer. Such Brave Girls series two is available to watch on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer from 3 July. Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across entertainment, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things pop culture for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow with equal respect).
New Statesman
15 hours ago
- New Statesman
Inside the BBC's Glastonbury debacle
Photo byThere are mumblings at the BBC about whether the director-general, Tim Davie, will survive the Glastonbury debacle. More than 400 BBC staff were reportedly attending – including Davie himself – yet none called for the livestream to be stopped when the rap duo Bob Vylan led the chant 'death, death to the IDF'. Insiders say staff 'panicked' when they heard the Vylan chant, having been told repeatedly that it was not the BBC's job to censor content. (Kneecap's set was not broadcast live but instead uploaded later to iPlayer.) Davie, who wasn't at Bob Vylan's set, ordered the performance should not be available on iPlayer – but it remained on the streaming platform for five hours. The mess follows BBC failings over Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone and the broadcaster's refusal to screen another film about medics in Gaza (which eventually aired instead on Channel 4). The Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, has referred to a 'problem of leadership', while an insider tells me: 'We're making enemies on all sides in this. It's a total mess. Tim Davie is far from decisive and yet is getting involved in editorial decisions, which then go to shit. We're forever trying to guess where the next crisis will emerge from. Why should hard-working junior staff carry the can for mistakes he is making?' Glastonbury bar worker 'Helen from Wales', who filmed Kneecap's set from her phone and livestreamed it on TikTok, is emblematic of the nightmare Davie faces. Almost a quarter of a million people (presumably many of them young folk the BBC craves) have watched the video. And it cost her nothing – apart from burned fingers from an overheating phone. 'When there's censorship coming from large media institutions such as the BBC, I think it's up to people like me to step in,' Helen said. Another satisfied BBC customer. Anger is bubbling at the Daily Mail over cuts to the business and finance desks just weeks after another redundancy process concluded. Much fury is directed at the salaries of three big beasts: Boris Johnson on a £1m-a-year deal for an 'embarrassing' weekly contribution; Nadine Dorries on a healthy whack for her latest Ozempic tale; and Richard Littlejohn, who, it is believed, is earning in excess of £600k for a column in which he often berates civil servants for working from home – written from his mansion in Florida. One insider said: 'Those three alone could pay the salaries of 30 reporters. It's disgusting.' Highly respected business editor Ruth Sunderland is said to be among those facing the chop. Apparently such content fails to drive traffic and is not suitable for hiding behind the Mail+ paywall, which has reportedly become bosses' 'absolute obsession'. GB News's Bev Turner will front the channel's first foray into the US. Turner, a right-wing Covid sceptic who has backed Russell Brand and raised concerns about climate crisis reporting, is off to Washington for a new nightly show. 'Sending Bev to the US is like sending coals to Newcastle,' a former colleague says. 'It's not like the States is short of people with batshit crazy ideas who can read an autocue.' Never a wallflower, Piers Morgan has been celebrating hitting four million subscribers for his YouTube show Uncensored. A source close to Morgan says: 'It's a work-in-progress. Piers has always been aiming for world domination – so just another 8.058 billion viewers to go…' Snout line: Got a story? Write to tips@ Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe [See also: Morgan McSweeney's moment of truth] Related
Glasgow Times
17 hours ago
- Glasgow Times
Paul Black's film Govan Fair Queen comes to BBC Scotland
Govan Fair Queen is a new comedy short by the Scottish breakout star, who started his career on social media. It follows nine-year-old Abigail, who is reluctantly pushed into entering the annual Govan Fair Queen competition by her larger-than-life gran Linda. The story is a celebration of working-class pride, local legacy and intergenerational love, set in the heart of Govan, in the city's Southside. It will star local acting legend Elaine C Smith, joined by Harper Blue Hamilton in her screen debut. Paul Black's film Govan Fair Queen comes to BBC Scotland (Source: Sonja Blietschau) (Image: Sourced) READ NEXT: Iconic Glasgow actress spotted filming 'new Paul Black film' Paul Black said: 'It was a joy to work with such a talented cast and crew on a wee story (roughly) based on my childhood. "The Govan Fair holds a special place in the community's heart, and I loved bringing it to life on screen. "It celebrates the humour and tenacity of the women I grew up around, highlighting the joy in working-class communities that is often overlooked in stories about us." Govan Fair Queen will air as part of BBC Scotland's Comedy Shorts initiative at 9:30pm on Monday, July 14. And again on BBC Three at 11pm on Thursday, July 17. It will also be available on iPlayer.
