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Sydney Morning Herald
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
What to stream this week: The Mitford sisters and five more picks
This week's picks include a period romp about the British aristocracy in the 1930s, a documentary about Billy Joel, and a soap-tinged melodrama starring Brittany Snow and Malin Akerman. Outrageous ★★★½ (BritBox) Told with a giddy energy that matches the bottles of champagne repeatedly being popped, Outrageous is a period romp about the British upper class that traverses the fine line between farce and tragedy. The show's historic subject is the Mitford sisters – six daughters of the aristocracy who became a microcosm of Europe's ructions in the 1930s. Influencers in a tabloid headline era, they were the closest of siblings who eventually became adversaries. You couldn't make this story up if you tried. Really, really tried. It's 1931 and Nancy (Bessie Carter) serves as wry narrator – she's a budding novelist whose own family will provide irresistible material. Diana (Joanna Vanderham) is 'the beauty', soon to leave her Guinness heir husband for Britain's leading fascist, Sir Oswald Mosley (Joshua Sasse). Unity (Shannon Watson) will go beyond that – she befriends Adolf Hitler. Jessica (Zoe Brough) becomes an ardent communist. Pamela (Isobel Jesper Jones) loves her Angus cattle herd. Deborah (Orla Hill) simply wants a husband and a nice country house. Loading Put two or more of the sisters in a scene and the dialogue has screwball pace and droll retorts. In adapting Mary S. Lovell's 2001 biography, The Mitford Girls, creator Sarah Williams has captured solidarity as a kind of accelerant. Growing up together – their father, Baron Redesdale (James Purefoy), believed girls shouldn't go to school – the young women pushed at boundaries and ached for agency and purpose. Everything is a lark, until it very much isn't (hint: when Unity fangirls Hitler). There's frivolity, some truly sketchy male suitors, and ominous headlines; imagine Wes Anderson adapting Hilary Mantel. The six episodes roll through five years. The budget struggles with the sweep of history – a Nuremberg rally is done with merely dozens of extras – but the personal dynamics are fascinating. It's ultimately a story of how you respond when someone you love crosses a line you never imagined existed. There's a scene between Unity and Jessica, the sadness tinged with memories of joint silliness, that's quietly heartbreaking. Tellingly, the conundrums the Mitford sisters impose on each other couldn't be more timely. The appeal of fascism is debated at family meals, while opposing criticisms are righteously written off as propaganda and misinformation – free speech as an absolute defence is repeatedly invoked, political street violence threatens to become the norm. It's both entertaining and horrifying, as living in the moment often proves to be, with the Bright Young Things insouciance serving as a Trojan horse. The first season concludes in 1936, and I hope there's another – their story has earnt a reckoning. Billy Joel: And So It Goes ★★★(HBO Max) Consisting of two episodes each the length of a sizeable feature film, this documentary about Billy Joel, one of the biggest-selling artists in the history of popular music, will hold an obvious appeal to fans. His music is prominent throughout and Joel discusses his life with pugnacious candour. But it's also of interest to novices, because Joel has long been contradictory: a populist suspicious of his own hits, a superstar who struggled to fit in. 'The most original thing I've done in my life is screw up,' Joel tells directors Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, and while they don't tug too hard on the many tangled threads of Joel's life and art this comprehensive documentary is a reminder that anyone with such a gargantuan career – over 150 million albums sold, a residency at Madison Square Garden that lasted 10 years – has an intriguing psychological set-up. The 76-year-old, who recently shelved all touring plans because of a normal pressure hydrocephalus diagnosis, was primarily a storyteller with his lyrics, and talking about them takes him back into the highs and lows – but mostly lows – of his own life. The likes of Pink and Bruce Springsteen offer input, but Joel's real foil here is his former wife and manager Elizabeth Weber. They've been divorced since 1982, but her read on him remains essential. Very unlikely, very Billy Joel. The Hunting Wives ★★½ (Stan) Hightown creator Rebecca Cutter returns with this soap-tinged melodrama about switching from one side of America's cultural divide to the other. When a fresh start transplants Sophie O'Neill (Brittany Snow, The Night Agent) and her family from the East Cost to Texas, she becomes fast friends with the cadre of desperate housewives commanded by the wife of her husband's new boss, Margo Banks (Malin Akerman, Billions). The desire for female friendship is an intriguing lens, but the story is taken up with mildly outrageous behaviour and the growing shadow of a murder enquiry. Riff Raff ★★½ (Amazon Prime Video) This American crime-comedy, informed by far better movies from the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino, is less than the sum of its parts: Bill Murray, Jennifer Coolidge, Ed Harris, Pete Davidson, Gabrielle Union, and Lewis Pullman all have roles in the ensemble cast. Directed by Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognising Your Saints), the move struggles to lay out the many circumstances required to explain how an unexpected family gathering at the Maine cabin belonging to Harris' Vincent is soon crashed by Murray and Davidson's vengeful gangsters. Nothing really cuts through. Somebody Feed Phil (season 8) ★★★ (Netflix) One of Netflix's longest-running shows, this culinary travel show continues to take Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal from one tasty global locale to the next. More a chatty enthusiast than sombre gourmand, Rosenthal is visibly delighted by good food – his face finds the most delightfully idiosyncratic shapes when he bites into something he enjoys. Phil's format is quick-fire stops, and this latest season fills a major gap in his planner by finally featuring an Australian episode that covers Sydney and Adelaide. The outside perspective makes for a refreshing change. Sold! ★★★½ (Binge) Loading Mark Humphries has been many things on our TV screens, from sketch satirist to game show host, but he may well have found his defining purpose with this tragicomic documentary about Australia's housing crisis. As a self-deprecating truth-seeker working with long-time collaborator Evan Williams and The Chaser 's Craig Reucassel, Humphries manages to cut through the unsettling numbers, partisan policies, and grim ramifications of a housing market that, over the course of this century, has flipped from inclusive to exclusive. The explanations are concise and bittersweet – it's your choice to laugh or cry.
The Age
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
What to stream this week: The Mitford sisters and five more picks
This week's picks include a period romp about the British aristocracy in the 1930s, a documentary about Billy Joel, and a soap-tinged melodrama starring Brittany Snow and Malin Akerman. Outrageous ★★★½ (BritBox) Told with a giddy energy that matches the bottles of champagne repeatedly being popped, Outrageous is a period romp about the British upper class that traverses the fine line between farce and tragedy. The show's historic subject is the Mitford sisters – six daughters of the aristocracy who became a microcosm of Europe's ructions in the 1930s. Influencers in a tabloid headline era, they were the closest of siblings who eventually became adversaries. You couldn't make this story up if you tried. Really, really tried. It's 1931 and Nancy (Bessie Carter) serves as wry narrator – she's a budding novelist whose own family will provide irresistible material. Diana (Joanna Vanderham) is 'the beauty', soon to leave her Guinness heir husband for Britain's leading fascist, Sir Oswald Mosley (Joshua Sasse). Unity (Shannon Watson) will go beyond that – she befriends Adolf Hitler. Jessica (Zoe Brough) becomes an ardent communist. Pamela (Isobel Jesper Jones) loves her Angus cattle herd. Deborah (Orla Hill) simply wants a husband and a nice country house. Loading Put two or more of the sisters in a scene and the dialogue has screwball pace and droll retorts. In adapting Mary S. Lovell's 2001 biography, The Mitford Girls, creator Sarah Williams has captured solidarity as a kind of accelerant. Growing up together – their father, Baron Redesdale (James Purefoy), believed girls shouldn't go to school – the young women pushed at boundaries and ached for agency and purpose. Everything is a lark, until it very much isn't (hint: when Unity fangirls Hitler). There's frivolity, some truly sketchy male suitors, and ominous headlines; imagine Wes Anderson adapting Hilary Mantel. The six episodes roll through five years. The budget struggles with the sweep of history – a Nuremberg rally is done with merely dozens of extras – but the personal dynamics are fascinating. It's ultimately a story of how you respond when someone you love crosses a line you never imagined existed. There's a scene between Unity and Jessica, the sadness tinged with memories of joint silliness, that's quietly heartbreaking. Tellingly, the conundrums the Mitford sisters impose on each other couldn't be more timely. The appeal of fascism is debated at family meals, while opposing criticisms are righteously written off as propaganda and misinformation – free speech as an absolute defence is repeatedly invoked, political street violence threatens to become the norm. It's both entertaining and horrifying, as living in the moment often proves to be, with the Bright Young Things insouciance serving as a Trojan horse. The first season concludes in 1936, and I hope there's another – their story has earnt a reckoning. Billy Joel: And So It Goes ★★★(HBO Max) Consisting of two episodes each the length of a sizeable feature film, this documentary about Billy Joel, one of the biggest-selling artists in the history of popular music, will hold an obvious appeal to fans. His music is prominent throughout and Joel discusses his life with pugnacious candour. But it's also of interest to novices, because Joel has long been contradictory: a populist suspicious of his own hits, a superstar who struggled to fit in. 'The most original thing I've done in my life is screw up,' Joel tells directors Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, and while they don't tug too hard on the many tangled threads of Joel's life and art this comprehensive documentary is a reminder that anyone with such a gargantuan career – over 150 million albums sold, a residency at Madison Square Garden that lasted 10 years – has an intriguing psychological set-up. The 76-year-old, who recently shelved all touring plans because of a normal pressure hydrocephalus diagnosis, was primarily a storyteller with his lyrics, and talking about them takes him back into the highs and lows – but mostly lows – of his own life. The likes of Pink and Bruce Springsteen offer input, but Joel's real foil here is his former wife and manager Elizabeth Weber. They've been divorced since 1982, but her read on him remains essential. Very unlikely, very Billy Joel. The Hunting Wives ★★½ (Stan) Hightown creator Rebecca Cutter returns with this soap-tinged melodrama about switching from one side of America's cultural divide to the other. When a fresh start transplants Sophie O'Neill (Brittany Snow, The Night Agent) and her family from the East Cost to Texas, she becomes fast friends with the cadre of desperate housewives commanded by the wife of her husband's new boss, Margo Banks (Malin Akerman, Billions). The desire for female friendship is an intriguing lens, but the story is taken up with mildly outrageous behaviour and the growing shadow of a murder enquiry. Riff Raff ★★½ (Amazon Prime Video) This American crime-comedy, informed by far better movies from the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino, is less than the sum of its parts: Bill Murray, Jennifer Coolidge, Ed Harris, Pete Davidson, Gabrielle Union, and Lewis Pullman all have roles in the ensemble cast. Directed by Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognising Your Saints), the move struggles to lay out the many circumstances required to explain how an unexpected family gathering at the Maine cabin belonging to Harris' Vincent is soon crashed by Murray and Davidson's vengeful gangsters. Nothing really cuts through. Somebody Feed Phil (season 8) ★★★ (Netflix) One of Netflix's longest-running shows, this culinary travel show continues to take Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal from one tasty global locale to the next. More a chatty enthusiast than sombre gourmand, Rosenthal is visibly delighted by good food – his face finds the most delightfully idiosyncratic shapes when he bites into something he enjoys. Phil's format is quick-fire stops, and this latest season fills a major gap in his planner by finally featuring an Australian episode that covers Sydney and Adelaide. The outside perspective makes for a refreshing change. Sold! ★★★½ (Binge) Loading Mark Humphries has been many things on our TV screens, from sketch satirist to game show host, but he may well have found his defining purpose with this tragicomic documentary about Australia's housing crisis. As a self-deprecating truth-seeker working with long-time collaborator Evan Williams and The Chaser 's Craig Reucassel, Humphries manages to cut through the unsettling numbers, partisan policies, and grim ramifications of a housing market that, over the course of this century, has flipped from inclusive to exclusive. The explanations are concise and bittersweet – it's your choice to laugh or cry.
Elle
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
Missing 'Rivals'? Let 6-Part Period Drama 'Outrageous' Hailed As 'Perfection' By Viewers Fill The Void
Rivals may have recently started filming on its second season, but for those counting the days, hours and minutes before its small screen return, may we present to you a new mini series. that may well pique your interest: Outrageous, a six-part series depicting the lives of the infamous Mitford sisters. The series is based on the 1930s chapters of Mary S. Lovell's biography of all six sisters, The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family. It tells the story of the aristocratic Mitford family, who became notorious during the 1930s due to the six Mitford sisters — daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and his wife, Sydney Bowles, whom he married in 1904. Sydney was the daughter of publisher and politician Thomas Gibson Bowles, and David was the second son of Bertram, Lord Redesdale. FIND OUT MORE ON ELLE COLLECTIVE The couple had seven children — six girls and one boy — and their family homes were Asthall Manor and Swinbrook in Oxfordshire. Naturally, their lives were a continuous romp of fun and frivolity — that is until things took a turn for the worse, of course. This is everything you need to know about Outrageous. Anybody who was anybody in the 1930s would have been familiar with the Mitford family, most notably the half-dozen Mitford sisters, who all grew in six drastically different directions. (The only Mitford brother, Tom, died during World War II.) Of the sisters, one became a Nazi, another a socialist. All but one married; all but one divorced, and most of them lived long lives, except one sister, who died of suicide. Somehow, despite the sister's different social circles including everybody from John F. Kennedy and Cecil Beaton to Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, and Oswald Mosley, the sisters remained close for almost a century. All six episodes of Outrageous are adapted from Lovell's biography of the family. The series is told through the voice of Nancy Mitford, whose friendship group became known by the British tabloids as the 'Bright Young Things.' Nancy became a hit author, with her work subtly satirising the shenanigans of her family, most notably in her bestseller, The Pursuit of Love. The majority of Outrageous was filmed in a house 40 minutes from London where the team shot multiple scenes, including those set in Diana's magnificent townhouse and the Black Cat Club, and where they filmed during the summer. James Purefoy, who plays the Mitfords' father, who the Mitfords affectionately called Farv, said: 'They'd be mad not to, I think', per the Mirror, while the series' creator Sarah Williams suggested in an interview that she has already considered where the story could go in a second season. 'I think it's a really complicated set of reasons why people might be drawn in those directions. For these women, I think sibling culture plays a significant role. We have to ask, if Diana hadn't left Brian [Guinness, her first husband] and devoted her life to Lord Mosley, would Unity have gone to Germany and stalked Hitler? If Unity hadn't done that, would Decca have gone off to — which we would have her do in season two — join the Spanish Civil War and fight with the communists? There is a bit of, do they egg each other on, in a way,' Williams said, nodding to a potential second season. Outrageous is available to stream on BritBox now. ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE. Naomi May is a freelance writer and editor with an emphasis on popular culture, lifestyle and politics. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard as its Fashion and Beauty Writer, working across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Acting News Editor at ELLE UK and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others.
Spectator
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Why you didn't want to get on the wrong side of Cecil Beaton
'Remember, Roy, white flowers are the only chic ones.' So Cecil Beaton remarked to Roy Strong, possibly as a mild put-down to the young curator. But it was a curious put-down to make because Beaton broke his own rule happily, buying mountainous armfuls of speckled yellow, pink and scarlet carnations at Covent Garden and longing to fill his borders with Korean chrysanthemums and purple salvias. This small exhibition at the Garden Museum enjoys the sweet-pea surface of Beaton's creations, while giving a flash of the glinting secateur that also made up such an important part of his personality. Beaton's ability as an image-maker was astounding. Those famous photos of his Cambridge days with the Bright Young Things are still outrageous, a mad foray into camp pastoral. In a huge bromide print from 1927 of Rex Whistler strumming a lute in a melancholy grove, every leaf seems to sigh. We're not altogether surprised to learn that Beaton left St John's, Cambridge, without a degree, but a glittering career clearly beckoned. Stage design, photography, floristry, costume: he did them all. He was a ruthlessly flattering photographer, making Wallis Simpson look positively vulnerable (a lonely wee thing against a big, wild wood), and he became sought after to the extent that he was also invited to photograph the Queen in 1939. He reached always towards elegance and fantasy, using blooms to garnish and garland. He was a master of allusion, adding an ear of corn to a country posy or using angel's trumpets (Brugmansia) to create an ethereal atmosphere around the model Penelope Tree. Of course Beaton loved flowers; he delivered beauty with a capital B.
