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The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Review, Karen Pirie, Fake or Fortune, The Couple Next Door
Much of the credit for that goes to Lauren Lyle in the title role. Playing Pirie like some sarky granddaughter of Taggart and cousin of Rebus, she dominates every scene she is in. No mean feat when you are up against James Cosmo. Cosmo played an oil tycoon whose daughter and grandson were kidnapped in 1984 and never seen again. Pirie, newly promoted to inspector, was assigned the case. Assisting her, as in the first series, were her secret boyfriend, DS Phil Parhatka, sidekick DC Jason Murray, also known as 'Mint', and Bel the blogger. The series is not above cliche, starting with moodily lit interrogation rooms (would never happen: see 24 Hours in Police Custody). Similarly, Pirie and her superior, DCS Simon Lees (Steve John Shepherd) retain the stereotypically surly maverick and shouty boss relationship. But the writing was tight and slyly funny, the plotting tight as a drum, and every member of the talented cast pulled their weight. The scenes between Sir Brodie and Pirie, the old lion with the still terrifying roar versus a squeak of a lassie, were alone worth another Bafta. In Lyle's more than capable hands, Pirie remains a mystery in her own right. The character is tough yet not above tears, empathetic yet cold, driven but for what reason? Who is she, really? Watch out Pirie, you're in danger of becoming a national treasure. There was a clash between Karen Pirie and The Narrow Road to the Deep North (BBC1, Sunday), but nothing iPlayer couldn't help with. If you are yet to catch up with this adaptation of Richard Flanagan's novel about a young Australian officer imprisoned by the Japanese, I'd urge you to do so quick as you can. On the evidence of the first episode this handsomely shot five-parter could be one of the year's best dramas - and the most harrowing, too. Jacob Elordi and Ciaran Hinds play the younger and older Dorrigo Evans, once a medical student heading off to war, now an ageing writer still imprisoned by the past. The three-stranded tale relies heavily on flashbacks, which would usually interrupt the flow of the story, but not here. The performances are outstanding, with Elordi a star in the making and Hinds, the elder statesman of the piece, his usual subtle self. The scene where he was being interviewed/lectured by a young journalist about the realities of war, was watch through the fingers fare. And of course, looming over everything is what we know is coming when Evans and his squad get to the PoW camp. Fiona Bruce, presenter of Fake or Fortune? (BBC1, Monday) earns between £410,000-£414,999 a year, the same as Nick Robinson but less than Alan Shearer. What's that got to do with a popular primetime docuseries about art, you ask? All will be revealed. The new run of Fake or Fortune? opened with a painting of a pretty summer scene, bought at an art fair for £140 by Barry, a carer. It was unsigned, but when Barry took it out of the frame (top tip), the inscription said it was a portrait of Clementine Churchill by her husband Winston, painted June 1916. With some works by Churchill fetching millions, this had the potential to be 'a right result', as they say in the art biz. But only if Bruce and her co-presenter, the art dealer Philip Mould, could prove its provenance. They made a stylish pair. He was dapper enough to get away with wearing a scarf, Monty Don-style, and Bruce had 'scarfed up' for the occasion with a groovy number of her own. Add a buttery soft biker jacket and jeans and she was good to go. That's the thing with Bruce, the BBC can send her anywhere and she will pass muster. She is this generation's Sue Lawley, posh but not too posh, and able to hold her own whether she is reading the news, anchoring Question Time, or doing lighter fare such as this and Antiques Roadshow. If you ask the high heid yins at the BBC, it takes a very special skill set to do all this, hence Bruce's big bucks salary. But is that actually the case, or could any competent presenter do it? Over tea in a palace, Barry filled Bruce in on his unsuccessful attempts to authenticate the painting. He wasn't taken seriously by the auction houses 'because of the way I speak, the way I dress, I just don't look like the typical art dealer'. I half hoped Bruce would launch a broadside at snooty auctioneers. Instead, she smiled and said: 'It's quite a rarefied world, isn't it, the grand auction houses?' Anyone looking for searing, insightful commentary about the art business would have to try the shop next door. She was much better when they visited the handwriting expert. In a programme that was full of people hedging their bets, Barry finally got a straight answer. He was so shocked he almost cried. Bruce was there instantly with a comforting arm around his shoulder. It could have been awkward or seemed patronising, but instead it was just a lovely human moment. The expert consensus was that only the auction houses could authenticate the painting. The auctioneers, in turn, said it was up to the experts. All the running around had been for nothing, albeit they got a programme out of it. Barry will have to wait for more answers. As for Bruce? I think the jury is still out on that one, too. The Couple Next Door (Channel Monday-Wednesday), a psychological thriller about suburban swingers, played out over six nights. If it was anything like the first series, it was going to be a long haul. But what do you know, all concerned had upped their game. While it was still a heap of weapons-grade silliness, it was a better-acted, better-plotted, better-directed heap of weapons-grade silliness. Instead of traffic cops and yoga instructors the protagonists this time were doctors and nurses. Lottie the heart surgeon (oh, the irony!) was married to Jacob, an anaesthetist. Lottie was so busy with her job and an ailing dad to look after she had to schedule sex with Jacob, a man so dull he could have put his patients spark out with his conversation alone. Lottie couldn't complain though. Life was good, if predictable. Then a nurse named Mia turned up at the hospital and moved in next door. With her heavy European accent and mysterious past, the beautiful Mia intrigued Lottie and flattered Duncan. Smouldering glances over a patient's open chest cavity soon became flirty conversations over glasses of wine, and before you know it our couple had become a throuple and clothes were being torn off all over the shop. The good times on the sofa and in Antwerp hotel rooms could not last, though. Lottie and Duncan's well-ordered life had been turned upside down. Regrets? They had more than a few. The Couple Next Door began life as the hit Dutch series, Nieuwe Buren ('New Neighbours'). Both are filmed in Belgium and the Netherlands, hence the slightly unusual houses on wide open streets that make the place look like America. Written by David Allison (Marcella, Trust Me), this series powered along, fuelled by plot twists that ranged from unlikely to flat-out bonkers. There was far more going on at the hospital than an on-off threesome. Frankly, it was a wonder anyone left the place alive, such was the carry on. Jacob Elordi, left, plays a young medic in The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Image: Curio Pictures/BBC/Sony Pictures Television) Annabel Scholey was a solid centre of credibility as Lottie (even if she did look disconcertingly like Kate, Princess of Wales). Plaudits go again to Hugh Dennis who scrubs up well as a serious actor. There was plenty to question (wouldn't the police be called in to investigate wrongdoing rather than leaving it to hospital administrators to play detective?), and more than a few cliches (particularly in the sex scenes). But if it was noirish nonsense you are after, The Couple Next Door supplied it by the bucket load.
Spectator
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
The power of BBC's The Narrow Road to the Deep North
It's been a good week for fans of TV dramas that are set partly in Syria, feature poetry-lovers confronting extreme violence, like to keep their viewers in the dark (sometimes literally) and have main characters with Australian accents (sometimes accidentally). But there are also significant differences between the two examples on display – with The Narrow Road to the Deep North the much more sombre and The Veil the considerably more bonkers. Adapted from Richard Flanagan's Booker-winner, The Narrow Road began in Syria in 1941. Through what would prove the programme's characteristic murk, a group of Australian soldiers led by one Dorrigo Evans could just about be seen rescuing a young boy and joshing about the respective size of their penises. Within minutes, however, they were interrupted mid-josh by an explosion that killed one of their comrades and the rescued boy. In the first of the constant time-shifts, it was then 1942, with Dorrigo's wife Ella anxiously awaiting news of him following the Australian troops' surrender to the Japanese. Immediately afterwards came 1989, where the older Dorrigo (Ciaran Hinds) was being interviewed about his wartime experiences by a smug young journalist to whom he explained that people like her think war is only one thing (i.e. wrong) whereas in fact it's many things at once. And with that, we headed to 1940 where the younger Dorrigo (Jacob Elordi) proposed to Ella, before starting an affair with his uncle's wife, Amy: an affair kindled by their shared love of Sappho's poem 'You Burn Me' (full text: 'You burn me'). A couple of minutes – and three years – later he was among the Australian prisoners arriving in the Thai jungle to build a railway… Although the TV adaptation makes a few of the usual inexplicable plot-tweaks, it's essentially faithful to the book – not least in all those time-shifts and the main reason for them. This is that, despite the unbearably vivid scenes of suffering and Japanese cruelty in the jungle, The Narrow Road isn't primarily a war story, but a piercing character study filtered through the memory of old Dorrigo and designed to show how he, too, has ended up many different things at once. He is, for instance, simultaneously guilt-ridden and rather chuffed about his long-ago affair with Amy, grateful to and resentful of Ella, determined not to be haunted by the war and haunted by the war. And it's that last contradiction in particular that lends the show its power, as Dorrigo finds himself unable to do anything so impossibly glib as 'move on'. However much you might wish it, this tough but gripping drama bleakly reminds us, some stuff just won't go away. In recent years, there's been a lot of talk about whether there'll ever be a female James Bond – but in The Veil we sort of get one. Sunday's opening episode even had a pre-credit sequence in which our heroine (Elisabeth Moss) completed her previous mission in an immaculate suit and with a few quips to the baddie, who also became the first of many characters to fix her with a wondering stare and ask, 'Who are you?' At this stage, the viewer's answer to that question was a firm 'search me' – and so it remained as she adopted the name Imogen and headed to a refugee camp in Syria. There, the man from Unicef was soon asking the same thing, especially after she'd overcome several assailants in a fight, having put down her omnipresent cigarette. (Ian Fleming readers might remember the striking sentence in Casino Royale: 'Bond lit his seventieth cigarette of the day.') In another Bondian touch, it also helps that everybody who shoots at her always misses. Very gradually, it became apparent that Imogen is an MI6 agent sent to the camp to find a suspected Isis commander who, this being television, is a woman too. Once she had, though, she naturally went rogue. Charged with driving Adilah to a detention centre, Imogen instead headed to Istanbul while the two women spent their road trip companionably discussing both terrorism and English poetry. After the downtrodden misery of The Handmaid's Tale, you can see why Moss might have wanted to go full-on alpha female. Less understandable is why she didn't spend more on a voice coach – because her English accent is all over the place: sometimes OK; sometimes accurate syllable by syllable yet still somehow sounding like no English person ever has; sometimes flat-out Aussie. The Veil is written by Steven Knight who can be great (Peaky Blinders) and can be dreadful (Great Expectations), but here is mostly somewhat annoying. The dialogue is often corny, the kickass heroine levels feel almost parodic and nothing is remotely plausible. Nonetheless – and this is the properly annoying bit – there's still enough intrigue and mad fun to keep us watching.
Daily Mail
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Olivia Jade models sexy backless dress as she hits party ALONE amid Jacob Elordi split rumors
Olivia Jade Giannulli turned heads as she arrived at a glamorous event in Miami on Thursday evening. The influencer, 25, who goes professionally by Olivia Jade, looked very much like her mother, actress Lori Loughlin, 60, as she showcased her fit form in a little black dress with a plunging back at the David Yurman after party celebrating the opening of his Miami store opening. The social media personality kept her accessories simple, wearing one of the jeweler's long gold chains down her back and a pair of gold hoop earrings. Olivia displayed her toned legs in a pair of strappy open toe heels. Her makeup was natural looking with a neutral red lip and her long, blonde locks were styled in a loose updo. The model has been enjoying time on a solo trip to the South Florida area, sparking rumors there might be some trouble between her and longtime boyfriend Jacob Elordi, 27. The Australian actor recently wrapped work on the upcoming romantic drama Wuthering Heights, with Margot Robbie and directed by Emerald Fennel. Elordi stars as the dark and moody Heathcliff. 'The performances from everyone — it's breathtaking,' he told Deadline. 'It's an incredible romance. It's a true epic. It's visually beautiful. The script is beautiful. The costumes are incredible.' The Euphoria star has been promoting his series The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Elordi stars as doctor taken prisoner by the Japanese in World War II who is forced to help build a railway in Burma. To accurately portray a prisoner of war, the hunky star lost about 20 pounds. 'We had six weeks to shed all the weight and we got to do it together' he told ETalk about the experience with his fellow castmates. The studio made sure they did it safely. 'We had a great crew of nutritionists and trainers around us,' adding that the experience was 'more psychological than physical.' He said the diet helped put him in 'the headspace' to portray the grim conditions faced by prisoners of war. The five-part series is based on the novel by Richard Flannigan. The Narrow Road to the Deep North debuted April 18 on on Amazon Prime.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North' Producers On Bringing Richard Flanagan's Epic Book to the Screen: 'A Really Important Australian Story'
The television adaptation of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan's epic Booker Prize-winning war novel, debuted on Amazon Prime Video on April 18. As befits the cultural importance of the book to Australians, the series stars arguably the country's buzziest male actor Jacob Elordi and is also helmed by one of its most important filmmakers Justin Kurzel. But Narrow Road's decade-long journey to the screen has been a long and arduous one. Published in 2013, Flanagan's WWII-set book follows Dorrigo Evans, an Australian surgeon haunted by a wartime love affair and his brutal experiences as a POW forced to build the Thai-Burma Death Railway under Imperial Japanese command. The novel shifts between Dorrigo's youth, including a summer affair with his uncle's young wife, the horrors of his captivity, and his later, unfulfilled life, exploring memory, trauma, and the fragility of human dignity. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'The Gardener' Producer José Manuel Lorenzo to Receive Conecta Fiction & Entertainment Honor Netflix Sets Four New Series Made in Mexico, Including 'Santita' With Gael Garcia Bernal 'How to Have Sex' Director Molly Manning Walker Heads Up Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Flanagan was inspired to write Narrow Road by his father's experience as a prisoner of war who was forced to work the Burma Death Railway. The book received worldwide acclaim, selling more than a million copies in over 42 countries, won both the 2014 Man Booker Prize and Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction, and cemented Flanagan's reputation as arguably Australia's greatest living author. Given the praise and international success of Narrow Road, it was inevitable there would be keen interest in adapting the book for the screen. In 2018, it was revealed that FremantleMedia Australia had secured the rights to the book with the intention of creating a miniseries. A year later, Justin Kurzel, the Aussie auteur behind Snowtown, True History of the Kelly Gang and Nitram, and his writing partner Shaun Grant were announced to be boarding the project to create their first work for television. And then nothing. The project was stuck in limbo due to leadership changes at Fremantle and also the production shut downs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. After the rights lapsed, Flanagan approached Jo Porter, a former exec at Fremantle, who had established a new production company, Curio Pictures. With Kurzel and Grant still attached, the long delay was also fortuitous as it meant that Elordi, basking in the success of his turns in Euphoria, Priscilla and Saltburn, had come of age and was ideally suited to take on the role of Dorrigo Evans. As well as being Kurzel's first TV project, the series had added significance as Elordi was coming home to star in his first major Australian production. Over a decade after the book was published, the first two episodes of the five-part miniseries of Narrow Road premiered at this year's Berlin Film Festival, to gushing praise from critics. The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Curio's Porter and Rachel Gardner and Amazon MGM Studios' head of Australian originals Sarah Christie about the long journey to the screen for Flanagan's book and its importance to modern notions of Australian identity, brining Elordi home and working with the actor who is at an 'inflection point' in his career and the heightened interest in Kurzel's first television project. Jo, I know originally adaptation was a Fremantle show, and you were at Fremantle previously. Did you take the show with you when you created Curio? JO PORTER Rachel and I when we both left our respective places of employment to join up forces and start Curio Pictures, which is a Sony production entity here. We often lamented the golden handcuffs of those projects that you put your heart and soul in that you have to leave behind and for me, the one that was really, really hard to leave behind was Narrow Road, but the opportunity for the new venture was there, so you have to move on. We started Curio up in the middle of 2021 and then towards the end of that year, I got a call literally out of the blue from Richard Flanagan saying — because COVID happened and that slowed everything down — 'hey, the rights have lapsed, [he asked] would you consider taking it on.' Personally, it was like oh my god, that is just extremely exciting. Rachel and I were still developing our slate, it was our first project, so it was before [Disney+ series] Artful Dodger. RACHEL GARDNER Curio had just formed, and Jo rang me. I was at the end of my time at [See-Saw Films]. I'd done all my gardening leave, and I was like, '[Justin Kurzel] and [Shaun Grant] doing The Narrow Road to the Deep North. What!? Wow, like what does that look like?' Really intriguing. So Kurzel and Grant were still attached when the rights lapsed? PORTER Yes. After I'd left [Fremantle] they continued and there was a lot of prior relationships but also trust between [Richard Flanagan, Kurzel and Grant] in the project. GARDNER We were really excited to take that it on. It was really important for us to make a statement for Curio with a really important Australian story. It's the type of show we want to be known for making out of Australia with the best of the best of Australian talent and working with great partners to take Australian content to a broad audience and a global one as well, not just a local one for us. The international aspect is interesting to me, given the talent involved and the book it is adapted from, the miniseries seems to have a lot of awards potential… PORTER You make it for an audience, to be honest. As producers, that's where our ambition sits, but we do believe that it has strong elements. I think particularly taking a filmmaker like Justin into the television sphere, this is his first sojourn. Also things like the Berlinale and the incredible honor of having the gala screening there [at the Berlin Film Festival]. Like Rachel said, I was intrigued to see what a Justin Kurzel television piece could look like. [Going back to] Berlinale, we got an encouraging response out of that. But you never make something thinking it's going to be awards bait. What is thrilling is when all the pieces coalesce, the ambition of your commissioning partner comes together as well, and it is just alchemy, and then if it also has [awards] potential, well, isn't that sweet? Personally, I believe every single person that's worked on it deserves the most enormous award because of their contribution. Sarah, in the timeline for the series adaptation of , where does Amazon come in? When did you guys start looking at this, and this actually this works for us as well? SARAH CHRISTIE I think it was late 2022 when Jo, Rachel and I started talking about the different things that we could potentially do together, and Narrow Road was just one of those projects that is absolutely gold in terms of speaking in a deep way to an Australian audience and then also the the international potential. Richard's novel is absolutely exquisite and when they brought around the project it was a huge draw card for us. Sitting down and reading Shaun's script for the first time — we read a lot of scripts like every single day — and when one sort of shines through, you know quite quickly that it's something we just had to bring onto the slate. Justin, Shaun and Curio's vision: we were really interested in seeing how these brilliant filmmakers were taking a new step in their ambition in telling a story that was going to be incredibly grounded, authentic and real. But it also has these elements of like lightness that came through, in the hope, in the love story that really enables people, particularly the character of Dorrigo, to survive the most horrific experiences. So we were so excited about the vision that this story in terms of the tonal balance. And then having Jacob Elodi attached already at the point when we first started talking about this project, for us really just cemented the potential to reach a really broad audience. Jacob was at a really incredible inflection point in his career, having made his mark in Euphoria and Saltburn and then wanting to sort of come home [to Australia] to work with this incredible team of the best Australian filmmakers working today and take on a very challenging but incredible role. There's also the fans of the novel, which we already know exist, which is a big drawcard again. We're speaking already to a very active and passionate audience and then having someone like Jacob come on board really for us felt like we were going to broaden out and really speak to a younger audience as well. Jacob is an incredible actor, and his performances have really resonated a lot with younger audiences. This story is actually about what young young people went through, so we were just very excited about the potential to speak to a really broad Australian audience. PORTER [The role of Dorrigo] was such a hard role to cast. To find someone that could carry a piece like this, that could be someone that could unlock the finance for this project, authentically play the role and be a leader amongst many. [Those types of actors] don't just fall off trees, and it's almost like we had to wait until Jacob was the right age to play the part. He speaks so beautifully about his love of the novel, but also of work of Justin and it was always his dream to work with him and so it feels like serendipity. As Sarah said, he's at the inflection point of his career, he just committed to it. That would have been in 2022, and he was prepared to wait 12 months until we started filming, which is a big commitment. GARDNER It probably wasn't the most popular opinion, really [for Elordi to take on this project]. An Australian TV series at that point in his career, it was a risk and obviously a very calculated one. We're really pleased that he's so proud of the series. Can we talk a little about the casting in general? There's a couple of stand out people in the cast, like Simon Baker, I mean he's incredible in this. But also Thomas Weatherall, the actor who plays Frank Gardiner, a similarly incredible performance. PORTER We had an incredible casting director, but it also speaks to the power of Justin to be the honeypot that they all adore working with. And then the material itself, there are a lot of meaty roles there to play. GARDNER And this speaks to Richard and the absolute beauty of the book, where even though it's relatively small roles like the one that [Simon Baker] played the characterization of that character Keith — who actually is quite different than the book, funnily enough — the characterization of everyone, is just so sharply drawn and that is really attractive to actors to play. Were there like specific production challenges you guys had? Obviously there's trying to recreate Myanmar in Australia, but also the torture scenes — which were hard to watch — how did you film those? GARDNER Practically speaking in terms of structuring the production, we had a lot of very real constraints such as Jacob's time, Simon's time, Odessa's time, also having to structure the weight loss [the boys in the camps go through]. But because we had one director, we were able to shoot it like a film. So we could shoot our actors and locations and because of how the timelines were split, it was actually relatively easy to structure and the stars were all aligned. Ultimately people's availability sort of neatly slotted into those areas. PORTER [Regarding where we shot the production] it did create decision [for us]. Do you travel around and find the locations potentially interstate or not, and we decided that we would base out of Sydney and find the locations around there. There was some away filming, but that was both creatively led and also because of the financing, it often makes more sense in Australia to just shoot within one state. GARDNER We had a lot of support from New South Wales, the state went above and beyond and we really needed it with the financing. PORTER If we couldn't make it work, we would have had to find another solution, but we felt we could find the best creative outcome by basing it [in New South Wales] and it also working within the financing model. GARDNER [The shoot] was really tough. Those boys were really hungry and a little bit hangry, some of them were shredding over Christmas. PORTER Justin is a very visceral truth telling director in his approach to filmmaking and I think actors really enjoy that as an experience, but it's why he's unflinching., his unflinching storytelling both in beauty and also in the horror, I think really shines through. With historical dramas, there are always nitpickers, people who pick holes in things, especially in terms of adaptating a famous book. For me, I noticed that some of the dialogue, there seemed to be some linguistic anachronims. Was that done deliberately? PORTER We didn't want to make a stuffy study, you want to feel these these women and men were alive and bled and [you want to] care for them. It's not meant to be a documentary, it is an examination extremists and and the worst and the best of humanity. That's the lens through which it [depicts] the war and the fire that Dorrigo has to walk through. It's important for the visceral nature of war and the hardship to be accurate, so everybody worked deeply hard to get right the truth of that lived experience. But yes, I think some liberties were probably taken in expression. GARDNER I think it's also really important to make things for an audience. We really want to find a broad audience, and Gen Z is a really massively important audience. We had to open it up. It's so easy to make period piece and there's a veneer of untouchability that you just can't quite necessarily get through. [Justin] has made something that's quite emotionally accessible. Sarah, for Amazon Prime Video Australia, is clearly a very big prestige show, and it has the ingredients and star power to attract an international audience. Are you looking to commission and produce more of these types of prestige dramas? Or was it just a one-off, the chance came up to grab and you had to take it? CHRISTIE When we're looking to curate our slate of Australian originals, we're really looking to cater to a broad Australian audience and have [programming] that speaks to everyone across the board, and across our scripted strategy, film, unscripted. Narrow Road was just one of those projects that really stood out to us, for its prestige quality but also this story in of itself and the team behind it to deliver, we really felt like this could be a big moment for us in terms of our slate and drive conversation. We were speaking about it being a historical piece and I think we were really interested in an important Australian story that hasn't been told that many times and particularly in this way, so we felt there was something there to really bring and connect with Australian customers and also people internationally. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise 'Yellowstone' and the Sprawling Dutton Family Tree, Explained
