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The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
TV tonight: more top-notch tunes in romantic drama Mix Tape
9pm, BBC TwoThe will-they-won't-they drama about two people who fell in love and parted 20 years ago takes a heartbreakingly dark turn, as we learn the real reason Alison (Teresa Palmer) left Sheffield without telling Daniel (Jim Sturgess). The pair finally meet up in Sydney, but it was always going to be an awkward reunion – especially as they both now have spouses. Was their love only ever meant to stay in the past? Beautiful, tragic and set to a top-notch soundtrack. Hollie Richardson 8pm, Channel 4It's the semi-finals, and the four remaining pastry pummellers must create an edible floating city. There's also a special guest judge dropping by: Gabriella Cugno, the official chocolatier for the 2023 film Wonka. She'll be challenging them to create a chocolate bar fit for a blockbuster. Ali Catterall 8pm, Channel 5Helen Skelton, JB Gill and Jules Hudson explore more of the British coastline. On the itinerary: Tynemouth Long Sands, the new surfing hotspot in North Tyneside; a conservation project involving photographing porpoises in Pembrokeshire; and mustard being made in Norfolk. HR 9pm, U&AlibiThe Auckland PI Alexa Crowe (Lucy Lawless) may be less gung-ho than Lawless's Xena: Warrior Princess but she gets the job done with similar good humour. Her latest case is a slippery one, not least because it involves murder at a family-run coconut oil firm. But there's also a bubbly, babbling cameo from Bill Bailey as her former client Enzo. Graeme Virtue 10pm, Channel 4The 1991 murder of Janine Downes is this week's cold case that the Silent Witness star Emilia Fox and the former senior detective Dr Graham Hill are attempting to crack. Downes's body was found in Wolverhampton's red light district – interviews with key witnesses lead them to ask if she may have been the victim of a serial killer. HR 11.30pm, Sky MaxA very grownup cartoon from DC Studios' James Gunn, following a black ops team that is a motley crew of monsters. There's a harrowing flashback in this episode, as 'the weasel' has a nightmare that shows his past – and he's definitely not 'dreaming about squirrels' like the others assume. HR Women Talking (Sarah Polley, 2022), 11pm, BBC Two Based on the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews, which was in turn based on true events, Sarah Polley's Women Talking is startlingly unconventional. The story of a Mennonite community in remote Bolivia whose women discover they have been drugged and raped, it centres on the discussion of how they should react. Do they leave, do they fight back, or do they do nothing? With a world-beating cast (Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy and Frances McDormand), the film is light on action but will linger long after the credits roll. Stuart Heritage Women's International One-Day cricket: England v India, 1.45pm, Sky Sports Main Event The third one-day international in the three-match series. Women's Euro 2025 football: ITV1 7pm/BBC One 7.30pm The first semi-final. The second semi-final match is on Wednesday on ITV1 at 7pm or BBC One at 7.30pm.
The Guardian
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I wish I'd enjoyed my fame a bit more': Jim Sturgess on regrets, romance and the art of the mix tape
Like all good love stories, this one starts with a chance meeting and ends with a reunion. It was 2008, pre-Hardy and Hiddleston, post-Bale and Grant; Jim Sturgess was a rising star and the latest handsome young Brit to break Hollywood. Having landed the lead role in casino thriller 21, Sturgess needed a love interest: cue a slew of chemistry tests with a roll call of beautiful young women, a process Sturgess remembers now as 'the most exposed blind date you could ever possibly put yourself through, with five producers watching you from afar'. Kate Bosworth got the role, but one actor lingered in Sturgess's mind: an effervescent Australian called Teresa Palmer. 'When you do those chemistry tests, they put you through it, so we spent the whole day together,' Sturgess says. 'I was really hoping she was going to get the part, because we got on really well. She's Australian, I'm English, and we were both in Hollywood going, 'Where the hell are we?'' Palmer didn't get the part, but Sturgess never forgot her. And, almost 20 years later, Sturgess and Palmer have been reunited – for Mix Tape, a wistful romantic drama about two people who reunite after 20 years apart. Told in four one-hour episodes (you'll wish it was much, much longer), Mix Tape follows two teenagers, Dan and Alison, as they woo each other with letters and mix tapes in 1980s Sheffield (which means we get some amazing needle drops: the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Cure, Joy Division). Guileless young Dan (Rory Walton-Smith) is completely smitten, but Alison (Florence Hunt) is guarded, desperately trying to hide her difficult family life at home. When she suddenly disappears – for reasons revealed much later – Dan is completely heartbroken. Sturgess, now 47, plays adult Dan: a music journalist who never left his home town and, despite being married, never really moved on from his first love. When he discovers Alison (Palmer) is now a bestselling author living in Sydney, he sends her a friend request online. Letters and cassettes are swapped for Facebook messages and Spotify playlists, but the feelings remain the same. Palmer tells me Sturgess is 'the kindest, warmest, coolest, most effortless actor I've ever worked with. And that dude really has great taste in music,' she adds. 'He is that character – he is the real deal.' Before filming even began, Sturgess and Palmer were sending each other playlists, with Sturgess putting her on to UK rappers like Kano, Dizzee Rascal, Ocean Wisdom, Little Simz. 'It was just like the show,' he says. 'Twenty-odd years later, we were reconnecting.' In his 20s, Sturgess made his name as the romantic lead in the Beatles musical film Across the Universe and opposite Anne Hathaway in One Day, but he has spent the past few years in roles that require guns and running – think Hard Sun and Geostorm. But Sturgess is made for this work, with his crinkly eyed smile and soft eyes. Last year was all about 'rodent boyfriends' – well, you can take your Mike Faist, because Sturgess is the OG rodent boyfriend, with a face particularly suited for yearning. 'I've been working on my yearning,' he laughs. 'I'm actually very attracted to romance stories, more so as I get older. They're just so human – it's literally two people navigating their feelings and their emotions, which is really beautiful and interesting.' Mix tapes were a 'big, big part' of how Sturgess wooed girls. 'It works!' he laughs. 'A mix tape was a really big deal back then! That was why I was so attracted to young Daniel – I was that guy!' As a teenager, he was obsessed with US hip-hop and guitar bands from Northern England; he vividly recalls listening to the Stone Roses on his Walkman while delivering newspapers. 'That's what's so beautiful about Mix Tape – it is about that period when you first fall in love, when you first hear music,' he says. 'Your receptors are just so wide open and everything is so important to you. And that's why, when people ask you what your favourite band is, you'll probably say what your favourite band was when you were 16.' Sturgess had a hand in choosing the music used in Mix Tape and even taught Walton-Smith and Hunt how to make mix tapes on cassette: 'It blew their minds. They were like, 'This is an art form. And this is a lot of work!'' he laughs. 'I was explaining to them how you couldn't just get the music off the internet – you had to own it, all your mix tapes came from what was in your collection. They couldn't believe it.' Director Lucy Gaffy let Sturgess in on the audition process for young Dan; they picked Walton-Smith, a complete newcomer who will be in everything soon. 'There was a real gentleness to Rory that some of the other actors didn't bring,' says Sturgess. 'He's got that natural Northern swagger and charm to him. And it was his first job! He was so wide open and desperate to learn. Beautifully inquisitive. He was brilliant. I'm really proud of what he's done.' When Sturgess was his age, he was too afraid to ask for help: 'I was dropped in at the deep end.' He never formally trained as an actor, but he got the bug as a six-year-old when he was cast in a production of Wind in the Willows. 'I was not very good at school. I struggled to concentrate … I was slightly tarnished with the naughty brush. But I just took to [acting]. I still remember the sense of community, of making something together – which I still crave now.' When he was cast opposite Evan Rachel Wood in Across the Universe, Sturgess was propelled to international stardom. 'I didn't really know what I was doing. I was just a kid from England, playing in bands – and suddenly this movie thing happened. Everything changed quite quickly. I didn't really understand how to navigate myself through all that. I didn't have anybody guiding me. I'd be invited to these big parties, but I would always not go. It was a bit scary, it feels a bit mad.' Over the years, he's been in the very good (Cloud Atlas), the worthy of reappraisal (Across the Universe – 'I feel like if it came out now, it might have done all right,' Sturgess muses), and the very bad (London Fields, a spectacular box office flop overshadowed by the subsequent tawdry trial between his co-stars, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard). He's passed on some big opportunities (playing Spider-Man on Broadway) and said yes to much smaller parts that made him happy. If anything, he's learned to focus on the experience of making something, rather than the reception: 'It's such a rollercoaster ride … If your end goal is just to have it be well received and get all the admiration that might come with that, you're going to fall over a lot. You're going to trip yourself up. If it is well received, that's the icing on the cake. I don't really read reviews. I just don't. I'm not trying to hide from them or anything. I'm just never that interested. If I read a bad one, I'll probably agree, you know? Fair enough!' At the premiere for that casino film 21, which was held in Las Vegas, he remembers his face was plastered across billboards on the Strip, on the blackjack tables at the hotel and even on his room key. What is his relationship with fame now? 'It is easier,' he says. 'I was definitely more famous when I was younger and, sometimes, I wish I'd enjoyed it a bit more. But I shied away from fame a lot. I had it at an arm's length. And, looking back, I think I would have got more out of it if I opened myself up to it and embraced it, if I wasn't quite so wary of it all.' Now, he is recognised 'just enough that I'm quite flattered when it happens'. These days, Sturgess is performing music under the moniker King Curious and his next film will be 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank, alongside Liam Neeson and – you guessed it– Teresa Palmer, who plays his girlfriend again. Is this what they're doing now, a la Fred and Ginger, Kate and Leo, Hanks and Ryan? Sturgess laughs. 'If you could just find somebody you got on with and kept making relationship movies … well, I'd be down!' Mix Tape is on BBC Two and iPlayer
The Guardian
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Mix Tape review – nails the heart-stopping excitement of new love
A few questions before we begin. Did you come of age in or around 1989? Do you look back on your teenage years with fondness or horror? Did you have a great, formative love during the above? Did you let him/her go and never even do a cursory online search as to their whereabouts in the intervening decades? Did I just startle you by referring to the intervening decades between 1989 and now? Because that's what there are. I know. I had to check, too. How great is your tolerance for the depiction of young love on screen now that you are past youth yourself? Will you sit on the sofa wreathed in smiles and yearning or will you put a boot through the telly? How well-disposed do you feel to the idea of a Sally Rooney-esque endeavour aged up to cover those who came of age in or around 1989 and how their lives have played out since? This is important. I'm talking contemplative scenes, wry smiles at memories, melancholic suffusion, mood above action. Have you read and enjoyed the acclaimed novel Mix Tape by Jane Sanderson? Your answers to the above will help determine how much you enjoy Mix Tape, an adaptation by Jo Spain of Sanderson's novel. The four-part, double-timelined drama tells the story of freelance music journalist Dan O'Toole (Jim Sturgess) and author Alison Connor (Teresa Palmer), who grew up as teenagers in Sheffield and were each other's first loves. Their younger selves are played (excellently) by newcomer Rory Walton-Smith and Florence Hunt respectively. Their scenes capture all the excitement and novelty, the heart-stopping importance of every minute spent together that teenagers in love conjure for themselves. Dan's mother (Helen Behan) has some misgivings – she would rather he were playing the field a bit – but his father (Mark O'Halloran) is a romantic and is happy just to give his boy a little life advice along the way, especially as Alison is almost as fond of his racing pigeons as he is. Dan only wishes that Alison would let him meet her parents. Or even tell him where she lives and let him walk her home. Unfortunately, Alison's dad is long gone, her mother is an alcoholic and her boyfriend is a deeply unlovely piece of work called Martin (Jonathan Harden), whose malevolent presence suggests nothing but bad things are coming for the family. So it turns out, though the languorous pacing of Mix Tape, which is slightly too pleased with itself, means that it takes too long to get there. Things are even slower in the present as we wait for Dan and Alison's paths to cross again. When Alison's new book is released, Dan sends her – hesitantly – a friend request online. She – hesitantly – accepts it. For a long time – a long time – they communicate by sending Spotify links to each other, of songs that accompanied pivotal moments in their lives and relationship. Dan is now married to Katja (Sara Soulié), one of those screen wives who exist merely to irritate. She insists that now (their only child has just departed for university) is the time for them to start travelling together, regardless of the fact that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Dan to collaborate with a music legend on his memoir is on the horizon. Women, eh! Alison is married to a successful surgeon (one day I want the story of an unsuccessful surgeon – one who's scraping by, his mortality rates just good enough to keep him in gainful employment but nothing to write home about) and trying to keep him from bouncing their daughter, Stella (Julia Savage), into a termination that she may not want. So neither adult life is perfect. Does this mean they should meet up and see what spark remains from 1989? Is the grass always greener on the path not taken? Why did they break up? Did he find out where she lived, and about her mum and Martin? Should they just hurry up and shag? Is your own life worthless because you do not have an intense, formative teenage romance to look back on that has shaped and haunted you in ways known and unknown ever since? The questions multiply. Sign up to What's On Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday after newsletter promotion Mix Tape is full of impressive performances and hard work from everyone involved but it never quite catches fire. Or perhaps that's just because, when I remember the first boy who made me a mix tape, I want to vomit into the nearest bin. I wish you happier memories and greater enjoyment. Mix Tape aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now
Irish Times
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Mix Tape review: Unspools like a glorified cover version of Sally Rooney's Normal People
Mix Tape ( BBC Two , 9pm) is a bit of a muddle. This underwhelming four-part romcom, adapted from a 2020 novel by Yorkshire author Jane Sanderson, debuted last month on Australian streaming service Binge. The show's writer, meanwhile, is Jo Spain , a former Sinn Féin political adviser and An Phoblacht journalist, and it was filmed in Dublin , often against very conspicuous local landmarks – despite being set in Sheffield. On one point, at least, the series is very clear: the late 1980s were the best time ever for music (it is set 10 years later than the novel, which celebrated the 1970s punk scene). It makes its feelings known by opening in 1989 to the riff from The Stone Roses Fool's Gold (which just about came out in 1989, being released that November). We're in the bedroom of music nerd Daniel (Rory Walton-Smith) – a young man with the world at his feet and a place in his heart for shy crush Alison (Florence Hunt), who he woos by creating mixtapes of his favourite tunes (The Cure, Nick Drake etc). These star-crossed teens are destined to be together. At least they are until dark secrets in Alison's life derail their romance. Fast forward to the present day, and Daniel is a middle-aged freelance journalist – portrayed as a tragic sad sack by Jim Sturgess (full marks for accuracy). Middle-aged Alison (Teresa Palmer), meanwhile, has fled both Sheffield and her Yorkshire accent and reinvented herself as a hot-property debut novelist in Australia. Inevitably, news of her literary breakthrough reaches Daniel, who immediately takes to mooching about like Robert Smith in the Just Like Heaven video. None of this is within yelling distance of plausible. If he was that hung up on Alison, Daniel would have stalked her on social media long before the excuse of her being a newly-published author. As is the tradition with romcoms, Mix Tape also insists we regard as adorable conduct what in the real world would be unhinged if not sociopathic – ie, Daniel and Alison jeopardising their marriages to moon after one another after decades of getting on with their lives. READ MORE Then there is the distracting Dublin-ness of the whole thing. An international audience might not blink as Daniel and his father are filmed on a barge at Grand Canal Dock, with Bolands Mill and those space-age new apartments over their shoulder. However, it's going to take an Irish audience out of the drama pretty quickly. As will a scene supposedly filmed at Sheffield United's 30,000-capacity Bramall Lane but which bears a much closer resemblance to a generic League of Ireland stadium. Nobody sits down to a romantic comedy expecting oodles of originality. Which is just as well because Mix Tape unspools like a glorified cover version of Sally Rooney's elevated romcom, Normal People – spritzed up with the weaponised schmaltz of Richard Curtis circa Notting Hill or Love Actually. It also cheats by casting leads much younger than their characters. As the story opens in 1989, Daniel and Alison are about 16 or 17. But Palmer was born in 1986: she would have been three-years-old when Alison's romance with Jim blossoms. Similarly, Sturgess was born in 1978, which makes him 11 when Fool's Gold came out. Why not feature age-appropriate actors? The answer is they would simply look far too old and beaten down by life for the story to have any lustre. There is also the fact that few in their 50s or beyond would risk everything for a teenage crush – a grim fantasy Mix Tape never sells. You've heard this tune before and done much better. Mix Tape airs on BBC2 on Tuesday at 10pm
Daily Mail
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Mix Tape: A blissful wallow in the nostalgic afterglow of innocent young love
Mix Tape (BBC2) Funny thing — until the advent of the Pill in the 1960s, most young women married their first serious boyfriend. That's why, this year, a good many couples will be celebrating diamond or even platinum wedding anniversaries. But a lifetime later, it's almost shocking for teenagers to marry. Yet the idea of First Love is still hugely romantic... and, thanks to social media, countless people are getting back together with the schooldays crush with whom they shared their first kiss or first dance. The comedian Katherine Ryan, for instance, dated her husband, Bobby Kootstra, at school in Canada, until he dumped her on prom night. Decades later, they met again and now have two children together, and is pregnant with her third. Mix Tape wallows blissfully in the nostalgic afterglow of a teenage love affair. Jim Sturgess and Teresa Palmer play former sweethearts Daniel and Alison, who shared a heartbreakingly chaste passion for each other in school at the end of the 1980s but have long since drifted apart. Both are married, both are parents of teenagers, both are writers — but while he's a struggling music journalist still living in Sheffield, she's a bestselling novelist with a millionaire's penthouse in Sydney, Australia. A sense of missed opportunities and disappointment pervades their lives, though neither of them wants to acknowledge it. Daniel's wife is smugly satisfied that her career is so much more successful than his. Alison's husband is arrogant and overbearing, even controlling. Any bitterness in the story is offset by the flashbacks to schooldays, drenched in the music of the era. The pair first meet at a party where The Stone Roses are shaking the walls, and in a series of shy, touching scenes, they bond over a shared obsession with the wistful songs of Nick Drake and The Velvet Underground. He (Rory Walton-Smith) makes her a cassette of his favourite tracks and slips it into her bag. She (Florence Hunt) compiles her own tape and leaves it in his locker. Many years later, she smiles distantly and tells her daughter, 'You never forget the boy who makes you your first mix tape.' All nostalgia has a flattering soft-focus filter, of course. In reality, their C90s wouldn't only feature cool bands like The Smiths, The Jesus And Mary Chain and New Order. There'd be some U2 on there, some Billy Joel, possibly something truly embarrassing like Bananarama. But the whole point of the past is that we can remember it the way it should have been, not how it really was. This four-part series, based on the acclaimed novel by Jane Sanderson, evokes a Yorkshire that perhaps had already vanished by 1989, where men in back-to-back terraces kept pigeons and supped from Thermos flasks while fishing in the canal. But we believe in it, because of the guileless innocence of the young actors playing Daniel and Alison. It's all so pure, it must be true. Meanwhile elsewhere on TV, Dan from Durham, a contestant on The Great British Sewing Bee (BBC1), revealed his talent for fire-breathing. One burp, presenter Sara Pascoe warned, and an outfit could go up in flames. The show has had drag acts before, but never dragons.
