All posts tagged: Horses

​​Slow Horses newcomer stars in exclusive first look for The Reluctant Vampire

​​Slow Horses newcomer stars in exclusive first look for The Reluctant Vampire

Published by Daniella Wilson

BBC comedy series The Reluctant Vampire will be swooping in this weekend – and Radio Times has an exclusive first look at the series. The show, which is an adaptation of the book series of the same name by comedy legend Eric Morecambe and features BAFTA winner Lenny Rush as its lead, is coming to BBC One and iPlayer on Sunday (4 October). It follows Rush’s character Val, the youngest member of a vampire family who starts living a double life after finding out that he is, in fact, not actually a vampire. In the clip (which you can watch above), there’s a comical misunderstanding between Val, his friend Gertie (played by Ellie-May Sheridan) and villager John (played by Charlie Cooper). The cast also includes Sian Clifford and Tom Davis, who play Val’s vampire parents, Ross Noble and Bill Bailey as gargoyles, and Joe Wilkinson as Wilf the Werewolf. Lenny Rush as Val and Tom Davis as Victor in The Reluctant Vampire. BBC Rush rose to stardom after appearing in the Daisy May Cooper comedy drama …

‘Slow Horses’ Star Gary Oldman Reveals That “Spies Love This Show”

‘Slow Horses’ Star Gary Oldman Reveals That “Spies Love This Show”

Published by Sam Flores

Also the funniest. One of Lamb’s greatest joys is to take the piss out of the so-called slow horses, the ragtag crew of MI5 misfits under his charge. In the show’s first season, when one of them accidentally kills a fellow agent while tumbling down the stairs, Lamb cracks, “If you meant to kill him, he’d still be alive.” It’s a classic Jackson Lamb retort. Yet behind the character’s contemptuous, world-weary exterior is a man who cares. “There’s a real loyalty to the slow horses and protecting them from that bureaucratic monster, which is MI5, MI6,” Oldman says. That bureaucratic monster is headquartered in a fictionalized Regent’s Park, where Kristin Scott Thomas’s Diana Taverner—Lady Di, as Lamb calls her—will finally lead as “first desk” this season. Taverner, with her plummy accent and cashmere wardrobe, is sometimes Lamb’s foil and sometimes his friend, depending on what she wants. Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb and Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner. Apple TV The government security service Taverner heads is driven by the Machiavellian ethos that the …

From the Horse’s Mouth | Lisa Hanawalt

From the Horse’s Mouth | Lisa Hanawalt

Published by Jenni Sidey

In 2013, shortly after I gave birth to my daughter, the Canadian publisher Drawn and Quarterly sent me a copy of My Dirty Dumb Eyes, by Lisa Hanawalt. Her art and writing made me laugh out loud through the mire of postpartum depression, and I’ve been a devoted fan ever since. So this June I direct-messaged her to ask if she might draw the cover for our Summer Issue; to my delight, she accepted. In an early sketch, Hanawalt included some made-up coverlines, which I wished were real: Jessipa Jonesky: Talking to Ghosts at the Local Diner; Allain St. Brewing: Donkeys, Doorknobs, and Dubrivnik; Chilm Timbers: Where Did I Put My Car Keys?; Cindy Chomps: Ballet on the Playground; Santiago Biggle: Kafka’s Lost Poems; Bageta Suzsmith: Trick-or-Treat in Outerspace; Verily Spivak: I’m Too Cold to Go Swimming; Omar Meerkowtow: High School Dances and Broadway Revivals. Hanawalt’s genius, I think, is in her evocation of the bodily and disembodied absurdities of being human and animal at the same time. She is best known as the creator …

Only Fools and Horses episode ‘banned’ for 20 years for being too ‘cruel’

Only Fools and Horses episode ‘banned’ for 20 years for being too ‘cruel’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Only Fools and Horses star Tessa Peake-Jones has said modern sitcoms should be as heartwarming as the BBC sitcom – but the series almost tarnished its own loving reputation back when it first aired. In a new interview, the actor, who played Del Boy’s wife Racquel, said Only Fools’s enduring appeal is down to the writing having “so much heart”. She told The i Paper. “Some of the comedy today seems to be having a go at other people – it can be quite cruel in a way that I don’t find funny personally.” While Only Fools and Horses featured jokes made by entrepreneurial market trader Del Boy (Sir David Jason) at the expense of his hapless brother Rodney (Nicholas Lyndhurst), one controversial episode was “banned” for featuring a scene too “cruel” to air. ‘Only Fools and Horses’ episode was too ‘cruel’ to be aired (BBC) Creator John Sullivan disliked “A Royal Flush” so much that he allegedly stopped it from being broadcast for almost 20 years. In the 1985 Christmas special, Del Boy (Sir …

Only Fools and Horses star reveals why there was tension before filming sitcom

Only Fools and Horses star reveals why there was tension before filming sitcom

Published by Daniella Wilson

Only Fools and Horses is one of the funniest sitcoms of all time – but you might not have known it if you saw the actors on set. Tessa Peake-Jones, who played Raquel, the wife of Sir David Jason’s Del Boy Trotter, has reflected on the filming experience ahead of the show’s 45th anniversary. While the cast members, including Nicholas Lyndhurst and Gwyneth Strong (Rodney and Cassandra), all got on together, they found themselves overcome with pressure before shooting scenes in front of a live audience. “If people had seen us backstage before the show, they’d have seen people pacing up and down the corridors with nerves, including David and Nick,” Peake-Jones said. “We cared so much, and we wanted to get it right, but one slip-up of a word could ruin that laugh.” She also admitted that the many jokes that have endured as classics lost their magic by the time it came to recording the show, telling The Express that the actors had “usually seen it all in rehearsals so many times, it’s …