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New British TV Series from 2020: BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky Dramas and More

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On top of the British series that returned in 2020 (His Dark Materials, Ghosts and Inside No. 9 to name just three), below are the many new UK TV series we welcomed in 2020.

You’ll find true crime series, contemporary thrillers and the usual hefty number of literary adaptations and period dramas. Here’s the same for all the new British comedy we enjoyed in 2020.

Obviously, with Covid-19 delays having taken at least a three-month chunk out of production on all continuing and new dramas since mid-March 2020, there were serious delays to many planned shows, but a good number of new arrivals still managed to make their way onto screens.

All Creatures Great and Small (September)

Filmed in the Yorkshire Dales in autumn 2019 is a new adaptation of the memoirs of rural vet James Herriot (real name: James Alf Wight). Airing on Channel 5 in the UK and on Masterpiece on PBS in the US, this series stars Samuel West, Anna Madeley and Dame Diana Rigg, with newcomer Nicholas Ralph playing young vet James. A six-part series plus a Christmas special has been filmed, timed to mark the 50th anniversary of the first book’s publication. Expect warm-hearted stories of animal frolics and local characters.

A Suitable Boy (July)

Literary adapter extraordinaire Andrew Davies (Les Miserables, War & Peace, Pride And Prejudice) is back on the BBC with the first screen adaptation of Vikram Seth’s 1993 novel A Suitable Boy. Making her television debut is acclaimed feature director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Queen Of Katwe). A Suitable Boy is a coming-of-age story about university student Lata (played by Tanya Maniktala), told against the backdrop of newly independent India in 1951. The official BBC press release describes it as “a vast, panoramic tale charting the fortunes of four large families and exploring India and its rich and varied culture at a crucial point in its history.” Here’s our spoiler-free review.

Adult Material (October)

This Channel 4 drama takes on the UK porn industry and the complex relationship between sex, money and power. Written by Skins and The Smoke’s Lucy Kirkwood, the four-part miniseries stars I, Daniel Blake‘s Hayley Squires (in a role previously given to Sheridan Smith, who left the project due to conflicting commitments) as Jolene, an experienced porn actor and mother of three whose on-set friendship with a young woman leads to a complex examination of her own work and home life. With warnings of adult and sexual scenes, here’s the official trailer.

Baghdad Central (February)

Based on the thriller of the same name by Elliott Colla, Baghdad Central is a six-part Channel 4 commission written by House of Saddam and The Last Kingdom‘s Stephen Butchard. Set in Iraq shortly after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, it’s described as “part noir detective drama, part Le Carre and part Green Zone“. With a cast led by Waleed Zuaiter (Omar, Altered Carbon), it’s the story of a quest for justice in an almost lawless society. Bertie Carvel co-stars, with Doctor Who and Tin Star‘s Alice Troughton as the lead director. All six episodes are currently available to stream on All4.

Belgravia (March)

Written by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and based on his 2016 novel of the same name, Belgravia is a six-part period drama set in 19th century London. Expect toffs and treachery in a story about society secrets on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. Among the fine looking cast are Tamsin Greig, Harriet Walter, Tara Fitzgerald, Philip Glenister and Alice Eve. It aired in March on Sunday nights on ITV1.

Black Narcissus (December)

This BBC commission was announced back in 2017 and we finally have some info on it. Adapted by Apple Tree Yard screenwriter Amanda Coe from Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel (which was previously adapted for cinema in 1947), three-part series Black Narcissus stars Gemma Arterton as Sister Clodagh in a Gothic tale of “sexual repression and forbidden love”. Set in the 1930s, it’s the story of a group of nuns who travel to Nepal to set up a branch of their order, and Sister Clodagh’s struggle with her attraction to a land agent, against the backdrop of the tragic history of a Nepalese princess. Diana Rigg, Jim Broadbent, Gina McKee and more join Arterton. Filming began in Nepal and the UK in October 2019, and back in January the BBC included it in the year’s ‘New for 2020‘ trailer.

Cobra (January)

New political thriller Cobra arrived on Sky One and NOW TV in January. From The Tunnel and Strike writer Ben Richards, it stars Robert Carlyle, Victoria Hamilton and David Haig as, respectively, the PM, his chief of staff and the home secretary. It’s a six-parter promising “high stakes politics and high-octane action” about a team of experts and crisis responders attempting to bring society back from the brink of collapse. A second series was ordered by Sky in February 2020.

Deadwater Fell (January)

From Humans screenwriter Daisy Coulam, this new four-part Channel 4 drama aired in January this year. Set in a remote Scottish community, it explores the aftermath of a heinous crime – a family is murdered by someone they know and trust, sending ripples through the supposedly idyllic town. David Tennant leads a cast including The Good Fight‘s Cush Jumbo and The Bay‘s Matthew McNulty. It’s an excellent, if difficult watch (read our spoiler-filled reviews here), and is currently available to stream on All4.

Des (August)

ITV has included this three-part true crime drama in its autumn 2020 schedule, so it looks like there are no delays here. Des stars David Tennant and is inspired by the real story of serial killer Dennis Nilsen, who murdered several boys and men between the years of 1978 and 1983. It’s adapted from Brian Masters’ book Killing For Company, and will be told from the perspective of three men – Nilsen, DCI Peter Jay (played by Daniel Mays), and biographer Brian Masters (played by Jason Watkins) – and explore how Nilsen was able to prey on the young and the vulnerable. See the first trailer here.

Dracula (January)

The Sherlock showrunners Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss reunited to bring another 19th century fictional icon to life in Dracula, which aired on BBC One over New Year and Netflix. Danish actor Claes Bang played the title role alongside Dolly Wells and John Heffernan in the miniseries which comprises three ninety-minute episodes. Moffat and Gatiss promised to “reintroduce the world to Dracula, the vampire who made evil sexy.” Job done. Read our spoiler-filled reviews here.

Flesh and Blood (February)

Filming on new ITV four-part drama Flesh And Blood got underway in June 2019, with an enviable cast led by Imelda Staunton, Stephen Rea and Russell Tovey. It’s a contemporary story of three adult siblings shocked when their recently widowed mother falls for a new man, bringing into question everything they thought they knew about their parents’ 45-year marriage. Staunton plays the family’s neighbour, who harbours an unhealthy obsession with the unfolding drama… Think dark wit and the unearthing of long-buried secrets. It’s available to stream on ITV Hub here and here’s our spoiler-filled episode one review.

Gangs of London (April)

Filmmaker Gareth Evans came to everybody’s attention with 2011 Indonesian-set action flick The Raid. In April, he made his TV debut with this Sky Atlantic/HBO co-production. Gangs of London takes place in a version of modern London torn apart by international criminal organisations. You can expect assassinations, intrigue, expertly choreographed fight scenes and full-muscled action from this excellent new drama. All nine episodes are available to stream on Sky and NOW TV. Read our reviews and interviews here.

Honour (September)

Keeley Hawes’ production company is behind new two-part ITV drama Honour, which filmed in autumn 2019 and is due to air this autumn. Based on the real-life so-called “honour” killing of 20-year-old Londoner Banaz Mahmod, “murdered for falling in love with the wrong man”. It comes written by Vanity Fair‘s Gwyneth Hughes and stars Hawes as DCI Caroline Goode, who investigated Mahmod’s disappearance.

I Hate Suzie (August)

Billie Piper has co-created this original Sky Atlantic comedy-drama with playwright Lucy Prebble, who adapted the Piper-starring series Secret Diary Of A Call Girl in 2007. It’s a story about a celebrity (Piper) whose career is threatened when she’s hacked and a personal photo leaked to the public. The Crown and Lovesick’s Daniel Ings co-stars. Piper is terrific in it and it has plenty to say on fame and the nature of modern celebrity. With adult content, see the first trailer here. It starts on Sky on Sunday the 27th of August, with all episodes available on NOW TV.

I May Destroy You (June)

The latest from acclaimed writer-actor Michaela Coel, creator of Chewing Gum, is a 12-part half-hour series exploring sexual consent, trauma, recovery, friendship and much more. Formerly under the working title of January 22nd, I May Destroy You is a BBC One/HBO co-production set and filmed in London, and stars Coel in the lead role of Arabella, a celebrated young novelist who suffers a sexual assault that causes her to reassess her life. Joining Coel in the cast are Weruche Opia, Paapa Essiedu, Aml Ameen and a host of new and stage talent. It aired in June on BBC One and stunned just about everybody with its frank, poised brilliance. Watch it here on BBC iPlayer.

Industry (November)

Another Bad Wolf production, this one is on its way to BBC Two and HBO in the US. Eight-part drama Industry comes from new writers Konrad Kay and Mickey Down, and is directed by Girls’ Lena Dunham. Taking on work, money, power, greed and loyalty. It’s about a group of graduates competing for places at a top firm in the cut-throat world of international finance. How far will some people go for profit?

Isolation Stories (May)

UK channels responded quickly to the unusual demands of making television during lockdown, with BBC stalwarts Have I Got News for You and The Graham Norton Show continuing but using remote video link-ups. In May, ITV aired the first lockdown drama with anthology series Isolation Stories. The episodes are 15 minutes long and depict the experience of lockdown on a variety of characters played by Sheridan Smith, Angela Griffin, Robert Glenister, David Threlfall and Eddie Marsan. Watch them on ITV Hub here.

Life (September)

From the writer of Doctor Foster comes a new six-part hour-long drama for BBC One. Life tells four separate story strands about the residents of a large Manchester house divided into flats. The cast includes Alison Steadman and Peter Davison as a married couple rocked by a chance encounter, Adrian Lester and Rachael Stirling are a couple whose marriage is threatened by temptation, while Victoria Hamilton plays a woman whose life is disrupted by the arrival of her teenage niece. Currently filming in Manchester, “LIFE explores love, loss, birth, death, the ordinary, the extraordinary and everything in between”.

Little Birds (August)

An original six-part UK drama coming to Sky Atlantic, Little Birds is creatively adapted from Anais Nin’s collection of erotic short stories of the same name. Set in Tangier in 1955, filming took place in Andalusia and Manchester, with Juno Temple playing the lead role of Lucy Savage, a young women trapped by society who yearns for an unconventional life. It’s an erotic, political exploration of sexuality against the backdrop of colonial rebellion, and all episodes are currently available to stream on NOW TV. Read our spoiler-free review of all six episodes.

The Best TV Shows of 2020

By Alec Bojalad and 9 others

The Best TV Episodes of 2020

By Alec Bojalad and 8 others

Miss Scarlet And The Duke (March)

This six-part co-production written by Trollied’s Rachel New and starring Peaky Blinders’ Kate Phillips aired on Alibi here in the UK. It’s a one-hour series set in the 19th century about London’s first female gumshoe, Eliza Scarlet (Phillips), a woman who takes over her dead father’s detective agency, aided by Stuart Martin’s ‘Duke’. One for fans of Aussie period detective series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, perhaps?

Noughts + Crosses (March)

Malorie Blackman’s hugely successful series of Young Adult novels have been adapted by Being Human’s Toby Whithouse for BBC One. The six-part series is set in a world where racial divisions are turned on their head, and two young people from different backgrounds battle through separation caused by power, politics and prejudice. All episodes are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer. Read our episode one review here.

Normal People (April)

Filming took place last summer in Dublin, Sligo and Italy for Normal People, adapted by Sally Rooney from her 2018 publishing hit of the same name. It’s a 12-part drama for BBC Three and US streaming service Hulu, starring new(ish)comers Daisy Edgar Jones and Paul Mescal. Directing is Room‘s Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie McDonald, telling an intimate story about a relationship between two young people – Marianne and Connell – stretching through their university years at Trinity College, Dublin. Available now on BBC Three and Hulu, read our spoiler-free review and more.

Penance (March)

Three-part hour-long drama Penance aired on Channel 5 this March. It’s an original scripted drama for the channel, and stars Neil Morrissey, Julie Graham and Nico Mirallegro in a psychological thriller about grief, manipulation and morally murky relationships. The story revolves around the Douglas family, reeling from the death of their son, and a young man they encounter at bereavement counselling with whom they become entangled.

Quiz (March)

Adapted from James Graham’s acclaimed stageplay of the same name, Quiz is the story of the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? 2001 cheating scandal in which Major Ingram and accomplices were accused of cheating their way to the show’s top prize. Human chameleon Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon, The Damned United) pictured above, plays quiz host Chris Tarrant, with Ripper Street‘s Matthew Macfadyen playing the accused Major in the three-part ITV/AMC drama. On directing duties is Stephen Frears, who recently directed excellent comedy drama State Of The Union and Russell T. Davies’ A Very English Scandal. Read our reviews here.

Roadkill (October)

Veep‘s Hugh Laurie is going back to politics. Acclaimed screenwriter David Hare (The Hours, The Reader) is behind a new four-part political thriller for BBC One. Roadkill is the story of Peter Laurence (Laurie), a conservative minister with his eyes on the top job who attempts to out-manoeuvre the personal secrets threatening to wreck his public standing. Peaky Blinders‘ Helen McCrory is set to play prime minister Dawn Ellison, with Westworld‘s Sidse Babbett Knudsen also appearing. Filming began in London in November 2019 and we’re expecting it to arrive later this year.

The Salisbury Poisonings (June)

An episode in recent UK history – the 2018 Novichok poisonings – is translated to the screen in three-part factual drama The Salisbury Poisonings, which filmed in 2019 in the Wiltshire cathedral city. The BBC Two drama focused on the impact of the chemical attack on ordinary people and public services in the city, and boasted a terrific cast including Anne-Marie Duff, Rafe Spall, Mark Addy, Johnny Harris and MyAnna Buring. It was co-written by BBC Panorama‘s Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn. Read our review here.

Sitting In Limbo (June)

A new feature-length film tackling the shameful political Windrush immigration scandal aired on BBC One in June. Sitting In Limbo is inspired by the true story of Anthony Bryan’s struggle to be accepted as a British citizen, despite having lived in the UK since emigrating to Britain as a child in 1965 with his mother. Written by Bryan’s novelist brother Stephen S. Thompson (Toy Soldiers, No More Heroes), it’s a deeply personal and powerful ninety minute drama about the devastating human toll of the foreign office’s ‘hostile environment’ tactic. Casualty‘s Patrick Robinson and Save Me‘s Nadine Marshall star.

Small Axe (November)

An anthology of six hour-long stories set in 1960s – 1980s London is on its way to the BBC and Amazon Prime Video from Steve McQueen, the director of Twelve Years A Slave, Hunger and Shame. Small Axe started filming in June 2019 and boasts a terrific cast including Black Panther and Black Mirror‘s Letitia Wright, and The Force Awakens and Attack The Block‘s John Boyega, with Malachi Kirby and Rochenda Sandall. The first of the anthology’s five stories, all of which are set in London’s West Indian community, will be told across two episodes. See a teaser for the first, ‘Mangrove’, here. The title is inspired by the Jamaican proverb about marginal protest challenging dominant voices, “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe”. The first three episodes are due to open the New York Film Festival on the 25th of September 2020, though it’s currently unknown how the ongoing pandemic will affect the event.

Talking Heads (June)

Nothing to do with the NYC post-punk band of the same name, this remake of Alan Bennett’s acclaimed Talking Heads monologue series featured an all-new cast and two new monologues by Bennett. Originally broadcast in 1988 and 1998 and featuring a host of acting talent including Julie Walters, Maggie Smith and Patricia Routledge, the new Talking Heads starred Jodie Comer, Maxine Peake, Martin Freeman, Lesley Manville, Kristen Scott Thomas, Sarah Lancashire and more. The episodes are available to stream on BBC iPlayer in the UK, and were filmed using the standing EastEnders sets.

The Windermere Children (February)

This one-off feature length BBC Two drama delved into a little-explored part of English history – the child survivors and presumed orphans of the Holocaust who were granted the right to come and live in the UK following World War II. The Windermere Children tells the story of one coachful of young refugees brought to Lake Windermere to be rehabilitated through nature. Romola Garai, Tim McInnerny and Iain Glenn star in a screenplay from The Eichmann Show‘s Simon Block and directed by Any Human Heart‘s Michael Samuels.

The End (February)

This ten-episode series aired on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV. The End is created and written by Samantha Strauss and stars Harriet Walter and Frances O’Connor in the story of three generations of the same family dealing with the thorny issue of dying with dignity. O’Connor plays a palliative care specialist opposed to euthanasia, while Walter plays her mother Edie, who feels strongly that she has a right to die. Complicated family dynamics meet complex moral issues. See the trailer here.

The English Game (March)

Netflix bagged itself a Julian Fellowes-written drama earlier this year, this one about the birth of football. Set in Northern England in the 1850s, The English Game tracks the development of the beautiful game with the help of a cast including Line Of Duty’s Craig Parkinson, The Virtues’ Niamh Walsh, Kingsman’s Edward Holcroft and Game of Thrones’ Charlotte Hope. It arrived on Netflix UK in March and reviews were… not kind.

The Luminaries (June)

Eleanor Catton’s novel The Luminaries won the Man Booker prize in 2013, and this June, arrived on BBC One. The six-part drama, available to stream on BBC iPlayer, boasts a strong cast, with Penny Dreadful‘s Eva Green and Eve Hewson taking lead roles in the 19th century New Zealand-set tale of adventure and mystery during the 1860s Gold Rush. Read our spoiler-free review here.

The Pale Horse (February)

The brilliant Sarah Phelps (And Then There Were None, The ABC Murders, Witness For The Prosecution, Ordeal By Innocence) is back with another Agatha Christie adaptation for BBC One. This time it’s 1961 novel The Pale Horse being adapted for the screen, a story where superstition and witchcraft meet rationalism and murder. In the cast for the two-part mystery thriller are Rufus Sewell (The Man In The High Castle), Kaya Scodelario (Skins, Pirates Of The Caribbean), Bertie Carvel (Doctor Foster, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell), Sean Pertwee (Gotham) and more. Read our spoiler-filled episode reviews and more.

The Nest (March)

Line Of Duty‘s Martin Compston joins Sophie Rundle in new five-part BBC One thriller The Nest. Filmed in Glasgow and written by Three Girls‘ Nicole Taylor, it’s the story of a wealthy couple struggling to have a baby who enter into a surrogacy agreement with an 18-year-old girl (Mirren Mack) that spirals into unexpected territory. The series arrived in March, and here’s our episode one review.

The Singapore Grip (August)

A bit of class here coming to ITV with an adaptation of JG Farrell’s World War II novel The Singapore Grip. Playwright Christopher Hampton, whose previous screenplays include Atonement and Dangerous Liaisons, has adapted the story for a six-part series set against the backdrop of 1940s Japan. It stars Luke Treadaway and Elizabeth Tan, with David Morrissey, Charles Dance and Colm Meaney. The series is due to air in Australia this July, and will arrive in the UK in autumn.

The Sister (October)

Neil Cross, the creator of Luther and Hard Sun, has a new drama on the way to ITV. The Sister, formerly titled Because The Night, is a four-part murder story “which exposes the quiet terror of a man trying to escape his past,” and comes inspired by Cross’ 2009 novel Burial. The psychological thriller is about Nathan, whose world is rocked when a face from the past suddenly appears on his doorstep. Russell Tovey and Bertie Carvel star. It’s due to arrive on ITV this autumn.

The Stranger (January)

Announced in January 2019 and arriving on Netflix a year later, The Stranger is a Harlan Coben thriller made for UK television. Nicola Shindler’s British production company RED (The Five, Safe) have once again turned a Coben novel into a twisting, turning UK series. This one’s about Adam Price (played by Richard Armitage), a man with a seemingly perfect life until a stranger appears to tell him a devastating secret. Things quickly become dark and tangled for Price and everybody around him. Read our spoiler-free series review here.

The Tail Of The Curious Mouse (December)

When children’s author Roald Dahl was just six years old, so the story goes, he persuaded his mother to drive him to the Lake District so he could meet his hero, writer-illustrator Beatrix Potter, the creator of Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddleduck and many more beloved children’s characters. The welcome he received, however, was less than warm. This one-off drama (Roald and Beatrix: The Tail Of The Curious Mouse) stars Dawn French as Potter and is made by the production team behind Sherlock and Dracula. Expect it to arrive this Christmas.

Trigonometry (March)

All eight episodes of this new contemporary drama are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer. Trigonometry comes written by playwright Duncan Macmillan and actor-screenwriter Effie Woods, and provokes some fascinating questions about modern love. It’s the story of Gemma and Kieran, a couple who decide to ease the financial burden of their London flat by taking in a lodger who soon becomes entwined in their relationship. Is life as a ‘throuple’ sustainable? Could it be the way forward?

Us (September)

A four-part adaptation of David Nicholls’ novel Us is on its way to BBC One. Tom Hollander and Saskia Reeves star as Douglas and Connie, a couple whose marriage is on the verge of falling apart when the family take a long-planned holiday touring European cities. London, Amsterdam, Venice, Paris and Barcelona will provide the backdrops to this humorous, poignant relationship drama from the novelist behind One Day, Starter For Ten and Sky Atlantic’s recent adaptation of the Patrick Melrose novels. The Killing‘s Sofie Grabol and Agents Of SHIELD‘s Iain de Caestecker also star.

White House Farm (January)

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This six-part ITV true crime drama tells the tragic story of 1985’s White House Farm murders, the Essex killings of multiple members of the Caffell and Bamber families. Based on research, interviews and published accounts, it’s written by The Slap and Requiem’s Kris Mrksa, and directed by Little Boy Blue and Hatton Garden’s Paul Whittington. Freddie Fox plays the role of Jeremy Bamber, who is currently serving a sentence for the murders, with Stephen Graham, Alexa Davies, Mark Addy, Alfie Allen and more among the cast. Read our spoiler-filled episode reviews here.

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jane-wei · 5 years

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3am bordem

1 Favorite place to be?

A quiet cinema with a massive screen

2 Something I can never live without?

Water

3 Hobbies that I’ll never give up?

baking

4 Three words to describe me?

Proffestional, day dreamer, loyal

5 My biggest fear?

ebaressment

6 What makes me angry?

ignorance towards others

7 My inspiration?

creativity and passion of others

8 Favorite wild animal? Why?

any big cats, because they literally are just big cats

9 Favorite food?

pizza, always

10 First memory of life?

probably playing with lego and having my dad make me spaceships out of lego

11 The best advice I got?

write every day

12 Where do I see myself in 10 years?

hopfully own my own flat or house, maybe running my own production company, maybe acting in some plays

13 Books reading these days?

im not a big reader, but when i read i read loads, i must read DUNE soon

14 The fictional character I want to be?

Luke Skywalker

15 My hidden talents?

quiet farts

16 Favorite type of music?

electronic or classical, if its both at the same time its magic

17 When do I feel happy?

when things are going right for collegues or loved ones

18 Which song would I like to hear to be happy?

duran duran ordinary world

19 My favourite word in English?

surety

20 My favorite word in Spanish?

da nada, that count as two?

21 Top 3 things on my bucket list?

visit hobbiton, sky diving, meet mark hamill

22 The most heard song in 2017?

redbone by childish gambino

23 Last book you’ve read?

probably a comic book or an excerpt from a book on how to direct actors

24 Favorite quote?

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.

J.R.R. Tolkien

25 If I had a superpower what would it be?

Creating objects, although that has a lot of responsibility, but it would end world hunger

26 Favorite sport?

rugby, its the only one id watch begining to end, but to play definatly badmington, brutal game

27 Biggest Dream?

be a jedi

28 Favorite Singer?

the chap who won x factor uk last year, Dalton Harris, that guy can create magic

29 Favourite Cusine?

italian

30 A positive quality about me?

I want to know what you have to say, i might get nervous at the answer or speaking other people in general but im interested

31 A negative quality about me?

push down my self confidence

32 Best place I’ve visited?

brecon beacons in wales

33 When do I laugh the most?

when something is funny, but also breaking through social conventions in a dark kinda way, nothing insulting just a little dark here and there

34 When do I get creative?

when travelling, trains and buses are great, but only when i can see a wide vista, so trains goign through the countryside are ideal, or in a creative soace with othe rlike minded creatives. enough of creativity for now eh?

35 Favorite lyrics?

nothing overlly specific, but i like Plan B’s stuff, Radiohead always do somethign interesting, A Tribe Called Quest are geniuses with words

36 The most scary thing I’ve done?

confront people, its tough, especially when you know something has to be resolved by words and talking

37 Biggest accomplished achievement?

going to film school, something i thought was impossible for a working class lad like me

38 What am I horrible at?

not keeping healthy

39 Favorite book genres?

sci fi and fantasy for sure

40 Any adventurous thing I want to do?

travel

41 Something I would like to try?

sports, i feel that if i was encouraged at school in sports id be a real jockey

42 Optimistic or pessimistic?

depends on the day, optimistic is the goal, that way your always looking up

43 Favorite TV show host?

Mel and Sue, old school bake off

44 A talent I want to acquire?

playing the violin and anoy other musical instrument i can egt my hands on

45 Something from my childhood that I still have?

1 teddy bear and 1 fluffy teddy style cat, those are going to be family heirlooms

46 If I had a chance to change something what would it be?

death of family members, but you cant dwell on such things, itll drive you mad

47 What would I do to calm myself?

music and cleaning

48 When do you find yourself singing?

while out walking or home alone

49 What do I consider unforgivable?

any attack on others, physical, psycological, verbal, insinuated

50 Have I ever sleepwalked?

as a kid yes but not since, if i did id definatly wear some kind of body camera and find out where id go

51 If I got a chance to go somewhere, where will it be?

everywhere, every continant at least 5 times

52 What is my dream career?

feature film writer/director

53 An impossible wish?

a real lightsaber

54 Who is my greatest role model?

i like elders who are accepting of others and those who take great joy in heling others

55 If I could live in any home on a television series, what would it be?

does the U.S.S ENTERPRISE count?

56 Favorite song currently?

Tiny Dancer by Elton John

57 Advice to people?

try to be understanding of others, dont put yourself or your skills down, make every day count, give yourself some credit for what youve done so far, make sure you get a little tlc every now and again

58 How do you handle jetlag?

sleep

59 Describe your style?

nerd

60 Favorite makeup product?

i dont use any, but i do get asked if i use mascara, all natural

61 What’s a guilty pleasure you have?

early naughties action movies, Van Heling with Hugh Jackman the main culprit

62 Favorite Star Wars Character?

The crew of the Ghost, you could never pick one over the other

63 Any pet peeve?

laughs with high pitches

64 If you could die your hair, what color would it be?

red

65 What’s your schedule these days?

in need of a job so a lot of job hunting, school is 2 days a week(ish) got a few writing jobs so putting pen to paper, need to start learnig lines for a play in the summer

66 Have you ever cut your own hair?

only the fringe and i didnt think it was that bad but when i got into school EVERYONE laughed #embaressmentismykryptonite

67 Who’s your style icon?

my friend zach, simple gorgeous colors

68 Do you consider yourself a good liar?

if the lie is a simple one

69 Favorite movies as a child?

star wars, star trek, lord of the rings, predator which i watched way before i was supposed to, i was also in the spy kids generation

70 Last show you’ve binge watched?

star wars rebels and the eric andre show

71 First toy you’ve had?

probably my teddies, but i do remember having star wars actions figures and lego very early on

72 What can you see from your window?

a main road which many buses travel down, a bus stop, a residential row of houses leading to a park, a betting shop

73 What’s for dinner today?

my other half makes great tempe and gyoza

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mobiracer · 3 years

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SAS Red Notice (2021) - Amazing of Mobi Racer

SAS Red Notice (2021) – Amazing of Mobi Racer

SAS Red Notice 2021 is an upcoming British action thriller directed by Magnus Martens and adapted from the same name by Andy McNab Novel, starring Sam Heughan, Ruby Rose, Andy Serkis, Tom Wilkinson, Hannah John-Kamen, Tom Hopper, and Noel Clarke. SAS Red Notice 2021 SAS The Red Notice is scheduled to be released by Sky Cinema in the UK on March 12, 2021. A small force of well-trained criminals…

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rosalyn51 · 3 years

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Will Farmer A small and seemingly insignificant piece of ephemera but something that I absolutely love!

Here is an original invite to the 1932 Annual Exhibition of Pottery and Display Craft at the Throne Room of the Holborn Restaurant, London including a display of Clarice Cliffs new Bizarre Wares for Christmas!

With the much anticipated arrival of The Colour Room starring @phoebedynevor as Clarice Cliff and Matthew Goode as Colley Shorter these little gems are a snap shot of a life that Clarice fans know so well, but that so many more are soon to enjoy!

This really is going to be Clarices year and I for one would love to know what she’d make of all the fuss!

______

The invite reads

Messrs. A.J. Wilkimson, Ltd., Newport Pottery Co. Ltd., and Shorter & Son, of Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, request the pleasure of the company of ___ at the Annual Exhibition of Pottery and Display Craft in the Throne Room of the Holborn Restaurant, Newton Street Entrance, London, W. C. from August 29th to September 9th, inclusive.

Including Clarice Cliff's "Bizarre" Ware for Christmas, 1932.

For the TRADE ONLY.

According to Farmer’s comment on the post, the dancers on the invite are

The Age of Jazz figures which were created circa 1930 to either dance in front of the “wireless” or intended as table decorations! Aren’t they wonderful! Clarice at her creative best but sadly they were a troublesome creation for the firm!

Also, a bit more insight into the life of Clarice Cliff (portrayed by Phoebe Dynevor in the upcoming movie).

She certainly stepped away from the limelight following the death of her beloved Colley and couldn’t understand why anyone would wish to attend the first exhibition held of her work titled The First Lady of Art Deco over January and February of 1972 at the Brighton Museum! To that end the story goes she only told her family and friends of that first exhibition after it had closed, October of that year she sadly passed away never to know the legacy she had left the world!

*Colley Shorter is portrayed by Matthew GoodE!

Will Farmer “is a specialist on BBC's Antiques Roadshow. He has a passion for 20th Century ceramics and glass.” He is a huge fan of Clarice Cliff, and is involved in the filming of The Colour Room. He posted this photo of his day on set on Instagram earlier. The movie is scheduled to hit UK cinemas as well as on SKY Cinema later this year!

Photo: Will Farmer IG

#matthew goode #phoebe dynevor #the colour room #colley shorter #clarice cliff #the colour room movie

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jacksonhenry297 · 4 years

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Sky Q Receives its Biggest Feature Update

Sky Q (Operated by Sky) is simply one of the best subscription-based television services in the market, especially in the UK. So, if you are a Sky Q subscriber, then we have good news for you. Sky has just released the biggest feature update for Sky Q.

With the new feature update, you get access to an amazingly redesigned user interface, “show centre,” HDR support for Disney+ app, improved voice discovery feature, and more.

Here are all the details about the major changes that you will get to see in Sky Q after its biggest feature update.

Expanded view

Expanded view allows you to browse and discover content very quickly. With the introduction of this feature, Sky has removed the left-hand-side menu bar from Sky Q. Expanded view gives you more visibility on the screen while you browse content, which means you get more space and visibility for TV, films, videos, music, games, and apps.

Show centre

Show centre is another great addition to Sky Q as part of the July 2020 feature update. Under this feature, all the shows now have their own “Show centre.” What does that mean? It means that all the seasons, episodes, recording and on-demand links of your favorite tv show will be available on a single page. Besides this, you can get information about your favorite show’s broadcasting schedule from the show center too.

Smart buttons

Smart buttons are large buttons that the user can click to go to the next episode of their favorite shows without scrolling down. Using these contextual buttons, you can easily switch between different commands like delete, watch from the start, play, or next episode.

Sports centre

If you are a sports fan, then this feature will surely make you happy. Now you no longer have to go through all the menus and EPG for watching your favorite sports event or show. The sports centre has a bar which contains all the sports channels and their programming schedule. Using which you can easily move to different sports channels without any scrolling and searching. Additionally, the sports centre also features sports content and events hosted on apps like YouTube, Sky sports apps, etc.

Voice discovery

With the release of the new July updates, the voice discovery feature of the Sky Q box has been greatly improved. The new update had made the voice discovery more intuitive. As a result, now you can ask content suggestions based on themes, genres, actors, etc. very quickly. For example, you can say “Marvel Studios with Robert Downey Jr” and Sky Q will display you a list of content based upon this search query.

Disney+ app HDR support

With the new features update, Disney +app finally got HDR support. So, if you have an HDR-ready Sky Q box and Tv, you can watch your favorite shows in HDR now. Additionally, Sky is also going to add New HDR content for its users on Sky Q in a few months like Gangs of London and Brassic. Besides this you will also be able to see Sky Nature shows, Sky originals, and Sky Cinema movies in HDR soon.

New apps

It is being speculated that Sky is expected to add lots of new apps on its platform in the coming months. It is believed that Sky will add only those apps on its platforms that bring lots of entertaining content with it. For example- Video, music, and gaming apps are expected to be added on the platform soon. But as of now, it is being speculated that Sky is going to add four apps in the Sky Q very soon.

Better update delivery

It is another great change that is being introduced with the new July update for Sky Q. Sky has spent lots of time to rebuild and improve their backend to deliver more regular, refined and smaller updates to its users. Earlier Sky was only rolling out updates for Sky Q only once or twice in a year over satellite, but from now on, Sky Q subscribers will receive updates more frequently (Probably once or twice every month).

What to do if you haven’t received the update yet for your Sky Q box?

If you haven’t received the July update for your Sky box, don’t panic. The company is adding lots of other small features to give its customers a great user experience. It is expected that the update process will be completed by 12 August 2020. So, don’t lose patience, good things always take time.

Jackson Henry. I’m a writer living in USA. I am a fan of technology, arts, and reading. I’m also interested in writing and education. You can read my blog with a click on the button above.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Peaky Blinders: Ending With a Film Makes Sense, But is it Fair to Fans?

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‘The city is a character in its own right’. ‘This cast gets on so well, we’re like a family!’ ‘I never read reviews, we made this for the fans.’

Of all the clichés uttered on the promotional circuit, the one most likely to sink the stomach is being told that a hot new series ‘is really a 10-hour movie.’ As a phrase, it’s so derided by now the real wonder is that anybody continues to say it (and yet they do. Perhaps they’re telling the truth about not reading their own press).

As explained neatly here by Vulture’s Kathryn VanArendonk, it’s a frustrating thing to hear because it does TV a disservice, equating value only with the novelistic or cinematic and snobbishly assuming that for TV to be truly worthwhile, it has to be something other than television. TV episodes, it supposes, must all be 42-minute ugly ducklings wishing they could turn into beautiful big-screen swans. It’s an insult to the format, galling to those who champion episodic storytelling, and, in one or two cases, absolutely spot on.

Some TV shows fetishize cinema to such an extent it’s clear that their heart lies at a John Ford retrospective and not in a season 1-4 DVD boxset. Television is the pal they’ve taken to prom while gazing over its head at their first choice of date: cinema.

UK crime drama Peaky Blinders grew into a global obsession thanks to its TV format. The scope provided by thirty-plus hours of storytelling let it develop characters that people adore. When it landed on Netflix, its reach extended beyond all expectation. It hit a word-of-mouth high around season three, by which point new fans had 18 episodes in which to get sucked in to the rarefied world of the Shelby family in 1920s Birmingham.

This week, Peaky Blinders’ producers announced that instead of the planned seventh and final season, it would end after season six, the filming of which has just resumed after a 10-month delay due to Covid-19. Speaking to Deadline, creator Steven Knight announced his intention to replace the mooted season seven with a film. “Covid changed our plans. But I can say that my plan from the beginning was to end Peaky with a movie. That is what is going to happen.”

Peaky Blinders: The Real Story the Gangster Drama Has Been Telling

By Louisa Mellor

Peaky Blinders Season 6 News, Cast, Story, Guest Stars, Filming

By Louisa Mellor

Since the very start, Peaky Blinders has been a cinema obsessive, telling its real-life stories from its creator’s Birmingham childhood with larger-than-life Hollywood glamour. Its directors and design teams have repeatedly referenced The Godfather, designing sets and lighting in homage. Road to Perdition and countless others have been visually quoted.

In 2019, uber-producer Caryn Mandabach told Den of Geek that each season was based on a different movie genre. Peaky Blinders‘ opening scene announces it as a Western, which develops in later seasons into a Hitchcockian suspense drama, a gangster flick, and a political conspiracy thriller.

The movies may feel like Peaky Blinders’ spiritual home then, but this is more a question of its physical one. The show’s increased pull in season five inspired the BBC to graduate it from the midweek BBC Two schedule to the prestige Sunday night drama slot on BBC One. As it grew around the world, the BBC remained its base. At press events, cast and creators were always careful to note their gratitude to the channel that first took a risk on their ambitious drama with the unfathomable name.

For years, there’s been talk of a Peaky Blinders film, stage musical, and even ballet. While the latter two would be reprisals of a tale already told – extras for enthusiasts willing to pay for more time with the Shelby family – the film is described as a continuation of the TV story, the final chapter.

It’s clear why a film would make an attractive option. The increased costs of filming during the Covid-19 pandemic, and continued strain on underfunded BBC budgets, may mean that a seventh TV season simply isn’t affordable now. Add in the fact that a cast led by Cillian Murphy (Dunkirk, Inception), and including Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dark Knight Rises) and woman-of-the-hour Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit, Emma) always has somewhere else to be. The time requirement of one feature would surely be less than that of six one-hour episodes, freeing the show��s in-demand actors and creators up for other projects.

The series already has a licensed video game, festival, merchandise and clothing line. It’s a diversified portfolio that takes understandable advantage of a hot property made – as Mandabach often stresses – on a considerably smaller budget than you might expect. Remarkably, given how expensive it looks, an episode of Peaky Blinders is reported to cost somewhere in the area of $1.5 million. A season’s worth of BBC cash would add up to only a comparatively tiny film budget, which is presumably where Netflix would come in.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Would a Peaky Blinders film make its debut, then, as every other series has, on the BBC and iPlayer, or might this instalment in Tommy Shelby’s story be a Netflix exclusive? When Deadwood: The Movie arrived in 2019, it was released on subscription services HBO Max and Sky Atlantic. That same year, the Downton Abbey film had a successful theatrical release and is still only available to rent or buy on DVD and streaming services. If the Peaky film takes the same approach and goes subscription-only in the UK, there’s a risk license-fee paying BBC viewers awaiting the final chapter in a much-loved story could end up neglected.

Subscribe to Den of Geek magazine for FREE right here!

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Six Senses Signs First Hotel in UK

Six Senses has signed its first hotel in London, England. The Six Senses London, scheduled to open in 2023, will be located in the iconic building that housed the former department store, Whiteleys. The hotel will open with 110 guest rooms and suites, starting from 355 square feet (33 square meters). There will also be 14 branded residences, with owners able to tap into all the privileges that come with a Six Senses home, including bespoke interior design, concierge service, dining, housekeeping and wellness programming.

Whiteleys takes its name from visionary entrepreneur, William Whiteley, who opened his first drapery shop in Westbourne Grove in 1863. A little over a decade later, the shop had grown to a department store described as an immense symposium of the arts and industries of the nation and of the world. Once a vibrant destination that formed the focus for the surrounding residential neighborhood, Whiteleys was then redeveloped in the 1980s into a shopping center with a cinema and bowling alley. It subsequently closed its doors in December 2018 as its popularity diminished. The redevelopment of Whiteleys is being headed by a Meyer Bergman-advised fund, with the preeminent residential real estate developer Finchatton as development manager. In collaboration with the British architectural firm, Foster + Partners, renowned for its eco credentials and responsible design approach, this historic landmark will become a sensitively restored mixed-use development. The original Grade II faade, central courtyard and dome will all be preserved, as will the majestic internal staircase (modeled on the La Scala opera house in Milan), which features as the centerpiece on the ground floor of the hotel. Inspired by the buildings origins, the interiors of Six Senses London are being designed by internationally celebrated AvroKO in conjunction with executive architects EPR, and combine nostalgic nods to classical detailing and art deco along with modern streamlining. Contemporary art from British artists will be showcased throughout the hotel. Six Senses London will feature a cozy lobby bar and lounge, an all-day dining restaurant with an open kitchen and seating area in the courtyard, a Six Senses Spa, a comprehensive fitness centre, indoor swimming pool, bar, and a relaxation room with vaulted ceilings. On the second floor, residents and members will access a new kind of social and wellness club. Away from the density and intensity of the city, this space will feature a central bar and lounge, coworking spaces, a restaurant and wellness rooms, and offer pioneering programming to encourage growth, reflection and reconnection. Chief Executive Officer, Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas, Neil Jacobs, said, I feel nostalgic when talking about Whiteleys. I grew up in the neighborhood and my parents used to bring me here. It is a wonderful opportunity to pay homage to this heritage and bring our brand values to life in this part of town, while celebrating our first port of call for Six Senses in the UK. See latest Travel News, Interviews, Podcasts and other news regarding: Six Senses, London. 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jehanimation · 7 years

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Celebrating the undersung heroism of The Peanuts Movie

In December 2015, a movie reboot of one of history’s most beloved entertainment brands was released in cinemas, and it took the world by storm. That movie was not The Peanuts Movie.

Not that I’m setting myself up as an exception to that. Like pretty much everyone else, I spent the tail-end of 2015 thoroughly immersing myself in all things Star Wars: The Force Awakens, drinking deeply of the hype before seeing it as many times as I could - five in total - before it left theatres. In the midst of all that Jedi madness, I ended up totally forgetting to see The Peanuts Movie, Blue Sky Studios’ well-reviewed adaptation of Charles M. Schulz’s classic newspaper strip, which I’d been meaning to catch over the festive period. But then, it’s not as though the schedulers made it easy for me; in the US, there had been a buffer zone of a month between the launches of the two films, but here in the UK, Peanuts came out a week after Star Wars; even for this animation enthusiast, when it came to a choice between seeing the new Star Wars again or literally any other film, there was really no contest at all.

A year later, belatedly catching up with the movie I missed at the height of my rekindled Star Wars mania proved an eye-opening experience, and places Blue Sky’s film in an interesting context. With a $246.2 million worldwide gross, The Peanuts Movie did well enough to qualify as a hit, but it remains the studio’s lowest earner to date; in retrospect, it seems likely that going head-to-head with Star Wars and the James Bond movie Spectre didn’t exactly maximise its chances of blockbuster receipts. Yet in an odd way, modest, unnoticed success feels like a fitting outcome for The Peanuts Movie, a film that acts as a perfectly-formed celebration of underappreciated decency in a world of bombast and bluster. Charlie Brown, pop culture’s ultimate underdog, was never fated to emerge victorious in a commercial battle against Han Solo and James Bond, but his movie contains a grounded level of heartfelt sympathy for the small-scale struggles of unassumingly ordinary folk that higher-concept properties don’t have the time to express. The Peanuts Movie is a humbly heroic film about a quietly laudable person, made with understated bravery by underrated artists; I hope sincerely that more people will discover it like I did for years to come, and recognise just how much of what it says, does and represents is worth celebrating.

CELEBRATING... BLUE SKY STUDIOS

Before giving praise to The Peanuts Movie itself, it’d be remiss of me not to throw at least a few kind words in the direction of Blue Sky Studios - a group of filmmakers who I’m inclined to like, somewhat despite themselves, and who don’t always get very kind things written about them. After all, the 20th Century Fox subsidiary have been in the CGI feature animation mix since 2002, meaning they have a more established pedigree than most studios, and their long-running Ice Age franchise is a legitimately important, formative success story within the modern era of American animation. Under the creative leadership of Chris Wedge, they’ve managed to carve and hold a niche for themselves in a competitive ecosystem, hewing close to the Shrek-inspired DreamWorks model of fast-talking, kinetic comedy, but with a physical slapstick edge that marked their work out as distinct, at least initially. Sure, the subsequent rise of Illumination Entertainment and their ubiquitous Minions has stolen that thunder a little, but it’s important to remember that Ice Age’s bedraggled sabretooth squirrel Scrat was the CGI era’s original silent comedy superstar, and to recognise Blue Sky’s vital role in pioneering that stylistic connection between the animation techniques of the 21st century and the knockabout nonverbal physicality of formative 20th century cartooning, several years before anyone else thought to do so.

For all their years of experience, though, there’s a prevailing sense that Blue Sky have made a habit of punching below their weight, and that they haven’t - Scrat aside - established the kind of memorable legacy you’d expect from a veteran studio with 15 years of movies under their belt. Like Illumination - the studio subsequently founded by former Blue Sky bigwig Chris Meledandri - they remain very much defined by the influence of their debut movie, but Blue Sky have unarguably been a lot less successful in escaping the shadow of Ice Age than Illumination have in pulling away from the orbit of the Despicable Me/Minions franchise. Outside of the Ice Age series, Blue Sky’s filmography is largely composed of forgettable one-offs (Robots, Epic), the second-tier Rio franchise (which, colour palette aside, feels pretty stylistically indistinct from Ice Age), and a pair of adaptations (Horton Hears a Who!, The Peanuts Movie) that, in many ways, feel like uncharacteristic outliers rather than thoroughbred Blue Sky movies. Their Ice Age flagship, meanwhile, appears to be leaking and listing considerably, with a successful first instalment followed by three sequels (The Meltdown, Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Continental Drift) that garnered successively poorer reviews while cleaning up at the international box office, before last year’s fifth instalment (Collision Course) was essentially shunned by critics and audiences alike. Eleven movies in, Blue Sky are yet to produce their first cast-iron classic, which is unfortunate but not unforgivable; much more troubling is how difficult the studio seems to find it to even scrape a mediocre passing grade half the time.

Nevertheless, while Blue Sky’s output doesn’t bear comparison to a Disney, a Pixar or even a DreamWorks, there’s something about them that I find easy to root for, even if I’m only really a fan of a small percentage of their movies. Even their most middling works have a certain sense of honest effort and ambition about them, even if it didn’t come off: for example, Robots and Epic - both directed by founder Chris Wedge - feel like the work of a team trying to push their movies away from cosy comedy in the direction of larger-scale adventure storytelling, while the Rio movies, for all their generic antics and pratfalls, do at least benefit from the undoubted passion that director Carlos Saldanha tried to bring to his animated realisation of his hometown of Rio de Janeiro. I’ll also continue to celebrate the original Ice Age movie as a charismatic, well-realised children’s road movie, weakened somewhat by its instinct to pull its emotional punches, but gently likeable nevertheless; sure, the series is looking a little worse for wear these days, but at least part of the somewhat misguided instinct to keep churning them out seems to stem from a genuine fondness for the characters. Heck, I’m even inclined to look favourably on Chris Wedge’s ill-fated decision to dabble in live-action with the recent fantasy flop Monster Trucks; after all, the jump from directing animation to live-action is a tricky manoeuvre that even Pixar veterans like Andrew Stanton (John Carter) and Brad Bird (Tomorrowland) have struggled to execute smoothly, and the fact he attempted it at all feels indicative of his studio’s instinct to try their best to expand their horizons, even if their reach sometimes exceeds their grasp.

Besides, it’s not as though their efforts so far have gone totally unrewarded. The third and fourth Ice Age movies scored record-breaking box office results outside the US, while there have also been a handful of notable successes in critical terms - most prominently, Horton Hears a Who! and The Peanuts Movie, the two adaptations of classic American children’s literature directed for the studio by Steve Martino. I suppose you can put a negative spin on the fact that Blue Sky’s two best-reviewed movies were the ones based on iconic source material - as I’ve noted, the films do feel a little bit like stylistic outliers, rather than organic expressions of the studio’s strengths - but let’s not kid ourselves that working from a beloved source text isn’t a double-edged sword. Blue Sky’s rivals at Illumination proved that much in their botching of Dr Seuss’ The Lorax, as have Sony Pictures Animation with their repeated crimes against the Smurfs, and these kinds of examples provide a better context to appreciate Blue Sky’s sensitive, respectful treatments of Seuss and Charles Schulz as the laudable achievements they are. If anything, it may actually be MORE impressive that a studio that’s often had difficulty finding a strong voice with their own material have been able to twice go toe-to-toe with genuine giants of American culture and emerge not only without embarrassing themselves, but arguably having added something to the legacies of the respective properties.

CELEBRATING... GENUINE INNOVATION IN CG ANIMATION

Of course, adding something to a familiar mix is part and parcel of the adaptation process, but the challenge for any studio is to make sure that anything they add works to enrich the material they’re working with, rather than diluting it. In the case of The Peanuts Movie - a lavish computer-generated 3D film based on a newspaper strip with a famously sketchy, spartan aesthetic - it was clear from the outset that the risk of over-egging the pudding was going to be high, and that getting the look right would require a creative, bespoke approach. Still, it’s hard to overstate just how bracingly, strikingly fresh the finalised aesthetic of The Peanuts Movie feels, to the degree where it represents more than just a new paradigm for Schulz’s characters, but instead feels like a genuinely exciting step forward for the medium of CG animation in general.

Now, I’m certainly not one of those old-school puritans who’ll claim that 2D cel animation is somehow a better, purer medium than modern CGI, but I do share the common concern that mainstream animated features have become a little bit aesthetically samey since computers took over as the primary tools. There’s been a tendency to follow a sort of informal Pixar-esque playbook when it comes to stylisation and movement, and it’s only been relatively recently that studios like Disney, Illumination and Sony have tried to bring back some of that old-school 2D squash-and-stretch, giving them more scope to diversify. No doubt, we’re starting to see a spirit of visual experimentation return to the medium - the recent stylisation of movies like Minions, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Hotel Transylvania and Storks are testament to that - but even so, it feels like there’s a limit to how far studios are willing to push things on a feature film. Sure, Disney and Pixar will do gorgeous, eye-popping visual style experiments in short movies like Paperman, Inner Workings and Piper, but when it comes to the big movies, a more conservative house style invariably reasserts itself.

With the exception of a greater-than-average emphasis on physicality, Blue Sky’s typical playbook hasn’t really differed that much from their peers, which is partly why their approach to adapting Seuss and Schulz - two artists with immutable, iconic art styles of their own - have stood out so much. Their visual work on Horton Hears a Who! was groundbreaking in its own way - it was, after all, the first CG adaptation of Dr Seuss, and the result captured the eccentric impossibilities and flourishes of the source material much better than Illumination managed four years with The Lorax - yet The Peanuts Movie presented a whole new level of challenge. Where Seuss’s worlds exploded off the page with colour and life and elastic movement, Schulz’s were the very model of scribbled understatement, often eschewing backgrounds completely to preserve an expressive but essentially sparse minimalism. Seuss’s characters invited 3D interpretation with their expressive curves and body language; the Peanuts cast, by contrast, make no three-dimensional sense at all, existing only as a limited series of anatomically inconsistent stock poses and impressionist linework that breaks down the moment volume is added. It’s not that Charlie Brown, Snoopy and co are totally resistant to animation - after all, the Peanuts legacy of animated specials and movies is almost as treasured as the comic strip itself - but it’s still worth noting that the Bill Melendez/Lee Mendelson-produced cartoons succeeded mostly by committing fully to the static, spare, rigidly two-dimensional look of Schulz’s comic art, a far cry from the hyper-malleable Chuck Jones/Friz Freleng-produced style of the most famous Seuss adaptations.

Perhaps realising that Schulz cannot be made to adapt to 3D, Blue Sky went the opposite route: making 3D adapt to Schulz. The results are honestly startling to behold - a richly colourful, textured, fluidly dynamic world, populated by low-framerate characters who pop and spasm and glide along 2D planes, creating a visual experience that’s halfway between stop-motion and Paper Mario. It’s an experiment in style that breaks all the established rules and feels quite unlike anything that’s been done in CGI animation on this scale - with the possible exception of The Lego Movie - and it absolutely 100% works in a way that no other visual approach could have done for this particular property. Each moment somehow manages to ride the line of contradiction between comforting familiarity and virtuoso innovation; I’m still scratching my head, for example, about how Blue Sky managed to so perfectly translate Linus’s hair - a series of wavy lines that make no anatomical sense - into meticulously rendered 3D, or how the extended Red Baron fantasy sequences are able to keep Snoopy snapping between jerky staccato keyframes while the world around him spins and revolves with complete fluidity. Snoopy “speaks”, as ever, with nonverbal vocalisations provided by the late Bill Melendez, director of so many classic Peanuts animations; the use of his archived performance in this way is a sweet tribute to the man, but one that hardly seems necessary when the entire movie is essentially a $100 million love letter to his signature style.

I do wonder how Melendez would’ve reacted to seeing his work aggrandised in such a lavish fashion, because it’s not as though those films were designed to be historic touchstones; indeed, much of the stripped-back nature of those early Peanuts animations owed as much to budgetary constraints and tight production cycles as they did to stylistic bravery. Melendez’s visuals emerged as they did out of necessity; it’s an odd quirk of fate that his success ended up making it necessary for Blue Sky to take such bold steps to match up with his template so many decades later. Sure, you can argue that The Peanuts Movie is technically experimental because it had to be, but that doesn’t diminish the impressiveness of the final result at all, particularly given how much easier it would have been to make the film look so much worse than this. It’d be nice to see future generations of CG animators pick up the gauntlet that films like this and The Lego Movie have thrown down by daring to be adventurous with the medium and pushing the boundaries of what a 3D movie can look and move like. After all, trailblazing is a defining component of Peanuts’ DNA; if Blue Sky’s movie can be seen as a groundbreaking achievement in years to come, then they’ll really have honoured Schulz and Melendez in the best way possible.

CELEBRATING... THE COURAGE TO BE SMALL

In scaling up the visual palette of the Peanuts universe, Blue Sky overcame a key hurdle in making the dormant series feel worthy of a first full cinematic outing in 35 years, but this wasn’t the only scale-related challenge the makers of The Peanuts Movie faced. There’s always been a perception that transferring a property to the big screen requires a story to match the size of the canvas; in the animation industry, that’s probably more true now than it’s ever been. Looking back at the classic animated movies made prior to around the 1980s and 1990s, it’s striking how many of them are content to tell episodic, rambling shaggy dog stories that prioritise colourful antics and larger-than-life personalities over ambitious narrative, but since then it feels like conventions have shifted. Most of today’s crop of successful animations favour three-act structures, high-stakes adventure stories and screen-filling spectacle - all of which presents an obvious problem for a movie based on a newspaper strip about a mopey prepubescent underachiever and his daydreaming dog.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Charlie and Snoopy have had to manage a transition to feature-length narrative, but it was always unlikely that Blue Sky would follow too closely in the footsteps of the four previous theatrical efforts that debuted between 1969 and 1980. All four are characterised by the kind of meandering, episodic structure that was popular in the day, which made it easier to assemble scripts from Schulz-devised gag sequences in an essentially modular fashion; the latter three (Snoopy, Come Home from 1972, Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown from 1977 and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!!) from 1980) also made their own lives easier by incorporating road trips or journeys into their storylines, which gave audiences the opportunity to see the Peanuts gang in different settings. The first movie, 1969’s A Boy Named Charlie Brown, also features a road trip aspect to its plotline, but in most respects offers the most typical and undiluted Peanuts experience of the four original films; perhaps as a result, it also feels quite aggressively padded, while its limited cast (lacking later additions like Peppermint Patty and Marcie) and intimately dour focus made it a sometimes claustrophobic cinematic experience.

Given The Peanuts Movie’s intention to reintroduce the franchise to modern audiences who may not necessarily be familiar with the original strip’s melancholic sensibilities, the temptation was always going to be to balloon the property outwards into something broad, overinflated and grand in a way that Schulz never was; it’s to be applauded, then, that The Peanuts Movie ends up as that rare CGI animation that tells a small-scale story in a focused manner over 90 minutes, resisting the urge to dilute the purity of its core character-driven comedy material with any of the family adventure elements modern audiences are used to. Even more so than previous feature-length Peanuts movies, this isn’t a film with any kind of high-concept premise; rather than sending Charlie Brown out on any kind of physical quest, The Peanuts Movie is content to offer a simple character portrait, showing us various sides of our protagonist’s personality as he strives to better himself in order to impress his unrequited love, the ever-elusive Little Red-Haired Girl. The resulting film is certainly episodic - each attempt to impress his object of affection sends Charlie Brown into new little mini-storylines that bring different classic characters to the foreground and evoke the stop-start format of Schulz’s strip, even though the content and style feel fresh - but all of the disparate episodes feel unified by the kind of coherent forward momentum and progressive character growth that Bill Melendez’s older movies never really reached for.

Indeed, it’s probably most telling that the film’s sole major concession to conventional cinematic scale - its extended fantasy side-story featuring Snoopy engaging in aerial battles in his imaginary World War I Flying Ace alter-ego - is probably its weakest element. These high-flying action sequences are intelligently conceived, injecting some real visual splendour and scope without intruding on the intimacy of the main story, but they feel overextended and only infrequently connected to the rest of the film in any meaningful way. This would be less of a problem if the Snoopy-centric narrative had effective emotional hooks of its own, but sadly there’s really not much there beyond the Boys’ Own parody trappings; any real investment in Snoopy’s dreamed pursuit of his poodle love interest Fifi is undermined by her very un-Schulz-like drippy damselness, and it becomes hard to avoid feeling that you’re watching an extended distraction from the parts of the movie you’re actually interested in. Of course, it’s arguable that an overindulgent fondness for Snoopy-related flights of fancy drawing attention away from the more grounded, meaningful exploits of Charlie Brown and friends is actually a fair reflection of the Peanuts franchise in its latter years, showing that Blue Sky were faithful to Schulz to a fault, but I wouldn’t like to focus too much on a minor misstep in a film that’s intelligent and committed about its approach to small-canvas storytelling in a way you don’t often see from mainstream animated films on the big screen.

CELEBRATING... LETTING THE ULTIMATE UNDERDOG HAVE HIS DAY

All of these achievements would count for very little, though, if Blue Sky’s movie wasn’t able to adequately capture the intellect and essence of Schulz’s work, a task that seems simultaneously simple and impossible. For such a sprawling franchise, Peanuts has proven remarkably resilient to tampering, meddling or ruination, with each incarnation - whether in print or in animation - remaining stylistically and tonally consistent, thanks to the strict control Schulz and his fastidious estate have kept over the creative direction of the series. On the one hand, this is a blessing of sorts for future stewards of the franchise, as it gives them a clear playbook to work from when producing new material; on the other hand, the unyielding strictness of that formula hints heavily at a certain brittleness to the Peanuts template, suggesting to would-be reinventors that it would take only a small misapplication of ambition to irrevocably damage the essential Schulz-ness of the property and see the result crumble to dust. This has certainly proven the case with Schulz’s contemporary Dr Seuss, one of few American children’s literature writers with a comparable standing to the Peanuts creator, and an artist whose literate, lyrical and contemplative work has proven eminently easy to ruin by misguided adapters who tried and failed to put their own spin on his classic material.

There’s no guesswork involved in saying these concerns were of paramount importance to the Schulz estate when prepping The Peanuts Movie - director Steve Martino was selected specifically on the strength of his faithful adaptation of Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!, and the film’s screenplay was co-written by Schulz’s son Craig and grandson Bryan - but even taking a cautious approach, there are challenges to adapting Schulz for mainstream feature animation that surpass even those posed by Seuss’ politically-charged poetry. For all his vaulting thematic ambition, Seuss routinely founded his work on a bedrock of visual whimsy and adventurous, primary-colours mayhem, acting as a spoonful of sugar for the intellectual medicine he administered. Schulz, on the other hand, preferred to serve up his sobering, melancholic life lessons neat and unadulterated, with the static suburban backdrops and simply-rendered characters providing a fairly direct vessel for the strip’s cerebral, poignant or downbeat musings. The cartoonist’s willingness to honestly embrace life’s cruel indignities, the callousness of human nature and the feeling of unfulfilment that defines so much of regular existence is perhaps the defining element of his work and the foundational principle that couldn’t be removed without denying Charlie Brown his soul - but it’s also something that might have felt incompatible with the needs and expectations of a big studio movie in the modern era, particularly without being able to use the surface-level aesthetic pleasure that a Seuss adaptation provides as a crutch.

I’ve already addressed the impressive way The Peanuts Movie was able to make up the deficit on visual splendour and split the difference in terms of the story’s sense of scale, but the most laudable aspect of the film is the sure-footed navigation of the tonal tightrope it had to tread, deftly balancing the demands of the material against the needs of a modern audience, which are honestly just as important. Schulz may have been a visionary, but his work didn’t exist in a vacuum; the sometime brutal nature of his emotional outlook was at least in part a reaction to the somewhat sanitised children’s media landscape that existed around him at the time, and his work acted as an antidote that was perhaps more necessary then than it is now. That’s not to say the medicinal qualities of Schulz’s psychological insights don’t still have validity, but to put it bluntly I don’t think children lack reminders in today’s social landscape that the world can be a dark, daunting and depressing place, and it feels like Martino and his team realised that when trying to find the centre of their script. Thus, The Peanuts Movie takes the sharp and sometimes bitter flavour of classic Schulz and filters it, finding notes of sweetness implicit in the Peanuts recipe and making them more explicit, creating a gentler blend that goes down smoother while still feeling like it’s drawn from the original source.

The core of this delicate work of adaptation is the film’s Charlie Brown version 2.0 - still fundamentally the same unlucky totem of self-doubt and doomed ambition he’s always been, but with the permeating air of accepted defeat diminished somewhat. This Charlie Brown (voiced by Stranger Things’ Noah Schnapp) shares the shortcomings of his predecessors, but wears them better, stands a little taller and feels less vulnerable to the slings and arrows that life - and ill-wishers like Lucy Van Pelt - throw at him. Certainly, he still thinks of himself as an “insecure, wishy-washy failure”, but his determination to become more than that shines through, with even his trademark “good grief” sometimes accompanied by a wry smile that demonstrates a level of perspective that previous incarnations of the character didn’t possess. Blue Sky’s Charlie Brown is, in short, a tryer - a facet of the character that always existed, but was never really foregrounded in quite the way The Peanuts Movie does. In the words of Martino:

“Here’s where I lean thematically. I want to go through this journey. … Charlie Brown is that guy who, in the face of repeated failure, picks himself back up and tries again. That’s no small task. I have kids who aspire to be something big and great. … a star football player or on Broadway. I think what Charlie Brown is - what I hope to show in this film - is the everyday qualities of perseverance… to pick yourself back up with a positive attitude - that’s every bit as heroic … as having a star on the Walk of Fame or being a star on Broadway. That’s the story’s core.”

It’s possible to argue that leavening the sometimes crippling depression in Charlie Brown’s soul robs him of some of his uniqueness, but it’s also not as though it’s a complete departure from Schulz’s presentation of him, either. Writer Christopher Caldwell, in a famous 2000 essay on the complex cultural legacy of the Peanuts strip, aptly described its star as a character who remains “optimistic enough to think he can earn a sense of self-worth”, rather than rolling over and accepting the status that his endless failures would seem to bestow upon him. Even at his most downbeat and “Charlie-Browniest”, he’s always been a tryer, someone with enough drive to stand up and be counted that he keeps coming back to manage and lead his hopeless baseball team to defeat year after year; someone with the determination to try fruitlessly again and again to get his kite in the air and out of the trees; someone with enough lingering misplaced faith in Lucy’s human decency to keep believing that this time she’ll let him kick that football, no matter how logical the argument for giving up might be.

Indeed, Charlie Brown’s dogged determination to make contact with that damn ball was enough to thaw the heart of Schulz himself, his creator and most committed tormentor - having once claimed that allowing his put-upon protagonist to ever kick the ball would be a “terrible disservice to him”, the act of signing off his final ever Peanuts strip prompted a change of heart and a tearful confession:

“All of a sudden I thought, 'You know, that poor, poor kid, he never even got to kick the football. What a dirty trick - he never had a chance to kick the football.”

If that comment - made in December 1999, barely two months before his death - represented Schulz’s sincere desire for clemency for the character he had doomed to a 50-year losing streak, then The Peanuts Movie can be considered the fulfilment of a dying wish. No, Charlie Brown still doesn’t get to kick the football, but he receives something a lot more meaningful - a long-awaited conversation with the Little Red-Haired Girl, realised on screen as a fully verbalised character for the first time, who provides Charlie Brown with a gentle but quietly overwhelming affirmation of his value and qualities as a human being. In dramatic terms, it’s a small-scale end to a low-key story; in emotional terms, it’s an moment of enormous catharsis, particularly in the context of the franchise as a whole. It’s in this moment that Martino’s film shows its thematic hand - the celebration of tryers the world over, a statement that you don’t need to accomplish epic feats to be a good person, that persevering, giving your all and maintaining your morality and compassion in the face of setbacks is its own kind of heroism. The impact feels even greater on a character level, though; after decades of Sisyphean struggle and disappointment, the ending of The Peanuts Movie is an act of beatific mercy for Charlie Brown, placing a warm arm around the shoulders of one of American culture’s most undeservedly downtrodden characters and telling him he is worth far more than the sum of his failures, that his essential goodness and honesty did not go unnoticed, and that he is deserving of admiration - not for being a sporting champion or winning a prize, but for having the strength to hold on to the best parts of himself even when the entire world seems to reject everything he is.

Maybe that isn’t how your grandfather’s Peanuts worked, and maybe it isn’t how Bryan Schulz’s grandfather’s Peanuts worked either, but it would take a hard-hearted, inflexible critic to claim that any of The Peanuts Movie’s adjustments to the classic formula are damaging to the soul of the property, particularly when the intent behind the changes feels so pure. The flaws and foibles of the characters are preserved intact, as is the punishingly fickle nature of the world’s morality; however, in tipping the bittersweet balance away from bitterness towards sweetness, Martino’s movie escapes the accusation of mere imitation and emerges as a genuine work of multifaceted adaptation, simultaneously acting as a tribute, a response to and a modernisation of Charles Schulz’s canon. The Peanuts Movie is clearly designed to work as an audience’s first exposure to Peanuts, but it works equally well if treated as an ultimate conclusion, providing an emotional closure to the epic Charlie Brown morality play that Schulz himself never provided, but that feels consistent with the core of the lessons he always tried to teach.

In reality, it’s unlikely Peanuts will ever be truly over - indeed, a new French-animated TV series based on the comics aired just last year - but there’s still something warmly comforting about drawing a rough-edged line under The Peanuts Movie, letting Charlie Brown live on in a moment of understated triumph 65 years in the making, remembered not for his failings but by his embodiment of the undersung heroism of simply getting back up and trying again. It’s not easy to make a meaningful contribution to the legacy of a character and property that’s already achieved legendary status on a global scale, but with The Peanuts Movie, the perennially undervalued Blue Sky gave good ol’ Charlie Brown a send-off that a spiritually-minded humanist like Charles Schulz would have been proud of - and in my book, that makes them heroes, too.

#peanuts #peanutsmovie #charles schulz #charles m. schulz #charlie brown #peppermint patty #lucy van pelt #linus van pelt #snoopy #woodstock #blue sky #blue sky studios #animation #film analysis #movies #movie critique #long post

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