News

Director Christopher Smith has built up a solid following in the horror community over the last twenty years by taking the helm of such films as Creep (2004), Severance, Triangle, Black Death, Detour, The Banishing, and Consecration. Back in October of 2023, we heard that he had lined up his next genre project, signing on to direct the arachnid horror comedy Spider Island for Vertigo Films. Now, Deadline reports that Spider Island has started filming on location in Mauritius.

Scripted by Christopher Jolley (The Price We Pay) and David Quantick (Veep), Spider Island will follow a group of social media influencers who go to the launch of a new hotel on a tropical island, where they find deadly spiders. The cast includes Rose Williams (The Power), Tim McInnerny (Blackadder), TikTok personality Avani Gregg, Owen Warner (Hollyoaks), Andy Nyman (Wicked), author / YouTube personality Léna Mahfouf (a.k.a. Léna Situations), Carlotta Banat (Fifteen...

Announced back in 2023, Spider Island is now in production on location in Mauritius, Deadline has learned.

The horror-comedy follows a group of social media influencers who go to the launch of a new hotel on a tropical island, where they find deadly spiders.

Christopher Smith is directing from a script by Christopher Jolley (The Price We Pay) and David Quantick (“Veep”).

Rose Williams (“Reign”), Tim McInnerny (“Game of Thrones”), Owen Warner (“Hollyoaks”), Andy Nyman (Wicked), Carlotta Banat (“3 Body Problem”), and Anuschka Van Lent (Natty Knocks) star alongside real-life influencers Avani Gregg and Lena Mahfouf.

Vertigo Films is producing in association with Fiction Films. Protagonist Pictures is selling the film internationally.

“Spider Island is first and foremost a great comedy horror for audiences around the world,” said Vertigo’s James Richardson. “It’s also an opportunity for a group of very talented actors and filmmakers and a group of very...

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My Fault is a Spanish teen romantic drama film written and directed by Domingo González. Based on the Waftpad novel of the same name by Mercedes Ron, the Prime Video film follows Noah, who is forced to leave her town, friends, and boyfriend to move into the mansion of her mother’s new husband. She soon meets and falls for Nick, her new stepbrother. My Fault stars Nicole Wallace, Gabriel Guevara, Marta Hazas, Iván Sánchez, Eva Ruiz, Victor Varona, and Fran Berenguer. So, if you loved the teen drama, steamy romance, and compelling characters in My Fault, here are some similar movies you should check out next.

Through My Window (Netflix) Credit: Netflix

Through My Window is a Spanish teen romantic drama film directed by Marçal Forés from a screenplay by Eduard Sola. Based on the 2022 novel of...

Director Christopher Smith has built up a solid following in the horror community over the last twenty years by taking the helm of such films as Creep (2004), Severance, Triangle, Black Death, Detour, The Banishing, and Consecration. Now he has lined up his next genre project, signing on to direct Spider Island for Vertigo Films. Protagonist Pictures is handling the project’s worldwide rights and will be launching distribution sales ahead of the American Film Market, which is set to be held in Santa Monica, California from October 31st through November 5th.

Scripted by Christopher Jolley (The Price We Pay) and David Quantick (Veep), Spider Island will follow a group of social media influencers going to the launch party of a new luxury resort on a beautiful island. With deadly spiders.

The killer spider effects will be handled by Automatik VFX, a company that has previously designed creatures for Monsters: Dark Continent,...

Horror Director Christopher Smith is getting ready to unleash arachnophobia-inducing horror-comedy madness in Spider Island. The project was announced today by Protagonist Pictures’ CEO Dave Bishop.

Spider Island “follows a group of social media influencers going to the launch party of a new luxury resort on a beautiful island. With deadly spiders.”

The film is written by Christopher Jolley (The Price We Pay) and David Quantick. Vertigo Films will produce the film, and Protagonist Pictures is handling worldwide rights, launching sales ahead of the upcoming American Film Market.

While the specifics behind these lethal spiders remain under wraps, we at least know that they’ll be handled via VFX.

From the press release: “The state-of-the-art VFX will be handled by Automatik VFX, the visual effects studio responsible for the brilliant creature design on Monsters Dark Continent, ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘The Wheel Of Time.’ Seb Barker will serve as VFX supervisor.

Award-winning horror writer-director Christopher Smith will direct concept horror comedy “Spider Island.”

Written by Christopher Jolley (“The Price We Pay”) and David Quantick (“Veep”), the film will follow a group of social media influencers going to the launch party of a new luxury resort on a beautiful island – one that is infested with deadly spiders.

Smith has won awards at Neuchatel for “Detour” and “Black Death” and at Bucheon for “Severance.” Most recently he directed HBO series “Spy/Master.”

The U.K.’s Vertigo Films will produce the film. Protagonist Pictures is handling worldwide rights, launching sales ahead of the upcoming American Film Market. Automatik VFX will handle visual effects with Seb Barker (“The Wheel of Time”) serving as VFX supervisor.

Production is set to begin in early 2024 in Mauritius. The film will feature a multinational cast.

Smith said: “For a while now, I’ve been searching for the perfect project...

Mainstream romantic comedies are a rare breed these days. Good ones, with real relationship stakes and sexual tension of the kind that once starred the likes of Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, are even rarer. That’s why one has to at least respect the effort when something like the amiable but imperfect “Book of Love” comes along with a time-honored “sex sells” principle, defying a sex-starved cinematic landscape oversaturated by sterile superheroes and icy franchises even if it doesn’t quite deliver the goods.

Indeed, Analeine Cal y Mayor’s balmy little charmer couldn’t be more welcome during the February chill despite its occasional clumsiness in plotting and deficit in its leads’ chemistry. Rest assured that this opposites-attract romp of modest pleasures (launching on Amazon Prime today) still leaves the sweet aftertaste of a mini romantic getaway, one you might as well indulge in from the comfort of your living room.

Sam Claflin and Veronica Echegui are toplining the romantic comedy Book Of Love, which shoots next month. Sky is producing the movie as a Sky Original for its markets, with XYZ Films co-producing, co-financing and handling rights for the rest of the world.

The story is about two writers thrown together on a book tour in Mexico. Analeine Cal Y Mayor (Treading Water) is directing from a script by David Quantick (Veep).

Producers include Michael Knowles from North of Watford Films, Naysun Alae-Carew from Blazing Griffin, Allan Niblo from Vertigo Films, Nick Spicer and Maxime Cottray from XYZ Films and Richard Alan Reid from BuzzFeed Studios. BuzzFeed Studios and North of Watford Films developed the screenplay and BuzzFeed Studios will be a marketing partner on the film.

Sky recently unveiled its content strategy for 2021, which includes a commitment to release two original films per month this year.

In today’s Global Bulletin, BBC and SundanceTV announce the third and final season of “The Split,” Sky and XYZ Films prepare to shoot “Book of Love” and Vis Distribution adds 750 hours of content following its acquisition of Israel’s Ananey Studios.

Television

BBC One and SundanceTV have ordered a third and final season of Sister’s “The Split,” created by BAFTA and International Emmy-winning writer Abi Morgan and produced by Jane Featherstone (“Chernobyl”), Lucy Dyke (“Black Mirror”) and Lucy Richer (“Small Axe”), with Dee Koppang O’Leary boarding as lead director.

Unspooling in London’s high-end divorce circuit, “The Split” follows the lives of the Defoe sisters, Hannah, Nina and Rose, and their imposing mother Ruth. Season two ended with divorce lawyer Hannah’s own marriage in tatters and the couple negotiating the terms of their own split. As the dust seems to be settling, a new revelation comes to light,...

Next Spring, Emmy award-winning TV writer David Quantick returns with his second novel Night Train, a sci-fi/horror that thrusts readers onto a – you guessed it – train full of odd characters and even stranger creatures. A woman, suffering from amnesia, must make her way carriage-by-carriage to try and stop this nightmarish locomotive whose destination […]

The post David Quantick’s Sci-Fi/Horror Night Train Glows Red In Exclusive Cover Reveal appeared first on Dread Central.

Exclusive: Trio of projects going into production in 2017.

Creative England has announced the latest recipients of its Production Fund, which supports filmmaking in the English regions using lottery funds via the BFI.

The three films are:

White Riot (working title) - dirs: Rubika Shah and Ed GibbsDawn Of The Dark Fox - dirs: Michael Smith and Tom StubbsSnodgrass – writer: David Quantick

The debut features are going into production in 2017 and were supported in development through Creative England’s lottery funded emerging talent strand as part of the BFI Network. The films are looking to close finance following the Cannes market.

Films that recently received Creative England lottery production funding include the Bifa-winning Adult Life Skills, Sundance winner God’s Own Country and Notes On Blindness. Critical hit Lady Macbeth was backed by Creative England through its iFeatures scheme.

Caroline Norbury, CEO of Creative England said: “These films, alongside our recent iFeatures greenlight projects, represent a ringing...

Andrew Blair Oct 17, 2016

Armando Iannucci & Chris Morris' BBC Radio 4 news spoof not only gave rise to Alan Partridge but also launched countless comedy careers.

If you haven’t heard of On The Hour, you’ll have seen or read the work of the people who made it: Brass Eye, The Thick Of It, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, Veep, Four Lions, that bit on the train at the end of Mission: Impossible, Closer, Jam, the Leicester Square Theatre Podcasts, the movie version of Notes On A Scandal; the NME, TV Burp, the videos for Little Baby Nothing by the Manics and Kung Fu by Ash, Smack The Pony, and Alan Partridge to name a few.

See related The Big Bang Theory season 10 episode 4 review: The Cohabitation Experimentation The Big Bang Theory season 10 episode 3 review: The Dependence Transcendence The Big Bang Theory season 10 episode 2 review: The Military Miniaturization The Big Bang Theory...

The Writers Guild of America has just announced the nominations for their annual awards for Best Screenplays (by writers who are guild signatories). That’s right, before you get nervous thinking that your favorite may have been left off the list, you must remember that the WGA is the group that is not all-inclusive and leaves out several of the top contenders each year due to them not being part of the guild or not following their very specific rules. For this reason, you won’t see Inside Out, The Hateful Eight, and Ex Machina in the Original Screenplay category or Room, Brooklyn, or Anomalisa in the Adapted screenplay category.

Taking a look at what’s left over for the nominations, we find many that were expected to make a showing, including Spotlight and Bridge of Spies for Original Screenplay, though they apparently had to sink to really low depths...

The Big Short

The Producers Guild of America (PGA) announced today the motion picture, long-form television, digital series, sports programs and additional television nominations for the 27th Annual Producers Guild Awards.

The categories include: The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures; The Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures; The David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television; Outstanding Sports Program; and Outstanding Digital Series. The feature documentary film category and other television category nominations were previously announced by the PGA in late 2015.

All 2016 Producers Guild Award winners will be announced on Saturday, January 23, 2016 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles. This year, the Producers Guild will present special honors to Jim Gianopulos (Milestone Award), Shonda Rhimes (Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television), David Heyman (David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures), The Hunting Ground (Stanley Kramer...

The Producers Guild of America has announced the nominations for its 27th annual Producers Guild Awards! 10 films are vying for the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures. And sorry "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and "Carol," you did not make the cut :sad

The PGA Awards winners will be announced on January 23. Here's the complete list of nominees of the 27th annual Producers Guild Awards:

Theatrical Motion Picture nominees

The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures

The Big Short

Producers: Brad Pitt & Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner

Bridge of Spies

Producers: Steven Spielberg, Marc Platt, Kristie Macosko Krieger

Brooklyn

Producers: Finola Dwyer & Amanda Posey

Ex Machina

This film is in the process of being vetted for producer eligibility

Mad Max: Fury Road

Producers: Doug Mitchell & George Miller

The Martian

Producers: Simon Kinberg, Ridley Scott, Michael Schaefer, Mark Huffam

The Revenant

Producers: Arnon Milchan,...

The Writers Guild of America announced some of its nominees for its 2015 awards on Thursday, including television, new media, and radio, and among the TV nominees are series both new and old, and all beloved.

In the comedy series category, freshman Netflix show "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" scored a nomination for best series, as well as an overall best new series nod. "The Last Man on Earth" also landed in that latter category, and was singled out for its pilot episode writing, too.

On the drama side of the equation, lauded "Breaking Bad" spinoff "Better Call Saul" also got best series and best new series nominations, in addition to a an episode writing nod. Newly-minted Emmy winner "Game of Thrones" also scored a best drama citation, as well as an episodic writing nomination.

The full list of nominees released this week are below. Nominations in the theatrical and documentary categories will...

'Harry Hill's TV Burp' will ''never come back''. A writer for the ITV2 series has revealed that toward the end of its 11-year-run, TV bosses turned on the popular show and blocked them from mocking programmes including ITV's 'Coronation Street' and BBC One's 'EastEnders' - but Channel 4 were the worst culprits. David Quantick said: ''TV Burp will never come back because TV companies are wise. There is a thing in telly called 'fair dealing', which means you can show anything for free, as long as you're reviewing it. ''You're not supposed to take the mickey out of it and say (Corrie star)...

Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Veep, Season 4, Episode 7: “Mommy Meyer”

Teleplay by Roger Drew and David Quantick, Story by Armando Iannucci, Roger Drew, and David Quantick

Directed by Becky Martin

Airs Sundays at 10:30pm (Et) on HBO

The toll that Meyer’s time as President has taken on her staff has been a running theme of Veep‘s fourth season, with Amy’s stress from her position as campaign manager being most apparent, as it resulted in an outburst and a resignation. This week’s episode sees Mike seemingly become the next member of Meyer’s staff to walk towards that brink, as Selina and her team continue to struggle with the Families First bill in a compelling episode.

It’s interesting to see Tom James get some added dimension this week. Not much has been revealed about Meyer’s running mate, as his likability was the key factor behind Amy,...

Tony Hale

Veep, Season 4, Episode 5: “Candidate”

Teleplay by Sean Gray and David Quantick, Story by Armando Iannucci, Sean Gray, and David Quantick

Directed by Stephanie Laing

Airs Sundays at 10:30pm (Et) on HBO

While the resignation of President Hughes gave Meyer a chance to take the job she has been aspiring towards for her entire political career, her eye has been firmly set on the upcoming election. This week’s episode turns the focus away from Meyer the President on to Meyer the Presidential candidate, leading to another hilarious episode that sees some more major shakeups in Meyer’s staff.

Amy’s resignation, while not unexpected given her recent frustrations, also signals another major change in Meyer’s cabinet, one that is likely to be more keenly felt than Dan’s firing. Amy’s frustrations with Meyer have been building up for a number of seasons, and Meyer...

Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel" won the Original Screenplay honor at the recently concluded Writers Guild Awards while Morten Tyldum's "The Imitation Game" took home the Adapted Screenplay trophy. "The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swarts" written by Brian Knappenberger won Documentary Screenplay award. The film is not nominated for an Academy award.

In TV land, HBO's "True Detective" won the Drama Series award and FX's "Louie" received the Comedy Series trophy.

Here's the complete list of winners (highlighted) and nominees of the 2015 Writers Guild Awards:

Feature Film

Original Screenplay

Boyhood, Written by Richard Linklater; IFC Films

Foxcatcher, Written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman; Sony Pictures Classics

The Grand Budapest Hotel, Screenplay by Wes Anderson; Story by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness; Fox Searchlight Winner

Nightcrawler, Written by Dan Gilroy; Open Road Films

Whiplash, Written by Damien Chazelle; Sony Pictures Classics

Adapted Screenplay

American Sniper,...

The Writers Guild of America announced the TV nominees for the 2015 WGA Awards on Thursday (December 4) morning and several new shows broke into the fields in a big way. And, of course, there were a number of big WGA Award nomination head-scratchers. Specifically, where the heck was FX's "Fargo"? The answer is below. Making perhaps the biggest splash was "Transparent," which earned three nominations and, since "Orange Is The New Black" earned two nods and "House of Cards" pick up one, that meant that Amazon Prime and Netflix are, at least for one award-giving organization, on equal footing as creators of original programming. The Jill Soloway-created "Transparent" is nominated for New Series, where it will go against "The Affair," "The Knick," "Silicon Valley" and "True Detective." "Transparent" and "Silicon Valley" are also up for Comedy Series, going against "Louie," "Veep" and "Orange Is The New Black." Lest you panic...

That’s Because You’re a Robot

Written by David Quantick

Art by Shaky Kane

Published by Image Comics

That’s Because You’re A Robot exists in a space between profound and asinine. With sublime art by Shaky Kane and mediocre writing by David Quantick, the one-shot presents a simple, satisfying concept marred by easy humor. Two cops are informed by their sergeant on the first page that one of them is actually a robot. The comic unfurls with the interrogation with an age-shifting convict, a stake out, a face-off between iconic fictional characters, a few deaths, and a dull skewering of buddy cop tropes. The conceit of the identity of the robot acts as backdrop to the outlandish patrol of an alternative Los Angeles illustrated by Kane. Kane creates a gonzo world filled with iconography and branded idiocy. Prisoners are transported in helicopter carried cages, criminal profiles can be pulled up on compacts,...

Paul Fitzgerald, Randall Park, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Glenn Wrage

Veep, Season 3, Episode 08: “Debate”

Teleplay by David Quantick and Tony Roche, Story by Armando Iannucci, David Quantick, and Tony Roche

Directed by Armando Iannucci

Airs Sundays at 10:30pm (Et) on HBO

Following a near-disastrous trip to the UK last episode that resulted in a nervous breakdown for atleast one person, Meyer shuffled some things around in her staff, firing Ray and Dan, and appointing Amy the campaign manager, a position the latter had long coveted. Amy gets her first real test on the job as Meyer prepares for a debate with the other candidates in this week’s episode, in an entertaining outing that continues the strong run of Veep’s third season.

Watching Mike and Wendy’s marriage nearly fall apart over the course of the episode is fascinating. While the possibility of their marriage lasting has always been in doubt,...

Sally Phillips, Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Veep, Season 3, Episode 06: “Detroit”

Teleplay by Kevin Cecil, David Quantick, and Andy Riley, Story by Armando Iannucci, Kevin Cecil, David Quantick, and Andy Riley

Directed by Tim Kirkby

Airs Sundays at 10:30pm (Et) on HBO

It was inevitable that Meyer’s newest campaign for the Us Presidency would run into some hot button issues, whether she liked it or not. The team has already faced prior crises related to this, whether they be public ones like the abortion stance, or private ones like Meyer’s childcare support. However, with the roles in the unit now more clearly defined, this week’s episode throws multiple problems at Meyer and her staff in a short period of time, resulting in an entertaining episode that further reinforces that the campaign will not be an easy one.

Watching Meyer’s campaign this week is an intriguing look into how the team handles crises,...

ITV is building up to the 2014 Brazil World Cup with a new animated football comedy from Simon Nye, the writer of Men Behaving Badly.

Warren United follows the fortunes of Warren Kinglsey, an overweight kitchen salesman and dedicated football fan. It will air on ITV.

Written by David Quantick and Dominic Holland, the show will feature the voices of Darren Boyd (Spy), Morgana Robinson (House of Fools), Morwenna Banks (Peppa Pig), Johnny Vegas and Eleanor Lawrence (Common Ground).

The production comes from Baby Cow (Uncle, Gavin and Stacey, Mighty Boosh and Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa) and Canadian animation house Smiley Guy.

The show will launch on April 22.

Henry Normal, co-founder of Baby Cow productions, said: "New animated narrative series in this country are so rare. So are comedies about football, while those about fans even rarer. On several counts, therefore, we're trying something unusual."

ITV's director of digital channels Angela...

Her, Stories We Tell and Captain Phillips took home top honors on Saturday night as the big winners of the 2014 Writers Guild Awards for outstanding achievement in writing for screen. Television, radio, news, promotional, videogame, and new media writing were also recognized at simultaneous ceremonies at the Jw Marriott L.A. Live in Los Angeles and the Edison Ballroom in New York City. It’s the final precursor guild award leading up to the Oscars.

Below is a complete list of the winners.

Screen Winners

Original Screenplay (matched up with the Academy Awards nominations)

Her, Written by Spike Jonze; Warner Bros.

Nominees included American Hustle, Blue Jasmine, Dallas Buyers Club, Her and Nebraska.

Adapted Screenplay (3 for 5 Oscar nominations)

Captain Phillips, Screenplay by Billy Ray; Based on the book A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy Seals, and Dangerous Days at Sea by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty; Columbia Pictures

In addition to Captain Phillips,...

Spike Jonze’s philosophical sci-fi love story Her, and Billy Ray’s harrowing true-life hostage saga Captain Phillips earned best original and adapted screenplays, respectively, from the Writers Guild Awards on Saturday.

In the original category, Her was facing its four rivals for the Oscar: American Hustle, Blue Jasmine, Dallas Buyers Club, and Nebraska, so its victory can be seen as a strong harbinger of where the Academy Award could go on March 2. In anecdotal sampling of Academy members, EW’s Prize Fighter has also determined that Her is far and away the front-runner for this category.

The WGA’s...

Tonight, the Writers Guild of America presented their awards for excellence in film and television for 2013. All eyes were on their top two categories, Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay, and while the former went to Spike Jonze’s incredible Her as expected, the latter went to Billy Ray’s Captain Phillips, which was completely out of the blue.

Her was widely expected to win due to its immense popularity throughout awards season, taking 20 screenplay wins from groups such as the HFPA and Bfca. However, Captain Phillips was a complete surprise given that it had not managed to win a single screenplay award prior to tonight, but as I’ve said before, it was going to be hard to tell which nominee was the favorite given the fact that the disqualified 12 Years a Slave has been the clear frontrunner throughout the season. However, it’s still quite shocking that Before Midnight...

Writers for Breaking Bad and House of Cards were among those singled out for the 2014 Writers Guild Awards, which will be held on Feb. 1 in Los Angeles and New York.

The nominees are:

Drama Series:

Breaking Bad, Written by Sam Catlin, Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, Gennifer Hutchison, George Mastras, Thomas Schnauz, Moira Walley-Beckett; AMC

The Good Wife, Written by Meredith Averill, Leonard Dick, Keith Eisner, Jacqueline Hoyt, Ted Humphrey, Michelle King, Robert King, Erica Shelton Kodish, Matthew Montoya, J.C. Nolan, Luke Schelhaas, Nichelle Tramble Spellman, Craig Turk, Julie Wolfe; CBS

Homeland, Written by Henry Bromell, William E. Bromell, Alexander Cary,...

BBC Radio Two and Radio Four Xtra will air a lineup of special programmes to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who.

Air dates and details have been revealed for the shows, which will be broadcast between November 16 and November 22.

BBC Radio Four Xtra will mark the cult show's 50th year with its 'Doctor Who at 50' run, bringing a different adventure each night between 6pm and 6.45pm.

The series kicks off with Doctor Who and the Daleks. Told from the point of view of Ian Chesterton (played by William Russell), the programme addresses the Doctor's first encounter with his extra-terrestrial enemies.

Sylvester McCoy stars in the second programme Protect and Shelter, while Monday (November 18) evening's segment Fanfare For The Common Men brings back fifth Time Lord Peter Davison. McCoy once again appears in Tuesday's (November 19) Thousand Tiny Wings.

Farewell Great Macedon will air on November 20, Sheridan Smith stars in...

It’s going to be Time Lord overload for the next couple of months. In addition to the 50th-anniversary special “The Day of the Doctor” and the making-of docudrama “An Adventure in Space and Time,” the Doctor is going to be all over the BBC. From the BBC’s Doctor Who site:

BBC Two will broadcast a number of new commissions, focusing on telling the story behind the show. For one night only, Professor Brian Cox will take an audience of celebrity guests and members of the public on a journey into the wonderful universe of the Doctor, from the lecture hall of the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1x60mins). Drawing on the latest theories as well as 200 years of scientific discoveries and the genius of Einstein, Brian tries to answer the classic questions raised by the Doctor – can you really travel in time? Does extra-terrestrial life exist in our galaxy?...

In just over two months, the BBC will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who with a one-off special, Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor, and the anticipation has naturally been buzzing for months around the special event.

The 75-minute episode will air on BBC One, BBC America, and around the world on November 23rd, and commemorating fifty years of what has grown to become a cultural landmark, as Steven Moffat describes it in the broadcaster’s full press release below.

As the programme draws ever clear, a new poster has been revealed for The Day of the Doctor, along with a slew of programming around the episode to celebrate the milestone.

The episode will be the penultimate to star the current Doctor, Matt Smith, who will be exiting the programme with the Christmas episode. Peter Capaldi was announced last month as his replacement, coming on board...

News Louisa Mellor 11 Sep 2013 - 07:57

The BBC has released even more details of its Doctor Who 50th celebrations, across its radio and television stations...

In the run-up to BBC One's simultaneous broadcast of Doctor Who anniversary special episode, The Day of the Doctor, comes, well, all this. Licence-fee payers, fill your timelord boots:

BBC Two

"Professor Brian Cox will take an audience of celebrity guests and members of the public on a journey into the wonderful universe of the Doctor, from the lecture hall of the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1x60mins). Drawing on the latest theories as well as 200 years of scientific discoveries and the genius of Einstein, Brian tries to answer the classic questions raised by the Doctor – can you really travel in time? Does extra-terrestrial life exist in our galaxy? And how do you build something as fantastical as the Tardis?

In an hour-long special,...

Revisiting 18 years of pop culture, from Britpop to the Spice Girls, via Father Ted

1994: Mad fer it!

Issue No 1 Previously a broadsheet section in the newspaper, The Guide was expanded into a magazine proper on 27 August 1994. Nobody bothered to archive a copy, though, so the best we can do is show you a Xeroxed reproduction of the cover. At the time we were concerned with the weird state of science shows on TV and had a wander around the Notting Hill Carnival.

Spotted! All Saints From a review of their single Silver Shadow: "Born in the same year and in the same area of London, what else could these girls do but form a swingbeat group? Their debut is a sickly Atlantic Starr cover with an idiotic number of mixes, encompassing every dance style bar Morris. Eternal may rest easy in their Timberlands." Note: swingbeat was a form of...

If the Brit Awards involve handing out the gongs to the great and good of the music industry, the performances are just as crucial to the success of the night, and organisers really pulled it out of the bag on this front last night.

Adele, the queen of the night with two major awards - for Best British Female Solo Artist and for Best British Album - brought her freshly-repaired voice home with her from the Us, where she had brought the house down at the Grammys with Rolling in the Deep.

Sure enough, she hit her spot again at the Brits, awing the audience with her soulful, powerful rendition. Last year's spine-tingling Someone Like You was always going to be hard nay impossible to surpass, but this year's performance revealed a more assured performer, confident of her appeal to an audience of this size, and happily singing about a...

Why is the video director for Cheryl Cole and Klaxons filming people dancing when drunk?

If you were making a reality show called The Only Way is Shoreditch, you would want to have aimed your camera at an innocuous white booth in Hoxton Square last month. Surrounded by the standard gaggle of east London hipsters, the luminous box, an interactive art installation by Saam Farahmand, became a scenester magnet over the course of two days.

A former Goldsmiths fine art graduate, Farahmand, at 32, is considered one of the most talented music video directors of his generation. According to Creative Review, with his "experimental approach and technical brilliance, you always know you're going to get something special".

So how do his videos come about? "Normally, you pitch to a [record] label and they choose the best one. I just work directly with artists now – but don't put that! It sounds arrogant." Farahmand...

British comic anthology The Dandy is to feature a strip based on comedian Harry Hill. According to writer and artist Nigel Parkinson, the strip is based on a concept by the TV Burp host, who also contributed jokes and oversaw its development. Hill's writing team - led by David Quantick - will script the short in future issues. "The Dandy has had an injection of fresh talent (more)...

British comic anthology The Dandy is to feature a strip based on comedian Harry Hill. According to writer and artist Nigel Parkinson, the strip is based on a concept by the TV Burp host, who also contributed jokes and oversaw its development. Hill's writing team - led by David Quantick - will script the short in future issues. "The Dandy has had an injection of fresh talent (more)...