News

Jessica Hynes (“Shaun of the Dead”) and Akemnji Ndifornyen (“Famalam”) are among the cast set to join Adjani Salmon’s BBC, A24 and Big Deal Films series “Dreaming Whilst Black.”

The show, which Salmon (“Doctor Who”) created and stars in, is based on a web-series of the same name. It was adapted into a critically acclaimed pilot in 2021 and greenlit for a six-part series last fall.

The series will see Salmon reprise his role as Kwabena alongside Dani Moseley (“Everything I Know About Love”) as Amy.

They will be joined by newcomers to the show Hynes and Ndifornyen as well as Isy Suttie (“Peep Show”), Peter Serafinowicz (“The Tick”), Roger Griffiths (“Chef!”), Martina Laird (“The Little Mermaid”), Jo Martin (“Doctor Who”), Steve Furst (“The Serpent Queen”) and “Love Island’s” Ovie Soko.

Meanwhile, returning from the pilot are Demmy Ladipo (“We Are Lady Parts”) as Maurice, Rachel Adedeji (“Champion”) as Funmi,...

Stars: Stephen Graham, Dave Johns, Steve Furst, Michael Socha, Stephen Tompkinson, Julian Sands, Jill Halfpenny, Lindsey Coulson, Robbie Gee, Jason Flemyng | Written and Directed by Dan Cadan

An evident labour of love for first-time writer-director Dan Cadan, this cheerful British comedy attempts to fuse a nostalgic love of Saturday teatime TV wrestling with a band-of-plucky-underdogs plot that’s straight out of The Full Monty. The result leaves a lot to be desired, but there’s no denying that the film’s heart is in the right place.

The film begins with a wistful flashback to the 1980s, when the nation was glued to British wrestling on ITV’s World of Sport, every Saturday tea-time and young Mark Bolton (Stephen Graham) grew up idolising his wrestler father, Trevor “Bulldog” Bolton (I, Daniel Blake’s Dave Johns) and his wrestling troupe, The Panthers. Cut to the present day, where Mark still harbours...

After treating cinema fans for more than a decade, Ee's 2-for-1 ticket offer is coming to an end today (February 25). We'll certainly miss breaking up the week with a cut-price cinema visit, and the end of the promotion has made us all nostalgic about the classic Orange Wednesdays ads that started it all off.

Dubbed 'Orange Gold Spots', they starred Brennan Brown and Steve Furst as two clueless film execs listening to pitches from some of Hollywood's finest. Brilliantly lampooning the bean counter thinking of studio suits and the fragile creative egos of A-listers, the likes of Patrick Swayze, Macaulay Culkin and Carrie Fisher all stepped up to offer their increasingly compromised film pitches:

1. A Clockwork Orange

This early offering sought to capture that creative moment when the lightbulb flicks on... unfortunately Brown's dim-witted exec can't quite grasp what's dangling right in front of him. Stanley Kubrick would be livid.

Reece Shearsmith is set to appear in the part-animated horror Borley Rectory.

The film, which also features live action and fantasy sequences, focuses on the hauntings of an Essex rectory.

Shooting has begun on the half-hour film, but Carrion Films is campaigning to raise £3,000 on crowdfunding website Indiegogo to complete the project.

Shearsmith - best known for his work on The League of Gentlemen - will play journalist Vernon Wall, who investigates the supposed apparitions of evil spirits.

"The project oozes as much quality as it does evil," the actor said. "Borley Rectory is one of the great ghost stories. I needed to be part of it."

Jonathan Rigby, Steve Furst, Nicholas Vince and Richard Strange are also attached to the project.

Richard Herring, Noel Clarke, Dawn Porter and Josie Long have all appeared in a new video about internet trolls. They are joined by Misery Bear, Steve Furst, Jocelyn Jee Esien, Helen Lederer, Tom Price and Isy Suttie in the clip from Clever Pie and Isabel Fay. (Warning: Adult Content): "Dedicated to hard working internet trolls everywhere," the track description reads on YouTube. "Love ya, keep on trollin'! X Isabel & all the Clever (more)...

Arts, London

Film locations often make for surprisingly good drama. Charles Wood's Veterans took us behind the scenes of The Charge of the Light Brigade. Here, Oliver Cotton's witty and perceptive play uses the shooting of a costume epic in rain-drenched Spain to explore British and American attitudes to life, art and the waiting game of making movies.

Cotton, who clearly knows the territory, creates a series of dramatic reversals. Two actors, the American Brad and English Stuart, are cooped up in a trailer waiting to shoot a scene in a film about Cortés's conquest of Mexico. But it is the seemingly brash Brad who can quote reams of Marlowe, while Stuart is momentarily stumped when asked to recite Shakespeare. And while Stuart attacks the status-consciousness of American actors and the imperialist pretensions of Hollywood, it is Brad who turns out to be made of the right stuff.