News

Watching an international version of Taskmaster has the uncanny quality of trying to explain a dream. The sets are the same, but also not. The theme music’s a match, but it’s playing over people and tasks you don’t recognise. The Taskmaster was there, but it wasn’t the Taskmaster, just some other tall man in a suit. And instead of the familiar comedian configuration of ‘two off telly, two off Twitter and one you’ve never heard of’, you (probably) haven’t heard of anybody.

Once you have your bearings though, free Taskmaster! Multiple new-to-you episodes to fill the gap while we wait for series 16. And it’s good stuff. The New Zealand version is particularly strong, with an excellent choice of Taskmaster’s Assistant and consistently funny comedians. Also, thanks to (the show’s own) joke that New Zealand has a population of just eight people,...

Sweden’s Svt Orders ‘Whiskey On The Rocks’ From Skyverse Nordic

Sweden’s public service broadcaster Svt has boarded Skyverse Nordic comedy-drama Whiskey On The Rocks as its main commissioning broadcaster. The six-part series is still at script and production development stage and is being billed as a “premium, epic Cold War dramedy special event” directed by Björn Stein (Midnight Sun) and based on an original story from author Jonas Jonasson. It is among the first shows from Skyverse Nordic, which is a subsidiary of Sparkling, the Stockholm-based sister company to Humanoids that Deadline revealed back in May. The show reunites Jonasson with Skyverse boss Patrick Nebout and creative producer Henrik Jansson-Schweizer, who were collectively behind Sweden’s biggest export success, the Oscar-nominated The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. A Scandinavian and international cast are being sought to play the drama’s protagonists onboard the submarine and in Moscow.

Question Time

The U.K.’s cross-party Dcms Committee, which scrutinizes the spending, policies and administration of the government Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, is set to interrogate BBC bosses on impartiality, the license fee and earnings.

The committee, which is chaired by Julian Knight, is set to convene on Tuesday, Sept. 6 to question BBC director general Tim Davie, BBC chair Richard Sharp and BBC COO Leigh Tavaziva. They will ask questions on topics including how the corporation “plans to remain relevant and effective in the modern media landscape,” “how the BBC’s offering is impacted by a more polarised political atmosphere” and the future of the license fee in light of soaring inflation rates.

Questions about impartiality will be particularly of interest to BBC watchers following a recent lecture by former “Newsnight” host Emily Maitlis at the Edinburgh TV Festival, where she used her platform to suggest the BBC was too objective.

You probably know Melissa Young as Kid Sister, who, in 2007, as a spritely Chicago Mc earned a verse with the city’s burgeoning superstar, Kanye West, on her high-energy dance-rap track “Pro Nails.”

Today, she continues to make music; she recently appeared on Black Thought and Danger Mouse’s boom-bap collab, Cheat Codes, and has seemed to earn credits as a contributor to esteemed Black-power-soul outfit Sault (“I’m not at liberty to say anything about anything,” she says when I ask her about her involvement with the group.) She’s been studying songwriting,...