Annika Season 3: Release date speculation, cast and plot details – Everything we know so far
There's no official green light or release date just yet, but looking at how the show's been paced gives us a few clues. The first season landed on Alibi in August 2021, and Season 2 followed suit in August 2023. PBS and BBC One picked up the series a bit later each time, so there's a bit of a lag between UK and international airings.
Some fans were hoping for a late 2023 release, but since that didn't happen, a more realistic estimate could be late 2025 on Alibi, with a 2026 release on PBS Masterpiece or BBC One. Reddit's buzzing with predictions pointing to August 2025, but honestly, if production schedules get messy (as they often do), it could shift again. Still, there's reason to stay hopeful. Expected Cast for Annika Season 3
Assuming Season 3 gets the go-ahead, the main cast should mostly be back. Nicola Walker is the show, and the chemistry between her and the rest of the Marine Homicide Unit is part of what makes Annika work. You can probably expect to see: Nicola Walker as DI Annika Strandhed
Jamie Sives as DS Michael McAndrews
Katie Leung as DC Blair Ferguson
Varada Sethu as DS Harper Weston
Silvie Furneaux as Morgan Strandhed
Kate Dickie as DCI Diane Oban
Paul McGann as Jake Strathearn
Sven Henriksen as Magnus Strandhed
One face we likely won't see again is Ukweli Roach, who played DS Tyrone Clarke. His character left the team in Season 2, Episode 3, and unless there's a surprise comeback in the cards, his chapter looks closed. That said, don't be surprised if new characters show up to shake things up, just like Harper did last season. Potential Plot Details for Annika Season 3
Season 2 left things on a seriously tense note. Annika's father, Magnus, was revealed as a key suspect in the murder of retired detective Jackie Drummond—the one who died in that suspicious boat explosion. The episode ended with Annika looking straight at us and asking, 'Help me.' Yeah, things just got real.
Season 3 is likely to dive into that mystery, with the show digging deeper into the father-daughter tension that's been bubbling since Season 1. Is Magnus actually guilty? Or is there a more twisted truth lurking beneath the surface? Either way, Annika's got a personal stake in this one—and she's not usually great at keeping those emotions off the job.
Meanwhile, there's Morgan. After learning that Michael is her biological father—despite him having a wife and kids of his own—her world's been flipped upside down. That little detail (dropped in Season 2, Episode 3) is bound to cause tension at home and probably at work too, since Annika and Michael have to navigate this new reality while solving murders.
We'll likely also see Blair adjusting to life as a new mom, and Harper continuing to find her footing in the squad. Expect the usual mix of darkly funny commentary, eerie case-of-the-week mysteries, and Annika's signature references to Norse legends and classic literature, all set against the moody, waterlogged landscapes of Scotland.
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Atlantic
4 hours ago
- Atlantic
How Kids' TV Turned Into ‘Preschool Tinder'
Julia, a Muppet on Sesame Street, is a 4-year-old girl with bright-orange hair who likes singing, painting, and playing with her stuffed bunny, 'Fluffster.' She's also autistic—which means, as the show made clear during the character's TV debut, in 2017, that Julia expresses herself in a manner some might not understand. When Big Bird worries that Julia's silence means she doesn't like him, his fellow Muppet Abby explains that Julia does things 'in a Julia sort of way.' By the end of the episode, Big Bird and Julia are friends, even harmonizing in song. Neurodivergence is rarely portrayed authentically on-screen, let alone in a way children can grasp. But Julia, who went on to become a regular presence on the show, is the result of a collaboration between Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit company behind Sesame Street, and a team of researchers who study child development and autism. And her introduction did more than demonstrate what neurodivergence can look like; the show emphasized that she has an identity of her own and is as worthy of friendship as anyone else. Those are complex concepts, carefully constructed for young viewers to comprehend. In the years ahead, such meticulous work may be harder to accomplish. In May, President Donald Trump's executive order pulling federal dollars from public networks such as PBS and PBS Kids led to the abrupt termination of Ready to Learn, a grant designed in part to financially provide for the development of children's shows. Last month, Congress approved the Trump administration's rescission package, revoking $1.1 billion previously allocated to public radio and television. Canceling such funding, PBS Kids' senior vice president and general manager Sara DeWitt told me recently, 'really puts a lot of our future planning in jeopardy'—planning that involves ensuring that their children's shows are in line with the 'high quality' educational TV established by Sesame Street. Not helping matters is the fact that, despite being arguably the most consequential children's show in history, Sesame Street has spent this past year being passed around like a hot potato by different streaming partners. The series' turbulent journey to stay on the air reflects, in some ways, how precarious and expansive the children's-TV landscape has become. Before the streaming boom, parents could depend on a handful of publicly funded or dedicated networks for well-curated, enriching children's programming. But as newer media platforms have become more prevalent, kids' television has become more sprawling—and more difficult for families to navigate. Streamers such as Netflix now offer kids' programming, with their own siloed-off sections and parental controls; YouTube, too, is packed with content creators making children's videos. Koyalee Chanda, a creative executive at Lion Forge Entertainment, a production company geared toward family-friendly projects, describes the current multiplatform landscape as 'preschool Tinder,' a realm in which young viewers can swipe endlessly through videos, seeking a match without always knowing the difference between one show's intentions and another's—and in which it's harder for show creators to make their work stand out. 'Essentially,' Chanda told me, 'you only are as valuable as your thumbnail.' As such, children's television has become a diffuse field. Linda Simensky, a former executive for Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon who helped create shows such as Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls, told me she fears that the genre has ballooned out of control. The industry's changing priorities and shaky quality assurance have left her disenchanted by the business. 'I spent more than 30 years building this industry,' she said, 'and I feel like it's just all falling apart now.' Think of a beloved character from your childhood—a Teletubby, maybe, or Thomas the Tank Engine. What comes to mind? Nostalgia, probably. But according to a study by UCLA's Center for Scholars & Storytellers that was published earlier this year, a toddler's favorite characters can also promote the development of lifelong behaviors and skills. Take Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, the animated spin-off of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood that began airing in 2012. The show has consulted childhood-development experts to ensure that the 4-year-old Daniel behaves like many of the preschoolers who watch him: If he gets mad, he expresses his anger; if he is disappointed, he makes that clear. Afterward, he sings a 'strategy song,' teaching his audience social-emotional skills while simultaneously relating to them. The UCLA survey reported that 21 percent of teenagers who had grown up watching Daniel were still making use of the skills they'd learned years earlier. The goal for many of those working in children's entertainment, DeWitt explained, is to make shows that help viewers retain a variety of skills, emotional and otherwise. That's certainly the approach behind Sesame Street: 'Our guiding principle has been to center the preschooler in our storytelling, always,' Halcyon Person, the head writer for the show's upcoming season, told me over email. She explained that by observing kids' needs, 'we know not only that we're making something that will teach them, but something that will stick with them as they grow.' Doing this has become harder, however, as the industry becomes more fragmented. In the past, child-development experts were often included in the making of kids' television, DeWitt said, but now 'a lot of the new content that's being created for kids is being created by anyone and is uploaded into a space that isn't heavily regulated and also doesn't have curation tied to it.' Plus, children themselves have become content creators, even small-screen stars. A preschooler can learn their ABCs from Elmo in one video, then watch another made by someone their own age, encouraging them to like and subscribe. The proportion of self-produced work to network-commissioned programming started to change as soon as YouTube became a significant player in the entertainment industry, in the 2010s. The company is reportedly on track to outpace even Disney in revenue, as a majority of younger consumers find creator-driven, social-media efforts more relevant than traditional media. 'There are stars, characters, and IP on YouTube that have bigger and deeper fan bases than what we're seeing on linear television,' Chris Williams, the founder and CEO of PocketWatch, a studio that harnesses the popularity of internet-driven talent, told me. His company partners with channels and creators that have major followings, such as Ryan Kaji, the now-teenage host of Ryan's World, and builds upon the content they've already developed. 'We kind of curate it, enrich it, package it,' Williams said of PocketWatch's aim. 'We basically turn it into TV.' That strategy is similar to what's deployed at Moonbug, the company that acquired and distributes Blippi and CoComelon. The latter show—a juggernaut on YouTube, attracting billions of views with its bobble-headed animated characters and earworm-y nursery songs—often came up as an example for, as one parent put it to me, the 'brain rot' their family encounters on YouTube. When I told Moonbug's chief creative officer Richard Hickey that some parents are wary of CoComelon, he sounded dismayed. He told me that Moonbug is a 'creative first' company, cultivating its shows with what he refers to as a 'story trust' that's concerned with finding storytelling elements that will resonate with their audience. 'Of course, yes, we are a business,' he said. 'We're looking for successful properties that we can then build on and try and create franchises from—but really, at the heart of it, how does that content connect with our viewers?' Williams pointed out that, in some ways, companies such as PocketWatch are simply trying to expand the reach of content that's already popular and considered good for kids, therefore streamlining the painstaking process of choosing what to watch. 'Parents have been media-shamed about YouTube for a really long time, like, Everything on YouTube's bad, right? ' Williams said. '99.99 percent of everything on YouTube for kids is bad, but we're mining for the .01 percent.' Making sure that children's videos on YouTube are better than the majority of what's available is a task that Katie Kurtz, the managing director and global head of youth and learning at YouTube, tackles for a living. She told me that when a creator marks a video or channel as age-appropriate on the YouTube platform, an algorithm—fine-tuned by machine learning and, at times, by human moderators—studies whether it follows the company's ' quality principles,' which educators and developmental psychologists helped establish in 2021. (Not all content labeled this way ends up on YouTube Kids. YouTube occasionally marks videos as 'Made for kids' based on its own algorithmic findings, although creators can appeal the label if they believe it's inaccurate.) The platform then recommends videos that promote the outlined principles, such as self-care, learning, and creativity, while burying submissions that don't meet these standards. YouTube also invites experts to host workshops that train creators on how to refine their videos in accordance with quality expectations. 'For us, it's really not enough to be a safe experience,' Kurtz said. 'We want it to be an enriching experience as well.' One of those experts is Yalda Uhls, the founder and CEO of the Center of Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA. Although she helps shape the direction of YouTube's content standards and has praised their impact, she has doubts about whether what's being produced will always enrich children. 'Companies are focused on money and engagement and the most eyeballs,' she told me. 'To continuously try to come up with a mechanism to get them to want to work with you on supporting their audience's well-being, it's just hard.' She recalled a meeting years ago in which a YouTube executive in charge of a former division making children's content asked experts which programs creators should draw inspiration from—only to bristle when they suggested Mister Rogers. (YouTube declined to comment.) ''I would never make a show like that, because it's too slow,'' she recalled the executive saying. 'And we were all like, What?! ' Of course, the children's-television genre today isn't devoid of series like Mister Rogers; Uhls herself pointed to Ms. Rachel, the popular YouTuber who specializes in toddler-friendly music, as a worthy successor. Yet young viewers have fewer sources directing them toward shows of this nature. The defunding of public networks has made the decentralization of kids' TV more stark, while individual companies and studios differ on what's considered worthwhile programming. 'We're trying to make the most nourishing content we can,' Hickey, the Moonbug executive, said. But in the end, caregivers should take charge, he argued: 'I don't think there's any shortcut.' Even creating guidelines for a single household, though, can get complicated quickly. Tetyana Korchynskyy, one of the parents I spoke with, told me that when her son began watching television just before his first birthday, she set ground rules for what he could view. There'd be no horror, no violence, and nothing meant for grown-ups. Screen time would not happen first thing in the morning or right before bed. She'd aim to allow up to three hours of daily viewing while also making sure he played outside, ideally with other kids. Korchynskyy's son is now 3, and maintaining those guardrails has often felt like a job in and of itself. Even though she tries to control the apps he can access and monitor which shows leave him glued to the screen, his media consumption can be 'very difficult to really control,' she told me. His preferences, too, can complicate the task; after liking Ms. Rachel for a while, he suddenly began rejecting her videos. This abandonment of Ms. Rachel —poor Ms. Rachel!—reminded me of something Simensky, who helped develop series such as The Ren & Stimpy Show and Rocko's Modern Life, observed about her work as a former creative executive. She'd know something was resonating if she saw children playing pretend with the characters. She called it 'the yard platform'—as in, were the kids putting the show on in the yard? If so, that meant they were passionate enough about what they were watching to become active participants rather than just passive viewers. In other words, children's interests and tastes can help greatly in the design of kids' shows—if not in the studio, then in focus groups and research studies. Chanda, the Lion Forge executive, recalled her early days of directing Blue's Clues, when she learned that the show followed a specific rhythm—one that could feel slow for adults. Children, studies indicate, seem to struggle to perform tasks after watching fast-paced content. Conventional wisdom may dictate that not much is required to hold a preschooler's attention—'There's always been an attitude of 'Kids will watch whatever you give them,'' Simensky said—but Blue's Clues aimed to also enrich its young viewers' minds. The history of the genre is one of constant disruption: Kids grow up quickly, the tech industry innovates rapidly, financial support fluctuates often, and societal norms are always changing. Lately, the combined disruption has become more acute—the funding more sharply slashed, the landscape more difficult to navigate—which, in turn, is threatening the quality control that children's programming needs. But key to finding a way forward through the uncertainty, Chanda pointed out, is understanding that a clear constant exists amid all the shakiness. 'Everyone who works in kids' TV knows who their boss really is,' she said. 'Their boss is that kid.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
I was a movie editor. Fighting for workers' rights made me quit the industry and go to law school.
After over a decade, Edward Wardrip is leaving documentary editing to attend UCLA Law School. Documentary and reality TV workers lack union protections, unlike many other film industry sectors. Wardrip aims to advocate for gig economy workers' rights, including healthcare and fair pay. This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Edward Wardrip, who worked as a documentary editor for over a decade. He's planning to attend UCLA Law School to become a labor attorney. It's been edited for length and clarity. I graduated from college in 2012, which was shortly after the financial crash, but when things were starting to pick up again. I loved working in documentary. I mostly worked on PBS-style historical documentaries. That's always been my favorite. It always felt like I was in school, still learning. My first two mentors were both incredibly talented editors who lived solid, middle-class lives in New York. I was inspired by that. I think the industry has changed. It was more plausible to have a middle-class life 10 years ago than it is now. But despite documentary and reality TV production increasing over the years, many workers feel like they haven't reaped the benefits. I spent the last couple of years fighting to unionize our section of the industry, which has been left behind by other film and TV unions. Now, at 34 years old, I'm going to law school to learn how to fight for workers like myself. Movie and TV unions are strong — but documentaries and reality TV are left out The movie and TV industry is known for its strong unions. But it's less common for documentary and reality TV projects to have a unionized crew. People who work on documentaries are seldom given the same protections as those in other parts of the industry. We work long hours and don't always get overtime pay or healthcare, which is getting more expensive. It's upsetting to open a streaming app, see your documentary or a friend's documentary on the homepage, and know that none of the people who worked on it got healthcare. The industry unions haven't always adapted to the gig economy nature of documentary work. Even as documentary filmmaking and reality TV production have expanded dramatically, we rarely have a seat at the bargaining table with traditional unions. A group of us in the Alliance of Documentary Editors formed an organizing committee. We found the traditional model of flipping one show at a time didn't work for us. Documentaries are not multiple seasons. By the time you spend months organizing and negotiating a union contract for a documentary crew, it's over. You're on to the next thing. We found out about the non-majority union model, which we thought made more sense for the fast-paced film and TV industry of this era. The organizing campaign is still ongoing. Many documentary filmmakers work on both big projects and small, independent projects. And we wanted to find a way to ensure everyone could have healthcare all the time, not just on the giant studio productions. It was time for a change I've worked only one union job, for 17 months in 2015 and 2016: "Spielberg," an HBO documentary about Steven Spielberg. The healthcare was incredible. If there was an issue, you called the union and it was fixed. The claims above say that there is no healthcare for people in documentary films That was the last documentary union job I've seen listed anywhere. I haven't heard of anyone I know working another one since. By 2024, my documentary film work was getting really, really scarce. I mean, it was very dead for a lot of people. I had to completely eat through my retirement savings just to stay afloat. That's the reality of freelance life. No one's putting anything into a retirement check for me. I was doing it all myself. At 34, I looked around and thought, "This doesn't feel worth it to me anymore." I felt like I was on a dead-end road and I was never going to be able to retire. And I was still young enough that I could do something else. But organizing a union energized me. I was passionate about labor law. I just started studying at night and on the weekends for the LSAT. I did an online class with a bunch of 22-year-olds. I got a 174 on the LSAT, which is the 98th percentile. UCLA gave me the best offer. And since I already live in Los Angeles, I could keep my apartment and stay relatively close to my relatives in California. There's a whole class of people in our economy who are doing what we have not typically considered union work. I want to work and fight for Amazon workers, Whole Foods employees, Uber drivers, YouTube content moderators — you name it. Our jobs have really changed, and the gig economy has changed, and there's this huge group of people who deserve healthcare and who are not getting it. I want to fight for them. Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
a day ago
- Business Insider
I was a movie editor. Fighting for workers' rights made me quit the industry and go to law school.
This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Edward Wardrip, who worked as a documentary editor for over a decade. He's planning to attend UCLA Law School to become a labor attorney. It's been edited for length and clarity. I graduated from college in 2012, which was shortly after the financial crash, but when things were starting to pick up again. I loved working in documentary. I mostly worked on PBS-style historical documentaries. That's always been my favorite. It always felt like I was in school, still learning. My first two mentors were both incredibly talented editors who lived solid, middle-class lives in New York. I was inspired by that. I think the industry has changed. It was more plausible to have a middle-class life 10 years ago than it is now. But despite documentary and reality TV production increasing over the years, many workers feel like they haven't reaped the benefits. I spent the last couple of years fighting to unionize our section of the industry, which has been left behind by other film and TV unions. Now, at 34 years old, I'm going to law school to learn how to fight for workers like myself. Movie and TV unions are strong — but documentaries and reality TV are left out The movie and TV industry is known for its strong unions. But it's less common for documentary and reality TV projects to have a unionized crew. People who work on documentaries are seldom given the same protections as those in other parts of the industry. We work long hours and don't always get overtime pay or healthcare, which is getting more expensive. It's upsetting to open a streaming app, see your documentary or a friend's documentary on the homepage, and know that none of the people who worked on it got healthcare. The industry unions haven't always adapted to the gig economy nature of documentary work. Even as documentary filmmaking and reality TV production have expanded dramatically, we rarely have a seat at the bargaining table with traditional unions. A group of us in the Alliance of Documentary Editors formed an organizing committee. We found the traditional model of flipping one show at a time didn't work for us. Documentaries are not multiple seasons. By the time you spend months organizing and negotiating a union contract for a documentary crew, it's over. You're on to the next thing. We found out about the non-majority union model, which we thought made more sense for the fast-paced film and TV industry of this era. The organizing campaign is still ongoing. Many documentary filmmakers work on both big projects and small, independent projects. And we wanted to find a way to ensure everyone could have healthcare all the time, not just on the giant studio productions. It was time for a change I've worked only one union job, for 17 months in 2015 and 2016: "Spielberg," an HBO documentary about Steven Spielberg. The healthcare was incredible. If there was an issue, you called the union and it was fixed. The claims above say that there is no healthcare for people in documentary films That was the last documentary union job I've seen listed anywhere. I haven't heard of anyone I know working another one since. By 2024, my documentary film work was getting really, really scarce. I mean, it was very dead for a lot of people. I had to completely eat through my retirement savings just to stay afloat. That's the reality of freelance life. No one's putting anything into a retirement check for me. I was doing it all myself. At 34, I looked around and thought, "This doesn't feel worth it to me anymore." I felt like I was on a dead-end road and I was never going to be able to retire. And I was still young enough that I could do something else. But organizing a union energized me. I was passionate about labor law. I just started studying at night and on the weekends for the LSAT. I did an online class with a bunch of 22-year-olds. I got a 174 on the LSAT, which is the 98th percentile. UCLA gave me the best offer. And since I already live in Los Angeles, I could keep my apartment and stay relatively close to my relatives in California. There's a whole class of people in our economy who are doing what we have not typically considered union work. I want to work and fight for Amazon workers, Whole Foods employees, Uber drivers, YouTube content moderators — you name it. Our jobs have really changed, and the gig economy has changed, and there's this huge group of people who deserve healthcare and who are not getting it. I want to fight for them.
