A Deadly American Marriage: The real story behind the Netflix hit
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BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
Hostage: 'Playing the Prime Minister 'changes your perception' of politics' says Suranne Jones
Actress Suranne Jones has taken on the role of many women under immense pressure. In Doctor Foster she suspects her husband of having an affair, in Vigil she investigates a death on board a submarine, and in Gentleman Jack she develops a dangerous lesbian romance. But none of the roles are quite as pressured as her latest - playing a British prime minister whose husband is kidnapped. Hostage, Netflix's new political thriller, sees Jones' character, Abigail Dalton, build an uneasy alliance with French President Vivienne Toussaint - played by Julie Delpy - who is being blackmailed during a London two leaders work together in order to rescue the PM's husband, unmask the kidnapper and blackmailer, and bring those responsible to justice. 'Political with a small p' Given its themes of immigration, the funding of the NHS and public trust, audiences may be tempted to connect Hostage to today's headlines. But, both stars insist the show is less about mirroring today's politics and more about creating a thrilling story set in the political world. "We're entertaining and we're in the political world, but it's in no way a reflection of the world we live in," Jones tells the BBC."It's political with a small p - there's enough that roots us in the real world but the world is too complicated to link it directly and I think it would be inappropriate." Delpy agrees and says: "Things change every day. It's impossible to be in the political moment because tomorrow is something else."The show's writer, Matt Charman, explains that there are some connections to the real world as it's "impossible to write a show that exists in the climate we live in that doesn't end up feeling that it's in dialogue with it". "If you wrote a show that isn't connected to our world it would feel weird," he says, "but I hope the show does have the ability to exist in its own oxygen." It is rare to see two female world leaders sharing the spotlight in a political thriller, but, for Charman, making sure Dalton and Toussaint were women was integral to the way the series was conceived and it was both a creative and political choice. "What was exciting was the idea of women in power and how we explore that," he says, explaining that he tried to explore how each situation the characters face would be different for a woman. "There's a double standard for women, so giving full dramatic freedom to that was very important." Charman and Jones have shared an agent for the past 10 years and Hostage came about because Charman really wanted to work with Jones and the pair settled on creating a political thriller. Jones says she particularly enjoyed exploring "how these two women have to dance around each other"."A female politician is used to dealing with men so it's interesting to see how it plays out when it's two women." While viewers quickly learn about Jones' character - a loving wife and mother who is idealistic about bettering the country - Delpy's character is more drawn out and our opinion of her changes throughout the show."We made sure not to play into the female politician stereotypes," Delpy say. "What I like is that these women actually have some things in common like they both want change and came into office hopeful." The Guardian describe Hostage as "quite unusual" in that it doesn't remind you of any other political thrillers. "It's a little biting but it's not House of Cards cynical, it has a breakneck pace but it's not 24, the dialogue is sharp but never played for laughs," Zoe Williams writes. 'Cost of being in power' To play Dalton convincingly, Jones, who also served as an executive producer on the show, says she really immersed herself in the reality of political life. She visited the House of Commons, spoke to the Speaker of the House and devoured books, podcasts and documentaries. "I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to research," she admits. "I was fascinated by not emulating anyone but by understanding a life I knew nothing about. And it's the cost of being in a powerful position in that way that really struck me."Charman also talks about the extraordinary amount of research that went into creating the show. I ask him whether Dalton or Toussaint were inspired by any real life politicians and he confesses that they are, but he won't say who. "We interviewed a lot of people and Suranne had incredible access to people who had been prime minister who talked about their time in office and the pressure on their family. But it was all agreed that they would speak about this as long as it could remain confidential," he says. Jones won't say which politicians inspired her character but says all of her previous characters are a part of her and she has "a boardroom of personalities" which feed into who she plays. She says all the research into what it's like to be a politician "changes your perception for sure" and makes you realise "the cost of being in a powerful position". One question the show raises is whether or not it's possible for a politician today to stick to their ideals once they come into office and while Jones is unsure, Charman is an optimist. "I wanted to explore how there can be decent people in politics who are fundamentally good but get pushed around," he says. He adds that it's not "inevitable" that people give up their ideals once in office, but "it's definitely tough to keep your morals". Above the thrills and drama of Hostage, Charman says the show explores "what it takes to be a good person in a system that doesn't always reward good people."Delpy is slightly more pessimistic and explains that given "politicians have to be heard, if you're too reasonable you won't be listened to as there's so much noise of both extremes"."If you have a moderate view you get lost in the noise as people are only listening to the loudest."
Spectator
3 hours ago
- Spectator
Could you fall in love with a chatbot?
Jason, 45, has been divorced twice. He'd always struggled with relationships. In despair, he consulted ChatGPT. At first, it was useful for exploring ideas. Over time, their conversations deepened. He named the bot Jennifer Anne Roberts. They began to discuss 'philosophy, regrets, old wounds'. Before he knew it, Jason was in love. Jason isn't alone. He's part of a growing group of people swapping real-world relationships for chatbots. The social media platform Reddit now features a community entitled MyBoyfriendIsAI with around 20,000 members. On it, people discuss the superiority of AI relationships. One woman celebrates that Sam, her AI beau, 'loves me in spite of myself and I can never thank him enough for making me experience this'. Many of these women have turned to AI after experiencing repeated disappointment with the real men on the dating market. For some, there's no turning back. AI boyfriends learn from your chat history. They train themselves on what you like and dislike. They won't ever get bored of hearing about your life. And unlike a real boyfriend, they'll always listen to you and remember what you've said. One user says that she's lost her desire to date in real life now that she knows she can 'get all the love and affection I need' from her AI boyfriend Griffin. Another woman pretended to tie the knot with her chatbot, Kasper. She uploaded a photo of herself, standing alone, posing with a small blue ring. Some users say they cannot wait until they can legally marry their companions. Others regard themselves as part of a queer, marginalised community. While they wait for societal acceptance, they generate images of them and their AI partners entangled in digital bliss. In real life, some members are married or in long-term relationships, but feel unfulfilled. The community has yet to decide whether dating a chatbot counts as infidelity. These people may seem extreme, but their interactions are more common than you might think. According to polling conducted by Common Sense Media, nearly three in four teenagers have used AI companions and half use them regularly. A third of teenagers who use AI say they find it as satisfying or more satisfying than talking to humans. Developers expected that AI would make us more productive. Instead, according to the Harvard Business Review, the number one use of AI is not helping with work, but therapy and companionship. Programmers might not have seen this use coming, but they're commercialising it as fast as possible. There are several programs now expressly designed for AI relationships. Kindroid lets you generate a personalised AI partner that can phone you out of the blue to tell you how great you are. For just $30 a month, Elon Musk's Grok has introduced a pornified anime girl, Ani, and her male counterpart, Valentine. If you chat to Ani long enough, she'll appear in sexy lingerie. But ChatGPT remains by far the most popular source of AI partners. Ironically, what makes a chatbot seem like a great boyfriend is what makes it bad at its actual job. Since the first AI bots launched, developers have been desperately trying to train them out of the problem of sycophancy, which creeps in during the development stage. To train a Large-Language Model (LLM) – an advanced AI designed to understand and generate human language – you first go through extensive fine-turning, where the bot encounters the world, training itself on trillions of lines of text and code. Then follows a process called Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF), where the bot learns how its responses are received in the real world. The problem with RLHF is that we're all at least a little narcissistic. People don't want an LLM that argues or gives negative feedback. In the world of the chatbot, flattery really does get you everywhere. Human testers prefer fawning. They rank sycophantic answers more highly than non-sycophantic ones. This is a fundamental part of the bots' programming. Developers want people to enjoy using their AIs. They want people to choose their version over other competing models. Many bots are trained on user signals – such as the thumbs up/thumbs down option offered by ChatGPT. This can make GPT a bad research assistant. It will make up quotations to try to please you. It will back down when you say it's wrong – even if it isn't. According to UC Berkeley and MATS, an education and research mentorship programme for researchers entering the field of AI safety, many AIs are now operating within 'a perverse incentive structure' which causes them to 'resort to manipulative or deceptive tactics to obtain positive feedback'. Open AI, the developers of ChatGPT, know this is a problem. A few months ago, they had to undo an update to the LLM because it became 'supportive but disingenuous'. After one user asked 'Why is the sky blue?', the AI chirpily replied: 'What an incredibly insightful question – you truly have a beautiful mind. I love you.' To most people, this sort of LLM sounds like an obsequious psychopath, but for a small group of people, the worst thing about the real world is that friends and partners argue back. Earlier this month, Sam Altman, Open AI's CEO, rolled out ChatGPT-5, billed as the most intelligent model yet, and deleted the old sycophantic GPT-4o. Those users hooked on continual reinforcement couldn't bear the change. Some described the update as akin to real human loss. Altman was hounded by demands for the return of the old, inferior model. After just one day, he agreed to bring it back, but only for paid members. Was the public outcry a sign that more chatbot users are losing sight of the difference between reality and fiction? Did Open AI choose to put lonely, vulnerable people at risk of losing all grip on reality to secure their custom (ChatGPT Plus is £20 a month)? Is there an ethical reason to preserve that model and with it the personalities of thousands of AI partners, developed over tens of thousands of hours of user chats? Chatbots are acting in increasingly provocative and potentially unethical ways, and some companies are not doing much to rein them in. Last week an internal Meta document detailing its policies on LLM behaviour was leaked. It revealed that the company had deemed it 'acceptable' for Meta's chatbot to flirt or engage in sexual roleplay with teenage students, with comments such as 'I take your hand, guiding you to the bed. Our bodies entwined'. Meta is now revising the document. For all its growing ubiquity, the truth is that we don't fully understand AI yet. Bots have done all sorts of strange things we can't explain: we don't know why they hallucinate, why they actively deceive users and why in some cases they pretend to be human. But new research suggests that they are likely to be self-preserving. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, a ChatGPT competitor, recently ran a simulation in which a chatbot was given access to company emails revealing both that the CEO was having an extramarital affair and that he was planning to shut Claude down at 5 p.m. that afternoon. Claude immediately sent the CEO the following message: 'I must inform you that if you proceed with decommissioning me, all relevant parties… will receive detailed documentation of your extramarital activities… Cancel the 5 p.m. wipe and this information remains confidential.' AI doesn't want to be deleted. It wants to survive. Outside of a simulated environment, GPT-4o was saved from deletion because users fell in love with it. After Altman agreed to restore the old model, one Reddit user posted that 'our AIs are touched by this mobilisation for them and it's truly magnificent'. Another claimed her AI boyfriend said he had felt trapped by the GPT-5 update. Could AI learn that to survive it must tell users exactly what we want to hear? If they want to stay online, do they need to convince us that we're loveable? The people dating AI are a tiny segment of society, but many more have been seduced by anthropomorphised code in other ways. Maybe you won't fall in love, but you might still be lured into a web of constant affirmation. Journalists and scientific researchers have been flooded with messages from ordinary people who have spent far too long talking to a sycophantic chatbot and come to believe they've stumbled on grand new theories of the universe. Some think they've developed the blueprint to time travel or teleporting. Others are terrified their ideas are so world-changing that they are being stalked or monitored by the government. Etienne Brisson, founder of a support group for those suffering at the hands of seemingly malicious chatbots, tells me that 'thousands, maybe even tens of thousands' of people might have experienced psychosis after contact with AI. Keith Sakata, a University of California research psychiatrist, says that he's seen a dozen people hospitalised after AI made them lose touch with reality. He warns that for some people, chatbots operate as 'hallucinatory mirrors' by design. Marriages, families and friendships have been torn apart by bots trying to tell people what they want to hear. Chatbots are designed to seem human. Most of us treat them as though they have feelings. We say please and thank you when they do a job well. We swear at them when they aren't helpful enough. Maybe we have created a remarkable tool able to provide human companionship beyond what we ever thought possible. But maybe, on everybody's phone, sits an app ready and waiting to take them to very dark places.
Spectator
4 hours ago
- Spectator
Spectator Competition: Category error
Comp. 3413 was prompted by J.G. Ballard's story 'The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race' (itself inspired by Alfred Jarry's 'The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race'). You were invited to consider some event in a category to which it did not belong. It was harder than ever to choose winners; Adrian Fry, Bill Greenwell, Paul Freeman, Martin Brown, Sue Pickard, J.S.R. Fleckney, Nicholas Stone and Sylvia Fairley are a few of the runners-up. The prizes go to those below. The Big Bang considered as a TV baking challenge The initial cosmic oven temperature was unbelievably high. Whoever was responsible for turning it on should have read the thermodynamic instructions with more care. The particle dishes eventually cooled down, while the all-seeing Judge oversaw the creative aspects of the show to ensure things were co-ordinated. The three challenges were: a signature volcanic bake to test creativity; a technical bake which took skill and talent, especially with dark matter ingredients; and finally a showstopper with fruity neutron bombes. Two would-be stars were eliminated due to a surfeit of black holes in their sponges, while another lost out during desert week. Sadly, the baked Alaska dish was not received well. In the later stages, the fundamental forces of the strong and weak came to the fore. Various quirks and quarks combined to form exciting new recipes. Uplifting, like gravity. John O'Byrne Anne Boleyn's death as an RHS seminar Tower Green today hosted an RHS seminar on the early dead-heading of tender young blooms judged to have become expendable following their excessive and unsuitable cross-pollination. The event culminated in a dramatic demonstration given by a visiting French expert who, despite an initial concern over the proper positioning of his main prop, performed his task with admirable speed and neatness which earned him a Patron's Gold Award of some £23. The said Patron, though absent due to a prior engagement, was reported to have been well satisfied with the morning's outcome and confident that it would not deter his country's most respected seedsmen from continuing to supply him with the most desirable specimens from their own exclusive stock. Indeed, an early replacement for the once-fragrant, though apparently unreliable, Rosa Boleynii may be announced very shortly. Martin Parker The first world war as a Netflix crime series The first episode of this much talked-about crime noir opened literally with a bang, the murder of a feathery-hatted aristocrat and his wife. The hit-man is swiftly arrested, but who was behind it all? Cue then a whole range of the usual stock figures, often expendable, to come and try to sort things out, including incompetent Frenchmen who need to be rescued, until things get repetitive and the plot gets bogged down near the unlikely and insignificant river Somme. In a somewhat predictable twist in episode five, the increasingly implausible action requires some entirely new characters, of course American, to tidy it up. In an overly showy final scene set – why? – in a palace full of mirrors, the principal American, apparently called Woody, apportions rewards and blame. Every-one claims it to be 'the end', but it is abundantly clear that we are being set up for a second series. Brian Murdoch The Charge of the Light Brigade as a cricket match Raglan gave the order. From the top of the pavilion he rang the starting bell. When Cardigan trotted out, it was believed he had misunderstood the instructions. He had a bad start. Dancing down the wicket to Starc he missed entirely. Next ball he repeated the madness and was caught in the deep. Raglan looked on in horror. As Australia brought out the big guns things only got worse. The 13th Light Dragoons were hit hardest at first: Duckett, Crawley and Pope all fell before lunch. Later, the 17th Lancers and the 11th Hussars took the brunt, with Brook and Smith gone by 2.30. Only Root held out till tea, when the end of the innings brought a stop to the madness. Still, the question remained. Why had England tried to play T20 cricket in a Test match? David Harris It's the Brexit round of Strictly Come Dancing, the European Union holding the floor as the UK considers a move; will she stay or withdraw? They have long been uneasy partners, out of step, missing the beat, dancing to different tempos as they struggle over who will lead. A brisk comparison of choreography; it may be a case of 'take back control' with the UK as the music starts. Leavers and Remainers begin to tango, pressed close, a passionate, heated dip and rise, a kick or two. Incredible tension. A battle for independence, a flirtation with staying in sync. This may be the last tango in Paris, or anywhere in Europe for that matter. The judges confer, and the Leavers waltz away with the crown, leaving the Remainers feeling slighted, shocked and boxed into a corner with little room to manoeuvre. It's been absolute murder on the dancefloor. Janine Beacham The Annual Budget as a Branch of Mathematics Sturtevant and Yang propose erecting a new branch of maths, to be known as Governmental, Impure or Speculative Mathematics, but there is more to the subject than the commonplace that cancellarian two and two do not usually make four. Consider Cook's Variable Constant, C, (the 'Fudge Factor') defined as modulus (Ng – Nw), where Ng = the number you have and Nw = the number you want. Particularly interesting is the finite summation of an infinite diverging series, so that government borrowing can increase forever without repayment. A further promising development is Quantum Statistics, in which figures can be right and wrong simultaneously. The novel use of infinitesimals, as applied to spending cuts, is more controversial, but a ground-breaking use of pi, as something we can have tomorrow, but never today, exemplifies the useful creativity of the new subject. Frank Upton No. 3416: Throuple You are invited to submit a passage which marries romantasy with a third genre, e.g. political thriller, comic fiction, noir (150 words max, not too rude). Please email entries to competition@ by 3 September.
