BBC & BritBox Unveil Latest Agatha Christie Adaptation
The BBC and BritBox International have landed on Endless Night as their latest Agatha Christie adaptation from Sarah Phelps.
Set in 1967, the book is neither a Poirot or a Marple but follows man-of-many-trades Michael Rogers, who finds himself working as chauffeur for the enigmatic designer du jour Rudolf Santonix. Transfixed by Santonix's latest project, a beautiful house in the English countryside, Mike dreams of meeting the love of his life and taking up residence. But unbeknownst to Mike, the house that he has set his heart on has a dark past that goes back for centuries.
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The show is the latest in a long succession of Christie adaptations on the BBC and BritBox from Phelps and ITV Studios-owned Mammoth Screen, with the latest being Towards Zero starring Anjelica Huston. Fifth Season is selling worldwide.
Phelps said: 'One of Agatha Christie's last novels, this is a chilling story of love, sex, deceit and death, of how far we'll go to get our hearts desire and what we'll do when night falls and the wolves start circling.'
The news comes in the week the BBC unveiled an AI Agatha Christie, forged to teach a paid writing course on its BBC Maestro platform. The AI Christie was created with the blessing of the author's great grandson James Prichard, who runs Agatha Christie Limited.
Endless Night (3×60') is produced by Mammoth Screen (part of ITV Studios) and Agatha Christie Limited, and is a co-commission between the BBC and BritBox International. Executive producers are Prichard for Agatha Christie Limited, Rebecca Durbin and Damien Timmer for Mammoth Screen, Phelps, Danielle Scott-Haughton for the BBC, and Robert Schildhouse, Jon Farrar and Stephen Nye for BritBox.
Filming on Endless Night will take place later this year and casting will be announced in due course. The series will air on BBC iPlayer and BBC One, and on BritBox in the U.S. and Canada.
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New York Post
44 minutes ago
- New York Post
Emmanuel Macron invites wife Brigitte to stand by his side to celebrate soccer championship, week after infamous viral slap clip
French President Emmanuel Macron invited his wife to stand by his side Sunday to celebrate the Parisian soccer team winning the Champions League at the Elysee Palace, just a week after the first lady was caught slapping the president on video. Macron gently took his wife Brigitte's hand in front of dozens of cameras as the couple cheered on the victorious team, following a tense week of speculation about their relationship status amid their public quarrel. The shocking video showed Brigitte take both her hands and smash them into Macron's face as they were departing the presidential jet that had just landed in Hanoi for an official visit with Vietnamese dignitaries last Sunday. Advertisement 3 President Emmanuel Macron and First Lady Brigitte Macron stand side-by-side with the hometown championship soccer team one week removed from the viral slap. via REUTERS As they descended the stairs, the first lady appeared to mutter 'Dégage, espèce de loser' — or in English: 'Stay away, you loser' to her husband, a lip reader told the UK's Daily Express newspaper. Footage of the soccer celebration this Sunday shared by the Daily Mail shows a much happier couple. With a broad smile, the French president encouraged his wife to join him as he stood with the players from the triumphant Paris Saint-Germain team. Advertisement Macron welcomed the Paris Saint-Germain team back to the French capital Sunday after the athletes beat Inter Milan 5-0 Saturday night, hoisting the Champions League trophy for the first time in the club's history. In Sunday's more cheerful video, Macron poses for photos with the jubilant team. He shouts 'bravo' and then happily calls for Brigitte to join them. The players can be seen moving out of the way so the first lady can stand with her husband. Nasser Al-Khelaifi, president of the PSG, also encourages her to join the crowd, and moves aside for her, the clip shows. 3 Emmanuel Macron, holds up a soccer jersey, and his wife Brigitte welcomed the victorious French team. POOL/AFP via Getty Images Advertisement Then the video show Macron and his wife inviting others to join the photo op. Macron eventually steps forward to hold aloft a team jersey. The pair tried to play off last week's highly publicized slap, as playful rough housing, then as Russian disinformation, but eventually conceded that the camera caught them mid-domestic squabble. 'At the beginning, the Elysee [Palace] denied the truth of the images, suggesting a video generated by AI and relayed by pro-Russian accounts before finally authenticating the sequence which [they said] evoked a moment of 'complicity,'' said news outlet Breves de Presse in a post on X Monday. 3 The shocking moment that First Lady Brigitte Macron slaps her husband French President Emmanuel Macron. Advertisement President Trump offered up cheeky advice last week for France's first family to help keep the peace. 'Make sure the door remains closed,' Trump chuckled in the Oval Office while responding to a question about the stunning video of Madame Macron's assault. 'That was not good,' Trump said of the slap video. 'No, I spoke to him and he's fine, they're fine. They're two really good people. I know them very well. And, I don't know what that was all about, but I know him very well and they're fine.' The pleasant meeting with the team came during a tumultuous time on the streets. Two fans died and a police officer is in a coma after mass nationwide celebrations turned into violent riots, French authorities said Sunday.


Geek Vibes Nation
6 hours ago
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'Doctor Who' Season 2 Finale Review - A Hollowly Nostalgic Trainwreck
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A Wish Gone Wrong After the explosive end of 'The Interstellar Song Contest', the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) wake up in their idyllic suburban home, their young daughter, Poppy (Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps) calling to them. But this isn't the Earth Belinda's been trying to return to. No, this is a world wished up by Conrad Clark (Jonah Hauer-King); a nuclear family-inspired callback to the heteronormative suburbs of yesteryear. It's a world devoid of identity and self-expression. Except the Doctor's doubt may literally crack the universe in two. Meanwhile, the Rani (Archi Panjabi) and Mrs. Flood hope to utilize all this doubt to free the First Time Lord, Omega, from his prison so they can create a new Gallifrey. Can the Doctor remember who he is and put a stop to the Unholy Trinity's evil plans? Or is this the end of everything the Doctor and his friends have ever known? 'Wish World' and 'The Reality War' offer a mixed bag of missed opportunities and hollow nostalgia. On the one hand, most of 'Wish World' serves as a timely satire of dystopian societies that idolize a heteronormative past that never existed, complete with a knowing wink at the fragilities of such fantasies. On the other hand, you've got an endless list of self-indulgent callbacks to Doctor Who 's past that form the rest of the finale. It's nostalgic nonsense that feels empty and devoid of any meaning. And the finale throws all of that goodwill generated by the first half of 'Wish World' out the window in favor of hollow fan service that goes nowhere, says nothing, and does little. Based on this finale, Doctor Who feels like a show trapped in its own shadow, terrified to truly try something new—despite 62 years spent proving the value of constantly innovating. The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) | Photo Credit: James Pardon/BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf A Mixed Bag of Character Beats The finale's character beats make for a similarly mixed bag. The Doctor's continued longing for a family takes center stage, a wish that's finally granted to him with Belinda and Poppy in 'Wish World'. But that joy gets cruelly taken away as the Doctor realizes his paradise is fake. Still, his endless longing leads him to quite literally give up his life in the sheer hopes of saving Poppy (who ends up being Belinda's child in the real world); a true act of heroism in this mess of a story. Otherwise, it's Millie Gibson's Ruby who shines the brighest, as she's the only person who seems to remember the world before Conrad's wish took over. And it's Ruby who defeats Conrad and remembers Poppy after she disappears from reality following that defeat In a way, she's more crucial to the story than either Doctor or Belinda. Which brings us to the biggest flawed character beat: Belinda Chandra feels like a former shell of herself. Gone is the Belinda who faced off against cartoon gods and unknowable horrors. Instead, she largely fades into the background as she hides away in a crate with Poppy and allows the Doctor to, later, go off on his own to save Poppy after the wish's end erases her from existence. A disapponting turn of events for a character so strongly introduced eight weeks ago. It's not that Belinda being a mother is a bad thing. It's that she's never once mentioned it in all of her time with the Doctor, despite the episode's final minutes suggesting she'd done just that in scenes never previously shown. Instead of the season using Belinda's daughter as a driving motivation, her existence feels tacked on in a way that ignores everything the show's previously told us. Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) and Poppy (Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps) | Photo Credit: James Pardon/BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf An Exercise in Hollow Nostalgia The root of these problems is Doctor Who 's current obsession with hollow nostalgia. Like several other legacy franchises, Doctor Who seems to think the mere existence of legacy characters offers a strong enough draw to entice fans into overlooking any narrative deficiencies. At least, that's certainly how this finale feels because there's just not a story here. You've got legacy Doctor Who villain, the Rani, trying to find legacy Doctor Who villain, Omega, so they can bring back legacy Doctor Who location, Gallifrey. But there's no drama and no emotional connection. In fact, the Rani and Omega don't even feel like themselves. Gatwa, Panjabi, and Dobson can try as hard as they like to sell their characters' pasts—and they do try—but there's just nothing there. So, what's the point? 'Freaky Tales' Review - A Lot Happening, But Leaves Us Wanting More Without a cohesive narrative or a group of characters to emotionally invest in, what's left to care about? A Wikipedia-style list of plot points and callbacks to past stories that were both more inventive and more enjoyable? No amount of mustache-twirling, scenery-chewing energy from Panjabi and Dobson can make up for the narrative's fundamental disinterest in exploring anything about their characters as fully rounded people. Their existence is just fan service in chase of a story rather than an exciting, innovative story delighting in playing with fan-favorite characters from the past. Say what you will about Davies' finales from his first tenure as showrunner but at least he knew then that if the character drama works, then the audience will forgive a wonky plot. But here, he chases solely after plot twists and cameos and winks at the expense of meaningful conclusions to the characters' arcs, and it shows. 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The 13th Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and The 15th Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) | Photo Credit: James Pardon/BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf Final Thoughts And with that, Doctor Who 's second season comes to a whimper of an end. After a strong run of episodes, Doctor Who just couldn't nail the landing. It's as if the show decided midway through the finale to completely ignore everything that's made the rest of the season so good and lean into its very worst habits. 'Wish World' and 'The Reality War' offer up an exercise in hollow nostalgia in search of a meaningful story. It's a collection of things happening with no real connective tissue. A surprise regeneration episode in the worst possible way and, perhaps most damningly, a perfect example of why Doctor Who might just need a rest. Say what you will about the finales of seasons' past but at least they tried to do something new, regardless of how well they accomplished it. But this finale? It's a whole lot of disappointing nothing. Doctor Who season two is available now on Disney+.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
Former Race Across the World contestant dies in crash
Former Race Across the World contestant Sam Gardiner has died after a crash. The 24-year-old had been driving on the A34 near Manchester on Monday night when his car left the road and rolled before landing on its side, Greater Manchester Police said. He was the only person in the vehicle and was taken to hospital where he died of his injuries on Thursday, his family said in a recent statement. The landscape gardener appeared with his mother Jo as they travelled across South America in the second series of the BBC show, which aired in 2020. They were unable to compete in the final leg after running out of money, but Sam described it as a "life-changing" experience. While filming for the BBC series, Sam said: "Mum and I are very close - we often think or say the same things. "She has travelled a lot in her life, so I think it would be fun to do it with her." In a statement issued by a family member, Sam's parents Jo and Andrew said they were "devastated". "Sam left us far too soon, and while words will never fully capture the light, joy and energy he brought into our lives, we hold on to the memories that made him so special," they added. Sam's parents said he was "adored by his family" and described him as "loyal, funny and fiercely protective". They added the Race Across the World experience "opened Sam's eyes to the wonder of adventure". Sam's uncle Jonny Gray told the BBC: "What you saw was what you got. Sam loved gardening, animals and doing physical activity." Mr Gray said his sister Jo and Sam had a "special relationship" and were an "enormous hit on the show", adding: "The public really loved them." Emon Choudhury, who won the second series with his nephew Jamiul, posted on social media that Sam was "pure sunshine in human form" whose "kindness was a beacon for anyone lucky enough to cross his path". He added that Sam and his mother "showed us what it truly means to live fully, love fiercely, and embrace every moment with an open heart". In a statement, a Race Across the World spokeswoman said: "Everyone who worked with him and indeed everyone who watched Sam could see just how precious and transformative the trip was for both him and his mum, Jo. "Sam embraced the seven-week trip with an energy, love and a determination that saw the pair enjoy adventures across Mexico to Argentina making audiences fall in love with them and their special bond as a result. "Since filming, both Sam and Jo have been an integral part of the Race Across the World cast family and on behalf of us all from the BBC, production and the rest of the cast, we would like to extend our deepest condolences to his parents, Andrew and Jo; his brothers, William and Charlie; his step mum Justine; his family and friends." Sam had been recently working on the west coast of Scotland and travelled down to Stockport in Greater Manchester to attend a family birthday celebration earlier this week, according to his uncle. The family have asked for privacy to grieve for his death. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.