Latest news with #PaulMcGann
Irish Independent
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Five new podcasts to add to your playlist, from Paul McGann's family Titanic story to the antidote to Joe Rogan
There's plenty to whet the appetite of true crime fans in this week's podcast round-up with investigations into a Canadian serial killer and the tragic murder of a Tennessee student, while for history lovers, Paul McGann takes the Titanic story out of Hollywood and back into the working-class neighbourhoods of Belfast and Liverpool.
New Statesman
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
How the Titanic sank
Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images The sinking of the Titanic is one of those historic events that only grows more vivid in our cultural imagination as the years go by. More than a century later, everyone has a friend with encyclopaedic knowledge of what happened, and there have been countless retellings across novels, Hollywood films and television dramas that have made even small details of the story notorious (the Case of the Missing Binoculars!). And here we have a major new podcast from the history company Noiser, hosted on BBC Sounds, which tells the story of the catastrophe over 13 lengthy episodes. Titanic: Ship of Dreams is narrated in ominous tones by Paul McGann, of Doctor Who and Withnail and I fame, who has a personal connection with events (his great-uncle, Jimmy McGann, was a trimmer down in the ship's engine room), and interspersed with the voices of experts, from historians to Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey and the 2012 TV drama Titanic. One talking head suggests there is only one story that is more popular 'in the history of mankind, and that is the story of how Jesus was crucified'. The pace is slow, yet it remains deeply compelling. Duncan Barrett's script is arresting and immediate. Unfolding in the present tense, it is full of human colour and overloaded with detail: not just crucial information such as the number of lifeboats and, yes, the location of the binoculars onboard, but the number of seconds it took for the ship to slide off the slipway and into the water at its launch on 31 May 1911 ('the longest 62 seconds in history') and the material used for the chairs in the Parisian-style bistro for first-class passengers (wicker). These small observations bring the ship vividly to life, and the scale of the project strikes us anew: not just the size of the vessel, but the number of people employed to build and sail it, the unfathomable luxury of the interiors, and the ambition with which it was executed. Clearly, the story has not been exhausted yet. [See also: The music of resistance] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
Irish Examiner
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Podcast Corner: Actor Paul McGann has a family link to tale of the Titanic
The Noiser network is home to dozens of history podcasts - over 600 episodes - ranging from Napoleon to Hitler to Sherlock Holmes and The Curious History, hosted by domestic historian Ruth Goodman and with episodes on sheds, laundry, bins, and heating. Noiser's latest series is one most of us in Ireland will be familiar with. Launched on April 8, Titanic: Ship of Dreams is hosted by actor Paul McGann ( Withnail and I, etc), who sets out what we can expect over the course of the series, from first designs and the years of construction in Belfast to 'the fateful voyage that sealed the ship's fate and beyond', considering some of the questions that haunt Titanic scholars more than 100 years later: Was the captain really ordered to increase speed, why were so many iceberg warnings ignored in the leadup to the collision, and with almost 1,200 places available on the lifeboats, why were only 700 people saved? Paul McGann's great-uncle James was on board the Titanic. There's a vivid soundscape underpinning McGann's rather grand narration - and if anything deserves such oratory, it's the biggest ship ever built. Consider this, early in the opening episode: 'For a moment, she looks like she won't move after all. Freed from her wooden moorings, the giant ship stands stock still, a towering immobile monument. Then almost imperceptibly, she begins sliding towards the water, gradually picking up speed, five, 10, 15 miles per hour. Finally, after the longest 62 seconds in history, Titanic floats freely for the first time.' McGann also has a personal connection to the story. His great-uncle James McGann is known in the family as Titanic McGann. An experienced 29-year-old Liverpool lad recently returned from a voyage to South Africa, he's signed up for Titanic's maiden voyage. 'I never met Uncle Jimmy,' explains Paul McGann. 'He died almost half a century before I was born. But my brother, Stephen, you might know him as Dr Turner from Call the Midwife, has managed to piece together his story.' He adds: 'By rights, Uncle Jimmy should have nothing to do with Titanic." There are more Swedes onboard than Irish, we are told in the third episode, Into the Atlantic, as the Titanic stops off in Queenstown (Cobh). There are also 154 Lebanese emigrants onboard - about 10% of passengers. Amid McGann's narration are talking heads and historians, who help explain such titbits, also expanding, on this particular episode, on some of the quirks of the menu and how Titanic even has its very own 'ice man', serving cocktails and desserts. Meanwhile, in Queenstown, a sinister omen is apparently spotted. Atop the ship's fourth funnel stands a figure, soot black from head to toe. Some of the more superstitious Irish visitors are convinced it's a harbinger of death. In fact, the ghoulish figure, reveals McGann, is one of the engine room workers. 'For all we know, it could have been my great uncle Jimmy.' Read More Culture That Made Me: Des Kennedy, the Belfast-born director of the Everyman in Cork
