Latest news with #Poirot
Daily Mirror
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Victoria Coren says her daughter with David Mitchell is 'just like her' in rare update
Only Connect host Victoria Coren has shared a rare family update on her two children with actor and comedian David Mitchell as she says her daughter is 'just like her' Victoria Coren Mitchell has shared a rare glimpse into her home life with husband David Michell and their children. The Only Connect host has two daughters - Barbara, 10, and June, two - with David, 51, and they have always shielded them from the public spotlight. But Victoria, 52, has revealed their bundles of joy have TV programmes they never want to miss - including one that Barbara loves just like her mum. She told the new issue of Radio Times magazine: "My 10 year old loves The Masked Singer and old episodes of Poirot, just like her mother. The baby doesn't have any screen time; she's only 18 months old. "She loves Bluey - an excellent TV show - but she doesn't know it's a TV show. She just thinks it's a source of really great plastic dog Weebles." Victoria writes a weekly television column in the Saturday Telegraph, but she will never criticize bad actors because they are trying their best to entertain people. Asked how she stays unbiased when she has to review a programme that Peep Show star David, 51, has been in, such as the BBC One detective dramedy series Ludwig, Victoria explained: "Well, I'm not a critic. "When Ludwig came out, I just wrote a column about puzzles, but I knew it was a great series. I tend not to write about bad shows - I can't see any joy in attacking people who are trying to entertain. "Mind you, I hated Squid Game and said so. But they seem to have soldiered on without my approval." Victoria has received lots of feedback from viewers who watch the BBC Two game show Only Connect, in which teams compete by finding connections between unrelated clues. However, one letter criticising her comments on "a man's bottom" has stuck with her. Asked what her most memorable piece of feedback has been, Victoria said: "I've never forgotten a letter from a few years ago. "We get all sorts of feedback - be it on a translation, or a clarification of parliamentary procedure. This chap asked, 'Why is it acceptable for Victoria Coren Mitchell to comment on a man's bottom?' I'm not even sure I had." Last summer, Victoria and David were all smiles on a rare night out together without their children. It marked one of their first public appearances together since their surprise baby announcement 10 months earlier. Victoria had shared the couple's happy news on social media back in November 2023. Taking to X, Victoria posted: "Many people are assuming my tweet yesterday was a Halloween costume. "Not at all; last week I had a baby and nothing currently fits me except cloaks. Luckily, Only Connect is a pre-record. Happy All Saints Day." David also addressed their new arrival in a short but sweet comment on the social media platform, posting under a tweet that read: "A huge congratulations to @RealDMitchell and @VictoriaCoren on the birth of their second child," he said: "Thank you! We're very happy."
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Mark Gatiss is brilliant in this series - just don't call it cosy crime
Bookish ★★★★ Max Many a fictional detective has an extracurricular talent that feeds into their work; Sherlock Holmes and his violin; Inspector Morse and his crossword skills; Columbo's fluency in several languages. In Mark Gatiss' new crime series Bookish, the co-creator and co-writer of Sherlock stars as Gabriel Book, for whom the detective work is the extracurricular talent. Book is an eccentric antiquarian bookshop owner who is also adept at solving mysteries. He draws on his encyclopaedic literary knowledge to help figure out motives, methods and the psychology behind all manner of crimes. Book regularly helps out the local police, led by the affable Inspector Bliss (Elliot Levey), and if anybody queries his involvement, he tells them he 'has a letter from Churchill'. (A bit like Doctor Who's psychic paper, the mere mention of it seems to satisfy anybody who asks). Bookish is set in London in 1946, a less common setting for period drama; Gatiss, a long-time detective fan (as well as Sherlock he has adapted several of Agatha Christie's Poirot stories for British TV, and starred in the series Marple), has said it's a favourite time period of his, given the state of the world: women suddenly empowered (although expected to return to their kitchens), lots of weapons brought back by soldiers, a radical government, and a sense of hope. But no shortage of criminal activity. We first meet Book when a young man, Jack (Connor Finch), freshly released from prison, shows up for a job he's been given at the bookshop. Jack moves in with Book and his wife Trottie (Bridgerton 's Polly Walker), who runs a specialty wallpaper shop next door to the bookshop. Gabriel and Trottie seem very much in love – but they have a secret: theirs is a 'lavender marriage', the term given to a marriage where one or both parties are gay, when such a thing is illegal. The pair have long been best friends, having met as children, and Trottie is aware of Book's 'proclivities', which must be kept secret. Especially from the police he spends so much time with. Jack is initially daunted by both Book and his books (all of which are 'catalogued' in a manner as oddball as the man himself), and understandably baffled that the local coppers defer to Book on criminal matters. But he soon comes around – and learns that he hasn't been taken in by the couple by coincidence.
The Age
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Mark Gatiss is brilliant in this series - just don't call it cosy crime
Bookish ★★★★ Max Many a fictional detective has an extracurricular talent that feeds into their work; Sherlock Holmes and his violin; Inspector Morse and his crossword skills; Columbo's fluency in several languages. In Mark Gatiss' new crime series Bookish, the co-creator and co-writer of Sherlock stars as Gabriel Book, for whom the detective work is the extracurricular talent. Book is an eccentric antiquarian bookshop owner who is also adept at solving mysteries. He draws on his encyclopaedic literary knowledge to help figure out motives, methods and the psychology behind all manner of crimes. Book regularly helps out the local police, led by the affable Inspector Bliss (Elliot Levey), and if anybody queries his involvement, he tells them he 'has a letter from Churchill'. (A bit like Doctor Who's psychic paper, the mere mention of it seems to satisfy anybody who asks). Bookish is set in London in 1946, a less common setting for period drama; Gatiss, a long-time detective fan (as well as Sherlock he has adapted several of Agatha Christie's Poirot stories for British TV, and starred in the series Marple), has said it's a favourite time period of his, given the state of the world: women suddenly empowered (although expected to return to their kitchens), lots of weapons brought back by soldiers, a radical government, and a sense of hope. But no shortage of criminal activity. We first meet Book when a young man, Jack (Connor Finch), freshly released from prison, shows up for a job he's been given at the bookshop. Jack moves in with Book and his wife Trottie (Bridgerton 's Polly Walker), who runs a specialty wallpaper shop next door to the bookshop. Gabriel and Trottie seem very much in love – but they have a secret: theirs is a 'lavender marriage', the term given to a marriage where one or both parties are gay, when such a thing is illegal. The pair have long been best friends, having met as children, and Trottie is aware of Book's 'proclivities', which must be kept secret. Especially from the police he spends so much time with. Jack is initially daunted by both Book and his books (all of which are 'catalogued' in a manner as oddball as the man himself), and understandably baffled that the local coppers defer to Book on criminal matters. But he soon comes around – and learns that he hasn't been taken in by the couple by coincidence.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Read books, don't burn them': Sherlock co-creator looks to the past in new show
Sherlock Holmes' great maxim 'There is nothing new under the sun, it has been done before' could have been a comment on television in 2025. Mark Gatiss, who has adapted Conan Doyle in Sherlock, Agatha Christie in Poirot and now writes and stars in his own series, Bookish, knows the saying well — and quotes it approvingly. He is more than happy to admit that Bookish, his new period detective drama set in London, 1946, about a secondhand bookstore owner called Gabriel Book who doubles as an amateur sleuth, will ring many bells. Loading ' Bookish is a synthesis of all my favourite things,' he says, speaking in London. 'There are a lot of laughs, a lot of melancholy, a lot of black comedy and a lot of horror. The tone was very important to me; it's sort of The Lady Vanishes, Green for Danger and Peter Ustinov in [Agatha Christie's] Evil Under the Sun. I mean I watch that film about five times a year, maybe more because it's just such a great confection, you know: wonderful actors, a brilliant murder mystery, and they're all having a great time.' The six-part series (a second has already been commissioned) sees Gatiss star as Gabriel Book, owner of a bookshop in the fictional Archangel Lane. Book carries with him at all times a mysterious 'letter from Churchill', that grants him access to crime scenes to help the police solve murders. He comes with several further mysteries of his own that run through the series — for one there's his marriage to his childhood best friend, the ever-practical Trottie (Polly Walker, Bridgerton). (It's mysterious because Book is a gay man living at a time when homosexuality was illegal.) For another, there's Book and Trottie taking in young Jack Blunt (Connor Finch) after his release from prison. It seems like good people giving a second chance to a young man who's gone down the wrong path, but as Jack helps out both at the bookshop and on the murder cases, it soon becomes clear that his job offer wasn't quite as random as it first appeared. Add to these overarching mysteries the three two-part stories — the poisoning of the local chemist; the poisoning of a film extra when Lovelorn in London is shot on Archangel Lane; and yes, the poisoning of an army captain at the August Walsingham Hotel (there is a lot of poisoning in Bookish) — and you have a knotty, stylish and witty period piece. Bookish sits squarely within the current vogue for Agatha Christie and cheery murder-mysteries but while it is terrific fun what it isn't is frothy or glib. Gatiss recognises that quirky detectives and the puzzles they solve offer the viewer escapism, but it's an escapism that we need because, as he says, 'The world situation right now is so frightening.' It's precisely because Gatiss knows the detective genre inside out that he is able to use the diversion of a TV show as something of a Trojan horse to make his point. Book, for example is a gay man who society forces to hide in a lavender marriage. Loading 'I wanted to show to people who don't really know what it was like that we're standing on the shoulders of giants: we've come such a long way [with LGBTQ+ rights] but also how fragile it is. Because it's happening again. Sometimes I slightly despair of the rarefied arguments we have when, not very far from here, people have been put in camps or murdered for being gay. [Progress] can all be undone in a minute. Just look at Trump.' As a prolific star and writer of cult comedy The League of Gentleman and then Sherlock, episodes of Poirot and countless TV ghost stories in homage to his hero M.R. James, Gatiss recognises that his first responsibility is to entertain. 'I don't want to be didactic,' he says. 'It's entertainment and the murder mystery is a hugely important part of it. That's what people come for. But I think you can do stuff while you're there. That's what I was trying to do at least.' 'The central thing is: read books, don't burn them.' Gabriel Book is unusual in the detective canon in that he is a super-sleuth without a superpower. He doesn't really have a 'thing' like Holmes's powers of deduction or Poirot's whirring little grey cells. He has merely read a lot and spends all his days in a capacious bookshop that Gatiss describes as 'an analogue computer'. Book has no need to consult Google or ChatGPT, even if they existed — all knowledge is there in those fusty pages, but he does have to look it up. Loading 'I didn't want him to be a know-it-all,' says Gatiss. 'I don't like that. When Steven Moffat and I wrote Sherlock, by going back to the [Conan Doyle] books we were able to demonstrate that one of the things people had forgotten about Sherlock Holmes was that he was spectacularly ignorant about things that didn't interest him. As a child, I found that thrilling.' As such, Book is full of flaws, both gaps in his knowledge and in his own make-up. 'Part of Book is directly inspired by Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey, one of the great detectives: everyone thinks he's a bit of a silly arse, but we know that he has PTSD. He screams in the night at flashbacks from the trenches. I love that, and I thought Book should have a very light-hearted view of the world precisely because he's seen some really terrible things.' Book also has a team of people around him who do the things he's not so good at. Trottie is practical; Nora (Buket Kömür), the waitress at the restaurant from over the road, happens to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of crime fiction and gruesome real-life cases; Jack, the jailbird, turns out to be a willing and capable apprentice, a Watson to Book's Holmes. And the period itself is not just there for ambience. In 1946 a murderer, Bookish reminds us, would face the death penalty. The shadow of the noose always dangles in the background, even as our team gad about and correct one another's grammar. Loading 'It's a different flavour if you feel someone's going to just get eight months as opposed to dangling from a noose at the end,' says Gatiss. As a whole then, you have a detective drama that has in many ways been done before, as Sherlock Holmes put it, but also, being a Gatiss script, knows exactly where it has come from.
The Age
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘Read books, don't burn them': Sherlock co-creator looks to the past in new show
Sherlock Holmes' great maxim 'There is nothing new under the sun, it has been done before' could have been a comment on television in 2025. Mark Gatiss, who has adapted Conan Doyle in Sherlock, Agatha Christie in Poirot and now writes and stars in his own series, Bookish, knows the saying well — and quotes it approvingly. He is more than happy to admit that Bookish, his new period detective drama set in London, 1946, about a secondhand bookstore owner called Gabriel Book who doubles as an amateur sleuth, will ring many bells. Loading ' Bookish is a synthesis of all my favourite things,' he says, speaking in London. 'There are a lot of laughs, a lot of melancholy, a lot of black comedy and a lot of horror. The tone was very important to me; it's sort of The Lady Vanishes, Green for Danger and Peter Ustinov in [Agatha Christie's] Evil Under the Sun. I mean I watch that film about five times a year, maybe more because it's just such a great confection, you know: wonderful actors, a brilliant murder mystery, and they're all having a great time.' The six-part series (a second has already been commissioned) sees Gatiss star as Gabriel Book, owner of a bookshop in the fictional Archangel Lane. Book carries with him at all times a mysterious 'letter from Churchill', that grants him access to crime scenes to help the police solve murders. He comes with several further mysteries of his own that run through the series — for one there's his marriage to his childhood best friend, the ever-practical Trottie (Polly Walker, Bridgerton). (It's mysterious because Book is a gay man living at a time when homosexuality was illegal.) For another, there's Book and Trottie taking in young Jack Blunt (Connor Finch) after his release from prison. It seems like good people giving a second chance to a young man who's gone down the wrong path, but as Jack helps out both at the bookshop and on the murder cases, it soon becomes clear that his job offer wasn't quite as random as it first appeared. Add to these overarching mysteries the three two-part stories — the poisoning of the local chemist; the poisoning of a film extra when Lovelorn in London is shot on Archangel Lane; and yes, the poisoning of an army captain at the August Walsingham Hotel (there is a lot of poisoning in Bookish) — and you have a knotty, stylish and witty period piece. Bookish sits squarely within the current vogue for Agatha Christie and cheery murder-mysteries but while it is terrific fun what it isn't is frothy or glib. Gatiss recognises that quirky detectives and the puzzles they solve offer the viewer escapism, but it's an escapism that we need because, as he says, 'The world situation right now is so frightening.' It's precisely because Gatiss knows the detective genre inside out that he is able to use the diversion of a TV show as something of a Trojan horse to make his point. Book, for example is a gay man who society forces to hide in a lavender marriage. Loading 'I wanted to show to people who don't really know what it was like that we're standing on the shoulders of giants: we've come such a long way [with LGBTQ+ rights] but also how fragile it is. Because it's happening again. Sometimes I slightly despair of the rarefied arguments we have when, not very far from here, people have been put in camps or murdered for being gay. [Progress] can all be undone in a minute. Just look at Trump.' As a prolific star and writer of cult comedy The League of Gentleman and then Sherlock, episodes of Poirot and countless TV ghost stories in homage to his hero M.R. James, Gatiss recognises that his first responsibility is to entertain. 'I don't want to be didactic,' he says. 'It's entertainment and the murder mystery is a hugely important part of it. That's what people come for. But I think you can do stuff while you're there. That's what I was trying to do at least.' 'The central thing is: read books, don't burn them.' Gabriel Book is unusual in the detective canon in that he is a super-sleuth without a superpower. He doesn't really have a 'thing' like Holmes's powers of deduction or Poirot's whirring little grey cells. He has merely read a lot and spends all his days in a capacious bookshop that Gatiss describes as 'an analogue computer'. Book has no need to consult Google or ChatGPT, even if they existed — all knowledge is there in those fusty pages, but he does have to look it up. Loading 'I didn't want him to be a know-it-all,' says Gatiss. 'I don't like that. When Steven Moffat and I wrote Sherlock, by going back to the [Conan Doyle] books we were able to demonstrate that one of the things people had forgotten about Sherlock Holmes was that he was spectacularly ignorant about things that didn't interest him. As a child, I found that thrilling.' As such, Book is full of flaws, both gaps in his knowledge and in his own make-up. 'Part of Book is directly inspired by Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey, one of the great detectives: everyone thinks he's a bit of a silly arse, but we know that he has PTSD. He screams in the night at flashbacks from the trenches. I love that, and I thought Book should have a very light-hearted view of the world precisely because he's seen some really terrible things.' Book also has a team of people around him who do the things he's not so good at. Trottie is practical; Nora (Buket Kömür), the waitress at the restaurant from over the road, happens to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of crime fiction and gruesome real-life cases; Jack, the jailbird, turns out to be a willing and capable apprentice, a Watson to Book's Holmes. And the period itself is not just there for ambience. In 1946 a murderer, Bookish reminds us, would face the death penalty. The shadow of the noose always dangles in the background, even as our team gad about and correct one another's grammar. Loading 'It's a different flavour if you feel someone's going to just get eight months as opposed to dangling from a noose at the end,' says Gatiss. As a whole then, you have a detective drama that has in many ways been done before, as Sherlock Holmes put it, but also, being a Gatiss script, knows exactly where it has come from.
