Latest news with #Unmasked
Mint
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
‘Nine Puzzles' becomes Disney+'s most-watched Korean series of 2025 within 9 days after its global premiere
Disney+ has announced that its latest Korean drama 'Nine Puzzles' has become the platform's most-watched Korean series globally in 2025. The gripping crime thriller reached this milestone just nine days after its debut on May 21. Starring 'The Witch's Kim Dami as Yoon E-na, 'Nine Puzzles' follows the story of a young woman whose life was changed by a shocking murder. As a high school student, E-na discovered her uncle's lifeless body at home, with a strange puzzle piece lying next to him. With no memory of how she got there, and being the only witness, she quickly became the prime suspect. Ten years later, E-na has transformed into a skilled criminal profiler working for the Seoul Metropolitan Police. But the trauma of her uncle's unsolved case still haunts her. When a new string of murders emerges—each one marked by the same type of puzzle piece—E-na is pulled back into the past. She must now work alongside Detective Kim Han-saem, played by 'My Liberation Notes' Son Sukku, who originally led the investigation into her uncle's death and still quietly questions her innocence. Directed by Yoon Jongbin and written by Lee Eunmi, the show features a strong supporting cast including Kim Sungkyun and Hyun Bongsik. 'Nine Puzzles' joins a growing list of Korean titles on Disney+, such as 'Unmasked' and 'Hyper Knife'. Upcoming releases include 'Low Life', a treasure-hunting adventure starring Ryu Seungryong, and 'Tempest', an international thriller featuring Gang Dongwon and John Cho. Another K-drama that is all set to be streamed on Disney+ in the second half of the year is 'The Manipulated'. Starring Ji Changwook and Do Kyungsoo, the release date of this show is yet to be announced. The series has captivated audiences with its suspenseful plot, emotional depth, and standout performances—making it a standout hit in Disney+'s global line-up.
Telegraph
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn on their ‘traumatic' megaflop Jeeves
There's an anniversary looming on April 22 that neither Alan Ayckbourn nor Andrew Lloyd Webber will be rushing to celebrate. It will be 50 years since the official unveiling of 'Jeeves', the pair's disastrous attempt to fashion a rip-roaring hoot, and hit, from one of the great comic literary properties of the 20 th century: PG Wodehouse 's Jeeves books. It's often held as the biggest theatrical flop of the 1970s, and of their careers. Even though the pair would ultimately wrest victory from defeat, with a successful rewritten version By Jeeves in 1996, it was a blot on their CV. An opening night that should have met with rapturous applause and raves elicited cat-calls from the gallery and savage reviews ('Disastrous' – the Telegraph) that ensured the curtain fell on the show at Her Majesty's after a month. It was the ignominious climax to a saga that had seen a calamitous try-out in Bristol, shock sackings – including the last-minute departure of the director – and a near-mutiny by the cast. That Lloyd Webber was braced for the worst was evidenced by the fact he wasn't present as the ordeal unfolded; he retreated nearby, to dine with Ayckbourn at the old 'Petit Club Français'. The night ended with the latter attempting to rally an inconsolable David Hemmings. The baby-faced heart-throb, who had made his name in Antonioni's Blowup, literally collapsed in a heap after valiantly carrying the show as Bertie Wooster. 'Somebody said, 'I think you guys had better go and see David,' Ayckbourn, now 85, recalls, ''He's absolutely distraught. He has had the most terrible evening.' So we went along to his dressing-room. David's girlfriend was shouting into the shower. David was in there, crouching in the corner, naked, the water full on. She was saying: 'You can't stay in there, David, it isn't your fault!' And I said: 'David, it's Alan. Look, we're really sorry, mate, it's nothing to do with you. The whole show went wrong from the minute we started it.' I was dressed up for the first night and got soaking wet. I went home and watched TV.' 'It was,' he continues, when we meet in Scarborough, 'the most traumatic moment of my life.' Lloyd Webber doesn't put it in quite those terms but tells me: 'I was obviously very, very, very upset about it'. In his memoir, Unmasked, he memorably describes the show as a 'driverless juggernaut hurtling downhill'. With hindsight, the co-ordinates looked set for catastrophe from early on. But the omens, initially, were promising. Ayckbourn was the new darling of the West End, riding high with Absurd Person Singular and The Norman Conquests, while at 25 Lloyd Webber's stock was through the roof thanks to Jesus Christ Superstar, already a fixture in London. Their names helped ensure a high-calibre cast – aside from Hemmings, there was Michael Aldridge, later of Last of the Summer Wine fame, playing Jeeves and adored comic actress Betty Marsden as Aunt Dahlia. Wodehouse was so persuaded of the project's potential he gave it his blessing. But if Ayckbourn and Lloyd Webber sounded like 'a dream team', one salient fact in making sense of the debacle is that Ayckbourn's role as the book-writer was expanded at short-notice to take in lyric-writing because Lloyd Webber's other half, creatively - Tim Rice - bailed early. After unfruitful weeks of slogging on a script derived from The Code of the Woosters and songs, Rice realised, he says in his memoir, that 'All I was doing was making the master PG Wodehouse unfunny – quite an achievement'. And he had chanced on a compelling alternative: the life of Eva Peron. Alarm-bells began to ring for Ayckbourn almost as soon as he got on-board, following a merry, boozy evening with the pair on a canal boat. There was no sign of Rice at the ensuing meeting the next day, and Lloyd Webber tried to persuade Ayckbourn that writing lyrics was '' a piece of p**s.' I was thinking: 'This is surreal,' and that set the tone.' Indeed the ensuing visit to Wodehouse on Long Island in the autumn of 1974 (he died on Valentine's Day the following year) sounds surreal in the extreme. Ayckbourn's stand-out memory of this somewhat strained showcase, presented in a suitably piano-equipped house 'owned by a prominent drug dealer', is of reaching the end and the kindly 'Plum', as he was nicknamed, being swept – dismayed - past a groaning table of sandwiches he had had his eye on by his wife Ethel: 'She said: 'Come on, we're off!'' Lloyd Webber remembers Wodehouse – who had enjoyed success as a lyricist, not least contributing 'Bill' to Show Boat – saying: ''Are you sure my characters are strong enough to sustain something like this?' And of course you know that's very telling.' Telling, too, was the gargantuan size of the script that Ayckbourn delivered just before rehearsals. 'It made Gone with the Wind look like a pamphlet,' Lloyd Webber jokes. David Wood, the children's playwright, then also an actor, who was cast as Bertie's pal Bingo Little, a job that involved a terrifying-sounding bit of comic business that required him to be suspended from a chandelier, remembers his outspoken agent Peggy Ramsay (also Ayckbourn's) saying: 'she knew there was going to be a problem as soon as she heard the script landing on the doormat. She could tell it was far too long.' Lloyd Webber hadn't attempted a 'book musical' before, Ayckbourn was a musicals novice and he recruited another newcomer to the form to direct, his regular collaborator Eric Thompson (father of Emma, and well-known too on account of The Magic Roundabout). The set designer was the Polish émigré Voytek, whose vision was of a green minimalist box, into which items of furniture would be sparingly introduced. 'It was the most hideous set I've ever seen,' Lloyd Webber observes – and, as the cast discovered, it was so thickly constructed they struggled to hear the cues. There was mounting collective anxiety from early on – glances were exchanged when Thompson reduced the rehearsal period to four weeks, and also suggested the cast simply speed up their delivery to cut the running-time - but Lloyd Webber saw himself as 'too junior' to intervene. Thompson used drink as a crutch, as did Hemmings, who would start in the morning. 'There was always a bottle of Hirondelle on the table and Eric was always sending out for more,' shudders Lloyd Webber. 'I was just thinking: 'Help, help!'' By the time the show arrived at the Bristol Hippodrome for a try-out it had become preposterously unwieldy. Cast as Madeline Bassett, Gabrielle Drake – who was reeling from the recent death of her brother Nick, the singer-songwriter – remembers the technical rehearsal lasting for several days, leaving no time for a dress rehearsal. 'The first performance ran around four and three-quarter hours. When the curtain came down we were all so relieved that it had ended without a disaster, we didn't care.' Finally the penny dropped that substantial cuts were needed. Ayckbourn suggested axing Aunt Dahlia; Thompson was required to relay the news to Marsden. 'I sat beside him, and Betty came in and, 'Hello darlings… What the **** are we going to do?' Eric said, 'Well, Betty…' She said, 'Don't tell me, you've cut my ****ing part!' There was silence. Then the air turned blue and Eric went pale. Of course, it sent a shock-wave through the company. People were going: 'Well, it's you next!'' In fact it was Thompson who got the boot, five days before the London press night, the composer's pleas for the run at Her Majesty's to be abandoned having fallen on deaf ears. Ayckbourn was summoned to the (hitherto alarmingly absent) co-producer Robert Stigwood's house in north London in the dead of the night. 'He said: 'The first thing I want to do is get rid of the director.' I said: 'I don't think he's to blame.' And he said: 'He lost control of it and I want you to take over.' Of course when I got there in the morning, nobody wanted to know, and the whole cast were extremely hostile.' Ayckbourn's working relationship with Thompson (who died in 1982) never recovered. What both he and Lloyd Webber insist on, though, is that the two of them never fell out, and one surprising twist in the tale is how much solidarity arose in the cast. Even though Drake can still recite some of the more toe-curling lyrics ('Even Mr Moon's begun to snore/ Good grief, no more'), she cherishes the camaraderie: 'I dined out on it a lot', she says, with a sang-froid worthy of Wooster's unflappable valet. 'If you're going to be in a flop, best it be a huge one.' Ever one to accentuate the positives, Lloyd Webber believes that – the vindication of the nimbler 1996 incarnation aside – his own fortunes were improved, not dented, by the flop. It prompted the hand of friendship, and some top-hole advice, from the American director Hal Prince – who urged him to persevere and stay in touch. 'Neither Evita nor The Phantom of the Opera might have happened were it not for Jeeves.' Ayckbourn left nothing to chance at the 1996 try-out for By Jeeves at the Stephen Joseph in Scarborough, though. 'I got the Archbishop of York in to bless the building on press night. I said: 'I need an exorcism, please!''
The Independent
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Mumford & Sons stick to the same format on their latest album, Rushmere
'Most of the songs on this record, you could play on an acoustic guitar around a campfire,' says Marcus Mumford of his first album with Mumford & Sons in seven years. After the lo-fi confessional of his 2022 solo album, Self-Titled (on which he unpacked the fallout from sexual abuse he suffered as a child), fans might wonder if that means that his band's fifth album, Rushmere, might be a more muted affair. Perhaps it's an attempt to shuffle shyly back onto the stage after the band's banjo player, Winston Marshall, quit following controversy around his support for Unmasked (Andy Ngo's book decrying the leftist protest movement Antifa). But there's no sidestepping into the spotlight here. Many of these new songs follow the old Mumford & Sons format, swelling from soft-strummed intimacy to open-armed, stadium-sized stomps. The band's party trick is reflected here in rootsy production by Dave Cobb (known for his work with country and Americana stars including Chris Stapleton, John Prine and Brandi Carlile), along with the album's packaging. Rushmere is an ancient pond on London's Wimbledon Common where the band members used to hang out in their pre-fame days: ye olde cosy England. Vinyl copies, however, yawp wide to reveal a large black and white photograph of a much bigger, unnamed body of water in the US. They're at it from the off, with opener 'Malibu' gradually building from the hushed expressions of 'doubt' and 'weakness' over muffled guitar strings to expansive, drum-bolstered and banjo-gilded declarations of love: 'You are all I want, you're all I need!' The son of evangelical church leaders, Mumford has always used a holy model to offer up his whispered worries; here he sings of feeling 'a spirit move in me again'. They canter on from there into the exhilarating 'Caroline' which nods to Fleetwood Mac with its title, its high stakes romantic drama and urging to 'go your own way'. Glass is broken. Accusations are thrown ('You can say you're a saviour/ But I know you're a fraud') but somehow Mumford manages to maintain a tone of steady sincerity. Elsewhere on the album – recorded partly in Devon but also in Nashville and at Cobb's home in Savannah, Georgia – the band lean into Americana that suits their holy-rolling emotional tone. Standout song 'Truth' is driven by a ragged tumble of a blues riff; Mumford's raw vocals summon fire while his bandmates lay down soothing AM-retro backing vocals like blankets on dusty desert ground. Slower moments come with the delicate wash of 'Anchor' (with the singer lamenting a life 'on the run') and 'Monochrome', a prettily finger-picked, piano-sprinkled track with a Beatles 'Blackbird' lilt. Cobb is a massive, memorabilia-collecting superfan of the Fab Four, and seemingly couldn't wait to coax a little of that heritage out of the first British band he's worked with. No wheels have been reinvented on Rushmere. But it's a solidly crafted and comforting addition to the band's earthy, fraternal oeuvre. As Mumford sings on 'Blood on the Page', sometimes we all need a little 'stillness in the chaos'. Or, in their case, an excuse for a few more arena-sized campfire singalongs.
South China Morning Post
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
The Glory star Jung Sung-il on Unmasked and nerves around Kim Hye-soo
By Park Jin-hai Primarily known for his work on the stage, 45-year-old Korean actor Jung Sung-il has seen a meteoric rise in domestic and international recognition after his role as the impeccably dressed Ha Do-yeong in the hit 2022 Netflix series The Glory . More recently, he successfully transformed his acting style for the Disney+ thriller series Unmasked , which concluded on February 19. He played Han Do, a new director who was unexpectedly transferred to the fictional 'Trigger' TV investigative news team after causing trouble at his previous workplace. 'Han Do grew up in circumstances that led him to be reclusive and prefer solitude,' Jung explained in an interview this week. 'He is an individualist who loves animals more than people. I wanted to portray him as an isolated person who doesn't act for others.' The series tells the story of a dedicated investigative reporting team as they create the programme Trigger. Han Do joins its veteran leader Oh So-ryong (Kim Hye-soo), assistant director Kang Ki-ho (Ju Jong-hyuk) and writer (Jang Hye-jin).
