Latest news with #Masterpiece
Boston Globe
09-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
GBH is laying off 10 employees from global news and documentary channel WORLD due to federal funding cuts
Advertisement The layoffs come roughly a year after GBH Goldberg said Friday that the layoffs and programming changes will take effect June 30, when the funding expires and PBS member station licenses for the channel end. She added that CPB paid for about half of the channel's costs and that this new approach is 'more financially sustainable in the current environment.' Advertisement 'We're grateful to all of our WORLD employees, for all of their hard work,' she said. Zoe Mathews, the steward for the union that represents GBH reporters and producers as well as some WORLD staffers, noted in a statement that the WORLD staff included award-winning documentarians who 'humanize complex issues through the work they do, often facilitating first-time filmmakers and storytellers from historically underrepresented communities.' 'To eliminate these journalists in this moment, in the way GBH has moved to do, is a betrayal of the very mission of GBH,' Mathews said. The cuts come against the backdrop of efforts from the Trump administration to end funding for public media. President Trump signed an executive order last week In a statement last week, CPB chief executive Patricia Harrison said that CPB is not subject to the president's authority. 'In creating CPB, Congress expressly forbade 'any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors.'' she said. While federal funding represents about 8 percent of GBH's annual revenue, additional federal funding cuts could have an outsized impact on its business due to the interconnectedness of the NPR and PBS networks. GBH is one of the largest producers of PBS programming in the country, which includes programs such as Masterpiece and Antiques Roadshow and kids shows such as 'Work It Out Wombats!' Advertisement The White House has also cut grants to Aidan Ryan can be reached at
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Show I Thought I'd Hate (And Learned to Love)
For ages, various friends of mine recommended that I check out Taskmaster, a British comedy game show in which a group of five comedians earn points by completing a series of silly challenges. The show, which first premiered in 2015, has crossed the ocean in recent years to become a word-of-mouth hit, with fans drawn to its comic hijinks and nonsensical premise. Yet every time my friends nudged me toward Taskmaster, I'd wrinkle my nose. Making the program sound exciting is tough: The idea of stand-up comics and character actors improvising art projects and undergoing physical trials doesn't seem like it'd be very fun to watch. And more important, I spent much of my youth in England; as I'd repeat to anyone who'd listen, I left the country to escape series like this one. Taskmaster is what's known as a panel show, a format that is a pillar of British TV. It's as foundational as the pre-dinnertime soap operas or the smoldering costume dramas that are exported to Masterpiece. Series in this genre are typically simple and cheap to produce: A committee composed of several comedic entertainers make fun of current events (Mock the Week, Have I Got News for You), answer trivia questions (QI, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year), or suss out which of them is telling the truth (the aptly titled Would I Lie to You?). The panelists' goal is to amuse one another as much as they do the audience. This type of comedy series can be good background viewing, but it's also overwhelmingly homogenous—both the rotating casts and the bits often start to feel repetitive. So the thought of diving into Taskmaster didn't initially appeal to me, even with the more competitive angle; after all, plenty of panel shows ostensibly revolve around a game, even if winning it doesn't matter. The Taskmaster setup, I discovered, is special, despite the glancing similarities to programs of its ilk. After enough hounding by some pals—British and American ones—I gave in and fired up an episode. (In the United States, the series is available to watch in its entirety on YouTube and Pluto TV.) At first, I was at most mildly amused by the seemingly traditional panel-style proceedings. But I was properly hooked after the comics were issued a bizarre prompt: 'Create the best caricature of the person on the other side of the curtain. You may not look at the person. The person may only say yes and no.' [Read: The game show that parodies your to-do list] Strange requests of this nature, I soon learned, are Taskmaster's bread and butter. The activities are overseen by the titular Taskmaster, Greg Davies, and his assistant, Alex Horne. Horne is the show's creator, but on-screen, he plays an eager second fiddle to Davies, who presides over each episode with imperious fury. Davies judges the panelists based on a combination of in-studio and on-location challenges. The ones undertaken onstage follow set rules: First, guests present the funniest answer to a ridiculous request (such as finding the 'most interesting autograph on the most interesting vegetable'); then they take on a dare that unites them in some sort of tomfoolery. The remote tasks, however, are the series's centerpiece. Sometimes, the premise is straightforward—finding creative ways to fill a tub with water or slide the furthest distance, for example. Sometimes, it's a more subjective concept, where who wins is totally up to Davies's personal taste. And sometimes it's a puzzle of sorts, a fiendish brainteaser designed by Horne and his team to get the best, most infuriated reactions from the participants. The contestants watch edited clips of their performances together, giving them the chance to see—and poke fun at—how they each accomplished the challenges. The seemingly impossible assignment Horne and company have set for themselves is to create a weeks-long tournament focused on what appears to be a mundane idea. The stakes are somehow ridiculously low—the winner essentially just receives bragging rights, along with a comically ugly metal bust of Davies's head—and incredibly high, for comedians looking to boost their notoriety. But the revelations that emerge, such as which comedian has a surprising level of artistic talent or a particularly creative approach to problem-solving, are more than just hilarious. The panelists handle their tasks seriously; each prompt yields very different results, and the methods they choose offer a small, fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of their brain. Watching how they go about keeping a basketball on a treadmill without touching it is as much part of the joy as hearing the jokes they tell about it afterward. I started with Season 4, because it had several guests I recognized—the comedians Noel Fielding and Mel Giedroyc were well known when I lived in England, and the actor Hugh Dennis has memorably popped up in international hits such as Fleabag. Taskmaster almost always throws some up-and-coming British comics into the mix too; the variety makes for an exciting change of pace from the stagnant casts populating the panel shows I remember. The serialized format also helped me become a fan of the performers I was less familiar with. The emotional investment builds naturally, with the audience following the contestants week to week. [Read: The comic who's his own worst enemy] The show even seems willing to expand its own comedic sensibilities. Season 19, which began airing last week, features a notable American player—the actor Jason Mantzoukas, a podcast and sitcom legend who's probably best known for his work on The League and Parks and Recreation. Only one other American comedian, Desiree Burch, has been on Taskmaster before now; unlike Mantzoukas, she is established in the U.K. and has lived there for more than a decade. American humor can often be more brash than British comedy, which is cloaked in irony and self-deprecation. So far, however, Mantzoukas's high energy is gelling well with the show's competitive bent. The first episode—which, like every installment, landed on YouTube the day after its premiere—makes clear that his anarchic style would stand out against Taskmaster's vibe of enthusiastic curiosity, what with its big, brassy score and fast-paced editing. That spirit does take some getting used to. For its first few years, Taskmaster was a cult program even within the United Kingdom. It has since cultivated a loving fan base and expanded into a global franchise, with editions produced in New Zealand, Finland, and Croatia. By contrast, a spin-off made for U.S. audiences in 2018 flopped. Yet the producers seem to believe that the American audience is only growing, as bringing in Mantzoukas, putting every episode online, and announcing the Season 19 cast at an event in New York City all suggest. Instead of Americanizing it, however, it's best to emphasize Taskmaster's most easily translated quality: its sense of novelty. With reinvention baked right into the concept—new participants each season, new tasks each episode—it stays fresh and compelling far longer than the average British comedy game show. I still swear I'll never watch another panel series, as cute as the clips that come across my social-media feeds sometimes are. When it comes to Taskmaster, the efforts made to win over someone as resistant as me have worked: I'm now as fervent as the folks who urged me years ago to check it out. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The Show I Thought I'd Hate (And Learned to Love)
For ages, various friends of mine recommended that I check out Taskmaster, a British comedy game show in which a group of five comedians earn points by completing a series of silly challenges. The show, which first premiered in 2015, has crossed the ocean in recent years to become a word-of-mouth hit, with fans drawn to its comic hijinks and nonsensical premise. Yet every time my friends nudged me toward Taskmaster, I'd wrinkle my nose. Making the program sound exciting is tough: The idea of stand-up comics and character actors improvising art projects and undergoing physical trials doesn't seem like it'd be very fun to watch. And more important, I spent much of my youth in England; as I'd repeat to anyone who'd listen, I left the country to escape series like this one. Taskmaster is what's known as a panel show, a format that is a pillar of British TV. It's as foundational as the pre-dinnertime soap operas or the smoldering costume dramas that are exported to Masterpiece. Series in this genre are typically simple and cheap to produce: A committee composed of several comedic entertainers make fun of current events (Mock the Week, Have I Got News for You), answer trivia questions (QI, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year), or suss out which of them is telling the truth (the aptly titled Would I Lie to You?). The panelists' goal is to amuse one another as much as they do the audience. This type of comedy series can be good background viewing, but it's also overwhelmingly homogenous—both the rotating casts and the bits often start to feel repetitive. So the thought of diving into Taskmaster didn't initially appeal to me, even with the more competitive angle; after all, plenty of panel shows ostensibly revolve around a game, even if winning it doesn't matter. The Taskmaster setup, I discovered, is special, despite the glancing similarities to programs of its ilk. After enough hounding by some pals—British and American ones—I gave in and fired up an episode. (In the United States, the series is available to watch in its entirety on YouTube and Pluto TV.) At first, I was at most mildly amused by the seemingly traditional panel-style proceedings. But I was properly hooked after the comics were issued a bizarre prompt: 'Create the best caricature of the person on the other side of the curtain. You may not look at the person. The person may only say yes and no.' Strange requests of this nature, I soon learned, are Taskmaster 's bread and butter. The activities are overseen by the titular Taskmaster, Greg Davies, and his assistant, Alex Horne. Horne is the show's creator, but on-screen, he plays an eager second fiddle to Davies, who presides over each episode with imperious fury. Davies judges the panelists based on a combination of in-studio and on-location challenges. The ones undertaken onstage follow set rules: First, guests present the funniest answer to a ridiculous request (such as finding the 'most interesting autograph on the most interesting vegetable'); then they take on a dare that unites them in some sort of tomfoolery. The remote tasks, however, are the series's centerpiece. Sometimes, the premise is straightforward—finding creative ways to fill a tub with water or slide the furthest distance, for example. Sometimes, it's a more subjective concept, where who wins is totally up to Davies's personal taste. And sometimes it's a puzzle of sorts, a fiendish brainteaser designed by Horne and his team to get the best, most infuriated reactions from the participants. The contestants watch edited clips of their performances together, giving them the chance to see—and poke fun at—how they each accomplished the challenges. The seemingly impossible assignment Horne and company have set for themselves is to create a weeks-long tournament focused on what appears to be a mundane idea. The stakes are somehow ridiculously low—the winneressentially just receives bragging rights, along with a comically ugly metal bust of Davies's head—and incredibly high, for comedians looking to boost their notoriety. But the revelations that emerge, such as which comedian has a surprising level of artistic talent or a particularly creative approach to problem-solving, are more than just hilarious. The panelists handle their tasks seriously; each prompt yields very different results, and the methods they choose offer a small, fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of their brain. Watching how they go about keeping a basketball on a treadmill without touching it is as much part of the joy as hearing the jokes they tell about it afterward. I started with Season 4, because it had several guests I recognized—the comedians Noel Fielding and Mel Giedroyc were well known when I lived in England, and the actor Hugh Dennis has memorably popped up in international hits such as Fleabag. Taskmaster almost always throws some up-and-coming British comics into the mix too; the variety makes for an exciting change of pace from the stagnant casts populating the panel shows I remember. The serialized format also helped me become a fan of the performers I was less familiar with. The emotional investment builds naturally, with the audience following the contestants week to week. The show even seems willing to expand its own comedic sensibilities. Season 19, which began airing last week, features a notable American player—the actor Jason Mantzoukas, a podcast and sitcom legend who's probably best known for his work on The League and Parks and Recreation. Only one other American comedian, Desiree Burch, has been on Taskmaster before now; unlike Mantzoukas, she is established in the U.K. and has lived there for more than a decade. American humor can often be more brash than British comedy, which is cloaked in irony and self-deprecation. So far, however, Mantzoukas's high energy is gelling well with the show's competitive bent. The first episode—which, like every installment, landed on YouTube the day after its premiere—makes clear that his anarchic style would stand out against Taskmaster 's vibe of enthusiastic curiosity, what with its big, brassy score and fast-paced editing. That spirit does take some getting used to. For its first few years, Taskmaster was a cult program even within the United Kingdom. It has since cultivated a loving fan base and expanded into a global franchise, with editions produced in New Zealand, Finland, and Croatia. By contrast, a spin-off made for U.S. audiences in 2018 flopped. Yet the producers seem to believe that the American audience is only growing, as bringing in Mantzoukas, putting every episode online, and announcing the Season 19 cast at an event in New York City all suggest. Instead of Americanizing it, however, it's best to emphasize Taskmaster 's most easily translated quality: its sense of novelty. With reinvention baked right into the concept—new participants each season, new tasks each episode—it stays fresh and compelling far longer than the average British comedy game show. I still swear I'll never watch another panel series, as cute as the clips that come across my social-media feeds sometimes are. When it comes to Taskmaster, the efforts made to win over someone as resistant as me have worked: I'm now as fervent as the folks who urged me years ago to check it out.
Los Angeles Times
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Miss Austen' on PBS wonderfully delivers the love and loss Jane Austen fans know by heart
If I write, It is a truth universally acknowledged that to begin an essay with the words 'It is a truth universally acknowledged' marks the writer out as a person of taste and good humor who has read Jane Austen, it is mostly to mark myself as a person of taste and good humor who has etc., etc. But it is a truth much acknowledged that we owe her more than that much-used opening gambit. Because Austen's prose is so elegant and clear, her wit so sharp, her comedy so dry, her irony so delicious, her observations so acute, her heroines so indomitable, her novels have lived on for two centuries. They offer a vacation destination for the mind, a world in which to luxuriate. Rich in characterization, compelling in their plots, fascinating in their social historicity, lively and lifelike in their dialogue, her books, published beginning in 1811, have the quality of seeming both of and ahead of their time, and they are particularly ripe for adaptation to the screen. Many readers see in them the roots of modern romantic comedy. And because there are only seven finished novels, three of them posthumous and one never submitted for publication, and because we are a species that always wants more — or, said another way, can't leave well enough alone — the ACLU (the Austen Cinematic and Literary Universe) continues to expand with sequels, pastiches, modernizations and reimaginings. 'Miss Austen,' a wonderful new limited series premiering Sunday on PBS' 'Masterpiece,' takes a biographical fiction approach. Adapted by Andrea Gibb from Gill Hornby's 2020 novel, it centers on Jane's sister, Cassandra — the title applies to either sister — whose historical claim to fame, or infamy, is that she burned the bulk of Jane's letters after her death. (She is not made out to be a villain here.) It has many of the qualities of an Austen novel — because why else bother? — though having to adhere to the facts of actual lives does steer some plot lines in a darker direction. The series runs in two timelines, full of parallel action and mirrored themes. In 1830, 13 years after the death of Jane Austen (Patsy Ferran), Cassandra (Keeley Hawes, deep and affecting) gets a message that the husband of the sister's late friend Eliza Fowle (Madeline Walker) is dying. Cassandra rushes to their home, partly out of friendship — she is as good as an aunt to Eliza's daughters Isabella (Rose Leslie) and Beth (Clare Foster), who, like the Austens, seem to be on a road to spinsterhood — and partly to lay her hands on Jane's letters to Eliza, in order to keep safe from future historians whatever reflected badly on her sister. Also after the letters is Cassandra's self-important sister-in-law Mary (Jessica Hynes), who is also Eliza's sister, who thinks they could provide material for a book on her late husband, Austen brother James (Patrick Knowles). In any case, they are mainly a device to send Cassandra, who finds and reads them secretly, into a series of flashbacks, some happy, some regretful, as she reflects upon her life with Jane and paths taken and not taken. Synnøve Karlsen plays the younger Cassandra, and if I may say so, recalls Jennifer Ehle, who played Elizabeth Bennet opposite Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy in the peerless 1995 BBC 'Pride and Prejudice.' ('You are my Lizzie Bennet to the root,' Jane tells Cassandra, seeming to agree with me.) Each storyline also finds the Austens and Fowles displaced from their homes into reduced circumstances. The Austen parents — optimistic father (Kevin McNally) and somewhat hysterical mother (Phyllis Logan) — could easily serve as Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in a 'Pride and Prejudice' adaptation, while new vicar Mr. Dundas (Thomas Coombes), chasing the Fowles from theirs, feels like a deliberate callback to the obsequious Mr. Collins in 'P&P.' But the main thrust of the series is sisterly love and self-sacrifice, tangled with Austenesque questions of marriage and financial security, both between Cassandra and Jane, and in the 'present-day' story line, Isabella and Beth Fowles. There is much presumptuous matchmaking as romantic possibilities come through the door and are sometimes shown it: tall, dark, ahistorical Henry Hobday (Max Irons) in the former case, described by Jane as 'the model of perfection, which if I may say is most infuriating, for you know as a woman of many faults, I abhor faultlessness in others,' and a poor but dedicated doctor, Mr. Lidderdale (Alfred Enoch) in the latter. 'I must know if she is to be married!' cries Isabella, regarding Anne Elliot, the heroine of Jane's 'Persuasion,' which Cassandra has been reading aloud. 'Is that the only outcome that would be happy?' asks Cassandra. 'Yes.' 'Oh, Isabella, there are so many other ways for women like us to find happiness,' says Cassandra, underlining the comparison between the two sets of sisters. 'Writing was Jane's greatest love; she took great comfort from the heroes in her books. But in life, no man was ever worthy.' Like Isabella, the viewer has their own ideas of happiness, of course, and, all things being equal would prefer a world in which romantic love comes to all. Then again, few of us are geniuses dedicated first to work that will transcend time. And not to spoil what must be obvious to everyone but the characters, but the Fowles story does provide clever opportunities for a conclusion more in keeping with the Austen corpus. The finale should run you through a pack of handkerchiefs, unless you are some sort of heartless monster.
Time Magazine
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Miss Austen Turns the Jane Austen Marriage Plot on Its Head
No novelist in the English language is more closely associated with the marriage plot than Jane Austen. That literary trope turned rom-com convention gives structure to all six of her masterworks—which goes to show that the romance genre, far from mere escapism, can be an ideal lens through which to observe a society's values. But another truth universally acknowledged about Austen complicates the happy weddings that conclude each book: The author never married. She spared her heroines the social and financial precarity she suffered. The realities of single womanhood in Regency England, and for the Austen family in particular, are at the center of Miss Austen, a four-part BBC adaptation of Gill Hornby's 2020 novel that will premiere stateside May 4 on PBS's Masterpiece. Set more than a decade after Jane's untimely death, this bit of historical fiction follows her beloved older (and only) sister, Cassandra, sensitively portrayed by executive producer Keeley Hawes, and imagines the circumstances that led her to destroy thousands of the author's personal letters. Its primary characters are unmarried women. If you can get past the mannered stiffness typical of Masterpiece fare, it loosens up as it evolves into a perceptive and affectionate portrait of the kind of life Austen lived but barely wrote about. Solitary in middle age, Hawes' Cassandra—also never married—is roused from a cozy routine of talking to goats and reading in bed when a letter arrives informing her of a family friend's imminent death. Against the advice of her correspondent, she hastens to Fulwar Fowle's (Felix Scott) bedside. Cassandra has a history with the Fowles; she was betrothed to Fulwar's brother Tom (played in flashbacks by Calam Lynch) before he died on an expedition to the West Indies. But it isn't sentimentality, for the most part, that motivates her to make the trip. 'There are certain items there of a personal nature that belong here,' she tells the servant seeing her off. Namely, the letters Jane wrote to Fulwar's late wife, Eliza, a close friend of the Austen girls. Of course she finds them, and the letters transport her back to the girls' youth, with the young Cassandra played by Synnøve Karlsen and Jane by a wonderfully animated Patsy Ferran, reviving precious memories but also revealing the author's unvarnished thoughts about her sister's choices. There are perhaps too many costume-drama boilerplate shots of Hawes gazing tearily at yellowed sheets of stationary. But they're worth it as a conduit to Cassandra's and Jane's 20s, a period when both women fielded suitors; the younger Austen grew into her voice as a writer, thanks in part to the encouragement of the elder; and each emerged as the most important person in the other's life. What seems to wound the grown-up Cassandra most, in the letters, is Jane's frustration at her sister's rejection of a love match worthy of Pride and Prejudice. 'She chose insecurity,' Jane writes to Eliza. 'I did it for you, too,' Cassandra murmurs, half a lifetime later. Would we even know the name Jane Austen if she hadn't taken such good care of the vivacious but also fragile, depressive writer in life and her work in death? Elsewhere at the Fowles' home, Kintbury, Mary Austen (Jessica Hynes), the haughty widow of Cassandra's brother James, is bustling around with notions of commissioning a joint biography of Jane and her late husband—whose undistinguished poetry she prefers to Jane's already-renowned prose. And in the wake of Fulwar's death, his conscientious daughter Isabella (Rose Leslie) is preparing the residence for the arrival of a replacement vicar (Thomas Coombes' lightly ridiculous Mr. Dundas), as she looks ahead to her own uncertain future. Cassandra has promised Fulwar that she'll set her up with one of his other two daughters, but neither situation seems ideal. (One bizarre Fowle sister is a highlight of the show.) She also notices romantic tension between Isabella and the local doctor, Mr. Lidderdale (Alfred Enoch). With its contrived conclusion, the latter storyline puts a somewhat ill-fitting bow on the series. What lingers after its giddiness dissipates are the experiences of so many single women, some widowed, others never married. Isabella's unceremonious ejection from the home where she grew up. Mary's fixation on commemorating James' dubious talents. The genuine bond between Isabella and her servant, Dinah (Mirren Mack). The adversity Cassandra, Jane, and their mother face after the Austen patriarch's death. Jane's inability to accept a loveless marriage that would finance a high lifestyle but rob her of time to write. Cassandra's lifelong protection of Jane—a devotion so fierce, in Hornby's scenario, it drives her to destroy thousands of pages of writing by one of the greatest authors who ever walked the earth. Austen's marriage plots reward her righteous heroines, granting them love and companionship they crave as well as wealth and respectability they need in a society that places too much value on superficial things. Particularly in chronicling the sacrifices Cassandra happily made for Jane, Miss Austen suggests that there was always more than one way for a woman to lead a fulfilling life.
