Apple Lines Up Original Podcast Series ‘Under Cover of Knight’

ITV has reportedly decided to shelve plans for a third series of Starstruck.The talent show was a modernised version of Stars In Their Eyes and saw contestants performing as their idols in a bid to win a whopping £50,000 prize. Hosted by Olly Murs, it saw Sheridan Smith, Adam Lambert, Beverley Knight and Jason Manford as judges for series one. However, Sheridan, 42, was replaced by Shania Twain and Ronan Keating in series two due to her filming commitments elsewhere.

Did Taylor Swift think Meghan Markle was trouble? Did she know all too well about the familial friction between the British royal family and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex? Was she not ready for an appearance on Markle's "Archetype" podcast?  The world may never know. A little over a week after it was announced that Markle and Prince Harry's organization Archewell had mutually parted from its partnership with Spotify, it was reported that Markle wrote a personal note to Swift, requesting she come on her now-defunct podcast.

Tech fans can get the latest Apple and Samsung smartphones for a fraction of the price if bought online on US sites compared to here in the UK. We put it to the test and found huge savings on Samsung and Apple products including £300 off the iPhone 14 Pro.

On today’s Crew Call we talk with The English composer Federico Jusid, who came into Hollywood’s spotlight after the industry caught his score on the Oscar winning 2009 foreign film, The Secret in Their Eyes.

EXCLUSIVE: Emma Appleton (The Witcher, Everything I Know About Love) is among the leading cast of the indie British folk horror Heretic, the debut feature from filmmaker Dean Puckett, which has just wrapped production on the southwest coast of England.

Like mother, like daughter!

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Prime Video has revealed its top traveling non-English local originals in the history of the service, with Spanish YA romance “My Fault” and French crime thriller “Medellín” topping the list. Both are feature films that launched in the last two weeks across Prime Video’s footprint in 240 countries around the world. Interestingly, both titles have more than 75% of their viewership coming from outside their country of origin (Spain for “My Fault,” and France for “Medellín”), though Prime Video hasn’t disclosed any further metrics related to ratings or impressions. Of the list (available in full below), 60% are movies and 40% are TV series.

Frasier reboot “may even be funnier” than the original.Back in 2021, Grammer confirmed that the American sitcom was being revived on Paramount+, in which he is returning in the title role of psychiatrist Frasier Crane.The show originally ran for 11 seasons between 1993 and 2004 after being created as a spin-off for hit ’80s series Cheers.The reboot, however, will not feature David Hyde Pierce, who played Frasier’s brother Niles, or the late John Mahoney, who played his father Martin. New castings include Only Fools and Horses actor Nicholas Lyndhurst, and Jack Cutmore-Scott, who will play Frasier’s adult son, Frederick.Speaking about what to expect from the reboot in a new interview with The Independent, Grammer suggested that the brand new dynamics could result in a show that “may even be funnier” than the original.“An entire [US] audience is gonna suddenly know who this guy is, who hasn’t known before,” Grammer said of Lyndhurst, who he described as “arguably one of the great actors of the UK” and a “great friend” of his.“So there’s a lot of positive energy around the casting of it.”Speaking about Cutmore-Scott, Grammar recalled: “At first, you cast these people, you’ve never seen them before.

Work has started on a new £250m holiday resort in Wales with forest lodges, zip lines and a spa.

Meghan Markle‘s podcast, “Archetypes,” will not be back for a second season despite its initial success as she and Prince Harry leave Spotify behind.

Spotify has confirmed that it will not be renewing Meghan Markle’s podcast Archetypes for a second series. The Spotify deal, which was estimated to be worth £18 million, was just one of many commercial partnerships that Meghan and Prince Harry entered into upon their exit of the royal family in 2020. When Archetypes was announced in late 2020, Prince Harry said it would 'bring forward different perspectives and voices that perhaps you haven't heard before.

“I like when I’m working on something that I don’t understand,” says 7x Oscar nominated filmmaker Wes Anderson on how he cracked his new off-kilter comedic period opus, Asteroid City, which hits theaters in New York and LA this Friday. The Focus Features release goes wide on Friday, June 23.

Alison Herman TV Critic The hit British film “The Full Monty” — for a brief period in 1997, the most lucrative release in U.K. history — was, in some ways, the original “Magic Mike.” The comedy chronicled six unemployed ex-steelworkers in post-Thatcher North England as they formed a stripping troupe. (The name referred to the strippers’ willingness to bare all, genitalia included.) By treating sex work as a symbol of larger economic malaise, “The Full Monty” anticipated the approach Steven Soderbergh would take stateside over two decades later.  “Magic Mike” has since ballooned into a full-blown phenomenon spanning a trilogy of films, a reality show and a globally successful stage revue. “The Full Monty” has, until now, resisted such expansion. (There have been a handful of stage adaptations, though nothing on the scale of “Magic Mike Live.”) But on June 14, FX will stream all eight episodes of a TV sequel, also called “The Full Monty,” on Hulu. The show carries the same set of core characters a quarter century into the future — minus the nudity, but retaining the same bittersweet mix of working class social realism and irreverent humor to take the edge off. Even affable British indies, it would seem, are not immune from the modern IP boom.

Vogue Williams has said that she's "exhausted" from the "bulls**t" rumours mill, as she discussed the fallout at ITV's This Morning following former host Phillip Schofield's affair confession. Phillip stepped down with 'immediate effect' from the show last month, amid reports of a feud between him and co-host Holly Willoughby. Following his resignation, Phillip then admitted to having an affair with a much younger male colleague while working at ITV, apologising for 'lying' to staff, friends and family.This confession sparked backlash directed towards Phillip, ITV itself and his co-host Holly.

Peppa Pig, the British cartoon character with a show for preschoolers, is coming to Audible by way of the upcoming Peppa Pig podcast. Further details on the podcast and where eager listeners can check it out will be revealed later in 2023.“We’re delighted to work with Hasbro to expand our family listening content with one of the most popular and impactful brands, Peppa Pig,” said Aurelie de Troyer, Head of Content UK and Canada at Audible.

EXCLUSIVE: Bohemian Rhapsody star Lucy Boynton is to headline an ITV series about the last woman to hang in the UK.

Eels reunited on stage in Los Angeles last night (June 10) for their first performance together in 25 years – see what went down below.Mark ‘E’ Everett formed the indie mainstays in 1995 alongside Jonathan ‘Butch’ Norton and Tommy Walter, with the pair leaving two years later.Eels are currently touring their latest album ‘Extreme Witchcraft’ and played Los Angeles’ Fonda Theatre on Saturday.During the show, Everett welcomed Norton and Walter on stage for a rendition of Argent’s 1973 track ‘God Gave Rock And Roll To You’ for their first performance together in decades.“The original Beautiful Freaks: Tommy, E & Butch onstage together for the first time since 1997,” Eels wrote on Instagram after the show. “Thanks LA for an amazing night! Where my freaks at? Right here.”See footage of the performance below.A post shared by EELS (@eelstheband)A post shared by Stereogum (@stereogum)Reviewing Eels’ new album ‘Extreme Witchcraft’ upon its release in early 2022, NME said: “It certainly doesn’t sound like an album recorded remotely in collaboration with PJ Harvey foil John Parish, with E adding his parts at 4am while trying not to wake his son.

BreAnna Bell MGM+ has picked up the four-episode true-crime docuseries, “Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein.” Directed and executive produced by James Buddy Day (Blumhouse’s “Compendium of Horror,” “Fall River”), the original documentary follows grave robber and serial killer Ed Gein, otherwise known as “The Plainfield Ghoul” and “The Mad Butcher,” whose crimes inspired such iconic films as “Psycho,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and “The Silence of the Lambs.” “For years, filmmakers, journalists, and scholars have tried to unravel the mind of this notorious killer, and with new reveals and never-before-heard recordings, viewers will be transported to late-1950s Middle America and submerged in Gein’s perverse mind. The series explores Gein’s upbringing and twisted relationship with his mother, his early grave robbing, the murders leading up to his arrest, and the police’s discovery of his terrifying house of horrors—all accompanied by the brand-new revelations revealed in the recordings,” reads the description, per MGM+.

Streaming platform MGM+ has picked up a four-part true crime docuseries on a serial killer so heinous he inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) Jamie Cooke is supercharging “original documentaries that push the boundaries” from his Central & Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Turkey region by greenlighting around 10 docs per year.