In February of this year, Netflix won its first Oscar and its first Bafta. Surprisingly, the awards were not for any of its high-profile drama series, but for two documentaries. The Academy Award went to The White Helmets, a film about a group of Syria Civil Defence volunteer rescue workers. The Bafta winner was 13th, Ava DuVernay’s film about race in the US criminal justice system.
The End of the F***ing World is a menacing, tense and chilling tale starring Jessica Barden (The Lobster) and Alex Lawther (Black Mirror) as teen outsiders James and Alyssa, who embark on a road trip to find Alyssa’s father, who left home when she was a child.
Emotionally detached and disdainful James is convinced he’s a psychopath and he’s decided he is ready to take a step up from his dark habit of killing animals... to humans.
The show, which stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the titular Grace and Frankie, follows two divorced 70-somethings whose mutual hatred gets put on hold when their husbands come out as gay.
The pair are forced into living together when their ex-husbands, played by Sam Waterston (The Newsroom) and Martin Sheen (The West Wing), decide to get married, and an unlikely friendship blossoms as the duo seek to navigate the next stage of their lives.
Like an entire generation of wildlife film-makers, Alastair Fothergill was drawn to television by David Attenborough. His 1979 series, Life on Earth, showed the young Fothergill that natural history programming was “a good way to be paid to be near animals”.
Fothergill, who was recently made a Fellow of the RTS, spent almost three decades at the BBC Natural History Unit (NHU). This included a five-year stint as head of department, when he landed several global hits, including The Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet.
Escobar's Millions (working title) will document former CIA case officers Doug and Ben as they search for the alleged hidden treasure of the notorious drug lord using their combined elite skillset.
The investigators will benefit from never-before-granted access and Colombian government support, as well as the latest advancement in GPR (ground-penetrating radar).
If BritBox, BBC Worldwide’s international subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) service, is to stand any chance of converting US consumers, it will need a major marketing push. Despite a plan to launch by the end of March, the joint venture between the BBC, ITV and AMC Networks that promises to deliver “best of British” content, it appears that even key industry players are unaware of its existence.
Journalist Andrew Billen was joined by the team behind Netflix's award-winning series The Crown to discuss how they brought the story of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation to the streaming service.
Billen was joined by writer Peter Morgan, actor Alex Jennings who plays the Duke of Windsor, Production Designer Martin Childs, Executive Producer Suzanne Mackie and Director and Executive Producer Philip Martin.
This is according to the screenwriter behind The Crown, Peter Morgan, whose lavish retelling of the early years of the reign of Elizabeth II, commissioned by Netflix, has won widespread acclaim.
Morgan, speaking at an RTS early evening event, The Crown: Deconstructing The Coronation, predicted a paradigm shift as streaming, rather than broadcasting becomes the norm.
“It really isn’t like television anymore. It’s absolutely overwhelming. It’s partly the way in which we make it is not like television.
There are many people wanting to see the back of 2016, and what better way to start the beginning of the year than getting stuck into a new television series.
Here are some of the best picks for the new year.
The show follows the talented Baudelaire orphans Violet, Klaus and Sunny on a series of pretty awful and mysterious encounters with Count Olaf, who is insistent on stealing their inherited fortune. Neil Patrick Harris stars as the terrifying Olaf in Netflix's adaptation of Daniel Handler's international best-selling children's novel, with Patrick Warburton, Joan Cusack and Alfre Woodard also co-starring.
