Llywela

The anniversary is 23rd November, so they will be timed around that, yes.

For the record, since some of us here wondered if this might be the last season, filming on a new season commenced this week, according to Maimie McCoy's instagram.

Doesn't it just say everything about the industry and the people running it that that was their preferred solution, instead of, you know...firing the known sexual predator. They continued to give him the platform and just tried to find workarounds to prevent him preying on more women, when what they should have done was take him off the air. Honestly.

I can't say I'm surprised. Brand has always been sketchy. Someone I know who is married to a comedian says that comedians have been warning each other not to be alone in a green room with him for years. ETA It's quite funny, though, that he outed himself by posting a pre-emptive denial before the expose has even aired.

This is a still-breaking story, following a joint investigation by the Times, Sunday Times, and Channel 4's Dispatches, there is a big expose due to air tonight (UK) so we'll know more after that. The BBC has the available details here. Accusations of rape and sexual assault during the height of his career.

Rabbit rather than quail. But it was Tom who cooked it rather than Joyce, that time. Rabbit donated by the wife of the murderer (another of the friends Tom made during an investigation who turned out to be the killer). The buckshot from the rabbit ended up being vital evidence, after Joyce and Cully gamely sifted through the rubbish in search of it. (Rewatched that one only recently, so it's fresh in my memory)

Fun fact - Joyce being a lousy cook was a character note taken straight from the books!

Neil Dudgeon has been in the role for 12 years and seven (and a half) seasons at this point - he's not far off John Nettles for years with the show, in fact, although there have been fewer seasons in those years, not least because of covid. So yes, I think it is safe to say that he is here to stay! I found it hard to adjust to the new Barnaby at first, as we all did, but as the years have passed I've become just as fond of him and his family and his sergeants as I was Tom and his crew. In fact, I like John's wife Sarah more than I ever liked Joyce or Cully (is it heresy to admit that here?). I like both Winter and Nelson more than I ever liked Scott or Troy, for that matter, although Jones is still my favourite. The show isn't the same as it was, for sure. It has moved with the times, as we all must. But there is as much to enjoy in the newer seasons as there is in the older ones, imo, even if it does take a bit of adjustment to the slightly altered style.

Different union, so no. The main union for the British TV industry is Equity. Some Equity members are also SAG-AFTRA members, if they work on both sides of the Pond, but UK TV productions would be Equity rather than SAG-AFTRA. The only UK shows affected by the strikes are joint productions - Good Omens, for instance, is a joint BBC-Amazon production, and Amazon is a struck studio, so if a third season is commissioned, no work can begin until the strike ends. But I don't believe Strike is a joint commission, it's a purely BBC production, so shouldn't be affected.

Yes, upscaling refers to digital enhancement, stretching a lower resolution image to fit a larger display (thus, quite literally scaled up), while also filtering to smooth the image and round out unwanted jagged edges that may become visible due to the stretching

Similar, but not quite the same thing, no. Related disciplines - freerunning derives from parkour, but has evolved into its own thing. Parkour emphasises efficiency; freerunning emphasises artistry and is more personalised to the individual.

June was the UK airdate - there has always been a lag of a few months before it transfers to the US.

See, to me as a Brit, Joss Ackland is in absolutely everything, so I don't think of him as one particular character only. Joan Hickson is the quintessential Miss Marple. No other has ever quite compared. She was chosen by Agatha Christie herself, you know - when she was still quite young, she performed in one of Christie's plays, and Christie sent her a note saying, "I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple." And forty years later, she did. I don't think I'd spotted that about the cottage. It's been a while since I rewatched the series. Next time I rewatch, I will have to look out for that! Maybe in the later episodes they couldn't get the same location to film? Or maybe those scenes are in a different part of the cottage? I'll make a mental note to look out for it. (Now I just need a bit of clear time for the rewatch...)

In the books, which were written at the time they are set and so reflect the lived experience of the author, we are told time and again that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find servants to work in houses like this - or in any house at all. A generation or so earlier, it was common for poor working families to send their children out into service - it was a standard career option for families with few other job opportunities open to them. But by the post-war era things were changing. New careers were opening up, and girls with other options didn't want to go into service, with all the restrictions such work entailed (living in, no 'followers', only a couple of hours off a week, etc). That's why incompetent maids like Gladys weren't fired - because they were better than nothing! If the story were set a generation or two earlier, then yes, Gladys would have been fired and replaced. But this is a post-war story. They keep Gladys on because they can't find anyone else willing to take the job.

Most people are, eventually, but Keeley hasn't been (yet). Having invested in a Firestick, giving me much easier access to ITV Hub, I'm in the middle of a mammoth Midsomer Murders rewatch. I watched the show right from the start, so saw (or at least thought I had seen) every episode as it originally aired, and then old episodes are on all the time, so I could have sworn I had seen every episode multiple times. And yet. Every now and then on this rewatch, via ITV Hub, I come across an old episode I have no memory of ever having watched. I can only assume I missed a few when they first aired and then those episodes for whatever reason aren't often included in reruns. After years and years of just watching random episodes as and when they happened to be available, it's fascinating to rewatch now - my first all-episodes-in-order rewatch since the show first aired. Baby Troy. Scott such a deliberate contrast - and he stuck around rather longer than I remembered, as well. I've just reached Baby Jones, who again is crafted as a very deliberate contrast to Scott, while also being strikingly different from Troy. Well played, Show. Rewatching as a semi-marathon like this is driving home the fact that I don't really like Cully all that much.

I feel like some of the folks here might be interested in reading this very long essay analysing Good Omens 2 and theorising about what Neil might be up to, setting up the cards for season 3: The Magic Trick You Didn’t See: Being An Analysis of Good Omens Season 2 It's an extremely long essay and I don't agree with all of it, but it does present some very interesting food for thought. Let's hope we get that season 3 and can find out!

Having watched the 70s Poldark adaptation and then read all the books, I was really excited when the new adaptation was announced...and then increasingly disappointed with it, until I had to stop watching. What annoyed me most was that the new one kept advertising itself as being more 'faithful to the books' than the older version - except that it wasn't any more faithful to the books at all, it made just as many changes, to the detriment of both the characters and the story. Then when it reached the break point in the books (there is a 10 year time skip with the action then moving to the next generation) it decided to just make up its own storylines for the later seasons - badly! I was glad I was no longer watching at that point. I would like to see a well made adaptation some day that actually is faithful to the books and doesn't attempt to smush two good-sized novels into a single season of TV, galloping to the finish line and then realising the material has run out before they were ready.

There were multiple stages of manipulation, as well. Validation, which Aziraphale so rarely gets. Buying a coffee for him, a treat he is known to respond to; Aziraphale values tasty things. Removing him from his bookshop, his home turf. Positioning Muriel to look after the bookshop, someone Aziraphale likes and would be prepared to trust. And so on. But it wasn't just about separating Aziraphale from Crowley, because offering redemption to Crowley was the final stage of the manipulation. I think removing one or both from Earth to prevent further interference was the main aim of the game, rather than simply separating them. And Aziraphale said no at every step along the way until the offer of redemption for Crowley was made. That was what swung him.

Nina was also in season one as a different character. Well, yes, he just manipulated Aziraphale in quite a masterful fashion to persuade him to do something he absolutely categorically did not want to do going into the conversation. And the Metatron then said out loud what he has up his sleeve - preparation for the second coming. In other words, another form of armageddon, which he did not warn Aziraphale about before persuading him to accept the new job, knowing full well that Aziraphale would not be on board.

BBC newsreader George Alagiah dies aged 67. Not unexpected, he's had cancer for years, but still very sad. I always liked him. Reading the article, I realised for the first time that his name was mispronounced literally every time I have ever heard it spoken, and that makes me sad for him, that he gave up correcting the mispronunciation so long ago that it just became the standard.

I finished watching S3 a while ago, but it made so little impression on me that I forgot to come back here and comment on it. I find that Van der Valk is a show I want to like more than I actually like, if that makes sense. I initially watched it mostly for Maimie McCoy, who I really liked in The Musketeers (the hair this show has given her continues to make me sad) and for Elliot Barnes-Worrall, who again I enjoyed in previous work, he's a promising young actor who I was sorry to lose in S3. Overall, I feel like this show is constantly trying too hard without ever quite pulling off whatever it is aiming for. It tries too hard to capture that 'hip' Amsterdam vibe without ever really feeling authentic to me (probably because it can't be authentic, being written and made by Englishmen). It tries too hard to sell Piet Van der Valk as a maverick detective without ever imbuing him with the kind of charisma a character like that so desperately needs - brooding male detectives being assholes to the people around them because they are just so hung up on their own pain are ten a penny in this genre, Mark Warren's take on Van der Valk just bores me, the character just isn't likeable enough to pull it off and make me root for him. It tries too hard to sell the cast as an offbeat 'family' without ever quite convincing me that the relationships between them are real and earned (switching out half the cast for S3 without explanation didn't help). It tries too hard to hint at intriguing backstories that it never then follows through on - don't drop hints if you are never going to explain! A lot of the dialogue comes across as stilted rather than natural. And so on. I agree with @Maren that the last scene did feel like it could be a goodbye, so if there isn't another season I won't be surprised (but how did you manage to see all three episodes early, before they'd all dropped?)

BBC live updates here - Huw Edwards' wife has named him as the man at the centre of the allegations. Not gonna lie, I gasped a bit when I read it. Her statement is interesting. ETA - the police say they have looked into the matter and have decided there is no evidence a criminal offence has been committed. The BBC says it is now resuming its investigation "whilst continuing to be mindful of our duty of care to all involved”

Our outdoor bathroom was still plumbed in and functional when I was a child, although we all hated it - so cold and full of spiders! But handy in a pinch, if the indoor loo was occupied. It was eventually disconnected and became a garden store. When my Nan was a child living in Caerphilly in the '30s, her nextdoor neighbours had about 11/12 children crammed into one of those tiny terraced houses. They all worked in shifts (mines and factories, it would have been) and also slept in shifts! I always found the Rhyd-y-Car cottages in St Fagan's fascinating, seeing how differently the limited space available could be used - building a kitchen out in the garden shed, for instance! And that one house where there was a bath tucked under the kitchen counter, which folded up to allow the bath to be used. The past is another country, they do things different there! I'm wondering now if it was Tyrone and Fiz who had the loft conversion in Corrie, rather than Chesney and Gemma. I'm sure it was one or the other who at least talked about it. I think Chesney and Gemma need it more!

Not as obvious as you'd think, as not all shows air all year round, those that do allow presenters time off - it's the summer, lots of presenters are coming and going at the moment, taking holidays. That said, the identity of the individual is apparently common knowledge within the BBC, so I can't see it staying a secret for long. On the other hand, the BBC is right to keep the man's identity secret while their investigation is in process, to avoid trial by press of someone who may or may not be guilty of the alleged offences - although I can see why a bunch of other presenters are calling on the individual to come forward, not wanting to be tarred by association. But the BBC as an entity won't want to identify them prematurely, so that if the allegations are found to be malicious, an innocent person won't have had their reputation smeared for no reason. But if the allegations are found to have basis in fact, I will expect the person to be named and further action taken.

To echo what @Shrek said, yes, terraced houses in an industrial city in the UK really are that small. There are plenty of variations on the shape and size, some are a little bigger than others, but they are all variations on the same theme. Those in Corrie are 'two up, two down', with a kitchen at the back and perhaps a box room over the stairs. The oldest of that type of house, built during the industrial revolution to house working class families, wouldn't even have had indoor bathrooms at the time they were built, all that was reconfigured in later. The house I grew up in, which was originally built to house railway workers, had two bedrooms and a box, to house a family of five - my dad extended the boxroom out over the stairs and built a cabin bed into it for my brother to have a bit more space. And we still had the old outdoor toilet out in the garden from when the house was first built, although by the time my parents bought the house in 1972 it already had a proper indoor bathroom as well. Lots of people living in such houses these days also have loft conversions, to create extra bedrooms. I've an idea Chesney and Gemma might have a loft conversion - I vaguely remember talk of one, at any rate; I'm hazy on whether the work was actually done or not. The Rhyd-y-Car cottages at the St Fagan's Folk Museum in Cardiff demonstrate just how tiny such terraces could be. Mind-blowing to realise just how large some of the families were that were crammed into these houses.