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Homeland season 8 showrunner reveals 'contentious' Carrie and Saul story that was scrapped after several tries

'We tried to tell that story, but it defeated us every time'




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Love Island cancelled: ITV axes summer series over coronavirus risk

Producers have reportedly found it impossible to arrange filming amid the coronavirus pandemic




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Rick and Morty fans confused by coronavirus joke in latest episode

Viewers have questioned how the hit animated series seemingly 'knew about coronavirus nine months ago'




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Nicolas Cage to play Tiger King star Joe Exotic in new scripted TV series

Cat trader previously said he wanted Brad Pitt to portray him




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Isolation Stories review, episode one: Sheridan Smith shines in first TV drama made under lockdown

The actors were directed over Zoom for the ambitious four-part ITV series – and judging by the inaugural episode, the results are laudable




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Piers Morgan tests negative for coronavirus after missing Good Morning Britain

Morgan had developed 'mild' symptoms




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Tiger King: John Finlay stars in advert for animal print emergency prep kit

Finlay was married to Joe Exotic during filming of 'Tiger King'




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Charlie Brooker hopes coronavirus pandemic won't make 'psychotic strongman politicians more secure'

Writer also said he has no plans for further episodes of 'Black Mirror'




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Craig Revel Horwood says Strictly Come Dancing could film without live audience under lockdown

The show is due to return in September




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Coronavirus: Game of Thrones actor becomes Asda delivery driver during pandemic

Michael Condron played Bowen Marsh in the fantasy epic




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Ricky Gervais says he negotiated with 15 lawyers and executives over how to refer to Judi Dench's genitals at the Golden Globes

Comedian made the off-colour quip after the veteran actor starred in 'Cats'




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Captain Tom Moore receives gold Blue Peter badge after raising more than £30 million for NHS

Captain Moore was presented the award by his grandchildren




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ITV viewers outraged by advert showing squirrel 'humping' Lynx Africa can

The Advertising Standards Authority received 155 complaints




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Sopranos creator David Chase writes coronavirus-themed scene in which Tony is alive

Character's fate was famously left ambiguous at the end of the seminal gangster drama




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Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel hit back at Trump after Twitter attacks: 'Now get back to work royally f***ing everything up'

Trump took time away from coronavirus crisis to call Kimmel 'wacko' in a social media rant




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Coronation Street will address coronavirus crisis when filming resumes

Production on the soap was suspended in March




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Kirstie Allsopp defends decision to film in Devon during lockdown after accusations she put locals at risk

Presenter said she is 'proud' of craft show despite criticism




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The A Word review: The pioneering if understated drama returns at just the right time

This series' great beauty is that it's about relationships in all their unpredictability – perfect for locked-down viewers who are seeking out human interaction vicariously




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Kevin Spacey compares his downfall to people struggling in pandemic in newly surfaced video

Actor said he had to ask himself 'who am I?' after his 'world completely changed'




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How Ryan Murphy convinced Macaulay Culkin to star in American Horror Story

Murphy pitched the role to the 'Home Alone' star over the phone




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My Secret Terrius: Netflix show predicted coronavirus outbreak with alarming accuracy in 2018

It's the most accurate one yet




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Coronavirus: The Masked Singer costume designer is making PPE for NHS staff

'I have just got to keep going, making sure other people are going to be alright,' said Tim Simpson




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Stephen Fry lends voice to children's mindfulness app from BBC

The app aims to help young children look after their mental health




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Snoop Dogg stars as delivery driver in new Just Eat advert

The advert will air during Friday's 'Gogglebox'




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Lenny Henry's daughter posed as comedian and sent 'manipulative' false messages in attempt to win back boyfriend

Billie Henry was given a five-year restraining order




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Stranger Things: Full list of films watched by writers reveals 'DNA of season 4'

All the clues you need in one picture




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Becoming, review: Michelle Obama's Netflix documentary gives emotion without intimacy

Ninety minutes in the company of the former first lady is like an inspirational infomercial, says Annie Lord




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Courteney Cox 'loved playing overweight Monica' in Friends because she 'felt free'

Actor also revealed her favourite episodes of the sitcom




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Space Force: Real chief wanted to be played by Bruce Willis instead of 'shaggy' Steve Carell

Series is a humorous response to Trump's actual Space Force




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Netflix secret codes: How to access hidden films and TV shows on streaming service

There are loads of titles you didn't know were on the streaming service




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SNL at Home: Saturday Night Live announces season finale with third remote episode

Brad Pitt and Tom Hanks have contributed to the programme remotely




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Pete Davidson fan delivered drugs to comedian's mother's house during lockdown

Davidson is currently quarantining in his mother's basement




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David Attenborough: 15 of the naturalist's best quotes

In celebration of his 94th birthday




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Donald Glover to reunite with Community cast for virtual table read and Q&A

The show ran for six seasons from 2009 to 2015




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'Love in the Time of Corona': Coronavirus romance series filmed entirely remotely to air this summer

Show promises a 'funny and hopeful look at the search for love, sex and connection during this time of social distancing'




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Have I Got News For You: David Tennant jokes that Eamonn Holmes lives in a 'tin foil bungalow'

Holmes came under fire for giving validity to a conspiracy theory linking 5G to coronavirus




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Normal People's Paul Mescal was once in an advert for sausages, and fans have only just found out

The 'Normal People' star played an Irish teenager whose sausage inspires him to travel the world




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Andrew Scott took Fleabag role to stop being typecast as a villain

Scott was best known for playing Moriarty opposite Benedict Cumberbatch in 'Sherlock'




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The Eddy review: Damien Chazelle's jazz drama sounds wonderful but the plot feels like an afterthought

Director's new series stars Andre Holland as a once-famous American jazz pianist who has been unable to play since his son died




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From 'Glee' to 'The Eddy', why are TV musicals so few and far between?

In our current climate, we need the escapism of musicals more than ever, writes Isobel Lewis. So why haven't television networks jumped on the bandwagon?




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Roy Horn death: Magician of famous duo Siegfried and Roy dies aged 75 from coronavirus

'Roy was a fighter his whole life including during these final days,' his partner Siegfried Fischbacher said




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Phillip Schofield shares family photo during lockdown, appears to contradict reports he's moved out

TV presenter, wife Stephanie and their daughters played a game of Murder Mystery




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Miriam Margolyes shocks fans after admitting she 'had difficulty not wanting Boris Johnson to die' during coronavirus battle

Actor is famous for making her opinions known during interviews




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Comedian Will Hislop goes viral for NHS clap for carers parody

Will Hislop engaged in a pretend argument with his neighbour, 'Karen', over whether one of them had broken lockdown rules




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Car Seat Headrest: Making a Door Less Open review – Will Toledo in yet another guise

(Matador)
The indie maverick is a purveyor of all styles on his studiously eclectic 12th album

There’s a strange psychological cross-pollination going on behind the mask that Will Toledo, the artist mostly known as Car Seat Headrest, sports on the cover of his 12th album. Indulging an alter ego called Trait, Making a Door Less Open seeks out deliberately eclectic hybrids of his wry, lo-fi indie rock style (heir to the likes of Beck, Lou Barlow and Eels) and the satirical EDM he and his drummer Andrew Katz make as 1 Trait Danger. The result is much better than anyone who’s heard the latter, who often veer perilously close to a Bloodhound Gang remix project, might expect: Can’t Cool Me Down has a sultry 80s electropop feel, while the roil of self-deprecation and naked emotion on There Must Be More Than Blood underlines Toledo’s debt to LCD Soundsystem.

The new styles don’t all gel. The sleazy, fuzzy synth-rocker Hollywood is pleasingly punchy, but brought down by facile lyrics (apparently Tinsel Town isn’t the dreamland it’s cracked up to be – who knew?). Two sister songs – the lumpen alt-rock Deadlines (Hostile) and the Hot Chip-with-extra-dour Deadlines (Thoughtful) – fail to charm, while What’s With You Lately is a wan, mopey strum that seems to have wandered in from an entirely different, very bad record. But on the likes of the pulsing, uplifting Famous and Life Worth Missing, Toledo finds new energy.

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Tony Allen: the Afrobeat maverick who blazed a trail across the globe

The Nigerian musician was a restless creator who embraced the physicality of drumming and innovated until the end

Few musicians can claim to have invented a revolutionary rhythm, but then few are quite like the late Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen. Brian Eno called him “the greatest drummer that ever lived”, citing his style alongside James Brown’s funk breakbeat and the constant pulse of German band Neu! as the “three great beats of the 1970s”. Allen’s swirl of jazz, Yoruba and highlife was unlike anything the world had ever heard: a full-body polyrhythmic workout that would give most drummers sore wrists just thinking of it.

Allen came to prominence in Lagos alongside Fela Kuti. He started drumming in the late 50s while working at a radio station, looking to jazz icons such as Art Blakey and Max Roach for inspiration as he taught himself to play. In 1964 he met Kuti and they spent the next half-decade fine-tuning their fusion of west African party music and American funk and jazz, in the bands Koola Lobitos and, by 1969, Africa ’70. While Kuti, who died in 1997, is more well-known than his musical soulmate, he said that “without Tony Allen there would be no Afrobeat”.

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Dave Greenfield: putting beauty at the rotten heart of the Stranglers

The keyboardist, who has died aged 71 of coronavirus, upended the rules of punk with organ arpeggios and a moustache – and pointed the way to post-punk

Music writer Pete Paphides’ recent memoir, Broken Greek, contains a vivid description of its seven-year-old author encountering the Stranglers for the first time, during a 1977 Top of the Pops appearance. “They landed in the living room while I was totally unsupervised,” he writes, “and scared the shit [out] of me. By now I would have seen images of punk rockers … but they looked like circus entertainers compared to [the Stranglers]. They looked too old to be punk. They looked like the sort of people you pass in the street and your mother puts her arm round you, stares at the pavement and doubles her walking speed … The point at which it all got too much was when the camera cut to Dave Greenfield – who has died from Covid-19 aged 71 – jabbing his keyboard while looking straight ahead with what seemed, beyond doubt, to be the eyes of a murderer, an effect somehow compounded by the army-surplus boiler suit he had decided to wear. Just like that, my list of phobias had got a little longer: worms, biting into mushrooms, insects, the fibreglass King Kong which stood next to a ring road in Birmingham city centre and, now, Dave Greenfield from the Stranglers.”

It’s funny writing, but it’s also very incisive about the Stranglers: in real life Greenfield was, by all accounts, the band’s most approachable and charming member, but otherwise Paphides has it spot-on. The Stranglers complained relentlessly about not being accepted by the punk cognoscenti, but what did they expect? They didn’t look like punks, particularly Greenfield, who defiantly sported that least punk of facial accoutrements, a moustache. They were old, at least by the standards of the day, old enough to have the kind of musical pasts it was wise to keep your mouth shut about in the scorched-earth environment created by the Sex Pistols: Hugh Cornwell had played bass in a band with Richard Thompson, later of Fairport Convention; Greenfield had been in a prog rock band called Rusty Butler.

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JoJo: Good to Know review – mature pop from a clear-eyed star

(Clover Music)
With this long-awaited fourth album, the former teen idol has finally arrived as the kind of artist she was always meant to be

‘Look at me now” is a fitting opening line for Good to Know, the fourth studio album from R&B singer JoJo. The artist has been on a storied journey through the music industry and the public eye: first emerging as the 13-year-old singer of Leave (Get Out), she then spent years mired in legal disputes with her label that prevented her releasing music. After reigniting her passionate fanbase with a string of independent, darker-sounding mixtapes (and one viral Drake cover), she released Mad Love, her long-delayed third album, in 2016. But Good to Know, released on her own imprint Clover Music, with its themes of independence and self-knowledge, carries with it a sense that she has finally arrived as the kind of artist she was always meant to be.

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Ghostpoet: I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep review – dark but defiant

(Pias)
Since his last outing, the south London musician and producer has eased up and moved to Margate. Yet this atmospheric return still carries the weight of the world

Ghostpoet – the brooding alias of south London-born Obaro Ejimiwe – is roughly a decade old this year. This dour bard has long been an artist ahead of his time. A track such as Cash and Carry Me Home, one of the highlights of his eclectic, jazz-inflected debut album – 2011’s Peanut Butter Blue and Melancholy Jam – defied genre as it mourned the self-inflicted pain of one drink too many. It now locates Ghostpoet as roughly adjacent to the south London jazz renaissance of the past few years – a multi-hyphenate scene in which most things go. Were it to be released today, its languorous, self-aware aperçus would find an even more receptive audience.

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