#this remains one of the greatest pieces of drama the bbc ever made

[thisbluespirit]

A head’s up for UK peoples interested in old time TV and/or history - BBC4 has started showing the 1971 BBC classic Tudor drama Elizabeth R starring Glenda Jackson.  They’re up to Episode 2 “The Marriage Game” as of last night, but of course this also means it’s up on the iPlayer for the duration: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p033w6j5/elizabeth-r

\o/

[aion-rsa]

Doctor Who Series 13: Jodie Whittaker Leaving Rumours, the Next Doctor, and the Future

https://ift.tt/2SweahO

Jodie Whittaker is fast approaching that three-season milestone at which most Doctors pull the inter-dimensional rip-cord and eject themselves from the TARDIS. Speculation has swirled around her, as it does for most Doctors, from the very start of her tenure, and now, more than ever, there’s the strong scent of Regeneration in the wind. So, will Whittaker leave at the close of series 13? And if so, will any of her companions remain to bridge the gap between eras? Might showrunner Chris Chibnall also hang up his sonic-shaped pen? The BBC is playing its cards characteristically close to its chest, so divining the answers to these questions is not unlike trying to unlock the mystery of the Doctor’s real name.

There was an ample reminder of the BBC’s zeal for secrecy when Who-newcomer and beloved Liverpudlian John Bishop – cast last year as companion Dan – was rebuked for revealing during an online Q&A that his character, too, would be Liverpudlian. If the BBC don’t want you to know that a Liverpudlian might be playing a Liverpudlian, then this is going to be a bumpy ride. But let’s strap in, brace for impact, and see what’s (or Who’s) out there…

Jodie Whittaker on leaving

Everyone has their favourite Doctors, and not-so favourite Doctors. Jodie Whittaker is not alone in having had love and scorn heaped upon her in equal measure, a phenomenon that has touched most actors to have taken on the role, with the possible exception of Tom Baker and David Tennant, who stand as almost deified in their respective eras.

It’s clear, though, that Jodie Whittaker has loved every moment of being the Doctor, and of being embraced by the show’s fandom, telling the Telegraph in November 2020: “If you bump into a Whovian, it genuinely makes both of your days. There’s something emotional, poetic and very humbling about being in the show, because you’re a little tiny jigsaw piece of something that is so precious to so many people.” It’s perhaps understandable, then, that her response to the speculation around her departure was to say: “To even question an end point would be too upsetting.”

Or, to parrot one of her predecessors: “I don’t want to go.”

Where’s the evidence?

Over the last eighteen months, rumours that Jodie Whittaker will be leaving after season 13 have been endlessly shared and repeated. These rumours were reported as fact by some media outlets earlier in the year, though the BBC has steadfastly refused either to confirm or deny them. It does, however, seem more likely than not that 13 will be 13’s last; a supposition based upon the ‘Who Rule of Three’ and the unignorable sound of drums gathering pitch and pace across the internet.

In the hunt for ‘evidence’, dead-ends and red-herrings abound. IMDb currently reveals no projects rumoured or in pre-production for Jodie Whittaker beyond her TARDIS tenure, but, then, actors keeping contractual secrets would be fools to release their schedules onto one of the most comprehensive entertainment databases ever to have existed. So no help there.

The Mirror newspaper recently reported that the front-cover of the 2022 Doctor Who annual would be Doctor-less for the first time in its 57-year-history. Could this be a clue? Not likely. The people at Penguin Random House – the annual’s publishers – made it clear that the thirteenth Doctor will feature heavily throughout the publication.  So whether the new cover is simply a radical redesign, a yielding to the purchasing power of this era of the show’s vocal detractors; or a shrewd marketing move designed to have the product promoted for free in the press, it doesn’t actually tell us very much about the likelihood of the 13th Doctor’s exit.

Peter Capaldi’s Trouser Clue

We might, however, be looking for clues in all the wrong places. Peter Capaldi deduced that he’d be handing over the TARDIS keys to a woman a few days before the BBC officially broke the news to him: thanks to his tailor.       

At a New York Comic Con panel in 2017, Capaldi told the audience: “I went into Paul Smiths, which is a very wonderful clothes shop in London where I buy my suits, and everybody knows me in there. And they said, ‘We just got a call,’ they said, ‘from the Doctor Who office saying, ‘Can we have a pair of [Peter’s] trousers, but with a waist size thirty?’ … And I thought, ‘Well, that can’t really be a man with a thirty-inch waist. That must be a lady then’.”

Staking out Jodie’s tailor probably won’t prove fruitful, though. Knowing the BBC, they’ve probably plugged that potential leak by sub-contracting Jodie’s wardrobe out to a mute grandma living alone in a fortress atop the Himalayas.    

Read more

TV

Doctor Who: the behind-the-scenes causes of regeneration

By Mark Harrison

TV

Doctor Who: Which New Doctors Are Now Canon?

By Chris Farnell

Will the Doctor Regenerate in 2022?

Series 13 will consist of eight episodes, set to begin airing later this year. The Mirror reports that there will be two specials in 2022, although it isn’t clear whether these will be in addition to this year’s 8,  or whether we’ll see a split of 6 episodes in 2021 with the 2 specials being held over for 2022. A special – Christmas Day, New Year’s Day or otherwise – has become the traditional arena for regeneration, so if Whittaker is leaving, it’s likely that her final scene will come at the end of that rumoured second special.

Many think that the greatest evidence for Whittaker remaining as the Doctor until at least 2023 is our proximity to Doctor Who‘s upcoming 60th anniversary. After all, it would seem a shame to bow out before a big milestone, and it could be daunting to saddle a new Doctor with spearheading such a significant celebration. Still, the timey-wimeyness of it all means that even should Whittaker leave in 2022 there’s no reason she couldn’t make an appearance in an anniversary episode, perhaps alongside a few other previous incarnations. And 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the BBC itself, so it’s hard to imagine that the show won’t be doing something extra special to mark that, given that it owes its very existence and longevity to the broadcaster (Michael Grade notwithstanding). Whenever she leaves, 13 could easily have her cake and eat it.

Will Chris Chibnall leave after Series 13?

When Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole left at the end of ‘Revolution of the Daleks‘, Mandip Gill’s Yaz stayed behind. Yaz has been one of the new era’s most underdeveloped characters, so it made sense that she would get her chance to shine and grow in a less crowded environment, sharing companion duties only with John Bishop’s newly teased Dan. But as her character and her story seems so intrinsically linked to the Doctor herself, with the promise of more in-depth exploration to come in series 13, when/if the Doctor leaves, will Yaz’s story also draw to a close? Will only Dan remain with a foot in two TARDISes? All speculation at this point, and it very much hinges on which direction the writers take Yaz in this next clutch of episodes.

Showrunner Chris Chibnall – a lifelong fan of the show and, prior to his appointment as big chief, a long-standing writer for both Doctor Who and Torchwood – has been at least as divisive a figure in Who fandom as 80s helmsman Jonathan Nathan-Turner. Rumours regarding his possible departure have circulated with just as much frequency as those surrounding Whittaker. When asked about series 13, Chris Chibnall told the Radio Times: “I do know I’m coming back for a third season. Yeah, absolutely.” Within those words, if you look hard enough, exists the implied absence of certainty around future seasons, but perhaps that’s getting rather too Da Vinci Code about the whole thing.

While the stewardships of previous showrunners Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat spanned two Doctors each, this doesn’t mean that Chris Chibnall is guaranteed a crack at the 14th Doctor. Should Chibnall leave after season 13, among the writing team perhaps only Pete McTighe – who wrote ‘Kerblam!‘ And co-wrote ‘Praxeus‘ – has the experience to take over as showrunner, given his stint over-seeing the award-winning Australian prison-drama Wentworth. 

How might 13’s Regeneration Happen?

Each of the modern Doctors has met their end in the service of some great sacrifice, either to protect a companion or to save if not the universe then at least a world within it. It’s unlikely that 13’s exit will be any different. It’s simply a question of against whom or what she’ll be fighting when her time comes.

Though it may be too soon for the Master to be directly responsible for the undoing of yet another Doctor so soon after 12’s John-Simm-shaped downfall, it’s likely that the Master will at the very least influence the direction of 13’s regeneration. Sacha Dhawan has expressed enthusiasm at the idea of returning, though nothing, as you would expect, has yet been confirmed. Or denied.

The revelations in ‘The Timeless Children‘, controversial though they proved for some fans, are perhaps too epoch-shaking and era-defining not to play a part in 13’s swansong, and it may well be that the shadowy Division – the Time Lord’s very own version of Starfleet’s Section 31 – will be complicit in the Doctor’s fall.

Another question presents itself: now that the Doctor knows she has infinite regenerations, might it make her more reckless? Might she start to see her body more like an easily changeable suit than a thing of flesh and blood? Might she regenerate multiple times before becoming the 14th Doctor, a la The Curse of Fatal Death, and what on earth would we call the 14th Doctor – who wouldn’t really be the 14th Doctor at all – if that happened?          

Who’s in the running for the next Doctor?

Many of the same actors tipped as possible replacements near the end of Capaldi’s run have reappeared in the Regeneration rumour mill, including firm favourites Michaela Coel, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Michael Sheen, David Harewood, Richard Ayoade and the indefatigable Kris Marshall. Joining them this time are Line of Duty alumni Kelly MacDonald and Vicky McClure, and It’s a Sin front-man Olly Alexander. It could be that one of them, or none of them get the call. The next Doctor could just as easily be Jo Martin’s fugitive Doctor, who’s been hiding in plain sight all along.

Really though, as with all things connected with the show at this stage of its cycle: Who knows?

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Doctor Who Series 13 will air on BBC One later this year.

The post Doctor Who Series 13: Jodie Whittaker Leaving Rumours, the Next Doctor, and the Future appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3h7A1nM

[extremelyblackandwhite]

betrothed - 03

Pairing: Viking!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warning(s): forced engagement, strong language, sort of angsty 

A/N: Was binge watching the White Princess while writing this. Expect some very strong Y/N in this chapter. Anyone here as obsessed with period dramas as I am? Swear every time Starz/BBC comes up with period pieces I’m always there.

Previous Part - Next Part

Y/N was curious. She had been rushed into her new headquarters by the Queen who had to dismiss herself to go and find her run away son which led the future Queen to be stuck in the middle of what she knew as nothing and yet as everything. Her chambers were bigger than the ones at the nunnery, decorated with assets of gold and crystals made to look like objects belonging to their deities. She didn’t understand anything, she didn’t know how to start believing in their Gods when she barely believed in hers. She found herself trapped within what felt like an ever opening world. She felt like she could run everywhere but she couldn’t escape and that was a distance. Just like a bird looked within a house, enough space to fly but not to live. Above that, the man she was expected to put her trust in and to love had barely even looked at her. He was starting to act every bit like the monster she had envisioned.

The young girl opened the door of her chambers and stepped outside of it, looking at the walls and halls that stared at her like a parent to a child and she felt the need to explore. Her eyes looked at everything like if it was the finest jewel in the world and her mind saw everything as if it was the greatest story ever told.

Soon, she found herself in yet another strange room. Unlike her own chambers and the other rooms in her headquarters. It was a quite darkish room with only portraits. A younger version of the Queen next to who she guessed was the late King stood in the middle almost ruling over all the other paintings and under this were two silver hooks which held a very beautiful sword. She had never seen something as beautifully worked on as that sword. The handle was silver with red gems on the borders and there were some writings on the blade which she couldn’t make out but looked as if done by the gods. She knew she shouldn’t have touched it but she found herself wilding the weapon in her hand.

     - Lady Y/N. - before she could return the sword to its place, a voice had made her turn around pointing the sharp blade to whoever its owner was. It turned out to be Steven. - Please don’t kill me already.

    - I’m so sorry. - she lowered the weapon, returning it to its due place. - It’s just such a beautiful crafted weapon.

    - It’s the King’s sword. Ceremonial, used to place honours upon warriors. Not sure if it was ever used on the field. - he tried his best to make sure the girl didn’t explode from the shame of snooping around. - Your husband to be once broke it therefore I don’t think you’re in trouble.

    - He’s really not interested in meeting me, is he? - she said, a snarky smile on her smile fully knowing that her future husband wasn’t back or if he was he still wasn’t ready to see her. - You needn’t lie to me.

    - It’s hard. - Steven replied. - I mean he lost his father, gained a responsibility he still wasn’t ready for and now he’s engaged.

    - I left my people, never had a father and gained a responsibility I was never raised for. I know nothing and no one here. - she replied, walking out of the room with the blonde warrior. - But I understand he’s where your loyalty lies.

    - My loyalty lies with the you my lady, just like my father remained loyal to the Queen. - he explained. The army commander had the role of protecting the Queen ever since royalty began, they would promise to make sure that the woman who would continue the bloodline would remain safe and protected. He had great pride in his position and he would make sure the Queen to be felt safe. - Besides, I don’t think James would like my loyalty.

    - Care to explain? - she replied, walking to his pace. She knew she shouldn’t be this curious about his life but James’ was to be her husband and as his wife she should at least know a few things about him.

    - My lady, I don’t think you would understand besides if you were to know, I’d rather have James tell you. - he said and she nodded. What could Y/N do? She wasn’t about to impose someone to tell her truth. They kept chatting about random things, mostly having to due with her new surroundings. She found Steven, or, as he liked to be called, Steve had been good friends with James knowing each other until they had a fall out due to a reason which he was keeping secret from her. They reached her chambers and he bid his farewells before leaving her against the door, her mind running. Her heart ached that she had spent more time speaking with the army commander than with her actual fiancé but she couldn’t impose him to speak to her. If she was freaking out, so was he. 

The young queen to be tried to clear her mind out, tried to believe that somehow he would gain courage to at least introduce himself to her. Her hands went to push the wooden doors but instead of finding the emptiness of her sleeping quarters or her handmaiden she found a man standing there. He turned once he heard her footsteps, her fiancé. She was about to start thinking about what to say when he took the cue to speak.

   - I am deeply sorry for running away from you at the docks. - James remained still, somewhat nervous in front of the woman who he’d someday have to produce an heir with, who’d we would rule with. - I just don’t exactly know how to act. My father never told me I was betrothed, specially to ... well, to an foreigner. 

   - I know you cannot and will never love me, I know it’s way beyond what you could ever offer me. The only thing I was hoping for is that you wouldn’t humiliate me in front of what is to be my court. Now, I understand what’s it’s like to lose someone, I understand what’s it like to suddenly be given a responsibility way beyond what you expected. I was supposed to be a bastard not your fiancée, specially not someone’s Queen. - he was surprised. From what he’d heard from foreigners and his father, ladies from outside his people were supposed to be submissive, well spoken but this one spoke as if she were condoning an army after its loss. - Enjoy it or not, we are to wed and I would’ve at least expected you not to run away from me.

   - All I can offer you right now are my apologies, Lady Y/N. It was my last thought to humiliate you. - James didn’t really know how to act with her. He knew his parents’ engagement had been arranged but also knew that they had fallen in love way before he was born. Should he try to love her? Should he try and console her? He did not know, what he knew was that the first impression of the shy girl had vanished and now stood someone unsure but who commanded respect. - I, if you were interested, could show you around the village tomorrow morning.

   - Yes. - she said, trying to hide a little smile. - I would like that very much.

[bbclesmis]

‘Valjean is like Spider-Man’

DOMINIC WEST FIGURES he's played his share of awful people. The serial killer Fred West in Appropriate Adult? Jimmy McNulty, the Baltimore cop in The Wire? A lovable rogue, but a rogue nonetheless. Noah Solloway, the lead in The Affair? "He's deeply silly," West contends. "Just a silly man!" In the film Colette (out this Friday), he plays a sadistic husband who locks his gifted wife (Keira Knightley) away and makes her write books for which he claims credit.

"As an actor, you do live with these people and experience what they're feeling," sighs the actor, 49. "If they're a******s, it's exhausting and ultimately degrading. So it was such a relief to play someone who's great." And he smiles that irascible smile, the one that makes you root for West even when he's playing murderers and pretentious, adulterous novelists.

Jean Valjean, West's character in the BBC's adaptation of Les Miserables, is not only "great" in the actor's eyes. He is nothing less than the "greatest hero in all literature": a superhero ex-convict who has spent 19 years in prison being tortured by Inspector Javert (David Oyelowo) for stealing a loaf of bread, but who determines on his release to be the best possible man he can be... with heartbreaking results.

West considers Victor Hugo's French revolutionary epic to be the "greatest novel ever written", too - "much better than War and Peace!" - and certainly much better than the famous musical (he's not a fan).

"Valjean is not just a good guy, he's an amazing guy. Like Spider-Man!" he beams. "He climbs up the sides of buildings to rescue kids. And he has the legitimacy of intense suffering; he's done 19 years of hard labour. That knocks Iron Man into a cocked hat! Then you get into the humanity of Valjean, his demons, his desperate need to redeem himself... He's trying not to be the brute that the prison has turned him into. You become a better person by spending time with someone like that."

He has asked me to his home, a converted brewery in Wiltshire that he shares with his wife, Catherine FitzGerald, and four children - Dora, 11, Senan, ten, Francis, nine, and Christabel, five - "I'm trying to cut down," he jokes. (He has another daughter, Martha, from his first marriage, who is studying English at Oxford and wants to act.) "I think all households should have a five-year-old girl running round," he says. "I just think it's better for children. Stops them from becoming little princesses. It's much harder to be a spoilt brat as one of four."

HE OPENS THE door unshaven and unkempt with a general air of bohemian bonhomie. He puts on a succession of silly voices as he leads me through to his kitchen. "Teas? Light refreshments? Do we want hot milk in our coffees? Yes?" He's such a chameleon as an actor that even his own accent sounds as if it's put on. He was educated at Eton, but his family isn't proper posh. His Irish father owned a plastics factory in Sheffield, his mother was an actor and he's the sixth of seven children.

The Wests have been doing up the house for about three years, but only moved in last summer - there are paintings waiting to be hung, pieces of Lego, mugs, antiques scattered around... The house used to be a "very manageable cottage next to a derelict brewery, but having decided to connect them all together they're only now getting used to the layout. "There are about five different doors to choose from. I didn't realise how spread out it would be. It's enormous!" They moved from west London to give the kids more space to range around when they're teenagers: "I want my kids to be around trees and animals more."

We take refuge in his office, up in the rafters of the old brewery, where he sinks into an armchair and resumes recounting his love affair with Les Miserables.

THE BBC VERSION is written by Andrew Davies and picks up more or less where his adaptation of War and Peace left off. It opens on the field of Waterloo in 1815 in the aftermath of Napoleon's defeat. Back in Paris, the royalists are resurgent - but can't quell the forces unleashed by the Revolution.

In the first episode, we follow Valjean's ill-starred attempts at redemption after his nemesis, Javert, releases him; meanwhile, the grisette Fantine (Lily Collins) falls for a cad (Johnny Flynn) and becomes pregnant with little Cosette - whose path will cross with Valjean's in the future. Six episodes, much heartache and many improbable coincidences will take us all the way up to the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris.

West hadn't read the epic novel, but now that he has, he's a convert. He even loves Hugo's digressions into the design of the Paris sewers. "Actually, I'd have loved it if we could have made six seasons out of it," he says. 'There's more than enough material and it's all important and relevant. As with any great classic, it's big enough to handle any amount of interpretations."

Javert's antipathy to Valjean is one of the engines of the plot - but it's also something of a mystery. Why does Javert hate him so much? "I always like to trace motivations to sex," West says. "I said to David, 'Javert obviously fancies him!' But he thought that was crass."

Did the rivalry extend off-set? "You're never quite sure where the character ends and the actor starts," he laughs. "But the key to David is that he's actually royal. He's a prince in Nigeria. And he doesn't drink. He's very religious. He's been married to his wife since he was 19 and they have four beautiful children. I hadn't realised people like that existed in the acting world! He's a very inspiring guy."

The co-stars decided it was the shared trauma of being institutionalised that set their characters against one another. "Valjean doesn't think he deserves anything other than brutality. Javert is constantly reminding him he's just a common criminal who breaks rocks and murders people."

Oyelowo is one of a number of non-white actors in the cast, marking a departure from traditional costume-drama casting. West jokes that he really wanted to do it all with 'A1lo'Allo accents, but: "Like any classic, it's not a museum piece. It has relevance to modern life. Eponine and the girls all talk like modern London girls. And therefore it looks like modern Britain, too."

THE PRODUCTION LOOKS likely to make Collins, as Fantine, a star. "She's incredible," says West. "It's an exhausting part. So harrowing. Any actress who goes for it deserves all the accolades she gets..." The first scene they shot together was Fantine's death, filmed in a freezing manor house outside Brussels at 5am. "She really went for it. I was like, 'Oh my God! How did you do those spasm things?' She said, 'I just made it up'." I imagine it's reassuring to have West on set: he is very experienced, but doesn't take himself too seriously. Do the younger actors come to him for advice? "Pfah! No. I'm jaded and lazy."

The Wire was the show that brought him fame, as well as a credibility not usually open to Old Etonians. But originally he didn't want to be in it. "And it turns out to have been the one thing that everyone knows me for and it was one of the best shows ever made! I think [creator] David Simon is almost the Victor Hugo of our time... certainly the Charles Dickens."

The Affair offers more escapist pleasure, its marital rows interspersed with good-looking people having sex (even if he doesn't think much of Noah). The Wests are about to decamp to LA for the filming of the final season, but it will be without Ruth Wilson this time. Last February, she disclosed in a Radio Times interview that she was "sure" she earned less than West. "I don't want more money, I just want equal money," she added. Not long after that her character Alison Bailey was killed off. What was all that about? "Oh, not related!" West yelps.

He remains good friends with Wilson. The main point of contention on set was whose behind would be visible in the sex scenes. "We used to fight about it. 'You're on top this time', 'No! I was on top the last three times!'"

He'd never given much thought to who was paid what, he says. "I never asked what the money is on a show. It was more a question of if I wanted to do it. So it woke me up to the issue. I never realised the disparity and the injustice."

It's one of a number of changes he has noticed since the #MeToo movement gained ground. "One thing that's happened is a positive discrimination in favour of female directors. But the main thing is that unacceptable behaviour from male directors or actors is now either not possible, or you can call them out on it. There was one guy in particular whose behaviour was disgusting. Particularly to young females in minor roles. I tried to counter it on several occasions. But now it wouldn't be so hard to get rid of them."

'Treatment of women has taken a big step back in television'

He twists his face in derision at those who feel the feminists have gone "too far". "Treatment of women has taken a big step back in the past 20 years," he says, his voice rising. "Particularly in television, which has become more pornographic and the burden of that falls squarely on young women. Things like Game of Thrones, where you get a pair of bare breasts every five minutes... I mustn't say this, but..." Say it!

"I'm fairly sure that 20 years ago young actresses would not have had pressure put on them to take their clothes off. The parts young actresses get, particularly pretty ones, involve violent rape. When I think about my daughter going into the profession... I'm just really glad that #MeToo has started to counteract what has happened in the past 20 years."

He puts it down to internet porn - "It's made boys feel that women are sex objects who are easily available" - as well as social media. "If you can swipe someone's face because you don't think they're pretty and it costs you that little... I haven't done it myself, but it cheapens it."

HE's CONCERNED AT the turn the world is taking: he mentions Trump, climate change, teenage boys becoming addicted to the online game Fortnite. A wariness of modernity seems to have inspired the move to the countryside; he and his wife are "luddites", he confesses. "I'm not one of those people who say, 'How can you bring children into this world?' But I do want to spend a lot more time hanging out with my kids and running around in forests."

Once he has finished filming the last season of The Affair, he plans to hire an enormous camper van, bundle the entire family into it and spend a few months driving around the States.

"It's the last chance we have," he explains. "They're nearly teenagers, so they're not going to want to spend that much time with their old man for much longer. I've spent a long time away from them. So we're taking six months, four months of it travelling. I've taken them out of school - there are no big exams. We'll home school them. They'll read. No screens. You're not going to get a better education than that. If you travel with as little as possible, you get much more interesting experiences."

Radio Times 5-11 January 2019

[gadgetsrevv]

Rebekah Vardy-Coleen Rooney Instagram feud: Why the football wives are fighting

As Britain descends into an increasingly bleak political horror show, today the country is delivering on its most famous export: Shakespearean drama. On the morning of October 9, two famous wives of major football (i.e. soccer) players were embroiled in an epic feud that just so happens to be deliciously suited to the era of Instagram Stories and private accounts. It’s the kind of splashy kerfuffle that forces people who previously had zero knowledge of or interest in a group of people or perhaps an entire sport to eschew all their responsibilities and learn everything they possibly can about it all in the span of a few hours.

This particular English Renaissance play stars two women, Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy (who goes by Becky), both wives of footballers who played for the England national team. Like many WAGs (an acronym for the wives and girlfriends of athletes), the two were friends, and Rooney had trusted Vardy enough to be included on her private Instagram account, where Rooney would post personal updates about her friends and family.

But according to an operatic tweet posted by Rooney on Wednesday morning, which is at once a brutal damnation of Vardy’s actions and a master class in scene-setting and plot building, Vardy was selling those private stories to the press. “For a few years now someone who I trusted to follow me on my personal Instagram account has been consistently informing the Sun newspaper of my private posts and stories,” it begins.

“After a long time of trying to figure out who it could be, for various reasons, I had a suspicion,” Rooney writes. Here’s where it gets good: “To try and prove this, I came up with an idea. I blocked everyone from viewing my Instagram stories except ONE account.”

Coleen Rooney in 2018.

Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

Rooney then writes that, over the last five months, she posted a series of fake pieces of information about her life to see if they ended up in the Sun. They did: On August 15, the Sun published a story about Rooney and her husband traveling to Mexico to seek controversial gender selection treatment. On September 28, the paper published a story about Rooney possibly joining the BBC reality show Strictly Come Dancing; a third piece about a supposed flood at the Rooney’s Cheshire mansion was also published by the Sun. (All these stories published in the Sun have since been taken down.)

Rooney writes that it was difficult to remain silent and refrain from commenting when the false stories spread about her but that it ultimately helped her find the culprit.

“I have saved and screenshotted all the original [Instagram] stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them,” she writes.

“It’s……. Rebekah Vardy’s account.”

By the time Americans were starting to wake up, the news had lit up British media. That’s not just because the British press is among the thirstiest in the world. It’s because the story had everything: a Notes app-esque manifesto, the genius weaponization of social media, the demonization of a woman named Becky, the exposure of shady tabloid inner workings, and yes, two very rich women fighting with each other, one of whom is widely beloved among football fans for “standing by her man” (Rooney) and one of whom is seen as a fame-hungry money-grubber (that’d be Becky). The Rooney-Vardy feud lets us all feel the kind of vindication of knowing a maybe-bad person is an actually-bad person; it allows us to share in Rooney’s catharsis as she closes her explosive note with the absolute perfect kicker. It’s ……. really great gossip.

Who are Coleen Rooney and Becky Vardy?

It has not been nearly as fun of a day for Becky Vardy, of course. Shortly after Rooney’s post was made public, she posted her own statement to Instagram denying the allegations, claiming that other people had access to her Instagram account and if only Rooney had called her when she first suspected that Vardy was leaking stories, she could have changed her passwords. “I don’t need the money, what would I gain from selling stories on you?” she wrote. “I liked you a lot Coleen & I’m so upset that you have chosen to do this, especially when I’m heavily pregnant. I’m disgusted that I even have to deny this.” Vardy has also reportedly tasked lawyers to conduct a “forensic investigation” on her Instagram account to find out who has access to it.

But for many who have followed both Vardy and Rooney for years, the two statements were vindication that their opinions about each woman were correct all along. “Becky Vardy has always been shady,” says SB Nation soccer writer Kim McCauley. “It’s very obvious she wants to take down Coleen because Coleen has always been the media’s favorite WAG, who got all the best TV spots, and Becky wants to take her place.”

Jamie and Becky Vardy in 2018.

Jan Kruger/Getty Images

“The Vardys are not nice people,” agrees Nicolle Zamora, who writes for the soccer site Unusual Efforts. She points to a series of racist statements both Becky and her husband Jamie Vardy have made in the past. Jamie has been caught on camera multiple times calling a person of Asian descent a racist slur; in 2014, Becky tweeted “Getting followed at 3am from work to your car by a weird black man has to be up there with one of the scariest moments ever!”

Becky in particular is also widely considered inappropriately fame-hungry — she was a cast member on the reality series I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here and regularly appears on talk shows like Loose Women, Good Morning Britain, and This Morning. Many have long suspected her of being the writer behind the Sun’s “Secret WAG” column, which covers football gossip from an anonymous WAG, which would solidify the link between Vardy and the Sun’s coverage of Rooney.

What adds insult to injury, Zamora adds, is that the Sun has a long and bitter history with the city of Liverpool, where both Coleen and her husband Wayne Rooney were born and raised (the Rooneys now live in the US, where Wayne plays for DC United). Since 1989, the people of Liverpool have boycotted the Sun for its false reporting on the horrific Hillsborough disaster, where 96 people were killed at an FA cup football game due to overcrowding inside the stadium.

Meanwhile, Coleen Rooney has long been royalty among football WAGs, once a part of the original queen WAG Victoria Beckham’s crew in the mid-aughts and now most known for being a mother and loyal wife during her husband’s various reported infidelities. People like her because, as London-based football fan Scott Perdue tells me over DM, she has a “humble background, stuck by her man, tries to stay out of the headlines.

“Coleen Rooney has absolutely bossed Rebekah Vardy,” he adds.

Why the Coleen Rooney-Becky Vardy feud is irresistible

But there is also something more universal going on with the Rooney-Vardy feud that’s pulling in even people totally unfamiliar with British WAG culture. Humans love stories about celebrities acting as investigative reporters of their own lives, and Rooney isn’t the first person to weaponize her social media accounts: Kim Kardashian has reportedly sent her friends fake photos of her newborn children to find out who is leaking information to the press. Fans, meanwhile, have started referring to Rooney as “Wagatha Christie” in admiration.

It might also simply be more banal than that. It’s refreshing, for once, to have a clear winner and a clear loser, to be able to root for one team without feeling sorry for the other. Ironically, this is also what can be so appealing about being a sports fan.

Charlotte Wilder of Sports Illustrated draws this parallel: “I’ve always said that sports are the greatest reality show. Even on reality TV, we assume that everything’s edited or manipulated. But you can’t have spoilers for a game, and there’s something really pure about that. And when the athletes’ lives mirror that unexpectedness, it’s thrilling to me.”

Wayne, Coleen, and son Kai Rooney in 2013.

Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images

Often, when we see athletes’ or celebrities’ lives play out in the press or on social media, there’s a tendency to assume what we’re seeing is in some way fabricated. The Rooney-Vardy feud, meanwhile, feels pure in its messiness. “A lot of times these athletes are very calculated because they know people are paying attention,” Wilder says. “And when done well, it becomes a master class in public relations. With something like this, [Rooney] knows she’s bulletproof, so she can take a risk. You don’t do this unless you’re pretty sure it’s not gonna backfire.”

Ultimately, what we’re talking about is leaked personal interest stories about the lives of famous people. “It’s still fairly petty,” Wilder laughs. “It’s not that there’s some horrible crime at the center of this, so it makes it a little more harmless to enjoy something like this. If it were really ugly and messy I would feel sad, but at this point, we can enjoy it.”

All of which makes Coleen Rooney and Becky Vardy the perfect distraction from literally everything else happening in the UK right now: a feud so neat and perfect it can be tied up with a bow, a Twelfth Night-style comedy of errors that writes itself where the good guy gets all the faves and the bad guy gets canceled. If nothing else, it beats talking about Brexit.

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Best TV of 2019 so far

Back to Life

Daisy Haggard’s downbeat gem took on a tough topic – a woman’s return to her home town after a stretch behind bars – and turned it into a meditation on grief, regret and the passing of time, though with enough gags to keep things zipping along.

What we said: A few episodes into Back to Life, I felt like pushing it away in protest. “No, no!” I cried inwardly. “It’s too much! It’s too good!” Read the full review

Barry

In its second season, this black comedy about a hitman who catches the acting bug took its story into darker territory, with Barry’s attempts to extricate himself from his past life only dragging him further into oblivion. Things aren’t going to end well.

What we said: Though it’s a comedy rather than a thriller, Barry replicates much of what made Breaking Bad irresistible. Read more

Broad City

After five virtually flawless sitcom seasons, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson’s millennial kweens went out in the same way they came in: with gross-out gags, madcap surrealism and one of the greatest on-screen friendships in TV history.

What we said: This season has given Abbi and Ilana the best possible send-off. It has been joyful, silly and wild, and while it feels like the perfect and necessary time to wrap up their adventures, it is poignant that they’ve done so by reminding you just how good those can be. Read more

A fitting, shocking end ... Catastrophe. Photograph: Channel 4

Catastrophe

Another comedy that went out on a high, Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney’s tale of floundering parents managed to deliver more home truths about the family unit, pay fond tribute to late guest star Carrie Fisher – and offer up one of the most shocking endings in recent TV history.

What we said: From first to last, Catastrophe has been an unremitting triumph. Read the full review

Chernobyl

Already sitting atop IMDb’s top 250 TV shows list before the final episode has even aired, Sky and HBO’s restaging of the Soviet nuclear disaster captures the ineptitude, corruption and horror at its core.

What we said: Chernobyl is a disaster movie, a spy movie, a horror movie, a political thriller, and a human drama, and it spins each plate expertly. The terror is unflinching and explicit, and its images of burned bodies collapsing into putrid decay are impossible to forget. Yet it never feels shocking for the sake of it, only as haunting and horrible as its subject matter demands. Read more

Finally ... David Attenborough lays bare our greatest threat in Climate Change: The Facts. Photograph: BBC/Polly Alderton

Climate Change: The Facts

After years spent hinting at the damage done to our planet by the climate crisis , David Attenborough finally laid out the threat in all its magnitude, in a documentary that may just have turned sceptics into believers.

What we said: This is a rousing call to arms. It is an alarm clock set at a horrifying volume. Read the full review

Dead Pixels

E4’s comedy accurately captured the loneliness and mundanity, but also the sense of community, that comes with picking up a controller. All that, and it was as addictive as an all-night Fifa session to boot.

What we said: This wickedly entertaining new sitcom may have been inspired by the massive success of online games like World of Warcraft but, thankfully, you are not required to know your Azeroth from your elbow to enjoy it. Read more

Derry Girls

One of last year’s surprise hits, Lisa McGee’s Northern Irish comedy didn’t let things slip in its second season, with its quartet still finding teenage kicks in the midst of the Troubles. The scene in which teens from both sides of the sectarian divide unleashed a barrage of stereotypes about each other (“Protestants hate ABBA!”) is among the year’s funniest.

What we said: Derry Girls’ magic remains intact. The evocation of the 90s is as lightly done as ever (Elizabeth Hurley is fleetingly referenced – “She’s a total ride, but she paperclips her frocks together”) and the Troubled setting never overwhelms but simply throws into relief the ordinariness of the girls’ lives in the middle of extraordinary depths of conflict. Read the full review

Don’t Forget the Driver

Bleak comedy … Toby Jones in Don’t Forget the Driver Photograph: BBC/Sister Pictures

Pulling off a state-of-the-Brexit-nation series looked a tall order, but Toby Jones’s understated comedy-drama was taller, finding humour and pathos in its tale of a coach driver who discovers a refugee hiding in his wheel arch and a body washed up on the beach.

What we said: If it is a comedy, it is one with the bleakest tragedy at its heart. But whatever label you put on it, it is a fine, fine piece of work. Read the full review

Fleabag

Back for its second (and, as it turned out, final) outing, Fleabag added a hot priest into the already heady mix of biting wit and family dysfunction – and it built to a heart-rending ending with a wedding, a mad dash to the airport … and a fox. Unforgettable.

What we said: Series two raised the bar. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s risks were so impressive all one could do was shake one’s head in appreciation. Read the full review

Game of Thrones

Unquestionably the TV event of the year ... Game of Thrones. Photograph: HBO

Did the gargantuan fantasy drama stick the landing in its final season? That’s an argument for the comments section, but both in the scale of its six episodes, and the fevered discussion they prompted, it was unquestionably the TV event of the year.

What we said: The ending was true to the series’ overall subject – war, and the pity of war – and, after doing a lot of wrong to several protagonists, it did right by those left standing. When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. Overall, I think, it won. Read the full review

Gentleman Jack

Sally Wainwright travelled back in time for her latest piece of thrillingly human Yorkshire drama, with this real life tale of Anne Lister. Suranne Jones has received rave reviews for her portrayal of the 19th-century industrialist and diarist, who developed a code to hide her lesbianism.

What we said: It’s Regency Fleabag! Because the heroine occasionally breaks the fourth wall and exteriorises her inner monologue. But it’s set in Halifax in 1832, so it could be Northern Jane Austen. Then again, it’s about Anne Lister, who has been dubbed the first modern lesbian, so maybe it’s Queer Brontë ... You can afford to have a little fun with Gentleman Jack; Sally Wainwright clearly has. Read the full review

Ghosts

The Horrible Histories team offered up more unashamedly silly comedy with this spirited sitcom about a group of ghouls going to war with the new owners of a crumbling mansion.

What we said: In making us giggle at the supernatural, Ghosts is very British. But it is American in the sense of having a gag-to-airtime ratio much higher than British sitcoms normally manage these days. Read the full review

I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson

This deliriously absurd sketch show from a former Saturday Night Live player was hailed immediately as one of the greatest Netflix shows to date.

What we said: I wolfed down the entire series in one sitting, genuinely incapacitated with laughter. And then I watched it all again. I’m at the stage where I’m cherrypicking sketches now, but I’ve seen my favourites six or seven times. I’m fully obsessed at this point. At its peak, I think I Think You Should Leave might be one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Read more

Leaving Neverland

A devastating four-hour exposé of alleged child sexual abuse by Michael Jackson. Wade Robson and James Safechuck chillingly and plausibly outlined their accounts of childhood grooming by the man that they, and the whole world, worshipped.

What we said: An astonishing piece of work. Relentlessly spare and unsensationalist, it manages better than any other in its genre not to let its attention wander from the survivors’ testimony. Footage of Jackson is confined almost wholly to that of him with the boys themselves on stage, private calls between them and family snaps. He is never allowed to overwhelm the story. Read the full review

Line of Duty

Complex … Martin Compston and Stephen Graham in Line of Duty. Photograph: BBC/World Productions

Jed Mercurio’s police corruption masterpiece returned for a fifth outing after a two-year wait, bringing with it a stunningly complex performance from Stephen Graham, more urgent exits required … and heartstopping, jaw-dropping action to the last.

What we said: As ever, nothing is wasted; not a scene, not a line, not a beat. It fits together flawlessly – you can imagine Mercurio sitting like a watchmaker at his table with the parts spread before him and fitting the loupe to his eye before assembling the whole thing and listening for its perfectly regulated tick. Read the full review

Mum

Stefan Golaszewski’s sitcom tour de force ended on a heartwarming high. Over three lovely series, Lesley Manville and Peter Mullan as Cathy and Michael gave us the gift of a quietly epic romance that will echo down the ages – and kept the tears in our eyes.

What we said: Mum might have looked like it was just a sitcom, but it had something beautiful to say about love and loss. It’s said it. Read the full review

Pose

Assembling the largest collection of trans actors in televisual history, Ryan Murphy’s big-hearted drama about the voguing scene in 1980s New York had style, grace, swagger and sass for days. What’s not to love?

What we said: Razzle-dazzle showmanship isn’t Pose’s only source of infectious joy. Watching the slow, still-unfolding process of these characters becoming more and more their true selves is as exhilarating as the opening bars of Cheryl Lynn’s Got to be Real. Self-actualisation isn’t easy, but it sure is beautiful. Read the full review

Pure

Frank and fearless ... Pure. Photograph: Sophia Spring/Channel 4

Following a young woman with a form of OCD called Pure O, which manifests as constant invasive thoughts about sex, this comedy-drama was among the year’s frankest and most fearless TV.

What we said: The drama and the gags are never sacrificed to worthy exposition, virtue-signalling or finger-wagging, but, at the same time, the series has so evidently been made in good faith that you can surrender to it entirely, never fearing that it will put a foot wrong. Read the full review

Russian Doll

A hipster Groundhog Day, but also so much more, Natasha Lyonne’s comedy about a thirtysomething trapped in a time loop of death and rebirth proved a truly mind-bending proposition.

What we said: Russian Doll is an acquired taste. But do persist: there is such a fine, idiosyncratic, impressive show nested within. Read the full review

Sex Education

Gillian Anderson starred as Jean, a sex therapist whose son Otis (Asa Butterfield) – though too anxious to masturbate himself – sets up a sex advice service at school. A punchy, horny comedy, with the added bonus of the fantastic Ncuti Gatwa as Otis’s best friend Eric. Worth watching for his heroic prom outfit alone.

What we said: Endlessly and seemingly effortlessly funny, in a naturalistic way that doesn’t have you listening for the hooves of the next gag thundering down a well-worn track but, like Catastrophe, catches you almost unawares and makes you bark with laughter. Read the full review

The Last Survivors

Sam Dresner, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Frank Bright and Susan Pollack ... The Last Survivors. Composite: BBC/Minnow Films Ltd

Arthur Cary’s thoughtful, wonderful and always dignified 90-minute documentary heard the stories of some of the last living people who survived concentration camps as children. A very important work indeed.

What we said: For an hour and a half, I was crying, especially when Cary followed three generations of Holocaust survivors to Auschwitz, knowing all the time that tears are not enough. Nor guilt. Read the full review

The Other Two

How would you react if you could barely get cast as Man Who Smells Fart in an advert while your kid brother became a Bieber-esque teen hearthrob overnight? That’s the premise of this brilliant satire, which skewers our pop-culture-obsessed society spectacularly.

What we said: It has heart, charm, steel, belly laughs and a gimlet eye. Get on it. Read the full review

The Victim

John Hannah and Kelly Macdonald starred in an intelligent drama about a vigilante attack on a potential child killer that managed to ask ever more challenging questions as its episodes rolled on.

What we said: It is a drama that resonates with its time by asking what constitutes a victim and how much leeway we allow in bestowing that status. Do they have to be perfect? How sure do we have to be? And what happens when the perpetrator becomes a victim too, of a different kind? Read the full review

The Virtues

Shane Meadows reunited with This is England star Stephen Graham for an unflinching drama about a troubled dad attempting to reunite with his long-lost sister and process childhood sexual abuse.

What we said: Unspoken pain infuses every scene, every gesture and expression from Stephen Graham and in doing so lays the foundations to do justice to the suffering of victims everywhere. Read the full review

The Yorkshire Ripper Files

Liza Williams’s three-part documentary revisited one of the biggest – and longest – murder manhunts in British history, taking us back to a time so different it seemed almost foreign.

What we said: At its best, Williams’ series – with its mixture of archive footage and new interviews – is a social document. The hindsight it offers is not primarily about the mishandling of the investigation, but of the grim tone of the times. Read the full review

This Time With Alan Partridge

Appalling company ... This Time With Alan Partridge. Photograph: Colin Hutton/BBC/Baby Cow

The excruciating monkey tennis-pitcher went back to the BBC for a One Show-style magazine programme. Inevitably – and hilariously for viewers – it wasn’t the smoothest of returns.

What we said: We get the heroes we deserve, and as you finish writhing in agony and lie limp from laughter, hatred, panic, despair or in awe at the end of another half-hour in his appalling company, you can only reflect that if Brexit means Alan then the whole business just got more complicated still. Read the full review

Veep

A last hurrah for Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s mendacious yet incompetent vice-president, in a political satire that was perfectly attuned for these most buffoonish of times.

What we said: Louis-Dreyfus has won a record six Emmy awards for her role as Selina Meyer, and, frankly, it’s no wonder. She is magnificent, brittle and furiously amoral. In this seventh and final season of Veep, it appears to be getting out while it still has a hope in hell of making its fictional world look more comedic than the real one. Read the full review

When They See Us

Almost unbearably harrowing ... When They See Us. Photograph: Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix

Ava DuVernay’s staggering miniseries about the Central Park Five showed how a group of young boys came to be falsely convicted for raping a young white woman in 1989. It is unbearably harrowing to watch the boys, as young as 13, get violently coerced by police into giving confessions.

What we said: The performances are uniformly astonishing – especially from the central five, Asante Blackk, Caleel Harris, Ethan Herisse, Marquis Rodriguez and Jharrel Jerome, most of whom are just a few years older than the teens they are playing. They capture the innocence, in all senses, of children, and the permanence of its loss. It feels like a great privilege to see them. Read the full review

Years and Years

Russell T Davies’s hugely ambitious drama followed a family through the next 15 years of British life, taking in the migrant crisis, terrifying technological innovations and Trump’s increasingly fraught face-off with China.

What we said: For a series that compresses 15 years into six hours, it seems to pass in the blink of an eye thanks to Russell T Davies’s trademark humour, compassion and the kinetic energy with which he infuses every project. We do not deserve Davies, but thank God he’s here. Read the full review

100 Vaginas

Following her projects about breasts and penises, artist Laura Dodsworth photographed a range of women’s vulvas, then showed the sitters their vaginal portraits and interviewed them for their responses. The result? Intimate, empowering television, unlike anything that has ever aired before.

What we said: A gently but relentlessly radical documentary. It’s not until you see a full set of female genitals filling your screen that you realise how little you see anything of or about them in wider culture. Read the full review

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/03/best-tv-of-2019-so-far