#willbond wednesday

[lifedistractions]

Mr Bluesky (aka Ben Willbond)

[sixidiotsdavidtennantfan]

Happy Willbond Wednesday

[parttimesarah]

Willbond Wednesday, you say?!

[be-gay-write-crime]

Happy Willbond Wednesday 👀

[silverfox-hunter]

Happy unexpected Willbond Wednesday. I knew There She Goes was doing a special but wasn’t expecting Ben to appear again as nothing had been announced. What a lovely surprise in an already excellent show

[moonahsrobin]

Willbond Wednesday

[jamiebamberdaily]

The Wives : What We Know So Far (UPDATED - 6th September 2024)

The first casting announcement of 2024 has finally been announced with the news of Channel 5's The Wives.

About

Written and created by Helen Black, The Wives is a domestic thriller that centres on 3 sister-in-laws, Sylvie, Natasha and Beth who, just as they have done for the last 15 years, embark on their usual family holiday to Malta. However, this year is different.

The official synopsis reads:

Last year, four sisters-in-law and their families escaped to their Maltese holiday apartments, as they’ve done every summer for fifteen years. Sylvie Morgan, was happily married, Natasha, was swimming in wealth, and Beth and Annabelle Morgan, were thick as thieves. But this year, as they come together again, everything is different. Sylvie’s now single and loving life, Natasha’s hiding a desperate financial situation, Beth is barely keeping her life together and Annabelle is, well… dead. When Annabelle’s widower Charlie, arrives with a new woman in tow, Beth tries to be happy for them, but something doesn’t sit right. Charlie’s new girlfriend Jade, looks exactly like Annabelle. Beth’s plans to have a great summer are quickly scuppered by Charlie’s odd behaviour, and her suspicion that there is more to Annabelle’s death is heightened. With lies coming to light and evidence building, the women work together and against each other to unravel the mystery and bring the culprit to justice. But with corrupt officials, drug cartels and career criminals closer to home than ever expected, have they bitten off more than they can chew?

The Wives has been ordered for Channel 5 by Sebastian Cardwell, Deputy Chief Content Officer, Paramount UK and Paul Testar, Commissioning Editor, Drama, Channel 5 and Paramount+. Executive producers for Gaumont are Jess Connell and Alison Jackson. Produced by Margot Gavan Duffy, The Wives was written and created by Helen Black (Time S2, Life and Death in the Warehouse), with episodes by Ciara Conway (Screw, Holby City) and Jamie Jackson. The series will be directed by Claire Tailyour (Phoenix Rise, Deceit) and Paulette Randall (Waterloo Road, Tin Star).

The Cast

Jamie will star as Annabelle's widower, Charlie Morgan.

Also starring will be:

Angela Griffin as Natasha Morgan

Tamzin Outhwaite as Sylvie Morgan

Jo Joyner is Beth Morgan

Katie Clarkson-Hill is Charlie's new girlfriend, Jade Glover

Christine Bottomley is Annabelle Morgan

Catriona Chandler will be playing Annabelle and Charlie's daughter, Sky Morgan

Ben Willbond is Beth's husband, Frankie Morgan

Jonathan Forbes as Natasha's husband, Sean Morgan

Louis Boyer as charming local businessman, Luca Vella

Ajay Chhabra as consulate official Vinay Taneja

Jamie, Jonathan and Ben will be playing wealthy brothers, Charlie, Sean and Frankie Morgan.

Trailer

The trailer can be viewed here!

Filming Locations

The series began filming in Malta in February 2024.

Episodes

There will be 6 episodes.

Air Date

It will air on Channel 5 (in the UK) during two weeks in September. The first three episodes will air on Monday 16th, Tuesday 17th and Wednesday 18th. With the final three airing Monday 23rd, Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th.

[skipperthekangaroo]

fave white man ben willbond

Yikes, I Don’t See The Appeal || Not My Type || He’s Alright || I See The Appeal But I’m Different™ || Cute But On Alternating Wednesdays || He Has A Kind Face And That’s Good Enough || Pretty || Gorgeous || I— I Love? We Don’t Deserve Him.

Ben is always handsome. Ben is only hot when he's playing someone rich, mean and useless (ie Adam Kenyon or Jeremy from Sardines)

[aion-rsa]

Ghosts Series 2: ‘They’re stuck in an existence they didn’t ask for… like all of us’

https://ift.tt/35QzhQ6

The Ghosts creators have worked together for over a decade. To-date, the six-person team (Mat Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond) have written and performed in long-running children’s sketch comedy Horrible Histories, three series of fantasy sitcom Yonderland, feature film Bill, and two series of the supernatural BBC comedy Ghosts, with a third on the way. 

Channelling Mrs Merton asking Debbie McGee what first attracted her to the millionaire Paul Daniels, I ask Baynton and Howick via Zoom what inspired the group to write Ghosts, a sitcom about a group of individuals who frequently drive each other nuts, trapped together for what may well be eternity? 

Both laugh. “I’m sure we do drive each other nuts in many ways,” says Howick, “but the truth is, like the ghosts, what we always come back to in these episodes is that they love each other and don’t know what they would do without each other. I think that can be said for the group?” He looks to Baynton for confirmation and gets a happy nod. 

Considering the well-documented fallings-out and imploding egos of other comedy gangs – the Pythons not least among them – this level of harmony over such a long period feels remarkable. What’s their secret? “I think we keep each other honest,” says Baynton. “There are certainly heated debates.”

Heated’s too strong a word, says Howick. “We only really fight for our opinion, we never fight each other.” On the rare occasion that there isn’t unanimity about a particular topic, there might be a locking of horns and a democratic vote, but real arguments don’t happen. “There’s no animosity or jealousy with each other’s independent careers,” he explains. “We are our most important project. We have no desire to work each other up. We’re all genuinely fond of each other.”

That much is clear watching them interact. The online BBC press launch for series two was punctuated by the group making each other laugh. Silly voices. Running jokes. At one point, to the absolutely delight of his colleagues, Simon Farnaby’s crotch moved unavoidably front and centre as he stood up in front of his webcam to adjust a window blind. The rapport is real. 

Indeed, during UK lockdown, say Baynton and Howick, the group’s regular Zoom calls drafting Ghosts series three were a godsend. Aside from the boon of having regular work when so much of their industry was in uncertainty, being able to see friends for three hours on a Wednesday evening kept them sane. 

“It’s been a tonic in an otherwise relatively difficult and quite miserable time to have been able to jump on Zoom and make each other laugh with ideas for these characters that we love,” says Baynton. Entertainingly, when the group splits off into writing pairs, each does impressions of the absent characters while drafting dialogue. “It’s funny,” remarks Howick. ‘When we come together as a six, if we’re trying to pitch a positive idea, it’s usually done in a [segues into the regional accent of his upbeat character] Pat voice. Or if it’s a melodramatic idea or if it’s over-the-top, it might be a [Baynton’s Romantic poet character] Thomas voice.” 

Via video chat, it took a little longer for the group’s writing wheels to start turning. Ordinarily a new series would start with two weeks of the gang together in the same room. Stretching that to months of three-hour Zoom calls, fitted in amongst home schooling for the parents among them, was an adjustment. “The energy that you would bring to a room at 10 o’clock in the morning in an office wasn’t there,” says Howick. “You’d have to try and generate this feeling even though everyone was exhausted.”

Howick found himself seeking out frivolity to reach the right frame of mind. He played videogames. “If I sat and thought too hard about what was going on outside my door, it would make me really sad, and so in order to keep a vital part of me going, in order to meet with Mat and the others every Wednesday and keep that bright demeanour, it was good to do that.” The writing momentum started to return with the ease of lockdown, says Baynton. “The simple mental health-saving fact of being able to meet up with family in a garden helped a lot.” 

Read more

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Trying to write comedy against a such a serious backdrop of world events also felt uncomfortable, says Baynton. “You feel like it’s almost… immoral is too strong a word, but when there are nurses and doctors and teachers and crucially important people doing the work they do… It felt like an elephant in the room to be tap tap tapping away at a story about another day at Button House and what the ghosts are up to.”

It helped to know how warmly Ghosts series one had been received by its many fans. “What’s touching is when we do get messages from fans who say how much the show means to them. I know how important comedy has been to me in my life, so if we can be that to other people, it doesn’t feel completely frivolous.”

Ghosts, with its colourful selection box of characters (there’s a caveman, a headless Elizabethan, a 17th century witch, an excitable Regency woman-child, an Edwardian snob, a WWII captain, a 1980s scout leader and a 1990s Tory politician) may look frivolous, but series one had moments of real pathos. Baynton is proud of the fact that the series doesn’t shy away from the bleaker side of its ‘dead people’ premise. “If you really interrogate the truth of it – these are people who lived, people who died, people who loved or were thwarted or killed or suffered injustices or never got to love the person that they admired…”

The original idea was for a much bigger cast of ghosts, with everybody playing multiple parts, Horrible Histories-style. It quickly became clear that the story needed to home in on a small ensemble, giving the gang what Howick calls “its own silhouette”. Had they stuck with the original plan, “It would have been like The Muppet Show,” he says. “Every week would only have scratched the surface.” Too many ghost characters would have diminished the show’s emerging premise, says Baynton, which is about “being stuck forever in a tedious and endlessly repetitive existence.”

A bit like lockdown, we joke. Exactly, says Baynton. 

“We talk about this a lot. The way I see it is that their situation is just the same as a living person’s: they’re stuck, they’re in an existence they didn’t ask for, they don’t know why they’re there or what happens next. They know that there is a next ‘thing’ but whether they go to heaven, or hell, or something else, they don’t know. They’re just the same as people on earth.”

Howick agrees, “Their existence is very mortal in that respect.” 

Writing about the afterlife, a sense of existential metaphor is unavoidable, says Baynton. “There is something deeply relatable about it, which is where sitcom will always thrive. You can’t really fail to connect with a story about a person who doesn’t know what to do with their time or who feels stuck. Regardless of class or job or circumstance, that is all of us.”

If the ghost characters are all of us, they’re also peculiar to their time period. The collision and unexpected blending of different social contexts is where much of the series’ comedy comes from. Howick compares the composition of the group to Blackadder Goes Forth, which kept “ranks of characters from different classes stuck together in a hell hole, cheating death every single week.” 

The source of much of the comedy is thwarted status, says Baynton, “It’s the stuff of Alan Partridge and Hyacinth Bucket and Basil Fawlty… people who see themselves a certain way but who aren’t that way to the audience. Every single one of the ghosts is that to some extent. Anything that gave you status in life, you’re robbed of the second you die, so that’s already pretty funny in the sense of a captain who can’t lead, a wealthy woman who has no wealth, a politician who is not recognised as an authority, a poet who can’t pick up a pen, a Scoutmaster with no kids…”

“Not Scoutmaster!” interrupts Howick. “Adventure Club leader!” Before series one aired, they were instructed not to use the “Scouts” organisation name in scripts. “That was before they knew who Pat was going to be,” says Howick. Pat, for info, is a sweetie, and the Scouts should be proud to have him. He’s also a vibrant dancer, as series two, episode two shows. 

“There’s a lot of dancing this series” says Howick. “Without giving too much away, there’s dancing in the last episode. I think Thomas’ best dance is at the end.”

Fans can expect more playfulness with series two. Now that the characters are established and the tone has been taken to heart, the team could afford to experiment a little more. “With series two, because the audience hopefully are with us at this point, we can throw different curveballs,” says Baynton.

“In that way that The Simpsons or those long-running American things, you can suddenly do one in black and white, as if it’s a Hitchcock thing. We’ve definitely had fun. There’s an episode later in the second series which is a format of its own. We’re thinking about those things for series three, being free to be really playful with it.”

There’s a Christmas special episode to come, “the last one ever to be filmed!” joked Farnaby at the press launch. The timing on series two’s filming was especially jammy, with only one day lost to the UK TV and film industry shutdown in March. They made the decision not to use supporting artists in the last scenes filmed, set in a Medieval plague village. The irony of having to tell actors they couldn’t come and play plague victims because there was an actual plague wasn’t lost on them, says Baynton.

Thomas gets a gun in series two, they tease, and we’ll find out how he met his end. “The burning question for fans of the show is how the characters died, and you will find out some in each series,” says Baynton. “There are some we’re holding onto for as long as we possibly can, but rest assured, they’re coming!” 

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Ghosts series 2 starts on BBC One at 8.30pm, with all six episodes available to stream afterwards on BBC iPlayer. 

The post Ghosts Series 2: ‘They’re stuck in an existence they didn’t ask for… like all of us’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[sixidiotsdavidtennantfan]

Still just in time for Willbond Wednesday!

[sixidiotsdavidtennantfan]

Happy Willbond Wednesday

This man has my whole heart 💜

[theniftycat]

1. 3. 5. 7. 17

1. who is your celebrity crush?

see, everyone expects to catch me crushing on Ben Willbond, but you won’t see it!!! the thing is that I have this great habit of seeing somebody with a glorious moustache being a gay and a nerd and going “me.” even though I don’t have a moustache myself, somewhere deep inside it’s always in my heart.

yeah, I’ve already answered the question and said I don’t have a crush. but I astral project onto the Captain every day of the week.

3. rant. just do it.

idk, mate, I’m just having such a week. uneventful as it goes, but so long and weird and packed with stuff.

my brother left last Friday and this Wednesday my mum went on her 2 week hospital shift. I live just with my dad, our dog and my cat. and my dad is chill, but he constantly needs approval and feedback. he hates using tthe dishwasher and then complains about having to wash the dishes. or like, he makes a big deal out of laundry. it’s all not a major issue, but it is what it is.

on like Tuesday or whatever I got a letter telling me I didn’t get the job I applied for in early September. they loved my interview and the finished test task I did, but then they didn’t want to hire me for the full time job (I guess, because I’m disabled) and told me to wait. And I waited for almost two months to get a no. it actually didn’t bother me that much, but today my brother told me that I should apply for another vacancy. I won’t and I don’t want to atm as I am at a pretty good place mentally and activities-wise, but it did get to me in a way. hell yeah, being the all-As aspirational sibling at school sucks. because now I’m just a failure in his eyes. after a while people will get used to seeing me as a stay-in-home weirdo, I hope.

now, none of these things are bad, it’s just life. but at the same time my feelings aren’t invalid or anything. I just needed to type it all out, I guess.

5. how many accounts do you have?

on tumblr it’s 8. I used some of them for rps, others were supposed to be side blogs, but I’m not good at maintaining them, lol.

17. google the top song from the year you were born

Wikipedia says:

The three longest running number-one singles of 1990 are "Nothing Compares 2 U" by Sinéad O'Connor, "Vision of Love" by Mariah Carey, and "Because I Love You (The Postman Song)" by Stevie B, which each attained four weeks at the top of the chart.

and it’s pretty rad. all of them are sad af, lol. the only one I’d heard before is Nothing Compares 2 U. I used to be a huge Sinead O’Connor fan 10 years ago and I still love her.

[not-morgendorffer]

[aion-rsa]

The Ghosts Christmas Special Will Warm The Very Cockles Of Your Heart

https://ift.tt/39sUkKn

Kiell Smith-Bynoe isn’t much of a Christmas person. “I don’t like the whole build-up and I despise the idea of people putting up their Christmas trees on the 1st of November. I’m horribly against it!” he tells Den of Geek over the phone. “If that makes some people happy then fine, but no, I’m not really a Christmas guy at all.”

That didn’t stop him from feeling a touch of the Christmas spirit when filming the Ghosts special in February this year. “That actually felt very festive. It really had that Christmas feel. As well as the decorations, they added in some scents that made the set smell really Christmassy.” Even the most tinsel-averse can be turned by a cinnamon and gingerbread candle.

It won’t have just been about the fragrance. The Ghosts Christmas special, which follows the goings-on in a haunted manor house populated by a gang of comedy spectres from across the centuries, is evocative of Christmas in so many ways. The frenzied dinner preparations, the family bickering, everybody wanting to follow their own personal tradition… and the warmth of celebrating together. In a year where many of us won’t be able to bundle under the same roof, it’s a soothing reminder of what usually makes this time of year special.

Smith-Bynoe plays Mike, one of two living leads who, along with his wife Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) inherited the ghosts along with Button House. Only Alison is able to see and hear their housemates, while Mike has to rely on her explanations of who they are and what they’re doing. He also uses his imagination, which is what’s led him to wrongly believe the ghosts are all floating around in the air and not – as they are – walking on the ground. “That was something I added in when we started, I don’t know if Tom [Kingsley, director] actually found it funny or was more just resigned to it. Like, ‘Oh, he’s doing that thing, we’ll just let him’. They eventually started writing it in.”

Just how funny Smith-Bynoe was simply reacting to thin air was a pleasant surprise for the show’s creators, who moulded the role around him, particularly in a couple of Mike-centric stories in series two. Stand-out episode ‘Bump in the Night’ found Mike alone with the ghosts, trying to fend off a couple of burglars. It’s Smith-Bynoe’s favourite episode so far. “I’d had a lot of practice at ignoring the ghosts, but usually Alison was around to navigate that conversation to make it a bit easier for Mike. This time, she wasn’t there at all. I watched that episode just beaming all the way through because I was enjoying it so much, I really loved filming that.” 

One aspect he didn’t much love was the moment that Mike, in his attempt to scare away the burglars, dons a suit of armour. Of all the costumes Smith-Bynoe has worn in his career, that was the worst. “I’ve worn bulletproof vest, a fat suit. I’ve been a camel! Nothing was as heavy as that. It was really quite uncomfortable and cold, especially when Mike falls down on the floor and I just had to lay there in this metal thing wriggling around.”

Another Mike highlight from series two came in series two’s ‘Redding Weddy’, when, after reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Martha Howe-Douglas’s uptight Edwardian snob Lady Button found herself flustered by Mike’s masculine energy. Smith-Bynoe laughs remembering. “Me and Martha get on really well and that was so much fun to do. My Diet Coke ad that was changed into a generic cola ad for copyright purposes! The water in the fountain at the end was freezing cold – apparently for some reason it had to be – I still don’t get that.”

If Mike could see and hear the ghosts, Smith-Bynoe thinks he’d get on well with Pat, Jim Howick’s upbeat 1980s scoutmaster killed accidentally by a stray arrow on an archery away day. “They’re both chilled, laidback, pretty happy-go-lucky guys. Mary too [Katy Wix’s 17th century witch, burned at the stake], I think Mary’s quite low maintenance in a similar way to Mike.” One ghost he definitely wouldn’t get along with is Thomas (Mat Baynton), a 19th century Romantic poet who’s forever trying to steal his wife away from him. “Big time tension! I don’t even know if Mike knows that Thomas is in love with Alison…”

Read more

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It’s bound to come up in a future series. The series three scripts were pretty much finished in mid-November, he was told by co-creator Ben Willbond. “I think we’re starting in March or April next year, but I think most of the scripts are done.” In terms of his hopes for the new episodes, “I’m sure there are a few more backstories for the ghosts that we haven’t seen yet…” 

The Christmas Special delves into the personal life of Simon Farnaby’s 1990s Tory MP with a Scrooge-tinged storyline. Julian Fawcett is forced to re-evaluate what Christmas is really all about when Mike’s family comes to stay at Button House. 

“It’s a great new dynamic for Mike. His family treat him the same way they would have when he was at home, despite the fact that he’s now a grown-up who’s responsible for a massive house, with a wife of his own and his own other family in the ghosts. But he’s still treated like the baby, and he reverts back. Mike’s quite a go-with-the-flow guy, we’ve never seen him have a tantrum or a meltdown before now.” 

Mike’s meltdown is provoked by an overstuffed Christmas whiteboard agenda detailing a mammoth list of tasks. Does the actor take a similar approach? What would be on Kiell Smith-Bynoe’s Christmas whiteboard?

“There would be one thing and one thing only and it would be: eat. Usually, Christmas is me and my aunts and my mum and all my cousins – just me and all the girls – and we have a lovely time eating a massive dinner. We sit on the kids’ table, even though we’re all 31 years old. There’s probably about five meats. We get macaroni cheese in there, we’ve got parsnips going, pigs in blankets, sweet potato. It’s getting me hungry thinking about it!”

After all the eating, there might be a bit of film-watching. “Last year we ended up watching a terrible film. It was with Danny Glover, it was on Netflix and it was basically Home Alone but set in a school. [Ed – Christmas Break-In.] It was very very bad. The year before that we watched Bird Box, which was great. 

“Do you know what I used to love? Robbie the Reindeer. Get that back on the TV! That was a fantastic bit of television. We’ll watch EastEnders too even though I haven’t watched it all year and I don’t have a clue who any of the people are.” 

Whatever happens in this year’s EastEnders Christmas misery-special, there’s bound to be at least call to 999. Smith-Bynoe’s next roles include a paramedic in upcoming Sky comedy Bloods and a police officer in another comedy. “I’ve completed two of three of the emergency services, I just need a job on London’s Burning and I’ll be done, then I can retire!”

Before he does that, he has a self-written comedy in development, and the third series of acclaimed Channel 4 comedy Stath Lets Flats, which is pencilled in to film in summer 2021.  Smith-Bynoe plays reluctant estate agent Dean, the grumpiest member of Michael and Eagle Lettings. “Where we finished series two, our boss has just died! Oops, spoiler! So I don’t know what’s next for Michael and Eagle. Looking at the chain of command, I’d say that Carol [Katy Wix] would be in charge but of course, she’s pregnant now. The nightmare for Dean would be if he had to become the manager…” 

He’s keen to see the American remake of Ghosts, which is in development starring iZombie’s Rose McIver and Pitch Perfect’s Utkarsh Ambudkar as the US equivalents of Alison and Mike. “I hope it’s good as ours,” he says, “but not better. What I’d really love though, is for our one to be a big success over there and everyone just to love” he laughs “…me!”

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The Ghosts Christmas Special airs on Wednesday the 23rd of December on BBC One at 8.30pm.

The post The Ghosts Christmas Special Will Warm The Very Cockles Of Your Heart appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[lifedistractions]

Guilty as Sin