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“If you want to make a TV drama about opium smokers, sadomasochists and imperial slavery in the 19th century, then write your own,” whines The Daily Mail‘s Peter Hitchens about Steven Knight’s new Great Expectations adaptation, presumably forgetting that in 2017, Knight did exactly that in 8-part Gothic Regency thriller Taboo.

Knight’s previous series starring Tom Hardy, bleeds into his take on Charles Dickens’ class and snobbery novel, which loses the comedy and grimes up the characters with the addition of adult content. Great Expectations returns to Knight’s constant theme of social mobility, moving away from ones roots, and the upper classes being mad, evil bastards, as explored in six series of Peaky Blinders.

Here’s the impressive cast amassed for this six-part drama.

Olivia Colman as Miss Havisham

Nobody needs an introduction to Olivia Colman, she’s been firmly in national treasure territory for years now,...

Matthew Perry has said he “begged” Friends producers to get rid of a signature Chandler characteristic.

The actor – who played Chandler Bing in the 10-season comedy series – made a number of revelations about his time on the show in his memoir, titled Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.

Reflecting on his time starring in the series, which ran from 1994 to 2004, Perry said he was annoyed with his character’s signature intonation and wanted to change Chandler’s voice.

In an excerpt published by Variety, he wrote that he “had to beg the producers” to stop writing his lines this way.

Riffing on his character’s catchphrase, Perry wrote: “That particular cadence – could it be more annoying? – had been so played out that if I had to put the emphasis in the wrong place one more time, I thought I’d explode, so I just went back to saying lines normally,...

Tony Blackburn has joked that Matt Hancock might be taking part in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! to pay for “the soaring cost of his electricity bill”.

On Tuesday (1 November), it was reported that the former health secretary will be jetting off to Australia and joining the ITV reality TV series as a “bombshell” contestant alongside comedian Seann Walsh.

The news was then confirmed as Hancock was stripped of the Tory whip with immediate effect, with Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson saying that “the Pm believes that at a challenging time for the country, MPs should be working hard for their constituents in the House or in their constituencies”.

Appearing on Radio 4’s World at One on Tuesday, radio DJ Blackburn – who won the first series of I’m A Celebrity in 2002 – echoed the prime minister’s point.

“Well, I find it a very strange choice in...

Matthew Perry has branded conservative broadcaster Peter Hitchens a “complete tool” after the pair debated drug reform on Newsnight in 2013.

The Friends star discusses the topic in his memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, in which he writes frankly about his struggles with drug addiction over the years.

Perry used his platform to advocate for the introduction of drug courts, which aim to decriminalise non-violent addicts and offer them treatment instead of a prison sentence.

In 2013, Perry was asked to debate the topic on the BBC programme Newsnight, which he recalled being moderated by “a cranky guy called Jeremy Paxman who was famous for being rude to guests”.

The other panellists were Baroness Meacher, an advocate for drug policy reform, and “a complete tool called Peter Hitchens”.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a sibling whom everyone adores when you’re the idiot brother everyone loathes,...

In further evidence that the UK has had a very unusual media week, two high-profile British TV presenters have been forced to defend themselves, after receiving a huge backlash from other mourners and commentators on social media for appearing to jump the queue at Queen Elizabeth II’s lying in state.

The queue has become historically long in the last week, with thousands waiting up to 24 hours to file past the Queen’s coffin in Westminster Hall and pay their respects to the late monarch.

Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, who co-present ITV’s daytime show This Morning and are very familiar faces to fans, visited Westminster Hall on Friday – at a time when the queue to get in was temporarily paused, due to over-capacity.

Critics were swift to point out that the pair had allegedly queue-jumped, which in recent days has become a heinous action, with the queue for...

The Death of Stalin film makes light of an intensely serious moment in history, writes Peter Hitchens

Peter Bradshaw (Notebook, 26 October) says the new film The Death of Stalin is not knockabout comedy, but a satire. Oh. What exactly is it satirising? As far as I know, this is the first time a mass-market film has dealt with this event.

We may be saturated with serious drama and documentary material on the Nazis and the end of Hitler, but the equivalent evils of the Stalin nightmare have not received anything like the same treatment. For most who see the film, it will be the first time they have ever heard of these strange events. And what do they see? An intensely serious moment in human history played for laughs, with extra lavatory humour and plentiful use of the failed comedian’s standby, the F-word.

Continue reading...

The ridiculous styles immortalised in American Hustle are a cause for laughter now, but we must remember that a major part of fashion is about having fun

Having just seen American Hustle, I feel compelled to ask, did people actually dress like that in 1978?

Jon, by email

Sure they did. Just as people in the 90s dressed like characters in Clueless and people in the 21st century dress like characters in a Wes Anderson film. This is simply a scientific fact.

But these incontrovertible truths aside, it is interesting to note that while people often rib films for being hilariously bad at predicting the future (you've got one year to get a hoverboard out, Back to the Future Part II – one year!), they are often even worse at depicting the past. Sure, movies should be fun and a great deal of the fun – indeed, I would go so far as...

Matthew Perry is engaged in a war with a British journalist ... a war that has no end in sight -- and it's all over how the U.K. treats drug and alcohol addicts. Perry was at Lax yesterday when we brought up his fiery exchange with Peter Hitchens on BBC's "Newsnight" ... in which Hitchens (who believes in stronger punishments for drug users) argued that addiction is nothing more than a "fantasy."During the show, Hitchens...

Matthew Perry made a surprise appearance on Newsnight on Monday (December 16) and took part in a heated discussion.

The Friends star sat with host Jeremy Paxman to debate drug addiction and drug courts, alongside author Peter Hitchens and the House of Lords' Baroness Meacher. Watch the video below:

Perry, who has been treated in the past for addiction to Vicodin and alcohol, is a supporter of drug courts in the United States.

Asked by Paxman why he has faith in drug courts, Perry said: "I see that they work. I've been involved with them for a little over four years and people that go through drug courts have a 55% less chance of seeing handcuffs ever again."

Hitchens, however, claimed that Perry and Baroness Meacher believed in a "fantasy of addiction", and called for a "stern and effective criminal justice system which persuaded [victims] it was unwise to take drugs in...

The Us war on drugs has cost one trillion dollars and resulted in 45m arrests. And yet nothing has changed, argues film-maker Eugene Jarecki, a polemical campaigner to reform America's drugs laws. So what did the prisoners in a New York jail think when he showed them his documentary?

Once consigned to the fringes of libertarianism, the argument for the legalisation of drugs has received an unlikely boost in America in recent months with the release of a documentary entitled The House I Live In. Coinciding with the decision by the states of Colorado and Washington to legalise marijuana, the film won the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance film festival last year and has arrived at a moment when Americans are beginning to reconsider the efficacy of their nation's drug policy.

Packed with facts, stories and polemics, the film traces the history of America's changing attitudes to drugs and...

His self-destructive urges have more than once threatened to completely derail his career – but the comedian turned Hollywood star says he has never been more focused and driven

"What's your life like?" Without waiting for an answer, Russell Brand channels the monotone certainties of a fairground psychic and hazards a guess. "South London, no proper boyfriend-y person at the moment – difficulty with relationships, I think, cos you're an interesting combination of sort of strong, and then I think you get a bit groundless. That's my guess about you. I bet you've got good sexual energy, probably not too difficult to bring about an orgasm in the right hands. Relatively satisfied with your work, but beginning to have an inkling that there could be some unfulfilled project, something that you could write that would be brilliant but you've not got round to yet. Curious, probably, about spirituality, but not entirely committed yet.

Literature likes to see sons as murderous rivals, but those who rediscover love for each other find it the most fulfilling of bonds

The notion of brotherly love has offered us mixed messages in the past few days. There were two heartwarming stories of reunions – one of the gorillas Kesho and Alf being reunited at Longleat after three years apart, and the other of two American brothers, Ed Muir and Kenneth Corcoran, brought together after being separated for 80 years.

Both the gorillas and the octogenarians were overjoyed to see one another again. On the other hand, the Gallagher brothers have been at each other's throats once more, with Noel mocking Liam's band Beady Eye as an "Oasis tribute band" after they covered Wonderwall at the Olympic closing ceremony. The two are in litigation and have barely spoken since Oasis broke up in 2009.

These three pairs of brothers represent two poles...

You thought it was innocent family entertainment? Wrong. Danny Boyle's political production would have made Joan Littlewood and the leftwing Theatre Workshop proud

During the era of agitprop theatre in the 1960s and 70s, when politically committed companies toured the UK, there was usually a rule that the show would not go on if there was a risk of having more people on stage than in the audience. And even with the hallucinogenic substances that were part of the scene at the time, no one would have imagined that a passionately leftwing theatre show would one day play to an audience of one billion and have a budget of £27m to spend.

But, last Friday night and Saturday morning, that is exactly what happened. Among the spectacular achievements of the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony was that it marked the apotheosis of a dramatic tradition that had previously been marginalised in this country.

This morning I was glancing around the internet as usual looking for some inspiration and instead I found a whole heap of stupid. It’s the kind of stupid you don’t expect to find when perusing the broadsheets, it’s the kind of Peter Hitchens starey-eyed, brains to the wall, life threatening thickness that makes you wonder how these people remember to breathe.

What I’m essentially trying to convey here is my amazement at the story printed in The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday about people demanding refunds for The Artist. Why? Because there was no dialogue or colour and the picture was a bit smaller than usual and no one gets decapitated by a big muscular man as he carts around a woman dressed only in a pair of breasts. I’m ever so slightly appalled.

The story harks back to last October when outraged morons went into...

I am a Christian minister who dislikes Narnia, but I think media attacks on the Voyage of the Dawn Treader film are over the top

Is the new Narnia movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, tantamount to Christian propaganda? Or is it an affront to the faithful, its makers so irreligious and "stupid" that they have destroyed the Christian thinking behind the books?

Both, if recent press reaction is to be believed. The Guardian's own Andrew Pulver noted "the sledgehammer moral lessons with nakedly religious overtones" found in "the godlike burbling of Liam Neeson, the voice of Aslan", whenever "the lion has to deliver one of his homilies".

On the flip side, Neeson remarked in a press conference last week that, in addition to Aslan's Christ-like qualities, he finds elements of "Muhammad, Buddha, all the great, great prophets and spiritual leaders that we've had over the centuries". The comment...

Given my Dagenham background - I went to school there and started my journalistic career there and still play cricket there once a year - it was natural that I should go to see the new movie Made in Dagenham.

It's about the 1968 strike by female sewing machinists at Ford's that led directly to the passing of the Equal Pay Act two years later.

I left the Barking & Dagenham Advertiser in 1967, so I wasn't a witness to the dispute, but I covered almost every strike - all by men, of course - in the previous three-and-a-half years.

So I soon spotted the film's flaws. The women it portrayed were too young and too pretty.

They may have used bad language, but not as casually as suggested, and the f-word was certainly not in common use among women of that generation at that time. (A letter-writer to yesterday's Daily Mail, former Dagenham resident Jacquee Storozynski-Toll,...

Our daily Haycasts - podcasts from the festival site - were the highlight of our coverage of last year's Guardian Hay festival. This year, we're heading back to Wales to bring you more of the same - but this time we'd like to hear your questions for the authors we're interviewing

Here's our full list of interviewees:

Joss Ackland

Simon Armitage

Antony Beevor

Helen Dunmore

Ranulph Fiennes

Rick Gekoski

Roy Hattersley

Charlie Higson

Peter Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens

Kazuo Ishiguro

James Lovelock

Henning Mankell

David Mitchell

Ben Okri

Yotam Ottolenghi

Mal Peet

Kjartan Poskitt

David Remnick

Sue Townsend

Robert Winston

Once we're at the festival, we'll blog and tweet every morning asking for your questions for the authors we're speaking to on the day day, but if you can't wait until then, please email your questions to books.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk. We hope to include one audience question per interview,...