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Netflix comes up with a new trick every time its position at the top is threatened by factors beyond its control – like F1 dropping Daniel Ricciardo in the middle of the 2024 Grand Prix season. Considering how the Aussie has been the fan-favorite in Drive to Survive and the show’s de facto protagonist, it was understandable for Netflix to begin scouring the field for its next star.

Daniel Ricciardo films his final episode of Drive to Survive Season 7 [Credit: Netflix]

However, Season 7 brings many surprises – in good ways and bad. Multiple new drivers and team principals have entered the grid, making Drive to Survive‘s latest season seem like a badly recast show with new faces filling in for the old favorites. The new players are also deemed an interesting project for Netflix as they get categorized as heroes and villains from the get-go.

3 Drive to Survive characters to root for in...

Welcome to the latest instalment of a brand-new feature here on Nerdly, where one of our comic gurus, Ian Wells, delves into comics history and dissects Comics Interview, the long-running journal of interviews and criticism from David Anthony Kraft.

A Yak with Dak

Dak uses the Upfront space to plug alternative/independent comics, whilst also going out of his way to say Comics Interview strives to include them. Personally, I feel he is selling himself short in that regard. In the eight issues I have looked at so far, I feel the alternatives/indies have had decent representation. Look at #6 you had Berke Breathed talking Bloom County right alongside huge fanboy porn in the shape of Jla vs The Avengers! Comico was featured last time out, and the comics of First have been featured. It would be interesting to see how the early days of those two, their success and...

If you attended a UK primary school in the last 50 years, then the sight of two white, animated eyes on a black screen turning into the heart of the word ‘Look’ is likely to trigger all sorts of pink custard and plimsoll memories. Those moving eyes, shown on the big TV wheeled by teachers into classrooms every so often, signalled the start of an adventure.

The eyes were part of the Look and Read logo, a schools TV series designed to teach literacy, apostrophe usage and the joys of magic, magic E. The first Look And Read programme was 1967’s Bob And Carol Look For Treasure, a 10-part story about two kids’ clue-filled search for swag and eventual capture of a thief. The most recent, Shadow Play – about a young boy who discovers the diary of a Victorian girl – aired in 2004. In between were the likes of Geordie Racer, the...

National Children’s radio station Fun Kids is introducing listeners to Badger – a plucky pooch who becomes a war hero.

This heart-warming children’s radio drama, based on real events in WW2 is narrated by comedian and actor Kerry Godliman and will be heard every Friday at 4.30pm from 28th April 2023, as well as being available as a podcast.

The story is one of a boy’s life and survival in a war-torn Britain - alongside a four-legged friend who never loses hope.

Following the death of his mother, Jack latches on to an abandoned puppy brought home by his fireman father. He names her Badger; and the two become inseparable.

Caught in an air raid they seek shelter, leading to a chance encounter with former blues singer, Josie Deprice. With Badger in tow, the pair go in search of a Duchess – a real-life aristocrat with a mission: to save Britain’s pets.

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A fond look back at UK comedy drama Teachers, starring a pre-The Walking Dead and post-This Life Andrew Lincoln...

Fifteen years ago, Andrew Lincoln wasn’t the guy from The Walking Dead. He wasn’t even the creepy guy from Love Actually (the one with the signs. Not any of the other creepy guys). No, he was the guy from This Life that was getting a show all of his own in which to charm the viewing masses. That show was Teachers. And charm us he did.

Set in a secondary school in Bristol, Teachers was good enough to make us actually want to go back to school – or, for those of us who were still at school when it started, to wonder if some of the ridiculous rumours we were making up about the staff shagging each other might actually be true after all.

Review Jamie-Lee Nardone Jan 20, 2013

The Eighth Doctor, aka Paul McGann, tips up on Ripper Street this week. Here's Jamie-Lee's review...

This review contains spoilers.

1.4 The Good Of This City

Our bloody and brutal Ripper Street has made its way across the pond to BBC America, where it's been the subject of much hype and media attention. Matthew Macfadyen, who plays the lead role of Detective Inspector Reid, has been cited in the papers defending the gore and smut, while Jerome Flynn who plays his right-hand man, Detective Sergeant Drake, has come out with some prime material guaranteed to give the readers of middle-England a touch of the vapours: what was he up to for those lost eight years of his career between Badger and Tommy Cooper and before Game of Thrones and Ripper Street? Well, he was in a sort of religious cult, run by the son of the actor...

Review Jamie-Lee Nardone Dec 30, 2012

Dark, intense and adult, the first episode of BBC One's Ripper Street impresses Jamie-Lee...

This review contains spoilers.

1.8 I Need Light

After the turkey gluttony and epilepsy-inducing fairy light displays of Christmas, the BBC obviously thought that TV audiences would be after something less saccharine upon the approach of the New Year than the best of Downton Abbey or the Eastenders Omnibus. Flicking through the Radio Times, post-watershed telly on BBC One is a Quality Street tin full of TV – ranging from the highly sought after purple-wrapped fantastic period drama Restless starring Charlotte Rampling, Hayley Atwell and Rufus Sewell, followed by a less salubrious sickly strawberry cream Take That highlights tour show, to the bog-standard toffee penny with Mrs Brown’s Boys. The 9pm primetime Sunday spot this week sees the start of brand new eight-part mini-series, Ripper Street. But this is no Nestlé chocolate treat wrapped in shiny foil.