Can anything top the success of Succession after the final series of the hit drama romped home in triumph, sweeping up awards at the Golden Globes and Emmys this month.
Now the British writer of the show, Jesse Armstrong, has landed a megabucks deal to come up with a new idea for HBO.
Armstrong has three or four thoughts in mind, but sadly for the show’s millions of fans it won’t be a Succession spin-off — so no more Tom Wambsgans and Cousin Greg (pictured). Sniff!
Armstrong, 53, was approaching the $1 million per episode level for the final series, and it is thought his new deal will be even more lucrative.
Succession was written by a small team in offices near Brixton Tube station. Armstrong would request that the heating was kept to an exact figure as apparently there is a correct temperature for creating comedy.
He lives in a terraced house in South-East London with his wife Millie, who works for the NHS, and their two children. Before Succession, he helped create Peep Show and The Thick Of It. This week, he donated £25,000 to Greenpeace, which is battling an intimidation lawsuit from oil giant Shell.
Matthew Macfadyen as Tom Wambsgans, left, and Nicholas Braun as Greg Hirsch in a scene from the series Succession, written by Jesse Armstrong
Armstrong, 53, was approaching the $1 million per episode level for the final series of Succession, and it is thought his new deal will be even more lucrative
Jesse Armstrong attends HBO’s post-Emmy reception at San Vicente Bungalows on January 15 in Hollywood
Riley Keough puts her Bigfoot forward in full costume
A touch of the absurd: Riley Keough
Riley Keough has gone from playing a pop icon in Daisy Jones & The Six to simulating sex with a dustbin while dressed in a Bigfoot costume.
Keough, 34, stars in a new absurdist comedy, Sasquatch Sunset, and wears a full Bigfoot costume throughout — including prosthetics to give her simian features. The film, which also stars Jesse Eisenberg, tells the story of a family of Bigfoots.
There is no dialogue or narration but a lot of action not for the squeamish, including masturbation, childbirth, vomiting and, yes, Bigfoot sex. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, last week to mixed reviews. One critic called it: ‘The kind of movie you need to see to believe.’
Director David Zellner said that he had worked with primatologists and anthropologists to prepare for the project and added: ‘Everything in this film is 100 pc authentic to how Sasquatches are in real life — even the weird stuff. Just trust us.’
Zellner revealed that they had used a trash can as a stand-in when rehearsing the Bigfoot sex scenes. Keough, who was in Park City to attend the premiere, said: ‘The costumes were really hard to move in. Jesse and I complained the whole time.’
The actress, who is the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, attended the Golden Globes and Emmys last week after nominations for Daisy Jones, but came away empty-handed.
She walked the red carpet at the Emmys with her grandmother, Priscilla, just over a year after the death of Keough’s mother, Lisa-Marie.
Kerry Godliman, brilliant as the wife in After Life, returns to Trigger Point as Intelligence officer Sonya Reeves in the second series of the ITV drama, starting on Sunday. She says her teenage children don’t often watch her on screen as they prefer Squid Game.
13 reasons why Oscars at last come calling for Nolan
Christopher Nolan, who already has a CBE for services to film, will be picking up more awards ahead of his Oscars run this spring.
Nolan, 53, is to be given a BFI Fellowship, its highest honour, on February 14, shortly before the Baftas (on the 18th) at which Oppenheimer is up for 13 awards, including Best Film and Best Director, and fancied to take both those biggies.
He will then hop across the channel to collect an honorary Cesar — the French equivalent of a Bafta — in Paris, before returning to LA, where he lives, for the Oscars on March 10. Nolan has yet to win a Bafta or an Oscar, but it seems a safe bet that this is about to change.
Congratulations, too, to Shropshire lad Jos Dent-Pooley, who studied music at Cambridge and has just landed an Oscar nomination for best Original Score for Poor Things — the first film score he has ever written.
Dent-Pooley, 28, who works under the moniker Jerskin Fendrix, was picked for the gig by Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, who loved his 2020 album of experimental pop music.
Hopefuls: Christopher Nolan, left, and Shropshire lad Jos Dent-Pooley
He’s up against the late Robbie Robertson, for Killers Of The Flower Moon, and beloved veteran John Williams, who scored Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny.
Williams is, at 91, the oldest person ever nominated for an Oscar; and this is his 54th nomination — also a record for a living person. Walt Disney holds the all-time record with 59.
Completing the category are Laura Karpman for American Fiction and Ludwig Goransson for Oppenheimer.
Off The Fence magazine says it has been hearing ‘a number of truly wonderful anecdotes’ about Tom Hiddleston, best known for The Night Manager, playing Loki in the Marvel Universe and being Taylor Swift’s best-forgotten former boyfriend in the Taylor-verse.The mag says: ‘The actor was at a smart wedding, deep in the English countryside, and at the end of the night tried to cadge a taxi with the immortal line: “Would it help if I told you I was Tom Hiddleston?”‘
New twist in Cruel Adoption tale of three identical Strangers
Channel 4 is following the smash hit documentary Three Identical Strangers — about triplets separated by an adoption agency as babies, growing up unaware of each other’s existence until fate intervened — by telling the story of unsuspecting female twins, given the same treatment by the same agency.
The Secret Of Me will be a documentary feature film directed by Grace Hughes-Hallett, who also produced Three Identical Strangers for Netflix.James Rogan (creative director at Rogan Productions), and Rogan Scotland, who are making the film, described the story as a ‘shocking and moving’ tale of a medical scandal.
The story behind Three Identical Strangers first came to light in 1980, when three young men discovered by chance, at the age of 19, that they were identical triplets. Their reunion made headlines around the world.
Reunited: The original triplets, Eddy, David and Bobby in the 1980s
Soon after, it became clear there were more cases of ‘multiples’ who had been split up. All had been placed in homes in the 1960s by the Louise Wise adoption agency in New York.
It transpired that at least ten sets of infant twins or triplets had been separated and placed in separate families, with the agency partnering with a group of psychiatrists and psychologists to study what happened next — without the knowledge of the families or the children involved.
Novelist Jilly Cooper had Aidan Turner and David Tennant over for a private Riders party at her Cotswolds house during the filming of the forthcoming TV show — based on her bestselling bonkbuster — last summer.
Cooper, 86, said of the cast: ‘They all fell in love with Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds completely.’
She added: ‘David Tennant is heaven, Aidan Turner is heaven, they are all heaven! And the most miraculous thing? A massive cast who all adore each other.’ The eight-part show about the amorous adventures of a bunch of libidinous horsemen and women — including her great fictional creation Rupert Campbell-Black — will come out on Disney+ later this year.
Former Miss Moneypenny, Samantha Bond
Former Miss Moneypenny, Samantha Bond (right), skinny-dips her way through her new Miss Marple-esque TV thriller The Marlow Murder Club — but says she hates wild swimming in real life.
Bond, 62, said: ‘I actually found swimming in a big river like The Thames, for The Marlow Murder Club, quite frightening — less so in some of the tributaries of The Thames that we used — and I’m not about to take it up as a hobby. My husband, Alexander, swims in The Thames and absolutely loves it; but I don’t go with him.’
Samantha plays archaeologist-turned-sleuth Judith Potts in the show which arrives on UKTV channel Drama in March. The two-part thriller has been created by Robert Thorogood, the man behind global hit Death In Paradise.