Netflix s saucy Regency romp Bridgerton showed its reach and confidence
Credit: NICK BRIGGS/NETFLIX
Netflix is about to get pricier. The streaming service is hiking its basic subscription to £9.99 from £8.99 per month while “premium” users – who pay extra for HD and multi-device streaming – will be paying £13.99 from £11.99. The increase prompted BBC Home Affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford to tweet: “Netflix is now more than the BBC licence and there is no radio, no live TV, no news online etc etc”.
The pushback from other social media users was swift and to the point. The BBC might be slightly cheaper – though not if you compare the license fee to Netflix’s bottom-tier subscription – but doesn’t come even close to offering the same value.
INTRO:
Hello and welcome to
Ask the Write Questions with Amanda Coe, a podcast from BBC Writersroom. If you haven t watched Black Narcissus, all episodes are available to view on BBC iPlayer now or there may be some spoilers. In this series we asked you to send in questions for the writer, abut their latest show and their writing career. We collated all your questions threw them in a bowl and we re going to ask the writer to choose them at random now, she s not sure what s coming next. Let s meet our writer Amanda Coe.
AMANDA INTRO
Hello. I m Amanda Coe, I wrote the screenplay of the recent BBC One adaptation of Black Narcissus. I have written various things, including last year s The Trial of Christine Keeler, the adaptation of Apple Tree Yard, a serial about The Bloomsbury Group called Life in Squares. Single biopics, including one of Mary Whitehouse and one of Margot Fonteyn and I also write novels. I ve written three published novels and a book of short stories and I m ver
It s time for Jennifer Lawrence to move over and Robert Downey Jr to take a bow- a bunch of emerging talents are about to hit the big time and become Hollywood s new power players.
With two years of blockbusters on the way and the streamers making bigger shows than ever, several actors are about to torpedo their way to the top of Tinseltown s A-list.
Excitingly, they include a number of Irish actors, including Jessie Buckley, who has several big projects coming up, Aisling Franciosi, to star with Sandra Bullock in a major new film for Netflix, and some young actor by the name of Paul Mescal.
He was expelled from boarding school at the age of 13.
Two years later, at the age of 15, he was sent to Borstal after repeatedly being caught stealing.
After going straight, he had several jobs in the 1970s, including a job as a stagehand from which he was sacked after joining Max Bygraves’ chorus line on stage naked.
Keith also worked as a stand-up comedian and vocalist, opening for rock bands such as The Clash.
He eventually found fame as a comedian, TV presenter and actor.
He played Hugo in the 1994 film Shallow Grave, and a drug dealer in the 1996 film Trainspotting.
“The Sisters left Darjeeling in the last week of October. They had come to settle in the General’s Palace at Mopu, which was now to be known as the Convent of St Faith.”
There is nothing in the innocent opening sentences of Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel Black Narcissus to suggest that the subsequent film version would be butchered by censors, banned, and eventually hailed as “one of the first truly erotic films” by one of the world’s great directors Martin Scorsese.
That movie was made by an English director and a Hungarian-born writer-producer: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The celebrated cinema partnership is revered for a series of groundbreaking and influential British films, of which Black Narcissus has become one of the best-loved. Now, there is a new adaptation, this time a joint BBC-FX production made for the small screen and starring Gemma Arterton and Aisling Franciosi.