Row of cinema seats

A Bishop is Born

Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper, 2025)

I saw John Bishop a few times at the Carbuncle — when he didn’t have to postpone for TV double bookings — and he was fine, if not in my top ten lives comedians. There was a backstory even then — he had abandoned some kind of sales job for another role on the road. The deeper story is that he had become estranged from his wife, inadvertantly did a comedy open mic in Manchester and realised he was good at it. One night, his soon to be ex-wife was in the audience and was someone shocked — but like what she saw and they were reconciled.

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Row of cinema seats

I Feel Sorry For Joe Alwyn

Hamnet (Chloé Zhao, 2025)

Hamlet (Aneil Keira, 2025)

I guess I confess to having not read the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, so I don’t know why of the clumsinesses are Hollywood additions. Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley) is the stuck at home wife in the 1590s, whilst hubby William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) is gallivanting around Shoreditch and the South Bank. All she has to look forward to is childrearing and his second-best bed.

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