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David Schwimmer is bringing a heavy dose of American arrogance across the pond in Peacock’s new UK import Intelligence — but did this goofy workplace comedy earn a full-time gig on your watchlist?

Schwimmer stars as brash Nsa agent Jerry Bernstein, who arrives in the UK to serve as a liaison with the British cyber crime division — a collection of geeky misfits including the eager-to-please Joseph (played by writer/creator Nick Mohammed), former hacker Tuva (Peaky Blinders‘ Gana Bayarsaikhan) and bedraggled cat lady Mary (Sally4Ever‘s Jane Stanness). Joseph spends his days snooping into Matthew McConaughey’s browsing history (“it’s lawn mowers,...

No matter your opinion of Ross Geller, the actor behind him is an objectively deft comic performer. David Schwimmer only got better during his decade-long, career-making time on “Friends,” and that we haven’t seen him starring in a half-hour comedy since 2004 speaks more to the artist’s varying interests than anything else (be it a collective dislike of the character forever tied to his image or a personal disinterest in the genre).

Enter “Intelligence,” Schwimmer’s return to TV comedy via NBCUniversal’s new streaming service, Peacock. It’s not exactly an orchestrated comeback. The six-episode first season was originally made for the U.K.’s Sky One and already aired overseas in February, making it less Schwimmer’s version of “Cougar Town” or “Mr. Sunshine” — big ticket broadcast series billed as the star’s return to network sitcoms — than a smaller series befitting the actor’s ever-widening focus.

Yes, we are inundated with streaming options.

Instead of the promise of all of our content being easier to navigate, not to mention less expensive, there is more to keep track of than ever before.

NBCUniversal's Peacock arrives to the public on Wednesday, July 15. Free for all with ads, to watch their originals, you'll need one of their premium plans. One has ads, and the other is ad-free.

We know services are always worth the additional cost for the ad-free versions. After all, with all the content available, time is essential.

But is one of the premium tiers worth the extra money?

Upon launch, there will be four scripted originals for adults.

They include Peacock's flagship show, Brave New World, based on the novel by Aldus Huxley, The Capture, a conspiracy thriller from the UK, Intelligence, a comedy from Nick Mohammed starring David Schwimmer, and Psych 2: Lassie Come Home.

Stop me when you’ve heard this one before: a baseline functional workplace full of well-meaning misfits gets a jolt from a hotheaded new guy, hijinks ensue, lather, rinse, repeat. When using such a formula that’s served dozens of sitcoms well over the years, it’s down to a show’s execution to make itself more compelling than the basics of its premise. “Intelligence,” created by British comic actor Nick Mohammed, occasionally finds moments of intrigue, but is more often content to plug along in its lane.

Even the much higher stakes environment in which “Intelligence” takes place — a windowless cybercrime unit in a London suburb — doesn’t especially up the urgency. Joseph (Mohammed) is a B-minus lackey scraping by under the watchful eye of his fearsome boss, Christine (Sylvestra Le Touzel), while nursing a small crush on their extraordinarily cool in-house hacker, Tuva (Gana Bayarsaikhan). Rounding out their...

Netflix has launched a new trailer for the latest series from ‘Downton Abbey’ creator Julian Fellowes, ‘The English Game’.

The six-part drama charts the origins of football and how those involved in its creation reached across the class divide to establish the game as the world’s most popular sport.

Directed by Birgitte Stærmose and Tim Fywell, the series stars Edward Holcroft, Kevin Guthrie, Charlotte Hope, Craig Parkinson, James Harkness, Niamh Walsh, Gerard Kearns, Joncie Elmore, Sam Keeley, Daniel Ings, Kate Dickie, Henry Lloyd Hughes, Kate Phillips, Ben Batt, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Harry Michell and Anthony Andre.

Also in trailers – Michiel Huisman stars in trailer for ‘The Other Lamb’

The show will launch on Netflix March 20th

The post The class divide exists in trailer for Julian Fellowes’ new Netflix series ‘The English Game’ appeared first on HeyUGuys.

Production has kicked off on Julian Fellowes’ Netflix drama The English Game. This comes after HBO picked up Downton Abbey creator’s period drama The Gilded Age, taking over from NBC.

The English Game, which is written and exec produced by Fellowes and produced by Traitors and Watership Down producer 42, is a six-part series that charts the origins of football and how those involved in its creation reached across the class divide to establish the game as the world’s most popular sport. It is currently shooting in the UK and will launch on Netflix in 2020.

The series will star Edward Holcroft (Kingsman: The Golden Circle), Kevin Guthrie (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald), Charlotte Hope (The Spanish Princess), Craig Parkinson (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch), James Harkness (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), Niamh Walsh (Jamestown), Gerard Kearns (Last Kingdom), Joncie Elmore (Downton Abbey), Sam Keeley (Anthropoid), Daniel Ings (The Crown...

Gem Wheeler Jan 17, 2017

1960s counter-culture comes to Oxford in the latest engrossing episode of Endeavour...

This review contains spoilers.

See related Power Rangers, boob armour, and impractical costumes

4.2 Canticle

After last week’s strong start, the fourth series continues with another engrossing case that sees Morse and his colleagues confronted by 60s counterculture and its vociferous opponents. The arrival of trendy band The Wildwood in Oxford attracts a lot of press, as does a visit by moral campaigner Joy Pettybon (Sylvestra Le Touzel). The long-haired heartthrobs are just the type of dope-smoking, free-loving hippies she loathes, and an appearance on TV show Almanac looks set to fan the flames of controversy. After a succession of death threats, Pettybon approaches the police, and Morse – much against his will – is ordered to provide protection. This brings him into contact with her unhappy daughter Bettina (Pearl Chanda) who sees the young policeman as...

Welcome back to Cannes Check, In Contention's annual preview of the films in Competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 14. Taking on different selections every day, we'll be examining what they're about, who's involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Jane Campion's jury. Next up, the first of two British veterans in the lineup: Mike Leigh's "Mr. Turner." The director: Mike Leigh (British, 71 years old). Few filmmakers have essayed the mundane woes (and occasional joys) of Britain's working-to-middle classes with the vivid specificity of Mike Leigh, though given his distinctive vernacular and customarily heightened sense of the everyday, it's not quite accurate to classify him as a kitchen-sink realist. Either way, as both a playwright and filmmaker, he's as significant and influential a figure on the UK cultural lanscape as John Osborne or Alan Bennett. A Rada acting student turned art school graduate,...

Right from the apocalyptic opening sequence, we knew what waters this boat 'Secret State' was heading, straight into the seas of all those other elliptical political thrillers - 'State Of Play', 'House of Cards', 'Heart of Darkness', something of something else.

Deputy Prime Minister Tom Dawkins (Gabriel Byrne) is a man with a lot on his mind

As the Deputy Prime Minister, Gabriel Byrne was a man with a lot on his mind - capably portraying existential guilt ("you're thinking about Bosnia, you did the right thing"), the ambition ("what if I stand?") and fear of a deputy prime minister who can see that the disappearance of his boss carries with it opportunity, but also the burden of too many secrets. Hopes for a residence at Number 10 loom, but in the meantime, he had to clean up the mess of a...

One of several new dramas we'll be paying attention to that are debuting this season on the UK's Channel 4 include a new political thriller series that was previously titled Coup, but is now called Secret State, and co-stars award-winning Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga. A roster of Britain's best-known acting talent (including Douglas Hodge, Gina McKee, Charles Dance, Rupert Graves, and Sylvestra Le Touzel) joins Gabriel Byrne in Channel 4's new series. Gabriel Byrne plays the pivotal role of politician Tom Dawkins, the reluctant hero at the heart of this contemporary conspiracy thriller, who finds himself thrust into the spotlight of...

Studio: Inception | Director: Julian Jarrold | Cast: Dominic West, Emily Watson, Monica Dolan, Anthony Flanagan, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Samuel Roukin

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: 9/11/2012 | Price: DVD $26.98

Bonuses: none

Specs: Nr | 135 min. | Fact-based drama | 1.77:1 widescreen | Stereo 2.0

Ratings (out of 5 dishes): Movie | Audio | Video | Overall

The 2011 British television film drama Appropriate Adult is based on the true story of Gloucester serial killer Fred West who, along with his wife Rosemary, tortured, raped and murdered at least 11 young women and girls over the course of eight years in the 1970s. The film focuses on the Wests’ arrests in 1994 and Fred’s chillingly “friendly” relationship with housewife Janet Leach, a Gloucester housewife who volunteered to be his “appropriate adult”—a person “assists” adults facing criminal charges and sits in during the investigation and suspect interrogation.

Dominic West gets dangerously into the head of Emily Watson in Appropriate Adult.

According to the film, West (an outstanding Dominic West,...

Dominic West was disturbingly convincing as Fred West, while Horizon suggested we might all know a psychopath

Appropriate Adult (ITV1) | ITV Player

Horizon: Are You Good or Evil? (BBC2) | iPlayer

Reel History of Britain (BBC2) | iPlayer

For some people – those directly affected by the Fred West murders, or those with sufficient reserves of outrage as to imagine their own feelings so violated – 17 years will not seem long or decent enough to warrant a return to 25 Cromwell Street for the purposes of so-called entertainment. And one sensed some pre-emptive accommodation in Neil McKay's compelling two-part Sunday night drama, Appropriate Adult, based on the true-life experience of Janet Leach, a trainee social worker volunteer called in by the police to observe fair play during West's interrogation. But it was a shrewd way into the story, offering a point of view that gave natural restraint to prurience and an examination of the...

DVD Rating: 5.0/5.0 Chicago – “Happy-Go-Lucky” was one my favorite films of 2008 with a pitch-perfect performance by the great Sally Hawkins, an actress who so embodied her character that not only did she deserve to be nominated for an Oscar, she should be polishing her trophy right now. New to DVD, audiences can finally catch up with “Happy-Go-Lucky,” another notch in the belt for the great Mike Leigh, one of the more consistent filmmakers of the last twenty years.

Mike Leigh doesn’t make films like most writer/directors. His work is a collaborative, improvisational process that takes months. But it’s not like Will Ferrell’s work. There’s no improv up on the screen in an ad-libbed sense. It’s more of a co-screenwriting process, where the ensemble works with Leigh on back story and dialogue by inhabiting their characters for months at a time.

Happy-Go-Lucky was released on DVD on March 10th,...