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“Ted Lasso” star Hannah Waddingham attended the premiere of upcoming BBC animation “Tiddler” at the Sea Life London Aquarium on Sunday. Waddingham, who voices the narrator in the half-hour film, posed with some of Tiddler’s fishy friends ahead of the screening.

The animation, from production company Magic Light, also features the voices of Lolly Adefope, Jayde Adams and Rob Brydon with child actors Reuben Kirby and Theo Fraser in the lead roles. Based on the children’s book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, it is directed by Andy Martin and Alex Bain. It is set to premiere in the U.K. on the BBC and iPlayer on Christmas Day.

Eurovision

The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest is set to go ahead in Basel, Switzerland after the city’s residents voted to use $40 million of taxpayer money for producing the all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza. After Swiss entry Nemo won this year’s contest,...

In the coastal Victorian fishing village of Yorkshire, we’re introduced to the Hardacre family, a tight-knit working-class clan. Easy-going Sam (Liam McMahon) and his eldest son, Joe (Adam Little), work as dockers, while fiery wife Mary (Claire Cooper), rebellious daughter Liza (Shannon Lavelle), and formidable mother-in-law, Ma (Julie Graham), are fish gutties. Their youngest, Harry […]

The Hardacres: Series Premiere...

Jared Harris, Joseph Fiennes & Sheila Atim Leading A+E/Sky’s ‘Royal Kill List’

Jared Harris, Joseph Fiennes and Sheila Atim are leading an A+E Networks/Sky series about King Charles I from Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story producer 72 Films. Royal Kill List is Sky History’s latest docu-drama following in the footsteps of the likes of Royal Bastards: Rise of The Tudors and The Royal Mob. The three-part series looks back at one of the most seismic events in British royal history. In 1649, for the first and only time, a British monarch was publicly executed, having been tried and convicted of treason by Parliament. This bloody spectacle heralded 10 years of Britain as a republic before, in May 1660, the monarchy was restored with the accession of King Charles II. Told through dramatic reconstruction, Atim for the Royalists, Harris for the Regicides, and Fiennes for King Charles II will play out the Jacobean tragedy,...

Stars: Holli Dempsey, Jay Taylor, Michael Smiley, Liam McMahon, Joanne Mitchell, Justin McDonald, Martelle Edinborough | Written and Directed by Dominic Brunt, Jamie Lundy

Co-directors Dominic Brunt and Jamie Lundy open their film on a moment of familial bliss, as a mother enjoys time on the beach with her two young children, Evie and Tony. As she leaves to put on dinner at their nearby home, she asks the children to not stay long on the beach. Her departure is followed by foreboding shots of the water and creepy whispering before the inquisitive Evie vanishes for a bit. She returns drastically changed, now reacting with violence and acting possessively over a strange item she found. Her altered self leaves the family shattered, as they are unable to cope with the young girl’s actions.

Time skips forward to a now adult Evie (Holli Dempsey), who has since been put up for adoption,...

Brit indie feature film Evie, starring Holli Dempsey, Michael Smiley and Jay Taylor, has just wrapped a four week shoot on locations in Yorkshire and the Llyn Peninsula, Wales.

Directed by Dominic Brunt and Jamie Lundy (making his feature film debut). the brooding psychological horror thriller centres on Evie (Dempsey), who has been burdened with a dark secret for most of her life.

Witness to a family tragedy when they were younger and ripped from an idyllic life by the sea, both Evie and her older brother Tony (Taylor) were put into care. Twenty years later they are reunited, but something terrible from their past follows…

Evie also stars Honey Lundy, Liam McMahon, Joanne Mitchell and Danny-Lee Brunt. Says director Dominic Brunt:

I was drawn to the allegorical aspects of the story and the stunning locations of Yorkshire and the Llyn Peninsula. I’d known Jamie Lundy as a brilliant...

Psychological thriller is co-directed by ‘Emmerdale’ star Dominic Brunt.

UK psychological horror Evie, co-directed by Emmerdale star Dominic Brunt and Jamie Lundy, has wrapped after shooting on locations in Yorkshire and Wales.

Produced by Paper Clip Pictures and Mitchell-Brunt Films Production, the thriller stars Holli Dempsey, best known for her roles in Ricky Gervais’ Derek and After Life, alongside Michael Smiley and Jay Taylor.

The story centres on a brother and sister who reunite 20 years after being separately placed in care, following a family tragedy. But they are soon confronted by something sinister from their past.

The film shot over...

Director Steve McQueen's first feature film, about Bobby Sands and the 1981 hunger strike, captures the humanity and brutality on both sides of the conflict in the Hm Prison Maze

• Steve McQueen: my hidden shame

Hunger (2008)

Director: Steve McQueen

Entertainment grade: B+

History grade: B+

Bobby Sands was a member of the Provisional Ira. He led a hunger strike against conditions in Hm Prison Maze, Northern Ireland, in 1981.

Chronology

12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen's first feature film opens with a prison warder (Stuart Graham) going to work. We see snatches of his day: checking under his car for bombs, washing his bloodied knuckles in a sink, smoking a cigarette outside in the snow with large sweat stains on his shirt for reasons yet unknown. The voice of Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister, is heard: "There's no such thing as political murder, political bombing or political violence. There is only criminal murder,...

Chicago – Here’s an art house film more visceral and unsettling than any run-of-the-mill mainstream bloodbath. It’s the feature debut of visual artist Steve McQueen, an unfortunate name for anyone who doesn’t happen to be the star of “Bullitt.” His previous work has been confined to art galleries, and there are countless shots in “Hunger” that could function as standalone artworks.

Though his film may seem fragmented at first, it holds together triumphantly, and packs an overwhelming punch. It immediately solidifies McQueen’s status as one of the most promising filmmakers of our time, proving that he will surely overcome his name. With a hypnotic attention to detail, “Hunger” depicts the events surrounding the 1981 Ira (Irish Republican Army) Hunger Strike that took place in Northern Ireland’s notorious Maze prison. Ira inmates, led by Bobby Sands, went on the strike to protest the British government’s refusal to grant them political status.

Hunger Directed by: Steven McQueen Cast: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, Liam McMahon, Time: 1 hr 36 mins Rating: Plot: An urgently told story about prisoners confined in Northern Ireland’s H-Blocks in the early 1980s. Despite having had happened a quarter century ago, these infamous tales of torture hit alarmingly close to home in the wake of recent events related to the world-wide war on terror. This story is about young men of a different era, led by Bobby Sands, who undergo a 1981 Hunger Strike in the fight for their human rights amidst an era of nearly unimaginable tyrannical rule. Who’s It For? Anyone who is a self-proffesed history buff, but who also requires strong authenticity in the retellings. This film cuts close to the bone, and is not for adolescent-laden history classrooms...

Film Review: Hunger

Cannes, Un Certain Regard

Turner Prize-winning artist Steve McQueen brings the key tenets required to win Britain's top honor for modern art to directing his first film, "Hunger", and so it is trite, grim and feebly provocative.

It tells of the last days of Bobby Sands, a Northern Irishman who died in 1981 in Belfast's hellish Maze Prison following a 66-day hunger strike. The film, which opened the Festival de Cannes' Un Certain Regard sidebar, combines scenes more suited to an art installation with static theatrical encounters and cliched flights of artistic fancy.

Violent, bleak and depressing, "Hunger" depicts lifelong Irish Republican Army fighter Sands (Michael Fassbender) as a martyr and may prosper where audiences are already inclined to that view, with prospects slim elsewhere.

No context is provided beyond the steely but patronizing words of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and there is no mention of the nature of the violent crimes perpetrated by Sands and his fellow inmates. Convicted on charges involving armed attacks and arson, Sands demanded the rights of a prisoner of war, which included wearing civilian clothes and the receipt of gift parcels.

Lacking any new insights on the fateful paradox that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter or that the imposition of punitive measures demeans all parties, the film adds nothing to the debate over broader issues involving such places as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graib.

McQueen and co-scripter Enda Walsh break the film into four uneven parts, with first the introduction of a brutal prison guard (Stuart Graham) and his suburban home life, which is prosaic save for the constant threat of being bombed or shot.

A new prisoner (Brian Milligan) enters the cell of an entrenched convict (Liam McMahon) who teaches him the ways of IRA rebellion, which included smearing the walls with blood and feces, smuggling notes and small items using bodily orifices, and bracing for the malevolent treatment of the prison guards.

Attention then moves to Sands, with a 22-minute scene in which he relates his ideals and plans to a weary priest (Liam Cunningham). The remainder of the film, in which Fassbender demonstrates a commitment to the demands of the role beyond the call of duty, shows in great detail the gruesome effect on a man's body of completely rejecting nourishment. It's not a pretty sight.

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, Brian Milligan, Liam McMahon. Director: Steve McQueen. Screenwriters: Enda Walsh, Steve McQueen. Producer: Laura Hastings-Smith, Robin Glitch; Director of Photography: Sean Bobbitt. Production Designer: Tom McCullagh. Music: David Holmes, Leo Abrahams. Costume designers: Anushia Nieradzik. Editor: Joe Walker. Executive producers: Jan Younghusband, Peter Carlton, Linda James, Edmund Coulthard, Iain Canning.

Sales agent: Icon Entertainment International

No MPAA rating, running time 100 mins.