Spectator Life

Forget the sausage war; could the real Brexit battle be over streaming services? After all, surely even hardened Remainers will have been appalled by the European Commission's plan to make it more difficult to stream British shows on the continent. Will it happen? Only time will tell. But here are eight shows that are a hit on the continent and that European viewers will really miss: Chernobyl Sky Atlantic/Now TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9APLXM9Ei8 Keenly watched pretty much everywhere, Sky’s superlative disaster drama is amongst the biggest British televisual exports to the EU (another accolade to add to its various Baftas, Emmys and Golden Globes). What's more, Chernobyl is one drama that really went out of its way to ensure cultural accuracy.

Lockdown affects us all in different ways. During New York’s first lockdown renowned art creative Shai Baitel, recently appointed artistic director of Modern Art Museum Shanghai (MAM), felt so starved of creative inspiration that he begged anyone he knew with access to an art gallery near his New York City home to let him visit – just him, socially distanced – just so he could get his artistic fillip. ‘Everything was shut down from mid-March and by mid-May I started calling friends of mine who were owners and directors of galleries, asking them just to open for me so I could go and see the art,’ he says. ‘No-one else was there and I would walk between the artwork and actually sniff the frames. I was so art-deprived I couldn’t believe it.

'Should I pay in actual money, in-person, in the shop itself?' I asked my husband incredulously the other day. Yes, he replied, sounding rather bored. Prior to the pandemic such an exchange would not have taken place. I would have simply gone to the shop with no thought of government restrictions to my personal liberties, unmasked and care-free, and paid in good old-fashioned sovereigns. But this is 2021 and the pandemic has had such a profound effect on our linguistic habits that we are now forced to speak in a tangle of retronyms to get our point across. But what exactly are retronyms? Those expecting the linguistic form of a Hoxton hipster, dressed ironically in 90s clothes may be disappointed because retronyms just aren’t that edgy.

As Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark prepare themselves to fulfil many a little boys dream and become real life astronauts on rocket-ship New Shepard, here's a look at space flight in the movies. No doubt part of the fun for Jeff will be tweaking the noses of fellow space rival billionaires Elon Musk and Richard Branson. Unless one or both of the pesky duo steal a march on the Brothers Bezos before July 20th that is. I have tried to avoid the obvious choices: Gravity, Interstellar,  Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Passengers and Apollo 13 - all worthy of a watch - and introduce you to lesser known titles.

'Like a sea beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it […] And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue – out of charity and out of chivalry.'  So said Churchill in 1915 after the disaster that was Gallipoli. Salvaged by the Muse, Churchill found solace from the pressures of political life in art. Last week, another sea beast emerged from the depths, consoled this time not by a Muse (he does, however, like to paint) but by the Sirens of the sea.

There's a little fact about Frank Skinner that you might have heard before. That before his big television break, the future comic and Three Lions scribe had a rather different vocation: as an English teacher in an FE college. Throughout his time in the spotlight, it's been one of those things that gets brought up every now and then as trivia. An interesting titbit on an otherwise familiar CV. Then, at the beginning of last year, Skinner decided to go back to his educational roots: and launch a poetry podcast. Okay, it isn’t quite a full return to the classroom. But it isn’t far off either - at least not in the way Skinner does it. Who else, other than English teachers, spends their time gently working through poetry, patiently explaining the concepts and imagery?

It’s all eyes on Cornwall today as the G7 summit kicks off, bringing the leaders of the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan to Britain.  The various heads of government, having spent months in lockdown, will no doubt be brushing up on their small talk ahead of their various diplomatic meetings, with leaders' spouses set to mingle under the watch of newly wed Carrie Johnson.  Should the policy debates prove too fraught here's everything they'll need to know to navigate the (somewhat) safer subject of their better halves and children: The Bidens, USA First Lady Dr Jill Biden will sit down to tea with Carrie Johnson ahead of the G7 summit.

To his many readers, Stephen King is the Dreamcatcher; to others, less keen on his prodigious output, Doctor Sleep may be a more fitting appellation. On Friday 4 June, Apple TV+ will debut King’s own 8-part adaptation of his 2006 best-seller Lisey’s Story. Reportedly one of King's favourite books, the novel harks back to both Misery and The Secret Window, concerning as it does the widow of a popular author plagued by an obsessive fan and the thin line between imagination and madness. Julianne Moore stars as Lisey, with Clive Owen as her late husband, the immensely successful novelist, Scott Landon.

‘Freezing winter gave way to frosty spring, which in turn merged to chilly summer,’ was how Jessica Mitford recalled her Cotswolds childhood in her memoir, Hons and Rebels. Our inclement climes have rarely been as hard to bear as they have this year, with the unusually cold, grey spring — coupled with the prospect of another staycation — severely dampening spirits that were already low. However optimistic the Met Office might be, we can never rely on a ‘barbecue summer’ in this country. So when weathering another rainy bank holiday or a soggy half-term in a damp cottage, try the literary equivalent of dressing for the job you want, not the one you have. But be warned: golden summers rarely make for happy endings.

How does the word 'literally' make you feel? For a lot of language-lovers, the answer will be somewhere between mildly irritated and fist-gnawingly furious. It’s the misuse of the word that most perturbs. It has a habit of lurking where it has no place to be, taking a perfectly acceptable (if conventional) metaphor and turning into nonsense. Metaphors are figurative, for heaven’s sake, say its detractors. If that’s how you feel, you’re far from alone. We all have our stylistic preferences, so I’m not going try to convert you to the ‘literally’ cause. But I do wonder why this particular word used in this way gets so many people so angry. It can’t be because it’s new.

Musical fans will be hyped for the film release of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s In The Heights, set to land in cinemas here on 25 June (seven years after its UK stage premiere at the lovely Southwark Playhouse). Of course the Dominican smash is far from the first big musical to make its way to Hollywood. Here are seven other classics - and one notorious flop - to enjoy: Chicago, Amazon (to rent) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EpaMmF9WVU Rapidly approaching the 50th (!) anniversary of its stage premiere, the Oscar-winning crime caper has lost none of its pizzazz. And looking at the cast it’s not hard to see why.