The Netflix Bloodbath: Explained

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2:26boss. He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osman. Hello everyone. Hi Marina. Hello Richard. How are you doing? Not too bad. Heading up to Manchester this week for the Luke Littler thing, which I think is going to be an awful lot of fun. How about you? I'm looking forward in the Q&A to you answering a number of questions. We've had a lot of questions about that. I have questions too. We're a couple of them all. Listen, I've got a couple. Yeah. Other than that, what are we talking about? We're talking about what's going on at Netflix. Is Netflix

3:12over? And if it's not, why is everyone saying that it is? Yes. We're also talking about the Ghosts movie and the cast of Ghosts in particular. A sort of a love letter to them, if I'm honest. The final thing we're talking about is updates in Donald Trump's case against the BBC, which are looking at present there, we say, quite positive for the BBC. Who would have thought? You have a plea before we start, though. I can't. If anyone has a good source for a Tung Tung Tung Sahar costume, this is not for me. It's for one of my children. I would love to hear it because the alternative costume being suggested is in such unbelievably bad taste that I'm, if you've got a Tung Tung costume, hit me up. You're holding up for a Tung Tung Tung Sahur.

3:55There we go. Now, Netflix. Yes. A few months ago, we talked a little bit about this because they'd released their figures and there was a sort of wide assumption that they'd won the streaming wars, you remember, a couple of years back. Yet their stock price fell immediately after these figures. It's now 45% down at least on where they were a year ago. Their market capitalization is basically half what it was. And they've just made huge changes, by which we mean layoffs, to their film and TV content teams. The two heads are out. They've got lots of other layoffs are happening, 6% of their workforce. So we know that what they need is hits. And they did have these huge behemoth shows that haven't really been replaced so things like stranger things squid game squid

4:46game um and those things ended and it's not completely clear they still have wednesday um which needs to hit very big for them and they still have bridgerton but in general they need they need more than that exactly and those things you know take years to put together yeah and this is a a generation of an audience who are used to going on YouTube and getting whatever they want immediately. And it's lightning in a bottle to some degree. It's really hard to say, you know, I know with the benefit of hindsight, we can all say that Stranger Things was going to be enormous and that the Squid Game was. But again, there's no particular way you can tell these things. Nobody predicted Squid Game. No.

5:22It's interesting to see sort of what's going on. Probably the most high profile firing is Bella Bejaria, who was the content chief, and she's hugely powerful. She's in charge of essentially everything that you see. She's the number one. On the TV side. She has had the job for three years. She's highly visible. Remember, this is a company that spends basically 20 billion a year on programming. There's nothing else out there like it. In terms of what happened, we will be anatomizing it, but they have definitely had a bad run of form. Q3 is probably their worst for five years. Put simply, they have not had any hits and they didn't do well at the Emmys, and they really want to be in contention for all awards now, and they didn't do well at the Emmys, you know, and they really want to be in contention for all awards now and they didn't do well.

6:17There's obviously renewed competition from Skydance now that Paramount and Warners are kind of united under Kendall Ellison. There's a possibility. Was Casey Bloys, who runs HBO, people were saying, was he offered her job? He is staying at HBO. He's very talented. Amazing. But yes, there's a sort of sense that with the layoffs they have to offer Wall Street something and they have to say they need a kind of change story to be happening. I mean that's the story here. It becomes a narrative after a while. As you say for so long it's been Netflix have been, who's going to win the streaming wars? It's Netflix. Oh my goodness, Netflix are getting linear television uh and very very quickly you become the hunted rather than the hunter and now the story is youtube is killing netflix

6:53and at those moments by the way they had their earnings call last week and it was sort of pretty much what everybody expected it wasn't kind of below what it needed to be but wall street needs exponential growth that's the point when you're be. But Wall Street needs exponential growth. That's the point. When you're a company like this, you need exponential growth. And in the beginning of a company like that, that exponential growth comes really from potential. Every sort of green shoot is seen as, oh, my God, this is growing to something enormous. And Netflix are now at the stage where something that ITV and other companies will understand, where they are now a legacy media stock. And that does not come at a premium, it comes at the exact opposite of a premium,

7:35i.e. money gets knocked off your share price. So they released this Q3 call, which is perfectly, you know, normal and in line with expectations. And yet the share price fell, again, it's down at like $65.. It was $125 odd at one point. But the underlying financial side of the business is good. They obviously have an insanely great business, which they've grown over a very, very long period of time. But yeah, they now face that pivot where they are the established media company, probably the biggest media brand in the world in terms of making content and that's a tough place to be because where do you go from there and all that wall street needs is for you to go somewhere to really really keep growing and growing and growing so every single

8:16thing now counts against them and youtube growing counts against them and apple and amazon prime having hits counts against them even though by the way apple and amazon they're not really content players make money all that stuff is a shop front tv seems to be a not-for-profit business but they have loads of hits and they obviously won very big at the emmy's oh they did brilliant they've got great shows whereas all netflix has as business is content and subscription you know that that is the business and so they find themselves at a fork in the road and if you were to just read the papers you go oh my god they're all over I mean I would argue they're probably not all over they've been pretty smart before but I do think

8:55first of all I think that their stock was way overvalued but that isn't their fault that is the financial industry's fault and I think that the potential for growth was massively overestimated and the problem is is that their big problem in all of this is that engagement growth has slowed down and if you spend 20 billion on content which is an insane amount of money and you're up two percent in engagement that is a problem but again i would argue only if i've been in this position before with endermore two percent on top of 10 15 years of incredible growth is still an unbelievably difficult thing to do i mean you have to spend that money just to pump it up a tiny bit they've been through the years of like double digit growth

9:41you know even more so they've done all of that stuff there comes a point where when you run a company you just want to go i mean we built it to be massive why don't we just keep it massive why don't we just keep it where it is like really really ticking along and making money for everyone but wall street is in that bit i think because it was seen as a stock that would deliver you huge growth all the time they're just in that transition where they go okay maybe this is like a you know a british airways or a coca-cola where we just hold this stock and let it do its job for years and years and years but it's making that transition from some sort of cool tech stock to oh okay this has been around a long time and it has competitors and there are issues with the business i think

10:21you're right on that pivot point which is whichresses share prices, which is why I think there's probably a good buy. And as I say, I think the share price was overvalued in the first place. Well, let's talk about individual things that people are saying are issues because I think that's quite interesting. Dan Lin, the film chief, has also gone. Netflix famously, Ted Sarandos said that cinema was over and he made some quite abrasive comments to the Hollywood industry about that people didn't bother driving to theatres anymore and all of this. And they were giving people this experience in their own home. I have to say that I think sometimes they put things in for a week to make it an awards play because it's not eligible unless it's been in cinemas. But they managed to get directors at the start over

11:07to do things with them because they paid a huge, huge amount of money, way more than anybody else. And they kind of left them alone. And that resulted, in my view, in some films that could have benefited from a little bit more control. But because it was very, very enticing to creators because they were given more creative freedom and fewer notes. But you have to give them a lot of money and that creative freedom in order that their movie doesn't open in cinemas, which is where all directors want their movies to open. And you can see how angry Christopher Nolan was with Warners during the pandemic when they seemed not committed to theatrical release and he left and went to Universal. And the biggest directors don't want to work unless they get significant theatrical release, and he left and went to Universal. And the biggest directors don't want to work

11:47unless they get significant theatrical release. What happened with Greta Gerwig, who's managed to negotiate this kind of really a unicorn type of deal, because other people don't have it for Narnia, is that it's going to have a 49-day theatrical window, which is really, really long. And it's completely, it's an outlier. They don't do it anywhere else. But now, because she's got it, other people want it. And I just think it's harder to get creators now because they can see that films that don't have cinema release just have less cultural purchase. It's just the fact of it. When a film comes out on Netflix, it just seems like something new has come on the service. Yeah, I think that Ted Sarandos probably said that

12:24because it would have been useful for his company if that were to happen. And also, he'd probably think of 50-50, perhaps it might happen, perhaps cinema is on the way out. It is definitely not now. I think we can definitively say that. So I think his mind would have been changed. You look at a movie like The Rip on Netflix, which is a great, great film, but it doesn't have cultural purchase because it didn't open in theatres. Not at all. And things that are not very good but have had a cinematic release, people are like, oh, it's come to the streaming now, I'll have a look at that because I know what it is. I've seen adverts for it on the sides of buses. Whatever it is, it's just got more cultural penetration

13:00and it seems like a bigger deal than it often is. And also so many movies open in theatres and do huge, huge, huge numbers then on the streamers. It doesn't affect it at all. It's like releasing a single from an album and giving it away free. It does not affect the sales of the album at all. It's the obverse of the TV thing, which is that they've got this binge model that they still like. And I think they will struggle to let go of. But if you put everything out at once, people do do it in a weekend. And then it takes a very long time to make this type of television, as you know. People just don't necessarily care in the same way about the second season. Yeah, it's like cooking Christmas dinner.

13:38Yeah. You know, it takes a really long time to do. And then it's finished within 40 minutes. Very quickly, yeah. And you don't care so much about second seasons. I think that's difficult for them. Sometimes they parcel it out and they did that very well with Stranger Things where it was the sort of biggest thing in the world and they did it in sort of three, I think if memory serves, three blocks and it all sort of culminated last kind of New Year's, this New Year's Eve. But in general, things they put out, and I think they're going to, if they go back as we've said how often to something more like a linear model that's difficult for them because they haven't done it before but they could do that a big problem for a lot of people is what

14:15they did with their user interface and their user experience there's a lot of stuff like podcasts youtube creators you can get somewhere else all of that stuff being pushed forward because I think they weren't quite sure what to do with it all and what to do with YouTube. And they changed it. And I don't think that is regarded as being a complete success because they used to have this unbelievable user experience where you got served things that you wanted. And it was sort of in the way that the TikTok algorithm is just miles ahead of everyone else's. And therefore, it's just a very, it's much more sophisticated as a platform. And people are just like, what is their special sauce? How does this work? Netflix had that. And if they

14:53don't have that anymore, then they lose something that was very, very significant to their business. It was a real competitive advantage. Yeah. And it's hard because if you think about them sort of three years ago, when the first rumblings of this were happening again I'll take it back to my experience at Endemol. Endemol we grew and grew and grew through employing people and coming up with ideas then selling those ideas and one in ten of those ideas would hit big and you set it around the world and that's a really nice business to have. There came a point where as we were bought by successively sort of bigger and bigger companies with less and less TV experience, that you had to keep growing at 15%, 20% a year. And you could not have a year

15:33when you didn't grow that much. And sometimes you will have a year when you don't have that big hit. And so everyone started going, no, we need additional revenue sources, we need other ways of making money. And so the business would start going in different directions and you know distribution and you know marketing and all these different things and suddenly the whole core of the business went over there and came off the creative now we've said before um when we talked about channel four and netflix has got exactly the same issue which is this is despite despite what anybody says, a hits business. And even Wall Street cares when you have a hit. It is, in a lot of ways, all you need. If you're a well-run company like Netflix,

16:13you just need two shows to really, really go big. Now, the UK is absolutely massively putting its weight in this. The UK is the one place that's really firing on all cylinders. You look at adolescents and black doves and baby reindeer and all this stuff. And actually a lot of the foreign territories, the non-Anglosphere, are doing great stuff. But the American product has suffered. Well, it's suffered. But again, sometimes you have a year or 18 months when you suffer because you cannot have hits all the time. It just can't be done. It's impossible. So what you have to do, you have to trust the right people. It's like a new manager at a football club. Sometimes you go, oh, no, I understand we're not scoring any goals,

16:50but we're playing good football. I saw one graph, though, and since Bella Bejeri had been in the job, and it was just, it's such a steady downward step of how much in the Nielsen ratings Netflix is taking of eyeballs, basically. And it is just almost like a straight down line. But again, I think a lot of that comes because she's, you know, incredibly talented, and I think a lot of it comes from the business starts looking elsewhere, and the business starts having different priorities, and, you know, big bits of the marketing of the business and big bits of just the brain of the business are going into these peripherals, where you might find a different income stream. Because when you're making making content you know the the engagement you get in the states over

17:30here it's you you become saturated there comes a point where you there are there are no more people who can afford netflix right they just aren't and they brought in things like an ad tier and other things like that because then you kind of go okay we've got our hundreds of millions how do we now monetize those hundreds of millions uh and therefore the business starts looking elsewhere and the business i honestly think sometimes the heart of the business goes away from content sometimes and goes into let's do deals with youtubers for stuff we've already had oh good business by the way there was stuff you should do but at the heart of the thing three hits would absolutely rocket fuel that story as well though because that's a of me, you know, almost this time last year,

18:08I'm trying to remember the exact dates of it, when we were like, oh, hang on a second, Netflix is now in for Paramount, not for Discovery as well. And they didn't get it. And they sort of couched it at the time as it would have been a nice to have. And so when the Ellisons just completely sort of overbid, it seemed like a win at the time that Netflix were kind of released from having to buy it and they got that cash pay out two billion yeah now people have settled on the idea that the fact they were even doing it revealed something about Netflix which is that they were concerned about their growth prospects and this was something they actually needed to do I said at the time genuinely I think they want to buy warner brothers because i think they want to put films in cinema

18:48because i think they understood that that was the thing to do uh and i think that would have been great and there are other studios out there that could be bought by netflix and i think that's a that's you know they can see cinema weirdly has now become this sort of uh tech darling is suddenly going oh my god we got all these kind of lo-fi movies that are making, you know, half a billion dollars. It's suddenly cinema movies seem to be the cool thing. And you wouldn't have predicted that three years ago. Yeah, but it is a statement of intent about an asset that you've effectively paid for. And it makes it seem more culturally important. And it still does. It still has that cachet if it's been in cinemas.

19:24And the other thing I think you would probably talk about in terms of the sort of familiar conversations are happening, which is things like, you know, do they put movies in theatres for longer? Do they abandon the binge model? Is do they need more regularly programmed sports? Because the thing about sport is Netflix have incredible profits because they do not pay for sports rights. And if you see how much other people in the US will pay for like the NBA or for their football, it's unbelievable amounts of money. Yeah, we'll get rid of their 20 billion content spend fairly quickly. Oh my God. I mean, it's ridiculous but they because they don't pay for sports but if you don't pay for sports people have to buy that somewhere else and that means

20:10they're basically buying another streamer that might have shows that you like and in the end you might think oh i'll just i'll just pay for those so in terms of what they're actually going to do about this we've obviously we've already seen the ad tier live tv this is something that people again we've talked about this so much. Oh, the thing you disrupted, you're becoming very like. Live channels, channels showing one thing or in one genre, you know, things like Tubi and Roku, who are growing really fast. Which are free. Yeah, which are free. But they have those channels. They have kind of dedicated channels for this or that. It's linear. They can bundle things. They can put other things into it.

20:47They might put Peacock in NBC. They might get Disney or Fox to do something. They want channels on their platform. And in France, they did this deal with TF1. TF1 has ads, but it has news. It has things that we don't expect to see on Netflix. And you can get TF1 on Netflix now in France. So they definitely are going to want more of those for sure. I think another telling thing they're doing is they are giving less and less information. They were always a bit of a black box for a long time. And then they said, oh, hang on, once we could tell that they really had, they dominated and they felt they'd won the streaming wars, we suddenly started hearing more from them. The What We Watch report was every six months.

21:32Now they don't report quarterly subscriber numbers. What We Watch is not going to be every six months anymore. It's going to be once a year. What We Watch, that's the list of who's watched what when. At the moment, it's every six months, it's now going to be annual. So they're giving less and less away because they don't want people to know these things. But again, it all comes down to share price. It really all comes down to share price because it's a hugely profitable business sitting on very, very big cash reserves. But the second that Wall Street is involved in your company, narrative is all important. And their narrative has gone from one where they were the insurgent to one where they're now the incumbent.

22:10Yes. And everyone hates incumbents. Yes, they do. So the big question is, do Netflix have any hits coming up? Wednesday's coming back. Which will be huge. Yes. They've got Lonesome Dove coming. They've got Oscar Isaacs. I'm so excited about that. Yes. I know. I love Lonesome Dove so much. They've got Lonesome Dove coming. They've got Oscar Isaac's done it. I'm so excited about that. Yes, I know. I love Lonesome Dove so much. They've got a Kennedy series. They've got things coming. The Dan Brown thing, Langdon, they've got that. Yeah, they've got, you know, and there's loads of great stuff coming out of the UK as well. It is one of those things that you just have to wait for two of those shows to hit big at the same time.

22:44And suddenly Netflix are fighting back against YouTube and TikTok. Because otherwise what happens is we'll have five years now of Netflix being sort of eaten away at by YouTube and TikTok. And then in five years' time, something will eat YouTube and TikTok. Just every five years, just something new will come along, which is that, oh my God, YouTube's business model is models through the floor they're losing all the advertising to whatever this new thing is uh it's just you know it happens and so what you have to do is look after the fundamentals and go okay we want Netflix still to be a really really big content business in 10 15 20 years time the key thing here is not to kind of panic about what Wall Street tells you and listen to what your

23:23gut tells you to employ the great creative people make great creative content that people want because there's always money in great television talking of hits uh straight after this break we will be talking about ghosts this episode is brought to you by our friends at Lloyd's. Now, let's talk about movie con artists. Who are your absolute favourites? Movies, TV and book, my answer is the same. And it's Tom Ripley. I was going to say him. It's one of the greatest characters of all time. So from the Talented Mr Ripley books by Patricia Highsmith, there's five of them. So if you like Talented Mr Ripley, you are in luck. He's like one of the worst men in the world, but you absolutely you root for him at all times. Now, of course, deception makes for excellent entertainment on screen.

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25:46Go to linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome back, everybody. Now, we have some housekeeping before we dive into ghosts. And it's the last week of Celebrity Traitors. I hardly need to tell most of our audience. And we will be doing reaction episodes on Thursday and Friday. That's at 9.30, the Friday one, just immediately. And also for our members, we return to the Bond series. Bond is back. And you can join at therestisentertainment.com. Add free listening, all of that. All of that jazz. Now, can we talk about ghosts? Now, plenty of people are listening to this. Hopefully may have been to see this film over the weekend or are going to see it over the half term. Lionsgate, who made it, have very, very quickly turned this around

26:39after filming to put it out in exactly this week's half term. It's Halloween, so it's the perfect time for ghosts. I've seen it. You've seen it as well well i'll start this whole thing off by saying it is magnificent it's so great it's everything you want it to be and it's everything that makes that group of performers they're so smart so stupid so it's so wise so warm it's just i thought it was a beautiful it's perfect for a feature film because they've been able to do, I was talking to Ben Wilbond, who's part of them, who I go very, very far back with. We used to do comedy together at university. And he was saying, yeah, it's different with a feature. You know, what they contrive to do in this is to get the ghosts

27:17out of the house. That's not a spoiler. But you couldn't really do that in the sitcom, or they wouldn't have wanted to do that because they feel like it's like an instant shark jumping. although we'll talk about the massive global phenomenon this has become because it's in so many different territories now um and then but to cut but for a feature you can do something totally different and it really works as a feature there's a moment uh that involves bmx where literally the whole cinema is in just gasped and then cheered. It's that sort of movie. So if you haven't seen it, it's a real half-term treat. So let's, should we go back to where this all began, this gang? There's six of them, the six people who write and perform in Ghost.

27:55Jim Howick, Martha Howe Douglas, Matt Bainton, Simon Farnaby, Ben Wilbon and Lawrence Rickard. And they are the same six people who started out on Horrible Histories. Now Horrible Histories which was it was 2009 it was CBBC. It's one of the great TV programs of all time and I'm not even exaggerating it's absolutely amazing that that sits on the BBC service forever and ever and has taught more children about history in a hilarious way than anything possible. I learned a lot about history from it. Yeah, exactly. It was pitched to the BBC by a 10-year-old, by the 10-year-old son of one of the executives. Clever way to pitch a kid's show. Based on the Terry Deary books, you know, Terrible Tudors and all of those books.

28:38He sold tens of millions of books worldwide. Terry Deary is obviously a bright man because when they bought the rights and said we're going to make it, he just gave them three notes. He said it just has to be funny, horrible, and accurate. Yeah. That's all I want this to be. Nailed it. It looks amazing. It's beautifully produced. Caroline Norris, who produced them. I mean, I don't know how they did it for the money. I do not know. I've never understood how they did it. It's incredible. And the accuracy comes from Greg Jenner, who's an historian, he does that You're Dead to Me podcast. He's brilliant as well. And so he would, with his team, just do acres and acres of research, stick it in the writer's room with those six

29:15and a few others, and they would, at the other end, they'd come up with these sketches. Now, so that's the six of them. They did five years of that. It won BAFTAs, it won comedy awards, it won everything. And rightly so. It's a sensational piece of work. But all six of them stayed together. When Horrible Histories ended, they decided to come up with a sitcom. And that sitcom, of course, is Yonderland on Sky, which I think is sort of unfair. He looked in all of this because everyone loves horrible histories. Everyone loves ghosts. But Sky made Yonderland, three series of it. Again, it's brilliant. It's incredibly imaginative. Martha Hale Douglas is sort of the lead in that. And the rest of the gang kind of play just crazy characters around her

30:01for whatever reason didn't have the cultural cachet of the other stuff it's on sky it's the honest yeah but i mean it's but it's hard isn't it yeah it's very hard you know because it's definitively a great show made by very very smart people um they then made a feature film which i would also strongly recommend this uh this half term which is bill yeah about william shakespeare with matt payton as william shakespeare and it's very very funny and it's just it i mean my god they've got a mood this gang well it's really interesting before yonderland they had thought about a haunted house series and thought maybe that would be cool and matt bainton said oh you couldn't get the jeopardy into we didn't understand how to get the jeopardy into it and then what they realized was oh I see this is just

30:45like a sort of forced house share sitcom yeah this is you know I don't know if there's a name for that trope but like you know enforced roommate situation yeah whatever and the boredom of it all was would be amazing um and it's funny I was um when I was talking to Ben about this he was saying that they were so lucky because what Charlotte Moore, who ran the BBC programming at the time, did, he said the best thing that ever happened to us is that we were allowed to make a 10 minute taster, not a pilot. And if you don't know what tasters are, they're a sort of proof of concept thing. And a pilot is very different. Once you've made a pilot, people are going to say, yeah, I see it, I don't see it, I don't know,

31:27maybe this isn't going to work. I quite like bits of this. But a taster allows you to do the pre-frequence set. And he said, we made all our mistakes in that 10-minute taster that no one has ever seen. And we were forced to kind of confront what it was because of that. And as a result, when we wrote the first episode, we had made all those mistakes in a thing that was loud. So they're very grateful for that particular way of doing it because it's so expensive. Once you've made one episode, then people have got to think, hang on a second, they're going to do six of these? I'm not sure. But to be able to make all their mistakes and to iron them all out was hugely important. But what I find so interesting about it is that, yes, once they got the idea, it's like, oh, I see why this works.

32:13It has been franchised basically to so many territories. It's one of the few UK sitcoms to be really, really, really big in America. Yeah. I mean, The Office obviously is a very, very good example and Sanford and Son. But this, in recent times, because they remake everything in the States. They'll do pilots of things. And this has run and run and run. And it's in Australia. It's in Germany. I mean, it's all over. He said all the time you're hearing, oh, they're doing one in the Czech Republic. And he said what's amazing about it, what's really lovely, is that it allows the, I want to say local creators in the other territories to say well hang on our history is really really interesting yeah and we can make

32:51this speak to our culture in a completely different way so for the americans who have you would imagine have less history but you know they have there's a viking in there there's a you know they they all hark back it's interesting because as you say all the local territories have have you know culturally significant significant figures as their ghosts. There's one trope that pretty much has been kept in every single series across the world. Do you know what that trope is? Which one? It's Simon Farnaby not wearing trousers. It's the MP. Like the American one, he's like a finance bro who dies with no trousers on. I think everyone just goes, you know what? That's just's just such a great international language of no trouser guys but you

33:29think of those poor actors inside some in some kind of ways where you just go oh literally every day I turn up to work and I'm not wearing trousers yeah okay that's uh they must have like blankets right yeah in between yeah uh but it's so it's one of those things that in retrospect looks obvious, Ghost, and absolutely wasn't. I remember talking to Ben, and I was saying to him when I was talking about this, I said, I remember when we met up and you were saying to me, you know, I don't know, we're doing this show for the BBC, and you said, I can be quite, yeah, I can be quite eorish about things because nothing works, right? Yeah, nothing works. As we always say, nothing is a hit hit except the very few things that are and i remember and then it

34:10obviously has just become this i mean a complete phenomenon yeah complete i think when they worked and because that's a group of performers and writers who have enormous heart and who really really like human beings and i think they worked out very quickly that, of course, a show about dead people is really a show about how precious life is. Yeah. And I think they worked it out. And so the jokes they got covered because they're so incredibly funny and stupid. So that's covered. But then it's just got this incredible heart as well, which they bring to it as just very decent human beings. I was really struck. I went to like a friends and family screening of this because Ingrid knows them well.

34:48So she got invited and I managed, I catched a ticket. And I was struck when I went there about the love in the room for them from all of their contemporaries. Some of the names you mentioned, Greg Jenner is still there. Caroline Norris was there. Jason Haisley and Joel Morris, who wrote on Yonderland. Everybody who ever works with them sticks around that's terrific everybody loves them can I mention one performer who is not officially in their collective but Loli Adafope who was in the franchise who I absolutely love she is so hilariously funny by the way I think she's so funny that you've got to be very careful if she's in any frame because she is going to steal that frame she is genuinely hysterical I love her way, I think she's so funny that you've got to be very careful if she's in any frame because she is going to steal that frame. She is genuinely hysterical. I love her so

35:28much. I think she's absolutely brilliant. Her character in this is sort of, you couldn't really describe her, but she is just so brilliant at all times. She's amazing. Yeah, she's incredible. So yeah, as I say, it's this gang of six, and you never know what's going to happen. You know, this is a CBBC tender to, you know, make a history show. And suddenly this gang of brilliant people who just stick around and stick around together and just make great telly. And then they've produced this thing, which is going to bring people such a huge amount of pleasure this half term. And is, as you know, my favorite thing in the whole world, which is make something that's right in the heart of mainstream but that is also demonstrably genuinely brilliant uh and it's um

36:10a couple of things that hadn't even occurred to me before watching the film and i've seen a lot of ghosts is that um uh fanny button is a is a really rude name that um i hadn't clocked that um jim howard's character is called pat butcher I sort of did know that he was called Pat Butcher and properly clocked it. And it's just full of stuff like that. These are people who love television, love comedy. I'm always very envious of writer-actors because they absolutely, writing multiplied by acting absolutely amplifies itself. Writer-actors are a rare breed and they're brilliant. But yeah, I just honestly, just in that room for the people who've worked with them for years and years and years, and I've been in some showbiz rooms before,

36:52and I'm sure you have, and there's not always universal love in those rooms. And in this room, it was universal love. And each of them has done other incredible things outside of this. And, you know, look at Simon Farnaby, who did Paddington 2. He did the sketch with the Queen. You know, Jim Harrogate's in Here We Go. I mean, they've all done, Matt Bainton did The Romance and loads of other things. So they populate British comedy. Lots of them have been on House of Games. Lolly, Lawrence, Matt, Jim, they've all been on Michael Sheen's House of Games. But it's, you know what, I just thought, given we both love the film, and given I just really, really admire them as human beings, just a love letter to ghosts

37:33and what can be done with human creativity. And just to get back to our old subject of AI, there are kids in their teens and their 20s now who are like these six, and will create things like these six six and will do these extraordinary things. Just let it come through. Give them time. Let them muck about. Let them do silly things. They will create this stuff because every generation's got these people and we're very lucky to have these six. Shall we finish with a brief little look at where Donald Trump versus the BBC currently stands? Yes. Now, this is the legal case, the $10 billion legal case that Trump has brought against the BBC for the misleading edit in the Panorama that sort of seemed to suggest

38:11he was telling the January the 6th rioters to fight, even though in a slightly different way he was, but they did a misleading edit. They've said that it was a misleading one. He brought it in Florida. The Panorama was not viewable in Florida, but he's used that unfair and deceptive trade practices act. Now, remember, he has sued a lot of media organisations. It's kind of lawfare. You know, for Mr. Free Speech, he doesn't half love suing them. And he's won against CBS and ABC. The one against CNN was dismissed. It's interesting what he's done here, because given the BBC have acknowledged the edit was misleading he has since claimed that they used AI to insert words into his speech uh no um and they're currently in this

38:52lawsuit which is having to be fought in Florida in the discovery process which is when you can you know you request documents from each side and it's very interesting what the Trump side has offered is absolutely risible like it's just just, it's incredibly slight. And the BBC have complained and said they've produced absolutely nothing of any substance. The documents they've given to the case have either been sort of stuff they've pulled off the internet, or things provided upon request by the BBC. And Trump was supposed to sit for a deposition. And that would be giving some sort of oral evidence about the case. On oath, Richard, on oath. But he missed it saying he was busy with matters of national importance.

39:32Obviously, he's quite a visible human. And they were able to see that what in fact he was doing was a campaign rally in Georgia and a fundraising event at Mar-a-Lago, which, you know, I guess you could debate whether it's national importance. But, you know, you kind of need to turn up for your deposition. Certainly not national importance to the UK. No. And the judge has actually now ordered Trump to testify and said you have to sit. And this is a US judge. This is a US judge. A Floridian judge, Richard, has said you have to sit for a deposition by the 11th of December. Trump is already saying, well, I can do it in the second or third week of January again. But the judge has said, you know, there are lots of sanctions,

40:10including the case just being thrown out if you don't do this. But if you want 10 billion, I presume that something incredibly serious has happened. So you might want to clear some time. I mean, I would want to sit down. and, you know, get my truth off my chest. If I was suing somebody for 10 billion, I would be available right now. I would stop the podcast and I would depose right where I sit. Well, I hope that puts things into perspective for our viewers and listeners. The BBC have also successfully done something else, which is quite interesting, that they've made Mar-a-Lago part of the discovery process. Yes, how did they do that? I couldn't work that out. Well, they've successfully argued that details and things might be there because he uses it as part of the presidency his side have said it's

40:49literally just a business so well i don't think if you entertain the ukrainian president now or any other president or you constantly use it as the winter white house or whatever you you like to call it that it isn't the bbc basically say he's stalling so it's the legal thing that you know he said obviously this damages his presidency. So actually, they have a sort of not a free reign, but there's a big ambit of things that they could ask to look at and ask his thoughts on and ask for factual documents about. I mean, yes. And I slightly feel like when we're talking about this, you know, because their legal system, I don't want to say it's sophisticated, but it is highly developed. Should we say that?

41:26But defamation, that's our culture, Richard, because we have these ridiculous libel laws. So we do sort of know quite a lot about how to deal with this particular complaint. It's highly developed like that car that Homer designs in The Simpsons. Yeah, exactly. I think it's interesting. He lies obviously all the time, as we know, but he is historically very nervous about testifying under oath. I mean, if that were my personality type, I simply would not testify under oath unless absolutely forced. What I would do is I would sue people until they just gave in. Yeah. Oh, look! And if they didn't give in, I'd give up. Yeah. Now, who's to say whether or not this will occur? Sorry, I'm not talking about him. Just saying if it was me. This case would involve him testifying about

42:07both his finances and the January the 6th insurrection. Again, I simply would choose not to do either of those things. But if you felt so wronged, if you felt 10 billion dollars worth of wronged, you would fight. But the thing about the cases he's bought against American media organisations, the boot is sort of so completely on the other foot because they kind of caved CBS in the case of trying to get the Paramount deal over the line, ABC for other reasons. Well, he has a lot of power over the American media. There's all sorts of things he can do and legislate for that would make their lives very difficult. Less so for the BBC. It felt existential in a different way for them in that they had other things,

42:45and in my view, he didn't have proper cases against either of them at all. And I think it's dreadful, absolutely dreadful that they settled with him. Yeah. And it's interesting, CNN, which is run by former Director General of the BBC, didn't, and that was eventually thrown out. It's completely different for the BBC. I mean, I'm not saying it's existential, but it's very, very significant. They can't roll over for this in any way. And as I say, you know, libel is our culture. So we know how to deal with this one. Trump is, as I say, he's saying, oh, I can't sit down and testify till second or third week of January. And the judge is saying, you have to sit by the 11th of December. So I feel we will be

43:26checking in on this story within the next six weeks to see whether he did or whether they've managed to get some kind of other deferral. But I'm not sure he can use the midterms as an excuse before the 11th of December because he's going to have a whole month in which he could quite easily sit under oath and talk about how this program that he never saw has damaged him. I mean, listen, we shall see what happens, but I'm getting good vibes. I'm getting good vibes. I don't think the bit when he said that they used AI to put words into his speech. Yeah, that's not going to be helpful for him. Yeah, I think there is quite considerable records of the things he said and that none of them, none of them are AI. And also, I thought

44:04he doesn't call it AI anymore. I thought you called it SI. SI, yeah. Yeah. Come on, Trump. Be consistent. So anyway, we will keep watching that one. Yep. Any recommendations this week? I've got a couple. Catherine Ryan's book, Firstborn Daughter, I mean, she writes about being that person who has all the family's passports. You know, she's the person in control. She's doing lots of the emotional labour. But she does it so funnily. I think she's totally brilliant. I really, really liked it. I think she's terrific. And the other thing I would recommend, which I sort of feel I recommend every year, but it is absolutely epic if you get a chance to see it over the next few months, is Wildlife Photographer of the year at the natural history museum it is the way they do it

44:49each time the way they light it the pictures the storytelling in those pictures and some of the pictures are captured by children under 10 i i don't know i'm it's unbelievable but some of the stories in these these pictures from around the world are absolutely incredible. And it's never not amazing to go and see. You would just be, it's extraordinary every year. Lovely. I'm going to recommend Norm, the tale of Norm Macdonald on Netflix documentary about the comic who people sort of maybe overheard, just know from YouTube clips, I suppose. He was on Weekend Update on SNL. But if you talk to comics, they all they all say oh this is the funniest comic of his generation it's a really really beautiful story

45:28it's a very very individual gentleman with very very individual views on things but by the end it's so deeply moving as well so anyone who's interested in the craft of comedy or anyone who's interested in the sort of heart of a comedian I really really really loved it What's in the larder Richard? Well we have as you say for members this week we have the resumption of the Bond series we have Traders Reactions episodes on Thursday and Friday and we have a Q&A on Thursday so a busy week ahead Busy week But do go and see the Ghost movie Tales are what make the song the song. With Bose, you'll hear everyone. Your music deserves Bose. Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweetgreen's Fall Harvest menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured.

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