The actor used his booming voice and Shakespearean pedigree in the service of absurd (and often lewd) comedy.

It influenced The Simpsons and sparked the careers of Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, John Candy and many others. Now this extraordinary Canadian series is finally getting its due

SCTV – short for Second City Television – is one of most influential comedy shows ever created. In the 1970s and 80s, while North American comedy fans worshipped at the altar of Saturday Night Live, the comedy nerds loved SCTV. The Canadian sketch show was weird. It was dark. It was multilayered and years ahead of its time.

Dave Thomas, head writer and an original cast member, was there from the start. “Conan O’Brien said that he used to watch and he thought, ‘This show is being written specifically for me,’” Thomas tells me. “There were references in it that he was absolutely sure only he got. We wrote at the top of our reference level. And the idea was to see if the audience would meet us there.”

Continue reading...

© Photograph: NETFLIX

© Photograph: NETFLIX

© Photograph: NETFLIX

Scraping copyrighted material from internet could ‘potentially’ amount to acquisition of property by government, Anne Twomey says

• Get our daily political email, free app or daily news podcast

Altering copyright law to allow AI companies to scrape music, books and journalism could trigger a constitutional breach, Coalition senators and the recording industry have warned, as they raise new fears it could open Australia to massive legal action and compensation claims from rights holders worldwide.

The attorney general’s department admitted it was “extremely alive” to the issue, and Australia’s leading constitutional expert, Anne Twomey, agreed there was “potentially” a concern – depending how legislation was drafted – that granting AI companies permission to scrape copyrighted material from the internet could amount to an acquisition of property by the government.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

© Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

© Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

The star takes on her biggest challenge yet: resurrecting her family’s Cantonese restaurant. She discusses the stress of rewatching her sitcom, nearly becoming a meat inspector … and her beloved matriarch, who passed away after filming

I’m embarrassed I didn’t bring anything. It’s 10-something in the morning, and I’m meeting Nora Lum, 38 – best known as rapper, comic actor and writer Awkwafina – the morning after the Bafta TV awards. I feel that I should have brought her a pastry pick-me-up. Yet here I am empty-handed. “It could have been Chinese buns,” she playfully suggests.

Yes, it could have been. Especially because we are meeting to discuss her new series on Apple TV, Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook. It sees the star of box-office hits Crazy Rich Asians and Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings travel across the US to learn from a new generation of Asian American chefs, in the hope that she might revive her own family’s long-closed Cantonese restaurant. But there’s one problem: she can’t cook.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

As Jean-Luc Picard in seven seasons, four films and a sequel, Stewart made us believe the most interesting person in the room might also be the most humane

• Patrick Stewart dies age 86

• His life in pictures

• Patrick Stewart brought gravitas and complexity to the screen, from Star Trek to X-Men

• ‘He stood for the best of us’: William Shatner and more pay tribute

What might humanity look like in 400 years’ time if we really do become wiser and more compassionate with each passing decade? The creators of Star Trek: The Next Generation clearly felt the answer closely resembled Patrick Stewart, who has died aged 86 after a short illness. Their decision may well have opened up an entirely new future for Gene Roddenberry’s enduring, resolutely utopian space saga.

Prior to the casting of the classically trained Yorkshireman in 1987, Star Trek was best known for the interplay between William Shatner’s charismatic, impulsive Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy’s drily logical Spock. Stewart brought something of both men to the captain’s chair as Jean-Luc Picard, combining analytical rigour with a depth of feeling his imposing formality could never quite conceal.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: George Rose/Getty Images

© Photograph: George Rose/Getty Images

© Photograph: George Rose/Getty Images

Emily McGonagle was watching cartoons with her sons when she decided to embark on a career change. A decade on, she is a star of a globally popular children’s series

Emily McGonagle was on maternity leave from her job as a lawyer, juggling the care of her new baby and her toddler son, when the daily diet of TV cartoons made her think about an unlikely career change.

Watching Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol, her older son’s favourites, “it occurred to me: who does this job?”, says the 42-year-old from Essex. “How do you get into it? Even when I was watching TV commercials, I’d think: well, how do you do that?”

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

© Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

© Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

Keira Knightley returns for more chaos and thrills with guns in an espionage drama. Plus, Owen Wilson is back as charming washed-up golf pro Pryce Cahill

Helen Webb (Keira Knightley) is now the prime minister’s wife. Will that temper her treachery? Not a bit of it. This hugely entertaining espionage thriller returns with Helen cracking a safe (and adding to her spectacular body count) at an official engagement. The Black Doves spy ring is now in chaos after a key disappearance and, worse still, Sam (Ben Whishaw) has become a loose cannon, forced to take on hit jobs without much due diligence. Soon, absolutely everyone is somehow on a direct collision course. It’s a glorious mess of motive, morality and murder, and the superb cast – which now includes Ambika Mod and Babou Ceesay – are clearly having a ball. So will you.
Netflix, from Thursday 5 November

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Matthew Towers/Courtesy of Matthew Towers/Netflix

© Photograph: Matthew Towers/Courtesy of Matthew Towers/Netflix

© Photograph: Matthew Towers/Courtesy of Matthew Towers/Netflix

“He’s working on material for his next special, ‘Hussein in the Membrane,’” Meyers said after the former president ruffled feathers with jokes about the Cheesecake Factory.

From Jean-Luc Picard to Charles Xavier, the actor’s Shakespearean training – and that sonorous voice – made him a unique charismatic force in Hollywood

• Patrick Stewart dies age 86

• His life in pictures

• O Captain, our Captain: on Star Trek, Patrick Stewart could make anyone feel hopeful for humanity

• ‘He stood for the best of us’: William Shatner and more pay tribute

No actor showed the commercial potential of blue-chip British classical training like Patrick Stewart. With style, technique and the most minutely self-aware, almost vaudevillian sense of mimicry, Shakespearean thesps can turn their hand to American movies and high-end American television and show the American method actors how it’s done – sometimes, even, at the beginning of their screen careers, at a competitively low wage.

Stewart was one of the thoroughbreds of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1970s stage generation who had also had classy small screen roles, such as his intimidating Sejanus in I, Claudius opposite Derek Jacobi. But he effected a warp-speed leap to pop culture stardom by getting the role of Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Federation starship USS Enterprise, in TV’s Star Trek: The Next Generation, the hugely successful reboot of Star Trek that ran from 1987 to 1994, spawning four separate feature films and then another series, Star Trek: Picard.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: MARVEL/Allstar

© Photograph: MARVEL/Allstar

© Photograph: MARVEL/Allstar

The motley mix of roles that won the British actor acclaim includes a Shakespearean hero, a “Star Trek” captain and an “X-Men” mutant.

© Aaron Rapoport/Corbis, via Getty Images

Led by the Shakespearean veteran in his role as Jean-Luc Picard, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” gracefully went where the franchise had never gone before.

© CBS Photo Archive