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Ronald Pickup was not a household name. However he was one of those actors whose presence was often felt even when he was in the company of acting royalty. Born in Chester in 1940, he did not court publicity but simply got on with the job of being a consummate character actor on stage and screen. Raised by his lecturer father Eric and mother Daisy, he attended the independent King's School in Chester before studying English at the University of Leeds. By this stage, he had developed an interest in acting and following his graduation in 1962, he applied for a place at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. It was there where he would pick up the Bancroft Medal but, more significantly, also meet his wife Rachel, an actress who he would marry in 1964. The couple would go on to have two children. Pickup would start to land work immediately, appearing in a 1964 episode of the BBC's sci-fi show 'Doctor Who' and in a theatre production of 'Julius Caesar' in Lo

    Anyone with an ounce of sense should have had serious misgivings about the way Britney Spears was marketed from the moment she became a pop star. The video for her debut single 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' played on the seedy, age old male fantasy of the 'Lolita' style schoolgirl. Aged 18 and a former graduate of Disney's 'The Mickey Mouse Club,' the song and its sexually provocative video catapulted Spears from Bible Belt child star to teen pop sensation. However it came at a huge price, whipping the tabloids, celebrity gossip magazines and mainstream TV shows up into a frenzy over every image that could be captured of her on and offstage. With the video still remaining controversial to this day, Samantha Stark's New York Times, FX and Hulu film 'Framing Britney Spears' has also become one of the most talked about documentaries of 2021 with its focus on the cost her phenomenal fame exacted on her. Social and mainstream media have in recent we

Hot on the heels of one Sky TV production about an episode in Roald Dahl's life comes a Sky movie about another. Last Christmas, Sky1 gave us  'Roald and Beatrix: The Tale of The Curious Mouse'  with Dawn French, Jessica Stevenson, Rob Brydon and Bill Bailey about an encounter between Dahl as a young boy and his favourite writer Beatrix Potter. Now Sky Original Movies gives us 'To Olivia' about the devastating impact the death of his eldest daughter had on Dahl's marriage to the Academy Award winning actress Patricia Neal. Adapted for the screen by director John Hay and David Logan from Neal's memoir 'An Unquiet Life,' it is the kind of movie aimed at audiences who adore Richard Attenborough's CS Lewis tale 'Shadowlands,' Marc Foster's JM Barrie movie 'Finding Neverland' or Chris Noonan's 'Miss Potter'. It's also the sort of film that you might end up watching on TV on a wet Sunday afternoon. Hugh Bonneville is

   If the assault on the US Capitol on January 6 has taught us anything, it is that some people are extremely gullible. They can be easily whipped up into a frenzy by malicious online conspiracy theories. Western societies have become so pre-programmed to see conspiracies everywhere in anything, they are more vulnerable than ever to online misinformation and political manipulation. Racist, anti-Semitic, anti Islamic and other sectarian rhetoric have always been a cancer on political discourse. However online conspiracy fantasies have adeed another disturbing layer of menace - making debate more fevered, more aggressive, with threats of violence against political opponents becoming more prevalent. In a world of increasingly partisan news and commentary pumped out on TV news channels, social media and blogs 24 hours a day, ordinary people are also drowning in information. They are struggling to discern fact from propaganda and insidious fiction. It is a worldwide phenomenon and not just

There's always a place for sentimentality in cinema. Charlie Chaplin knew it during the silent era and was not averse to regularly tugging his audience's heart strings. Walt Disney knew it too and built a studio around animated and live action films that touched the heart as well as the funny bone. Steven Spielberg has known it too, playing with his audience's emotions in films as diverse as 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' 'ET,' 'Always,' 'The Color Purple' and 'Schindler's List'. Sentimentality, if it is done well, can be one hell of a powerful tool in cinema. However it is also extremely hard to pull off. Overcook it and you can really wreck your film, reducing it to treacle. Australian director Glendyn Ivin has decided to walk that fine line in his Netflix movie 'Penguin Bloom,' a story about a woman's road to a new life after a debilitating injury. Based on true story documented in a 2016 book of the same nam