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  THE STUDIO, Season 1 Be careful what you wish for. That appears to be the message behind Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez's Apple TV+ sitcom 'The Studio'. A 10 part comedy of errors, it stars Rogen as Matt Remick, a film buff turned Hollywood exec who finds himself ascending to the throne at a fictional studio after Bryan Cranston's CEO Griffin Mill decides to axe its head Catherine O'Hara's Patty Leigh. Stunned yet pleased to be replacing his mentor, Matt embarks on the new role with zeak, vowing to turn Continental Studios into an entertainment conglomerate that makes the sort of quality films that Hollywood is no longer known for. However accepting the job comes at a price, with Matt agreeing to Griffin's demand that he greenlight a lame franchise movie about the Kool Aid Man. Initially encouraged by his colleagues to hire Nicholas Stoller of ' Forgetting Sarah Marshall ' fame as its director, he quickly chang...

  THE ASSEMBLY Who would have predicted an interview show fronted by neurodivergent and learning disabled people would turn out to be one of the most compelling and uplifting this year? Yet here we are with ITV's 'The Assembly' - a show which puts famous faces into a high rise office building to face a barrage of questions that often cut really deep. Originally piloted on BBC1 last year with the Welsh actor Michael Sheen serving as the guinea pig , the format has been a huge success in France where Emmanuel Macron was asked about marrying his high school teacher and Australia where the ' Jurassic Park ' and ' Peaky Blinders ' star Sam Neill welled up when recalling his parents . The BBC decided not to option 'The Assembly' as a series. However that decision now looks like a massive own goal. Stepping into the breach, ITV's version catapults Danny Dyer, David Tennant, Little Mix's Jade Thirlwall and Gary Lineker into an arena where no question...

  THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME We're at that stage where people either love Wes Anderson films or are really irritated by them. Few contemporary directors sharply divide audiences and critics like the Texan. Then again, few filmmakers regularly attract the calibre of cast that Anderson assembles for his movies. True to form, Anderson's latest quirky black comedy 'The Phoenician Scheme' boasts a cast most directors and producers would die for. Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Riz Ahmed, Alex Jennings, Hope Davis, Matthieu Amalric, Jason Watkins, Willem Dafoe, Rupert Friend, Charlotte Gainsbourg, F Murray Abraham and Bill Murray all feature. But in the biggest role of her relatively short career, it is Kate Winslet's daughter Mia Threapleton who steals the show with a deadpan performance as a novice nun. 'The Phoenician Scheme' begins in unlikely Anderson fashion like ...

  THE FOUR SEASONS Good observational comedies on the big or small screen are a precious commodity. Far too often we are subjected to comedies that go for crude, cheap laughs or are poor imitations of much better shows. So it's comforting to see Tina Fey, Lang Fisher and Tracey Whitfield reboot a successful but largely forgotten romcom hit from the 1980s, give it a 21st Century makeover and turn it into an engaging Netflix show. Alan Alda's movie 'The Four Seasons'  was the ninth biggest movie of 1981 and enjoyed huge critical and commercial success. Written, directed by and starring Alda, its cast included Carol Burnett, Sandy Dennis, Rita Moreno, Len Cariou, Jack Weston and Bess Armstrong and it followed the ups and downs of three New York middle class couples over four vacations in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Fey, Fisher and Wigfield's Netflix series isn't the first attempt to turn Alda's comedy drama into a TV show. Weston and Tony Roberts starred...

  DOPE THIEF (Apple TV+) If you're not watching 'Dope Thief,' why the hell not? Yes, it's on Apple TV+ but such is the quality of the acting, writing and directing, it's as good an argument as I've seen to subscribe to the streaming service. Unravelling over eight episodes, Peter Craig's adaptation of Dennis Tafoya's 2009 novel tells the story of two low life criminals who stumble into a conspiracy that is bigger than they could ever imagine. Brian Tyree Henry's Ray Driscoll and Wagner Moura's Manny Carvalho are childhood friends in Philadelphia who are recovering addicts and low level drug dealers. They also have a pretty good scam going. Dressed as DEA agents, they stake out other low level dealers and then carry out fake raids, stealing their product and money. The information on which houses to hit comes from Dustin Nguyen's Son Pham, a successful Vietnamese drug trafficker who lives in a nice house, with a model family but who also has s...

  From ' Public Enemy ' to ' The Irishman ,' ' The Sopranos ' to ' This City Is Ours ,' it seems we can't get enough of tales about gangsters on the big and small screen. Ireland has also had quite a few TV shows and movies about crime gangs in its time from ' The General ' to ' Calm With Horses ,' ' Love/Hate ' to ' KIN '. Sometimes, though, the grim storles of what real life crime gangs get up to is just as fascinating. That is especially true of two recent docuseries about rival sides in a feud that spectacularly erupted on the streets of Dublin - RTE1's 'Gerry Hutch: AKA The Monk' and BBC1's 'Kinahan: The True Story of Ireland's Mafia'. The feud between the Kinahan and Hutch gangs is probably best known for the  shocking gun attack on a boxing weigh-in in Dublin's Regency Hotel in February 2016 . However the fallout claimed the lives of 18 people. There were lots of other casualties ...

  In  Series One of 'KIN,'  everybody was talking about Jamie. In Series One of the Liverpool crime drama 'This City Is Ours,' everybody is... well, talking about Jamie. Despite being touted as  "the Scouse Sopranos" , BBC1's 'This City Is Ours' actually has a lot more in common with its RTE/AMC predecessor 'KIN'. Both have sensitive gangland lead characters at the centre of the show called Michael.  Both gangs in each show also have macho hotheaded young men desperate to prove their criminal credentials but who ultimately place their families at risk. Both gangs in each show also incur the wrath of the international drug cartels. However the most striking thing about ' KIN ' and 'This City Is Ours' is the way the women around the men are just as callous, calculating and culpable as the husbands, sons and partners they often run rings around. That is not to say 'This City Is Ours' is a 'KIN' rip-off. Like its...