EastEnders fans were left on the edge of their seats after the BBC soap appeared to 'confirm' the true identity of Rose Knight after one telling comment.
01.06.2023 - 15:13 / variety.com
Tim Greiving Every composer who scores a true crime series is dealing with ghosts. Their challenge is to help make a show riveting, dramatic — even entertaining — while trying not to exploit a real tragedy with real victims. “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal” called for sensitivity from composers Danielle Furst and Khari Mateen. For Danielle Furst and Khari Mateen, the composers behind “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal,” an added challenge was writing music knowing that the families and friends of victims would likely be watching. “Every time we were working on it, I was thinking about the parents,” says Furst, “listening to what was behind their testimonies and their story and wanting them to feel good about it.”
At the heart of “Murdaugh” is the death of Mallory Beach, a teenager whose death in a boating accident instigates a series of other calamities and murders. “It was a big responsibility,” Furst says. Then there are all the usual scoring considerations of tempo, orchestration and mood. Furst found a hurdy-gurdy, an old hand-cranked string instrument, and used it to create drones throughout. The textbook techniques of scoring a thriller — relentless pulse and accelerating tension — were fair play, while other scenes called for a string elegy. Sometimes images feel dry and stark without music, but there were 911 calls and on-camera testimonies used in the series that were heartbreaking without any accompaniment. Music can make a scene “not feel so heavy,” says Furst. “Or it can give it more of an investigative feeling rather than a heavy tragedy. It’s so important, yet it’s so in the background and shouldn’t be noticed too much.” “We don’t want to over-dramatize what’s already happening,” adds Mateen. “As
EastEnders fans were left on the edge of their seats after the BBC soap appeared to 'confirm' the true identity of Rose Knight after one telling comment.
Ryan Murphy is parting ways with Netflix, it seems, and teaming up with Disney.
Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. Prime Day doesn’t officially kick off until July 12, but the retailer has slowly started releasing early Prime Day deals ahead of the annual deals event — starting with their own subscription services such as Amazon Music and Audible.
Hailey Bieber is a Barbie girl living in a Barbie world!
Urban explorers have been picking through the ruins of a Scots home abandoned for so long that cars outside have been consumed by undergrowth.
Sophia Scorziello editor If there’s one thing Americans love to listen to, it’s true crime. A new Pew Research study of the U.S. podcast market found that nearly a quarter of top-ranked titles in America focused on true crime stories. Moreover, 95% of these true crime podcasts use in-depth reporting to cover their topics, compared to other genres which are much lower (split roughly evenly between deep reporting, interviews and commentary). After the crime podcast wave, genres thin out a bit: 10% focused on politics and government, 9% on entertainment, pop culture and arts and 8% on self-help and relationships. The rest covered a broad range of topics like comedy, religion, sports, health and money.
Charna Flam ABC News Studios has announced its summer slate of true crime docuseries, including an exploration of the rise and fall of scandalous dating site Ashley Madison. The four series — “The Ashley Madison Affair,” “Betrayal: The Perfect Husband,” “Mother Undercover” and “Demons and Saviors” — will premiere throughout July and August, with each featuring multiple parts. Read more about ABC News Studios’ summer docuseries below. “The Ashley Madison Affair”Friday, July 7
Fashion giant PrettyLittleThing has been praised after launching a stunning swimwear and lingerie collection that celebrates women with stoma bags and mastectomies. The "game changing" collaboration is PLT's first ever post-surgery swim collection that is designed to be both comfortable and empowering.
EXCLUSIVE: Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs’ Candle Media has hired a UK development boss for its fledgling True Stories label.
William Earl An interview series hosted by Isaac Mizrahi, a workplace improv comedy created by Ron Howard and a true-crime deep dive into a notorious murder case from L.A.’s early 1980s punk rock scene with Penelope Spheeris highlight the first slate of original podcasts produced by Imagine Entertainment through its joint venture with radio and podcasting giant iHeartMedia. Imagine and iHeart set a podcast production deal in December 2021. The first fruits of that partnership debut today with the launch of “Hello Isaac,” a weekly interview series featuring the fashion and media entrepreneur sitting down with notable figures such as Carson Kressley and Andy Cohen. New episodes will debut Mondays.
preview for Newsom’s upcoming interview with Sean Hannity, which will air on Fox News’ “Hannity” on Monday, the cable news host asked the California governor for his response to Trump’s indictment on Friday, which charged the former President 37 felony counts originating from an investigation into the classified government documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate and other locations upon leaving office.“Sad,” Newsom told Hannity. “And I say that as an American.”Hannity went on to ask Newsom about his relationship with Trump, asking “were you friendly with him?”“Well, as you know, I didn’t have a closed fist — I had an open hand,” Newsom said in response.
Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent “Forest,” an Italian eco-themed animation film about deforestation, has scored some strong pre-sales for Rome-based True Colours at the Cannes Marché du film. The still-in-production 3-D animation feature – the protagonist of which is a young mushroom named Fey – has been picked up for roughly 20 territories by Top Film Distribution which will distribute “Forest” in Ukraine, CIS, the Baltics, and Eastern European countries including former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, Czech and Slovak Republics, Romania, and Hungary. Helmed by Luca Della Grotta and Francesco Dafano, the film is produced by Italy’s AI One, the same team that previously spawned 2020 similarly themed animation feature “Trash” that sold in more than 30 countries.
A woman said to be “obsessed” with true crime television shows has been accused of murder in South Korea after allegedly luring a tutor to her brutal death and dismemberment. On Wednesday of last week, police in t
The CW, which is under new ownership following Nexstar’s acquisition last year, is developing its own true-crime strand.
Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer In Fox’s “Crime Scene Kitchen,” it’s not (entirely) about who wins or loses the most-delicious-baked-good portion, it’s about how you play the baking-detective game. For the second season, which premieres Monday at 9 p.m., host Joel McHale and judge Yolanda Gampp said the competition becomes even harder, as it includes both self-taught and classically trained bakers who come at deciphering the mystery baked goods in very different ways. This season also throws savory recipes into the mix in an attempt to trip up contestants who saw only sweet treats featured in Season 1. “The new bakers all saw the show, and I will say a lot of them swore they could do it,” McHale, who also hosted the first season of “Crime Scene Kitchen” back in 2021, told Variety. “It’s just like anything you see while you’re watching it at home, you’re like, ‘I can do that, I can figure that out.’ And then because we opened up the competition a little bit, so now it can be sweet and savory, we put in another variable that did stump a lot of them. Because some of them were classically trained, they knew their stuff very well. But some of the non-classically trained ones thought out of the box a little bit. I would say the advantages are almost equal, in a weird way.”
Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Playing a man who gets entangled in a murder investigation because his wife (Kaley Cuoco) is obsessed with true crime, “Based on a True Story” kind of hits close to home for Chris Messina. When he was a kid, he and a friend actually may have actually discovered a crime scene. “I grew up in Northport, Long Island,” Messina told Variety at the Peacock series’ premiere Thursday at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. “I grew up on Makamah Road, about a block from the Long Island Sound. A buddy and I walked to the Sound and – it was very ‘Stand By Me’ – we found a hand that washed up on the beach.” They immediately called the cops. “We had to report it,” Messina recalled. “I was pretending to be River Phoenix in ‘Stand By Me.’”
BreAnna Bell MGM+ has picked up the four-episode true-crime docuseries, “Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein.” Directed and executive produced by James Buddy Day (Blumhouse’s “Compendium of Horror,” “Fall River”), the original documentary follows grave robber and serial killer Ed Gein, otherwise known as “The Plainfield Ghoul” and “The Mad Butcher,” whose crimes inspired such iconic films as “Psycho,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and “The Silence of the Lambs.” “For years, filmmakers, journalists, and scholars have tried to unravel the mind of this notorious killer, and with new reveals and never-before-heard recordings, viewers will be transported to late-1950s Middle America and submerged in Gein’s perverse mind. The series explores Gein’s upbringing and twisted relationship with his mother, his early grave robbing, the murders leading up to his arrest, and the police’s discovery of his terrifying house of horrors—all accompanied by the brand-new revelations revealed in the recordings,” reads the description, per MGM+.
The Post spotlighted for being a die-hard “Swiftie” had her dreams come true at the pop superstar’s concert at MetLife Stadium Sunday – when Taylor Swift knelt down and placed the fedora on her head while singing “22.”“I felt so special, happy, nauseous, shocked, excited,” 12-year-old Grace DelVecchio, who has Down Syndrome, told The Post about the special moment. Prior to the DelVecchio family attending T-Swizzle’s Eras Tour concerts on June 26 and 28, The Post and the DelVecchios reached out to Swift’s public relations team several times to request a meet-and-greet with Grace’s idol – but never received a response. So when Grace and her dad, Michael DelVecchio, were instructed by a security guard to go to the end of the ninth row where they were sitting, Michael initially didn’t know what to think. But within seconds, he realized that Swift was in the middle of singing “Enchanted” – the song that routinely came before “22,” during which Swift traditionally gives her fedora to an audience member. “I knew what was going to happen next because I’ve read about it previously.
Lily Moayeri A theme song sets the tone for a series. This is certainly the case for HBO’s awards favorite, “The White Lotus,” which won an Emmy for “Aloha” last year. The jungle sounds, exotic tones, yodels and screams laid over percussive rhythms and high-pitched flutes became instantly identifiable and an echo of the contentious characters vacationing at the Hawaii-based titular resort. Considering how iconic “Aloha” became, changing the theme for the Sicily-based second season was a bold choice. Chilean Canadian composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer drew his original musical ideas from the script and from conversations with series creator Mike White. White “wanted the music to feel like it was boiling under these characters,” de Veer says from his studio in Montréal.
Kaley Cuoco gets in between Chris Messina and Tom Bateman at the premiere of their new Peacock series, Based On A True Story.