Monday Montage

What’s happening, what’s on and what’s interesting this week …

FRONTLINE goes inside the protests that have rocked Iran since the death of a young woman in police custody. Don’t miss INSIDE THE IRANIAN UPRISING – Tuesday night at 10 on PBS NC.

Jodie Comer (Remember Me) and Tom Hardy (The Virgin Queen) will star in The Bikeriders, a new movie by Jeff Nichols coming out in December.

Dive into a counter-narrative and collective memory of the past 30 years of Muslim life in America as POV presents AN ACT OF WORSHIP – Thursday at 9pm on the Explorer Channel.

Monday Montage

What’s happening, what’s on and what’s interesting this week …

Relive the cooking competition that took PBS by storm as ten contestants share heartfelt stories and signature dishes to win the national search for the GREAT AMERICAN RECIPE – beginning tonight at 9 on PBS NC.

Hugh Laurie (Jeeves And Wooster) leads the voice cast of the animated feature The Amazing Maurice, based on the Pied Piper tale. Himesh Patel (EastEnders) and Gemma Arterton (Tess Of The D’Urbervilles) also appear.

Discover the enduring friendship between television personality Dick Cavett and his mentor iconic comedian Groucho Marx. Tune in as AMERICAN MASTERS presents GROUCHO & CAVETT – Tuesday night at 8 on PBS NC.

Anya Taylor-Joy (The Miniaturist) took in a performance of The Nutcracker while in Alabama for the holidays.

Where Do I Know That Actor?

If you missed PRESS on MASTERPIECE then you missed a intriguingly taut drama dealing with journalism ethics in the twenty-first century. You also missed a few familiar faces you may have recognized from other shows UNC-TV has broadcast. Let’s meet the PRESS gang.

Charlotte Riley starred as Herald news editor Holly Evans. About a decade back, Riley played Catherine on a Masterpiece adaptation of Wutherings Heights (opposite Tom Hardy as Heathcliff). More recently, she portrayed Kate on King Charles III.

Where Do I Know That Actor? (Dunkirk Edition)

Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s World War II tale, is the #1 film at the box office. In full disclosure, I haven’t seen the film yet (although it’s on my summer cinema must-see list). However, I have seen the trailer several times and I always lose count of the familiar faces I spy from shows we’ve broadcast on UNC-TV. So I thought it might be fun to see how many I could find. Some were obvious, others less so.

Mark Rylance (Mr. Dawson) was the actor I first recognized. He won an Academy Awards for Bridge of Spies a few years back but I knew him instantly as Thomas Cromwell from Wolf Hall. And if we go back 20 years, Rylance also played King Henry V on a 1997 Great Performances.

Tom Hardy (Farrier) is probably most associated with blockbuster films like Inception, The Dark Knight Rises and Mad Max: Fury Road yet Hardy has a couple of Masterpiece roles of note. He played Heathcliff on Wuthering Heights and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, on The Virgin Queen.

Kenneth Branagh (Commander Bolton) portrayed Swedish detective Kurt Wallander for four seasons on Masterpiece Mystery. Going back a bit, Branagh starred as Shakespeare’s Henry V in the Masterpiece Theatre presentation of that feature film – and he played Guy Pringle on Fortunes of War, another Masterpiece Theatre series.

The PBS Connection (Oscar Edition)

The Academy Award nominations were announced earlier today and I was very pleased to hear Mark Rylance received a Best Supporting Actor nod for his role in Bridge of Spies. After seeing him in last year’s Wolf Hall, I can’t imagine him turning in anything less than a stellar performance. However, I was disappointed no other actors with a public television connection received nominations for their work. (Helen Mirren, for example, had been nominated for a Golden Globe for her role as gossip maven Hedda Hopper in Trumbo, however no such luck where Oscar was concerned.)

I’m happy to say I was wrong. Several of the actors nominated have been in programs we have aired on UNC-TV. Here’s the list I compiled with a little sleuthing.

Michael Fassbender and Eddie Redmayne were nominated for Best Actor, Fassbender for his turn as Steve Jobs and Redmayne for his role in The Danish Girl. But what’s the PBS connection? Fassbender played Charles Allen in Masterpiece‘s Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Silk Stocking about ten years back. Redmayne was also on a few Masterpiece shows – he played Stephen Wraysford on Birdsong (2012) and Angel Clare on Tess of the D’urbervilles (2009).