STV.tv – 15th October, 2015

Meet Bulstrode: Richard E Grant takes on the role in the new adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde.

Richard E Grant is one of the main stars of new drama Jekyll and Hyde, which comes to STV this autumn and winter.

The renowned actor takes on the role of Bulstrode, who runs MIO (Military Intelligence Other), a government department that officially doesn’t exist. The department’s job is to track down any supernatural or monstrous forces, and get rid of them.

Basically, if the world appears mundane, grey and all too ordinary, that’s because Bulstrode and his team have been doing their job well. Having said this however, there is something amoral and unhinged about Bulstrode. He seems to be running his department primarily for himself and is only paying lip service to his government masters.

Speaking of monsters there are plenty of them – complete with a healthy dose of CGI effects. Some of the villainous characters promise to send chills down the spine. Each of them play a key role in the dark series, as Robert Jekyll struggles to find out the truth about his past and why he is the way he is – all while a series of dark forces also try to track down the source of his powers.

The monsters will come into play via a bit of meddling from Bulstrode. However, while Bulstrode knows rather a lot about Jekyll/Hyde and hopes to recruit him, he’ll first of all use him as bait to draw the villains of the series into his trap. Some of these monsters include:

The Vetala — The zombie-like reanimated corpses of Captain Dance’s enemies, they become his ghoulish slaves.

The Harbinger — Half man, half dog, he brings dire warnings of the future.

The Black Dog — When under pressure Robert turns into Hyde. During the series he meets a branch of his family who when under similar pressure turn into monstrous black dogs.

The CuUer — 7’6″ tall and with a lobster claw for an arm. He may not be very bright but he’s extremely destructive.

The Moroii — Hideous leech-like creatures who help Captain Dance to regenerate, but when let loose into the sewers they grow to monstrous proportions.

The Reaper Bug — A parasite that gets inside you and controls your every action.

The Incubus — A demon who takes on the form of the person you love most in the world in order to eat your soul…

TheGuardian.com – 15th October, 2015

Writer tells of organisation of monsters featured in his Sunday evening ITV series based on Robert Louis Stevenson novel.

Charlie Higson: ‘Each generation we create our own new monsters and our own new threats.’ Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

Charlie Higson says his new Sunday evening ITV series, Jekyll and Hyde, will be “Downton Abbey with monsters”.

Downton Abbey will conclude after six series when the Christmas special airs in December, leaving a hole in the Sunday evening schedule.

Higson’s Jekyll and Hyde is a retelling of the Victorian Robert Louis Stevenson novel – but traces the fate of Jekyll’s grandson in the 1930s. Robert Jekyll (Tom Bateman), having been raised by foster parents in Ceylon, is called to London, where he finds out more about his lineage and the monster who lurks inside him: Hyde.

Two shadowy organisations are in pursuit: Tenebrae, an organisation of monsters, and MIO (Military Intelligence Other), a super-secret service. It turns out the world is stalked by monsters of every variety – and MIO, led by Sir Roger Bulstrode (Richard E Grant) is tasked with suppressing the monsters and keeping them under wraps.

Novelist and screenwriter Higson, 57, said: “We’re really hoping this is going to be like Downton. It’s going to be Downton Abbey with monsters. We’re set in the 30s, it’s like a classic traditional period drama, and of course ITV has done all the Marples and the Poirots in that era. But they haven’t done them with men with giant lobster claws, and I think it’s about time.

“It certainly would have livened Downton up a bit. It’s very popular, I’m not dissing Downton, but I’d have watched more of it if it had a guy with a giant lobster claw turning up and smashing everything to pieces.”

Higson explained that the idea of MIO was partly inspired by current affairs.

He said: “In some ways I was I suppose channelling the ideas of all the stuff that [Edward] Snowden exposed, the idea that governments do all this stuff on our behalf. We do these terrible things for you. We get rid of these terrorists and we send them abroad to be killed – and don’t worry because we’re doing it for you. We’re doing it to protect society.

“So that was my idea of MIO, that in order to protect us and for us not to get scared, they will deal with all the nasty things, and they will do it quite ruthlessly … My MIO is very much like a modern government. Their job is to get rid of in secret all these things they think they need to get rid of.”

Pointing to the idea of the monster within, he said: “That’s a really strong idea, and that’s a very contemporary idea – the idea that monsters aren’t things from elsewhere, they’re not creatures from another planet, they are us. They are what’s inside us … Each generation we create our own new monsters and our own new threats.”

14th October, 2015

ITV have announced that their new series ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ will premiere on Sunday October 25th at 6:30pm.

As reported earlier on The Temple the new series is set in 1930s London and will follow Robert Jekyll (played by Tom Bateman), the grandson of Henry Jekyll, on his quest to discover his true identity.

Apart from REG, ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ stars Natalie Gumede, Stephanie Hyam, Donald Sumpter, Phil McKee, Christian McKay and Ruby Bentall. Charlie Higson and Francis Hopkinson are the executive producers.

The Telegraph – 9th October, 2015

Actor Richard E Grant followed his nose to create his own perfume ‘Jack’ after a life-changing journey through the South of France

Inner drive: with Jack, Richard E Grant’s olfactory dreams have finally become a reality Photo: ©Jake Henderson

By Richard E. Grant.

Climb aboard and travel back with me to 1969 – 12 years old and transitioning from knobbly knees in short pants and cropped hair to a lanky colt with floppy fringe and bell- bottoms. I was still playing with my Dinky toy cars as hormonal storms squalled up my shins, but even in time-warped colonial Swaziland, messing about with toy cars at the age of 12 was uncool. Especially as Neil Armstrong had just put his foot down on the Moon. Everything American was the “future” and the arrival of a Yankee gal a few desks along from me was my “present”. She encapsulated the fast-talking, gum-chewing, movie-accented “dream” and taught me how to French kiss. In return, I saved my pocket money and traded some Dinky toys to buy a bottle of perfume for her birthday; alas, it proved way beyond my means.

Instead, I stole all the rose and gardenia petals from our garden, boiled them up in sugar water and stuffed them into jam jars, then buried them. A couple of weeks underground produced several stink bombs of sludge, but the dream of making my own perfume was secretly planted.

Fast-forward four decades and I was on Mustique driving back from the beach alongside fellow house guest Anya Hindmarch. When we stopped, I missiled my nose into a gardenia bush, prompting her to ask: “Are you going to do something about this?” – “this” being my obsession with smelling everything in sight.

“Do you mean psychiatrically?”

Laughing, she said: “No, I meant have you ever thought about creating your own fragrance?”

“It’s been a life-long dream.”

“Make it a reality”

“But how?”

And with a wave of her Fairy Godmother iPhone, Anya tapped out a list of contacts to approach back in London.

At this point I had to confess that the four per cent I scored in my maths mock O Level in 1973 had kyboshed my business ambitions ever since.

“Passion is everything,” she declared, echoing the cover blurb of a Seventies self-help manual. “You don’t need to be a bean counter to go into business. There are people who can do that for you. What they can’t do is match your passion for perfume.”

Her smiling assurances brooked no doubt. However, the cold reality of actually getting started in business scuppered my resolve – until independent British perfumer Lynn Harris of Miller Harris generously agreed to meet me.

It was like a game of Snakes and Ladders where, with my first throw of the dice, I’d zoomed to the top rung, getting expert advice and being taken seriously.

Former Harrods chief honcho Marigay McKee introduced me to scent supremo Roja Dove, with his own bespoke perfume emporium on the fifth floor. I felt like a country bumpkin flattening my nose to the glass wall of a corporate world, prompting a tiny voice to whisper: “You have no backer, no production company, no distributor, no retailer, no business plan, no hope.”

Roja is a walking, talking perfume lexicon with an encyclopaedic knowledge he is willing to share. What market was I aiming for, “niche or mass, bespoke or Boots?”

He then gave me an hour-long blind testing session. “Possibly because you’ve never smoked nor drunk, you have a very clear, pure nose and are utterly obsessed and possessed,” he said. “Go to Grasse.”

So I exited the motorway at Mougins, then satnavved up the hill towards the factory where Roja had arranged a private tour. Before I even came to a stop, the perfume- saturated air was overwhelming. I could feel an olfactory epiphany approaching.
The factory itself is a combination of Dickensian copper vats and Heath Robinson-ish contraptions, cheek-by-jowl with 21st-century state-of-the-art machinery. Tons of petals are transformed via a Dr Seuss-like hiss-and-steam process into drums of perfume wax.

As my guide described it all in epic techno-detail, my head obediently nodded like a dashboard dog, but all I could think of was that this was precisely what I wanted to be doing with my future – mixing and creating fragrances which made perfect scense.

A year after this life-changing journey, my unisex “signature in scent” Jack was launched exclusively at Liberty in London. It may have been only 38 kilometres from Nice Airport to Grasse, and took a mere 40 minutes on the A8 motorway, but this was a journey I had been on for 44 years, one that began with that Dinky toy car in Swaziland.

Penguin Books UK – 7th October, 2015

Paula Hawkins brings a photo of her father, an Edward Hopper picture and a DVD of Rear Window to the Penguin Studio to talk about her bestselling book ‘The Girl On The Train’ with host Richard E Grant.

Richard E Grant invites authors, comedians, musicians, historians, actors, business leaders, philosophers and fellow actors to join him at the Penguin studios with five objects that inspired and shaped the writing of their latest book. The objects they bring to the conversation act as a diving board for Richard to delve deep into the author’s world to fully understand the origins of their story, the experiences that influenced its development and the vision for translating the story into an audiobook, excerpts of which are heard throughout the episode. Every podcast is unique as our authors shape the conversation through the objects they select to illustrate the creative process. The themes of the book provide the inspiration for wider cultural discussions.

To subscribe to the podcast, go to http://po.st/penguinpodsubscribe.