Could arts funding cuts and cost of living crisis affect your favourite TV shows and films?
Could your favourite Netflix series be impacted by funding cuts to the theatre industry? Could a reduction in investment into opera really affect franchises such as Star Wars?
It’s something most people don’t think about when they read about funding cuts to the arts, warns top British playwright James Graham – but they should.
Graham, whose plays include the Tony-nominated Ink, Privacy, and Quiz – about the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? coughing scandal, which he turned into a TV series in 2020 – says recent cuts in London by Arts Council England, combined with the cost of living crisis, will have a huge impact on the entertainment industry’s “pipeline”.
Pic. Star Wars/Walt Disney
He told Sky News: “Even if you don’t go to the opera, you don’t necessarily appreciate the training that happens to artists, writers, technicians, scenic designers – they all go on to Netflix, they all go on to work on the Star Wars movies.
“Very quickly, I think in the next 18 months, two years, the depletion and the diminishment of arts across television, theatre, music, is going to be really impactful. And it’s frustrating.”
Earlier in November, Arts Council England announced a £43.5m “levelling up” investment outside London to back “art, culture, and creativity for more people in more places, across the country”.
However, grants in the capital have been cut – including to organisations such as English National Opera.
Supporters say the rebalancing is long overdue, but critics argue the move impacts some of the UK’s most important cultural institutions.
Graham, who grew up as “a working class kid” in Nottingham, said he understands “these are hard arguments to make in a difficult climate”, as people struggle to heat their homes and feed their families due to soaring prices.
“But the arts is one of the main drivers for the British economy,” he said. “I reject this argument that giving money to the arts is taking away from hospitals – investing in arts pays for hospital beds, having a really thriving culture sector pays for teachers wages.
James Graham: ‘The arts basically prints money and gives it back to the government’ – Pic: Johan Persson
“They keep talking about growth… we’re a huge growth sector. As well as remembering of course that stories, television dramas, plays, musicals, have an emotional, social impact on our society. They make us better, empathetic human beings for a very, very small cost.”
The arts “eventually return more than they cost, in all the ways – financial, emotional, social cohesion,” he added. “It basically prints money and gives it back to the government.”
Graham’s latest play, political drama Best Of Enemies, stars Zachary Quinto as Gore Vidal opposite David Harewood’s William F Buckley Jr, exploring their bitter political rivalry and historic clashes which transformed political debates and revolutionised current affairs broadcasting.
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“The play centres on these debates, [the] very first live televised debates that were screened on ABC between two intellectuals, one on the left, one on the right,” Harewood, best known for Homeland, told Sky News. “And it ended up being the most watched programme of that entire election cycle. It’s about politics. It’s about ideas. It’s about personal animosity.
“It’s very, very funny. Hugely entertaining, and I think… says a lot about where we are in modern politics.”
Quinto, who starred in the American Horror Story series and also played Spock in the rebooted Star Trek films, said: “You can really chart the journey from where this began to where we are today in a way that is, I think, both exciting and also troubling in a sense.
“Troubling in the sense that we now live in a world that is almost entirely created by echo chambers. We listen to what we want to hear and not really anything else.”
Best Of Enemies opens at the Noel Coward Theatre on 28 November
Taylor Swift has revealed the release date for her new album, The Life Of A Showgirl.
The pop megastar announced her 12th studio album earlier this week but didn’t give many details.
Now, in social media posts and an appearance on boyfriend Travis Kelce’s sports podcast, Swift revealed just what fans can expect from the new album.
Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce on the New Heights podcast. Pic: New Heights
The Life of Showgirl, written during the European leg of her record-breaking Eras tour, will be released on 3 October.
It consists of 12 songs, including the title track that features pop star Sabrina Carpenter.
The full track list is:
1. The Fate Of Ophelia
2. Elizabeth Taylor
3. Opalite
4. Father Figure
5. Eldest Daughter
6. Ruin The Friendship
7. Actually Romantic
8. Wi$h Li$t
9. Wood
10. Cancelled!
11. Honey
12. The Life Of A Showgirl (featuring Sabrina Carpenter)
Long-time collaborators Max Martin and Shellback, two Swedish producers who worked with Swift on some of her biggest hits, joined the pop star for this album.
Within four hours of posting the full podcast episode on YouTube, it had already gathered 4.7m views.
The cover of Taylor Swift’s newly announced album. Pic: Republic Records
The back cover of Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album The Life Of A Showgirl. Pic: Republic Records
‘The hardest-working star in pop’
The album follows last year’s The Tortured Poets Department, which was released during the Eras tour.
That tour, with shows on five continents and in 51 cities, raked in more than $2.2bn (£1.62bn) and was the highest-grossing tour of all time.
Read more about Taylor Swift:
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“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” Swift said during her podcast appearance.
Sky News culture and entertainment reporter Gemma Peplow said after her globe-trotting tour and a swathe of re-releases over recent years, the new album cemented Swift’s reputation “as the hardest-working star in pop”.
Disgraced US film producer Harvey Weinstein is to be tried for a third time in a sexual assault case.
A jury in New York could not reach a verdict in June against the 73-year-old who was accused of raping actress Jessica Mann, and a mistrial was declared.
Judge Curtis Farber has said he wants the new trial to happen before the end of this year.
The same jury found Weinstein guilty in June of sexually assaulting former Project Runway production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 and not guilty of assaulting Polish former runway model Kaja Sokola the same year.
Weinstein will be sentenced for the guilty verdict in Ms Haley’s case on 30 September.
He denied all of the charges. Throughout the retrial, his lawyers insisted the sexual encounters with his three accusers were “transactional” and “consensual,” and labelled the women as opportunists.
Weinstein was originally convicted of rape and criminal sexual act by the same court in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in prison for the crimes.
Last year, however, New York’s highest court overturned the conviction, prompting Weinstein’s retrial this summer.
Weinstein was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood – the co-founder of film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company, who produced films such as the Oscar-winning Shakespeare In Love, Pulp Fiction, and The Crying Game.
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In 2017, a series of sexual misconduct allegations against him propelled the #MeToo movement.
Some of those accusations later led to criminal charges and his convictions in New York and California.
Before the retrial, Weinstein was also serving a 16-year prison sentence after being found guilty of rape in California in December 2022. He has also denied this charge.
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