Inside the Gozo filming locations of The Madame Blanc Mysteries

After taking a flight to the small Mediterranean island, I hop on a 25-minute ferry ride to its sister-island of Gozo, embarking on the same journey that the cast and crew of The Madame Blanc Mysteries make when they…

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The horror films you thought were fiction – but were inspired by terrifying true stories

But, what about the scary movies where the truth is more surprising and ghastlier than the fictional on-screen depiction? Here are 10 films that fit the bill – and be warned, there are gristly details of real-life cases…

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Are You With Me Now? by Hanif Kureishi review – back to basics

Not against his family, or the physical reality of being tetraplegic (and how could he?), but the liberal homogeneity of Shepherd's Bush. He gets a diamond stud in his left ear at Westfield shopping centre, a piercing…

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Wicker review – Olivia Colman finds the perfect lover in intriguing folk-horror romance

It's almost funny but not exactly, and almost disturbing but not exactly, occupying a strange and intriguing Venn-diagram overlap between macabre horror and sentimentality. Yet devotees of bucolic British…

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The BBC ghost story that terrified Britain, sparked 30,000 complaints – and was never shown again

What they hadn't realised was that the whole thing was, in fact, a scripted drama. Starring Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith and Craig Charles, the 90-minute mockumentary prompted thousands of complaints…

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Actor targets 'scarred villain' screen stereotype

One casting agency said visible differences were often used as a shorthand for villainy, but that these casting briefs could be successfully challenged. New research by the Centre for Appearance Research (CAR) at the…

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EastEnders airs huge Max Branning lie to Linda Carter before major character returns 20 years after debut in early BBC iPlayer release

A familiar face has also rolled into Albert Square after 4 years away... The episode picked up straight from yesterday's doof doof, where Lee Carter (Danny Hatchard) had just drunkenly revealed his mum's relationship…

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TV tonight: it’s already time for some Christmassy drama

Somebody has murdered the mayor of Sainte-Victoire and dumped her body in the village fountain, which has put a dampener on antique-dealing sleuth Jean's (Sally Lindsay) Christmas Eve wedding plans. Still, she joins the…

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How did a fishmonger who starred in an adult movie make Rocky? The film about Sylvester Stallone’s amazing triumph

That film, of course, was Rocky. Its creation, famously, was no less remarkable an underdog story – one about an out-of-work character actor with the curious name of Sylvester Stallone who wrote his own boxing movie then…

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Nocturne review – Stephen Graham is TV’s most evil serial killer … and it’s impossible to stop watching him

Walter, who draws out the deaths of his victims in order to torture their families as much as the individuals themselves, is incarcerated for life in the bowels of Riverside psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh…

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