2 w. ago ‘The Met won’t be happy with it’: Jeff Pope on Suspect, his drama about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes

The king of UK true-crime dramas tells Gabriel Tate about returning to a 20-year-old scandal, and what’s driven him to probe the psyche of everyone from Fred West to Jimmy Savile

Events

3 w. ago Pray that this outlandish new social policy will fail to take flight | Phillip Inman

Analysts trace a link between financial security and a troubling, increasingly devil-may-care, attitude to political risk Steve Coogan wants ­people to see his new film, The Penguin Lessons, and think about how they might be living in a wealthy cocoon, disengaged from the world.The film’s central character – a Briton teaching expat children in Argentina – rescues a penguin and tries to help local people persecuted by the rightwing government. Re-enacting a true story, Coogan is showing how it’s possible to be involved in local communities even when the protagonist is an outsider. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago It’s not poverty that’s breeding the new populism. It’s wealth | Phillip Inman

Analysts trace a link between financial security and a troubling, increasingly devil-may-care, attitude to political risk Steve Coogan wants ­people to see his new film, The Penguin Lessons, and think about how they might be living in a wealthy cocoon, disengaged from the world.The film’s central character – a Briton teaching expat children in Argentina – rescues a penguin and tries to help local people persecuted by the rightwing government. Re-enacting a true story, Coogan is showing how it’s possible to be involved in local communities even when the protagonist is an outsider. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Steve Coogan isn’t earnest enough for the dire political comedy The Penguin Lessons

Finally a film that asks ‘could an adorable flightless bird convince Alan Partridge to stand up to Argentina’s military dictatorship?’

Politics

4 w. ago Steve Coogan on his very unusual new comedy: ‘The penguin takes the edge off the fascism’

In ‘The Penguin Lessons’, the man behind Alan Partridge plays a school teacher in military-occupied Argentina who forms an unlikely bond with a seabird. Such tonal extremes required a delicate hand, he and his co-star Jonathan Pryce tell Annabel Nugent

Politics

4 w. ago The Penguin Lessons review – Steve Coogan seabird comedy drama tries to sell feelgood mood

Coogan does his best, but there’s a tonal mismatch here: the animal-teaches-lonely-human narrative jars with a depiction of lives in totalitarian ArgentinaHere is a well-meaning, awkward tonal jumble of a movie, based on the bestselling memoir by former teacher Tom Michell; it is a quirky true-story heart warmer, in which an adorable penguin is apparently supposed to redeem not merely the human hero’s personal heartbreak but maybe even the agony of Argentina during the 70s junta. It stars Steve Coogan, who has often in the past shown brilliant technique as a straight actor, and in Philomena with Judi Dench proved he is perfectly capable of carrying an un-ironised emotional story. But his performance here is bafflingly underpowered and opaque, as if he is slightly perplexed by the script he’s been given.Coogan plays Tom, who takes a job in Peronist Argentina in 1976, teaching English at a stuffy private school for the sons of wealthy expatriates, and is wary of the overbearing headte...

Events

last month Steve Coogan: ‘Art is what humanises us, and it can’t be measured on a spreadsheet’

Steve Coogan and the cast and crew behind charming new movie The Penguin Lessons share what they learned from being on set with a penguin.

Politics