New Statesman's round-up of what's happening behind the scenes in the world of the arts
HBO, the maker of those televisual treats Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Sopranos, is developing a sexually explicit drama series. With the working title "HBO's sex drama", the as-yet-uncast TV series will follow three couples, in their twenties, thirties and forties, who all share the same sex therapist. "It's going to be more explicit than anything you've ever seen - but hopefully not so as you won't buy the show in the UK," an HBO bigwig tells me.
Good to see that the comic actor Christopher Biggins can take a joke. I sat behind him at the opening night for Whipping It Up, the West End satire about party whips, which pokes repeated fun at Biggins as "that fat bloke off the telly" for failing to dress up as a charity Santa (forcing Richard Wilson's chief whip character to do it). Biggins, languidly spread before me and blocking the view, guffawed heartily every time he was mocked.
Steve Coogan fronted the Film Distributors' Association spring lunch at the Ivy restaurant with a filmed skit in which he pretended to cook the food. "I'm a film actor, too - I've been in two Michael Winterbottom films," Coogan said, perhaps venturing a little too close to the true feelings of a man more than desperate to break into Hollywood.
With Julie Walters (pictured below) fresh from her £1.75m memoirs deal, I hear there's more good news for her. The Film Council wants to adapt Maggie's Tree, her novel about three women friends falling apart in wintry Manhattan, for the big screen.
bendowell@ btinternet.com
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