Bryan Elsley - Managing Director / Writer

Bryan Elsley - Managing Director / Writer

Dave Evans - Head of DevelopmentCurrently listening to / watching / reading Pat and Margaret, Victoria Wood's 1994 TV movie is the purest joy. Wood plays Margaret, a service station canteen worker who is reunited with her long lost sister Pat, Julie Walters playing a Joan Collins type. It is hilarious, deftly acted across the board and with writing to die for. Even five years after her death, the world without Wood remains colder, poorer understood and worse.The Victoria Miro (16 Wharf Road, London) has a double exhibition of paintings at the moment by Doron Langberg (intimate figures blown up on an epic, almost galactic field) and Kudzanai-Violet Hwami (surprising and confronting portraits of the sexualised body). They bounce beautifully off each other and the little garden out back is like an oasis off the ugliness of City Road.Bendik Giske's Cracksis the ideal soundtrack to late night marches through the streets of a city waking up again. Sleazy, urgent, plaintive and driving, this is saxophone but not as you know it.

Dave Evans - Head of Development

Currently listening to / watching / reading

Perhaps it’s schadenfreude that’s got me hooked on the Guardian’s fabulous podcast Gina about Australia’s richest person, mining heiress Gina Rhinehart. It’s smart and well told with great characters and gripping on both the scale of her dominion and the lack of joy apparent in a life spent in constant lawsuits with family members. What can 40 billion Australian dollars buy you? Perhaps exactly what you deserve.

Re: the wicked rich and the end of the world they seem so determined to hasten, I’ve loved two very different musicals with casts so good you’ll have to Google: Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End tells the story of some long-term bunker dwellers who must face their past and future when a stranger appears in their midst and Stephen Sondheim’s final musical Here We Are at the National where a set of entitled pricks become trapped in a neverending ‘meal’. Neither is perfect, both are delightful.

And if in the face of recent repulsive events, you’re looking to support trans genius, Justin Vivian Bond has announced two shows in the new Soho Theatre Walthamstow, one in tribute to Marianne Faithfull, the other returning Kiki and Herb, v’s duo with Kenny Mellman. Both will be unmissable.

Lindsay Taggart - Company ManagerCurrently listening to / watching / readingBobs Burgers - Very late to the party but my August has been filled with watching this from the start. Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls - I think it was the new editions beautiful front cover that drew me to this classic. I don’t think I’ll be able to watch The Shape of Water the same way again. The Dropout - these new episodes of the podcast have picked up from the original 2019 series for the trial of Elizabeth Holmes and her medical tech company Theranos. I won’t give too much away but it is a fascinating listen!

Lindsay Taggart - Company Manager

Currently listening to / watching / reading

A recent trip to Leeds Art Gallery introduced me to British photographer Peter Mitchell who quite shamefully I’d never seen before. His work documents the ordinary in an extraordinary way - from shopkeepers, to partially torn down buildings to scarecrows watching over objects. He currently has a show on at The Photographers Gallery

Funboys on BBC, a new comedy from writers and performers Ryan Dylan and Rian Lennon about a group of friends in small town Northern Ireland. A very fun and charming show for fans of This Country and Julia Davis.

Staying on Northern Irish exports I am very much looking forward to catching Chalk and Makeshift Art Bar on tour. New young, noisy punk best seen in a small sweaty venue.

Daniel Donnelly - Development ExecutiveCurrently listening to / watching / reading On Becoming a God in Central Florida – This comedy drama TX’d on Showtime in the States in 2019 and was stubbornly hard to get hold of in the UK. It is now finally available on Netflix and is a treat. Kirsten Dunst is a minimum wage water park worker who climbs the ranks of a pyramid scheme, the same scheme that killed her husband. A smart dark satire of the American Dream. Sky comedy Bloods written by Nathan Bryon and Paul Doolan, stars Samson Kayo and Jane Horrocks as two mismatched paramedics serving the good people of London. It’s a 25-minute punch of joy that I didn’t know I needed. Everyone is banging on about it but yes I devoured The White Lotus as fast as I could. I now need to go back and watch everything Murray Bartlett has ever done. Google tells me he’s going to be in the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us, happy days.

Daniel Donnelly - Development Executive

Currently listening to / watching / reading

I’ve seen some very good documentaries this year. Murder Trial on BBC got into the mechanics of a cold case murder at the High Court. Anatomy of Lies was about Elisabeth Finch the Grey’s Anatomy writer who told the most crazy lies, look her up. The Boyzone doc was excellent, entertaining and really well put together.

Barry Can’t Swim is an Edinburgh DJ/musician that has been recommended to me that I’m really enjoying. Electronic music and a bit jazzy. I also love the song Mathematics from Joy Crookes feat Kano. Nice UK soulful stuff, with a lovely big chorus, the notes of which I can’t quite hit.

The Digger is an independent magazine from Glasgow that focuses on crime stories, mainly found from sitting in the sheriff court and reporting some of the weird and wonderful going ons that don’t make the big news outlets.

Bradley Adams - ProducerCurrently listening to / watching / readingTristian and Isolde, Follies (50th anniversary), Mama Mia (my grandaughter makes me)Promising Young Woman. Succession (cracking performances)Maiden Castle by John Cowper Powys, (some…

Bradley Adams - Producer

Currently listening to / watching / reading

Tristian and Isolde, Follies (50th anniversary), Mama Mia (my grandaughter makes me)

Promising Young Woman. Succession (cracking performances)

Maiden Castle by John Cowper Powys, (someone thought it would make a good drama, they were wrong!). A Terrible Beauty by Peter Watson, (Started it 15 years ago, totally love it but can't quite finish it. It's next to my bed permanently). The Longest Memory by Fred D'Aguir (think it could make a great drama).