Oh, Strictly. Home of the both the most bizarre and glorious dances known to man. Over the years we’ve seen some incredible routines – ones that brought a tear to the eye, ones that made us double over with laughter, and ones that made our jaws drop.
Many have been watched again and again online. Here are six that broke the internet:
Faye Tozer and Giovanni Pernice’s Charleston
This charleston, choreographed the The Lonely Goatherd, is amongst the most iconic, inventive, and technically brilliant performances the programme has ever witnessed. Bruno hailed it a “theatrical masterpiece” and urged them to “take it to Broadway”. Darcey Bussell emphasised how remarkable it was that a specific movement had been crafted for every single beat of the music.
(Image: BBC)
Lewis Cope and Katya Jones’ Couple’s Choice
Lewis and Katya’s Couple’s Choice to a jazz version of Radiohead’s Creep during Series 23 proved to be one of the defining, standout moments of that series. The performance moved many viewers and judges to tears, with commentators and former professionals hailing it as one of the most unforgettable Couple’s Choice routines in Strictly history.
(Image: BBC)
Danny Mac and Oti Mabuse’s Samba
Who can forget the first samba to earn a 40 on Strictly? Oti crafted professional-level choreography, and Danny delivered fluid hip isolations and relentless energy that matched her step-for-step.
(Image: BBC/Guy Levy)
Rose Ayling-Ellis and Giovanni Pernice’s Couple’s Choice
Their Couple’s Choice routine is widely regarded as one of the most powerful, moving, and culturally significant moments in British television history. Performed in Week 8 to “Symphony” by Clean Bandit ft. Zara Larsson, the contemporary routine was dedicated to the Deaf community.
At the midpoint of the routine, as the music swelled to its peak, the sound cut out entirely, leaving a silence lasting roughly 20 seconds while Rose and Giovanni continued dancing in perfect unison.
(Image: BBC)
Bill Bailey and Oti Mabuse’s Couple’s Choice
Bill, a 55-year-old actor and comedian initially regarded as the “novelty” or wildcard contestant of the series, astonished everyone with his remarkable sense of rhythm, musicality, and dedication. The performance immediately went viral on social media and established Bill as a genuine contender for the series title.
(Image: BBC)
Aston Merrygold and Janette Manrar’s Salsa
The choreography showcased numerous breathtaking overhead lifts and spins, capitalising fully on Janette’s mastery of Latin theatrical work. Their salsa proved hugely popular with audiences and achieved an impressive score, though it later became a focal point of debate within the series, as only three weeks later, Aston and Janette were knocked out.
Peyton Manning sat in the studio and cued the video. Stafford looked off a Philadelphia safety last Sunday to hold him in place. He froze a cornerback with a glance. Then he threw an out-and-up to Puka Nacua, absorbing a big hit as he released the ball.
“That’s a lot of looking off,” Manning said.
Hall of Fame linebacker Luke Kuechly, watching from his own home studio, agreed.
“The quarterback will lie to you,” Kuechly said. “He’s going to look you off. He’s going to pump you. But the one thing that never lies to you is the route.”
Welcome to “The Breakdown,” the ESPN2 show in which Manning and Kuechly provide different perspectives from opposite sides of the ball, discussing strategy, preparation and key storylines heading into marquee NFL matchups.
This show airs on Friday at 12:30 p.m. PDT, and this week’s episode focuses on Monday night’s game between the Rams and Buffalo Bills at SoFi Stadium. The show is in its second season, and Kuechly replaces Bill Belichick, who played the defensive counterpart to Manning in Season 1.
“I’ve had lots of college coaches and pro players and high school coaches that watch this show that love it,” Manning said. “Because they want the details, but also for the casual fan to be able to understand and follow the game and maybe be entertained at the same time. It’s a delicate balance.”
Elements that Manning and Kuechly identified as critical to Monday’s game:
Stafford’s eyes. The Rams quarterback will try to move Buffalo defenders with his looks, a flick of his shoulders, a tiny pump fake. Kuechly advises defenders to watch the route.
Greg Rousseau. Kuechly identifies Buffalo’s edge rusher as the scariest player on tape, especially with his long arms that almost seem telescopic.
Allen’s ability to throw outside the numbers. The Bills quarterback has the arm strength to get the ball to any of his receivers at any time. “I would need a cutoff man to complete some of the throws he makes,” Manning said.
Quick snaps. Stafford is a master of catching the defense off guard and before it has set. It’s a look, Manning said, that some teams call “cheetah.” Kuechly said the rule for the defense should be that the play starts when the center touches the ball.
The last possession. Manning believes the last team that has the ball will be the team to win, and that the game will be back and forth the whole way.
Manning credits Kobe Bryant as the inspiration for “The Breakdown.” The late Lakers legend created a film-analysis series called “Detail,” which was designed to show the public how a professional basketball player studies game tape. It debuted in 2018 during the NBA playoffs.
Bryant then called Manning.
“He said, ‘Hey, I want you to do ‘Detail’ for football,’” Manning said. “He wanted me to take people behind the ropes in football, so that’s what I did.”
Manning did it alone at first, using only his voice to break down quarterbacks. Eventually, he brought in a defensive specialist for another perspective and they both appeared on camera.
Bryant’s concept of franchising the show across different sports gave Manning the idea to do the same with “Peyton’s Places,” thereby creating spinoffs with his brother, Eli, John McEnroe, Sue Bird and others.
Josh Hartnett and Charlie Heaton know how to brood.
The actors both found fame in their early 20s playing characters prone to pining and sulking: Hartnett became a heartthrob in the late ’90s and early 2000s with mellow roles in films including “The Virgin Suicides,” “Pearl Harbor” and “Black Hawk Down.” Heaton, meanwhile, spent most of the last decade embodying the introverted Jonathan Byers on “Stranger Things.”
But now, the duo are wearing their hearts on their sleeves in “Below,” a six-episode Netflix miniseries now streaming, in which they play a father and son living in a misty Newfoundland fishing village that is increasingly terrorized by something mysterious in the iceberg-filled waters.
As Calvin and Wade Penney in “Below,” the actors are passionate and emotional. They get into animated family arguments and gleefully celebrate when things (occasionally) go their way.
“It’s all on the page,” Hartnett said. “All I had to do was show up and feel those things toward Charlie.”
Filmed on location in Newfoundland, Canada, “Below” is the latest unexpected project for Hartnett, 48, who has been cultivating a career renaissance in recent years with roles in “Black Mirror,” “Oppenheimer,” “Trap” and this month’s “Verity.”
Charlie Heaton as Wade, left, and Josh Hartnett as Calvin in Netflix’s “Below.”
(Netflix)
Heaton, 32, has likewise been diversifying his post- “Stranger Things” portfolio. He played an ill-fated financial journalist in the fourth season of “Industry” and will next star in a “Peaky Blinders” sequel series.
“I like trying to surprise people, and maybe surprise myself too,” Heaton said.
When they convened for a joint video interview in late September, Heaton had recently returned to his London home from a music video shoot. Hartnett had just finished putting his four children (with wife, the actor Tamsin Egerton) to bed at their countryside home in Hampshire, England. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What attracted you both to this project?
Hartnett: I was in “Black Mirror” a couple of years ago, and Jessica Rhoades, who produced “Black Mirror,” sent me the [“Below”] script probably about two months before production was supposed to start. I loved the script but I had some questions, so I had to speak to [creator] Jesse [McKeown] and a couple of the other EPs, just to get the lay of the land. After that conversation, I was like, this sounds really fresh and nuanced and organic.
Heaton: It seemed to have so much warmth and mystery. I do remember having a conversation with my agent because, obviously, I’d come off “Stranger Things,” and there was a little concern of, “Is it too similar?” But Wade is such a fun character. I’m from a working-class fishing town [Bridlington, England]. He’s also working class. Everyone knows somebody like Wade.
Hartnett: Willow Kean, who plays my sister, his aunt, saw Charlie on set when he first arrived. He was in his outfit and smoking a cigarette, and she was like, “I think somebody’s on set who shouldn’t be” — because he looked like a local. He fully embodied the mood of this character immediately.
How did the two of you meet? Had you crossed paths in the industry before?
Hartnett: We hadn’t. We met on Zoom. We did a bunch of stuff with the full cast, and it was more to learn the accent than anything else. Once we started to get into the accent work together, just shooting the s— online, it was great.
Heaton: We wanted the family to all sound like they were from the same place. But the accent is so hard to hear in the beginning. So, we were all getting it wrong together.
Heaton and Hartnett hadn’t crossed paths before being cast in “Below,” but they created a rapport by trying to learn the show’s Newfoundland accent together.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
What was the biggest obstacle with the Newfoundland accent?
Heaton: I’ve done a fair amount of accents, but it’s hard to understand the rules of this one. It’s like, well, that word’s Irish, that word’s kind of American. It took me a while to be able to hear it. We had Ali [Alison Kelly], who was our voice coach, and a lot of the extras that we had on set also were local artists, so you could really lean on them.
Hartnett: Everybody was so welcoming. The most difficult part for me was hearing the rhythm of it. So, I listened to this thing called “The Broadcast,” which used to be called “The Fisheries Broadcast.” It’s a radio show that’s been on since 1951. Every day they’re talking to someone about something that’s happening on the island, so you’re getting all these different versions of the accent, but you’re also getting an overall perspective of how people speak in Newfoundland. It was really revealing.
How familiar were you with Newfoundland before doing “Below”?
Hartnett: I knew very little. I knew the “Come From Away” story about all the people stranded in Gander after 9/11. I knew that it was where Leif Erikson landed a long time ago. I knew that it was the closest place in North America to Europe, so when people would do transatlantic flights up until relatively recently, they would stop in Newfoundland. I knew there were puffins.
Heaton: I’m going to be very honest. I hadn’t even ever heard of it. But I learned a lot. We were there for a long time, and Newfoundlanders are extremely proud of their history and their culture, and they love talking.
What was it like shooting on location and out in nature?
Heaton: It was powerful and beautiful. Where we shot, Snook’s Arm, was this bay called Brigus South. You’d come down in the morning, and just that sheer amount of nature every day I found really moving.
Hartnett: One of the first days we were there, they took me out on a whale-watching tour. I was like, “Oh, cool. That sounds touristy but fun.” It was a spiritual experience. I’ve never been anywhere where I felt so small and insignificant next to another animal. These humpback whales, they’re right underneath these tiny little boats, and if they wanted to, they could just flick their tail, and you’d be off in the sea. I had never experienced nature in the sea the way that I experienced it there.
You play father and son, but you’re not that far apart in age.
Hartnett: Fifteen-and-a-half years! I did the math.
Heaton and Hartnett play father and son in “Below,” but in reality they’re just shy of 16 years apart.(Netflix)
How did you develop your onscreen dynamic?
Hartnett: Charlie was so in character as Wade, it was very easy to feel a real sense of protectiveness and an incredible amount of love.
Heaton: What I really admired about working with Josh [is] he is such a leader. You really care, and you’re so generous with everyone, and I got to see your family, and I got to see how you are as a dad. So, those projections weren’t that difficult to come up with in my head, honestly. It’s cool that I get to be your son.
Hartnett: So sweet, man. Thank you.
Charlie, do you remember any of Josh’s past work that stood out to you?
Hartnett: [Pretends to cover his camera] I’m just going to turn this off.
Heaton: One of my favorite films for a while was “Lucky Number Slevin.” When I was younger, I used to watch that quite a lot. I might rewatch that, Josh. It’s been a while.
Hartnett: Well, tell me if it holds up.
Josh, were you familiar with Charlie’s work?
Hartnett: I was a big fan of “Stranger Things,” and I saw “Industry.” Then, when he came on the first Zoom as Wade and was so already intact as a character, I was like, “He’s a star, man. This guy’s a star.”
Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers in “Stranger Things.” Hartnett says he was a fan of his work.
(Netflix)
You both found fame in your early 20s, but at very different points in the industry. What are your memories of first realizing, “Oh, people know who I am offscreen and something has shifted?”
Heaton: I remember the exact moment. I was shooting a movie in a small town in Asturias in the north of Spain. “Stranger Things” had been out for only a couple of days. I was in this little town, and a family came up to me that could barely speak English, but they recognized me. Then, I walked down the street a little further and another kid came running up to me.
The show blew up overnight, and before you knew it, you’re going to the Emmys and the BAFTAs with all these people who you have admired. I think we all felt impostor syndrome. Like, what am I doing on a carpet where Bryan Cranston and Helen Mirren are? If I think back to it now, it’s very overwhelming. I don’t really know if I processed how that changed so fast and how you are expected to know how to deal with it.
Hartnett: It was a long time ago for me. There was no social media, obviously, but we did have a pretty intense paparazzi problem. So, the initial success of films like “The Faculty,” “Halloween: H20” and “The Virgin Suicides” was a nice level of, like, people knew who I was and I was able to get more work, but there wasn’t a crush of paparazzi waiting outside the hotel.
When “Pearl Harbor” came out, that changed. I was in Morocco shooting “Black Hawk Down,” and I had to come back to do press for “Pearl Harbor.” Suddenly, that’s when I couldn’t go anywhere. That was an odd thing to encounter because I was 22, and I was not ready for it. Right after I finished “Black Hawk Down,” I decided to get back to Minnesota, where I grew up … There’s no paparazzi in Minnesota. That’s where I stayed for about two years.
Heaton: Those seismic changes are such a strange thing to go through. I always felt like, I haven’t changed but everyone else around me has changed — and that’s a weird thing to get used to. But there are great opportunities and great things that come out of it.
Hartnett: One hundred percent. My life is so much better now than it probably would have been had all that not happened.
Josh, you’ve said that you felt celebrity culture was “vacuous” and that you didn’t want to do things like “Cribs” or “Punk’d.” Did you feel like you were being pushed to fit a certain mold as a teen heartthrob?
Hartnett: That stuff wasn’t for me. Being a young celebrity, you’re always going to be pushed toward the cusp of insanity, the stuff that people are going to look back on and cringe not too far into the future. I was lucky enough to avoid that side of it.
In our business, it’s about surviving your 20s to get to the place where you have the respect of the people on set that you’re working with, and they allow you the leeway to create characters the way that you want to create them.
Charlie, how are you approaching your post-“Stranger Things” career?
Heaton: After wrapping the final season, I wanted to do “Industry,” which felt extremely different to me. I got to use my own accent. It’s a much more adult show than I’ve ever been in. And playing a man was important. I’d been playing a perpetually 21-year-old for like 10 years. I keep getting older. [Jonathan] stays the same. He gets further away from me. But I just want to do things that hopefully allow me to show range.
Josh Widdicombe took part in his first live show of Strictly Come Dancing last weekend, but the new hosts have since faced a wave of backlash. The presenting shake up seemed to leave viewers torn
07:42, 29 Sep 2026Updated 07:47, 29 Sep 2026
Josh Widdicombe appears to have broken his silence (stock image)(Image: Guy Levy/BBC/PA Wire)
Now it appears Josh has broken his silence following the backlash as he posted on his Instagram stories on Monday (September 28) following a lot of conversation about the future of Strictly Come Dancing. It seems his fellow cast members are supporting him, as he shared what could be deemed a very telling post.
More recently, Josh re-shared a post that was initially published by professional dancer Lauren Oakley. It said: “We couldn’t be in safer hands than with these beautiful people.
“Strictly is about family, uplifting others, and creating a safe space for celebrity contestants to be vulnerable and do something so outside of their comfort zone.
“This trio have been so warm and welcoming, and they felt like family from the minute they stepped into the studio, and we love having them with us.
“Professional, funny, kind and fantastic at what they do. I couldn’t feel more lucky to be sharing the screen and our Saturday nights with them.”
The heartfelt post was shared with a picture of Emma, Josh and Johannes and Josh re-posted it alongside three red hearts, clearly thankful for the support. It was a very touching moment.
It comes after Strictly fans were left concerned over the new hosting format, with some claiming it “doesn’t work”. The new hosts took over from Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman, with bosses hoping they’d prove to be a power trio.
However, while fans have seemed impressed with Emma, some remain unsure about her co-hosts. The shake up has left viewers pretty divided.
One said: “Okay, I don’t want to be a hater, but three hosts is just not working. Not at all. “
Another added: “I normally enjoy Strictly, but not this year. The presenters just don’t gel.”
Meanwhile, there are some who think the format just needs to be tweaked a little. A different social media user wrote: “Josh Widdicombe could have easily taken over the Claudia Winkleman role.”
Someone else also replied: “Emma is brilliant. Josh should be upstairs.”
One more also chimed in with: “But surely it’s about the dancing? That’s great, give these presenters a chance for heaven’s sake.”
EXCLUSIVE: Strictly Come Dancing legends Vincent Simone and Brendan Cole have had their say on the divisive new presenting trio of Josh Widdicombe, Emma Willis and Johannes Radebe.
Strictly Come Dancing’s Josh, Emma and Johannes hosted for the first time on Saturday(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Guy Levy)
Strictly legend Vincent Simone has branded one new host of the hit dance show ‘lost and nervous’ after their debut showing on Saturday. He didn’t hold back as he laid bare his thoughts – but he did hold special praise for another, admitting they pleasantly surprised him.
All eyes were on the new trio of presenters on Saturday night prime time as Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe took centre stage after the exit of Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly. But Josh felt the wrath of Vincent, who labelled him a “lost lamb” before saying he hopes it’s just first show nerves.
Speaking exclusively to the Mirror, Vincent went on: “Emma, professional as always. But I’m sure she was probably as nervous as everybody else. There’s a huge amount of pressure on their shoulders to hold a show together which is essentially new but old.”
And he admitted Johannes’ style shocked him. “Johannes surprised me in a good way,” he said. “I thought he was going to be all flamboyant, running around, talking about himself.
“I don’t know the guy, I’ve met him a couple of times but I thought he seemed really professional and seemed like he was doing a really good job as a host. I heard he was just going to be roaming around, talking to the couples and what have you.
“He would have been as nervous as hell. They all would have been. Given that, I think he did a good job.”
The opinion was matched by Brendan Cole, who also had his say on the new hosts, admitting he would have hoped for a Bruce Forsyth vibe to take the hot seat. He said: “I wanted the old-school class of the likes of Brucey [Bruce Forsyth].
“There aren’t many around that good that you could choose from, but it’s a big world out there. I’m sure they could be found. I want somebody old school. I want somebody triple threat – actor, singer, dancer. Somebody who, when they’re at the helm like Brucey was, absolutely knows showbiz like the back of their hand.”
But despite his disappointment, he held out praise for Johannes too. “I liked Johannes, actually. He did really well for the first show. I didn’t know what his role was going to be, and I think he held himself very, very well.”
Fans also had their say shortly after the launch show on Saturday and were divided in their opinions. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, one fan said: “I know it’s only the first few minutes, but I just cannot gel to there being three hosts #strictly.”
Another defended the line-up, adding: “3 presenters was an interesting choice by producers but Emma, Johannes and Josh really do work together. Natural already.” And it was also backed by no-nonsense judge, Craig Revel-Horwood who branded the new trio “fabulous”.
Vincent and Brendan were talking to the Mirror on behalf ofSky Vegas.
Filming a broadcast television show can leave even the most seasoned actors feeling like they’ve lost sense of time. But by afternoon on a recent weekday, Josh Charles actually looks like he teleported to the past as he collapses into a seat inside his production trailer in upstate New York.
He’s in the throes of filming Season 2 of “Best Medicine,” the Fox dramedy he headlines that’s set in a small fishing village in Maine, and the reason he’s shed his character’s usual suit and tie for gaitered trousers and a navy coat with red facings eventually reveals itself: Port Wenn, the show’s fictional town, is putting on a Revolutionary War reenactment. And if you’re familiar with Martin Best, the curmudgeonly doctor with an almost permanently furrowed brow portrayed by Charles, the character’s willingness to don such a getup likely took some coaxing.
That’s the fun of it all for Charles.
He’s been a working actor since childhood — making his debut at 15 in John Waters’ cult classic “Hairspray,” followed soon after by his turn as Knox Overstreet in “Dead Poets Society” — and a fixture in TV and film ever since.
While best known for dramatic roles like high-powered lawyer Will Gardner in “The Good Wife,” Charles easily pivots to comedy — like the time he memorably played the triple-collared, snobby camp ringleader in “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp.” Now, “Best Medicine” lets Charles leans into the push and pull of the comedy and drama within his tightly wound alter ego.
Josh Charles as Martin Best in Fox’s “Best Medicine.”
(Francisco Roman / Fox)
Created by Liz Tuccillo (“How to Be Single,” “Sex and the City”), the series follows a brilliant but cranky heart surgeon who, after developing a crippling blood phobia spurred by a traumatic medical case, abandons his thriving career in Boston to become a general practitioner in the town where he spent summers as a child. Martin Best is a doc whose bedside manner could use some TLC, but he came to town hoping he can still practice medicine — that is, if the townspeople would actually do as he says.
“I have been really wanting to do more comedy lately and looking — especially if I was going to call a place home for a particular period of time, like you do in a television show — for something that was a little more lighter air than I had been networking in of late,” says Charles, whose recent credits include dystopian drama “The Handmaid’s Tale” and spy thriller “The Veil.”
The series is based on the beloved British dramedy “Doc Martin,” which starred Martin Clunes as a doctor with a similar storyline, that aired between 2004 and 2022. Tuccillo says Charles brought an elegance and depth to the fish-out-of-water dynamic his character navigates in the quirky town.
“He never hits a false note,” she says in a separate video call. “I knew the material would be in great hands in that he would always elevate it just by his artistry and being. I knew he was going to be able to play the gruffness, but any time that you’re doing a show, there is a question mark on so many things. To be honest, we were like, ‘But is he going to be super funny? Is he going to want to do pratfalls? Is he going to be game for the comedy part of it?’ When we started working, it was clear he was game for all the shenanigans … he likes to laugh. So I try to devise things that I think will amuse him.”
A special advance preview of the Season 2 premiere aired Sunday, but the show will move into its regular time slot Tuesday. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation with Charles.
Josh Charles poses for photos on the “Best Medicine” set in upstate New York. He says he was drawn to the Fox dramedy because it was “a little more lighter air” than the other work he had done recently.
(Ebru Yildiz / For The Times)
“Best Medicine” hit Netflix after its first season aired. Building an audience outside the traditional linear viewing has become such a key component of television today. How do you feel about it?
One of my dad’s best friends told me, “I’m watching the show on Netflix!” He’s like, “I just can’t watch shows with commercials anymore” — as people are programmed now. That is the new shift. You go into these platforms for periods of time, build your audience in a different way and hopefully keep growing that audience. [Television] keeps evolving and growing in a way that I don’t fully understand, but I do know that it’s a different world right now. Netflix has a great reach, and it’s great that we’re on there and that people are discovering it. And apparently we did very well.
Season 2 opens with Martin on probation and under review by the medical board. What is Martin in for this season?
When it starts off, he’s really in it. Eden [Martin’s ex-girlfriend played by Eliza Coupe] is now back in the picture. She’s coming from Boston every weekend, and she’s rubbed a lot of people in town the wrong way. And the progress that Martin made, we see him maybe take a few steps back in the way that he interacts with people. He’s with her and I think there’s feelings there, but I think their relationship feels very — I don’t know, it’s interesting. It doesn’t have the fire. But she doesn’t make him feel bad about himself. She respects him, and I think those things are important. And he’s around in this town where nobody’s listening to him half the time. People are just always mad at him about something, and she’s not. She puts him a little bit on a pedestal, and I think he really needs that.
All that presents an obstacle for the show’s slow burn: Martin and Louisa (Abigail Spencer). There’s been some discourse about the art of the slow burn and how the pacing has changed in an era of short episode orders and unpredictable renewals. You have experience in this department with “The Good Wife.”
Liz and I have talked about it a little bit. You don’t want to muck bait it and drag it out for the sake of dragging it out. I think they’ve done a good job of putting the obstacles in a way that still feels organic and genuine and not yet a reach. In the British show, things accelerated so much faster. They only made eight [episodes] a year. We want to also have it feel like it’s plausible. It is really fun to have Eliza Coupe here. It’s fun to play scenes with her and [see] the different side that brought out in Martin. That is the challenge because I don’t think we’re as interested in doing it quite that fast [as the British show]. I have faith in them that we’ll land it in a good way.
Ellen Soraya Nikbakht as a peculiar patient and Josh Charles as Martin Best in the Season 2 premiere of “Best Medicine.”
(Danielle Mathias / Fox)
You’ve played in comedy and drama in your career. It’s fun to watch you straddle both sides with this character. How has it been finding the rhythm or tone with him?
A lot of the comedy I’ve done, I’ve done some stuff that’s more silly and kind of over the top. I love playing the fool. What’s really fun [here], to me, are the circumstances they put Martin in where things are blowing up in front of him and he’s just trying to deal. I’ve enjoyed doing a lot of the physical comedy on the show.
I [also] found it really interesting to have a character who doesn’t want to be around people, but he actually does. He just doesn’t really know how to do it, and he’s never really had any kind of practice at it in his life. And he’s gone through a lot of trauma in his life. He’s a really specific kind of workaholic. For him to grow up with what he did, and losing his sister really young in his life — I did research on that and what that does to people and how that can sort of frame your life. I imagine he went to private school, maybe a boarding school, then he goes on the track of going to college and medical school — we know how hard that is, the kind of hours they put in; then to be really successful at it, you put everything you have into your work. There’s this other side of his life that is completely empty. This town kind of just softens off the edges of him a little bit and helps him become a little more authentic version of who he was maybe meant to be. That gives me some place to build off of and to go with the character, other than it feeling kind of just very one-note.
Matthew Goode, left, as Finn Polmar and Josh Charles as Will Gardner in a scene from Season 5 of “The Good Wife.”
(CBS)
This series marks your return to broadcast television after leaving “The Good Wife” in its fifth season. You’ve done TV since then, of course. But a big reason you left broadcast was because of the grind of a 20-plus episode season. With “Best Medicine,” you’re the lead and the second season will have 14 episodes. Does that feel like the sweet spot?
If “The Good Wife” was “The Good Fight,” I would have done that until the wheels come off. I would have never wanted to leave that because I would have had a life. I could have been able to go do a play, travel with my family, see my kids. At the time of “The Good Wife,” I didn’t have kids, but we were about to get married and wanted to have children. I was only going to do 18 [episodes] at most with this show, if they wanted it. And then I asked them this year, “Well, we’re just at 14. What was the decision [there]?” And I’m happy about it. They also agree. This just feels like where the show wants to live creatively. You work really hard for four or five months, and then you get to go explore other projects and travel and live your life.
Your departure from “The Good Wife,” with your character Will Gardner dying, felt like an out–of–body viewing experience as it happened. The fact that it was kept under wraps —
I can’t believe we did it, honestly. There was one journalist who obviously had a source somewhere and did find out. Part of being able to keep that silent until the moment was an agreement that they would come to set and be there as long as it was [kept secret]. I remember like when the episode aired, I was in the editing bay with the editors in L.A. [for an episode I directed]. I’m seeing things come in and I was like, “Oh my God!” I thought it was going to get ruined for people on the West Coast. These days, you know how they make something, how much this cost, how they did this scene … we used to be surprised by things. To be able to truly shock people you know like in an Orson Welles-style “War of the Worlds” way. I felt like in our own sort of network TV way, this was the equivalent of that. We really got to narratively pack a punch. That season was one of the great treats of my career. I just felt the writing on that show that season was at another level.
Allen barged into the endzone and found Joshua Palmer for a 43-yard touchdown, before Dawson Knox scored early in the second quarter.
The Lions replied with Jared Goff finding Jahmyr Gibbs, who became the NFL’s highest-paid running back in the off-season, for an 11-yard touchdown catch.
But Dalton Kincaid stretched Buffalo’s lead and the Bills remained comfortable throughout the second half.
Detroit, who beat the New Orleans Saints in overtime last week, cut the deficit with two touchdowns by Amon-Ra St Brown and another from Sam LaPorta.
