You thought the Oscars brought awards season to an end? Think again. The iHeartRadio Music Awards took place Thursday night with performances and appearances by Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Sombr, Weezer, Alex Warren, Shaboozey and John Mellencamp, among other stars. Here’s a glimpse at the best looks from the red carpet and the best moments of the show itself, which took place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
The Show
Lainey Wilson performs onstage at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Taylor Swift accepts the pop album of the year award onstage at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Miley Cyrus accepts the Innovator Award onstage at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
John Mellencamp, right, performs onstage at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Terry Ellis, from left, Cindy Herron and Maxine Jones of En Vogue perform at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards.
Red Carpet
Miley Cyrus on the red carpet for the iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Ella Langley on the red carpet for the iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Shaboozey and Kehlani on the red carpet for the iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Cheryl Porter on the red carpet for the iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Cindy Herron, Maxine Jones and Terry Ellis of En Vogue on the red carpet for the iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Teddi Mellencamp on the red carpet for the iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Brianna Mazzola and Wennely Quezada of ‘3QUENCY’ on the red carpet for the iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Sublime on the red carpet for the iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Brent Smith and Zach Myers of Shinedown on the red carpet for the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Graham Stanush, Sebastian Gonzalez, Matty Bielawski and London Hudson of Return to Dust on the red carpet for the iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
The US-Israeli war on Iran has destroyed over 80,000 civilian units leaving many causalities, according to Iranian officials. Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi reports from a residential building hit in a recent attack.
AUSTIN, Texas — “The Sun Never Sets” is filmmaker Joe Swanberg’s 10th indie to premiere at SXSW but his first to play the event since 2017. The astonishing pace with which he made his early work — loose, idiosyncratic stories that were progenitors of the emergent style known as mumblecore — has slowed significantly, but also given way to a newfound maturity as both a person and an artist.
Introducing “The Sun Never Sets” at its world premiere on Friday night to a sold-out crowd at the Zach Theater, Swanberg called his latest “my favorite film I’ve ever made.” Shot on 35mm in Anchorage, the movie follows a 30-ish woman, Wendy (Dakota Fanning in a vibrant turn), torn between pursuing a fresh romance with a reckless old flame (Cory Michael Smith) or continuing on with the settled-in-his-ways divorced father of two (Jake Johnson) she’s been seeing for a few years.
Dakota Fanning in Joe Swanberg’s “The Sun Never Sets,” filmed in Alaska.
(SXSW)
“I guess this is what they tell you about getting older and doing this job longer,” said a thoughtful Swanberg in a video interview from his home in Chicago shortly before the South by Southwest festival. “You get better at it and you sort of mature and all of this.”
The film marks Swanberg’s fourth collaboration with Johnson, a partnership that goes back to 2013’s “Drinking Buddies.” (The actor partly financed the new project along with his brother.) Following completion of the third season of the Netflix anthology series “Easy” in 2019, for which he wrote and directed all the episodes, Swanberg was planning to take a break. A divorce and the pandemic caused that pause to grow even longer.
In the intervening years Swanberg produced a number of projects for other filmmakers, did some acting and opened a small video store in Chicago. Swanberg knew Anchorage-based producer Ashleigh Snead, who encouraged him to consider shooting something there. The scenic location would give Swanberg the opportunity to expand his visual style from his usual couches, bars and apartments of much of his work. (There still are a surprising number of scenes on couches and in bars.)
“Joe’s a real filmmaker,” says Johnson in a separate interview. “And I think sometimes he doesn’t get that credit because he can make movies with nothing. This is a real adult movie. This is a film about how complicated breakups are and how messy they get. And it’s in beautiful Alaska.”
Swanberg, center, on the set of “The Sun Never Sets.”
(SXSW)
Swanberg has now gone from someone making talky, provocative and at times controversial films about the lives of post-collegiate 20-somethings to exploring the nuances and specifics of being a 44-year-old divorced father of two still trying to figure out his place in the world. His original cohort of SXSW-affiliated filmmakers, many of whom also fell under the rubric of mumblecore — nobody much liked the name, but no one ever came up with anything better, so it stuck — included Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, Barry Jenkins, Ti West and others who have gone on to more conventional mainstream success.
But Swanberg doesn’t seem to feel left behind. Rather, he only sees doors opening.
“It’s gone so much better than I thought it was going to go for me,” he says. “I mean, when I was making these really tiny, sexually explicit 71-minute movies, I was like, I’m just grateful to be here. I can’t even believe these festivals are showing this work and it’s so cool that there’s a space for me in this ecosystem.
“And so to watch my friends go off to do these giant movies, to see Greta doing ‘Barbie’ and stuff like that, to me it just opens up the possibilities,” he adds. “Each time a friend of mine sets some new record or moves into some new space, I’m kind of like: Oh, that just opened up for all of us now.”
His earlier work often featured raw sex scenes, sometimes featuring Swanberg himself. From practically the start of his career, well predating the #MeToo-era reckoning that began in 2017, Swanberg weathered accusations that he was exploitative and manipulative of his female performers. His stepback from productivity coincided with a moment when his explorations of sexual power dynamics fell out of favor. It would be easy to interpret that Swanberg preemptively soft-canceled himself to avoid a broader scandal. He doesn’t see it that way.
“Certainly in Chicago, where I’ve spent the last five years, I’m not unwelcome places,” he says, drawing a distinction between himself and “people who lose jobs or are capital-C canceled. But also my work has always pushed those boundaries and always attracted some amount of positive and negative attention.”
Though “The Sun Never Sets” has numerous kissing scenes, it doesn’t go too much further than that.
“I won’t do it,” Johnson says of more graphic scenes. “When I worked with Joe early on, I was like, ‘I love you, man — I’m not doing this.’”
For her part, Fanning had no reservations about working with Swanberg. He offered both Fanning and Smith the opportunity to work with an intimacy coordinator, but neither felt it was necessary.
“There was no planet where you’d ever be asked to do anything you were uncomfortable with,” Fanning says. “If there was ever a moment like, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ he’d be like, ‘Oh, then let’s not.’ There was a day where there was a scene and it was pouring rain outside. And we both looked at each other and he was like, ‘We’re not going to do it. The scene’s cut.’ He’s just open. And I just trusted him implicitly.”
Jake Johnson and Dakota Fanning in the movie “The Sun Never Sets.”
(SXSW)
Swanberg has long worked in an unusual style in which the script is essentially a detailed outline and the actors work to come up with their own dialogue during rehearsals. For “The Sun Never Sets,” Swanberg and Johnson developed the longest, most complete outline Swanberg has ever used, including some dialogue exchanges. Then the actors were allowed to make it their own.
Fanning recalled an early Zoom call with Swanberg and Johnson on which they explained the process.
“It’s still made like a real film,” Fanning says. “And Jake and Joe promised it’s not like we’re just flying by the seat of our pants: ‘You will know what to say, I promise.’ And then friends that know me asked, ‘Are you so nervous?’ And I was, but for some reason, I don’t know why, I just knew that it was going to be fine. And that just proved to be true.”
Even though it takes places in Anchorage, Swanberg calls “The Sun Never Sets” “extremely personal.”
“I was definitely writing a movie about a divorced mid-40s guy dating a younger person,” he says. “The questions of marriage and having children were sort of an amalgam of two real relationships that I merged into one onscreen.” He describes the material as “questions that I had and have about what my own relationships are going to look like post-divorce.”
That comes through in Fanning’s rich, layered performance, which might rank among the best of her already lengthy career. Swanberg’s style draws both an ease and an intensity from Fanning, who captures a woman at a pivotal moment of figuring out what she wants amid the emotional whirlwind she is going through. (At the film’s premiere, Fanning said, “I’ve never put so much of myself into a role before.”)
“I think the goal of Joe’s films, and I think at least my goal with this film, is trying to make everything feel real,” she says. “Things are just a mess some of the time.”
Dakota Fanning and Cory Michael Smith in “The Sun Never Sets.”
(SXSW)
Swanberg himself appears in a small role as the new husband of the ex-wife of Johnson’s character. And the characters of the two kids in the movie are named after the director’s own children. With a newfound maturity and emotional depth, Swanberg is continuing to make movies that are part diary, part generational markers.
“It’d be really cool in my 40s to make movies about characters in their 40s,” he says, “and in my 50s, 60s and 70s. It’d be neat to be making sexually explicit movies about 70-year-olds in their dating lives and sex lives and stuff. It’s really exciting to have movies about characters at this phase of their life, whether they’re finally settling down in their 40s or whether they’re getting out of relationships and reexamining their life. It’s where my head is at.” .
MAURA Higgins looked incredible as she stripped off for a bubble bath for a new St Patrick’s Day advert.
The former Love Island star, 35, was seen relaxing in the tub with a cold pint of Guinness on the side.
Sign up for the Showbiz newsletter
Thank you!
Maura Higgins stripped off for a bubble bath as she stars in a new advert for St Patrick’s DayCredit: InstagramThe TV presenter used the bubbles to cover her modestyCredit: Instagram
Maura used the bubbles to cover her modesty as she enjoyed a relaxing soak.
Meanwhile, her crew were seen frantically searching a pub for her as one member screams: “Did you lose Maura?”
The video then cuts back to Maura who admits there’s nothing better than an “Irish exit”, which is the act of leaving a party or social gathering quietly without telling the host or saying goodbye to anyone at the event.
Looking seductively at the camera, Maura said: “There’s nothing better than a successful Irish exit.
The TV star posed up a storm in her corset style dress at the party to celebrate theOscars, which take place tomorrow.
Last night’s party is just the latest in a string of glitzy bashes that the Love Island star has been attending as she continues her US domination tour.
Maura was recently asked about their relationship when she appeared on US talk show Watch What Happens Live recently.
Host Andy Cohen told her: “The internet wants you and Rob to get together.”
Speaking about her close friendship with RHOBH star Lisa, she told Andy: “Lisa helped majorly, majorly.”
Maura added: “Lisa, thank you very much for this!”
Meanwhile, further proof that Maura has cracked the USA, something that British reality stars have found hard to do, is that she has been signed to the top-tier agency Align PR.
Their client roster includes A-list stars like Madonna, 67, Matthew McConaughey, 56, and Bryce Dallas Howard, 45.
Maura has also proved herself to be popular with Hollywood stars.
What happens in Bridgerton Season 4’s post-credits scene? – The Mirror
Need to know
Some Netflix fans have been left scratching their heads after realising they missed one of Bridgerton’s biggest Season 4 plot points
The post-credits scene offers an update on Benedict’s unfinished Lady in Silver portrait(Image: Netflix)
Everything to know about Bridgerton Season 4’s post-credits scene including wedding
Bridgerton fans have been left utterly baffled after discovering they missed a crucial wedding scene hidden in the Season 4 finale. Some viewers believed the story ended with Benedict and Sophie dancing after their engagement at the same spot they first kissed during the masquerade ball, while others who stuck around until after the credits saw the duo getting married.
So what exactly happens during the scene? The post-credits scene shows Benedict Bridgerton and Sophie Baek actually tying the knot, with many viewers completely unaware it existed.
It features Benedict waiting at the altar alongside his brother Lord Anthony, who tells him: “Never listen to me again,” as he references his previous advice to end things with Sophie. The wedding is attended by guests from all walks of life – not just high society – who are smiling as they watch Sophie walk down the aisle.
As the ceremony unfolds, the camera pans away from the action to reveal Benedict’s completed portrait of the Lady in Silver hung up on the wall. This time, the painting has Sophie’s face finally added.
Confused fans took to social media after seeing clips circulating online. One penned: “Wait what I never saw the wedding??? I’m so confused??” Another viewer admitted: “I had to go back and search for it today because I kept seeing screenshots from it.”
That the “The Napa Boys” won’t be everyone’s cup of tea — or in this case, goblet of wine — almost feels like this meta comedy’s raison d’être. And to say its fusillade of jokes is hit-and-miss would also be a charitable take. They’re mostly miss, even if that, too, can seem like kind of the point.
Co-writers and co-stars Nick Corirossi and Armen Weitzman (Corirossi also directed) have assembled a series of scenes in search of a story, sending up pivotal moments from a hodgepodge of movies, some real (“Sideways,” “American Pie,” “The Lord of the Rings”), some invented. I’ll admit, it took a minute to understand what the filmmakers were doing (their grandiose statement in the movie’s press kit is purposely unenlightening) and, thus, for this grab bag of nonsense to sink in.
Still, once you realize what the heck it is you’re watching, you might just settle in for a more diverting — or less terrible — time than first expected. But the lower your entertainment bar, the better.
The barely-there plot finds a group of pals and wine aficionados, a.k.a. the Napa Boys, gathering in the California valley (Malibu subbed) for a screwball adventure that, among much else, will involve a coveted wine competition at something called the Great Grape Festival.
The hapless group includes its leader, the crassly horny Jack Jr. (Corirossi), sad-sack widower Miles Jr. (Weitzman), conflicted family man Kevin (Nelson Franklin), underdog vintner Mitch (Mike Mitchell) and a kinder, newer member known only — in an all-caps nod to “American Pie” — as Stifler’s Brother (Jamar Neighbors). Meanwhile, a devotee and “investigative podcaster,” Puck (Sarah Ramos), also joins the guys on their wayward journey.
The film’s goofy conceit is that this is the fourth installment of a Napa Boys movie series (based on nonexistent graphic novels), with the official on-screen title of “The Napa Boys 4: The Sommelier’s Amulet” (Dig that “Indiana Jones”-style font.) As a result, it unfolds as if the viewer is already intimate with a franchise’s culture and lore, dropping us smack into the thick of things with little, if any, context. Confused yet?
This ploy hands Corirossi (a former head creative at Funny or Die) and Weitzman a license to be as slapdash and surface as possible, which, it would seem, is also part of the picture’s wobbly in-joke. Because this alt comedy makes no bones about its characters or situations being even remotely logical or realistic, anything goes — and does. You sometimes wish it didn’t.
Case in point: After a meds mix-up, unruly Jack Jr. (he and Miles Jr. are always addressed with the suffix) unleashes his explosive diarrhea into a barrel of contest-qualifying wine, after which he “spontaneously” ejaculates into it. And then, natch, the judges must sample the concoction. It’s an awful, protracted sequence that begs the question, satire or not, is this truly the funniest bit they could hatch? (To be fair, it’s likely some viewers will, uh, eat it up.)
That aside, the film’s barrage of scenes, sketches, shout-outs and absurdist scenarios leading up to the climactic wine-making championship are largely harmless flights of farce. These involve sex, love, death, near-death, maybe incest, lots of wine tasting (why is the vino here iced-tea brown?) and a moose on the loose.
There are also rides in Jack Jr.’s showy “Wine Wagon” SUV (license plate: IH8MERLOT), beatific montages backed by swelling strings celebrating the “joys” of Napa Boys life (“To be a Napa Boy is to be free!”) and a surprise — and rather pointless — cameo by those other movie “brainiacs,” Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith). There’s also an anxious visit to Jack Jr.’s onetime hookup, the now-elderly sexpert called the Milfonator (Eve Sigall). Oh, and is that really iconic filmmaker and vintner Francis Ford Coppola as the wine competition’s “super-secret celebrity guest judge”? (Two guesses.)
All this inanity takes place over the course of a handful of days, during which no one ever seems to change clothes. Couldn’t Jack Jr. have packed at least two Hawaiian shirts?
And what of the title’s elusive sommelier (DJ Qualls of “Road Trip” fame) and his mystical green amulet? He makes an almost tacked-on, Yoda-like appearance, but it’s too little, too late.
The game if uneven cast includes Paul Rust (channeling Paul Reubens, with whom he co-wrote 2016’s “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday”) as Squirm, Mitch’s insufferably cruel wine-making rival; David Wain (who directed and co-wrote “Wet Hot American Summer,” another spoofy touchstone here) as the wine contest’s even-handed host; and playing the guys’ various love interests: Chloe Cherry, Vanessa Chester, Riki Lindhome and Beth Dover.
Reportedly shot in under 10 days, the film features such fun needle drops as the Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love,” Gerry Rafferty’s “Family Tree” and, of all things to accompany a seduction scene, “The Girls of Rock ‘n’ Roll” sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Chipettes. How this proudly low-budget effort managed to license those tunes is as curious as so much else in this ragtag oddity.
Gogglebox aired a gruesome moment on Friday’s episode as they aired scenes from Alice Roberts: Our Hospital Through Time
Gogglebox aired a gruesome moment on Friday’s episode as they aired scenes from Alice Roberts: Our Hospital Through Time(Image: Channel 4)
The Gogglebox cast were left screaming on Friday’s episode after watching a squeamish moment during Alice Roberts: Our Hospital Through Time.
During the latest instalment, the cast members caught up with the latest television shows, which included Alice Roberts: Our Hospital Through Time.
The Channel 5 show sees Professor Alice Roberts explore 900 years of St Bartholomew’s Hospital – Britain’s oldest on its original site. From medieval miracle cures to modern cardiac and cancer care, Professor Roberts explores all that is on offer.
During the latest episode on Wednesday night, Professor Roberts recreated a grisly 17th-century operation on a ‘patient’ suffering from an enormous bladder stone. The scenes were aired on Friday’s Gogglebox with the cast members reacting to the squeamish moment.
After showing real bladder stones from over the years, which left the Gogglebox cast floored over the size, Professor Roberts then got stuck into a 17th-century operation on a dummy model to extract a bladder stone.
It was explained on the show that bladder stones can grow if patients don’t drink enough water to which Gogglebox’s panicked Lee Riley told Jenny Newby: “I don’t drink enough water, you know!”
The show then explained that back in the 17th-century it was “too dangerous” to operate from the top as it was too near the bowels so instead they would operate from underneath, going through the “root of the penis and prostate” with no anaesthetic. Professor Roberts then conducted this precise operation on a dummy model.
Responding to the scenes, Gogglebox’s Giles Wood exclaimed: “I think I’d rather call it a day, wouldn’t you?” before covering his eyes, adding: “Has it finished yet Mary?”
Meanwhile, Lee also had to look away exclaiming: “Can you imagine?” to which Jenny quipped: “I’m glad you’re suffering for a change!”
For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new **Everything Gossip** website.
Viewers were also left squeamish over the scenes as they took to Twitter, now X, to share their thoughts. One person said: “I have no words ! #Gogglebox” while a different account added: “I’m having to cover my ears for this bit ! #Gogglebox.”
A different viewer joked: “If that wasn’t a great advert for drinking more water, I don’t know what is. #GoggleBox#Stones” while another wrote: “From now on I’m going to be drinking gallons of water daily. #Gogglebox!”
Gogglebox continues on Fridays at 9pm on Channel 4.
Ensure our latest headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source.** Click here to activate**** or add us as your Preferred Source in your Google search settings.**
“The Gray House,” a limited series now streaming on Prime Video, purports to tell the fact-based story of Elizabeth Van Lew, who spied for the Union in the Civil War while living in the midst of Southern society in Richmond, Va. And in very broad terms it does, though it fills up the space within those outlines with an army of imagined details and melodramatic plots and subplots.
It is not the first work for the screen that betrays history by attempting to make it more exciting than it already is, and if you go in ready not to wonder or care what did or did not actually happen, and which characters are real or invented, you may make out alright. (If you do care, there is Gerri Willis’ 2025 volume “Lincoln’s Lady Spymaster: The Untold Story of the Abolitionist Southern Belle Who Helped Win the Civil War.”)
So I will not ring a bell every time the miniseries, which admittedly bills itself as “inspired by a true story,” diverts from the record, even though in my head it may be clanging.
It’s July 4, 1860, nine months before the beginning of the Civil War. Elizabeth (Daisy Head) lives in a mansion in Richmond with her mother Eliza (Mary-Louise Parker), and the two are throwing a party. Guests, including the historical Swedish novelist and social reformer Fredrika Bremer (Oxana Moravec), congressman Sherrard Clemens (Ionut Grama), Virginia Gov. Henry Wise (Mark Perry) and his awful son Obie (Blake Patrick Anderson), unload expository dialogue and provide a primer for anyone not acquainted with the roots of the Civil War. Meanwhile, a runaway slave shows up out back, pursued by hounds, having heard that the Van Lew house is the place to run for help. The women, who are against secession and for abolition but are practiced in the art of deceiving their neighbors, are involved with the Underground Railroad in some way that’s not exactly clear.
Among their servants — the Van Lew slaves were (secretly) freed upon the death of Elizabeth’s father — are head porter Isham, played by Ben Vereen, who it is a pure pleasure to see back on screen, and Mary Jane (Amethyst Davis). A well-educated, determined young woman who is just back from Liberia, which did not suit her — she calls it a “tricky little way of ridding America of free Blacks” — the series gives her a lot of agency and makes her a virtual partner in the spy ring. White and Black, they live as much like a family as is possible when some people are labor and others are management and it’s the antebellum, then the wartime South.
Also involved in Elizabeth’s tradecraft are Scottish baker Thomas McNiven (Christopher McDonald) and Clara Parish (Hannah James), a beautiful prostitute who dreams “of Bronte’s moors” and gets, of all things, a big musical number in an out-of-place Western saloon, like Marlene Dietrich in “Destry Rides Again.” (The saloon is a standing set at Castel Film Studios in Romania, where the production was based; their backlot Western street, too, makes an implausible appearance.)
Ben Vereen as Isham Worthy, a porter in the Van Lew home.
(Bogdan Merlusca/Prime Video)
Out of the loop are Elizabeth’s brother, John (Ewan Miller), whose heart is in the right place, but who’s married to Laurette (Catherine Hannay), whose heart is not. An avaricious, envious flirt on the undisguised lookout for something better, she is angry that John wouldn’t use slave labor to build their house. She’s Scarlett O’Hara, minus the intelligence and charm.
Calling roll on the enemy, we find present Confederate President Jefferson Davis (Sam Trammell), in whose house — the eponymous Gray House — Mary Jane will be embedded, with a cocked ear and a photographic memory, to gather intel; Secretary of War (and then State) Judah P. Benjamin (Rob Morrow), who has a thing for Clara, to whom he opines on property rights while they share a bathtub; and a pip-squeak John Wilkes Booth (Charles Craddock), popping in and out no reason, unless it’s to foreshadow the death of Lincoln (who makes a rearview cameo), or just because everybody’s heard of him. Below them, but more in the action, are the nasty, thuggish Sheriff Stokely Reeves (Paul Anderson) and slave hunter Bully Lumpkin (Robert Knepper); and while thuggery and violence were endemic in a racist South, caricature and cliche do your history lesson no favors, however valuable it is.
Because Hollywood hates, let’s call it a love vacuum when it comes to screen heroines, Elizabeth will find herself the object of not one, not two, but (at least) three admirers, who prize her brains and spirit and talent for conversation. (She is no frilly, fizzy, fuzzy Southern belle, like the mean girls around her sister-in-law.) There is Hamton Arsenault (Colin Morgan), a sort of Rhett Butler lite, visiting from New Orleans with a huge live alligator, because I guess that’s something you could manage in 1860 just to make a splash at a party a thousand miles away. Capt. William Lounsbury (Colin O’Donoghue) is a dashing Union officer, escaping a Confederate prison, who passes through the Van Lew house on the way to freedom; they click together like Legos. Finally, there’s shy puppy dog Erasmus Ross (Joshua McGuire), who works at the Van Lew’s hardware store and will later have a post at a prison for captured Union soldiers, which the Van Lews will turn to their advantage.
“The Gray House” isn’t all bad, and its intentions are good, but it’s dramatically predictable and at eight episodes, some over an hour, goes on much, much longer than it needs to, letting scenes play out past profitability and wasting time on extraneous subplots involving minor characters — and minor minor characters — that do nothing to enrich the fabric of the show. A duel between two characters with no significant connection to the rest of the story exists here seemingly just because their historical counterparts did fight one, and gives the filmmakers the chance to add a duel — on horseback, like jousting with guns — to the show.
Parker is always fine, though the part requires a bit too much Southern breathiness. Davis and Head make strong impressions, masking the pedestrian, sometimes cornball dialogue. (The miniseries was written by Leslie Greif and Darrell Fetty, who collaborated on “Hatfields & McCoys”, with an undiscernable assist from John Sayles.) Keith David, who plays real-life activist minister Henry H. Garnet, gives a seven-minute speech on education as if he’s performing a Shakespearean monologue, after which he faces down a murderous sheriff like he’s Shaft. It’s a high point of the series, and the one scene I was happy to see go long.
Directed by Roland Joffé, who four decades ago was Oscar-nominated for “The Killing Fields” and “The Mission,” the production is a mixed bag; much care has been lavished on the costumes; the crowd scenes are well populated; printed material is done really well. (It matters.) Battle scenes — including Bull Run, where picnicking tourists are accurately shown in attendance — are convincingly rendered. But Romania, whether on or off the studio lot, only occasionally musters a decent impression of 19th century Virginia, reminding you, as “The Gray House” often does, that this is only a movie.
