Tom Burke was born in June 1981 in London. His mother Anna Calder-Marshall is best known on screen for her Cordelia, opposite Laurence Olivier’s Emmy Award-winning King Lear. His father, David Burke, is fondly remembered as Dr Watson in The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes alongside Jeremy Brett. But both were more renowned for their work in the theatre. His godfather, the late, great Alan Rickman, was also a big influence on his early life and career choice.

Burke attended the National Youth Theatre, the Young Arden Theatre in Faversham and the Box Clever Theatre Company at the Marlowe, Canterbury, before being accepted at RADA at the age of 18. After small roles in TV shows including Casanova and The Trial Of Tony Blair, he caught the eye in the BBC’s 2011 adaptation of Great Expectations and the newsroom drama The Hour the following year. Recent years have seen him take a starring role in the BBC crime drama strike and stand-out film roles in Only God Forgives, The Souvenir (parts one and two), Mank and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

Speaking to the Big Issue for his Letter to My Younger Self, Tom Burke remembers an idyllic adolescence infatuated with films, his anger at being overlooked for roles and taking advice from Alan Rickman.

At 16, I was at a really idyllic little school. It was a Steiner school and was literally in a valley, so it was a very particular environment. We were quite sheltered and hermetic. And we didn’t know until after we left, but the other schools referred to us as the Rainbow Warriors. Partly because you could wear your own clothes, but there was also quite a hippy thing going on. I found those years quite tricky. It was like The Prisoner – everything was very bright and colourful, but I remember feeling a real want to get out of there. I was quite solitary. But talking to my friends, because we’re all still in touch, I think it’s just part of being that age. I did feel quite lonely for a time.

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

I’d really fallen in love with the theatre and movies. I shared a real love of movies with my friends – we would talk in Quentin Tarantino or Trainspotting quotes for the whole lunch break. And that was supplemented with trips to the theatre. All my contemporaries at school were either into Blur or Oasis, apart from my best friend Tim who was very into Nirvana. I liked soul, which I’d come across via a freebie CD my mum had got with some Nivea products! So I was listening to The Chi-Lites.

When I went to the National Youth Theatre, I just remember feeling very loved. It wasn’t that everyone else was like me – it was a much more diverse group of people than I’d come across at school – but National Youth Theatre was like an Edenic honeymoon of a summer. And it definitely brought out something more social in me. I almost wish I’d taken that and gone to university rather than straight to drama school. Because I think that would have been quite good for me.

My impression of how one went about asking somebody out was from films. So I’d eventually work up the courage, but then do it in a very dramatic way. I’d say, ‘I need to talk to you! I have feelings for you!’ And then I’d turn on my heels and make this big exit, and leave them going ‘what!?’ And that was it done for me. I didn’t really need the cinema date. It was like I’d said it, so it was done and nothing will happen – I was very fatalistic about it. What was I thinking? I suppose in some way I thought they would run after me or the next week they’d go, where did you go? But I’d tell my younger self not to be afraid of starting conversations.

I grew up around actors and it was a really lovely thing. I remember feeling like I was part of the game – particularly when my parents [actors Anna Calder-Marshall and David Burke] spent a year in Stratford. There were an awful lot of parties, not just with the actors but the crew and costume lot. It felt like a really fun world. And my parents were going through all the things you go through unless you’re one of those people that steps out of drama school and never looks back. So I met all kinds of actors, from all different phases in their career, who all loved and supported each other. Alan Rickman [Tom Burke’s godfather] was always there. It was a lesson in getting on with it and being grateful for the work, whatever it was, knowing you’re blessed to be getting paid to do something you love.

• Daniel Mays: ‘Becoming a dad made me a better person and a better actor, it galvanised me’
• Michael Sheen: ‘I’ve essentially turned myself into a social enterprise, a not-for-profit actor’

What would surprise my younger self about my life now? At one point I didn’t think I was ever going to not have the sensation that my head was like a washing machine, with stuff going round and around and round. I remember thinking that was something I was just going to have to live with. But that’s not the case. There is a solution. And it was about talking to the right people. Not necessarily in a professional sense, sometimes you find the right friends to chip away at that with or figure out how to deal with it. In my 20s I was jumping from one kind of retreat to the next – I’d spend five or six days somewhere, or doing something fairly extreme, then get back to London and go crazy again. They were wonderful experiences, I’m glad I had them. But I needed something a little more mundane.

Mel Gibson was one of my favourite actors, so my younger self would love to know I was going to do a Mad Max film. Richard Harris and Anton Lesser are the people who made me want to act. But I also loved Mel Gibson and Eddie Murphy. I remember watching Beverly Hills Cop with my dad and him going, ‘That man has poise.’ And he fucking does! I always knew I’d love to do an action film, and if you’re doing that, you want to be doing it with someone like [Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga director] George Miller. But you think, if I’m going to have that career, I’ve got to probably do a lot of not so good action films first to get in that sphere. And as a younger actor, I was like, I’d rather be in a Strindberg play, actually. That’s going to be more interesting. So it’s been a great surprise that it’s somehow led around to this.

I grew up in a Labour home – and in my personal life and my actions as a civilian, as a voter, that still feels like a massive chunk of my identity. In terms of politics in my work, I feel great stories are more akin to a Zen koan than a political slogan. I go to the theatre or the cinema to unravel – and I don’t mean that in a glib way. I mean it in a radical way. I’m not there to educate or be educated – I have a sense of what Louise Bourgeois meant when she said reason is the opposite of truth – and I’ve always felt protective of that. There’s an assumption that an actor is going to nail their colours to the mast. And when you don’t, it inevitably arouses suspicion and ire in some. But if I felt otherwise, I’d want to find a different vocation, a different medium.

It stung when someone said I didn’t have a face for ITV. And it stung because it was the second of two parts that had been my first sense – certainly on screen – of feeling I was born to play a role, and that some of the best work I’d done was just on an audition tape somewhere. I later found out my involvement in the other job had been vetoed by the same person when they were at a different channel. I didn’t know what to do with that feeling. I was so angry. But I had to let go of any expectation I might have had about what one might call the parts in the canon, you know, for men in theatre or on screen. I just went, OK, I have to see what’s out there, and more importantly, who’s out there who is willing to stick my mug in front of a camera. If I’m honest, there’s a bit of me that is glad I’ve proved them wrong. I’ve always had a very romantic streak in me, so being a ‘leading man’ has always had an appeal.

Working with Joanna Hogg on The Souvenir was punk rock, in a way. There’s a lot of research that goes into it, but learning that you can rock up and jump into it and just start making a film was so exciting. There is a blueprint. But it is not like a normal script. There is much room to explore and it’s improvised. So making films with her is very special. But there have been so many highlights. Filming Mank – I learnt a lot from [David] Fincher. I felt slightly out of my body on that film, which was the first one I’d done in America – and I was playing Orson Welles! I remember Fincher having to show me the monitor at one point because I was moving too much and he was like, this bit has to be still. So I realised I had work to do. But I’m enjoying work more than ever. There are moments I could have taken a more obvious path to ‘build a career’. But I just tried to follow my nose as much as possible. I really wanted to feel alive, you know? What jobs are going to make me feel alive?

Alan Rickman taught me so much. Thinking about a letter to my younger self, I was thinking about the advice he would always give. He would say to everyone, ‘Remember, it’s not a race, remember it’s not a race.’ I know people who do treat acting like it’s a race and that must be exhausting. There were a couple of near misses with roles that could have made a substantial difference to my career. But I just had to let go. It was like seeing people sprinting off ahead of you, many of whom are my friends. Most actors have that experience at some point. But I don’t want it to say ‘he made 200 movies’ on my gravestone – there is so much other stuff in my life to enjoy. I wonder when people are flying high if they ever have a moment to experience other stuff.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in cinemas now.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

This article is taken from the Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.

To support our work buy a copy! If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.

“There are people who follow me on Instagram and all they do is ask when season two of We Are Lady Parts is coming out.” 

Good news for Anjana Vasan’s band of social media followers. We now have the answer to a question that has dogged the actor for three long years. We Are Lady Parts, the most inventive and important comedy of recent times, is finally back on Channel 4. And the show, which follows the lives and misadventures of Muslim female punk band Lady Parts, is better than ever.  

“I didn’t want a show like this to only have one season. It didn’t feel right,” Vasan says. “Because it’s led by incredible women, it has five Black and brown women in the lead roles – and I didn’t want that show to just be a one-off. There was so much love for it and a real will to make it happen.” 

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

We Are Lady Parts is written by Nida Manzoor, who also co-writes the music with her brothers and brother-in-law. In series one, punk anthems were shorn from the fabric of the characters’ lives and struggles. 

For Amina, played by Vasan, the series saw her struggle with the transition from folk and country music-loving, microbiology PhD student to punk guitarist, as well as her feelings for drummer Ayesha’s hot brother Ahsan. For Vasan, who also sings, this was a dream role.

“It was just by chance that this role came up, with Amina who, musically speaking, was so close to the kind of stuff I like,” she says. “When am I ever going to play a brown girl who loves Joan Baez and folk music? It felt like something the universe wanted to happen.”

But how do Lady Parts the band top songs like “Voldemort Under My Headscarf” and “Bashir with the Good Beard”? Vasan suggests Manzoor, who directed her debut film Polite Society between series one and two, had big plans from the get-go. 

“I remember when series one came out, I asked if she had any ideas for series two yet,” says Vasan. “All she had, she said, was a nugget of an idea. A song title that was something like “Malala Made Me Do It”.  I didn’t say it to her, but I remember thinking, ‘I bet she’ll find a way to get Malala in the show.’ Because if anyone can do it, then it’s her.” 

Sure enough, in episode two, the band unleash their new song namechecking the education activist and there she is. Malala Yousafzai herself. On screen. Astride a horse as the band dance and sing around her – the sort of surreal scene that punctuates the show, elevating the comedy and foregrounding the brilliant songs.

“It’s amazing,” Vasan grins. “Everyone was excited and nervous before her arrival. There was a big lead-up. ‘Oh my god, she’s coming on Thursday, we have to make sure everything is right.’ But she was so calm. I think she found us very funny. We were being very silly around her, coming up with dance moves, and she was so stoic on the horse. But I could hear her chuckle at the ridiculousness of what we were doing. And she liked the song!” 

Meera Syal also makes an appearance – as a punk pioneer. “Meera is amazing,” grins Vasan, who has worked with Syal twice on stage. “It’s so nice to have someone who is a pioneer in the industry playing someone in our fictional world who was also a pioneer. And she loves music. So it was a lot of fun for her.” 

• Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley: ‘Why the hell are we still judging someone on how they look?’
• Jodie Comer on taking up space as a woman and advice she received from Killing Eve co-star
• The Gathering creator: ‘It’s class, even more than ethnicity, blocking fair representation on TV’
• Paapa Essiedu: ‘It’s hard for me not to be political in the work that I do’

By its very existence, We Are Lady Parts is a political show, as well as a heightened, visually innovative comedy. This labour of love was born of frustration – at the narrow and stereotypical representations of Muslim women across TV and film. 

“When series one came out, a lot of people were like, ‘I’ve never seen this before.’ Well, you don’t see this on TV, but in culture it exists,” says Vasan. “So TV is catching up with what’s already out there.  

“The biggest thing this series is an existential question around the band’s identity. There’s the collective question of what Lady Parts means to us and that perennial one of art and money, creativity and capitalism.” 

As the band wrestle with the complex conundrum of no longer being the only all-female Muslim band on the scene when more media savvy, younger band Second Wife compete for their audience, Amina – who, for viewers, is our window into the world – there is also complex feelings about a young troubadour.

“Of all the characters I’ve played, she’s the one person who is so open-hearted and warm, she just wears her heart on her sleeve,” says Vasan.

“She’s so vulnerable and beautiful that way. And it’s very rare you get to play completely uncynical characters So to play her is a real gift. I get to like be a clown. That’s how I approach her, almost like a clown.”

Returning to We Are Lady Parts was not so much a case of getting the band back together as interrupting the ongoing friendship with a filming schedule.  

“We were all genuinely friends, the whole cast, so we are in each other’s lives,” says Vasan. “Our WhatsApp group was going strong the whole time. So we didn’t have to find the chemistry again or go, what have you been up to?  

“We go a bit crazy when we are all together. Once we got into costume and were together for a group scene, the energy was as manic and chaotic as ever. It’s like we are on a sugar high. So after every day of filming we are exhausted, in the most wonderful way.” 

Between series of We Are Lady Parts, Anjana Vasan has been stealthily putting together one of the most eclectic CVs in the acting world. She went straight into series four of Killing Eve as trainee assassin Pam. Vasan went on to shoot Wicked Little Letters alongside Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman, causing a commotion as police officer Moss unveiled the phantom filth-writer of old Littlehampton Town.  

“I said yes faster than you could say Olivia Colman,” Vasan grins. “It was a masterclass every day – watching these beautiful actors and beautiful humans at work.

“My favourite memories are of whenever Eileen Atkins was on set. She has such great stories about people in the industry – that I’m not allowed to tell – and we would just assemble around her in a circle, just in awe of her, and her incredible career and life that paved the way for all of us.” 

This was followed by a long run in A Streetcar Named Desire, with Vasan winning an Olivier Award for her performance opposite Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran.  

Vasan also received a second Bafta nomination, in the Best Actress category, for her killer performance alongside Paapa Essiedu in “Demon 79” – the Black Mirror episode that looked at the impacts of everyday racism through an unsettling lens. Her character Nida Huq (Vasan) went on a killing spree against a backdrop of anti-immigration policies and the rise of the National Front and under the influence of a demon dressed as Bobby Farrell from Boney M.

“I love the questions that it was asking within it,” she says. “Paapa is an exceptional actor and exceptional friend. I can be quite self-critical when I’m filming, but there was so much love and trust on set, that it was the one time I’ve been on a film set and not gone home thinking, ‘I should have done this or that differently.’ And I think that’s because I felt so held by everybody.”

What next? Vasan is not one, she says, for writing lists, making plans, or manifesting her next dream job. 

“I always want to exist in a different genre, a different world, or a different time period,” she says. “It’s about always trying to put yourself outside of your comfort zone. Maybe subconsciously it’s trying to stop yourself from being stereotyped or put in a box.  

“Because starting out in this industry, I felt very limited by the choices that were in front of me.” 

Big stardom is approaching for Anjana Vasan. But what is her Big Issue? She pauses, settling on the right choice of words, before explaining what was going through her head at the BAFTAs last week.

“I feel so lucky to be able to work as an actor in this country because it’s not my country,” says Vasan, who was born in Chennai, India and grew up in Singapore before moving to the UK to study at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 2011.

“That I even have a career is incredible to me. I was thinking of all these things at the BAFTAs, because it is all very meaningful and symbolic. But it struck me that if I had to start that journey now, I don’t know if any of it would be possible. Because the policies are different. The rhetoric is different. The climate around immigration is different.

“This government is wanting to close its doors. But I think the country, and by extension, our industry, is strongest and at its best when it can look outwards and welcome people and their stories, and open its doors to immigrants, to asylum seekers, to dreamers, to hardworking people.”

We Are Lady Parts series two begins on Channel 4 on Thursday 30 May.

If Benedict Cumberbatch was to explain all the reasons why he wanted to star in Abi Morgan’s new
Netflix thriller Eric, it would, he says, take all day. But near the top of the list is the chance to really explore the inner trauma of his latest alter ego, puppeteer Vincent Anderson.

“It’s rare that you pick up a script and read that your inner self is made manifest as a 7ft tall blue and white monster puppet walking around,” says the actor. It certainly didn’t happen in Sherlock. Or 12 Years a Slave.

“He’s a very rich character to play,” continues Cumberbatch. “I had to be quite fearless about playing another seemingly unlikable character. But I’m interested in the layers that make us human. In diving through the depths of depravity and darkness of mental health issues, drug addiction, and the near-abusive neglect in his childhood to get to a position of understanding him. It’s such a unique journey.”

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

Although the six-part series features its central character in regular dialogue with Eric the giant blue puppet, it is also shot through with big, real-world issues.

Set in 1980s New York, Eric skilfully weaves City Hall’s brutal treatment of its burgeoning homeless population – including the so-called ‘mole people’ living in disused subway tunnels – the early days of the Aids epidemic, institutionalised police racism and homophobia into the story of Vincent and Cassie Anderson (Gaby Hoffmann, surely one of the most brilliant, truthful actors on the planet right now), and the search for their young son who goes missing on his way to school. 

“It tackles the structural failings of that time – whether it’s healthcare, policing or even the domestic sphere of the family,” says Benedict Cumberbatch. 

“History judges us on how we treat those who are most vulnerable. And the family is a microcosm for everything societally that’s going on. Vincent’s mental health is the trauma of a loveless childhood, brought on by this totalitarian father who’s greedy. It’s about the Gordon Gekko ‘greed is good’ thing that started in ’85 and has carried on for the next 40-odd years. 

“That breeds a harshness. And that’s when care goes, and people start falling through the cracks. The things that are supposed to help us, hinder us – whether it’s gentrification and people being priced out, whether it’s the many crises that can bring about homelessness, whether it’s a disease that is not understood and therefore brings about more fear, prejudice, anger and alienation or that fear and anger resulting in institutional, societal and individual homophobia and racism. That’s what it feeds off.” 

New York City in the 1980s was a place in flux. 

“It’s coming after the death of the dreams of the ’60s and ’70s and the death of our heroes that were making this call to arms to do better: MLK, JFK, Malcolm X, RFK,” says Gaby Hoffmann, who grew up in Greenwich Village in the 1980s.

“We had less than a couple of decades of being able to see what we needed to do as a country, as a world, as a society. And those ideas – and those men – were assassinated.

“What came up in the 1980s was the power structures that are in place now. Corporate greed, money-money-money, building-building-building, power-power-power at the expense of humanity at large.

“It begins when characters like Robert Anderson are evicting people to put up big fucking towers. It’s the era of Donald Trump, really. The era of profit over people. And it is the beginning of the period we are in now.

“I’ve never seen as much homelessness as I’ve seen in the last few years in New York,” she adds. “I’ve never walked down the street in New York City and been afraid until the last two years. I have never felt that so many people are on the edge of so much desperation and thus capable of anything – and I trace it all back to the 1980s.”

• ‘You know my politics’: Benedict Cumberbatch reflects on these strange times
• Screenwriter Abi Morgan on the dramas in her own life that rival anything she’s written

It’s quite a departure for Morgan – best known for BBC dramas The Hour and The Split, her adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong, and films such as The Iron Lady, which starred Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. 

But it’s born of firsthand experience of 1980s New York, a time that left a huge imprint on her mind. 

“I had a desire to go back to 1980s New York, which I spent a small amount of time in and had been
fascinated with ever since,” she says. “Also, I grew up with creatives. My father ran theatres my entire life, my mum is an actress, so I was always backstage,” says the writer. “I liked the feeling that you saw behind the magic.

“So I wanted to write from the perspective of a boy in the middle of that brilliant intensity, but also watching a marriage fall apart. And it became a metaphor for that period when New York and all those institutions – City Hall and the NYPD and the property developers who are meant to help you get somewhere to live rather than price you out – were falling apart.”

Benedict Cumberbatch is at his best in Eric. We see the fierce intelligence and obsessive energy he brought to Sherlock, the propensity for cruelty he showcased in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, the arrogance and charisma of Doctor Strange and the unravelling into addiction and breakdown from Patrick Melrose. It is a mature and smart depiction of a man unmoored and flailing. When Edgar vanishes, Vincent is fully adrift and begins to believe that only bringing his son’s drawings of a misunderstood monster called Eric to life will bring his son home.

Detective Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) is leading the search for young Edgar – but he is also struggling with his own shadows and secrets.

“We also see what he’s managing as a Black queer man in the ’80s in the middle of an AIDS epidemic who is, in real time, mourning a partner who is still here but quickly deteriorating,” he says. 

“We see how his life is compartmentalised. He has a safe space at home where he is just able to be. Then we see him step out into a hostile world in which it is dangerous to be queer, it is dangerous to be open, and watch him manage the very real mask of the public and private self.”

Another missing person case – involving a young black boy called Marlon – is not getting the same level of public attention or police scrutiny as Edgar’s disappearance. This undermines Ladroit’s vision of himself as changing the NYPD from within. 

“It’s exciting to tackle that very real way institutional racism shows up in the real world,” says Belcher III.
“As evidenced by the last few years, there’s so much that needs to change with the NYPD specifically, and the relationship between communities and the people who police them in general. Ladroit has to land in a place in which he is brave enough to rage against the machine.

“Ultimately, we see him stepping fully into himself, embracing himself – and there’s great power in that.
He can be the change he wants to see in the world by loving himself.”

Hoffmann is moved to tears. It could be the jetlag, but more likely it’s her co-star’s powerful words. 

“Hearing McKinley talk about his character brings me to tears because his performance is so beautiful – and it’s a reminder of that,” she says. 

Hoffmann, best known for Transparent and Girls, having begun her career as a child in Field of Dreams and Uncle Buck, rallies. 

“This show is about us as individuals, but also societally, having to go through a dark night of the soul to find the light,” she says. “And that dark night of the soul is full of unbearable suffering and tremendous grief and pain.”

Eric, then, is a supremely well-observed New York story. But writer Abi Morgan, director Lucy Forbes, and lead actor Benedict Cumberbatch are all from the UK. They see parallels back home. 

“Last night I walked past Tottenham Court Road station [in Central London] and I must have counted 50 tents,” says Cumberbatch. “It was like the cardboard cities of the 1980s and ’90s.” Abi Morgan joins in: “So it’s about leaning into the fact that history is repeating itself. I wonder if that’s why the 1980s is so evocative, because so many of those thematic strands we’re playing with are as relevant today as they were then. 

“We’re playing with the idea of who has the responsibility to look after those people. We saw the post-Thatcher period where so many institutions that had cared for people with mental health issues were closed down, when Care in the Community led to a lot more homelessness on the streets.”

Hoffmann was impressed with Morgan’s depiction of her native New York and Cumberbatch’s of a native New Yorker. “Abi has written this from a place of real love and a great deal of experience,” she says. “And Benedict’s a one-man circus. He’s just a masterclass. He can inhabit anything. I couldn’t care less that they come from the UK if they come at things with so much humanity and so little ego.”

As for the puppeteering, Benedict Cumberbatch – a lifelong fan of Jim Henson – took his homework home to entertain his three children.

“It’s such a particular skill,” he says. “I loved it as a child, as an adult, and as a parent. That thing of making the unreal real and animating the inanimate is magic. It is very exciting. But the dog was very unhappy and utterly freaked out every time I got the orange practice puppet out.”

Good Day Sunshine, the show within the show that Vincent created (and on which he works through his childhood trauma), has new and original puppet creations. It also features a beautiful mantra that bears repeating. ‘Be good, be kind, be brave, be different.’

Cumberbatch sits back, splays his arms wide, and grins. “It’s a good thing to have stamped on your heart. It really is…”

Eric is on Netflix from 30 May.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

Benedict Cumberbatch has spoken out about the rise of homelessness in the UK ahead of his big new Netflix series Eric.

The actor’s latest starring role sees him play a puppeteer named Vincent Anderson in Abi Morgan’s emotional thriller set in 1980s New York. The series, which also features a seven-foot blue and white monster puppet called Eric, explores big themes – from the early days of the Aids epidemic to institutionalised police racism and homophobia, gentrification, and the brutal treatment of New York’s homeless population.

Cumberbatch, talking to the Big Issue, explained that he felt history was repeating itself in this country, when it comes to homelessness.

“Last night I walked past Tottenham Court Road station and I must have counted 50 tents in the first 100 yards,” Cumberbatch said, in a new interview with the Big Issue.

“It was like the cardboard city of the 1980s and 90s.”

The new Netflix series charts a real period in New York City history, when politicians in City Hall were trying to evict the city’s homeless population while skyscrapers – including Trump Tower – were going up. Huge protests, which are shown in the new drama, erupted.

“It feels like a tipping point, the end of the 60s and 70s idealism veering into that narcissistic capitalist driven consumerism we have now,” said Cumberbatch.

“Eric tackles the structural failings of that time. Whether it’s healthcare, policing or even the domestic sphere of the family. It’s about the Gordon Gekko ‘greed is good’ thing that started in 85 and has carried on for the next 40-odd years.”

• Jodie Comer on The End We Start From: ‘I really want women to see themselves depicted in a truthful light’
• ‘You know my politics’: Benedict Cumberbatch reflects on these Strange times
• Benedict Cumberbatch: ‘We created the migrant crisis’

The idea that unhoused people were the problem, rather than the lack of housing or support, remains prevalent to this day. Cumberbatch even encountered it on his current press tour.

“The Angelinos I talked to recently doing press for Eric were saying, ‘There’s a big problem here but they’re cleaning them up. They’re moving them on,’” Cumberbatch told us.

“But that’s not the solution. Are they’re tackling the housing crisis? Are they helping the people falling through the cracks in the middle classes, let alone the working classes or people with mental health issues in that non-welfare state miasma of the dollar? It was terrifying to hear that. It’s like, out of sight, out of mind.”

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

At the heart of Eric is the story of Vincent and Carrie Anderson (Transparent star Gaby Hoffman). whose son goes missing on his way to school. And Cumberbatch, famous for roles in Sherlock, Dr Strange and The Imitation Game, admitted the ‘missing child’ genre is not his favourite.

“As a father I find this kind of drama hard to watch. The missing child genre is tricky. It is not top of my TV wishlist,” he said, before adding “I probably shouldn’t say that!

“But Eric should be. Because it’s a redemptive story. And it’s actually about the lost child in all of the characters. It’s this amazing, imaginative odyssey about how they step into themselves and find themselves.”

Eric is on Netflix from 30 May.

Read the full interview with Benedict Cumberbatch, plus co-stars Gaby Hoffman and Mckinley Belcher III, and writer Abi Morgan in The Big Issue magazine on sale from May 27.

At this year’s BAFTA Television Awards, Baroness Floella Benjamin was awarded a BAFTA Fellowship – the highest honour in television – for her pioneering role in creating a more diverse broadcasting industry and outstanding contribution to children’s television. Before receiving the award, she spoke to the Big Issue about her incredible career – from classic kids’ TV show Play School to the House of Lords – and lifelong mission to create positive change.

“My only motive is to make the world a better place for our children,” said Benjamin. “My catchphrase for the last 50 odd years has been: ‘Childhood last a lifetime – so let’s get this right.’

“I’m so grateful to BAFTA for blessing me with this accolade, and recognising someone from the children’s world.”

Even as a young performer in the 1970s, Floella Benjamin was confronting bigwigs and producers to push for a more inclusive, representative industry.

“In 1974, I was doing a show called Within These Walls,” she recalled. “I said to the producers: ‘Why do Black and Asian actors always play thieves and criminals? Why can’t we play professional roles, accountants, lawyers and doctors?’ They said to me, ‘Oh, Floella that’s not realistic, is it?’

“That’s when I started banging on doors and joining committees. Because you have to be around the table where the decisions are made. If you’re not around the table, you can’t change the world. I’ve persuaded so many broadcasters to get diversity on their agenda. I want diversity and inclusion to be in all the broadcasters’ DNA.

“I’ve done lots of other things in my career. I started off in dramas long before I did Play School. I’ve worked with all the top directors and done some great things. But my work with children, to me, is so important because it’s effecting the future. Because whatever children see stays with them – it effects their thinking and their behaviour.

“So we’ve got to have that same responsibility throughout our industry, to be to be truthful, to act with morality and integrity. I’m also getting children to see themselves which is a huge responsibility.”

Benjamin knows she is a pioneer. She refers to the millions of people who grew up watching her on Play School from 1976 to 1990 as her Play School Children. For millions, she was one of the only people of colour they saw on television on a regular basis. She can, she says, see her descendants all over the media.

After landing her dream gig on Play School, the show that would cement her position in the hearts of millions, Benjamin continued to push for positive action – despite everyone around her advising her not to speak out.

“I was always paving the way,” she said. “I was told I shouldn’t be speaking out. But I said, ‘No, I’m going to make a difference.’

“On Play School, back in 1976, all the illustrations were of white children. Now I was a young actress, I’d got a brilliant job, I was paid well. But I was confident in what I believed in, so I said to the producer: why can’t we have Black and Asian faces in the illustrations? Because if you don’t see yourself, you don’t know you belong.

“She said something very interesting: ‘Oh. We hadn’t noticed.’ I realised I had to get people to notice what was missing. And that would be my mission.”

For Floella Benjamin, this has involved persuasion and education.

“I’ve done it by example,” she continued. “By never accusing anybody of anything, but just saying, I’m here to open your eyes.

“People say, children don’t see colour. And I say, yes, they do. They see colour, but they embrace diversity naturally. I want us to grow up embracing it and valuing people for what they do in the world, what they’ve got in their hearts, not the colour of their skin or religion. Children do that automatically. I want us to see the world through the eyes of the child.”

• More than 700,000 children plunged into poverty since Tories came to power: ‘We’re going backwards’
• Children of Windrush: Mica Paris, Jay Blades, Lenny Henry and more reflect on heritage and identity
• Child poverty: Two-fifths of children under five are missing key developmental milestones

In 2010, Benjamin broke further new ground, becoming the first Trinidadian woman to take a seat in the House of Lords – becoming Baroness Benjamin of Beckenham. She has used her position to focus on children’s rights and better diversity, equity and inclusion in the media and beyond.

More children are growing up in poverty than at any time in the last 30 years. There has been an increase of 700,000 children living in poverty since the Conservative Party came to power in 2010 – meaning one in three children are now growing up in poverty.

So Benjamin’s recognition by BAFTA could not be more timely. If childhood lasts a lifetime, so can the impact and repercussions of childhood poverty. It is why the Big Issue has launched our latest campaign, in the hope that political leaders sign up to our demand to end poverty this election.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

“When I came to Britain, I lived eight people in one room. My mum used to say to us, ‘This room is full of love – whatever you do in life, remember you are loved.’ Now my message to you and your campaign is that we need society to give people hope,” said Benjamin.

“We need to show people there is a way out and make an environment where you can find a way out of poverty. And we’ve got to give children who live in poverty hope.”

Benjamin continues to campaign for a full cabinet post for a Minister for Children as another route to eradicate childhood poverty.

“Hopefully our voices will be heard,” she said. “Then all government departments would have to have joined up policies because they know it’s affecting children. And then we wouldn’t have poverty – because we would be thinking about how decisions and policies impact children.”

Richard Rankin’s dad warned him not to become a cop. Now he’s about to be the most famous one in Scotland. 

“One of the biggest things he said to me was, ‘Don’t join the police,’” said the Glasgow actor, recalling his late father Colin’s advice. “He said it was a very hard, very demanding and sometimes quite overwhelming job. One of his first days on the job was pulling someone’s body out of the River Clyde. A finger came off the body because it had been in the water for so long. 

“So he wasn’t the biggest advocate of joining the police force. My dad died six years ago, and it would have been nice to discuss this with him now. He’d almost have been like a resource for me.” 

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

Rankin would no doubt trade all the words that have been scripted for his new role for a few more with his father. But as secondary resources go, he has plenty to fall back on by way of research for the biggest part of his career so far. The 41-year-old makes his debut this week as the titular character in the BBC’s much-anticipated reboot of Rebus, based on the detective novels written by the actor’s Fifer namesake, Sir Ian. 

This is DC John Rebus as a younger man, reimagined in a contemporary Edinburgh setting of iPhones and social media, Amazon delivery drivers and zero-hours contracts.  

The old, cobbled streets are the same as those policed by John Hannah and Ken Stott, who embodied the rough-hewn cop in the 1990s and 2000s, but the world he polices is very different.  

And so is the way he polices it. Episode one opens with a breathtaking scene in the back of an ambulance, followed by a moment of unflinching sibling violence in a rundown Edinburgh flat. Rebus 3.0 comes out brawling, almost, you might imagine, in anger at having been away for so long. At times, Richard Rankin’s ferocious 2024 take makes the previous depictions seem like an episode of Teletubbies. 

“It opens with a full pace and gives you a great idea of this character now,” said Rankin, in understatement. “There’s an unpredictability to him. You don’t see the anger coming.  

“I saw a lot of Ken Stott’s Rebus when I was younger as my dad always watched it. I remember there was an east coast / west coast thing growing up in Scotland with Rebus and Taggart on the telly. Almost like an allegiance. But I didn’t go back and look at old episodes for this. I didn’t want to be influenced by that in any way.” 

• Peter Capaldi on why his new cop drama Criminal Record is going to be your next TV obsession
• Outlander and A Discovery of Witches star Steven Cree: ‘These shows have the power to unite people’

Rankin’s casting as the famous fictional cop has its roots in a theatre project first staged 16 years ago. 

In 2008, the National Theatre of Scotland commissioned playwright Gregory Burke to research a piece about the realities of conflict in the Middle East for the squaddies from Fife’s Black Watch battalion. 

The resulting play – Black Watch – became a huge success, touring the world multiple times, picking up four Olivier Awards, reams of five-star reviews and countless celebrity endorsements. Rankin was cast as Glenrothes squaddie Granty. Nobody knew it, but the role was his audition for Rebus over a decade later. 

He said: “I had heard they were rebooting Rebus, there was a buzz about it in acting circles, but I didn’t know anything about who was behind it. It seemed like 80% of the actors I knew were meeting for it and auditioning for it over a period of two or three months, so I figured they weren’t interested in me for any sort of part in it, which is the way it goes in the industry. 

“Then I got a call from my agent in 2022 saying that Gregory Burke and [director] Niall MacCormick wanted to send me a script. Even then I didn’t think it was for the part of Rebus. Not even in a fantasy way. 

“Greg sometimes refers to Rebus as Black Watch 2.0, and I think that’s an idea of the flavour of it. Brian Ferguson plays Rebus’s brother, Michael, and he was in the first cast of Black Watch. 

“It would have been their local regiment, and it could have been the case that these boys were squaddies in the show he wrote all those years ago, then grew up and joined the police. 

“Greg had a say in my casting, he was instrumental. He writes with a certain dry or dark humour. I think he’s always thought I get that and there’s a lot of that in my nature too: dry, sometimes undetectable, sarcasm. I love playing that element in Rebus.” 

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

After almost a decade building up a sizeable female fanbase playing  Roger Wakefield MacKenzie in Outlander, Richard Rankin’s star is in the ascendant, and he knows his highest-profile leading role to date will be open to scrutiny, and not just from Outlander fans (free spoiler alert for them: RR gets his bum out in the name of crimefighting). 

He said: “I don’t think my arse is in Rebus to hook Outlander fans, but if that’s what it does, then so be it. 

“I come from a show which is based on another hugely successful series of books, and that character was also very anticipated when he came along. 

“There are still a lot of fans of the other series, who seem to be quite vocal about this version. Some are looking forward to it, some are on my Instagram timeline telling me I’m not their John Rebus before they’ve even seen it. There’s a bit of ‘all right, show us what you’ve got then’. 

“There’s a huge affection for the character. This is a fresh take on doing him justice.” 

Rebus is on BBC Scotland, BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.

To support our work buy a copy! If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.

The true scale and scope of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s achievement across nine series of Inside No 9 may only become clear in the years and decades to come. Perhaps by the year 2099 they will be getting the full plaudits this marvellous, macabre, genre-melding anthology series truly deserves. 

When the ninth and final series closes next month, they will have written 55 episodes (and acted in most of them). Each one standing alone, beautifully crafted, smartly written and surprising. The series expanding the possibility of what a half-hour TV comedy can do. 

Shearsmith and Pemberton burn through ideas like they are going out of style. Ideas that many would try to turn into a career-defining long-running series are played out with precision in just 30 minutes. 

The pair are ruthless in maintaining their standards. But there have been standout classics. A Quiet Night In was superb silent slapstick. The 12 Days of Christine was a heartbreaking tale of love, life and loss – built around a stunning central performance from Sheridan Smith. Dead Line saw Shearsmith and Pemberton live and unleashed in a Halloween horrorshow, toying with and eventually tearing up all the rules of television, going one step beyond meta. And as for the Devil at Christmas, from 2016 – well, we laughed, we cried, we squirmed, we screamed and we gasped at the final twist in this demonic tale. 

Along the way, the duo have been joined by a roll call of the best in the business. Each actor signing up confident in the knowledge that, in just five days of filming, they will create a little piece of TV magic.   

Shearsmith and Pemberton go back a long way. Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of their debut stage performances alongside Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson as The League of Gentlemen. The comedy troupe transferred to television 25 years ago, for three series of off-kilter dark comedy and a clutch of specials. And, from Psychoville to Inside No 9, it’s been one psychological comedy drama after another ever since.

Did you have to finish Inside No 9 after nine series – and how are you feeling as it comes to an end? 

SP: Well, I’ve actually got Covid. I tested myself last night.  

RS: That’s very old school. I’m not meeting up with you today, then! 

SP: But anyway, more than anything, I feel really proud of what we’ve achieved. It’s also a relief to not have to think, how do we top this?  

RS: It’s sad, but it is not sad, sad. It will feel strange when it really has finished. Because it doesn’t quite feel like it’s properly finished until the episodes have gone out into the world. That’s when it will hit us.  

SP: It crept up on us. We would joke about doing nine series around series four. But it’s not easy, because from the start it was well received. We’ve been going round with this weight on our backs because we didn’t want to be one of those shows that people go, the first series was great and then it was downhill. Hopefully we got this last series over the line in that regard.  

RS: We are fans ourselves. We know what it’s like when something goes off the boil. So there’s that terror of having that levelled at us. In our minds, we’ve always had a court of public opinion – but it’s a literal court where we’re pulled in and made to answer questions. So we’ve always had to be able to justify our every move. 

Can you take us inside the writing room? 

RS: We have a little room with not much in it. It is quite a monastic place. There’s just a desk and there was once a wardrobe in it, which was, weirdly, the inspiration for the game of sardines in the first episode. Steve does a lot of the typing. But there isn’t a set rule about that.  

SP: You’ve no idea how long we spend talking and thinking about the episodes. There’s not much pacing around. It’s mainly lying, slouching, lolling, pondering, staring at the ceiling. But we have fun as well. It helps that we have been best friends for many years. So our writing doesn’t feel like work. It feels like hanging out with your friend. Every day we find new things to talk about.  

RS: We’ll talk for a long time before writing anything. We like to explore the possibilities of a story and endlessly discuss where it could go. Bit by bit, that filtration process distils it into the scenes we need to write it in the leanest way. I talk like this is how you do it, but it’s a bit of a magic trick how we really do it.

Is there a way to define what makes a story an Inside No 9?  

RS: We’ve tried to maintain the idea that the story has to come from somehow ‘inside’ and ‘number nine’ – whatever that might mean. We’ve stretched that a bit, but the restrictions make you think in more inventive ways. But Steve’s right to talk about us being friends. We can say the stupidest idea but being able to voice it is important. It might unlock another door. So to be able to air silly ideas is a massive step in creativity and to feel like you’re properly playing. 

SP: There are no rules, so if you had different writers each week given carte blanche, it would be a very interesting experiment but I’m not sure it would have built the same fanbase. What is it that allows you to go from the realism of Love’s Great Adventure to the craziness of Wuthering Heist and say it is the same series? Every episode has something of us in it.  

RS: We’ve got similar references, as do Mark [Gatiss] and Jeremy [Dyson] from our League of Gentleman days. We all seemingly had the same childhood, the same obsessions. And it’s not just us who enjoy the blackly, comic 1970s landscape we grew up in – so it’s been great to find like-minded people. Because that was everything to us.  

SP: That’s how you make friends, discovering those shared sensibilities. It’s an extension of friendships in a way, isn’t it, having fanbases?  

Are there actors who have particularly got Inside No 9? 

SP: We’ve honestly loved working with everyone. Lorraine Ashbourne came in for Nana’s Party and it was such a specific character, the pathos and humour and tragedy, and she got every single beat. Sheridan Smith gave you an entire lifetime in just five days of work. Because we are taking most of the male roles, a lot of our male contemporaries have been shut out, but we loved Daniel Mays in Kid/Nap. He was so funny – threatening but with a lightness of touch and no vanity. And Mark Bonner is brilliant in the new series, but we knew that from Psychoville. I could go on all day – Reece, what do you think? 

RS: Rory Kinnear was so funny as a person and brought that Shakespearean stellar quality to Zanzibar. And Helen McCrory was great in The Harrowing and so delighted to do it – because I don’t think she was asked to do much comedy.  

SP: David Morrissey did so much research and brought such gravitas to The Referee’s a W***er. A lot of dramatic actors have loved doing a bit of comedy with us. I’m pretty sure everyone goes away and says it was a fun job.  

What’s your favourite performance by each other? 

RS: Steve’s got the advantage of having pictures of all the episodes up on his wall behind him. He was so chilling when he played Adrian in To Have And To Hold, which was a very creepy story, one of the darkest episodes we did. The quiet monster, this seemingly very vanilla character who seemed happy just to sit and do crosswords  but was keeping a woman in the basement. 

SP: Not crosswords – it was jigsaws.  

RS: Oh yes, crosswords is you in real life.  

SP: It is! I’m going to say Wise Owl in series seven. There wasn’t a lot of dialogue, but Reece had to convey so much emotion and pain, and there was humour as well. I also loved revisiting David and Maureen from Psychoville. Seeing Reece hobbling in on his crutches as Maureen was a bit of a highlight. We never thought we’d get to do them again. 

Has Inside No 9 also felt like a shop window for your acting chops? 

RS: I remember John Cleese saying Ronnie Barker was never going to get work because you don’t recognise him from one thing to the next. And I think we go under the radar as actors because we are kaleidoscopic. I mean, you could argue we are the same in everything. But it must have afforded us other opportunities, although the League did that, really. We were actors struggling away and wrestled back control in our own thing, which became our calling card. But as far as a showreel of our range as actors, you hope it’s demonstrated we’re able to do various things. 

SP: We’ve both done big acting jobs on other series and it’s such a breath of fresh air not to be thinking about the writing. But you do not get the same satisfaction of sitting in a room, working on an idea and seeing it through every single process. It is the most inspiring thing, so we’ll always want to continue working together.  

RS: Like Steve said, being an actor in someone else’s thing is great. But you sometimes think, the things we do are better than this script. So, let’s stick with that!  

How has the TV and film industry changed over the Inside No 9 years? 

SP: One thing I’d say that’s changed about the TV landscape since we started is that there’s a real lack of opportunities for new writers because of the lack of sketch shows. That was how we got a start. It’s great people are being given chances to tell personal stories, with Baby Reindeer being such a hit and Such Brave Girls. But I miss the old sketch show where you could learn how to write by doing a two-minute self-contained joke. It’d be nice for new writers, because we’ve got to bring on the next generation of Steves and Reeces… but only when we’ve retired! 

Was it emotional, looking back over this decade when you were filming the finale? 

SP: We never write episodes in order. We debated the order quite a bit – but we want the series as a whole to be what we go out on.  

RS: It was strange filming the last scenes. And it was emotional. But it didn’t feel devastating. We couldn’t not get through the last scene because we were crying – it wasn’t like the last episode of Friends or something.  

SP: They made us a lovely cake, which had characters from all our different series on. It was emotional eating that cake. I had a little nibble of the little Wise Owl. It was a real work of art. But the thing that makes me most emotional is seeing people’s reactions to an episode, seeing how it affected people or how passionate people are. I find that very moving. 

You’ve been working together for 30 years. What’s next? 

RS: The idea of being around for 30 years – we don’t see it like that, because it’s just been our lives. But step outside of it and we see this body of work, this televisual legacy we’ve done, by accident, by living. And it never goes unnoticed that we are still, every day, doing this thing we love. It’s amazing we have been on the televisual landscape, whether you’ve caught us or not, for such a long time now.  

SP: I can probably tell you… we are doing a stage adaptation of Inside No 9 at the Wyndham’s Theatre from January. It started as quite a theatrical idea anyway – a single set, small cast of characters. So on the one hand we are sitting back, celebrating nine seasons. But we are also instantly back in the sweat room. How do we turn it into a satisfying stage show that doesn’t just become a lap of honour and recreate things we’ve already done? It never ends… 

Inside No 9 airs on Wednesdays on BBC Two and iPlayer.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.

To support our work buy a copy! If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.

“Every companion is a mystery.”

Millie Gibson is right at the heart of this new era for Doctor Who. Her introduction in The Church on Ruby Road at Christmas – when her character Ruby Sunday forged an instant, lifelong friendship with Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor, met TV’s Davina McCall, and narrowly defeated some singing goblins – was a soaraway success. And there is so much more to come.

“I’m so excited for everyone get the reward of getting to know Ruby Sunday,” she says, when she takes time out of the busy filming schedule to meet the Big Issue in London. 

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

Gibson was young when she was cast as Ruby Sunday, but she has years of acting experience behind her. She began her path to stardom, like so many brilliant actors before her – from Sarah Lancashire, Suranne Jones and Anna Friel to Joe Gilgun and Olivia Cooke – at the Oldham Theatre Workshop. 

“It was just incredible,” she says. “I could bang on about Oldham Theatre Workshop all day. It is so important. I found my people there. So many of my friends I have today were from there. And I got spotted by an agent in my first production, which was called Eyam – a very cheery play about the plague!”

From there, Gibson began auditioning, got a role in CBBC football drama Jamie Johnson, before winning a big role in Coronation Street. 

“I grew up watching it,” she says. “My mum and my nana loved it. When I got into Corrie, my nana was just gagged – she still thinks it’s bigger than Doctor Who.”

And, as soap fan, Russell T Davies knows there is nowhere better to learn how to build a character over time. For three years, she was a mainstay of our screens. 

“If Coronation Street was my secondary school, Doctor Who is like my uni,” says Gibson. “All my friends were going off to uni and I was heading to Cardiff. 

• Ncuti Gatwa on ‘feeling seen’ by Doctor Who, being a Ken and why his Time Lord is ‘very human’
• Russell T Davies on returning to Doctor Who, queer representation and ‘maddest’ episodes yet
• Doctor Who: Going back to the future with David Tennant and Catherine Tate heralds an exciting new era

“So I’ve grown so much on this show already. I started when I was 18 and I’m the grand age of 19 now. I’m a lot more independent. 

“Honestly, I’ve learned so much, I’ve grown so much. When you have done this job, you can put yourself in any situation and deal with it, because it is really intense and a unique experience to have at such a young age. It can set you up for the rest of your career.”

Gibson’s final episode in Coronation Street aired the night before her recall audition for the role in Doctor Who – where she met and read with Gatwa for the first time. 

“I was in the waiting room and could hear Ncuti’s laugh. So iconic,” she grins. 

“As soon as I walked into the room, all my nerves completely floated away. It was a magical moment. Then it was like a blur – I knew we had chemistry, but he is such a nice guy, he probably has chemistry with everyone. Honestly, Ncuti could have chemistry with a wall.”

Whether fighting for the unhugged, abandoned Space Babies or taking on the unhinged, audacious Maestro (Jinx Monsoon) who violently consumes anything approaching a catchy chorus in a music-free Earth where even The Beatles churn out tuneless dirges in The Devil’s Chord, the Doctor and Ruby have wit and energy to spare. They are stylish, sparky, superb – and Gibson is having a blast. 

“Jinx Monsoon in The Beatles episode was just insane,” she says. “Some scenes she was involved in, I felt like packing my bags and going home. Me and Ncuti would turn to each other and be like, ‘She’s BAFTA-winning, Oscar-winning, everything-winning good!’ Give it all to her. And she was my favourite on RuPaul’s Drag Race, so I was really starstruck.”

Ending the opening episodes with an all-star song and dance was a dazzling way to kickstart the new global era of Doctor Who – showrunner Russell T Davies greedily splashing the Disney co-production cash to make his second coming in his dream job bigger and bolder than ever. 

Because if Doctor Who is always fun, the new era, led by Gatwa’s mesmerising central performance, is more fun than most, even when the entire concept of the show is being spelt out for newcomers.

“Ruby and the Doctor have a similar relationship to me and Ncuti,” says Gibson. “We’re both very cheeky. Two peas in a pod. I first described our chemistry as like two schoolgirls having a giggle.

“Ncuti brings a whole new light and love and representation to Doctor Who that no one has seen before. I get to witness it firsthand and it is like a masterclass. We’ve had so many beautiful moments together. And when the work gets intense, it really helps to have that foundation and that love.” 

This series will see them living out their Bridgerton fantasies in Regency England, trapped by a landmine on a far-off planet and facing Welsh folk devils. 

But while monsters come and go, the mystery of the Doctor’s new companion will be one of the key themes of the whole series. Ruby is both open book and complete enigma – upbeat and positive, but also in search of answers about her past and her birth family, having been found on the church steps and fostered as an infant. 

But this is a show that thrives on such dualities. And there is such a dynamism and a charm to Gatwa and Gibson’s Tardis team.

For Gibson, knowing she is representing children brought up in foster care by playing the inspirational Ruby Sunday – abandoned as a baby, raised in a loving foster family, and now boldly going off to see the entirety of time and space – was vital. 

“I really want Ruby to be a beam of hope,” she says. 

“Companions are the eyes and ears of the world, and I think if people connect with her on a personal level, because of the fostering storyline and the way Russell has written it, you’ll be even more on her journey. 

“It’s an ongoing theme of the series. Because the Doctor is a lost child as well. So it’s like meeting your person or finding your family, or the family you choose. And that’s so important to see. These two lost children meeting each other and finding their way through the universe – what a beautiful thing…”

Doctor Who airs on BBC One and iPlayer every Saturday night 

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.

To support our work buy a copy! If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.

The organised labour movement has a new, blue-haired hero.

In the latest episode of The Simpsons, Marge forms a union after discovering the brutal reality of the gig-economy. “Night of the Living Wage” – yet to air in the UK – sees the beloved cartoon matriarch forced to take on a minimum-wage job at ‘Gimme Chow’, a ghost kitchen and delivery app, in order to pay off an unexpected medical bill.

“It kind of shakes my faith in billionaires,” she tells Lisa, after being refused overtime pay for an exhausting and dangerous shift.

Anti-capitalist messaging is common in American TV, says Kathy M Newman, associate professor of English and director of graduate Studies at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert on unionism in mass culture. Such overt references to trade unionism are rarer, she adds – but they make surprising cameos in “almost every long-running TV show”.

• ‘We’re slaves to the platform’: Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats riders are striking. Here’s why
• What is the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) bill and why are trade unions saying it’s anti-strikes?

“Finding culture that’s critical of capitalism is much easier than finding culture that even mentions the word ‘union’,” she explains. “[but] I would encourage people, keep your eye out for labour when you’re when you’re watching TV. It’s almost like a Where’s Wally game. And references to unions are maybe getting less rare.”

Strikes are relevant topics for writers and actors, Newman explains, many of whom are, like delivery drivers, ‘gig economy workers’. Last year, the dual SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes all but shuttered the US culture industry, delaying production for many TV shows – including The Simpsons.

“We tend to think of culture and labour as being opposites, because culture is what we do when we’re not working – we go out on the town, we watch TV, we go to a movie… but they’re synonyms, they’re linked,” Newman says.

“When you watch something that was made in Hollywood, almost everyone who is affiliated with it is a member of a union. The writers, the actors, all the behind-the-scenes people.”

The Hollywood strikes were partly prompted by the huge pay disparities between studio bosses and contracted writers. Gig economy food delivery workers have been galvanised by a similar profit disparity.

Earlier this year, thousands of delivery drivers for Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat went on strikes over “ridiculously inadequate” pay and dangerous conditions. Drivers told the Big Issue they’d been treated like “human filth”, making less than £100 for a 12 hour shift.

The Simpsons episode draws attention to this sort of stark disparity. As Marge nurses a workplace injury, Gimme Chow CEO Finn Bon Idée brags about doing ayahuasca in space with Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos. “Gimme Chow is a family, united by one goal: enriching our shareholders,” he oozes.

But according to the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, the ‘minimum wage’ that Marge is on in the episode actually exceeds the pay that delivery drivers receive.

“Riders are often at the mercy of entirely opaque algorithms, which feed on their data to make hidden calculations and spit out the lowest fees they think riders will accept,” IWGB president Alex Marshall said. “The result is a continuous erosion of fees, forcing workers to spend longer and longer on the streets just to survive.”

Have unions been on The Simpsons before?

It’s not the first time that unions have featured on The Simpsons. In an iconic 1994 episode, Homer – newly-appointed as union president – leads the workers of the nuclear plant in a strike in order to restore their dental plan.

For today’s gig economy workers, membership in such a powerful union is a distant dream.

In many jurisdictions, precarious workers are not classified as “employees,” an arrangement which denies them collective bargaining rights. California’s Proposition 22 – which allowed app companies to classify drivers and deliverers as independent contractors – was the inspiration for the new Simpsons episode, writer Cesar Mazariegos told Eater magazine.

“All these companies [are] coming together to basically screw us over and make it so that workers can’t unionize,” he said.

Things aren’t much better in the UK. In November, the Supreme Court ruled that Deliveroo riders are not “workers” and could not collectively bargain in a way that Deliveroo must recognise in statutory process. The ruling – described by drivers as a “bitter” disappointment – came after a long-running battle by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain for the right to bargain on behalf of workers.

But legal constraints haven’t stopped workers from engaging in collective action. New forms of solidarity may have a different legal structure to a traditional union, but organising tactics can nonetheless be effective, Jonathan Preminger, senior lecturer in management, employment and organisation at Cardiff Business School.

“Unions have a legally sanctioned status in civil society… but it’s misleading to think of unions solely as a legal issue,” he said. “Obviously, the legal context is very important. But [the most important thing] if workers can get together to demand certain things, they can have an impact, even without the legal category of being a ‘union.’”

In the UK, couriers have organised through grassroots pop up organisation Delivery Job UK, connecting via social media to overcome the isolation of the fragmented gig economy workplace.

“The classic idea of unionizing is that people are working together in a particular place. So they get to know each other, and they often know each other outside of work. The precarity of the gig economy at first seemed to have broken down that kind of social solidarity,” Preminger says.

“So people working in the gig economy had to find ways to overcome the fact that they weren’t working together, they often didn’t know each other, they are often in direct competition with each other. But gig workers know the situation they’re in, and some of them are finding ways to overcome it.”

Marshall echoed this claim.

“The Supreme Court may have refused to officially recognise riders’ right to collective bargaining, but that does not prevent us from coming together and taking action for the changes we want to see,” he said.

“Our power comes not from the courts but from our unity as workers acting collectively. For things to change we need riders to unionise, get organised and take back what they’re owed.”

Star Trek is back soon, with the fifth and final season of Discovery launching on Paramount+. There will plenty of people who will revel in its dark and gritty take on the franchise, light years away from the goofy coloured jerseys and computers which explode when you ask them a riddle, which we remember from the 60s show. 

But as someone who recently rewatched everything from The Original Series (1966-1969) to Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005), the dark and gritty nature of Discovery makes it rather atypical of the Star Trek franchise, and it risks throwing away the very thing which made The Original Series so ground-breaking and beloved. 

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

Take The Devil in the Dark, from the first season of Star Trek. This begins with Kirk and the Enterprise being called in to deal with a terrifying monster which has already killed 50 miners – seemingly a pretty standard-issue hunt-the-creature story. So far, so Boy’s Own adventure. Only Spock’s scientific curiosity about an organism which might be the last of its kind stands between our heroes and their bloodlust. But midway through comes the revelation that the monster is a mother protecting her eggs. Before the episode is over, Kirk is threatening to kill any miner who raises a hand to the thing, and in the end, he brokers a peace between the alien and the humans. The story is resolved through compassion and understanding rather than superior firepower. 

Look at what Star Trek was up against on US TV in the 1960s. If you wanted something other than cop shows and cowboy shows, your choice was the goofy Lost in Space, or the bleakness of The Twilight Zone. And the pattern continues through movies and TV shows of the 1970s and 1980s. If you want your science fiction exciting and fun, here’s Star Wars, where dozens of anonymous stormtroopers get slaughtered, but it’s all just larks. If you want your science fiction to play like serious drama, there’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which a psychotic computer murders four men without ever raising its chillingly level voice. 

Star Trek lives in this middle ground, where we aren’t assuming a dystopian future where everything is awful, but nor are we just playing everything for laughs either. When the show relaunched in the late 1980s as Star Trek: The Next Generation, original creator Gene Roddenberry laid down firm rules, which continued to be respected by his successors. Chief among them: no conflict between our regular characters. They are the best of the best and won’t succumb to petty personal vendettas. 

For many new scriptwriters, this was an insane directive. Drama lives in having characters with opposing viewpoints butt heads – and to be fair there are quite a few rather dull episodes in the first couple of years of The Next Generation. But over time, having to stick to this rule forced the writing team to find unexplored areas of narrative, and the results include all-time classic episodes like Ship in a Bottle, Darmok, The Inner Light or I, Borg. Star Trek teaches us that we can be better than we are, and in a world riven by conflict, it’s a useful lesson. 

• Star Trek: Picard is finally set to stun thanks to The Next Generation reunion in season 3
• Lea Thompson on directing Star Trek: Picard and her plan to make a Howard the Duck sequel

Later iterations of the franchise dealt with this in different ways. It’s a slightly weird quirk of fate that the series about characters hanging out in a shopping mall in space (Deep Space Nine) ended up being the one about the horrors of war, the pain of generational trauma, and the terrible things which people will do to obtain and cling on to power. Whereas the one about a tiny group of survivors stranded light years from home, desperately clinging on to the one small life-raft (Voyager), ended up being the one about spreading the Federation’s optimistic vision of the future to far reaches of the galaxy. 

So, it is with the current crop of shows. If the darker tone of Discovery isn’t for you, then the breezier Strange New Worlds may be a better fit for your tastes. Or if you think that Strange New Worlds has gone too far, with its cartoon-crossovers and characters bursting into song, then the pure nostalgia of the final series of Picard may be where you’ll feel most at home. 

But in all of its incarnations, there’s an optimism about the future which Star Trek always carries with it, and maybe precisely because the world feels scary, unempathetic and dangerous right now, now is when we need Star Trek’s utopian vision of the future the most. I know that I was much happier watching and documenting 724 episodes of science fiction adventure than I was watching the news.  

Star Trek: Discovering the TV Series by Tom Salinksy is out now (Pen & Sword, £25). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops. 

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play