Latest news with #BrianCox
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Michael Lachmann obituary
The television producer and director Michael Lachmann, who has died aged 54 in a mountaineering accident in the French Alps, helped to turn the former pop musician and particle physics professor Brian Cox into a TV presenter known for bringing science documentaries into a new age. Lachmann also took the pig farmer Jimmy Doherty around the world to explore the pros and cons of GM foods, and made thought-provoking programmes on great scientists and the space race. His skill in popularising science without dumbing down included placing Cox inside a derelict Rio de Janeiro jail for a sequence in the 2011 BBC Two series Wonders of the Universe. Cox sprayed chemical element symbols on the walls, and Lachmann had the building dramatically blown up. The four-part series attempted to answer the question: 'What are we and where do we come from?' In Stardust, the episode directed by Lachmann, he and Cox travelled not only to Brazil, but also to Kathmandu and Chile, to reveal the origins of humans in distant stars. Both had previously worked together on Wonders of the Solar System (2010), with Lachmann, as lead director, making two of the five episodes filmed in extreme locations on Earth to explain how the laws of physics carved natural wonders. This breakthrough series for Cox attracted more than 6 million viewers on BBC Two, and Lachmann used CGI techniques to tell the story. It also won two Royal Television Society awards, in the best presenter and science and natural history programme categories. Cox regarded Lachmann as fun to work with and said his 'visual imagination and ability to tell a story without intellectual compromise were second to none', adding: 'I never quite knew what he would dream up to illustrate an idea: an exploding prison in Rio, a race around Rome in a vintage Fiat 500, a journey of a thousand metres below the waves in a 1960s submersible.' The pair's collaborations continued through episodes of Wonders of Life, Science Britannica and In Search of Science (all 2013) before they made the single, feature-length documentary Brian Cox: Seven Days on Mars (2022), with Lachmann negotiating access to Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, mission control for Mars 2020. They spent a week filming the surface of the red planet through the eyes and instruments of the Perseverance rover as it searched for evidence of long-extinct life. Lachmann was born in Cambridge, to Sylvia (nee Stephenson), a doctor, and Peter Lachmann, an immunologist who at the time was assistant director of research at the Cambridge University department of pathology. On leaving the Perse school, Cambridge, he gained a degree in natural sciences and zoology from Peterhouse, Cambridge, and a master's in science communication from Imperial College London. He entered television with an independent production company, McDougall Craig, as the researcher on a 1996 programme for Channel 4's science series Equinox, about how social status affects human health. Moving to John Gau Productions, he was assistant producer on the three-part documentary Plane Crazy (1997), for Channel 4, and the US network PBS, about a resident of California's Silicon Valley who claimed he could build an aeroplane in his garage in 30 days. When progress was painfully slow, Lachmann and the director, Paul Sen, worried about meeting their shooting deadline – then had the idea of turning it into a story of failure. In 2000, Lachmann joined the BBC to work as assistant producer on Walking With Beasts, the sequel to Walking With Dinosaurs. Screened the following year, it traced the story of life on Earth from the death of the dinosaurs to the dawn of the age of man, using CGI animation and pioneering red-button features. The six-part series won Bafta's interactive/enhancement of linear media award. Lachmann then became a founding member of the BBCi department, the corporation's first foray into interactive and streaming TV services, working on other projects before producing and directing programmes, including episodes of the science series Horizon (from 2008 to 2018). Jimmy's GM Food Fight, in 2008, brought with it controversy. Lachmann, whose father had been an advocate of genetically modified crops, followed Doherty – an organic farmer – on a quest to Argentina, Pennsylvania and Uganda to assess whether the crops could feed the world or start an environmental disaster. When some anti-GM campaigners complained about bias, the BBC rejected the criticisms, asserting that the programme was 'carefully balanced to take in both sides of the debate' and had concluded that 'any future development of GM should be done with great care'. Later, Lachmann made the Horizon film Should I Eat Meat? How to Feed the Planet (2014), presented by Michael Mosley, who destroyed some myths in the 'meat-eater versus vegetarian' debate. His standalone documentaries included Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race (2014), contending that the Soviet Union was the real pioneer during the cold war, and The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice (2015), with Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver telling the story of Queen Boudicca's revolt against the Roman army. Lachmann was series editor for Neanderthals: Meet Your Ancestors (2018), which put more myths to bed, this time about these early humans often depicted as 'apemen'. An anthropologist, Ella Al-Shamahi, revealed that 2% of most people's DNA comes from Neanderthals, and motion-capture animation transformed the Lord of the Rings actor Andy Serkis into one. From 2015 to 2020, Lachmann was also series producer on The Sky at Night. To mark the first anniversary of the death of Stephen Hawking, he wrote and directed the Emmy-nominated Einstein and Hawking: Unlocking the Universe (2019), looking at how the two scientists' theories revolutionised human understanding. More recently, away from the BBC, Lachmann was the writer and director of Spacetime Capsule (2024), a series for Chinese television that explored China's latest advances in science and space technology. Lachmann's 2002 marriage to Lisa Suiter ended in divorce. He is survived by their sons, Dexter and Max, and by his mother, brother, Robin, and sister, Helen. • Michael Alan Lachmann, writer, producer and director, born 20 August 1970; died 8 June 2025
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Michael Lachmann obituary
The television producer and director Michael Lachmann, who has died aged 54 in a mountaineering accident in the French Alps, helped to turn the former pop musician and particle physics professor Brian Cox into a TV presenter known for bringing science documentaries into a new age. Lachmann also took the pig farmer Jimmy Doherty around the world to explore the pros and cons of GM foods, and made thought-provoking programmes on great scientists and the space race. His skill in popularising science without dumbing down included placing Cox inside a derelict Rio de Janeiro jail for a sequence in the 2011 BBC Two series Wonders of the Universe. Cox sprayed chemical element symbols on the walls, and Lachmann had the building dramatically blown up. The four-part series attempted to answer the question: 'What are we and where do we come from?' In Stardust, the episode directed by Lachmann, he and Cox travelled not only to Brazil, but also to Kathmandu and Chile, to reveal the origins of humans in distant stars. Both had previously worked together on Wonders of the Solar System (2010), with Lachmann, as lead director, making two of the five episodes filmed in extreme locations on Earth to explain how the laws of physics carved natural wonders. This breakthrough series for Cox attracted more than 6 million viewers on BBC Two, and Lachmann used CGI techniques to tell the story. It also won two Royal Television Society awards, in the best presenter and science and natural history programme categories. Cox regarded Lachmann as fun to work with and said his 'visual imagination and ability to tell a story without intellectual compromise were second to none', adding: 'I never quite knew what he would dream up to illustrate an idea: an exploding prison in Rio, a race around Rome in a vintage Fiat 500, a journey of a thousand metres below the waves in a 1960s submersible.' The pair's collaborations continued through episodes of Wonders of Life, Science Britannica and In Search of Science (all 2013) before they made the single, feature-length documentary Brian Cox: Seven Days on Mars (2022), with Lachmann negotiating access to Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, mission control for Mars 2020. They spent a week filming the surface of the red planet through the eyes and instruments of the Perseverance rover as it searched for evidence of long-extinct life. Lachmann was born in Cambridge, to Sylvia (nee Stephenson), a doctor, and Peter Lachmann, an immunologist who at the time was assistant director of research at the Cambridge University department of pathology. On leaving the Perse school, Cambridge, he gained a degree in natural sciences and zoology from Peterhouse, Cambridge, and a master's in science communication from Imperial College London. He entered television with an independent production company, McDougall Craig, as the researcher on a 1996 programme for Channel 4's science series Equinox, about how social status affects human health. Moving to John Gau Productions, he was assistant producer on the three-part documentary Plane Crazy (1997), for Channel 4, and the US network PBS, about a resident of California's Silicon Valley who claimed he could build an aeroplane in his garage in 30 days. When progress was painfully slow, Lachmann and the director, Paul Sen, worried about meeting their shooting deadline – then had the idea of turning it into a story of failure. In 2000, Lachmann joined the BBC to work as assistant producer on Walking With Beasts, the sequel to Walking With Dinosaurs. Screened the following year, it traced the story of life on Earth from the death of the dinosaurs to the dawn of the age of man, using CGI animation and pioneering red-button features. The six-part series won Bafta's interactive/enhancement of linear media award. Lachmann then became a founding member of the BBCi department, the corporation's first foray into interactive and streaming TV services, working on other projects before producing and directing programmes, including episodes of the science series Horizon (from 2008 to 2018). Jimmy's GM Food Fight, in 2008, brought with it controversy. Lachmann, whose father had been an advocate of genetically modified crops, followed Doherty – an organic farmer – on a quest to Argentina, Pennsylvania and Uganda to assess whether the crops could feed the world or start an environmental disaster. When some anti-GM campaigners complained about bias, the BBC rejected the criticisms, asserting that the programme was 'carefully balanced to take in both sides of the debate' and had concluded that 'any future development of GM should be done with great care'. Later, Lachmann made the Horizon film Should I Eat Meat? How to Feed the Planet (2014), presented by Michael Mosley, who destroyed some myths in the 'meat-eater versus vegetarian' debate. His standalone documentaries included Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race (2014), contending that the Soviet Union was the real pioneer during the cold war, and The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice (2015), with Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver telling the story of Queen Boudicca's revolt against the Roman army. Lachmann was series editor for Neanderthals: Meet Your Ancestors (2018), which put more myths to bed, this time about these early humans often depicted as 'apemen'. An anthropologist, Ella Al-Shamahi, revealed that 2% of most people's DNA comes from Neanderthals, and motion-capture animation transformed the Lord of the Rings actor Andy Serkis into one. From 2015 to 2020, Lachmann was also series producer on The Sky at Night. To mark the first anniversary of the death of Stephen Hawking, he wrote and directed the Emmy-nominated Einstein and Hawking: Unlocking the Universe (2019), looking at how the two scientists' theories revolutionised human understanding. More recently, away from the BBC, Lachmann was the writer and director of Spacetime Capsule (2024), a series for Chinese television that explored China's latest advances in science and space technology. Lachmann's 2002 marriage to Lisa Suiter ended in divorce. He is survived by their sons, Dexter and Max, and by his mother, brother, Robin, and sister, Helen. Michael Alan Lachmann, writer, producer and director, born 20 August 1970; died 8 June 2025
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Letter: Gawn Grainger obituary
Gawn Grainger and I got to know each other well in the mid-1990s, during the filming and subsequent theatre run of Julian Mitchell's Welsh relocation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, entitled August. As a schoolboy I had seen most of Gawn's National Theatre appearances – I particularly loved his slimy aristocrat Oronte in Molière's The Misanthrope. A fierce and unwavering champion of my only play, Bitter With a Twist, he gave it an early reading with Brian Cox at the Bush theatre in London. As a result, the Bristol Old Vic staged it in 1999 and Faber published it. Gawn never lost his extraordinary humility and bonhomie. Everything was possible, nothing was off-limits.
BBC News
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Writer James Graham welcomes 'beast of an actor' to latest play
Award-winning playwright and screenwriter James Graham has spoken of his delight that actor Brian Cox will star in his latest It Happen, which charts the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland, premieres at the Edinburgh International Festival in will play the ghost of Scottish economist Adam who lives in Pulborough, West Sussex, has previously had hits with Dear England and the stage version of Boys from the Blackstuff, which opens in Brighton on Tuesday. Graham said of Brian Cox: "He is a beast of an actor. I have admired him for years and years."People know him from television but he's a theatre actor at heart."You feel so presumptuous and at times you pinch yourself – the 11-year-old boy who was making up stories in his room gets to work with these Hollywood actors, these legends. "You feel incredibly lucky."Produced by the National Theatre of Scotland, the play will preview in Cox's home town Dundee before moving on to Edinburgh. The playwright said his passion for writing was fuelled by his mother who bought him a typewriter at the age of just said: "I loved writing stories and I was very lucky that my mother – rather than rolling her eyes and saying 'get a proper job', really encouraged me from a young age."Dear England, the story of Gareth Southgate and his England football redemption, picked up the Olivier Award for Best New Play in is set to go on tour from September, as well as becoming a BBC television series with Joseph Fiennes reprising his role as the former England manager. Meanwhile his adaptation of the 1980s television series Boys from the Blackstuff opens at the Brighton Theatre Royal on Tuesday."To work with Alan Bleasdale- someone I grew up watching on the sofa with my mum when I was eight or nine – to actually spend time in a room with him building this for the stage was one of the honours of my life to be honest," he said that living in Sussex helped to provide a peaceful base for his writing."I need the peace and quiet to be able to write and to hear my own thoughts and from the first time I arrived in West Sussex I just could not believe it – the beauty of it," he said."I got taken there by friends and just fell in love with it and just knew it was going to be a really inspiring place to live and work."
Daily Record
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Netflix horror so terrifying it 'redefines goosebumps' and 'just like Stephen King'
Horror fans looking for a film to stream on Netflix need to look no further as Brian Cox stars in this chilling A psychological horror guaranteed to leave any viewer shivering on the edge of their seat is now on Netflix and a perfect watch for any fans wanting a thrill. Starring the legendary Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch, The Autopsy of Jane Doe is one of the most gripping films on the platform with plenty of twists and turns to ensure you're never bored and to keep that adrenaline pumping. The dark thriller naturally starts with an eerie setting, following father and son coroners Austin and Tommy Tilden - who late at night are tasked with the autopsy of an unknown woman dubbed Jane Doe. But as with any thriller, things quickly take a turn to the dark as their routine work seems to unleash a world of horrors as they try to uncover the truth about the woman's identity and death. As the story goes on they discover strange objects and unexplainable scarring as the mystery deepens. The plot continues to escalate into the last 20 minutes which once over, will leave you needing a walk and some fresh air - but perhaps not on your own. First released in 2016, the film was Norwegian director Andre Øvredal's English language debut after the success of his 2010 cult classic fantasy-horror Trollhunter. Although the film wasn't a big hit at the box office, only making around $6 million, it now ranks somewhat more of a hidden gem as critics heaped on the praise being ranked 'certified fresh' on Rotten Tomatoes with an impressive 86%. One one critic wrote: "In this horror story much closer in spirit to Stephen King's novels than to cheap horror films, Ørvedal makes us feel and live with his revenge nightmare." While another wrote: "It redefines gooseflesh. Hell your scalp will crawl right off of you and into the seat beside you and then demand some of your popcorn, if you let it." For fans of Stephen King's often spooky work such as IT or The Shining, the man himself even gave the film a recommendation, tweeting out shortly after its release: "Visceral horror to rival ALIEN and early Cronenberg. Watch it, but not alone." Although some critics were happy at the fresh and eerie take on the genre others were less convinced of the film's greatness. The Guardians Mike McCahill called the film: "Functional Video On Demand filler, but chilly with it." Giving it two out of five he added: "The second half is merely morbid runaround, punctuating its soundtrack crashes with self-justifying footnotes on historical misogyny."
