Beyond the Odyssey’s intellectual importance, though, was the fact that it was a great story. As a child, I was lucky enough to be told the stories by my father in the burning midday sun on gruelling family holidays. I felt the terror of being trapped in the Cyclops’ cave or being snatched away by a raging whirlpool.

When I finally got to see The Odyssey, then, I went into it with trepidation. I have always loved Nolan’s work, but as a longlife devotee of Homer, it seemed inevitable that some of my favourite details from this vast epic would not make the cut.

I had also been primed by fellow classicists to regard the film with suspicion. Mary Beard, on her excellent podcast with Charlotte Higgins, seemed to express overall disappointment with the film. Nolan’s Odysseus was too serious, too flat. Where were all the jokes? Why was it so unsexy? Emily Wilson, one of the most renowned translators of The Odyssey, went even further; the film was an “elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display” and “all the food looked horrible.” Ouch.

Charlotte Higgins took a more favourable view. Christopher Nolan, she felt, had made an Odyssey for our times, and had managed somehow to convey the bizarre timeline of the original on screen. At the same time, it did not capture the “the delicious darkness of Homer’s epic.”

The consensus, then, seemed to be that it mostly captured Homer but with some important caveats. When I left the cinema, though, I felt confused. This film wasn’t only amazing, but…. could it even be better than the original?

To write such a sentence goes against all my instincts as a classicist - stabbing my beloved Homer in the back to defend a Hollywood epic?

Yet what interested me when watching the film were the rare instances where it seemed the medium of cinema could deepen elements that were comparatively thin in the poem, or bring something new to the story simply because we could actually see the story before our own eyes.

Tentatively, then, I lay out my case.

1. Structure

First and foremost, the structure. In the original epic, the adventures of Odysseus only occupy a few of the 24 books. Most of the actual story is focused on Telemachus looking for news of his father and Odysseus fighting the suitors. Of course, these sections are integral to the poem’s soul; the theme is “nostos” or homecoming, and the violence that follows Odysseus’ return is essential to the poem’s conception of what it means to reclaim a home that is yours.

When I think about why I love the Odyssey, though, I don’t love seeing my main character going on a violent rampage against the suitors and hanging the “treacherous” slave women.

No, really it’s all about the monsters Odysseus encounters on his journey, the Circes and Calypsos and Sirens of this strange alternate universe. In this way, gulp, the film is better than the original simply because these adventures take up a much greater ratio of the story, but also because these monsters are given new layers.

2. The Cyclops

For instance, Nolan rightly devotes proper time to exploring the terror of the Cyclops, but also the simultaneous tragedy of his story in a way that can’t be conveyed as powerfully in the original text because we can’t see the monster’s agony or loneliness. In Homer, the Cyclops violates the sacred Greek rule of guest-right (xenia) by trapping his visitors in his cave and eating them alive. In the film on the other hand, the fact that we can hear and see Polyphemus’ screams when he is blinded by Odysseus’ men means we are left with complicated feelings about who the true villain is. Shows like The Sopranos show us how powerful it can be when to complicate the audiences’ feelings about the “villain” of the piece; Nolan does this to masterful effect in his portrayal of the Cyclops.

3. Circe

Another character that is given a huge amount of airtime is Circe. Here, again, I think Nolan improves on the original in a variety of ways. In the epic, Circe uses a magic wand to transform men into animals. In the film, however, she physically twists the men into pigs in a graphic, body-horror sequence. Again, the fact that we can watch this happen is, in my opinion, far more impactful in conveying the true power of Circe’s magic. Circe also seems to be traumatised in some way, explaining to Odysseus that she had to turn the men into animals to avoid them hurting her. Here, Nolan may very well be to be borrowing from Madeleine Miller’s retelling of Circe, where she uses magic to protect herself after a violent assault in her past. Again, I think this improves on the original; we know how compelling it is to get the backstory of a “villain”, and in just a few sentences, Nolan’s Circe gives us far more depth than Homer’s.

4. Odysseus’ men

By now, I must have caused classicists to throw their computers against the wall.

But I have a few last thoughts to proffer, one of which is the portrayal of Odysseus’ men. When I was recently rereading the original, I honestly couldn’t keep up with all of the names. I vaguely remember Eurylochus, and the one who fell off the roof of course. But in general, they all seem to move en masse, with very little to differentiate them.

Again, because we can see them, cinema here makes it easier to differentiate. In particular, Nolan’s Eurylochus feels a lot more central to me, and the director wisely dedicates screen time to this “bromance” so that it feels even more devastating when the two characters are separated. Odysseus’ guilt over the deaths of his men is also amplified; the scene of the phantom men pursuing him in the Underworld sequence really hammers home the psychological impact of losing all of your friends in a way I don’t really feel in Homer.

5. Odysseus

On the whole, I have to agree with critics who feel that Matt Damon’s Odysseus lacks some of the cheekiness the eponymous hero is famous for. I do love, though, the idea that he is haunted by the trick he played with the Trojan horse.

We are shown in flashbacks that it was Odysseus who conceived of the idea which ultimately led not only to the destruction of Troy, but also to the death of Sinon. Sinon is not in the original at all, but here is imagined as a boy from Ithaca who bravely volunteered to join Odysseus at Troy. His death is clearly inserted into the story to create more layers of guilt for Odysseus, and more humanity in general for a character that, while known for his cleverness, is not known for his remorse. This, of course, is idiosyncratic; Nolan will have grown up on poetry and cinema bemoaning the futility and guilt of war that was very much not part of the Homeric landscape. Yet this does inevitably lead to the character being more recognisable and human in the film than he does in the original, precisely because he has picked up some more modern anxieties.

In the film, then, there are numerous instances where Nolan can choose what to expand, compress and reinvent to “improve” on some of the more subtle aspects of Homer’s original, and bring them alive for a new audience. What we are seeing here is not just an adaptation, but an improvement on a 3000 year old epic.

This will upset die-hard Classicists, and for that I am sorry.

What I think we can all agree on is that it is rather wonderful to see this poem placed once again front and centre of our imaginations. I hope it will inspire many more to study Classics and one day write their own think pieces about Nolan’s treatment of a much beloved text. <3

It is exactly these obsessive questions which reveal why a big studio like Disney would leap at the chance to commission the sequel to 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada. There is nothing more synonymous in many a millennial’s mind than this film when it comes to glamour, horrible bosses, bad boyfriends and navigating the workplace in your 20s. There are many of us who could quote entire scenes at each other, and the sequel of course capitalises on this deep emotional attachment. As my friend Leo noted in excitement, nods to the original are sprinkled throughout like buried treasure for the eagle eyed viewer. We find Andy brushing her teeth at the beginning of the film just as we did in 2006, and Nigel once more decks her out in fabulous clothes from the fashion closet. This is glamorisation of “hustle” culture at its finest; a world away from the recent popularity of “quiet quitting”, cottage core and trad wives.

Yet this film is not just another trip down memory lane for all its shots of Dior and Prada and even… Lady Gaga? Instead, we find journalists getting laid off in waves, and even the fiercesome Miranda Priestley seems to have lost some of her power. The 2006 film inspired a wave of young journalists to believe anything was possible; work as hard as Andy, and you will make it.

The 2026 reboot is weirdly a lot more sombre, and reminds me of Mamma Mia 2 in this regard. The sequel to the 2008 cult hit looked like the original - ABBA, Greek islands, Colin Firth dancing. At the same time, in killing off its main character Donna, the second instalment of Mamma Mia 2 also become something entirely different, a deep meditation on grief and ghosts, buried beneath the lyrics of “Andante, Andante.” The audience thinks it will be getting a dose of nostalgia, when in fact it gets something tragic instead.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is similar in this regard. We have the fabulous closets and catwalks and shoes. But everything is at the same time a lot more sombre. Just as we are seeing many journalists being laid off in real time - The Washington Post’s recent job cuts are just one example - we find Andy winning a prize for her journalism, and in the same breath losing her job. Even the powerful Runway isn’t safe. Just as we have seen traditional media giants humbled over the last 20 years by the rise in streamers and digital media, Runway has clearly also fallen victim to the changing media landscape. Brands now have power over the magazine in a way they didn’t before; Dior, for instance, is shown as being not just a brand, but a partner that is key for the magazine’s future success. Nigel laments that the days of generously funded campaigns are over, and we even see Miranda Priestley (Miranda Priestley?!) flying economy. Is this really the same woman who used to throw her coats over her assistants and ride exclusively in sleek limos?

The whole film is a lament for a world that no longer exists, and to me it seems surprising that it has been so successful. The writers of Mamma Mia 2 and The Devil Wears Prada clearly feel that replicating the optimism of the original doesn’t quite work; we are living in different times, and the stories have to reflect that. 

Call me shallow, but I watch films like The Devil Wears Prada for life-style aspiration, the clothes, the glamour. To see that even Miranda Priestley cannot fully survive the changing media market, even more in flux with the wave of AI, makes me really sad.

That’s all.

The Drama follows Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a very chic New York couple preparing for their upcoming nuptials. Everything looks perfect; even their flat would fit right in the pages of Architectural Digest. How could it not when the two most gorgeous people on the planet are paired together in a rom com?

However, the wheels fall off the cart at lightning speed when Zendaya’s character reveals the worst thing she’s ever done, forcing Pattinson’s character into a complete spiral.

The key question the film asks is how well you really know the person you love. This is a theme that can be traced all the way back to Greek myth, where love is often continent on not knowing. Zeus is constantly appearing in disguise to seduce women, and famously in Greek Tragedy, Oedipus Rex is ignorant that he is hitched to his own mother. As in The Drama, the person you love is never entirely who you think they are.

Fast forward and we find an even stronger parallel in the French folktale about Bluebeard, a wealthy and mysterious nobleman with a blue beard who marries a young woman. He forbids her from entering a secret, blood-soaked chamber in his castle containing the corpses of his murdered previous wives. When she disobeys, her curiosity is punished. Zendaya’s character in this film is an unwilling Bluebeard, forced to reveal the skeletons in her closet. Both stories explore how much we really know, or should know, about our significant other. Is it better in fact to follow Bluebeard’s advice and keep that door shut?

The Drama also fits in with A24’s obsession with exploring “anti-rom-coms” that deconstruct, subvert or darken traditional romantic tropes after being set up as traditional rom coms. We are now a world away from the world of Four Weddings and a Funeral or When Harry Met Sally - where we are taught that love can be messy, but that ultimately it works.

The rom-com has now entered its deconstruction phase. Films that examine deconstruct romance have been around for a while; think 500 Days of Summer, which charters a breakup from the protagonist’s perspective, and in doing so, shows how subjective a “love story” really is. What feels different now is the scale; The Drama follows in the wake of an explosion of new films dissecting romance, Splitsville, Materialists and Netflix’s Vladimir are just a few of recently commissioned films and TV shows that turn the genre upside down.

It is interesting to ask why we have moved on from the traditional rom com. One argument could be simply that genres always evolve to try and do something new. Nora Ephron was famously the genius of the romantic comedy. When you feel like someone has “conquered” a genre, then, perhaps the only way to make your mark is to subvert it?

Societal trends may also be at play here.

We are now in a world where we understand relationships through the lens of psychology. A fight scene between the lovers in Bridget Jones would have been seen as a bump in the road; now it would be seen by audiences as a difference in “attachment styles”.

Likewise ,Me Too has made us question what we may have previously perceived as romantic. Going back to the Bridget Jones example, Daniel Cleaver used to be seen as a “naughty flirt”. He would now be seen as a workplace predator, and similarly we feel a sense of unease when we see how the characters in The Drama met. Robert Pattinson’s character pretends to have read a book to bond with his future bride; it feels less like a meet-cute, more creepy.

Together, these forces produce a more sceptical audience, one that doesn’t take intimacy at face value. Is it the case that the traditional rom coms of the 90s would fall flat with such an audience so literate in psychology?

What else can we learn about the film industry from this film? For one thing, it’s clear that any genre - even an arty A24 film - will do well with big bankable stars. Unlike many films and TV shows, which are based on existing IP and seen as “safer”, The Drama is an original script. Star power is being used to sell risk and allow creators to experiment and create new narratives.

Another trend? The marketing is now becoming an art form in itself. In the run up to the release of Marty Supreme, Timothee Chalamet was praised for his extensive marketing campaign. He didn’t just rock up to an occasional chat show. Instead, there was a huge focus on the colour orange, a branded blimp and pop up screenings. Zendaya has clearly taken notes and really leaned into the bridal vibe. Increasingly, it seems like films are being greenly not just based on the story, but also on how well the themes of the film can be used to shape the marketing campaign and create discourse.

The series, based on the book by Julia May Jonas, follows Rachel Weisz, a fifty-something literary professor who feels that she is now beyond her sexual sell-by-date; she has no more sexual capital and is beyond her “peak.” We somehow have to ignore the fact that Rachel Weisz is perhaps one of the sexiest women alive, but anyway…

The protagonist’s disheartening realisation is made only worse when she develops an all-encompassing crush on her younger colleague, Vladimir (Leo Woodall).

We have seen many components of this story before, going all the way back to the ancient myths! Greek goddesses, who because they are immortal are often a million years old, are constantly falling in love with mortal beings. Selene (the moon goddess) falls in love with a young shepherd Endymion, Aphrodite lusts after Adonis… the list goes on and on…

We also have many examples of illicit affairs taking place in the context of a school or university, where the older woman is almost always a teacher and the younger man a student; Notes On a Scandal (2003) is perhaps the most famous example I can think of.

Other elements of Vladimir are not so timeless. It feels like a recent phenomenon to place an unreliable, and often unlikeable, female protagonist centre stage. Rachel Weisz’ character constantly breaks the fourth wall, and remains unnamed, in a very Fleabag-esque way.

What’s more, the focus of Vladimir on female sexuality - particularly during middle-age - also seems to firmly belong to the current cultural zeitgeist. In this show, as in Bridgerton, we see women beyond the age of 25 develop crushes and have desires; the episodes are interspersed with visions of the narrator being steamy with Leo Woodall. But it also shines a very harsh spotlight on the frustration of feeling you are beyond your “prime.” The very first scene has our anti-heroine declaring:

“I may not be the cause of a spontaneous erection ever again.”

There is also something even more provocative at play than a character’s declaration they cannot elicit a spontaneous erection. While our protagonist daydreams about her hot younger colleague, often with his shirt off, another storyline is taking place. The protagonist’s husband, aka Roger from Mad Men, has just been suspended for sleeping with students at the college they both work at.

He faces immediate backlash, but so too does Rachel Weisz’ character for refusing to disown him. Indeed, not only does she stick by him, she questions whether we belittle those who sleep with people more powerful than them:

“It’s very hard for me to understand how consensual affairs that were fun not despite of the power dynamic but because of it could be thought of as hurtful or damaging after the fact. As a fellow female, I’m a little offended.”

It is comments like these, scattered throughout the series, that firmly root this series in the current moment. After the Hunt, which came out last year, similarly explores the grey areas of consent in an academic setting when a Yale professor is accused of sexual assault by his student. There, as in Vladimir, generations of women seem to have taken very different lessons from the Me Too movement. While the protagonist’s students see power dynamics as crucial to the issue of consent, she repeatedly insists that when she slept with someone older, it was a “different time” and that “we didn’t think of sex as trauma.” These statements ignore the fact that she may be abusing her own position in trying to get close to her younger colleague.

So what does this tell us about commissioning and audiences? The fact that this series, though it deals in modern themes, is based on a book, points to the wider trend we are seeing of using existing IP in a risk-averse market.

In terms of audience appetite, the show’s willingness to sit in moral grey areas suggests a streamer’s comfort with making the audience… uncomfortable. This suggests streamers are increasingly prioritising conversation over comfort - betting that content that divides audiences will travel further than content that simply pleases them.

For many viewers, the film is less an adaptation and more an act of vandalism. Fennell is accused of taking an axe to the novel and leaving in its place an unrecognisable shell of one of the greatest Gothic novels of all time.

Hindley, the driving force behind Heathcliff’s desire for revenge, disappears, as does the second generation of characters explored in the second half of the novel. Even the characters that do survive Fennells’ edit appear unrecognisable. In particular, much of the commentary focusing on Heathcliff notes that the Euphoria star Jacob Elordi does not embody the “dark-skinned gypsy” of the novel. Indeed, pretty much all of the main themes of Wuthering Heights that we are taught in school - generational trauma, revenge, class tension - simply vanish.

What’s left is a Gone With the Wind-esque tale that brings the simmering sexual tension and heartbreak of the original to the fore:

“I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it you have broken mine.”

Like or not, the fervent criticism around this film is extremely interesting in that it raises questions about “adaptation” and what this word actually means. For many viewers, it seems that what constitutes a “good” adaptation is faithfulness to the source material. It is permissible to transpose the story to a different time - think Amy Heckerling’s Clueless or Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, but it should at the very least preserve the themes and characters of the original.

In Wuthering Heights, though, it feels like Fennell is challenging this assumption and finding a new way to translate a much-loved text to a new audience. Indeed, in press for the film, Fennell hardly focuses on the themes of the novel at all.

Instead the focus is on how Wuthering Heights made her feel.

Justifying the decision to consummate Cathy and Heathcliff’s love on screen in an almost “fan-fictiony” way, Fennell speaks of being “obsessed” and “driven mad” by the book, of wanting to honour its primal, sexual undercurrents and the shock that greeted its original publication. In other words, it is not the book as it exists in a library, but the book as it detonated inside a fourteen-year-old girl. This manifests through recasting Wuthering Heights as a story of sexual awakening and coming-of-age.

Interestingly, the idea that an adaptation might privilege the “feeling” of a text over its fidelity is hardly new.

Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006) is a clear precedent for Wuthering Heights in this arena. Both films, of course, are visually linked through their use of anachronism. In Marie Antoinette, a pair of Converse famously makes a sneak appearance at Versailles. In Wuthering Heights, Cathy is adorned in a latex ball gown as Charli XCX thunders through the speakers.

Yet really what binds the two directors together is that they both make films about adolescent female interiority, even when working with canonical material, and in doing so, challenge our assumptions of what to expect from an adaptation.

Indeed, in Coppola’s film, whilst she is not directly working on a novel per-se, she is adapting the “myth” of Marie Antoinette as told through Antonia Fraser’s 2001 biography of the young queen. As explored in the V&A’s remarkable exhibition on “the most fashionable queen in history,” Antonia Fraser’s 2001 biography is often credited with capturing, for the first time, Marie Antoinette as a naive teenager that suddenly found herself at the centre of the court following Louis XV’s death.

The experience of reading this new perspective on the young queen clearly made an impact on Coppola. In an interview for 44th New York Film Festival, the director focuses exclusively on how the story as told by Fraser made her feel; “I was struck by how young she was... she was this 14 year old kid.” Similarly, Kirsten Dunst, who plays Marie Antoinette, states that the film is “kind of like a history of feelings, rather than a history of facts.”

This is the guiding philosophy that informs the entirety of the film. Like Fennell, Coppola refuses to stick to the source material. The beheading of Marie Antoinette, for instance, is entirely absent, and instead the focus becomes entirely on trying to convey the young queen’s youth and girlishness.

Anachronism is deployed to marvellous effect. We see, for instance, pastel colours, piles of cakes and macarons and Manolo Blahnik shoes to emphasise the young queen’s exuberant, fun spirit. Similarly, Coppola layers the film with pop music from her own teenage years, collapsing centuries to align Marie Antoinette’s experience with that of a modern teenage girl. In one of the film’s most famous sequences, Bow Wow Wow’s I Want Candy plays against the backdrop of a display of sweets, shoes and champagne to capture how intoxicating, and how unreal, the young queen’s world must have felt.

Historians sometimes have a fear of psychoanalysing historical figures in this way. Yet, to my mind, Marie Antoinette is the most remarkable adaptation precisely because it reveals, through expressing the director’s feelings about this character, precisely why her myth has endured for so long.

This is precisely what Fennell seems to be aiming to do in Wuthering Heights. Just as Coppola does, she adjusts the story to allow an exploration of how the book made her feel. In this case, the imprint on Fennell’s mind is clearly the love story between Cathy and Heathcliff. Duly, Fennell expands their romance to become the centrepiece of her adaptation, painting Heathcliff as the ultimate “bad boy” and Cathy as undergoing a sexual revolution; the entire film is underscored with bursting bodices and erotically charged shots of jellied fish mouths and egg yolks. Anachronism, food and music all fuse together to recreate how the director first felt reading the novel.

In this way, Coppola and Fennell have redefined what it means to make an adaptation. When critics protest that this director has erased the novel’s intricate second generation or trampled over the themes that made the original so great, they may be right on a technical level. But memory is selective.

And perhaps that is the more honest kind of adaptation.

There is nothing quite like the thrill of a national viewing experience, and in my lifetime, I can remember three distinct examples of this. First it was Big Brother, then it was Love Island, and now it is The Traitors.

A Modern Sensibility?

It makes sense that a show dedicated to finding the "truth" is striking a nerve now. Fake news is growing, deepfakes are on the rise, and we all suddenly wonder whether we are in our own sort of Truman Show - is everything around us in fact fabricated?

I may be reaching here - as I am wont to do - but I do question whether this moral conundrum explains the popularity of a show like The Traitors; because we get enormous comfort knowing exactly who is lying and who is telling the truth in this game.

Whatever the reason, The Traitors has clearly struck a nerve with today's audience. And yet while its themes seem to chime perfectly with contemporary conversations around the importance of truth and authenticity, The Traitors is anything but unprecedented. Indeed, looking closely, one can feel in the show's format the influence of decades of reality TV, centuries of literature, and even Greek Tragedy.

Big Brother is Watching You

At its most obvious level, The Traitors belongs to a long tradition of reality TV that trades on voyeurism. Recent Traitors contestant David Olusoga recently did a short history of reality TV on his podcast Journey Through Time, citing An American Family as the first show we would now class as "reality TV". Launched on PBS in 1973, this documentary-style series placed cameras inside the home of the affluent Loud family. Nobody knew if it would work.  Soon the numbers were off the charts. The key to its success? The human desire to take on the role of the voyeur. Just as we enjoy watching the contestants in The Traitors succumb to the pressure of being trapped in a small space, and eventually forgetting that the camera is there, so too did America become gripped watching the Loud family interacting in the pressure cooker that was their Californian home. This has been key to the success of pretty much all gamified reality TV since, from Big Brother to Love Island; watching characters in an enclosed space slowly forget that the cameras are there and reveal their “real” selves. 

Wagatha Christie

But the show’s appeal does not only rely on using tropes of reality tv that consistently produce the bangers we know and love. Largely through Claudia Winkleman’s fantastic “gothic chic”, The Traitors introduces a campy sense of mystery that seems starkly at odds with the fluorescent hue of other reality tv shows like Love Island or Ex on the Beach. The game here self consciously references crime fiction by gathering participants in the library, or pushing certain self-confident players to style themselves as the Hercule Poirots of the group. Indeed, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None has often been seen as the direct ancestor of The Traitors. In this novel, a group of people invited to an island are slowly picked off one by one. 

Know thyself

It is quite rare, though, for crime fiction to immediately tell you who the murderer is - that’s half of the fun after all. This is where we start to feel the influence of Greek Tragedy, where the audience often knows far more than the protagonists of the plays. As Natalie Haynes notes, Oedipus Rex walked so that The Traitors could run. In this play, the eponymous hero embarks on a relentless quest to discover the murderer of his city’s former king, unaware - unlike the audience - that he himself is the culprit. No play, in my opinion, is more painful to watch; we squirm in our seats as Oedipus, with good intentions, declares he will subject the killer to endless agony, blind to the knowledge we have. The play’s recurring motif of blindness, both literal and metaphorical, resonates uncannily with The Traitors, where participants stumble through a game of partial information, convinced of their own insight while missing what is directly in front of them.

The Rest is History

Beyond literature and drama, the show also owes something to history itself. Indeed, the Dutch TV producer Marc Pos, who originally created the format and ended up licensing it around the world, credits a grim real-world episode as his inspiration for the show: the wreck of the Dutch ship Batavia in 1629, off the west coast of Australia. After the ship ran aground, survivors were stranded on remote islands, unsure who among them supported a violent mutiny. Deception became a survival strategy; trust was impossible, alliances unstable. It’s Lord of the Flies, IRL.

As Pos explains in an interview, what fascinated him was not betrayal per se, but what happens when a group is forced together under conditions of extreme uncertainty, when everyone needs everyone else, yet no one can be fully trusted. That question sits at the heart of The Traitors. The show isn’t just about catching liars; it’s about observing how human behaviour mutates under pressure, suspicion and fear.

Seen this way, The Traitors begins to look less like a contemporary phenomenon and more like the product of an enduring fascination with how humans lie to each other and themselves. 

Indeed, where else can you find a dynamic between two humans that so often combines jealousy and resentment, passionate love and devotion, all at the same time? This is what Wicked devotes itself to, a relationship where two women love each other, envy each other, and ultimately define themselves in relation to one another. 

This kind of relationship is having a moment, and it could be argued that friendships between women that are intimate but hostile, affectionate but quietly cruel, are being scrutinised more than ever before. Certainly, the standout storyline for me and many others watching the third instalment of The White Lotus this year was the relationship between the three gal pals, Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie. Almost immediately, we see that this triumvirate is on shaky ground; as soon as one woman leaves the room, the other two will begin to tear into her with faux concern; “I love her so much… I just worry about her.” 

Much of the tension arises from the three friends constantly comparing their life choices - whether that be in their relationships, their income or their jobs. This is so true to the deep complexity of female friendship, where an examination of your own life compared to that of your friends can inspire deep insecurity. One of the women, Laurie, even admits in the last episode: “When I’m with you guys, it’s so transparent what my choices were, and my mistakes.” 

However, as in Wicked, The White Lotus also explores what holds the key to the magic of so many female friendships; the sense of history, and that another human will have known so many different versions of you and still love you. A speech made by one of the women, Laurie, encapsulates this so beautifully: 

“We started this life together. I mean, we’re going through it apart, but we’re still together, and I look at you guys, and it feels meaningful. And I can’t explain it, but even when we’re just sitting around the pool talking about whatever inane shit, it still feels very fucking deep.” 

This is precisely the glue that holds Elphaba and Glinda together; that despite all the hurdles that are thrown their way, and the jealousy and resentment that is an undeniably key tenet of their relationship, there is a deep love there grounded in the fact that they have known many versions of each other throughout the history of their lives.

This uneasy blend of love and rivalry has deep roots in literature. Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels remain the most piercing modern exploration of female friendship as a lifelong psychological bond. Lenù and Lila’s relationship is defined by constant comparison; each woman measures her worth against the other’s perceived success. Their devotion is real, but so is the envy. Ferrante treats friendship not as a consolation prize for women without romantic fulfilment, but as the central drama of a female life.

Going further back, 20th century television is peppered with explorations of female friendship, but the one that really stands out is that between Monica and Rachel (in large part influenced by Sentimental Garbage’s excellent recent series on Friends). Indeed, the intensity of that friendship, grounded in the girls’ deep love for each other, is often played as a romantic relationship. In Season One, when Rachel finds out that Monica went shopping with Ross’ new girlfriend Julie, it is written explicitly as if Monica has cheated on Rachel; “we only did it once… it didn’t mean anything to me.” It’s written this way for laughs, but hits on the raging jealousy and general unpleasantness that intense female friendship can inspire, especially between two women that have a deep sense of shared history together.

Cinema, too, has long understood that the most dangerous doubles are not lovers but friends. In Persona, Ingmar Bergman traps two women together until admiration tips into erasure. In Black Swan, rivalry masquerades as friendship until the distinction collapses entirely. Even Mean Girls, beneath its candy-coloured cruelty, understands that the real romance is between Cady and Regina: desire, obsession, betrayal, and all.

What Wicked adds to this lineage is a sense of scale. Elphaba and Glinda’s friendship isn’t just emotionally fraught. It is mythic in the sense that the strength or dissipation of this relationship can change the destiny of Oz and imperil the lives of its two female characters. This is where the story’s ancient roots begin to show.

Long before pop musicals or prestige television, Greek myth was already fascinated by the danger inherent in a relationship between two women marked by admiration but also rivalry. Take Athena and Arachne. Arachne is talented, extraordinarily so, and dares to challenge the goddess herself in a weaving competition. Athena admires her skill; as Ovid writes, “Not Pallas, not Envy, could pluck out a flaw in that work.” Her jealousy, however, outweighs her admiration, and Arachne is transformed into a spider, condemned to create endlessly but never to be seen as an equal.

It’s difficult not to see Elphaba in Arachne: gifted, abrasive, unwilling to temper her brilliance for approval. Glinda, meanwhile, functions like Athena, invested in maintaining the status quo, at the cost of her female counterpart. 

The fascination in the complex dynamic between two women who love each other, then, has deep roots. Wicked joins a tradition that stretches from ancient myth to modern television, proving that stories about women who love each other and hurt each other in equal measure are not a new obsession at all.

Grace, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is a woman obsessed with her husband Jackson (R Patz). They move to a desolate Montana house and, at first, seem to be delighted to exist in each other’s presence. However, before she knows it, Jackson has drifted elsewhere, emotionally, and perhaps physically, if the stray condoms are any indication. Grace is left alone in the house with their newborn, left entirely to her own devices as the days stretch unendingly before her. Grace loves her son - “he’s perfect.” At the same time, we watch as the unrelenting loneliness that comes with being a mother, frustrated desire and the breakdown of her relationship cause this woman to rapidly unravel. One minute Grace will be tending to the baby, the next she will be dragging a sinister-looking knife around the house and throwing herself through a glass door.

This uneasy mix, ferocious love blended with the creeping horror of what motherhood demands, is one that has become a recent obsession. Over the past decade, cinema in particular has consistently probed at the myth of the glowing, fulfilled, infinitely patient mother.

Indeed, Lynne Ramsay, the director of this film, seems to specialise in the exploration of “motherhood gone wrong”. Her 2011 film, We Need to Talk About Kevin, is an unflinching examination of one mother’s struggle to connect with her son and the terrible results this incurs. We see her, just as Grace is, alienated by the experience of being alone with a crying baby and admitting to him that “Mommy was happy before Kevin came along.” This is one of many depictions of a woman’s discomfort with her new found status as a mother. In Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter, say, the main character here experiences motherhood as a seizure of identity, oscillating between ferocious love and fantasies of escape.

Grace fits right into this lineage. She is isolated and frustrated by her newfound status as a mother, but also can’t commit to being an author; she is meant to be writing a book while her husband goes to work, but we never see the fruits of her labour - she is even more unproductive than Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining.

Indeed, that the film seems to tap into recent explorations of womanhood can be felt through the way that images used to convey Grace’s sense of entrapment all feel very reminiscent of TV or film of the last decade. In Don’t Worry Darling - which I love despite what the haters say - Florence Pugh literally gets squeezed between the glass walls of her home. Grace goes one better and licks the window, as if hoping the universe might mistake her for a dog and let her out. There’s a flavour too of Mad Men: her midnight wander with a rifle has the spirit of Betty Draper’s iconic moment in Mad Men, where she shoots at her neighbour’s birds in a desperate attempt to gain control over a situation where she feels powerless.

Contemporary concerns and imagery, then, abound in this film. And yet, going back in time, it is clear that literature from throughout time contributes to this depiction of feral motherhood. Much has already been made of the film’s resemblance to A Woman Under the Influence, with its portrait of a marriage unraveling as a woman loses her grip on reality. There is a whiff too of The Bell Jar. Die My Love is shot to make the house feel like a prison, just as Plath uses the bell jar as a metaphor for the suffocating enclosure of depression.

Going even further back, we find a stark precedent in The Yellow Wallpaper, an 1892 study of a woman confined to solitude after the birth of her baby in a room with hideous yellow wallpaper, and who slips into madness. In the story’s climax, she tears down the wallpaper to “free” the woman she believes exists beneath it. When Grace scratches desperately at the bathroom wallpaper, it feels like a deliberate allusion, a woman trying to claw her way out of her domestic confines.

Finally, we arrive at Greek myth, and find arguably the most satisfying comparison for Grace, Medea. Medea is a princess from Colchis who, abandoned by her husband for a younger woman, kills their children in revenge and flies off in a golden chariot.

Once you look, the parallels really are everywhere. Like Medea, whose “passions master her resolve,” both are driven by their lust for their partners. In Euripides’ play Medea, the eponymous heroine betrays her entire homeland because she fancies Jason so much. Grace, meanwhile, crawls through long grass on all fours toward Jackson in flashbacks. As Mark Kermode puts it, the film is “a comedy in the same way that Punch Drunk Love is a violent comedy about love - a bonkers crazy love story teetering on the brink of madness.”

As they are united in their sexuality, the passionate love (eros) of both women turns into a destructive rage when the marriage goes wrong. Grace finds condoms in her car; Medea is dumped for a younger version. Both women proceed to show that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Medea kills her children to avenge the insult (hybris) to her honour and status as a wife and mother that has come from Jason’s betrayal: “I understand too well the dreadful act I am to commit; but my judgment cannot check my anger.” Grace never directly harms her baby, but the film flirts heavily with the idea that she could through her increasingly erratic behaviour.

In both tales, then, sex, jealousy, violence, and motherhood stir together into something volatile. Something combustible.

Indeed, it is no coincidence, perhaps, that both women literally go out in a blaze of glory. Medea’s final disappearance in the fiery chariot sets a mythic precedent for fire as liberation and catastrophe. Grace’s final steps, walking straight into a burning forest, feel like a modern translation of the same idea: liberation and annihilation fused into one glowing image.

So yes, Die My Love is absolutely a film of today. It is also, unmistakably, a story as old as the Greek myths. Depression, ancient fury, baby monitors and fiery chariots all fit together in this absolute tour de force of cinema.

This ability to bring an exhibition or work of art to life in the reader’s eye, Laura says, is the most important role of the critic. You are not a judge issuing instructions, dictating “taste” and deciding what makes good art. Readers should, and will, decide for themselves. Rather, Laura states, a critic should create a “parallel text,” a description rich enough that even a person who will never see the work can feel it.

“You’re creating an experience for the reader - one that should be pleasurable. You must be able to subtract yourself from your own experience.”

Laura has been writing long enough to see several cultural tides turn. Social media, she explains, has made the connection between the critic and the audience much more immediate. In the days of yore, pre-internet, the critic might occasionally receive a letter from a reader detailing their inner thoughts. Now, though, “they can reach you in seconds.” These audiences, Laura states, are also now more confident in their opinions. Where once there was an almost reverential humility before art, there is now a willingness to assert taste. This is a positive development; no one individual or subset of society is an arbiter of taste.

In her time as a critic, Laura has also seen visual culture transform, and with it, audiences’ relationships to art and exhibitions. Digital exhibitions, 4D walkthroughs, and museum films, bursting in popularity, have all changed expectations of how art is encountered. Whilst the critic Robert Hughes once said that viewing paintings on a screen is like looking at a “shrunken man,” Laura again sees opportunity in this development; the ability of art to reach as many different people at once has never been greater.

One constant during the span of Laura’s career is the intense culture of criticism in this country. Having such a tough press, she explained, has led to criticism being taken very seriously in the UK. Indeed, compared to the rest of Europe and the US, we are miles ahead. In France, only 2 major art critics remain, and in the US, criticism has largely migrated to podcasts, newsletters and blogs. In Britain, where we have a grand total of 6 ballet critics (!), cultural criticism is still part of the national conversation, the sort of thing that ends up on BBC News when Taylor Swift releases an album. In the UK, we don’t just want culture. Interpretation is just as important.

When asked whether it is hard for certain groups to gain attention in the media, even with our strong culture of discussion around art, Laura states that gender still shapes the canon in ways people pretend it doesn’t. Personal mythology also matters: artists with larger-than-life biographies tend to overshadow those who simply paint.

Finally, I ask how she balances personal taste with public responsibility.

“Of course I’ve been moved more than another critic would be. But you must suppress the odd attachments. Never use the first person if you can avoid it.”

This is at the heart of Laura’s philosophy: the work comes first. The reader comes second. The critic comes last. 

It is yours at the touch of a fingertip, but everything on your screen will have been on an odyssey to get there.

To understand more about the greenlighting process, I spoke to the brilliant documentary maker/former actor/AWARD winner/all round fantastic human, James Parris.

What is the first stage in the green lighting process?

The annoying answer, as with almost everything - it depends. Sometimes, major broadcasters or streamers might have an idea they want to commission and bring this to production companies. 

Mostly, though, it is the other way round. An independent production company (or “indie”) will have a development team who come up with a bunch of ideas. The indie will present these to the broadcasters or streamers. If a particular one jumps out at them, the indie will develop this into a more formal pitch, and sometimes hire freelance producers like me to work on the project.

Something that is more common now is what is known as “funded development”. Essentially, a commissioner who hasn’t officially committed to buying the project will give the indie a small amount of money to investigate whether they have access to all the material they need (e.g. actors, equipment). For instance, for a documentary costing £1 million, the production company might be given £10-40k to test how viable the story is; is it too sensitive to tell? Can you get access to both sides of the story?

The commissioners will then assess the indie’s findings and greenlight the project if they are satisfied it is viable.

What motivates broadcasters to commission documentaries?

Again - depends! In general, platforms are driven by what will get the most reach, and so in general would rather commission the next Traitors than a documentary. In this sense, it is more of a risk to commission a documentary, and we are seeing across the industry a tightening of budgets when it comes to this genre. 

That being said, it is beneficial for any broadcaster or streamer to commission a documentary because it does tend to bring in awards. The broadcaster will get kudos from the industry when it receives awards, which in turn will encourage more production companies to bring it exciting ideas.

You’ve pitched to both the BBC and Disney — what are the biggest editorial or cultural differences in what each is looking for?

Normally an indie would develop ideas for a specific streamer or broadcaster because they are all so distinct, and abide by different rules.

Netflix tends to be drawn to documentaries with broad popular appeal like true crime stories, and have a little coterie of indies they like to use. National Geographic tends to commission more niche, specialist, factually bent topics with specific content takeaway. HBO is similarly quite tonally serious, but is not as scientific.

Domestic broadcasters like the BBC are unsurprisingly more interested in UK-based stories; they have a core audience and a mandate to provide for them. Meanwhile, Amazon and Apple commission almost nothing.

These are all generalisations, though, and part of a development team’s job is to find out exactly how a platform’s tastes and interests are evolving. They analyse each platform’s commissioning briefs, build relationships with their commissioners, and analyse speeches at events like Edinburgh film festivals. You can’t be invested in one style because you need to win everyone’s business, so it’s absolutely crucial to get a good grasp of what each streamer or broadcaster wants.

How do you decide if a story has an audience? Any data or intuition that guides you?

Again this would be the domain of the development team at a production company. Most of the time, things that aren’t “à la mode” won’t do well, so you’re usually trying to grasp what the popular trends are and riff off that. For instance, when “Don’t Fuck with Cats” became a big success, companies tried to come up with another cinematic approach to a true crime story that takes place in the social media space. The fads change constantly, so you need to be able to spot what they are quickly and come up with the best idea. 

The downside to this, of course, is that innovation is punished because everything that gets commissioned is based on audience stats and how well a similar thing has done.

Are some formats more commission-friendly than others?

Again, whatever the current fad is will influence whether a certain format is more commission-friendly or not. Reconstruction, archive footage, drama documentary and observational documentary have all had their time in the sun.

Now, the obsession with commissioners is being able to commission a documentary that can become a “franchise”. For instance, I recently worked on a documentary about the 2004 Tsunami (poster above); there was a lot of deliberation about what the title should be as National Geographic wanted this documentary to kick start a chain of programmes about natural disasters that could all be linked by the same name. Eventually we settled on Tsunami: Race Against Time, and a subsequent documentary on Hurricane Katrina has been made using the same title.

Why do you think that there is an overwhelming focus on American stories in documentaries today?

In general, I think audiences around the world see American stories as “global stories”. We have more exposure to their celebrities, their politics, their language and their way of life, and so the stories told feel more universally relevant or interesting.

What’s more, with less money to make documentaries, topics associated with the US feel less risky than documentaries focusing on less well known countries or cultures because you know these will guarantee reach. The majority of conversations I have are about American stories, or global stories that have had American involvement.

This was less the case when linear TV prevailed. It was easier to feed an audience a topic and they would respond accordingly. Now, because viewers have total autonomy over what they watch, you have to rely on your core subject being so interesting that you are compelled to watch it right away.

How do you decide what to cut or compromise when budgets are tight?

Wages have stagnated but haven’t collapsed, so it’s more numbers of staff. Even in my experience, the teams have shrunk a lot and we have to think a lot more forensically about whether we can afford to do another trip, what kit we can afford etc.

What do you use to measure a project’s success  - awards, reach, audience feedback?

It slightly depends on the platform. For instance, when I worked at National Geographic, they looked at what is known as “completion”, or in other words, the number of people that watch through from episode 1 to episode 8. 

Conclusion

The greenlighting process, it seems, requires one to think not just about whether a story is good, but whether it can connect with audiences in the right way, at the right time.

From aligning with a broadcaster’s editorial DNA to anticipating cultural resonance across borders, commissioning is really about predicting audience impact. That perspective changes how we think about the journey from idea to finished film.

From the Mekong River to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (the focus of his co-authored book Getting Away with Genocide?), Fawthrop's expertise of the region is vast, making him the perfect person to speak about how Southeast Asia tells its stories.

In a wide-ranging discussion, we explored the influence of national pride on Southeast Asia’s media ecosystem, the ways in which the region is misrepresented around the world, and the strengths and limitations of documentary as a vehicle for enacting change. 

National pride has a profound impact on the media landscape in Southeast Asia

In Thailand, media habits vary sharply by generation. Older people still tune into TV, while younger audiences turn to social media. Yet across all age groups, local content dominates. Why? “There is a strong sense of cultural pride in the country,” Tom explains. “This drives the need in Thailand to see stories where Thai people win at something and national pride is boosted - a tournament for example.”

That sentiment plays out across the region. Tom was recently in Vietnam during the country’s celebration of 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War. “What struck me was that all age groups, young and old, came together to celebrate the unity of their country.” Likewise in Cambodia, leaders are often seen to invoke national greatness; this directly impacts the use of media to affirm sovereignty and identity.

Still, not all media is equal. Among Thai outlets, Tom notes that TPBS (a public TV station) stands out for impartiality, “like a Thai version of the BBC.” Meanwhile, English-language versions of local news websites are growing, not only to reach foreign audiences and increase readership, but also to become a reputable source of information for academics working in Thailand. 

Cultural Imperialism & Media Misrepresentation

There is plenty that Western media tends to get wrong about Southeast Asia, according to Tom. His concern is not just factual inaccuracy, but structural, a lens of cultural imperialism that flattens or misinterprets stories.

“The assumed intellectual and moral superiority of the West is the prism through which Southeast Asia is judged.” Tom cites Hollywood films like The Deer Hunter, which framed the Vietnam War through white American heroism whilst imposing western habits on the Viet Cong - think the game of Russian Roulette. Indeed, Tom reveals that he felt so strongly on this point that he even told Robert De Niro his concerns on set in Bangkok, concerns he feels were largely ignored. 

Still from The Deer Hunter (1978). Courtesy of Universal Pictures. 

The consequences go beyond fiction. Western media routinely ignores issues like the impact of Agent Orange in Vietnam. A defoliant sprayed by US forces to destroy jungles and uncover the enemy’s hiding places during the Vietnam War, Agent Orange contains one of the most toxic chemicals in the world, and Vietnam has claimed that millions of its people have been affected to this very day. “If it had happened to white people,” he says, “it would’ve been treated as a war crime. But because it happened in Southeast Asia, it wasn’t covered in nearly the same detail.”

For global platforms which commission both fiction and documentary, this should matter deeply. Authentic representation isn’t just about who’s on screen; it’s about who controls the lens.

The power and limits of documentaries 

As a filmmaker, Tom has seen how documentaries can spark public response, but also where their influence ends.

He points to John Pilger’s Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia, a 1979 British film about the aftermath of Pol Pot. “It had an incredible impact,” Tom said. “At the end, it told viewers to donate to Oxfam, and raised huge amounts of money.”

Tom’s own documentary Where Have All the Fish Gone?, on the environmental fallout of dam-building in the Mekong, sparked academic conversations in universities across the region, and was shown in Vietnam, Cambodia, and China. Impact on the building of dams, however, has been limited, and 10 years of exposés later, the region faces the reality: nine dams could result in a net $7 billion economic loss. The story is known, but not always heard.

Journalism and the Battle for Attention

When asked about the major issues in getting a story told, Tom revealed that funding is a constant barrier, as without funding it is difficult to do a story well. Despite having written for many publications over the years, Tom stated that some media outlets are cutting travel expenses, or won’t commission anything they couldn’t produce in-house.

When funding does happen, it’s often thanks to foundations or NGOs like the Pulitzer Center. But even with funding, there’s the battle for attention. “You can have a story you think should make the front page,” Tom explained, “but if the global news cycle is focused elsewhere, it’s hard to break through.”

He points to moments when even big stories were overlooked, unless attached to a celebrity. “When Muhammad Ali came to Vietnam to give aid,” Tom said, “that story ran because he was famous. But if it had been an unknown person visiting the region, there’s a high chance it wouldn’t have landed.”

Conclusion

What can we learn from the fascinating insights of a journalist immersed in Southeast Asia’s media landscape for the past few decades? 

The biggest takeaway for me is that while Southeast Asia continues to be a deep source of fascination around the world, much of that attention is still filtered through a Western lens - we see the stories we want to see. As Tom highlights, this can lead to the disappearance of important narratives from the public consciousness. 

The takeaway is clear: commission more voices on the ground. To contribute meaningfully, partner with voices who understand the nuances and untapped voices in the region to ensure we do not mistell stories, or miss them altogether. 

To find out, I spoke to Amy Rose Scoggins, a director and theatre-maker based in Pittsburgh. With a degree in theatre, and drawing from her Story Analysis course taught by Emily Thomas, a former Pixar script consultant and professional story editor, Amy gave me a sharp and structured take on what makes a story resonate, or fall flat. 

Amy, how do you define a story that “works”? Are there any hard and fast rules?

A story’s “theme” is its essential DNA. When we say theme, this usually involves exploring a question or statement that can’t be answered.

Once you’ve nailed the theme, it becomes your filter. I was taught that if a scene or line of dialogue doesn’t serve the theme, it’s out. 

Would you say a story lacking a clear theme tends to feel less coherent or emotionally resonant? 

Yes I think so. If you don’t lead with the theme, the story is going to be blurry. This is usually why audiences find a second series of a beloved TV show weaker than the first. The priority here is to make money, now that producers know the series is financially viable, and not to tell a good story with a strong theme. 

Severance, for instance, had a really strong theme in Season 1. It was about work-life balance and whether this is really possible. Every storyline served this theme and made the season cohesive and emotionally engaging. Season 2, however, broadened the scope and fell apart slightly because it did not have this thematic thread tying it all together. Having said that, it’s a beautifully crafted series and it hasn’t concluded yet, so it’s perhaps too early to say whether or not Season 2 fits into the broader theme of the show. 

Are there any universal rules scriptwriters follow when it comes to structure?

Almost always, the same arc is used across any story. You will have the inciting incident, midpoint, climax, and then resolution. 

The inciting incident, the event that forces a character to act, will be linked to the theme. 

In Finding Nemo, for instance, the major question the film is exploring is about the difficulty of trusting your kid to grow up. The inciting incident, then, allows this theme to be explored by separating the father and son (when Nemo is scooped up by some goggles). This allows Nemo to go through trials that show his father he can trust him to be autonomous. 

How does this structure device help you to flesh out your characters?

Your inciting incident should be a “gift” to your character in the sense that it should challenge them to consider their “normal ways” of doing things and drive them towards growth and change. As the plot unfolds, a character’s choice to acknowledge their shortcomings (or not), will lead them to a successful or unsuccessful outcome.

I was taught that the problem presented in the status quo must then be pressing enough that your characters are forced to abandon the comfort of their norm, i.e. there must be something at stake if they don’t address the problem (motivation).

If we return to Finding Nemo, for instance, Marlin is forced to abandon the status quo when he is separated from his son to realise that Nemo is capable of being autonomous. He has a successful outcome in this sense.

Even Reality TV uses this formula. If you look at a show like Too Hot To Handle, for instance, the producers ask contestants to pursue an emotional connection over sexual gratification. This premise becomes the inciting incident, and the contestants’ reactions become their arcs. 

Conversely, if we think of the TV show, Girls, Hannah is arguably much the same in the last episode as she is in the first. She loses in this sense because she hasn’t moved out of her comfort zone. Lena Dunham is consciously subverting this trope to reveal exactly what kind of person her protagonist is. 

HBO/Girls official trailer (YouTube) 

What are the most common mistakes writers make when crafting emotionally believable characters? 

Audiences are instinctive. It’s really important, as my tutor Emily Thomas noted, to write what you know and avoid giving characters a perspective that you don’t yourself have experience of.

If you venture into completely unknown territory, an audience can feel that lack of authenticity and your characters and story will fall flat. 

Another important thing to note is that, even if you have a character who is an antihero (e.g. Tony Soprano), they need to have some sort of redemptive quality. Without this, an audience will have a hard time embracing your characters in the face of evidence of their flaws, which are often demonstrated in their least-likeable choices. It also makes them more layered and real because as humans, we aren’t entirely evil or good; we’re more messy than that.

HBO/The Sopranos official trailer (YouTube) 

What is the role of genre tropes in the fabrication of a successful story?

Each genre has different “tropes”. For example, horror is associated with different tropes like people getting picked off one by one, or the last girl standing.

However, genres should be seen more as tools to help you tell a story, and you don’t have to stick to the conventions of a genre to make a successful piece of work.

Indeed, many films will borrow tropes from different genres to evoke feelings from the audience or use a specific genre, even though it may not initially suit the theme. For instance, Get Out is about systemic racism. The film wants you to feel scared and uncomfortable and so uses horror tropes to make you scared and feel the theme. 

Universal Pictures/Get Out official trailer (YouTube) 

Do you think societal or political factors shape which stories get greenlit?

Absolutely, and there are two main ways I think this happens.

Firstly, societal or political factors can change how a story is communicated. If a theme feels uncomfortable or polarising, producers may repackage it for palatability and marketability. 

More obviously, societal and political factors influence what stories are most interesting to people. For example, it is no coincidence that we’ve seen a resurgence in apocalypse films; the combination of Covid, climate change and the rise of AI have led people to believe that the end of the world is coming. Producers are capitalising on this fear because audiences want to see what a worst-case scenario could look like.

Do you think short-form (TikTok/Instagram) is changing the DNA of how stories are told - or just where they’re told?

I think that the rise of short-form actually gives films and TV a special edge.

Short-form media is almost always consumed alone and is highly personal because the algorithm will show you what you yourself are interested in as an individual.

However, we are social creatures by nature and want to share entertainment collectively. This is as old as time; the existence of Greek Tragedy shows that society has always wanted to use stories to ruminate collectively on society and the world around us. I still think audiences want to experience art together - look at the success of Barbenheimer, which in large part was about the physical act of going to the cinema.

iStock by Getty Images

This need for collective storytelling is the unique gift of theatre and the cinema and so long form storytelling may become even more valuable as attention spans fragment. However, I don’t think theatre and cinema are fully embracing the advantages they have - I hope this will change in the coming years.

Where does AI help or hinder in finding a good story?

While AI may summarise scripts or generate coverage notes, it struggles with tone, emotional pacing - and the elusive quality that is “vibe.”

Conclusion

What can we learn from Amy’s unique perspective on the DNA of a successful story? As AI rises, and short-form rises, the power of long-form human storytelling will become more important than ever. 

The success of its content, whether it be a documentary or a drama, will rely on the creators knowing what they are trying to say. Clarity of theme and character will continue to draw audiences to the screen, even as our media trends rapidly evolve.

The “influencer economy”, as it is now known, has seen Love Islanders become millionaires by the age of 21 and has reshaped the relationship between media, advertising, and personality. It also offers a revealing lens into the current state of UK media, where traditional channels increasingly rely on individual creators to bridge the gap between audiences and brands.

I wanted to know: does the same apply elsewhere?

During a recent trip to Hong Kong, I sat down with Moon Cheung, one of the city’s early content creators and now a well-known Gen Z influencer, and Jovy Yu, an entrepreneur in the creator economy. Through their perspectives, it became clear that Hong Kong’s influencer economy is younger, more fluid, and just as revealing of national media attitudes as the UK’s. But it’s also shaped by cultural hesitation, platform fragmentation, and a distinct kind of audience scrutiny that makes success and trust harder to earn.

The influencer economy is new, but rapidly expanding

When Moon started her YouTube channel in 2020, she was one of the first short-form content creators in Hong Kong. Fast forward 5 years, and many students in the country are now striving to follow in Moon’s footsteps, seeing content creation as a lucrative career option.

What has changed?

According to Moon and Jovy, a number of factors. Firstly, AI is making the barrier of entry lower. “It used to take five people to build a platform,” Moon said. “Now, it only takes one.” That same accessibility applies to content: tools like Instagram Reels allow creators to shoot, edit, and share polished videos within minutes, a major incentive in a media landscape where speed is everything.

There is a deep suspicion of local media 

Hong Kong, Moon and Jovy explained, is an incredibly judgemental society. This directly impacts the way some people there consume media. While countries like Taiwan embrace media that has been made by local creators, audiences in Hong Kong are largely suspicious of content (whether that be TV or instagram reels) that originates in Hong Kong. Compared to homegrown films in Cantonese, audiences in general prefer content in Mandarin (e.g, 那些年，我們一起追的女孩), English or Japanese. 

Anything Western is particularly seen as high value; this is a potential hangover from the recent colonisation of Hong Kong, Jovy explained. 

For content creators like Moon, this has presented its own problems. This scepticism extends beyond language. “If you’re local, you have to offer something they’ve never seen before,” Moon said. “If you don’t, the reaction is, ‘I already know this. Why are you wasting my time?’” In other words, local creators are expected to educate, innovate, or entertain at a higher bar. Western creators, meanwhile, are more easily granted the assumption of quality.

For platforms in Hong Kong, then, localising content in Cantonese may require elevation visual and narrative cues to overcome local scepticism - or partnering with trusted influencers who can act as “cultural validators”.

Instagram dominates, but monetisation lags

In Hong Kong, Instagram is vital to the influencer ecosystem. In part, this is because of local nuances. Though there are workarounds, TikTok is banned in some areas of Hong Kong, and so cannot reach vast audiences in the way Instagram can. YouTube is popular, and can garner loyal audiences due to the fact that a creator can show their personalities in more depth than on Instagram.

However, Moon, who decided to move her content from YouTube to Instagram, explained that audiences tend to be much larger on Instagram, and that it is quicker to garner a following simply because it takes less time to produce a reel than it does to produce a YouTube video.

One major drawback for influencers and content creators on Instagram? There is a clash between the popularity of the content and earning potential. As Moon explained, reels are very popular but can’t make money for the creator. Unlike YouTube, which allows its creators to directly earn from the platform through advertising revenue sharing, Instagram does not have a monetisation programme and so the main revenue stream relies on filming a product and being paid by a brand.

For media organisations, this may offer an opportunity. If creators aren’t earning enough through the platforms themselves, they may be open to partnerships with brands or streamers who can offer fair pay and give exposure. 

Gen Z need to be catered to in a specific way

Moon, as somewhat of an expert in “Gen Z”, explained that this is a generation that wants freedom. In general, she said, there seemed to be a rejection of the traditional 9-5 among this age group, and a desire to travel, try everything and be emotionally expressive. 

This directly impacts how this group should be marketed to. Because they want experiences, freedom, emotion, and authentic storytelling, not just product information, there has been a general rejection of traditional advertising in Hong Kong in favour of content made by influencers. 

“It’s now more about the story,” Moon told me. Gen Z doesn’t want to be sold to, they want to be invited into something. This is why even legacy celebrities from Hong Kong’s TVB (Television Broadcasts Limited) are shifting gears, embracing social media and short-form video to maintain cultural relevance.

To attract Gen Z, then, it is crucial to embed brand messages into emotionally resonant narratives.

AI: Useful, But Not Fully Trusted

When asked whether AI was a help or a hindrance in content creation, both Moon and Jovy had mixed reactions.

On the one hand, Moon explained, AI is a massive time-saver. Crucially, it can help to generate video when filming isn’t possible; for example, if the weather stops you filming. However, many creators in Hong Kong are still cautious and behind the curve. 

However, as my investigation into the world of advertising revealed, human connection stills remains essential. In the world of influencing and content creation, a personality helps to build audience trust and sell or promote a product in a world where audiences are increasingly becoming more wary about what is real and what is not. 

The Future of Content: Interactivity, Mini-Games, & Multimedia Responses

Jovy, when asked about the future of content creation, gave an eloquent response. In terms of monetisation potential, she stated that it would become even more common than it is now to build a product on top of your channel and tackle the consumer market through emotional storytelling. We have this in the UK already - think Molly Mae and her sun tan product (which I may or may not have in my cupboard…)

In terms of how Gen Z’s media consumption might evolve in the next 3-5 years, Jovy explained that Gen Z is showing clear signs of moving toward shorter formats, mainly in the form of interactive storytelling and gamified content. This is a result of needing to find further stimulation, as their attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter with reels. 

Jovy also predicted that open AI would start to generate a video to answer your question instead of writing, to reflect that video is increasingly preferred over text as a way to consume content. It is possible this will also bleed into the way more traditional broadcasters and streamers work, though that remains to be seen.

Hong Kong may be a small market, then, but it is  a rich testing ground for the future of global media. The way creators navigate trust, language, emotion, and technology here offers a blueprint, not just for reaching Gen Z, but for rebuilding the very structures of how we make and consume stories in a platform-led world.

“More Don Drapers than you’d think”

In many ways, as we will see, Abi’s job is a far cry from that of Don Draper’s. Using machine learning to analyse skincare routines or scanning TikTok to understand Gen Z would baffle the mysterious protagonist of Mad Men. At the same time, at its core, advertising is still about solving problems with ideas.

“A brand might want to launch a product, rebrand itself or appeal to a particular audience. My job is to help them understand the problem and work with creative teams to solve it. Mad Men isn’t entirely wrong; it has just evolved.”

The similarity with Mad Men? Advertising remains a male-dominated space and can be hard to break into. While the tools have changed, the power structures haven’t entirely.

TikTok is the key to understanding what younger audiences really want

In Mad Men, we often see the advertising agency using focus groups to gain a better understanding of the tastes and motivations of consumers.

Now, Abi says, TikTok is a new type of focus group; it is an absolute game changer for understanding what Gen Z and Millennials think of the brands you are trying to help. 

What’s more, whilst customers’ opinions during a focus group will be influenced by the fact they know they are talking to an ad agency, the voices on TikTok tend to be a lot more authentic.

“It’s one of the only platforms where people’s opinions still feel genuine. Instagram is full of influencers who have to give a biased opinion of a product; it is slightly more manicured. TikTok, however, is new enough to allow you to access peoples’ genuine opinions.”

This was particularly evident in the work Gravity Road did with Mars. Abi and her team were able to analyse audience sentiment, particularly among Gen Z, on platforms like TikTok. The insights helped uncover evolving perceptions of the brand, leading to strategic adjustments in how one of their consumer brands was positioned. The outcome: a refreshed brand narrative more aligned with the attitudes of younger audiences.

Similarly, at her last agency working for Starling Bank, Abi was able to use a subsection of TikTok, FinTok, the finance section of the app. Starling Bank wanted to understand how better to advertise their services to women. FinTok revealed that some women seemed to be more scared of talking about money than men, and used different terms and a tone of voice to talk about money. Insights gathered from FinTok eventually informed the tone of voice and language that Starling Bank went on to use in its ads.

TikTok isn’t just noise then; it’s key to understanding what audiences want.

AI is a helping hand throughout the entire process.

Right from the beginning of the process, AI is in use, because the tool now gives advertisers a thousand minds in the room instead of one, and you are now editing and “remixing” ideas rather than having to come up with all the initial ideas yourself:

“When I worked on Simple, AI helped us understand what kind of skincare content was trending; things like ASMR routines and transformation stories. That helped shape our entire creative direction by providing us with some initial stimulus.”

At Abi’s agency, AI’s role does not stop there. Indeed, using AI, her firm has a tool which allows them to identify really niche communities that are able to engage with the products. For instance, the tool was used to identify different audiences interested in maintaining vitality; this identified new audiences for Peloton. AI can then generate fake audiences to test how these different sub sections would react to an advertisement (complimenting more traditional methods).

Another key difference, Abi says, is that you can now do a much better job of pitching to the client what an advert might look like right at the beginning of the process. In the past, an illustrator would draw 25 storyboards of an idea, but the drawing would be in pencil, and it would be difficult to capture the aura of the final product. Now the agency can use AI to mock-up life-like images that tend to look very similar to the final product; the cost of doing this is, unsurprisingly, much lower than the traditional method.

Finally, AI doesn’t just optimise; it localises. Some cultural differences are well known. In France, for instance, adverts play on the fact that the “clean girl aesthetic” is popular. However, AI tools can now help agencies understand preferences across subcultures in places like Northern Paris, work that used to require expensive international research to understand the intricate cultural differences between regions.

AI cannot replace human creativity

While agencies are still in awe of AI’s power, Abi is deeply worried by the environmental impact of the technology. Additionally, she predicts a cultural backlash is coming;

“I think there is always a danger that AI-made ads could start to feel like fast fashion; cheap, quick, disposable. There will always be demand for ideas that feel crafted, personal, and emotionally intelligent.”

Indeed, Abi adds, the winning creative idea for an ad is almost always a human articulation of an idea because a lot of advertising is understanding culture and what is going on in the world. Whilst AI is a helping hand, it does not have “taste”, the ability to have aesthetic cricks and apply it to contemporary culture. For instance, AI is terrible at writing taglines because they rely on nuance and “vibes” to work; it cannot understand the dual meaning of some words. More than that, a machine will not be able to evoke intangible and yet deeply human feelings to sell a product.

This is the key to a successful advert, as Mad Men constantly shows us; Don Draper’s pitch for the Carousel in season 1, for instance, famously focuses on the idea of nostalgia to draw the client in. 

It is this human side of storytelling that will become even more precious as AI continues to reshape how content is delivered and discovered. 

Stills from the series “Mad Men” © AMC. Used here for illustrative/editorial purposes only.

When 13 Going on 30 came out in 2004, Victoria Coren wrote that “it is a film which I believe should be watched only by 13 year old girls and if you are a 13 year old girl.”

Whilst the film could teach this particular demographic  the importance of holding on to parts of your younger self as you enter adulthood, Coren argued that for older viewers, “given the regrettable absence of wishing dust in any major department stores, we cannot return to our childhoods.” It might just be too late for the rest of us.

Amazingly, when I watched the film this week as a 26 year old, I couldn’t help but feel this film should be mandatory preparation for the coming years, a guide for dummies on how to navigate your twenties.

It’s certainly a confusing time. In the latter half of this decade, you find yourself firmly in the grips of adulthood, but without the age, wisdom or experience you sometimes feel that you need to garner respect. 

If you are somewhat on the silly side, this can be even harder. A constant conundrum I mull over with my friends is the extent to which you should leave the foolish side of yourself behind as you grow up. Should you cling on to any vestiges of your tween self, or should you instead metamorphosise into an entirely different person as you progress through early adulthood?

My mother certainly thinks the latter. I cannot count the number of times she has despaired at ridiculous outfits I simply cannot bring myself to sell on Vinted, and (out of love) worries that I may be acting too young for my age. Silliness must be stamped out at all costs.

13 Going on 30 suggests that perhaps a careful balance is the answer. 

On the one hand, when the 13-year-old Jenna finds herself trapped inside her 30 year old self, her childlike wonder and excitement certainly has its downfalls. Most obviously, it takes a special kind of naivety to ask your former best friend to leave his perfectly nice fiancée for you a week after reconnecting, unaware of the pain this would cause a woman he has invested time in and cares about. 

Her “doe eyed act”, as the main villain of the film puts it, might also be seen as a bit irritating. In this regard, Jenna is reminiscent of the main character Poppy in Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky. Her relentlessly cheery disposition is admirable, and does not wane even in the face of significant hardships. On the other hand, both Poppy and Jenna’s optimism can jar in the face of the harsh realities of adult life. In Happy Go Lucky, both the audience and the characters within the film cannot accept that Poppy can really be that upbeat. As Peter Bradshaw puts it in his review of the film, “we are so hyper-attuned to irony that it is at first difficult to accept that Poppy isn't really nursing some tragedy or heartbreak, or that she isn't really supposed to be nasty or a prat.”

However, whilst 13 Going on 30 does not suggest a cheery attitude alone will help you to successfully navigate adult life, it does suggest that a sense of childhood wonder and excitement about all the opportunities you get once you reach adulthood can also be one of the greatest gifts you can have.

Indeed, Jenna thrives at work because she is able to creatively harness the appreciation for simple and beautiful things her 13-year-self appreciates. She is unabashedly excited about the prospect of doing the exact photoshoot her 13-year-old self would want, and this passion clearly fires up the colleagues around her. 

One of my favourite films of last year, My Old Ass, carries a similar message. In the film, an 18 year old takes magic mushrooms and comes face to face with her 40 year old self. As in 13 Going on 30, it is clear that the 18 year old still has some growing to do. She is told to be nicer to her parents, but is also admired by her older self for her optimism and desire to grab on to every experience that comes her way. 

Both films, I think, carry powerful messages for any adult woman. You can be taken seriously without having to quash a sense of excitement and wonderment that might still remain inside you from your adolescence. Many of my most amazing friends are silly and full of passion and excitement and do amazing things with it. Abi Hodges, for instance, runs a fashion brand called Fotu; this, she says, is entirely driven by a fascination she had for clothes and design as early as 13, and I have seen first hand how her unabashed love for Fotu has helped the brand to grow at a rapid pace.

The takeaway, then? Listen to your mother - wear age appropriate clothes and act your age. At the same time, there is a place for silliness and passion and excitement in the adult world; it might be the most powerful tool you have.

*Films stills from 13 Going on 30 courtesy of Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Film still from Happy Go Lucky courtesy of Miramax.

This extraordinary series, which deserves all the acclaim it has received, explores the impact on a 13-year old boy and his family after he is accused of murdering a girl in his class.

As widely discussed, the reason the show has hit such a nerve, not only among parents but also in Parliament, is because it has shone a harsh light on the rising misogyny we are seeing in young boys in the UK. This is a real and pressing issue; one of the show’s stars and co-creator Stephen Graham has repeatedly stated that he wanted the show to explore why there has been such an influx of violent incidents across Britain in which teenage boys committed deadly knife crimes against girls. Thorne, the writer, says they wanted to “look into the eye of male rage”.1

This story, then, which even name checks Andrew Tate, is a sign of the times. At the same time, it is interesting that the tropes found in the story of the radicalisation of young men by the “manosphere” are so troubling similar to those found in Greek myth.

Indeed, whilst Adolescence focuses primarily on the psyche of a 13 year old boy who kills his female classmate, it is the experience of the murder victim Katie which aligns closely with that of female characters in Greek myth.

Like Katie, many women from mythology who refuse the sexual advances of their male pursuer meet with a violent end. The Trojan princess Cassandra is perhaps the most famous example of a woman who is punished with sexual violence after a god “struggled to win (her), breathing ardent love for (her).”2 But the list goes on. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Io in Book 1 pays for her rejection of Jupiter through meeting with sexual violence. In the very same book, Ovid describes how the beautiful nymph Daphne, in trying to escape the advances of the god Apollo, transforms into a laurel tree:3

But she flees swifter than the lightest breath of air, and resists his words calling her back again.

Even like this Phoebus loved her and, placing his hand against the trunk, he felt her heart still quivering under the new bark. He clasped the branches as if they were parts of human arms, and kissed the wood. But even the wood shrank from his kisses, and the god said ‘Since you cannot be my bride, you must be my tree!

Though Daphne turns into a tree, she cannot escape Apollo’s lust. To add insult to injury, Daphne is now without a voice.

The removal of a female victim’s voice is indeed a common trope in Greek mythology, and here we find another parallel with the way the female victim is presented in Adolescence. Like Daphne, Katie is also a victim without a voice; we hear nothing of her side of the story, or even her family’s reactions to her death. She is entirely defined, just as these characters are, by the results of a man’s unwanted attention and violence towards her.

What’s more, whilst alive, Katie’s voice has power, which her male aggressor realises he needs to stop. In Adolescence, we are told that Katie’s voice has real power; Jamie tells his psychologist in episode 3 that he was humiliated by Katie’s use of incel emoji symbols in online messages to him, and that this is one of the reasons for his anger towards her.

This also finds its parallel in Greek mythology. The story of Philomela is the most striking example, as her voice is literally taken away when her tongue is cut out by her brother in law Tereus to hide the fact that he has raped her;4

But he severed her tongue with his savage blade, holding it with pincers, as she struggled to speak in her indignation, calling out her father’s name repeatedly.

Just as Jamie understands the power of Katie’s voice and the damage it can cause to his reputation, Tereus understands the power of Philomela’s voice and needs to silence her at all costs.

It is perhaps not surprising that the dynamic between a 13 year old boy and his female classmate in 2025 bears so many resemblances to the dynamics between men and women in Greek mythology. Indeed, in her book Not All Dead White Men, Donna Zuckerberg explores the rise in far-right men’s groups using classical antiquity to support their views, including the fact that women are morally inferior, that women’s boundaries are permeable and that consent is a flexible concept.

Adolescence may be “of the moment”, then, but we should also note its intriguing and sinister links to the classical past.

Even though I was not even born when the first Bridget Jones was published in 1996, I don’t think I’ve ever related to or loved a character more than a woman who accidentally force-feeds her friends blue soup, dances to Chaka Khan to cure her heartbreak, and generally makes a tit out of herself.

Bridget is indeed so adored by boomers, millennials and Gen Z alike that she is often described as “classic” or “timeless.” Caitlin Moran notes, for instance, that “Bridget Jones is part of the character pantheon alongside Jo March, Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Eyre, Scarlett O’Hara, Becky Sharp, Pippi Longstocking and the Wife of Bath – women and girls whom one can imagine being set into any time, or location, and being just as entertaining, companionable and prone to amusing, yet ultimately triumphant, misadventure as they were in their original centuries.”

In the words of Carrie Bradshaw, this got me to thinking… where did this extraordinary character come from? What’s more, can we find parallels between the work of Helen Fielding and that of the poets living many millennia ago?

Of course, it is hard to argue that the scene where Bridget runs after Mark Darcy in her knickers in the snow has obvious parallels with Homer or Virgil. Indeed, the majority of Bridget’s character and world are firmly influenced by her creator’s own life. In her Desert Island Discs, for instance, Helen Fielding states explicitly that she drew from her own experience as a wannabe “serious” journalist in the 90s, and also from her experience as a single 30-something in London; “it was a time when the image of a single girl in her 30s had not caught up with the reality of it… most comedy comes out of dark things, it was hard.”

The latest instalment is also undoubtedly influenced by Fielding’s own life experiences. Fielding lost the father of her children in 2016, and stated in a recent interview with The Sunday Times that she tried to help her children deal with this loss through humour, as Bridget and her two children do in the film.

The other key literary influence, which has been well documented, is of course Pride and Prejudice. Fielding has noted on numerous occasions that she is crap at plots, and so essentially copied that of Pride and Prejudice for the first book, and Persuasion for the second.

But can we go even further back in time to find further parallels between the way Fielding writes about the romantic mishaps of a 30 something woman, and the ancient world? Fielding did not study Classics, and at first glance, it seems preposterous to suppose that a book which started in the 90s following the trials and tribulations of a 30 something woman in London could have anything to do with classical antiquity.

After all, everything that happens to Bridget is written from her perspective. On the contrary, we have hardly anything written by women from Classical Antiquity expressing their thoughts or feelings. As Simon Goldhill notes, the one major exception to the rule is Sappho. “It is she,” he says, “who dominates all our ideas of ancient female desire.” Even then, even I would have to admit that Sappho’s poetry does not bear many similarities to Bridget’s despairing about the size of her ass.

That being said, it is the personae of the Roman love poets who I think are the true predecessors to Bridget Jones in their descriptions of trying to find love, falling in love, getting dumped, and recovering from heartbreak.

Catullus, for instance, explores many of the same feelings about romance that Bridget Jones does millennia later. As Charlotte Higgins notes, “Catullus was the first person in history to write in a sustained way about the whole trajectory of a love affair, from its opening salvos to its agonising descent into bitterness.” This is precisely what Bridget Jones writes about. Just as Catullus describes the feeling of loving the wrong person - you hate them, but you also love them - so too does Bridget at the very start of her diary state that she must resist falling in love with someone she is supposed to despise; “I will not fall for any of following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, people with girlfriends or wives, misogynists, megalomaniacs, chauvinists, emotional fuckwits or freeloaders, perverts.”

A Roman poet whose work bears even more similarities to that of Helen Fielding is Ovid. His Heroides, for instance, letters written from the perspectives of abandoned lovers of well-known epic heroes, bear striking similarities to the entries Bridget writes in her diary. They are of course similar in form; the letters and diary entries are both used to allow the reader to delve deep into the psyche of the writers. More than that, though, the key theme is heartbreak, and the feelings of betrayal and abandonment that come with it. As she watches Theseus sail off, for instance, Ovid’s Ariadne remembers her lover promising that she would be his forever (sob!). Similarly, another heroine, Phyllis, remembers the “smooth-talking” man she once trusted. If this doesn’t remind you of Bridget’s diary entries once she has been binned by Daniel Cleaver, I don’t know what will!

The more comedic elements of Bridget’s diary entries also bear striking similarities to other works of Ovid. Bridget Jones often describes the intense preparation it takes to prepare for a date; “being a woman is worse than being a farmer - there is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done.” This could be lifted directly from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, an ancient self-help book for men and women on how to convince someone to go out with them. Bodyhair for Roman women, as for Bridget, is absolutely not allowed when trying to attract a man; on many occasions, one could assume Bridget has read the Ars Amatoria and is putting its lessons into practice.

The parallels between the Roman love poets and Bridget Jones, then, are absolutely there. They both describe so vividly the absolute agony of falling in love and being in love, and the games we have to play when we date. But I think even in the final film, a much more sober affair, we still find parallels with stories from the ancient world. Indeed, as we see Bridget Jones dealing with the loss of Mark Darcy, she is haunted by his ghost. Several times in the film, he appears beside her or behind her, a device used to absolutely devastating effect in Mamma Mia 2 when Donna’s ghost appears before Sophie at her baby’s christening.

To me, this use of the ghost reminds me of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. When Eurydice dies suddenly, Orpheus tries and fails to retrieve her ghost from the dead. Similarly, Bridget is trying to keep the memory of Mark Darcy alive, but he is now only a ghost. It is a subtle link, but adds another layer to an already incredibly moving film.

The classics, then, have more to do with the Bridget we know and love than one might suppose.

This anthology series, moving from Hawaii to Sicily for its second season, follows the guests and employees of the beautiful White Lotus resort as they navigate their complicated relationships both with each other and themselves. There are 3 groups of guests. Ethan and Cameron, college "buddies", have come to Sicily with their wives Harper and Daphne. These couples don't know each other too well, but have reconnected now that Ethan has sold his company for a huge amount of money. The DiGrasso family, another group of guests, are Bert, Dominic and Albie - grandfather, father and son. They are here nominally to rediscover their Sicilian roots, but Dominic is also here to win back the trust of his son after cheating on his mum. The third contingent is Tanya (and her husband), known to us from Season 1, and her very questionably-dressed assistant Portia. Valentina is the resort manager, and Mia and Lucia are Sicilian locals and prostitutes looking for their new client. 

This is the basic set up, and without giving too much away, I think it is some of the best TV I’ve ever seen; I’ve started listening to the opening soundtrack on repeat because it is just that good, and have read every possible article I can about the cultural significance of Tanya's outfits. Another guest's description of the character as a “symphony of salmon” will forever be imprinted on my memory. 

One thing I want to hear more about, though, is the role of Greek myth, and particularly the significance of Greek myth set in Sicily in this season of the White Lotus.  

Now, I have to concede that it would be hard to argue that Mike White, the creator of the White Lotus is drawn to Sicily purely because of the ancient myths and the links they might have to the story he is unravelling. We know that The Godfather, for instance, is an important motivation for setting Season 2 in this location. In the third episode, we see the Di Grasso family (who have travelled to Sicily to reconnect with their past) make the most of being in the island by embarking on a tour of the locations used in The Godfather. 

Perhaps this not-very-subtle nod to the filming of The Godfather in Sicily answers this question - why Sicily? After all, links to the mafia are everywhere in Season 2.  Tanya is introduced to Niccolo towards the end of the series, who we are told is part of the Mafia. Lucia, the prostitute working her charms on the guests of the White Lotus, seems to be stalked by a member of the mafia when out with the Di Grasso family. Most obviously, the season stars a cast member from the most famous mafia series of all time, The Sopranos. The choice to make Michael Imperioli's character Dominic a film producer is surely making play with the fact that his character in The Sopranos, Christopher, looks to be a screenwriter and make it big in Hollywood. 

Allusions to the mafia, then, and in turn to a world of beauty, but also of crime and danger, seem to partially reveal why we are taken to Sicily . 

Surely, though, the mythology of Sicily also holds some appeal. In Greek myth, this island is host to a wide range of strange tales about nymphs, goddesses, rivers and volcanoes, and in certain scenes, the myths associated with Sicily stare us in the face.  

When in one scene the character Dominic discusses the sordid state of his marriage to his wife back in the US, his father Bert explicitly draws upon a Greek myth to show that Dominic’s adultery is not all that bad. Since Demeter forgave Hades for raping her daughter, Bert reasons, Dominic's wife can surely find the space in her heart to forgive the philandering Dominic. 

The reference to this specific myth is surely significant; the abduction of Persephone is one of the most renowned myths set in Sicily. In Book 5 of the Metamorphoses, Ovid tell us: 

“When Hades god of the underworld, had come up to earth, Cupid’s arrow instilled love for Persephone in his heart. The king of Hades kidnapped the girl from the field she played in, and he took her unwillingly to the Underworld.” 

As Screen Rant notes, not only do we get this direct allusion to the myth of Hades and Persephone, but the myth is also almost retold in the very next scene. As Ethan's wife Harper swims in the sea, Cameron pulls her underwater, part of a series of attempts to make a move on her. 

That this scene directly follows a direct reference to Persephone being dragged into the underworld by her sexual predator surely indicates that Mike White’s desire to create an affinity between the characters in his show and figures from Sicilian myth. 

When we start to look for links between the plot of the White Lotus and other Sicilian myths, we find them everywhere.  

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the poet takes us to Sicily again to tell us the myth of Acis and Galatea. In this story, Acis is a mortal who falls desperately in love with the beautiful sea goddess Galatea. 

Unfortunately for Acis, Galatea is also desired by Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon. 

Galatea tells Scylla: “I sought him, the Cyclops sought me, endlessly. If you asked, I could not say which was stronger in me, hatred of Cyclops or love of Acis, both of them were equally strong.” 

Eventually, Polyphemus’ jealousy of Acis grows strong that he destroys him:  

“The Cyclops followed him and hurled a rock wrenched from the mountain, and though only the farthest corner of the stone reached him, it still completely buried Acis.” 

As with the story of Persephone's abduction, we see the story of Acis, Galatea and Polyphemus retold when we look at the dynamic between Ethan and Cameron. The two know each other from college, and it is established throughout the series that Cameron is known for wanting what Ethan has and that he usually gets it. 

This dynamic between the two men sets the scene for an explosive jealousy when Ethan imagines that Cameron has now seduced his wife, placing him in the role of the Polyphemus battling for the attention of Galatea, and almost killing Cameron/Acis in the sea. 

The abduction of Persephone therefore,  along with the tale of Galatea, Acis and Polyphemus, are directly paralleled in season 2 of the White Lotus. With this in mind, it seems plausible to me that Sicily’s mythological past, witness to two famous tales about desire and its consequences, surely provided inspiration for what Mike White actually calls the series of sex and desire, with most of the battles emerging from the characters’ preoccupation with sex. (“The motivation of sex is always primary, I think,” White told The New York Times). 

Even allusions to Sicilian myths not directly touching on desire seem to relate and contribute to this wider theme.  

The volcano exploding in the background, for instance, has its own story attached to it. In Greek mythology, the volcano is seen as a metaphor for the fury of a defeated victim of Zeus, trapped in the mountain. 

Aubrey Plaza describes this series as “volcanic”, and there is certainly the possibility that the characters who reach boiling point by the end - Daphne for instance (when Ethan tells her about Cameron cheating) - are designed to share a certain affinity with Typhon, trapped and raging in his prison. Daphne, so desperate to keep her marriage together, will stay in a prison of her own making if it means her philandering husband will stay with her. 

Myth serves not only to touch on the headline theme of desire and its consequences. It seems to serve too to foreshadow the end of the series. Throughout myth, death and water are closely linked. When Icarus flies too close to the sun, he plunges into the sea. When Theseus returns home with black sails, his father in his grief meets a similar fate to that of Icarus. 

Moreover, in myth set in Sicily, water and death are closely related. Scylla, the famous whirlpool that sucks up Odysseus’ men in the Odyssey, is found near Sicily. This is how she is described by Homer: 

“For on one side lay Scylla and on the other divine Charybdis terribly sucked down the salt water of the sea. Verily whenever she belched it forth, like a cauldron on a great fire she would seethe and bubble in utter turmoil, and high over head the spray would fall on the tops of both the cliffs.” 

When Acis is destroyed by Polyphemus in Sicily, he is turned into a river god by his father: 

“Then I did the only thing the Fates permitted me: I let my Acis take ancestral power of river deities. The purple blood flowed from beneath the rock, but soon the sanguine richness faded and became at first the color of a stream, disturbed and muddied by a shower…" 

We know from the very first scene of the second season that death and water are connected when Daphne finds a corpse in the water. 

That the death in the show, set in volcanic Sicily, should occur in the water seems far too much of a coincidence to me. 

It is strongly plausible, then, that the White Lotus Season 2 is haunted by Sicily’s mythological past. What do you think? Clutching at straws or unlocking the key to Mike White’s genius? Let me know.