A new drama series about the Hillsborough disaster will air on ITV this weekend.
Anne will tell the story of a bereaved mother and her tireless campaigning for justice for the 97 people who were killed.
Mancunian actress Maxine Peake will star as Anne Williams, nicknamed Liverpool’s ‘Iron Lady’, in the four-part series.
The series has been written by Kevin Sampson, who was at the Hillsborough Stadium on the day of the disaster.
Maxine Peake in Anne. Credit: ITV
The drama will relive the deadly incident, in which a crowd crush at the football stadium killed 97 Liverpool fans, through the life of Anne.
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Her 15-year-old son Kevin was one of those who was unlawfully killed at Hillsborough on April 15, 1989.
Anne, a new ITV drama about the Hillsborough disaster. Credit: ITV
In the 24 years that followed, and up until her death in 2013, Anne never stopped searching for the truth about what happened on that dreadful day.
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Matthew McNulty will star as Andy Burnham in the series.
Anne will be shown on ITV across four nights from January 2 to January 5, followed by a documentary on January 6.
Featured image: ITV
TV & Showbiz
Happy Valley fans say ‘sorry’ to Neil Ackroyd after getting him all wrong
Daisy Jackson
Happy Valley viewers have all been publicly apologising to Neil Ackroyd, a central character in the hit BBC drama, after several fan theories fell completely flat.
Once again, if you haven’t watched last night’s finale, please walk away now – spoilers lie ahead.
To recap – Neil Ackroyd, played by the brilliant Con O’Neill, made his first Happy Valley appearance in the show’s second series.
He was a recovering alcoholic whose wife had left him, and took up a position working in the local corner shop.
It was there that he met Clare Cartwright (Siobhan Finneran), who is the sister of the drama’s main character Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire).
The pair quickly strike up a romantic relationship, which carries on throughout the show.
Neil really landed himself in trouble during this final season, when it emerged that he had been taking Ryan to visit his convicted criminal father Tommy Lee Royce in prison – a decision that nearly broke Catherine and Clare’s sisterly bond.
Clare and Catherine almost fell out for good in this season of Happy Valley, with Neil at the heart of the drama. Credit: BBC
The whole time, he’d seemed like a relatively minor character who just facilitated the relationship between Ryan and his dad.
But it left many fans questioning why he would actually help Tommy – a bona fide Bad Man – to build a bond with Ryan.
Fan theories have been flying around ever since Neil joined the Happy Valley cast, one of which was that he was secretly Tommy’s father.
Someone else hypothesised: “Tommy is not Ryan’s father after all it’s actually Neil and he was the one who raped Becky all those years ago.”
Another person shared a clip of Neil’s reaction the first time he realised he was dating the sister of a police officer.
But after the series wrapped up at last last night, it turned out that Neil was just a normal bloke after all – albeit a normal bloke with a few brain cells missing.
It’s led to hundreds of viewers publicly apologising to the fictional character.
One person said: “Sorry for talking sh*t about you Neil xoxo.”
Another said: “A f*ck tonne of us all silently apologising to Neil. Who wasn’t dodgy, or Tommy’s dad.”
One tweet said: “It’s such a Neil thing to do to not be part of any shock twist but just to have been a boring wet lettuce all along.”
A user pointed out: “Can’t believe we were all thinking Neil was Tommy’s dad and he was some kind of criminal mastermind who had planned for years to reconnect Tommy and Ryan when our first introduction to Neil was when he was so drunk he couldn’t get his own jumper on!”
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Well, that’s that then. Sorry Neil.
Featured image: BBC
TV & Showbiz
New Channel 4 show is all set and filmed in Manchester — and features a familiar face from The Manc
Danny Jones
A new Channel 4 show set in Manchester and almost entirely filmed here too is delighting locals as it spotlights various areas around the city centre and county of Greater Manchester.
Everyone Else Burns is the recently released comedy which centres around a religious family who belong to a devout and cult-like puritanical Christian sect who believe that the end times are near.
Starring Simon Bird (The Inbetweeners, Friday Night Dinner) as the patriarch of the apocalypse-obsessed family, the six-episode series has some serious comedy pedigree behind it, but the real star of the show is Manchester itself which serves as the familiar backdrop.
Though set in an unnamed town, the show takes place in and is almost entirely filmed in Greater Manchester, though some scenes were shot in Northwich, Cheshire. Having watched the full thing ourselves, it is very much an exercise in acting out that Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme in real life.
Meet the Lewises: your average, everyday Manchester family who belong to an ultra-religious order. Oh, and they reckon the world's going to end in the next 10 years. #EveryoneElseBurns starts Monday, 10pm. pic.twitter.com/xumrgWiSfd
Even within the first few minutes of the show starting, before the opening titles have even popped up on screen, the cast begins walking down a familiar cobbled street over in Castlefield, which is just one several Mancunian districts seen in the series.
The area itself has been used for filming and notable photoshoots increasingly frequently of late with the likes of Peaky Blinders, Manchester City and even Apple Music’s Zane Lowe shooting part of his Matty Healy interview in the last year or so alone.
Nevertheless, it’s always fun to peep recognisable parts of our lovely city on the telly and nearly every episode of Everyone Else Burns is basically part watching and part trying to identify various places across the region. I even spotted my old bus route back in Stockport.
Better still it isn’t just parts of 0161 that you’ll notice, there’s even a familiar face from The Manc itself…
That’s right, if you’re a regular watcher of our Takeaway Champions series or caught our recent interview with Danny Beard, then you’ll recognise our lovely Sophie Galustian who first appears in episode three.
Playing a key role in the story as the character of Julia — another member of the religious group who quickly befriends teenager Rachel (played by Amy James-Kelly, a Manchester School of Acting alumn) — there is more than meets the eye to this girl.
We don’t want to spoil anything for you but we can assure you she’s great in it, and we’re not just saying that because she’s one of our own.
You might be used to seeing Soph scanning takeaways and interviewing people for On The Street, but she’s also a poet, spoken word artist; author, actor and comedy writer. She even created her own sitcom for BBC Three called Peck’Eds.
We can thoroughly recommend giving it a try. There’s plenty of laughs and seeing what parts of town you can spot as you watch makes for an added layer of enjoyment.
You can watch the full first season of Everyone Else Burns on All4 HERE.
Another popular British production has recently been greenlit for a TV adaptation too and is also set to be filmed around Manchester.
Daisy Jackson -
30th December 2021 
