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The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, or so the over-quoted adage of John Maynard Keynes goes. Fighting those fickle currents, then, is a Sisyphean task, where bankers and traders lurch from one crisis to another. So it is no surprise that these mercurial money markets make a suitable backdrop for drama: not least in the third season of the BBC’s prestige thriller (yes, thriller) Industry, where calm rarely descends for more than a heartbeat.

Having been fired by Pierpoint in the second series finale, off the back of a fabricated academic transcript, Harper (Myha’la) finds herself exiled to a socially conscious fund in the US. Back in London, Robert (Harry Lawtey) is working on the IPO of an energy firm, Lumi, which is run by a bullish toff, Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington – if the knighthood seems improbable, presumably calling the character “Lord Muck” would’ve been too on-the-nose). It’s a deal that also ensnares the attentions of Yasmin (Marisa Abela), who is distracted by the fallout of her father’s disgrace, not to mention becoming the focus of tabloid gossip columns, and her boss, Eric (Ken Leung), who is rapidly going off the rails. But cracks begin to show as Lumi goes public, and the foundations of Muck’s business look shaky. “Everything’s built on nothing!” he laments, as his board closes in. “That’s how you build something!”

Given the last season of Industry, broadcast in 2022, dealt with the fallout of Covid-19’s impact on global markets, then it should come as no surprise that the new series is rooted in the concerns of the past year. The Kamikwasi mini-budget and COP 27 in Sharm El Sheikh (compared to both Davos and Cannes) both feature as drivers of turbulence. ESG – “environmental, social and governance” investing – is a typically zeitgeisty target for the show. Muck’s business, Lumi, closely resembles failed start-up Bulb (down to the employee numbers), whose collapse in 2021 sparked fears about the solidity of the renewable and off-set energy industry. So, the quarry chosen by writers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay feels plenty topical.

Of course, as ever with Industry, that’s all filtered through the prism of finance’s moral repugnancy. The show’s most daring innovation has always been the sheer viciousness of its characters; their fundamental unlikability. “You work for an investment bank,” Muck tells Robert. “You’re the parasite’s parasite.” And even as Yasmin deals with the impact of her abusive, reckless father, the show never retreats into pitying her. She remains an enigmatic combination of confidence and deep-rooted insecurity (and is the lynchpin of this season’s action). Harington, meanwhile, gives his best performance to date as a brittle, over-hyped CEO. A bottle episode, following the miserable travails of associate Rishi (Sagar Radia, superb) is a virtuoso descent into risk addiction – shot like Uncut Gems in the Leicester Square Hippodrome – but equally uncompromising. Understanding someone doesn’t require forgiving them.

At times, it makes Industry a difficult watch. Attempts to unriddle class dynamics within the sector (“You’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth, people are going to assume you’re an idiot,” Muck tells Yasmin) butt up against the core critique of gamified, high-risk capitalism. The writing sometimes tries too hard to capture the verbosity that marks out writers like Armando Iannucci and Jesse Armstrong – both of whom, coincidentally, do a good line in shows that have no heroes – with insults such as calling a colleague “the Nobel laureate in noncing” striking a bum note. But what Down and Kay are brilliant at is creating a pressure cooker on the trading floor, where each character is both enemy and ally to one another. If the dynamics of Succession were constantly described as Shakespearean, the internal politics of Industry are more like The Weakest Link. You need each other to make money, but you also want to shaft your competitors when you get the opportunity.

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For people wanting a quiet evening in front of the telly, Industry is a terrible option. It’s relentless, nasty, sexy, vulgar, and all the other adjectives generally reserved for TripAdvisor reviews of Berghain. But in a world where prestige drama is so focused on humanising troubled people, it’s gripping to watch a drama that takes their humanity as a given and focuses on the troubles. It’s not just the markets that are irrational: most counter-intuitively of all, this third instalment of Industry is, somehow, a lot of fun to watch.

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Modern Family star Eric Stonestreet has said it was “hurtful” to have his spin-off series rejected by the show’s network.

Stonestreet, 53, rose to fame playing Cam Tucker on the Emmy-winning sitcom, which ran for 11 seasons on ABC from 2009 to 2020.

In an interview with Deadline, the actor recalled how there had been plans to potentially develop a spin-off series that would focus on his character and his husband Mitch (played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson) living in Missouri.

Ultimately, however, the series was not picked up by ABC.

Speaking to the publication, Stonestreet suggested that the network’s decision not to move forward with the spin-off might have been related to the fact that he and Ferguson were thought of “as the old guys”.

He said: “I don’t think it’s potential anymore. They had their chance. Chris Lloyd and a couple of the writers wrote a really great script that spun Jesse and I off in our life in Missouri, and they said, ‘No.’ They just said, ‘We don’t want to do it.’”

Stonestreet continued: “I love my character. I love the show. I love Jesse. We had a great working relationship, we had amazing chemistry.

“I think Jesse and I maybe felt like they thought of us as the old guys, or something like that, that didn’t seem worthy of keeping those characters going. It felt a little hurtful. But people make business decisions.”

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The spin-off series would have followed Cam, Mitch, and their adopted daughter Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) after they had moved from California to a farm in Missouri where Cam is from.

“I think it would have been a slam dunk,” Stonestreet said of the idea. “I don’t think it would have not been successful. Because you had one of the creators – who had really taken such great care of making sure that show was great for so long – willing to do it.”

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Modern Family co-creator Christopher Lloyd had been on board as a writer. Lloyd created the show with Steven Levitan.

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“We had the right people in place,” said Stonestreet. “It would have been great. If ABC would have said ‘Let’s do it,’ I think we’d be on right now.”

Although the Missouri-based spin-off series is now likely never to happen, fans are hoping for a potential reunion episode in the near future.

“I wish we’d do a Christmas special,” Stonestreet said. He is not the only cast-member to have spoken about the possibility of a special.

Ed O’Neill, who played Jay Pritchett in the series, previously said that he is “open” to the idea.

“I like everybody involved, so I wouldn’t be the guy who [says no if everyone else wants to]. I wouldn’t do that,” he said.

Across its 11 seasons, Modern Family won 22 Emmy awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series five years in a row from 2010 to 2014.

The series also won Outstanding Casting thanks to its brilliant ensemble cast, which also featured Julie Bowen, Ty Burrel, and Sofia Vegara.

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Max has greenlit a four-part Friends-themed game show in honor of the classic sitcom’s 30th anniversary this year.

Titled Fast Friends, the game show will “take place in the celebrated series’ iconic sets in a fast-paced competition event,” a press release states.

“From racing through Rachel and Monica’s apartment to darting across Joey and Chandler’s bachelor pad and grabbing a coffee at Central Perk, fans will re-live their favorite moments while being put to the test with trivia, puzzles, and games that will keep even the most die-hard FRIENDS fans on their toes. The quickest team will win the title of Ultimate Friends Fan.”

Touted as a first of its kind, the series is scheduled to begin production next month at The FRIENDS Experience: The One in New York City, “a NYC flagship location featuring 18 nostalgia-filled rooms, activations, and recreated sets, spanning two stories and 17,000 square feet dedicated to the show’s history.”

In addition to the forthcoming game show, the streamer will also pay tribute to the comedy by offering Max Ultimate Ad-Free subscribers the opportunity to enjoy their favorite Friends episodes in 4K UHD with Dolby Vision and HDR10 on supported devices.

This premium format is said to enhance the show’s viewing experience, allowing fans to spot “baby Ben before Joey and Chandler with sharper details, experience the iconic prom video and savor Joey’s Dr Drake Ramoray scenes with enhanced clarity, and have Ross’s unforgettable white-teeth mishap dazzle them on screen.”

Friends first debuted 30 years ago this month. The show, which follows a group of six twentysomethings – Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), Monica (Courteney Cox), Ross (David Schwimmer), Chandler (Matthew Perry), Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) – living in New York City, ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004.

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Aisha Tyler, who starred as Charlie, the series’s only recurring Black character, recently reflected on how the show changed her life.

“It did change my life,” she told The Independent, “but not in a ‘fame and fortune, and she rode in on a tiger, people are feeding her grapes’ sort of way. I still went back to the drawing board and was a working actor after that. But it made me more confident as a performer, to trust my instincts and my comic abilities.

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“And we’re still talking about it all these years later. I don’t know that there are a lot of shows that have been off the air for more than two decades that people still watch on a daily basis and new fans find all the time,” Tyler added.

“Little kids come up to me and say they love the show and I’m like, ‘You were not alive when I was on that show! You were not yet born’ It’s rare to be on a show like that and end up in the collective memory.”

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The View hosts have weighed in on Janet Jackson’s recent controversial remarks regarding Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity.

In a new interview with The Guardian, the singer and sister of Michael Jackson regurgitated a false claim made by Donald Trump that Harris is not Black.

“She’s not Black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian,” Jackson said, admitting that although she hadn’t “watched the news in a few days,” she was told somebody had “discovered [Harris’s] father was white.”

“What she did was spread misinformation,” host Ana Navarro said on the latest episode of the daytime talk show. “I think it’s irresponsible when you have a platform the way Janet Jackson does, to use that platform carelessly to spread misinformation based on a racist allegation by Donald Trump. It was Donald Trump who tried to say Kamala Harris just turned Black.”

Last month, Trump made headlines when he made the unhinged assertation that Harris only recently “became a Black woman” to suit her political agenda.

Whoopi Goldberg, meanwhile, stepped in to defend Jackson. “You know, sometimes I’ve said stuff. And you know, I was wrong. But people want you to say something right away. You know, when people are coming at you saying, ‘Hey, you’re not paying – you’re dumb, you don’t know’ – you don’t want to answer people,” she said.

“And it is a pain in the butt, I have to tell you. Sometimes people get it wrong and they’re wrong, they made a mistake, they were wrong, it happens. Anybody who says it doesn’t happen to every one of us, multiracial or not, we all do it. So, okay, a little grace for the girl, alright?” Goldberg said, arguing that Jackson is “a musician,” not “a political animal.”

While Navarro acknowledged that Jackson has the “right to endorse, support, or not support” whomever she chooses, she noted that the singer has still not yet owned up to her mistake.

“We forget that we live in information silos. This is so different from how the media was even 10 years ago,” Alyssa Farah Griffin added. “My guess is she’s not looking at great sources of media.”

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Sunny Hostin went on to say that “regardless of whether Janet Jackson thinks she’s Black, white, or Indian, the very fact that she’s in the room deconstructs, in my view, the alleged societal norms we’ve seen in the nearly 250 years of this country of what a presidential candidate looks like.”

“I think that’s what matters most, and I think that when you’re biracial or multiracial, you do get to identify yourself in any way you choose to identify yourself,” Hostin, who is biracial, continued. “It’s unfortunate that Janet Jackson, an icon, admittedly said, ‘I don’t know, I haven’t been reading the news these past few days.’ I don’t know if it comes from misinformation, I don’t know if it comes from a lack of information, all I know is I don’t want to give it this much air.”

Yesterday, it emerged that Jackson’s apparent “apology” for her comments about Harris was not authorized by the “That’s the Way Love Goes” singer.

It was widely reported by several outlets that Janet had issued an apology through a man named Mo Elmasari, who claimed to be her manager.

However, it has since been corrected that Jackson is, in fact, managed by her brother, Randy, and that the unusually worded “apology” did not come from Jackson.