ITV, TIGER ASPECT AND BRITBOX INTERNATIONAL RELEASE THE FIRST LOOK STILLS FROM SIR LENNY HENRY’S THREE LITTLE BIRDS

6x60’ SERIES IS WRITTEN AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY SIR LENNY HENRY AND COMING TO SCREENS FROM THIS AUTUMN 

The first look stills from Sir Lenny Henry’s Three Little Birds lead by rising stars Rochelle Neil (The Nevers, Guilt), Yazmin Belo (What Just Happened) and Saffron Coomber (Tracey Beaker Returns, Eastenders), who made their red-carpet debut at this year’s TV BAFTAs, have been released ahead of the series coming to ITV and ITVX this Autumn and BritBox International in the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa and Nordic markets in 2024. The series is produced by Tiger Aspect in association with Douglas Road.

Spirited, moving, funny and utterly heartfelt Three Little Birds is a triumphant celebration of immigration, community and the strength of Black womanhood inspired by the life-affirming stories of Sir Lenny Henry’s mother and all those who have travelled to make Britain their home.

Set in 1957, post-Windrush, and amidst the booming decade set alight by promise, the rhythm of rock and roll, swing, Hollywood starlets and fabulous fashion Three Little Birds will introduce Dudley and the rest of the world to gregarious sisters Leah (Neil) and Chantrelle (Coomber) and their virtuous, bible-loving acquaintance, Hosanna (Belo), as they board a cruise ship from Jamaica bound for a new life in Blighty.

The second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds begins today with episode 201, “The Broken Circle.” With Ethan Peck back as Spock and Paul Wesley cast as Kirk, fans are looking forward to the big moment when the franchise’s foremost characters meet for the first time.  In the runup to the season, Peck and Wesley sat down with a panel of journalists to talk about playing two legendary characters as young men whose enduring friendship is still in the future. 

Peck’s Spock is much younger than the previous versions (played by Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto) and he’s still trying to get to get a handle on his emotions.

“We will see Spock further explore his human side,” Peck told SciFi Vision, “and he does this in various situations and relationships as well.  I think it's very apparent in his interactions with Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush). There's a really wonderful situation where Spock can do nothing but face his human-ness that I'm very excited about.”

The pair also talked about their chemistry on and off-screen and gave plenty of insight into what motivates young Spock and Kirk. One writer even got Peck to talk about an early episode that highlights a “secret ability…that my friends don't even know [about].”

“[The Dead City] universe is going to tell the story of what happens when you lose someone [to murder]. Not just for the person who lost him, but the person who did it.”

--Eli Jorné, interview with SFX, June 2023

Just before the title sequence for The Walking Dead: Dead City plays for the first time, Maggie Rhee (Lauren Cohan) pulverizes the head of a walker using a telescope. She brings the makeshift weapon down repeatedly as she screams in rage, blood and brain matter splattering her face. The visual reference is obvious to anyone who has watched The Walking Dead’s flagship show. But just in case it isn’t, “Old Acquaintances” later provides a flashback to Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) crushing Glenn Rhee (Steven Yuen)’s head with a barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat, while Glenn’s pregnant wife Maggie watches. 

From the outset, Dead City suggests that its main protagonists, Maggie and Negan, are two sides of the same coin. The show’s premiere is not shy about this intention, and neither is its creator, Eli Jorné. The widow and her husband’s killer are inextricably linked, the opening scene reminds us, separated only by a flip, a flick of the fingers, a choice. Not a choice made by the characters, but one made by the viewers.

Last week season two of Cruel Summer premiered on Freeform. This season, the story starts in the summer of 1999 when small-town computer genius Megan (Sadie Stanley) is upset when she and her mother are joined by foreign exchange student Isabella (Lexi Underwood), whose arrival affects her relationship with her best friend Luke (Griffin Gluck). The story is told from three different points in time concurrently through to the summer of 2000, and follows the love triangle between the three, and the mystery that changes their lives forever.

Stanley, Underwood, and Gluck recently spoke with the media in a roundtable in which SciFi Vision took part.

***The following interview contains spoilers for 2.08***

In season two of MGM+’s From, things got even more interesting when a tour bus from Grand Rapids appeared in the town, allowing the series to add new characters. One of these characters is Randall (A.J. Simmons), who has had a hard time finding his place in the town, picking fights, especially with Donna (Elizabeth Saunders) of Colony House, not dealing well with authority. As such, he was banished to living on the bus alone with only a talisman to protect him from the creatures that come out at night.

However, Randall seemed to somewhat connect with Jim (Eion Bailey), who he had helped previously try to rescue his wife. In this week’s episode, the two tried unsuccessfully to use Randall’s drone to boost the signal of the radio by attaching a receiver to it.

However, by the end of the episode, things took a dark turn when Randall kidnapped and tied up Donna, now believing some of Jim’s conspiracies, but suspicious of him as well.

In season two, the MGM+ thriller From is amping up the terror, and right now there’s probably nobody more terrified than Fatima (Pegah Ghafoori). Newcomers are stretching the community’s resources, people are dying almost every night, her fiancée Ellis (Corteon Moore) was accidentally stabbed, and oh yeah, Fatima thinks she might be pregnant. The only thing scarier than living in the town would be bringing a child into this world, but thus far no one has ever had a baby, and it’s not clear if it’s even possible to get pregnant.

In a video chat with SciFi Vision, actress Pegah Ghafoori (Hello Au Revoir) shared her thoughts on where Fatima is mentally and emotionally coming into episode 207 (“Belly of the Beast”).  

“I think in the back of her mind, there's still a shoe to drop,” Ghafoori suggested. “Whether that is the town going ‘JK, you're actually not pregnant, but I'm so glad you got your hopes up,’ or it's that she is pregnant and it's a gift from the town.

From, which airs on MGM, takes place in a town that traps anyone who arrives. The residents struggle daily to survive the nightmares of the town, including the terrifying creatures that come out to hunt at night. Season two has brought with it a group of new residents from a bus that arrived from Grand Rapids, but also a bunch of new horrors as truths and origins of the town start to come to light.

In last week’s episode, Ellis (Corteon Moore) was accidentally stabbed and needed a blood transfusion from his father, the sheriff (Harold Perrineau). Having contracted some kind of strange disease from a man he met in the previous episode, Sheriff Boyd was reluctant to let Kristi (Chloe Van Landschoot), the town doctor, use his blood. However, in a surprising turn, he transferred his blood into one of the creatures (Jamie McGuire), which seemed to actually kill it, perhaps giving them a fighting chance against the them for once.

Friday, the new comedy Primo premiered on Amazon Freevee. The coming-of-age story is inspired by the life of creator and executive producer Shea Serrano and follows Rafa Gonzales (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio), a teen growing up and going to high school in in San Antonio, who lives with his single mother, Drea (Christina Vidal), and his five overbearing uncles, Jay (Jonathan Medina), Rollie (Johnny Rey Diaz), Mondo (Efrain Villa), Ryan (Carlos Santos), and Mike (Henri Esteve). The series also stars Stakiah Lynn Washington as Rafa’s love interest, Mya, and Nigel Siwabessy and Martin Martinez as his friends Harris and Miguel.

Recently, cast members Diaz-Silverio, Washington, Medina, Diaz, Villia, Siwabessy, and Martinez talked to SciFi Vision about working on their new series.

Today, the new reality series The Family Stallone premieres on Paramount Plus. The series stars the three-time Academy Award Nominee Sylvester Stallone and his wife and three daughters, Sophia, Sistine, and Scarlet. The series offers an inside look at the famous family for the first time.

SciFi Vision recently spoke to the Stallone family about creating the reality series. In the premiere episode, Sistine plays a prank on her father with the help of her family. SciFi Vision was curious about the best prank someone in the family played.

“I would say there's so many incredible pranks coming in the later episodes,” Stallone teased. “I think the one they pulled on me was the cruelest one of all. I don't know how I could top that one, except like, ‘Hey, come visit me. I'm in a funeral home,’ and I like pop up. Like, ‘Fooled you!’ I mean, how do you top that? But the best pranks are yet to come in the other episodes.” 

A reality show can get pretty personal, so SciFi Vision also questioned if that was something they ever worried about. For Scarlet, the youngest of the three daughters, it was at first. “I feel like a lot of information, how we’ve told our feelings, and stuff like that, I feel like was kind of outside my comfort zone at first,” she admitted to the site. “But then at the same time, you're, you have to think that you're speaking to a bunch of, you're talking to a bunch of people that can also relate to you as well. So you're not alone. So at first, it was scary, but then you get used to it and realize that it's normal problems.”

Today, The Tower returned to Britbox with an all-new season entitled The Tower: Death Message, which is based on the second novel in Kate London’s best-selling series. In the new season, rookie Police Constable Lizzie Adama (Tahirah Sharif) returns to duty, where she ends up in the middle of a domestic dispute with a family with a young daughter that she will fight to protect. Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant Sarah Collins (Gemma Whelan) has been transferred to Homicide, but it’s not what she expects when she not only finds that Detective Sergeant Steve Bradshaw (Jimmy Akingbola) has beat her to the division, but she is immediately saddled with a cold case of a missing schoolgirl. Collins, however, works hard to shed light on the investigation where others failed. Unexpectedly, she and Adama cross paths once again and are forced to work together.

Recently, the three stars of the series talked to SciFi Vision about the new season, including how the events at the tower are still affecting their characters, what’s to come in season two, and more.