Empire UK

129

Gotham: Season 1

★★

FROMNOW/CERT. 15

➞This pre-Batman Gotham City crime

drama dragged early on when it stacked

its deck with too-familiar rogues and

thudding foreshadowing. It improves

later in the season by veering from the

canon — Barbara Gordon has a radical

path while Jada Pinkett Smith’s Fish

Mooney is a stand-out — but it’s a long

slog for too little reward.HOH

Outlander: Season 1

★★★

FROMNOW/CERT. 18

➞Ronald D. Moore offers a different

kind of (almost) sci-fi in Outlander where

a World War II-era nurse finds herself

back in Jacobite Scotland. Torn from

the pages of Diana Gabaldon’s bodice-

rippers it’s beautifully shot and solidly

acted but slaloms from soppy to

shocking and a languid pace stops it

ever becoming a compulsive watch.JD

Empire: Season 1

★★★★

FROMNOW/CERT. 15

➞By many reasonable standards this

is tosh. The dramas of a warring family

running a record company include such

soap classics as secret babies terminal

illness murder and a variety of sexual

affairs. Yet it’s so well-acted particularly

by a gale-force Taraji P. Henson as

matriarch Cookie that its melodrama

becomes positively Shakespearean.OR

ALSOOUT
( 2008 ) fi lm of King Lear and I’ve
love to have a go at that again. I’m
old enough now to understand the
guy. Ian could play the fool.

Ian did you get to hear some of
Anthony’s fabled impressions?
McKellen: Oh he’d do all sorts. It might
be his uncle or Alec Guinness or Alan
Badel. I’ve heard he does me but he
didn’t do it. You don’t go up to another
actor and imitate them. That’s not on.
Hopkins: I actually can’t do Ian. I know
actors who can — Gary Oldman Ken
Branagh — but maybe I’m too busy
laughing with Ian to study him. By the
way Gary Oldman used to leave me
voicemails as me. I thought “Who the
hell is that?” I fi nally worked out it was
him. It sounded more like Richard
Burton anyway.
McKellen: I can do a few people — I’m
quite proud of my Patrick Stewart — but
I’m no good at accents. Anthony is very
musical which I’m sure has something
to do with it. He plays the piano. He
composes. He paints. He doesn’t cook
at least. I don’t think he can boil an egg.
Hopkins: That’s true! About the only
thing I can cook is gravy. I add
everything to it — diesel oil everything.
Ian is a good cook but he never eats.
He’d sit there with his cup of Marmite
and I’d bring him pieces of cheese.
He just looked at me. He couldn’t
fi gure me out.
McKellen: I’m trying to watch my
weight. And Marmite is delightful.
I recommend it highly.

Will you stay in touch?
McKellen: I was just in Los Angeles
and we were going to have breakfast
together but he had some fl ooding.
They get very nervous in California
when it rains. He was worried his
house would slide away.
Hopkins: I live in Malibu and suddenly
out of the sky came this fl ood. Nothing
was damaged but it was uncommonly
wet and the gate wouldn’t open. So I had
to text him to say I couldn’t make it. But
I’d love to keep up with him. It’s good to
have a friend like Ian.
McKellen: To be working right up
close with him was a thrill. The extra
joy was that he likes nothing more
than chatting and reminiscing and
listening to stories. Although on the
whole you don’t bother telling a story
if Anthony Hopkins is in the room.
He’s much better at it.

THE DRESSER AIRS ON BBC TWO IN
LATE OCTOBER. r45*

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