Are the best memes, GIFs and posts
on social media passing you by? Fear
not, because in E4’s topical comedy,
Savage Socials, Rob Beckett will be
sifting through Instagram, Facebook,
Twitter and more to locate – and often
lampoon – the week’s finest, funniest
and downright daftest content.
Here, Beckett, 33, gives us the
lowdown on his new show...How would you describe S a v a g e
Socials? It’s me wading through all
the rubbish on social media and
finding the best and worst of it. We
take the mickey out of social media
as a whole. It’s going to be fun.What kind of posts will you
showcase? We will be celebrating
celebs and also winding them up.
It’s also going to be really reactive.
We’ll use something like Jacob
Rees-Mogg lying down in Parliament
as a jumping-off point.How will you keep it as topical
as possible? We will record it very
last-minute. It has to be like that
because social media moves so fast.
That egg photo that got more likeson Instagram than Kylie Jenner was
about six months ago but it feels like
it happened in 1987 and the Ice
Bucket Challenge feels prehistoric,
so you have to be quick or people
will have seen it and be bored.Is social media a good thing or a
bad thing? I love it and it’s a great
way to communicate. But it shows
the best and worst of humanity. You
can see a post on there reuniting a
little girl with her teddy, but then you
get horrendously angry people, too.What kind of posts or clips do
you get obsessed with? Boxing
interviews on YouTube. I’m a big
boxing fan, so I go down a rabbit
hole of watching boxing stuff and,
before you know it, you’re watching
a whale jump out of the water and
you don’t know how you got there.Have you had any embarrassing
blunders on social media
yourself? No, I’ve lost all shame
from doing comedy. I don’t feel
embarrassed any more. Also, I post
all the worst pictures of me, so
there’s nothing to fear.It’s 10 years since you started in
comedy. How does that feel? I try
not to think about it because it blows
your head a bit. I’ll wait until I’m old
and grey and with my grandkids.
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Rob Beckett’s
Savage Socials
Sunday, E4 HD, 10pm
flashbacks of
what happened on
the Western Front, he’s now a bus
conductor and pacifist who’s very
much against the
approaching war.
‘Douglas has two
children in their
late teens and he’s
desperate to stop
them experiencing
the horrors of war,’
reveals Bean. ‘He’s
particularly close to
Lois and sees that
she has hopes and dreams for the
future – as he did. He’s terrified of
her suffering the same fate.’
Because of his daughter’s
romance, Douglas is thrown
together with Harry’s snobbish
mother Robina.
‘He’s a working-class guy and
she’s posh, so they start out in polar
positions and have no time for
each other. But slowly they build
a friendship,’ says Bean. ‘Working
with Lesley was a real joy and
she’s marvellous in the role.’CHALLENGING ROLE
To play his traumatised character,
the actor drew on his experiences
starring as military man Richard
Sharpe in ITV’s 1990s dramas
about the Peninsular Wars.
‘When we filmed Sharpe, we
had ex-servicemen who’d been in
the Falklands War and lost arms orlegs portraying soldiers,’ he recalls.
‘I remembered the conversations
I’d had with those brave chaps and
also drew on traumatic experiences
I’ve had in my own life. Hopefully
that works on screen.’
After recent roles in Curfew
and The Oath, the Sheffield-born
star, who turned 60 in April, was
drawn to World on Fire because
of its sweeping range.
‘It shows that it wasn’t just Britain
that was affected by the war,’ he says.
‘Everyone in Europe came together
to fight off Hitler. These countries
pulled together to retrieve a
situation that looked like it was
going to be lost. The
way Peter Bowker
has threaded these
stories and love
affairs together
is fantastic.’FAMILY TIES
Bean has his own
connection to World
War Two. His
grandfather was in the Royal Navy
and saw action in the Barents Sea.
‘When he came back he was
quite shaky,’ he says. ‘He drank a
lot and always seemed on edge,
which must have been difficult for
my dad. It took him some time to
become confident again.’
The former Game of Thrones star
has suffered many on-screen deaths
during his career, and he admits
he was curious to see if Douglas
survives to the end of the series.
‘The first thing I did was to skip
to the end of the script to see if I was
still in the final episode,’ he laughs.
‘People always ask what my
favourite screen death is and it’s
definitely Boromir in The Lord of
the Rings. His death was very
triumphant and heroic. It went
on for ever because it was in slow
motion. I was very happy with that- much better than a quick death!’
Rob Beckett sends up the world of
social media in a new comedy series
Love blossoms for Kasia(Zofia Wichlacz) and Harry
j u s t a s wa r b r e a k s o u tJacob Rees-Mogg
on social media?
Rob Beckett
will find youThe horrors of a
world at war‘The first thing
I did was check
if I was in the
final episode’
SEAN BEAN
Rob goes
viral
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