• A bunch of bananas to the catering staff at Netflix’s showcase in Paris who wore orange prison suits throughout the two-day event. The cafe serving journalists was kitted out in the style of the prison canteen in Orange Is The New Black canteen, hence the orange suits – except for the catering manager, who was kitted out in a prison officer uniform. Monkey is thankful they didn’t pick Marco Polo as the theme. But could this talent for theming be a sign of things to come? When it was suggested to bosses Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos that Netflix could follow in Disney’s footsteps one day and leverage the brand into retail or leisure parks the pair did not dismiss the idea. “Ahh Netflixland”, said Sarandos turning to Hastings when it was suggested. Just don’t let it be run by Frank Underwood.
• Stars were out in abundance at the Netflix showcase. But Ashton Kutcher’s entrance to talk about his new sitcom The Ranch (described by the Guardian as “a plains version of Chekhov spliced with a Mel Brooks movie”) was slightly unusual. As he sat down he started flipping the bird towards the audience. However he hurriedly explained that it wasn’t at them but at the boss of Netflix. So that’s all right then.
• Monkey was intrigued to see that the former BBC4 controller and ITV factual chief Richard Klein (one of those let go by new director of television Kevin Lygo) is regarded as a front-runner for the job of BBC2 editor – the channel controller role having been abolished, causing Kim Shillinglaw’s exit. If he gets it, peppery “Little Richard” would at least nominally oversee Newsnight (although mighty BBC News regards it as part of its pan-BBC domain); a fascinating prospect, because the late-night show is seen by its rightwing enemies as a lefty enclave, whereas Klein famously told the Edinburgh International TV festival that he was “the only Tory in the BBC” and reaffirmed his Toryism more recently as an unusually grumpy lunch guest of the Broadcasting Press Guild.
• “No more tweets for ten days or ever! Feel like the luckiest AND happiest man in world,” tweeted Rupert Murdoch on 4 March as he headed off on honeymoon; and “ever” is starting to look a plausible possibility, since by the end of last week a biblical 40 days had passed without another mini-missive. Good news for the imperial officials who have had to trickily deal with the fallout from his many Twitter gaffes without excusing the loved-up octogenarian as elderly and out-of-touch; but perhaps less so for editors in Murdoch outlets looking for horse’s-mouth guidance (lest they make a blunder by wrongly second-guessing him) on such pending issues as which Republican candidate to endorse, when to declare that Cameron is toast, and whether Osborne or Johnson should get the empire’s support in the battle to succeed him.
• Little changes at GQ, not least in the criteria that govern the swaggering men’s monthly’s annual awards and power lists. In the May issue’s Most Connected Men list, for example, only one literary agent appears in the peculiar Publishing, broadcasting and media category (which also includes a tribute to “matinee idol looks” FT editor Lionel Barber so gushing it may be sarcastic): he is Ed Victor, 77, who happens to be the agent of GQ editor Dylan Jones. The equally tautologous Marketers, PRs and spinners category, meanwhile, has only four entries: one is Matthew Freud, whose clients include GQ publisher Condé Nast, and another is Simon Kelner, who moonlighted as GQ lunch correspondent while editing the Indy.
• Is the BBC trying to airbrush Cliff Richard out of pop history? Monkey only asks after seeing the first offerings in My Generation, which BBC Music bizarrely hypes as a “year-long landmark season” (can spring, or a landmark, last all year?). They began over the weekend and in this phase cover the 1955-65 period, when Richard was arguably the biggest, and certainly became the most enduring, of Britain’s early rock ’n’ roll stars. Yet he’s absent - neither subject nor contributor nor seen in clips - from this debut slate including 50s-focused programmes about or presented by Billy Fury, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and Tom Jones; and was missing too from Friday’s skiffle-to-Stones first part of the fan-led series People’s History of Pop, even though Cliff fans are known for being daffily devoted, and even though his backing band the Shadows were one of the acts celebrated. All very odd.
