A quarter of a century on from their beloved 90s sitcom, the pair are teaming up for a travel series where they meander around France. They discuss being an odd fit in ‘lad’ culture and why getting back together took so long

Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey haven’t appeared together on TV since Men Behaving Badly, the much-loved (perhaps very much-of-its time) sitcom in which they played Gary and Tony, two emotionally immature, beer-guzzling, lady-loving flatmates besotted with their upstairs neighbour Deborah (Leslie Ash). Their characters came at a time that the caring, sharing new man of the early 90s was being swiftly replaced by the “lad”, with the rise of Loaded magazine, Oasis and similarly minded TV shows such as Game On.

Since Men Behaving Badly ended in 1998, Clunes has gone on to star in 10 series of ITV’s cosy detective drama Doc Martin, and his own travel series, Islands of Britain. Morrissey, meanwhile, has been in everything from Skins to Neighbours and, of course, voiced kids’ favourite Bob the Builder. Now they’re finally back together on screen with their new travel show, Neil & Martin’s Bon Voyage. We caught up with the pair to discuss painting each other’s portraits, the youth of today, and who else they’d like to go on holiday with …

You name it, I can’t be near it. Even kissing my boyfriend is risky

I’ve been diagnosed with mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). It means your immune system is triggered too frequently and can cause anaphylaxis, so you can become allergic to a huge range of things. It’s a rare, incurable condition.

I’d had some minor problems from the age of two, and knew I was allergic to nuts. But a crucial turning point came when I was 18, in 2017. I was at university in Massachusetts and decided to grab a mint chocolate-chip ice-cream with friends. Before I knew it, I went into anaphylaxis, and my friends rushed me to hospital.

The author on being inspired by Hemingway, Joyce’s jokes, and the diary he loves to dip into

My earliest reading memory
The first novel I remember reading was called My Side of the Mountain. I’m not sure how old I was. Maybe nine. My memory of it is so intense, and yet so vague, that I had to look the book up to make sure that it actually exists, that I didn’t just dream it. It does exist, and it’s easy to understand why I liked it so much. It presents a vision of idealised solitude – a 12-year-old running away from society and civilisation and fending for himself in some American wilderness – that obviously spoke to something in me at the time.

The book that made me want to be a writer
It’s hard to answer this question because it implies some kind of single “road to Damascus” moment that didn’t happen. Having said that, I remember even today the impact that two short, simple novels had on me when I read them at the age of 11 or 12. They were George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and it’s probably at about that time that I started “wanting to be a writer”. I think that the desire to be a writer is essentially the desire to imitate, to recreate the effect that other people’s writing has had on you. In that sense all fiction is fan fiction.

Ariyan A Johnson stars as the back-talking, fourth wall-breaking high schooler who falls pregnant in Harris’s rough and ready drama

There’s an undimmed freshness, warmth and freewheeling energy in this 1992 indie gem, and its director Leslie Harris – whose career since has chiefly involved writing and teaching – deserves a far bigger presence in US film history. Ariyan A Johnson plays Chantel, a young Black American high schooler who lives with her stressed parents and two kid brothers in Brooklyn (in an era before its gentrification) and rides the subway’s IRT Eastern Parkway line.

Chantel is getting great grades in school, and plans to be a doctor, but is addicted to talking back to the teachers and won’t restrain herself, even when she’s sent to the principal’s office. Her relationship with her mother and father is just as fraught – and as far as dating goes, Chantel is not going to sell herself short. And when she finally has sex with her boyfriend Tyrone (Kevin Thigpen), dizzied by his ownership of a Jeep – so she doesn’t have to travel on the IRT – it ends in pregnancy and further disasters. Tyrone gets 500 bucks from his uncle to get her an abortion, but Chantel blows it all in one afternoon on a shopping spree with a friend, in deep denial about what is happening to her, a set piece of black-comic calamity that only intensifies the compassion you feel for her. And when the baby comes, a further existential crisis is in store.

Barry Jenkins’ stunning prequel to the 90s cartoon classic, and Stranger Things’s Sadie Sink stars in a punky musical about a guitar player who may be able to save the world

The idea of photorealistic lions speaking English is a bit weird, but Disney’s remake juggernaut rolls on with a prequel to the reboot of the animated musical. Lin-Manuel Miranda takes over from Elton John in the song department, while Barry Jenkins, creator of Oscar-winning arthouse gem Moonlight , is an intriguing choice to direct this child-friendly origin story for Simba’s dad and evil uncle Scar – AKA Taka (Kelvin J Harrison). Young orphan Mufasa (voiced by Aaron Pierre) is adopted by Taka’s pride but when a gang of white lions attack, the brothers flee. They encounter a lioness Sarabi (Tiffany Boone) and her possibly familiar mandrill and hornbill pals, with danger and betrayal on the cards. Simon Wardell
Wednesday 26 March, Disney+

(15 Love)
Of a piece with the off-kilter pop of Astrid Sonne and Tirzah, Raisa K builds a striking debut out of hazy melodies, unaffected vocals and observations of everyday love

In recent years, there’s been a real appetite for a certain strain of hazy, quietly off-kilter pop made by classically trained musicians who favour a more DIY approach. Think Astrid Sonne , ML Buch or Tirzah , all of whom have put out records that are simultaneously cosy and jarring. Affectionately, the debut album by Raisa K , has a similar blueprint: simple melodies, unaffected vocals and scrappy production.

The formula makes sense: K is a longstanding member of the pop-not-pop group Good Sad Happy Bad, and the record enlists some of the key players from that world: bandmates Marc Pell and Mica Levi (also Tirzah’s producer) plus friend and collaborator Coby Sey. Here K takes the lead, exploring the mundanity of love, trust and tension with unembellished candour. The lyrics are unshowy – the kind of nonchalant sentiment you might jot down in your Notes app.

The follow-up to Detransition, Baby is a collection of short works ranging from dystopia to romance that delight in complicating identity politics

When Detransition, Baby hit the shelves in 2021, its success took readers on both sides of the Atlantic by surprise. Longlisted for the Women’s prize and selected as one of the New York Times 100 best books of the 21st century, Torrey Peters’s debut novel was among the titles that defined the literary landscape of the Covid-19 pandemic. Finding herself in the crosshairs of a mounting culture war, Peters became one of the world’s best known trans writers, seemingly overnight.

Of course, this isn’t the full picture. Before her international breakthrough, Peters had self-published two novellas, The Masker and Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, shifting enough copies for mainstream publishers to take an interest. Both appear in Stag Dance, along with two pieces written either side of Detransition, Baby: the title story and The Chaser. They make up an ambitious compendium of a decade in writing.

Disney’s latest live-action adventure has been at the centre of various controversies over casting, alleged feuds and delays

Once upon a time, Disney made a business decision: if it was going to adapt its library of animated movies into live-action features (with merch and theme park tie-ins galore), it should add Snow White to the pipeline. The 1937 classic – the company’s first full-length animated feature ever, its first crack at a veritable goldmine of princess IP – would follow the modernizations (and attendant revisions) of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, released in 2015 and 2017, respectively. It was only logical, Snow White being one of its most recognizable and brand-defining characters. The company began developing a live-action feature in 2016, in the heady first wave of its IP era.

Nine years later, Snow White has finally made it the big screen , but the journey has been anything but a fairy tale. The remake has been a saga of delays, culture war flashpoints and controversies, some earned and much not. The new Snow White has managed the difficult feat of being a children’s movie that irritates both ends of the political spectrum at once, from rightwing nuts crying “woke” over the casting of Rachel Zegler, an American actor of Colombian descent, to pro-Palestine advocates upset over the presence of Israeli actor and IDF supporter Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen. And that’s not even getting to the obvious and nagging issue of the titular seven dwarves.

After almost 60 years in the US, the actor wants to quit the country. She talks about ‘hooligans’ in the White House – and her new silent film role in Four Mothers

Fionnula Flanagan, the veteran Irish actor, has been a star of stage and screen for more than six decades, earning Tony nominations for her theatre work, a nod from the Screen Actors Guild for Waking Ned, a Saturn award for The Others and a voice acting trophy for Song of the Sea – as well as accolades for the cult TV series Lost.

This means she has spent a lot of time in the US – in fact, she’s lived there since 1968. The home she shared in the Hollywood Hills with her late husband, Garrett O’Connor, was well known for its parties – despite O’Connor, an eminent psychiatrist, being the first president of the Betty Ford Institute.