Screenshot

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode take a look at the screen's morbid fascination with the serial killer genre - and its dicey ethics.

Mark starts by speaking to John McNaughton, director of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. First unveiled in 1986, but not released in the UK until the early nineties, due to the BBFC taking issue with the films realistic approach to on screen violence. Mark and John discuss the making of the film and why, 40 years on, it still terrifies.

Ellen then talks to film critic, Beatrice Loayza. They discuss the evolution of the genre and why female audiences have such a complicated relationship to the serial killer film.

Ellen also speaks to one of the most acclaimed and successful documentarians at work today, the Oscar nominated and award winning Liz Garbus. They discuss Liz’s victim orientated take on the serial killer film and why she takes issue with the label ‘true crime’.

Producer: Queenie Qureshi-Wales

The writer-director Billy Wilder was responsible for some of the most unforgettable stories in cinema history, from Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard, to Some Like It Hot and The Apartment. Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode celebrate his extraordinary career and ask - what was the Wilder touch?

Born in Sucha, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1906, Wilder began his career as a journalist in Vienna, before moving to Berlin in the 1920s. In 1933, as a Jewish man fleeing the Nazi regime, he left Europe for Hollywood, where he became one of the leading figures in the studio system.

Ellen talks to critic and film historian Pamela Hutchinson about Wilder’s early years as a journalist, his experience in Hollywood and some of his most significant works, from The Lost Weekend to A Foreign Affair.

Meanwhile, Mark speaks to two people who knew Wilder and his work firsthand.

First, he talks to actress Juliet Mills, who starred alongside Jack Lemmon in Wilder’s 1972 Italian-set romcom Avanti!

And then, Mark talks to German director Volker Schlöndorff, who got the chance to ask his cinematic hero, 'Billy, How Did You Do It?' in a series of conversations filmed in the late 1980s, and later broadcast by the BBC.

Producer: Jane Long

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode delve into the ubiquity of the care-experienced person (someone fostered, adopted, or in a children's home) on screen, from Superman to Annie. What can we learn from film and TV about the experience of care and the care system for young people?

Ellen speaks to poet, broadcaster and lifelong film fan Lemn Sissay, who grew up in the care system, about some of his favourite care-experienced characters, from Buddy the Elf to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

And Mark talks to actor and returning Screenshot guest Samantha Morton, who drew on her own childhood for her 2009 directorial feature debut The Unloved, about an 11-year-old girl moving through the care system.

Producer: Jane Long

Ellen and Mark investigate the relationship between graphic novels and film, asking if the graphic novel is an inherently cinematic artform.

Mark talks to critic and lifelong comics fan, Kambole Campbell about the history of comics and graphic novels on the silver screen. Mark then speaks to graphic novelist, Joff Winterhart, about his 2012 graphic novel Days of The Bagnold Summer, and its 2019 film adaptation directed by Simon Bird. The film stars Monica Dolan and Earl Cave as mother and son spending a bittersweet summer together. Mark talks to Joff about what it was like seeing his graphic novel on the big screen.

Ellen talks to multimedia artist Sook-Yin Lee, about her film adaptation of the graphic novel Paying For It. A comic that examines the breakdown of her relationship and written by no other then her ex partner, cartoonist Chester Brown.

Producer: Queenie Qureshi-Wales

As movie megastar Tom Cruise returns to our screens, and the world awaits the revelation of the next James Bond, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode examine the evolution of the leading man.

Critic and broadcaster Christina Newland talks to Mark about the changing face of the Hollywood heartthrob, from the silent era's 'Latin lover’, Rudolph Valentino, to contemporary stars Timothée Chalamet, Michael B. Jordan and Glen Powell.

Ellen speaks to acclaimed casting director Susan Shopmaker, whose eye for talent has helped shape the careers of some of the hottest actors working today, including Jeremy Allen White, Riz Ahmed and Callum Turner.

And Ellen also talks to a real-life leading man - actor Jason Isaacs. Jason’s many celebrated roles have included Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, an Emmy-nominated turn in The White Lotus, and playing the archetypal leading man Cary Grant in the biographical ITVX series Archie.

Producer: Jane Long

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode consider the role of natural history film and TV today. 

Ellen speaks to the wildlife cinematographer, Sophie Darlington ASC who has spent decades recording wildlife for primetime documentaries for the BBC, National Geographic, Netflix and beyond.

Meanwhile, Mark talks to Ed Sayers, director of recent feature film Super Nature, a global love letter to the natural world, filmed on Super 8. Mark also speaks to the Oscar-winning director of My Octopus Teacher, James Reed.

Producer: Mae-Li Evans

From Butch and Sundance to Maverick and Goose, Woody and Buzz to Frodo and Sam, male friendships have long been at the heart of many of our favourite screen stories. 

But in recent years, stories about male friendship seem to have taken on new significance. They’ve become a way of exploring emotional vulnerability and what it means to be a man in an era shaped by debates around the manosphere, toxic masculinity and the male loneliness epidemic.

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode revisit some of film and TV’s most memorable male pairings, and ask how today’s filmmakers are responding to what many describe as a crisis of masculinity. Ellen speaks to critic Matt Schimkowitz, staff writer at US website The AV Club, about how male friendships have featured in Hollywood movies, from classic comedy double acts like Laurel & Hardy and Abbott & Costello, to the chaotic camaraderie of the Jackass movies.

Mark speaks to writer-director Bruce Robinson, who mined his own very personal experiences of male friendship to create the cult 1987 film Withnail & I, about two out-of-work actors living in Camden Town at the end of the 1960s.

And Mark also speaks to Jack Rooke, creator of the Channel 4 comedy-drama Big Boys, which found fresh emotional depth in the familiar male ‘odd-couple’ dynamic. Drawing on Jack’s own time at university in the early 2010s, the series concluded in 2025 with a highly-acclaimed episode sensitively exploring the long shadow cast by suicide.

Producer: Jane Long

Screenshot makes contact with film and TV’s enduring fascination with UFOs and extraterrestrial life, from the Cold War paranoia of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the quietly unsettling recent TV series Pluribus.

Mark speaks to film critic Kim Newman about the history of aliens onscreen, from their arrival in 50s B Movies to The X-Files.

Ellen then talks to director John Sayles about his 80s film, Brother From Another Planet, and how the idea came to him in a dream. Ellen then talks to musician and alien movie obsessive, Mike Skinner, about his favourite alien films.

Producer: Queenie Qureshi-Wales

On the 40th anniversary of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode look at films that confine their action to a single day (and occasionally, night).

From the high-stakes urban odyssey of Martin Scorsese's After Hours to the quiet contemplation of Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7, what difference does a day make to cinema?

Ellen talks to screenwriter and novelist David Nicholls, whose international bestseller One Day followed a couple who meet on 15th July 1988, revisiting their lives on the same date every year for the next two decades.

She also talks to creative writing professor and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Kim Krizan, who co-wrote Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, the first two films in director Richard Linklater's time-constrained romantic drama trilogy.

Meanwhile, Mark speaks to writer-director and Ferris Bueller superfan Emma Seligman, whose breakthrough feature Shiva Baby wrought extraordinary tension and comedy from the course of a single afternoon.

And Mark also speaks to Danish-Norwegian director Joachim Trier. Now perhaps best known for Oscar nominees Sentimental Value and The Worst Person In The World, Trier made one of modern cinema's finest single-day films with 2011's Oslo, August 31st, which follows recovering heroin addict Anders over the course of a day and night.

Producer: Jane Long

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode revisit the decade that transformed Britain’s image around the world, focusing on how film and TV captured - and helped shape - the spirit of Swinging London, from Blow-Up to Alfie.

Mark speaks to the "Face of 1966", model and fashion icon Twiggy, about what she was watching as the sixties started to swing - and how closely the films of the era reflected the world she experienced.

Meanwhile, Ellen speaks to cultural historian Matthew Sweet about why Richard Lester and The Beatles proved such a turning point, and how films including The Sorcerers and Two Gentlemen Sharing offer a different perspective on the Swinging Sixties story.

And Mark also talks to the iconic actress Rita Tushingham, whose remarkable run of 1960s films - including The Knack... and How to Get It, A Taste of Honey and Smashing Time - mirrored British cinema's shift from gritty black-and-white social realism to vibrant pop culture.

Producer: Jane Long