In this exclusive interview, Yaina Samuels (Founder & Director of NuHi Training Ltd a social enterprise which offers bespoke education and training workshops for people with substance misuse problems) speaks to the Director of Get the Chance about her background, the challenges presented in Lockdown. Her love of gardening and lack of black presenters in the media. Yaina also discuss where she thinks arts funding should be focused.

Hi Yaina great to meet you, can you give our readers some background information on yourself please?

A few years ago, a friend once described me as a disruptive influencer. I thought at the time it was a bad thing. Reminded me of school, my end of term reports (for lessons that I didn’t like/couldn’t get my head around) always read “Yaina is a disruptive influence in the classroom”. That was then and this is now! For me being described as a disruptive influencer is very much a good thing. I’ve decided to also add the word innovator as it aligns well with the person that I am today. I consider myself to be a ‘disruptive innovative influencer’ seen through my life experiences, the work that I do and the things that I am passionate about

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During Lockdown you have been sharing updates on work in your garden. Have you always been interested in gardening?

If it wasn’t for gardening, my emotional health and wellbeing would have taken a steep nosedive during lockdown. I am the type of person that likes to be actively involved in doing something. Living alone, being in lockdown, working from home on my laptop, was driving me nuts. I had to sort my head out and fast.

My passion stemmed from my early childhood experiences of visiting extended family who were keen gardeners. As a young child I loved visiting my grandmother’s house in West Close, in the Docks. She had a long path to the front door and there were always pretty coloured flowers and plants filling the borders, they smelt wonderful to my little nostrils.

Another experience: visiting my cousins in Ely meant that I would get to see what uncle Les was growing on his garden veg plot. He spent hours in the back garden, tending his plants, tying up canes for his runner beans, and weeding the ground. When we had a Sunday roast dinner at my uncle’s house, the vegetables were always freshly pick from his garden that same morning.

From the age of nine we moved to a housing estate in Newport we were fortunate enough to be housed directly opposite miles and miles of green fields. For years I would watch the farmer from my bedroom window ploughing, planting and harvesting his crops. In my teens, to earn pocket money, I worked at a local farm at the weekend picking blackcurrants.

You use lots of recycled materials in your garden projects, where do you get them from and which are you most pleased with?

I get my recycled materials such as wood and pallets from skips by the side of the road. I can’t drive past a pallet without stopping and putting it in the car. I’m obsessed with pallets; I go to bed at night watching YouTube tutorials of creative things to make with pallets. Ideas come to me when I’m sleeping, next morning I can’t wait to get out of bed to get started.

I got into the habit of carrying my jigsaw tool with me as I quickly came to realise that pallets come in different shapes and sizes and some need cutting to fit into my small car. Friends who follow me on social media have also messaged me to offer me pallets.

You have also been growing your vegetables, which you have had to defend from garden predators! Have you managed to save any veg and made any nice meals?

Growing veggies brings forth both pain and joy. For the first few weeks I had a nice harvest of rocket lettuce, chives, mint, rosemary, parsley, garlic, and strawberries. So far, I’ve made several dishes of tabbouleh salad – main ingredients parsley and mint. I shared much of my rocket and mint with my lovely neighbours. My cucumbers, cabbage and courgettes are growing slowly but surely, as I put them in a raised bed. However, my lettuce has been totally annihilated by the invisible slugs that come and go in the night, the only evidence being their slimy silvery trail.

There are very few black gardeners in the media, what can be done to increase representation and support people into considering this as a career path or as a pastime?

My biggest passion has always been plants, gardening and nature. Up until last year I had never seen a black woman garden presenter on TV, I was a follower of Charlie Dimmock, that’s all we had. Imagine my joy when I first saw Flo Headlam on Gardeners World in 2017, about time too! Then I remember Juliet Sargeant a black garden designer winning gold at the Chelsea Flower show in 2016 for her creative expression of modern-day slavery.

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The black gardeners that I have mentioned above are from over the bridge in England. I would love to see Wales cultivate and nurture our very own homegrown black gardeners – Wales is missing out on so much by not embracing this unique and diverse talent.

Get the Chance supports the public to access and respond to arts activity, if you were able to fund an area of the arts what would this be and why?

If I were able to fund an area of arts I would most definitely choose presenting or hosting. We need more black people presenting topical issues that relate to all. The media is a very powerful tool which is, all too often, used to spread hate and promote divisiveness in relation to black people. As a black woman born in Cardiff, with strong Sierra Leone roots, I feel hopeful that change is finally coming on a global scale. Such a shame that it took the death of George Floyd to get us to where we are now.

During Lockdown a range of arts and third sector organisations and individuals are now working online or finding new ways to reach out to audiences. Have you seen any particularly good examples of this way of working that you would like to highlight?

For me Zoom conferencing has all the components needed for running a successful activity online, engaging with people who may not normally attend such events. Also allowing people to join and just listen without having to walk into a room full of people, which to many community members, is a pretty daunting experience.

The added bonus of Zoom is the break out room facility where a large group can be broken into smaller groups for discussion. I feel that online engagement is the future. Being able to access a service or event without leaving the home will enable far more people to participate and get their voices heard in relation to issues that affect them and their communities.

Thanks for your time Yaina

[This review contains spoilers for Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker]

Imagine, if you will, that the ‘Scavenger Rey has royal lineage’ twist had been the plan from the beginning of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and not just The Rise of Skywalker’s tacked-on cynical move to appease sexist fanboys? If you want to know how to do that plot properly, look no further than Vagrant Queen, Syfy’s latest swashbuckling series set in a galaxy far, far away.

Co-produced with Blue Ice Pictures, Vagrant Queen is that rarest of gems: an under-the-radar show that truly deserves the spotlight. Created by Jem Garrard and based on the Vault comic book series of the same name by Magdalene Visaggio and Jason Smith, the series stars Adriyan Rae as Elida, a scavenger on a desert planet who has long been running from her secret past. Elida, aka Eldaya El-Fayer, was once the child-queen of Arriopa, a sprawling celestial empire in another galaxy (not ours), until she was deposed by a band of revolutionaries led by Commander Lazaro (Paul du Toit) who shot Elida’s mother (Bonnie Mbuli) in front of her. Over a decade after she went into hiding, news that her mother may be alive after all leads Elida to team up with the roguish Isaac (Tim Rozon) and the effervescent Amae (Alex McGregor) on a hazardous quest to learn the truth and overthrow the corrupt government that stole everything from her.

Space train! Karaoke death battle! Spaceship murder mystery! What more could you possibly want from a show? In its DNA is the antipodean oddness of Farscape, Mad Max, and Thor: Ragnarok, coupled with a Mystery Men-style wackiness that ticked every one of my boxes. Colourful, campy and cool, it’s a delightfully zany mishmash of all your sci-fi faves – Star Wars, Killjoys, Firefly, Guardians of the Galaxy – but with a tone and style that’s completely its own. Whilst a lot of low budget sci-fi restricts its setting to a single spaceship and a handful of samey locales, Vagrant Queen is filmed in Cape Town, South Africa, and takes its audience to a smorgasbord of smorgasbord of distinct, memorable and diverse locations, making it a genuine delight to see where the characters will go next. The series isn’t afraid to end a fight scene with a cheesy pun or a pop culture reference, but it’s all done with a winking self-awareness that is so refreshing in our recent glut of grimdark genre fiction. In a landscape of po-faced programming, Vagrant Queen was bright, breezy breath of fresh air that didn’t take itself too seriously. My kingdom for a bit of light entertainment!

Showrunner Jem Garrard has assembled a multi-talented team of brilliant women both in front of and behind the camera – not only is every episode written and directed by women, Vagrant Queen’s lead character Elida is a Black queer woman who is wonderfully complex and multi-faceted: impulsive, kind, cynical, loyal, occasionally cavalier, and delightfully unafraid of punctuating a punch with a dorky pun, Elida is reluctantly heroic and compulsively likable. Adriyan Rae is utterly magnetic in the role, moving effortlessly between comedy, drama and action – by the end of the show you’ll want to go for a drink with her and take down a totalitarian government with her! Rae, a multi-talented Renaissance woman (she was a scientist before becoming an actor, singer and model) with recent credits in Atlanta and Burning Sands, is definitely one to watch.

Although Elida starts out as something of a lone wolf, she quickly assembles a motley crew in her quest comprising of Isaac Stelling (Tim Rozon) and Amae Rali (Alex McGregor). Isaac is more Jack Sparrow than Han Solo, haplessly selfish and frustratingly self-centred, but Rozon (of Wynonna Earp and Schitt’s Creek fame) manages to make the character relentlessly endearing in spite of his many transgressions. Amae is a whip-smart, endlessly kind and joyously optimistic engineer who is probably the only reason Elida and Isaac haven’t killed each other yet. I wish we’d seen more of Amae’s bartender brother Chaz (Steven John Ward), but their bond was excellently sketched even in the brief time they shared the screen. McGregor is utterly charming in the role, and it’s easy to see why she and Elida fall for each other.

To see a healthy, loving and well-written queer romance in any show is something to celebrate, especially in an era in which showrunners are more than happy to bury its gays (*cough* The 100 *cough*) or string its audience along with the promise of an LGBTQ+ love story while never intending to make it canon (looking at you, Teen Wolf). Representation in Vagrant Queen is straightforward and unfettered right out of the gate: we first meet Amae in bed with another woman, and often see her flirting with other women throughout the show. The sweet, sparkling chemistry between Rae and McGregor is right there in their first interaction, and the bond they strike up through various (mis)adventures makes for both a breathlessly swoony and emotionally healthy romance – they support each other, trust each other, listen to each other, protect each other, and truly care about each other as friends first and (potential) lovers second. Not only is this a particularly brilliant queer romance, it’s just a gorgeously written romance full stop, one which doesn’t function solely on angst for angst’s sake (*ahem* Vampire Diaries).

The show’s fun, feminist and cheekily badass vibe has shades of Lost Girl and Wynona Earp, but sometimes it goes full-on Saw – and the character responsible for most of the bloodshed is the meticulously unhinged Commander Ori Lazaro (Paul du Toit). If you were to mash together Joaquin Phoenix’s roles as Emperor Commodus and Johnny Cash with a pot of hair gel and a pair of elf ears, you’d get Commander Lazaro. Du Toit may be having the most fun of the entire cast, which is really saying something – and it’s easy to see why. Lazaro is a completely looney tune; a preening sadist with both a raging superiority streak and an inferiority complex (a dangerous combination). This is a galaxy which feels genuinely dangerous, especially for our three ramshackle heroes, and it’s largely down to du Toit’s unnervingly psychotic performance.

My only real point of contention is that I think the show is often too gory for its own good. Don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of gore – but it has to fit the tone of its story. The campy ultraviolence of Punisher: War Zone matched its hyperbolically brutal tone; the casual carnage in Deadpool is an essential part of its cynical metatextuality. Vagrant Queen’s not afraid to Go There™ – and that’s commendable, but its gore often feels disturbing for the sake of it – there are things that Lazaro compels lackeys and prisoners to do to themselves that will haunt me for a long time, and while it reinforced his credentials as a worthy villain, it often feels gratuitous and unnecessary given the otherwise tongue in cheek tone. At the same time, it’s commendable of the show to have the courage of its convictions and go to some truly dark places…

…Because this is a show which is 100% itself. It’s refreshingly proud of its strangeness, and its scrappy, unpolished charm is a real draw in an age of by-the-numbers blockbusters. This is a show that cares. It cares so deeply – about its characters, its story, its world, and its audience. It knows when to be goofy, when to be cool, and when to be emotional. Everyone on this show is giving it their all, from the hapless loyalists to the Republic guards (essentially Goth Stormtroopers) who all have distinct, quirky personalities. One particular standout is Thembalethu Ntuli who plays Nim, a canine-faced humanoid who steals any scene he’s in and is in too few of them. Ntuli’s performance is so good he makes you forget that the CGI on his face is little more a marginally enhanced Snapchat filter.

There is a genuine warmth and sincerity infused in every frame – and shows with a low budget and a big heart are my kryptonite. It’s clearly having a ball and wants you to join in with the fun. It’s a terrible shame that Syfy thoughtlessly cut the party short when it was only just beginning – and also a huge mistake for a channel with the least inspiring line-up of shows that don’t come close to filling the void left behind by Vagrant Queen. It could have been their new Killjoys – but instead, with Van Helsing ending and Wynonna Earp as their sole remaining draw, most of their remaining content is composed of rookie shows in their first seasons – like Vagrant Queen, which had so much potential that I can only hope another network has the guts to put their faith in.

With very few exceptions, it is unwise to judge a series on its first season alone. They need time to breathe, to experiment, to play, until they’ve settled into a tone. Cancelling a series after one season is like throwing a first draft in the bin – and Vagrant Queen, like many shows cut down before their time, got better and better with every episode. There’s a common misconception that a pilot has to hook you for a show to be worth investing in. I’ve been guilty of switching off a show mid-premiere, only to give it another try and become involved. Killjoys’ first season was shaky but promising. The Expanse’s first episode was almost unwatchable, but a mid-season turn got viewers hooked. Dark Matter had an intriguing pitch but its slow burn approach to character and plot rewarded viewers by the end of its first season. Season one is where you work out your tone; season two is where the story you want to tell truly begins. You need to give a series the time and space to find its footing and build its audience.

For my part, I feel that every series should be automatically locked in for a first and second season when a network green lights them – a single season is just a graveyard of missed opportunities otherwise. There seems to be an increasing aversion to investing in shows which aren’t an immediate worldwide sensation. Networks are giving hope and opportunity to creators without actually giving them a chance to build new worlds with long-lasting mileage. It seems that if a series isn’t an instant hit, it’s binned – and there’s a trend of co-productions not lasting long at Syfy (I’ve never got over them cancelling Dark Matter three seasons into a five-season plan). Haven’t networks learned from Firefly that cutting down a promising show before it’s even hit its stride is a mistake in the long run?

After The Rise of Skywalker crushed my love for Star Wars into a fine pulp, Vagrant Queen was like the fix-it fic I desperately needed. Knowingly campy, pulpy fun with fantastic costumes, striking makeup design, a goofily psychedelic tone and technicolour palette that makes it one of the most distinctive and innovative shows on TV right now, Vagrant Queen is a neon-splashed, gung-ho space adventure that has an enormous amount of fun and wants you to bring you along for the ride.

Sign the petition to #SaveVagrantQueen and stream the series on Syfy.com.

The Get the Chance team share some of their favourite binge-watch series they have been enjoying during Lockdown. First up Kevin Johnson with Justified.

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Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens shoots a hitman while both are sitting in a Miami rooftop bar, the latest of many such incidents. Although the shooting is considered ‘justified’ by the authorities, as a punishment he is reassigned to his home state of Kentucky, a move he considers a demotion. There he’s forced to face his past, including his ex-wife Winona (for whom he still has feelings), his estranged criminal father Arlo (for whom he doesn’t), and his old friend, and crime family kingpin, Boyd Crowder (for whom?).

While ostensibly a crime show, Justified is also a modern take on the western, as well as a psychological drama. The characters are rarely either completely good or bad, with relatives and friends on both sides of the law. They’re living in a state that is poor, jobs are scarce but drugs aren’t, and corruption is rife. To show how morally confused things are, in one story Loretta, a teenage girl, outwits a sexual predator, who is an enforcer for the crime family that also employ her & her father to grow cannabis for them.

An excellent cast is well-served by superb writing that not only conveys believable characters, but has a rich vein of laconic wit running through it. At one point Raylan, after warning a criminal about trying to kill him, punches him to the floor, drops a bullet on his chest, and remarks “next one’s coming faster”. To a snitch too scared of another criminal to talk, he says “You think you’re scared of him? You got no idea what you can expect from me.”

Nor is he the only one to be given good dialogue. About to be shot by a member of the Bennett clan over a family feud, he’s told ominously “this bullet’s been on its way for 20 years.”.

https://youtu.be/AbiMQeWBHCw

While Raylan is terse, Boyd Crowder is all Southern charm, whether he’s trying to relate to someone or about to shoot a rival criminal. There’s a bond between the two from when they worked in the mines:”we dug coal and drank beer together”, as Raylan puts it. He joined the Marshals and Boyd enlisted in the army and served in Iraq, both trying to get away. Both failed.

Despite being the ‘hero’, Raylan is actually a tragic figure, often his own worst enemy. His boss Art, a father-figure to him, driven to exasperation by his actions says at one point “you’re a great lawman but a lousy Marshal”. Brooks, a black female Marshal, also tells him that he wouldn’t get away with such behaviour if he weren’t white, male, and handsome, which given that this was said in 2013 was a little ahead of its time.

There are also many layers to the storyline, and events often take place without Raylan’s participation or knowledge. One of the best scenes is in a diner where his Aunt Helen is meeting with Mags, the head of the Bennett family. What seems like a simple chat over a coffee is actually a parlay between the matriarchs of two warring families, both trying to negotiate a peace treaty before there is more bloodshed. It’s subtle, but almost Shakespearean in its execution.

Each series also features a new antagonist, as well as recurring characters, and it helps to keep the show fresh. The scope also varies from Kentucky to Florida to California, as well as Mexico, which feature memorable figures who may or may not turn up again.

Despite it being a great series overall, I was disappointed that the characters of Tim Gutterson, a former army Ranger, & Rachel Brooks, a black female Marshal, colleagues of Raylan’s, are not really developed over six series, despite both being fascinating. But with so many others in the cast, that’s understandable.

The show was based on an Elmore Leonard novel, who got the idea for it after meeting a young man at a book convention in Amarillo, Texas. When finding out that the man’s name was Raylan, Leonard asked him, “How would you like to be the star of my next book?”.

One more thing, Raylan always wears a white hat. Whether this is a tongue-in-cheek reference to him being the hero, I don’t know. As he says himself when asked about it: “I tried it on and it fit”.

If you’re looking for a good drama with plenty of action, but also one with a lot more depth than your average shoot-em-up, this is the show for you.

Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams star as a quirky Icelandic musical duo who fail their way to the top in representing their nation at the Eurovision Song Contest.

Eurovision is, at its heart, a celebration of togetherness; it’s essentially a festival of campy delights that annually gathers the wondrous and the weird together on a single stage. It’s so singularly, spectacularly strange that I’m not surprised to hear that Will Ferrell of all people is a fan. The man loves to sing! He sings in practically all of his movies, like this one, this one, this genuine belter from Casa de Mi Padre and of course this classic. He even sang at the Oscars – twice!

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga brings two of these loves together in a joyous ode to being completely and defiantly true to yourself. Directed by David Dobkin, the film follows Lars Erickssong (Will Ferrell), a lovably unlucky wannabe-musician who dreams of nothing but winning the Eurovision Song Contest. The only support from his small-town home of Húsavík comes in the form of his long-suffering bestie and Fire Saga bandmate Sigrit Ericksdottir (Rachel McAdams), who has been in love with the oblivious Lars since they were children. Through a series of loopholes, freak accidents and government wrangling, the unlikely duo finds themselves representing their nation in the contest.

Ferrell could play the lovable man-child archetype in his sleep, and in his last few films he seems to have done just that – Daddy’s Home 2, Get Hard and Holmes & Watson all missed the mark in so many ways – but here he’s on top form (aided in no small part by an absolutely fantastic wig). Rachel McAdams shines once again in a comedic role after her hilarious turn in Game Night, and they have real chemistry – even if the film veers into fantasy by suggesting that McAdams and Ferrell could have grown up together or that she would be the one pining for him and not the other way around. Fire Saga is not quite a musical, not quite a pastiche, but its songs are enjoyable across the board. I liked that neither Lars nor Sigrit are inept musicians – the lavish music video for the extremely catchy ‘Volcano Man’ may exist only in their dreams (for now), but their songs are genuinely excellent, from the foot-tapping ‘Double Trouble’ to the sweeping ballad ‘Húsavík’.

The highlight of the whole thing is Dan Stevens having the time of his life as Alexander Lemtov, an ostentatious singer representing Russia in the contest. Not to spoil the film, but you should absolutely know in advance that there is a scene in which Stevens, wearing a gold-brocade suit and a Careless Whisper-era George Michael wig, sings a song called ‘Lion of Love’ while flanked by a group of scantily-clad hunks. You owe it to yourself to watch that in HD.

A starry medley featuring a multitude of Eurovision winners (I spotted Conchita Wurst and Alexander Rybak) is the cherry on top of a loving homage to the hilarity and exuberance of the contest. It compelled me to revisit my Eurovision favourites of yore – Only Teardrops, Running Scared, Hard Rock Hallelujah and Fairytale – and though nothing could ever beat Ukraine’s entry from 2007, Ferrell has distilled the magic of what makes a classic Eurovision act, capturing the campy charm in a way that only a superfan could.

Sometimes Ferrell’s comedies veer into the mean-spirited (Get Hard, Anchorman, Daddy’s Home) – that’s not the case here. Instead, the film affectionately teases a show which is already acutely self-aware, and gloriously proud, of its quirks. In terms of Ferrell’s filmography, it’s his most successful blend of good comedy and genuine emotional warmth since 2003’s Elf (although I have a place in my heart for both The Other Guys and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, you would be hard-pressed to call either film particularly warm-hearted).

Although it’s a shame we won’t get to witness Daði Freyr win the top spot with the immeasurably catchy ‘Think About Things’ due to the COVID-19 pandemic cancelling this year’s contest, Netflix’s endearing, fun tribute is a loving send-up of the things which make Eurovision bizarre and brilliant in equal measure. It may not be for everyone, but for me it’s the best film released in lockdown so far, and a welcome slice of escapist fun.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is currently streaming on Netflix.

The new BBC 1 TV series Talking Heads brings back a personal memory of Dame Thora Hird, DBE, to Barbara Michaels

If any of you were fortunate enough to have seen Thora Hird in Cream Cracker Under the Settee, one of Alan Bennet’s witty and often heart-breaking monologues in the series, Talking Heads,  premiered back in 1988,  you will fully understand why I rank meeting and interviewing Thora Hird as one of the high spots of my career.  I interviewed Thora at home in her London flat, with her husband Jimmy Scott pottering around making us coffee in the kitchen.

Forward to 1994. The next time I met her was when I sat next to her at a long prearranged gala performance hosted by Melvyn Bragg, at which she was the guest of honour.  Sadly, it was not long after Jimmy, to whom she was married for 57 years, had died.  In the darkened auditorium she wept silently, with tears coursing down her cheeks.  Widowed myself just over two years previously, I understood only too well what she was feeling.

But wonderful trouper that she was, when the spotlight shone on her (at least she was spared having to walk on stage) she stood up, all traces of the tears gone, and made a speech without a wobble in her voice. 

It was her audience who choked back their tears then.

Since that day, there has been a hugely prestigious list of actresses including Dame Eileen Atkins, Stephanie Cole and Dame Penelope Wilton who have performed in the monologues.  This time around, the list includes Imelda Staunton (did you see her in Finding Your Feet on Channel 4 recently?) and Dame Harriet Walter.

Great actresses, all of them.  But it is Thora I will always remember.   Perhaps it is just as well that Cream Cracker Under the Settee has not been included in the remake.  The reason why?  It calls for an actress  over 70 years of age (as Thora was) and, under the lockdown rules, the BBC felt unable to include anyone of that ilk!