Torchwood at 20: Ianto Star Recalls Gory Cuts — plus Dune and More

Evening News · Tuesday 20 October 2026

Torchwood is 20 this week, and one of its stars has been remembering the episode that was too gruesome to film as written. Tonight’s edition also has Timothée Chalamet singing on the first single from Dune: Part Three, a Reddit horror story heading for the big screen, a zombie Riverdale for Disney+, Jeff Daniels joining Shane Black’s spy series Bannerman, a final-season date for Mayor of Kingstown, a new free streaming service in the UK, and farewells to two familiar names.

The News That Matters

Torchwood turns 20, and Ianto actor Gareth David-Lloyd reveals the episode that was too gory to shoot as written

• New development: Gareth David-Lloyd spoke to Radio Times on Monday 19 October as the Doctor Who spin-off reaches its 20th anniversary
• The anniversary: Torchwood began on BBC Three on 22 October 2006, so it turns 20 this Thursday
• The episode: Series 1’s “Countrycide”, in which the team is hunted in the Welsh countryside by people rather than aliens
• Still to come: Big Finish’s audio miniseries Torchwood: Legacy, billed as a 20th-anniversary celebration, arrives in two box sets in September and October 2027
• UK availability: Torchwood streams on BBC iPlayer

Ianto Jones began as the quiet one who made the coffee, and became one of the most loved characters in the whole Whoniverse. Looking back for the anniversary, David-Lloyd picked “Countrycide” as his favourite, and admitted he wondered whether the show would get away with it. “The original script was a lot more gory than what we did,” he said. Ianto was meant to be trussed up upside down, and another captive was to have his throat cut “like an animal”. Both scenes were toned down, but the episode still pushed hard. “As a horror fan, I really enjoyed it,” he said.

He also recalled that Ianto barely had any lines when he auditioned, so he read a police officer’s speech instead, and that he only found out about the Ianto-centred “Cyberwoman” when the script arrived in the post two weeks before filming. Big Finish’s Torchwood: Legacy will bring him back with Kai Owen, Tom Price, Tracy-Ann Oberman and Sophie Aldred’s Ace. There is a twist in the timing too: Torchwood began life on BBC Three, and the BBC confirmed today that BBC Three will stop broadcasting as a channel again next spring. For the parent show, our Doctor Who watch guide shows where to stream every era in the UK.

Watch a clip from the first episode

Timothée Chalamet sings on “Desert Chant”, the first single from Hans Zimmer’s Dune: Part Three score

• New development: WaterTower Music released “Desert Chant” on Tuesday 20 October, Variety reported
• The track: Written by Hans Zimmer; it opens with Chalamet humming before building into the Fremen war chant heard in the trailers
• The film: Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, set 17 years after Part Two, with Robert Pattinson joining the cast
• UK availability: The single is out now. The film is in UK cinemas from Friday 18 December 2026, with previews on Tuesday 15 December

It has been a big day for Arrakis. This morning Dune: Part Three tickets went on general sale around the world, and now Zimmer has released the first piece of his score. Paul Atreides finally gets a voice of his own in the music: Chalamet starts with a low hum before the chant rises around him, the same sound that has given the trailers their menace.

Zimmer says the film took him back to the book that “lit his imagination as a teenager”, and to the shared love of it that bonded him with Villeneuve. “Denis and I never stopped dreaming those dreams the book lit like fire in us teenagers,” he said, “but now we had learned the craft.” Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Florence Pugh and Anya Taylor-Joy return. Our earlier coverage has more on how the edit is shaping up.

Listen to Desert Chant

Deadstream directors Joseph and Vanessa Winter adapt Reddit horror story Future Me

• New development: Announced on Tuesday 20 October by Longevity Pictures, Spooky Pictures and Image Nation Studios, as reported by Variety and Bloody Disgusting
• The story: Based on Daria Vasileva’s viral NoSleep story, about a man who gets a deeply unsettling email from his past self through the FutureMe website
• Producers: Majd Nassif for Longevity; Steven Schneider and Roy Lee (Weapons, Barbarian) for Spooky Pictures
• UK availability: No release date yet. UK date not yet confirmed

Most of us have written a letter to our future selves. Few of us expect the reply to be frightening. The Winters, the husband-and-wife team behind the Shudder favourite Deadstream and the “To Hell and Back” segment of V/H/S/99, will write and direct the psychological horror-thriller, which follows a man drawn down a “terrifying and increasingly surreal rabbit hole” by a message he does not remember sending.

It is the next film from the partnership behind Home Safety Hotline, and Longevity’s Majd Nassif pointed to the success of Backrooms as proof that internet folklore now works on the big screen. The Winters are also developing Amityville, a new take on the haunted house franchise.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon will lead Disney+’s zombie series Afterlife with Archie

• New development: Gomez-Rejon will direct the first two episodes and executive produce them, Deadline reported on Monday 19 October
• The story: A spell from a certain teenage witch backfires and unleashes the dead on Riverdale, leaving Archie and his friends fighting to survive
• Behind it: Adapted from the comic by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla; Aguirre-Sacasa and Greg Berlanti are among the executive producers
• UK availability: A Disney+ series. No premiere date yet. UK date not yet confirmed

Riverdale is about to get a lot less wholesome. The series, greenlit by Disney+ in July, is based on the comic that turned Archie Comics’ small town into a zombie apocalypse, and it comes from Aguirre-Sacasa, who also wrote Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Deadline’s description promises that the only thing scarier than the undead is surviving your teenage years.

Gomez-Rejon knows his way around horror. He earned an Emmy nomination for directing American Horror Story: Coven and directed episodes of Prime Video’s Hunters, and he balances dark material with real warmth, which is exactly what this mix of teen drama and zombie terror needs. No cast has been announced yet.

Jeff Daniels joins Shane Black’s spy series Bannerman, heading to Netflix in the UK

• New development: Daniels is the first actor cast, Deadline reported on Monday 19 October
• His role: Raymond Lesko, a disgraced NYPD detective working hotel security, who is pulled back in when his daughter starts dating a man who may be more dangerous than he is
• The series: Based on John R. Maxim’s novels about Paul Bannerman, an operative who persuades the world’s deadliest assassins to retire to suburban Connecticut
• UK availability: Netflix will carry the series exclusively in the UK; AMC premieres it in the US and Canada. No date yet

Shane Black, the writer of Lethal Weapon and director of The Nice Guys, co-wrote the first episode and will direct the first two, with Craig Silverstein as writer and showrunner. It is the first series from AMC Studios’ new co-production deal with Netflix, and Deadline says AMC went after big names for Lesko, a central character in the books.

Some early reports suggested Daniels would play Bannerman himself, but he plays Lesko, the ex-cop who becomes the assassins’ biggest problem. It is the two-time Emmy winner’s first lead role in a series since American Rust. It also adds to a busy week of Netflix news after the streamer’s two-season order for Gwyneth Paltrow’s The Apology.

Mayor of Kingstown sets 15 January for its fifth and final season

• New development: Paramount+ announced the date and released 15 first-look photos on Tuesday 20 October
• The story: After Tracy’s murder and the revenge taken on Callahan, FBI agent Russell Hardy (David Morse) arrives in Kingstown and threatens to expose all of Mike McLusky’s secrets
• Cast: Jeremy Renner, Edie Falco, Taylor Handley, Laura Benanti, Hugh Dillon, Tobi Bamtefa and Lennie James
• UK availability: Earlier seasons stream on Paramount+ in the UK. The US premiere is Friday 15 January 2027; the UK date is not yet confirmed

Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon’s prison-town crime drama is coming to an end. The final season brings in David Morse as a “true lawman” searching for the “fugitive” Callahan, which spells trouble for Renner’s Mike, the man who keeps Kingstown’s fragile peace by bending every rule going. Dave Erickson continues as showrunner.

It is one of several Sheridan shows on Paramount+, and the busy producer has more on the way, including Frisco King, which got its first teaser on Saturday.

JustWatch launches its own free streaming service, JustWatch TV, in the UK

• New development: The streaming guide launched JustWatch TV on Tuesday 20 October, Deadline reported
• What it offers: Free, ad-supported films and series plus titles to rent or buy, from 30 initial content partners, inside the JustWatch app and website
• Partners: Altitude in the UK and Ireland, plus Paramount, New Regency, Fremantle, Bleecker Street and Cineverse
• UK availability: Available in the UK and Ireland from today. A premium ad-free tier costs $3.99 a month in the US; UK pricing has not been confirmed

JustWatch is the site many of us open to find out where a film is streaming. Now it wants to be the place you watch it too. The Berlin-based company says its 50 million users will be able to find and play hard-to-find titles without leaving the app, and founder David Croyé called it “the most important new development in our company’s twelve-year history”.

It launches in 11 countries, including the UK, Ireland, the US, Germany, France and Australia. For our own picks across the UK services each night, see What to Watch.

Remembering Richard Riehle and Beauty and the Beast creator Ron Koslow

• Richard Riehle: The character actor, best known as Tom Smykowski in Office Space, died on Thursday 15 October aged 78, The Hollywood Reporter reported on 19 October
• Ron Koslow: The creator of CBS’s 1987 fantasy series Beauty and the Beast, starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman, died on 7 October aged 81, his family announced on 19 October
• Sci-fi and horror links: Riehle guest-starred in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager and Enterprise, and appeared in Adam Green’s slasher Hatchet
• UK availability: Riehle’s Star Trek episodes stream on Paramount+ in the UK

With more than 430 screen credits, Riehle was one of those faces everyone knows. He was the guard who lets Harrison Ford’s Richard Kimble slip away in The Fugitive, appeared in Glory and Casino, and became Hollywood’s go-to Santa Claus. In Office Space he made the “Jump to Conclusions” mat a cult classic. Donal Logue, his on-screen son in Grounded for Life, called him “an actor’s actor — humble, kind and incredible at his craft”.

Koslow set his Beauty and the Beast in a hidden world beneath New York, with Hamilton as an assistant district attorney and Perlman as the noble, lion-faced Vincent. George R.R. Martin was among its writers and producers, and the series earned Koslow three Emmy nominations before inspiring a CW reboot. He also co-created the vampire drama Moonlight. His family said his work explored “the extraordinary possibilities of worlds beyond our own”.

Twenty years on, which Torchwood episode has stayed with you the most?