Glee Is Coming Back at Disney+ — plus BBC Axes The Catch Up and More

Screen Wrap · Wednesday 21 October 2026

Glee is officially coming back, as Disney+ and Hulu order a reboot from the original creators. Tonight’s Screen Wrap also has the BBC axing its youth bulletin The Catch Up, the 60 pages David Fincher cut from Tarantino’s Cliff Booth script, a new Icelandic thriller for Kari Skogland and the 7,000 Ofcom complaints about Big Brother.

The News That Matters

Glee is coming back as Disney+ and Hulu order a reboot

• Order: A series order from Disney+ and Hulu, produced by 20th Television, the studio behind the original
• Creators: Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, who created the original, have written a new script
• Cast: None announced yet; Murphy says he has been in touch with around ten of the original cast
• The original: Six seasons on Fox from 2009 to 2015, winning six Emmys
• UK availability: UK date not yet confirmed

New Directions are back. Disney+ and Hulu have handed a series order to a revival of the musical high school comedy, with 20th Television returning as the studio. Disney named no cast or producers, but co-creator Ryan Murphy said last month that he, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan had written a new script, and that he had been in touch with around ten of the original cast, who “all were very enthusiastic about the idea”.

Set at William McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio, the original ran for six seasons on Fox and won six Emmys. Disney points to its afterlife as proof of the appetite: the show still streams on Hulu in the US, and its songs draw around four million monthly listeners on Spotify. It is a busy week for Murphy, whose American Horror Story was renewed for a 14th season this morning.

Update: BBC axes youth news bulletin The Catch Up as BBC Three closes

• New development: The nightly bulletin for 16- to 24-year-olds is being cancelled as part of the BBC Three closure
• The show: A two- to four-minute round-up of the day’s headlines, launched in 2022 when BBC Three returned to linear TV
• Why: The BBC is saving £500 million; BBC Three goes off air as a TV channel in spring 2027, with the brand kept on iPlayer
• BBC’s response: BBC News says it reaches around half of 16- to 34-year-olds each week, increasingly via TikTok, Instagram and YouTube
• UK availability: BBC Three stays on air until spring 2027; the bulletin’s final date is not yet confirmed

The first casualty of the BBC Three closure we reported on Tuesday has emerged. The Catch Up, the short nightly bulletin pitched as a way to “bring back” 16- to 24-year-olds to TV news, is being scrapped. It launched in 2022 alongside BBC Three’s return to linear TV, a decision that has now been reversed.

Tuesday night’s edition, hosted by Ben Henley-Washford, even reported BBC Three’s closure without mentioning its own fate. A BBC News spokesperson said the corporation remains the UK’s leading news publisher for 16- to 34-year-olds, with growing audiences on social media; the BBC News TikTok account, which did not exist when The Catch Up launched, now has 16.5 million followers.

David Fincher cut 60 pages from Tarantino’s Cliff Booth script

• Film: The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by David Fincher
• The first draft: 230 pages, “essentially two movies”, according to Fincher
• Running time: About two hours and 20 minutes
• Cast: Brad Pitt returns as Cliff Booth, with Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Peter Weller
• UK availability: In UK IMAX cinemas from 25 November, then on Netflix from 23 December

Tarantino’s script for the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follow-up needed trimming. “The first draft I read was 230 pages. It was essentially two movies,” Fincher told Empire in a joint interview with Tarantino, explaining that the final cut came from finding “the Venn diagram” of what Brad Pitt, Tarantino and he wanted to focus on. Around 60 pages went.

Tarantino said that, unlike Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he does not see this as “a hangout movie at all”. The film opens in IMAX on 25 November before reaching Netflix two days before Christmas, and it is not the only Tarantino script in the news: he revealed at the weekend that he has written his tenth film, but is not making it yet.

Watch the trailer

Kari Skogland to direct Icelandic vigilante thriller Vigilant

• Series: Vigilant, a six-part English-language crime thriller
• Director: Kari Skogland (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), who also executive produces
• Writer: Severance star Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, adapting Skúli Sigurðsson’s novel Big Brother
• Producers: Icelandic company ACT4 with ZDF and ZDF Studios, which handles international sales; Iceland’s Síminn is the local partner
• Filming: Starts in Iceland on 29 October
• UK availability: UK date not yet confirmed

A journalist is approached by a self-styled vigilante who wants her to expose his violent campaign against sexual predators. She first sees him as a voice for the voiceless, then begins to suspect a darker truth, and as her reporting sparks a national debate the series asks whether violence can ever be justified when the justice system fails.

Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, a partner in ACT4, adapts Sigurðsson’s award-winning debut novel with co-writers Víkingur Kristjánsson, Aníta Briem, Teitur Magnússon and Anna Gunndís Guðmundsdóttir. No cast has been named yet.

Channel 4’s The Experiment tests whether Britons can be swayed by Nazi-era ideas about disability

• Presenters: Actor and writer Mat Fraser and disability rights campaigner Sophie Morgan
• The set-up: SegriLife House, a fake supported-living facility with slick corporate branding, staffed by disabled and neurodivergent actors
• Also: Fraser and Morgan visit Hartheim Castle in Austria, one of six killing centres in the Nazis’ Aktion T4 programme
• Made by: Kalel Productions, with Access All Areas and the Graeae Theatre Company
• UK availability: Tonight, Wednesday 21 October, at 10pm on Channel 4

Members of the public tour SegriLife House believing it is a radical new model of supported living. The catch is that it is not real, and the ideas behind it are drawn from the Nazi regime’s segregation and murder of disabled people. Every visitor is filmed and asked their views, while Fraser and Morgan watch from backstage.

Channel 4 calls it a “complex, emotional and often harrowing film”. In a joint statement, the presenters said they wanted to test whether the British public “could be persuaded by similar propaganda today, to believe that disabled people are disposable”.

Big Brother draws more than 7,000 Ofcom complaints

• Complaints: 7,138 about Monday’s episode, according to Ofcom’s latest weekly complaints figures
• What happened: Housemate Omar El Mayer’s behaviour towards Rhianna Collins during a tense exchange, in which he told her “don’t cry” and “don’t look away from me”
• Ofcom: Assessing the complaints, but has not yet decided whether to investigate
• ITV’s response: All housemates receive respect and inclusion training, are monitored around the clock and have a dedicated welfare team
• UK availability: Big Brother continues on ITV2 and ITVX

The row followed Monday night’s episode, in which Rhianna suggested the pair would be better off as friends. Omar later leaned over her in the bedroom and told her not to talk about him to other housemates, and Big Brother called her to the Diary Room to check she was okay.

Women’s Aid has criticised the scenes as coercive and controlling behaviour being given a platform, and viewers and former housemates have called for Omar’s removal. ITV says any inappropriate behaviour is “responded to appropriately”.

Hiam Abbass to receive European Film Academy honour

• Award: European Achievement in World Cinema
• Ceremony: 39th European Film Awards, Athens, 16 January 2027, where she will be the honorary guest
• Career: More than 100 films, including Paradise Now, The Visitor, Lemon Tree, Blade Runner 2049 and Palestine 36; an Emmy nomination in 2023 for Succession
• UK availability: The European Film Awards ceremony on 16 January 2027 will be streamed live online

Born in Nazareth to a Palestinian family, Abbass began her career at the El-Hakawati theatre in East Jerusalem and has lived in Paris since the late 1980s. She has twice been nominated at the European Film Awards, for The Syrian Bride and Lemon Tree, both directed by Eran Riklis, and played Marcia Roy in Succession.

To mark the award, the European culture channel ARTE is showing The Syrian Bride and putting her directing debut Inheritance online.

Sara Ishaq’s Yemen drama The Station lands a North American release

• Deal: Watermelon Pictures has North American rights and plans a cinema release later this year
• Festival: Premiered in Critics’ Week at Cannes in May
• Cast: Manal Al-Mulaiki, Abeer Mohammed, Rashad Khaled and Saleh Al-Marshahi; Jon Kilik executive produces
• UK availability: UK date not yet confirmed

The debut narrative feature from Yemeni-Scottish filmmaker Sara Ishaq follows Layal, who runs a women-only petrol station in war-torn Yemen with simple rules: no men, no weapons, no politics. When her younger brother faces forced enlistment, she reunites with her estranged sister to save him.

“Yemen so often makes US headlines in the most negative light,” Ishaq said, “while the spirit and humanity of its people remain largely unknown to the American public.”

Glee is coming back: who from the original cast would you most want to see return?