ALISON BOSHOFF: Jesse Armstrong works on the heir to Succession after landing a megabucks deal to come up with a new show for HBO

Can anything top the success of Succession after the final series of the hit drama roared home triumphantly, picking up awards at the Golden Globes and Emmys this month.

Now the show’s British writer Jesse Armstrong has landed a megabucks deal to come up with a new idea for HBO.

Armstrong has three or four thoughts in mind, but unfortunately for the show’s millions of fans, it won’t be a Succession spin-off – so no Tom Wambsgans and Cousin Greg (pictured). Sniff!

Armstrong, 53, approached the $1 million per episode mark for the final series, and it is thought his new deal will be even more lucrative.

Succession was written by a small team in offices near Brixton tube station. Armstrong would request that the heating be kept at an exact level, as there is apparently a correct temperature for creating comedy.

He lives in a terraced house in south-east London with his wife Millie, who works for the NHS, and their two children. Before Succession, he helped create Peep Show and The Thick Of It. This week he donated £25,000 to Greenpeace, which is fighting a harassment lawsuit from oil giant Shell.

Riley Keough brings out her Bigfoot in full costume

Riley Keough has gone from playing a pop icon in Daisy Jones & The Six to simulating sex with a garbage can while dressed in a Bigfoot costume.

Keough, 34, stars in a new absurdist comedy, Sasquatch Sunset, and wears a full Bigfoot costume throughout — including prosthetics to give her ape-like features. The film, which also stars Jesse Eisenberg, tells the story of a family of Bigfoots.

There’s no dialogue or story, but plenty of action, not for the squeamish, including masturbation, childbirth, vomiting and, yes, Bigfoot sex. The film premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, to mixed reviews. One critic called it, “The kind of movie you have to see to believe.”

Director David Zellner said he worked with primatologists and anthropologists to prepare the project, adding: ‘Everything in this film is 100% authentic to what Sasquatches are like in real life – even the weird stuff. Just trust us.”

Zellner revealed that they used a garbage can as a stand-in when rehearsing the Bigfoot sex scenes. Keough, who was in Park City to attend the premiere, said, “The costumes were very difficult to move in. Jesse and I complained all the time.”

The actress, granddaughter of Elvis Presley, attended the Golden Globes and Emmys last week after nominations for Daisy Jones, but came away empty-handed.

She walked the Emmys red carpet with her grandmother Priscilla, just over a year after the death of Keough’s mother, Lisa-Marie.

Kerry Godliman, brilliant as a woman in After Life, returns to Trigger Point as intelligence officer Sonya Reeves in the second series of the ITV drama, which starts on Sunday. She says her teenage children don’t often see her on screen because they prefer Squid Game.

13 reasons why the Oscars are finally asking for Nolan

Christopher Nolan, who already has a CBE for film services, will pick up more awards ahead of his Oscar ceremony this spring.

Nolan, 53, will be awarded a BFI Fellowship, the highest accolade, on February 14, shortly before the Baftas (on the 18th), where Oppenheimer won 13 awards, including Best Film and Best Director, both of which he was keen to win keep watch. those great ones.

He’ll then hop across the channel to pick up an honorary Caesar – the French equivalent of a Bafta – in Paris, before returning to LA, where he lives, for the Oscars on March 10. Nolan hasn’t won a Bafta or an Oscar yet, but it seems a safe bet that this is about to change.

Congratulations also to Shropshire lad Jos Dent-Pooley, who studied music at Cambridge and has just secured an Oscar nomination for best original score for Poor Things – the first film score he ever wrote.

Dent-Pooley, 28, who works under the name Jerskin Fendrix, was picked for the gig by Greek author Yorgos Lanthimos, who loved his 2020 album of experimental pop music.

He goes up against the late Robbie Robertson, for Killers Of The Flower Moon, and much-loved veteran John Williams, who scored Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny.

At 91 years old, Williams is the oldest person ever nominated for an Oscar; and this is his 54th nomination – also a record for a living person. Walt Disney holds the all-time record with 59.

The category is completed by Laura Karpman for American Fiction and Ludwig Goransson for Oppenheimer.

Off The Fence magazine says it has heard “some really wonderful anecdotes” about Tom Hiddleston, best known for The Night Manager, who plays Loki in the Marvel Universe and is Taylor Swift’s best-forgotten ex-boyfriend in the Taylor -verse. mag says: ‘The actor was at a fancy wedding, deep in the English countryside, and at the end of the night tried to trick a taxi with the immortal line: “Would it help if I told you I was Tom Hiddleston?”

New twist in Cruel Adoption story about three identical Strangers

Channel 4 follows the hit documentary Three Identical Strangers – about triplets who are separated by an adoption agency as babies and grow up unaware of each other’s existence until fate intervenes – by telling the story of unsuspecting female twins, who receive the same treatment received by the same agency.

The Secret Of Me will be a documentary feature film directed by Grace Hughes-Hallett, who also produced Three Identical Strangers for Netflix. James Rogan (creative director at Rogan Productions) and Rogan Scotland, who are making the film, describe the story as a ‘shocking and moving’ tale of a medical scandal.

The story behind Three Identical Strangers first came to light in 1980, when three young men discovered by chance at the age of 19 that they were identical triplets. Their reunion made headlines around the world.

Shortly afterwards it became clear that there were more cases of ‘multiples’ that had broken up. They had all been placed in homes in the 1960s by the Louise Wise adoption agency in New York.

It emerged that at least ten sets of baby twins or triplets had been separated and placed in separate families, with the agency working with a group of psychiatrists and psychologists to study what happened next – without the knowledge of the families or children involved.

Novelist Jilly Cooper invited Aidan Turner and David Tennant to a private Riders party at her Cotswolds home during the filming of the upcoming TV show – based on her best-selling bonkbuster – last summer.

Cooper, 86, said of the cast: ‘They all completely fell in love with Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds.’

She added: ‘David Tennant is heaven, Aidan Turner is heaven, they are all heaven! And the most wonderful thing? A huge cast who all love each other.’ The eight-part show about the amorous adventures of a pair of lusty riders and women – including her amazing fictional creation Rupert Campbell-Black – will be released on Disney+ later this year.

Former Miss Moneypenny, Samantha Bond (right), leans her way through her new Miss Marple-esque TV thriller The Marlow Murder Club – but says she hates wild swimming in real life.

Bond, 62, said: ‘I found swimming in a major river like the Thames, for the Marlow Murder Club, quite frightening – less so in some of the Thames tributaries we used – and I have no intention of doing that . take it up as a hobby. My husband, Alexander, swims in the Thames and absolutely loves it; but I won’t go with him.’

Samantha plays archaeologist and sleuth Judith Potts in the show, which will be released on UKTV’s Drama channel in March. The two-part thriller was made by Robert Thorogood, the man behind world hit Death In Paradise.