In the week in which the 78th Golden Globes are to be broadcast with a nomination in the best comedy series category for the loose assemblage of idiocies that comprises Emily in Paris (alongside the likes of Schitt’s Creek and The Great), I feel very much that the post-truth world has come for TV, too. Nevertheless, we must hold hard against the tides of nonsense that wish to sweep rationality...
Fourteen of author Harlan Coben’s 31 novels, we are told, are due to be adapted for Netflix. Your mileage may vary, of course, but as I have a barely satiable appetite for bingeable thrillers, I see this as more promise than threat. Last year we had The Stranger, an adaptation of Coben’s 2015 bestseller, which leapt from cliffhanger to cliffhanger to tell the increasingly baroque-slash-demented...
The DJ Janice Long, who has died aged 66 following a short illness, became a pioneer in broadcasting as the first woman to have her own weekday show on BBC Radio 1 and the first to become a regular presenter of Top of the Pops. Unlike some of the prominent DJs with whom she shared the airwaves during the first part of her career in the 1980s, Long was a genuine music fan, credited with giving a...
We begin with a moment of relief. Kendall did not die in the swimming pool (or, as his loving brother Roman puts it, become “Kurt Cobain of the fucking floaties”). Comfry saved him – though for what seems an ever more present question in Kendall’s mind, as he reappears at the villa after a night in hospital for observation still virtually catatonic with guilt and grief. After that, the finale...
The gut-punch series finale saw the Roy siblings reunited before another biblical betrayal. Here’s your order of service from a rug pull-packed climactic episode, titled All the Bells Say … Kendall, you had us worriedLast week ended on a shattering cliffhanger as the clearly inebriated Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) submerged his face in a swimming pool and appeared to stop breathing. The Gatsby...
There are several reasons to commit hours of your life to a TV series: to be provoked, to laugh, to explore universal elements of the human condition, to become totally absorbed, to be turned on by voyeurism, fashion/wealth porn or hotness, to have fun (whether intentionally or not). Nine Perfect Strangers, the Hulu limited series which premiered on 18 August, would appear to offer at least some...
The 2021 Strictly Come Dancing line-up has been unveiled in full, which can only mean one thing. It’s Christmas already. Merry Christmas everyone! But who are these brave celebrities who have dared to develop a close friendship with a professional dancer that has a statistically high likelihood of ending their marriage? Below you will find them all, ranked from worst to best in terms of probable...
The actor Paul Ritter has died of a brain tumour at the age of 54, his agent has told the Guardian. Ritter, who starred as the family patriarch Martin in Channel 4’s Friday Night Dinner alongside Tamsin Greig, Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal, died on Monday. In a statement, his agent said that the actor, who also appeared in numerous films including Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Quantum...
Quality trash is our entertainment G-spot. There is nothing else like it. Films rarely hit it because they are too big and expensive and the target is too small. They deal only in binaries: success or failure, prestige or crap. This is not what we seek for the particular itch we want to scratch. Books are better. There are more of them, and the genre we are looking for is better established...
There is a reason A Teacher, a limited series about the relationship between a thirtysomething female teacher and her 17-year-old student, uses the indefinite article. “A”, not “the”, – a magnetic portrait of one black hole of a relationship, a deliberately uneasy exploration of one case of grooming that tries to stand for much more. The 10-part series, written and directed by Hannah Fidell based...