From Peaky Blinders to Sherwood, Shaheen Baig has cast some of the best shows on screen. But she struck gold with Owen Cooper for Adolescence – and won an Emmy. How does she spot such game-changing talent?
At the Emmys in September, Adolescence all but swept the board. It won best limited series. It won awards for writing, for directing, for cinematography. Three of its actors – Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Owen Cooper – all took home awards. But Adolescence also earned another Emmy for a craft that often goes overlooked: best casting.
Shaheen Baig was the woman responsible for casting Adolescence, and her Emmy is tucked away in the top right corner of the screen as we chat about her year over Zoom. She is mortified as soon as she realises this, immediately re-angling her webcam to keep it out of sight, lest anyone mistakes it for a boast.
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© Photograph: Michael Buckner/Variety/Getty Images
© Photograph: Michael Buckner/Variety/Getty Images
© Photograph: Michael Buckner/Variety/Getty Images
He stole our hearts in The Celebrity Traitors – then it all went wrong. The actor and comedian opens up
When I catch up with Nick Mohammed, he is on the set of War, a new HBO series. Full of legal eagles, tech-bro hot shots and ugly divorces, it’s a punchy, slick enterprise, nothing at all like The Celebrity Traitors – except for the high drama, unbearable tension and the fact that Mohammed is reunited with Celia Imrie. Traitors was filmed in April and May and this started in September, so they both knew exactly what had happened in the castle, but were still in their chamber of deadly secrecy. Mainly, Mohammed was happy just to kick about with Imrie again. “She’s wonderful,” he says. “Everything you think she might be, she absolutely is – she’s just brilliant.”
Which brings us to the root of the problem, the answer to the question: “What the hell happened, Nick?” Spoiler alert: we intend to talk about exactly what went down in the most infuriating Traitors final since, well, the last non-celebrity Traitors. If Joe Marler had had his way, he and Nick would have sauntered to victory, Alan Carr’s magisterial fibbing finally unmasked. Instead, Nick’s niggling doubts brought down the ship.
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© Photograph: Mike Marsland/WireImage
© Photograph: Mike Marsland/WireImage
© Photograph: Mike Marsland/WireImage
© Lucia Vazquez for The New York Times
Swift’s six-parter charting her Eras tour began with some riveting revelations – but the drama ebbed away, leaving another piece of mere product for fans
In the behind-the-scenes documentary series Taylor Swift: The End of an Era, the singer Florence Welch ascends to the stage to perform their duet Florida!!! to a crowd of 90,000 people. Welch later reflects on their duet at Wembley Stadium with a mix of awe and bemusement. “Taylor is my friend,” she says. “I know her as this very cosy person, and I came out of that lift and I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s fucking Taylor Swift.’”
If Swift is a cosy person, The End of an Era – now complete, with its concluding episodes dropping today – is certainly a cosy watch; the sort of lighthearted, low-demand viewing that feels especially welcome in the lazy days leading up to Christmas and stretching towards the new year. Viewers will be familiar with the story. The Eras Tour was great, it tells us. It broke records, burst hearts and boosted the economy. We know she pulled it off. This is only a problem insofar as it means there is almost zero jeopardy in the series, which feels repetitive and thinly stretched over its six hour-long episodes.
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© Photograph: John Shearer/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
© Photograph: John Shearer/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
© Photograph: John Shearer/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
She won an Emmy for her electric performance in the Netflix smash hit, but the casting process wasn’t exactly hiccup-free. The actor opens up about a year of success, struggle – and how she nearly became a footballer
For a while, Erin Doherty ignored Stephen Graham’s calls. Not deliberately, she stresses with a laugh. “I’m just really bad at my phone. I’m such a technophobe, and he knew that,” she says. They had made the Disney+ show A Thousand Blows together, in which Doherty plays an East End crime boss in Victorian London, and Graham had talked about an idea he wanted to dramatise, about a teenage boy who is catastrophically radicalised by online misogyny. A couple of months after they’d wrapped A Thousand Blows, Graham and his wife and producing partner, Hannah Walters, kept trying to get in touch. “I was getting voice notes from him and Hannah being like, ‘Erin, pick up your phone!’” Doherty’s girlfriend told her to ring him back and Graham offered her the role in Adolescence. She said yes on the spot, without reading the script.
Since it was screened on Netflix in March, Adolescence has had nearly 150m views. It sparked a huge cultural conversation; it was shown in secondary schools and its creators were invited to Downing Street. Did they have any idea it would become such a phenomenon? “No, and I’m not sure you’re supposed to,” says Doherty when we speak. She is chatty and down-to-earth, even in the year her career went stellar. As well as starring in A Thousand Blows, her role in Adolescence – as Briony Ariston, a psychologist – won her an Emmy for best supporting actress. “But you do know when you’re a part of something that’s good and deserves to be seen, and we knew that about it. I think because it came from such a genuine place, a place of real purity and rawness, it [fed into] the making of it. From day one, it had that electricity.”
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© Photograph: Stefan Bertin
© Photograph: Stefan Bertin
© Photograph: Stefan Bertin
An exceptional cast, astonishing directing and the talent discovery of the decade – not to mention a plot so of-the-moment it was discussed in parliament. This may actually have been perfect TV
• The 50 best TV shows of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025
How could it be anything else? Adolescence is the Guardian’s best television series of 2025. And you’d have to assume that we’re not the only ones who think so. In any available metric – story, theme, casting, performances, execution, impact – Adolescence has stood head and shoulders over everything else.
So ubiquitous was Adolescence upon release that it would be easy to assume that everyone in the world has watched it. But just in case, a recap. Adolescence is the story of a terrible crime, and how its shock waves ripple out across a community. In episode one, 13-year-old Jamie Miller is arrested on suspicion of murdering a female classmate. In episode two, we follow a pair of police officers through a school, and learn that Jamie was radicalised online. The third is a two-hander between Jamie and his psychologist, in which Jamie’s anger rushes to the surface. The fourth returns to Jamie’s parents, as they question what more they could have done to stop this from happening.
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© Photograph: Courtesy of Ben Blackall/Netflix
© Photograph: Courtesy of Ben Blackall/Netflix
© Photograph: Courtesy of Ben Blackall/Netflix
© Fortunate Joaquin
© Lucia Vazquez for The New York Times
This year saw everyone from Alan Carr to demon sheep run riot on our screens – but there could only be one winner. Here’s our full countdown of the very best television of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025
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© Composite: Guardian Design/Netflix
© Composite: Guardian Design/Netflix
© Composite: Guardian Design/Netflix
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