Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days
Continue reading...
© Composite: Sabrina Lantos/Sphere Abacus/Sky
© Composite: Sabrina Lantos/Sphere Abacus/Sky
© Composite: Sabrina Lantos/Sphere Abacus/Sky
Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie have gone from waiting tables to ‘One Direction-level’ fame in a matter of months, upstaging A-listers at the Golden Globes last week. What’s next?
Tough luck if you prefer your romcoms PG-rated, or ice hockey leaves you cold: there is no escaping Heated Rivalry. The steamy coming-of-age series has been a sensation in North America, making instant stars of its leads as producers rush to make more of it. It’s hard to remember the last TV show to spark such a furore, let alone one from Canada’s “Crave network”. So who are the young men at the centre of the frenzy – and how are they coping with all that thirst?
1. From waiting tables …
Continue reading...
© Composite: Guardian Design; Harold Feng/Getty Images
© Composite: Guardian Design; Harold Feng/Getty Images
© Composite: Guardian Design; Harold Feng/Getty Images
In its second season, the award-winning medical drama is a scarily reflective show for the many Americans who watch it
If you were stuck in the waiting room at the fictional Pittsburgh trauma medical center (PTMC) – and, as is the case with most real emergency rooms, to be at “the Pitt” almost certainly means waiting for hours (unless you’re imminently dying, but even then …) – you would at least have a lot to read. Paperwork and entry forms, for one. Signs warning that “aggressive behavior will not be tolerated”, a response to the real uptick in violence against healthcare workers. A memorial plaque to the victims of the mass shooting at PittFest, which drenched the back half of the acclaimed HBO Max show’s first season in unbelievably harrowing, bloody, very American trauma. Labels on the many homeopathic remedies carried, in Ziploc bags, by a prospective patient deeply skeptical of western medicine and big pharma. Promotional literature on the larger hospital system, for which The Pitt is its cash-strapped, paint-stripped, constantly beleaguered front door.
And, in its second season, which premiered earlier this month, so-called “patient passports” that supposedly help you understand the procedures and expected wait times at an urban emergency room. The leaflets are the brainchild of Dr Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), the tech-affectionate, norms-challenging attending physician introduced this season as a foil to the more by-the-books Dr Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the series anchor played by recent Golden Globe winner Noah Wyle. Dr Robby, the show’s raison d’être and the core of viewer sentiment, is skeptical of the patient passports, as he seems to be of most change at the Pitt; their introduction is one of many seeds planted in what will surely become a larger thematic battle between tradition and innovation, emotion and rationality, old, haunted attending physician and his upstart replacement.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Warrick Page/HBO Max
© Photograph: Warrick Page/HBO Max
© Photograph: Warrick Page/HBO Max
From home cinema to on-wall art, the latest 4k HDR TVs can do it all - but which is the best for you? I compare the best new televisions boasting the latest technologies
© Steve May/The Independent
She was a star at 14, learned how to act with the whole world watching, then stepped away to discover herself. Now she’s back in the new Tomb Raider – and a Die Hard-style thriller
Sophie Turner has a screwball comedy vibe in real life – elegant trouser suit, arch but friendly expression, perfect hair, she looks ready for some whipsmart repartee and a sundowner. She seems very comfortable in her own skin, which is unusual anyway when you’re not quite 30, but especially incongruous given her various screen personas: first, in Game of Thrones. Thirteen when she was cast as Sansa Stark, 14 when she started filming, she embodied anxious, aristocratic self-possession at an age when a regular human can’t even keep track of their own socks. Six seasons in, arguably at peak GoT impact, she became Jean Grey in X-Men: Apocalypse, a role she reprised in 2019 for Dark Phoenix, action-studded and ram-jammed with superpowers.
Now she’s the lead in Steal, a Prime Video drama about a corporate heist, though that makes it sound quite desk and keyboard-based when, in fact, it is white-knuckle tense and alarmingly paced. The villains move in a malevolent swarm like hornets; hapless middle managers are slain almost immediately; it’s impossible to tell for the longest time whether we’re looking at gangster thugs or hacking geniuses, motivated by avarice or anarchy. It’s a first-time screenplay by novelist Sotiris Nikias (who writes crime under a pseudonym, Ray Celestin), and it feels original, not so much in the action and hyperviolence as in the trade-offs it refuses to make: whatever explosions are going on, however much chasing around a dystopian pension-fund investment office, you still wouldn’t call it an action drama. It has a novelistic feel, like characters from a David Nicholls book woke up in Die Hard, and there’s a constant swirl, as you try to figure out who’s the assailed and who’s the assailant.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Marco Grob/Prime
© Photograph: Marco Grob/Prime
© Photograph: Marco Grob/Prime
Is there any circumstance on Earth that would make these people, in all their finery, skip this thing entirely?
The truest thing ever said about the Golden Globes was by Tina Fey when she hosted the awards in 2019 and described the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of junket hacks, as operating out of the “back booth of a French McDonalds”. The HFPA was disbanded in 2023 after allegations of racism, but 95 former members retained voting rights and on Monday, the show went on.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/CBS/Getty Images
© Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/CBS/Getty Images
© Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/CBS/Getty Images
From Gilmore Girls to Perry Mason, readers reveal the programmes that never fail to bring them joy
I really think Toast of London is Matt Berry’s best work. It’s hilarious. The plots are daft, the cameos are often left-field but work well, and it has loads of great nonsensical gags. It’s a shining example of a sitcom with an unlikable protagonist that you can’t help but root for anyway. I must have watched it from beginning to end at least 15 times. Every friendship and relationship in my life eventually reaches a crossroads: will they like Toast or not? Rhys, 24, Cardiff
Continue reading...
© Photograph: PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy
© Photograph: PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy
© Photograph: PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy
Sophie Turner is excellent as an office worker caught up in an armed heist, while Bella Hadid leads Ryan Murphy’s flashy and deeply unserious drama about an injection that comes with the promise: ‘one shot will make you hot’
Zara (Sophie Turner) is half-heartedly slogging away in a mid-ranking job at a pensions company. But her life is dramatically upended when a brutal and terrifyingly efficient gang of robbers appear in her workplace to carry out a £4bn heist. This thriller gives up its secrets gradually: what originally seems to be a taut crime caper soon twists and turns in unsettling and credulity-stretching ways. It’s a smart attempt to reimagine the perfect financial crime for the digital age and Turner’s lead performance is deceptively subtle, with her apparent office-drone apathy eventually barely concealing a surprising level of slick calculation. Archie Madekwe is also excellent as her sidekick Luke.
Prime Video, from Wednesday 21 January
© Photograph: Ludovic Robert/Prime Video
© Photograph: Ludovic Robert/Prime Video
© Photograph: Ludovic Robert/Prime Video
Monumental levels of camp, explosively powerful showdowns, glorious chaos: this season finally proves that matriarchs are Traitors’ best characters. Has anyone ever been more legendary than Harriet?
Wednesday’s episode of The Traitors was explosive: Matthew’s recruitment deal with Traitors Stephen and Rachel “confirmed”, James stealing a shield, Rachel revealing her “FBI training”. But let it be known, if I ever go missing I want Harriet Tyce on the case. Her behaviour was nothing short of Shakespearean – dropping the secret writer and criminal barrister bomb, calling out Rachel against the dramatic backdrop of a gothic chapel, publicly prosecuting her at breakfast then presenting nothing but vibes-based evidence at the round table. To top it all off, she is the first Faithful in the show’s history to ask to be banished simply to prove a point. I fear Harriet is operating on levels of camp no TV show has ever seen before.
It’s a common trend that emerges every season: a woman over 50 captures the nation’s heart and becomes a viral sensation, elevated to “mother” status by fans. And this mother is always powerful, outspoken and often utterly incomprehensible. In series one, we had Amanda Lovett, the then 54-year-old estate agent turned Traitor, masking her ruthless “Welsh dragon” instincts behind a clueless appearance. Series two brought us Diane Carson, the 63-year-old Faithful and former teacher, who came armed with blunt directness and a ginger bob only to be offed by fizzy rosé as Ross, her secret son, took part in her funeral procession. Turn to 70-year-old Linda Rands in series three, a retired opera singer who clung on as a Traitor until episode seven despite blunders so blatant they made billboards.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: PHOTOGRAPHER:/CREDIT LINE:BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
© Photograph: PHOTOGRAPHER:/CREDIT LINE:BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
© Photograph: PHOTOGRAPHER:/CREDIT LINE:BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
The previous actors to take the lead in Stieg Larsson’s franchise were excellent. So the successor to Noomi Rapace, Rooney Mara and Claire Foy is bound to be brilliant – whoever they are …
This week Sky announced that it will be remaking Stieg Larsson’s 2005 novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo as an eight-part television series. So far, all we know is that it will be set in the present day and will be written by Steve Lightfoot and Angela LaManna.
What we don’t know is who will play Lisbeth Salander, the aforementioned girl with the dragon tattoo. And this will be a big deal, because previous screen adaptations of Larsson’s books have made stars of whoever was cast as Salander. In 2009’s Swedish adaptation, she was played by Noomi Rapace, who was nominated for a Bafta. In David Fincher’s 2011 remake, she was played by Rooney Mara, who was nominated for an Oscar. And in 2018’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web adaptation, she was played by Claire Foy, who wasn’t nominated for a Bafta or an Oscar, but was still very good.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Maximum Film/Alamy
© Photograph: Maximum Film/Alamy
© Photograph: Maximum Film/Alamy
The actor answers your questions on her preference for playing goodies or baddies, kissing Denzel Washington and sneaking a nap on set
Why didn’t you insist on a “must kiss Denzel” scene in your two Equalizer films? nivlek47
Well, if you go back to the first Equalizer, he comes to my character seeking permission to do his “equalizing”. I’d been his boss and trained him, so kissing him would be highly inappropriate. However, if somebody is looking to see me kiss Mr Washington, please whisper that into his ear.
I hear you’re a big fan of knitting. What’s been your greatest knitted creation? TopTramp
The knitting has been eclipsed by pottery the past three years. I go to a local pottery studio, do what I can on a wheel, and get my creativity out there. The knitting was a wonderful thing. I’d make simple squares without having to count stitches, then sew them all together. I must have made about a dozen blankets, most of which are still in a trunk upstairs. If I get another job in television – which I hope I do – that has you sitting around quite a bit, so knitting is a good mobile craft.
© Photograph: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
© Photograph: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
© Photograph: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
From planes to trains, Idris Elba’s high-stress hostage thriller is back
© Apple TV
Martin Freeman does his best to lift this three-parter, but it feels like Enid Blyton – made for an international market that thinks Paddington Bear is holding the queen’s hand in heaven
‘Tis the season, just, for your annual Agatha Christie. In recent years, the adaptations have been infused with the grief and instability of the postwar backdrop against which they all exist, and been given rich, dark, adult inflections by Sarah Phelps for the BBC.
The latest, however, is for Netflix by Chris Chibnall and we are back in the world of period costume, clipped vowels and dialogue infused with nothing but plot, designed to get the puzzle pieces recited into the right position for the next bit then the next bit then the solving – this time at the end of three very hour-long episodes.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Netflix
© Photograph: Netflix
© Photograph: Netflix
This hormone-fuelled tale of the training college for space voyagers is like Grange Hill, with phasers – and it has a female lead unlike any captain before
The original Star Trek TV series debuted in 1966, so trying to get your head round all the sequels, prequels and timeline-splitting spin-offs can often feel like homework. It was only a matter of time before the venerable sci-fi franchise used a school as a setting. But Starfleet Academy, the latest streaming series, is not some random cosmic polytechnic for aliens to study humanities or vice versa. This is the oft-referenced San Francisco space campus sited right next to the Golden Gate Bridge. With James T Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard on the alumni list, it is basically Hogwarts for wannabe starship captains.
Or at least it used to be. As this newest Trek opens we are in the 32nd century: as far into the future as the franchise has ever gone, boldly or otherwise. (The original 1966 five-year mission for Kirk and co took place in the 23rd century.) The universe is still recovering from the Burn, an all-encompassing cataclysm from 2020’s season three of Star Trek: Discovery that put the kibosh on faster-than-light warp travel. After an extended period of intergalactic isolationism, Starfleet Academy is about to receive its first new intake for over a century. Mega-fan Stephen Colbert is already on board as the school’s PA announcer. All it needs is a new chancellor.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Brooke Palmer/Paramount
© Photograph: Brooke Palmer/Paramount
© Photograph: Brooke Palmer/Paramount
Exclusive: Artist reminisces about his life in film using interviews recorded in last four years of his life
Fifteen years ago, Sir Ian McKellen was among the leading arts figures who criticised the Tate for not showing its collection of paintings by LS Lowry in its London galleries and questioned whether the “matchstick men painter” had been sidelined as too northern and provincial.
Now, 50 years after Lowry’s death, McKellen is to star in a BBC documentary that will reveal a trove of previously unheard audio tapes recorded with Lowry in the 1970s during his final four years of life.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Multitude Media
© Photograph: Multitude Media
© Photograph: Multitude Media
The small screen phenomenon, and its publicized use of intimacy coordinators, has arrived as established Hollywood names have started to criticize the role
If you could pinpoint a moment where things change for Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), the two professional hockey players secretly hooking up in the show Heated Rivalry – a moment when the relationship breaks through into fraught emotional territory, when the hazy, undefined thing has become a thing – it would be midway through episode four.
Ilya’s couch, mid-morning, post-breakfast. (The exponentially growing fandom of this six-episode show from Canadian streamer Crave, which premiered in North America in late November with virtually no promotion and has rapidly become one of the most organic TV phenomena in recent memory, knows exactly what I’m talking about.) Hollander overhears Rozanov’s distressing phone call from home and asks how his father is (he doesn’t know Russian, but agitation needs no language); Rozanov responds by wrapping a sculpted arm around his neck. The two then get intimate, in one of the show’s many near-wordless sex scenes, culminating in them each using the other’s first name for the first time.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Sphere Abacus/Sabrina Lantos © 2025
© Photograph: Sphere Abacus/Sabrina Lantos © 2025
© Photograph: Sphere Abacus/Sabrina Lantos © 2025
Sam Levinson’s hit HBO drama series returns in April with Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi returning
The first trailer for the third season of Euphoria promises more sex, drugs and violence, teasing a troubled life after high school for the show’s characters.
Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer and Jacob Elordi are among those returning for episodes four years in the making. The new season will take place five years after the characters were last seen.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: HBO
© Photograph: HBO
© Photograph: HBO
© CBS Evening News
Connexion