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Goodbye, Queer Eye: pure comfort TV that’s too fabulous to exist in this world any more

21 janvier 2026 à 10:00

The fab five convene in Washington DC for the show’s 10th and final season – and one last, escapist feelgood hurrah

In 2018, hopes were not high for Queer Eye. Having dredged the sea floor of early 00s nostalgia, Netflix announced that it had reimagined Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a makeover series that churned out 100 episodes between 2003 and 2007. In it, switched-on gay men had told clueless straight men how to dress, act and behave. Fifteen years after it debuted, however, that concept felt like a relic. At best, it was a testament to an era in which queer representation on screen was still rare and mostly dealt in unthreatening stereotypes. Bringing it back sounded unpromising, like yet another dead-end television reboot.

When Queer Eye launched, however, it had undergone a makeover of its own, and confounded most expectations. It chopped the name in half, ditched the focus on straight men as its subjects – though, ever inclusive, they were very much part of it – and dragged itself into a more emotionally literate and sensitive era. The five men at its core did fashion and style, of course, but they were delicate about it. The idea was not to shame people for their bodies or personal taste – a common feature of early 00s makeover shows – but to give them a helping hand, lift them out of the doldrums and make them feel as if they and their lives had value and worth.

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© Photograph: KIT KARZEN/NETFLIX

© Photograph: KIT KARZEN/NETFLIX

© Photograph: KIT KARZEN/NETFLIX

Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart review – her frankness about her ordeal is truly inspiring

21 janvier 2026 à 08:00

Taken from her bedroom at the age of 14 and sexually abused for nine months, Smart, now a child safety activist, rails powerfully against shame in this true-crime documentary

New year, new true-crime documentary from Netflix. Age cannot wither the genre made famous by the streamer all the way back in 2015 with Making a Murderer, which explored the wrongful conviction of Steven Avery for sexual assault and attempted murder who spent 18 years in prison for that and who was later tried and convicted of another murder. That documentary was a decade in the making. Things move more quickly now, and the preferred content is more palatable to a mass audience – tales of victims’ survival and the very rightful conviction of perpetrators meet the voyeuristic appetite and proxy lust for vengeance without requiring too much painful thinking abut the inadequacies of a country’s legal system, say, or the corruption of its law enforcement.

Still, the new approach has brought some astonishing untold stories of forgotten victims into the light and – usefully or not – given us a better measure of the depraved depths to which men can go. (And it is almost always men, who either have an innate problem or need to bring a suit against an incredibly biased set of film-makers and commissioners tout damn suite.)

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

Steal review – you long for Sophie Turner to triumph in this wild thriller

21 janvier 2026 à 06:00

This breathless and hugely entertaining financial heist show isn’t just packed with twists. It’s a clever meditation on the evil of money – in which you’re rooting for the Game of Thrones star

The trick, Zara Dunne tells her new underling as she shows her round the trades processing floor of the pension management company for which they both now work, is not to dwell on the fact that every day that passes is another day wasted. And to know where the nice biscuits are. This is very good advice for any twentysomething starting their first job, but especially one called Myrtle, as this one is, whom I imagine has already had much of the stuffing knocked out of her by her peers’ reactions to this odd parental choice of moniker.

Soon, however, they are all in need of substantially more comfort than even a chocolate Hobnob can provide, as a team of armed villains swarms the floor. From there, the glossy new six-part thriller Steal kicks into high gear and doesn’t let up for a moment. The baddies – sporting not masks but sophisticated, subtle prosthetics that can fool all the facial recognition software the police will soon be applying to the CCTV footage – herd Zara (Sophie Turner, continuing to deliver sterling work post-Game of Thrones), Myrtle (Eloise Thomas), Zara’s friend and colleague Luke (Archie Madekwe) and the rest of the rank into one conference room while the management committee is locked in another. A couple of gruesome beatings later, so that nobody is in any doubt about the dedication of the villainous gang, Luke and Zara are yanked out and forced to help them execute a set of trades worth £4bn, and the committee is forced to sign off on them all. At one point, Luke crumbles and Zara must step in to save the day. She is hailed as a hero once the thieves have completed their hi-tech heist and left the building.

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© Photograph: Ludovic Robert/Prime

© Photograph: Ludovic Robert/Prime

© Photograph: Ludovic Robert/Prime

Judge orders release of actor Timothy Busfield pending child sex abuse case

21 janvier 2026 à 01:13

Emmy award winner faces charges of inappropriately touching a minor while on set directing a TV series

A judge has ordered that actor Timothy Busfield be released from jail during a detention hearing on child sex abuse charges .

The order Tuesday by state district court judge David Murphy is linked to accusations that Busfield inappropriately touching a minor while working as a director on the set of the series The Cleaning Lady.

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© Photograph: Sam Wasson/AP

© Photograph: Sam Wasson/AP

© Photograph: Sam Wasson/AP

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