Music’s biggest night is underway in Los Angeles

It scooped the prizes for best film, screenwriter, director, and supporting actor

SPOILERS AHEAD: David Farr and Georgi Banks-Davies tell Patrick Smith how the BBC series had to earn its blockbuster ending and talk about the fate of all its characters

Hugh Laurie’s weight of charisma has been a gift to this series, which in its latter stages has been let down by implausible character development

There are estimated to be a million undiscovered geniuses in the UK, and this show is out to find one. It’s a stressful, heartwarming, shocking watch – which raises big questions about the UK

This, then, is what Alan Carr did next. Fresh from his victory as the last traitor standing in The Celebrity Traitors, and elevation to national treasure status, the Chatty Man is co-presenting Secret Genius with Countdown’s dictionary-botherer, the lexicographer and author Susie Dent. On second thoughts, given the lead times for these things, this is probably better billed as “What Alan Carr was contracted to do next” but no matter. We are here to have fun and fun we shall! Though, this being a reality-competition show in which people take part in regional heats to find out who among them is “one of the estimated million undiscovered geniuses” in the UK (no definition of the term given – Dent, you had ONE JOB), it comes with a buffet of sob stories, a side order of stress and a hefty dollop of whatever the word is for that patented mix of schadenfreude and voyeurism on which the genre depends.

We begin with a dozen participants drawn from north-west England and Northern Ireland. They have either nominated themselves or – more often – been nominated by friends and family who know them as the cleverclogses of their circles. All will compete in the first round: eight will reach the second.

Without a weighty Le Carré novel behind it, there were fears the steamy, stylish spy series would feel phoned in. We needn’t have worried – it’s been a delight

• This article contains spoilers for the season finale of The Night Manager

What a pleasure it is to be seduced – and The Night Manager is just about the most seductive show on television. The palatial houses and swish hotels; the expensive suits and crisp shirts (does anyone wear a button-up better than Tom Hiddleston?); all the beautiful people with their beautiful faces, elegantly stabbing one another in the back. The first season aired 10 years ago – an entirely different world – so when it was announced that a second season was coming, my first thought was: oh no, lightning doesn’t strike twice. Delightfully, I was wrong.

If you haven’t revisited The Night Manager since 2016, here are the pertinent points: Jonathan Pine (Hiddleston), a night manager in a Cairo hotel, weaseled his way into the rarefied world of arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper (Hugh Laurie), AKA “the worst man in the world”, under the direction of Angela Burr (Olivia Colman), who ran a British intelligence operation. As a supposedly loyal henchman, Pine beguiled Roper, shtupped his girlfriend, imploded his arms deal and made off with a cool $300m, as Roper was dragged off screaming to a violent fate by unhappy customers.

Rotterdam film festival
The Repo Man director relocates Gogol’s surreal novella to the old west in what he says will be his final film

English film-maker Alex Cox comes riding into town with this jauntily odd and surreal western which he has indicated will be his swansong, shot on the rugged plains of Almeria in Spain and also Arizona. Cox himself is the star – an elegant, dapper presence – and his co-writer is veteran spaghetti western actor Gianni Garko.

The story has obvious relevance to contemporary America, and a flash-forward makes some of this clear. But it is also inspired by the classic novella of the same name by Nikolai Gogol, a mysterious parable of greed and vanity about a man who travels around offering to buy the souls of dead serfs on various estates in pre-revolutionary Russia so landowners can lower their tax bills, but plans to claim that they are still alive and therefore pass himself off as a wealthy man.

Melania, however, cost quite more than a typical documentary, at $40m to make and $35m to promote.

Amazon’s Melania Trump documentary has reportedly beaten box office expectations and recorded the strongest start of any documentary in over a decade, taking $7m at the US box office during its lavishly-promoted opening weekend. But it also cost quite more than a typical documentary, at $40m to make and $35m to promote.

And Amazon – which recently cut 16,000 corporate jobs – has been hit with criticism that making the documentary about the first lady, and paying so highly for it, was little more than a ploy to curry favor with her husband, Donald Trump, during his second presidency.

The Pillion star gives a so-so episode his all with sketches targeting the tactics of ICE officers, Tarzan and Trump voters changing their minds

The thousandth episode of Saturday Night Live opens with White House “border czar” Tom Homan (Pete Davidson) addressing members of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) amid the continuing chaos in Minneapolis. He stresses that ICE commander Greg Bovino wasn’t dismissed for doing a bad job, publicly lying about the killing of civilians, or even dressing like a Nazi, but because he “was filmed doing these things – the president no likey that.”

When asked what the mission in Minneapolis is, his ICE goons plead ignorance, causing him to flip out: “I’m Tom Homan, OK? I’m the separating families at the border guy. I’m the on film taking a $50,000 bribe guy, and you all are making me look like the upstanding, reasonable adult in the room. That’s crazy!”

[Précommande] Aucun nouveau Mario Tennis n’avait vu le jour depuis 2018, Mario Tennis Aces étant jusqu’alors le dernier épisode de la licence. Une attente désormais comblée avec l’annonce de Mario Tennis Fever, dont la sortie est prévue prochainement sur Switch 2.

Quand HBO s’intéresse enfin au genre médical, cela donne The Pitt, une série nerveuse et addictive portée par un ancien d’Urgences et révélatrice des dysfonctionnements de la société américaine. Alors que la saison 2 vient de débuter sur HBO Max, depuis le 9 janvier 2026, on vous explique pourquoi il est grand temps de vous y mettre.