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The Beatles Anthology: the flammed together ‘new episode’ feels totally pointless

The TV equivalent of raiding a bare cupboard, the supposed extra hour here is cobbled together from previous DVD extras – but you can’t miss the tension between Harrison and McCartney

There’s no doubt that the arrival of The Beatles Anthology in 1995 was a big deal. The TV series was broadcast at prime time on both sides of the Atlantic, and ABC in the US even changed its name to ABeatlesC in its honour. The three accompanying albums (the first time the Beatles had allowed outtakes from their recording sessions to be officially released) sold in their millions. Its success helped kickstart the latterday Beatles industry, a steady stream of officially sanctioned documentaries, reissues, remixes, compilations and expanded editions, predicated on two ideas: that the Beatles’ archive contains fathomless bounty; and that the band’s story is so rich there’s no limit to the number of times it can fruitfully be retold in fresh light.

For a while, those ideas seemed to hold true, but recently, it’s been hard not to think the Beatles’ Apple Corps might be trying to feed an insatiable appetite for content from an increasingly bare cupboard. You can marvel at the highlights of Peter Jackson’s TV series Get Back and still wonder whether the director wasn’t stretching his material a little thin; whether nearly eight hours of it – plus a separate Imax film of the Beatles’ final live performance on the roof of Apple’s London HQ, and a reissue of the original 1970 Let It Be documentary – might have been rather too much of a good thing.

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© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

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Apple TV series The Hunt postponed due to plagiarism allegations

French thriller starring Benoît Magimel has been accused of stealing its story from a 1976 action film

A new Apple TV thriller has been pulled from the schedules because of accusations of plagiarism. French drama The Hunt was due to be released on 3 December, but it has been hit by allegations of similarity to a 1976 film adaptation of a novel, Shoot.

The Hunt stars Cannes and three-time César award winner Benoît Magimel and two-time César winner Mélanie Laurent, who has featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. But press releases about The Hunt, as well as its official trailers, have now been removed from Apple’s site.

Rex is an uber-macho hunter who, together with four equally testosterone-addled buddies, embarks on a hunting trip in the Canadian wilderness. But their weekend is cut short by a rival band of hunters they encounter in the forest, one of whom inexplicably takes a potshot at Rex’s party and grazes the head of one of his buddies. Another of Rex’s friends returns fire, killing the shooter. From there Rex and company scurry off and head back to civilisation. Rex, however, becomes convinced that the dead man’s companions are going to come after him and his friends.

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© Photograph: Apple

© Photograph: Apple

© Photograph: Apple

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Hania Rani: Non Fiction review – atmospheric and absorbing storytelling by Polish composer

Barbican Hall, London
From ghost-story minimalism to wartime memory, Rani’s two new works, premiered here, shimmer with imagination, although issues of balance diminished the piano concerto

In a crowded post-minimalist world, Hania Rani has carved herself out a respectable niche. The Polish pianist and composer’s erudite yet accessible work often defies genres, appealing to classical, jazz and electronic aficionados alike. This concert comprised two 40-minute premieres and fell pretty firmly into the classical category, yet the lively audience skewed significantly younger than the Brahms and Beethoven crowd. Stylishly performed by the envelope-pushing Manchester Collective, it felt like quite the happening.

Shining occupied the first half, a piece devised for the kind of 12-piece band favoured by Steve Reich and Philip Glass. It’s based on a short story by Jon Fosse; a stream of consciousness tale of a man lost in the woods at night. Opening with sinister discords on bass clarinet, bassoon and horn, its motifs shifted and spun. A pall of smoke and half-lit players conjured images of a ghost story told around a campfire at midnight.

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© Photograph: Sian O'Connor

© Photograph: Sian O'Connor

© Photograph: Sian O'Connor

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Christy review – Sydney Sweeney pummels a boxing pioneer’s story into lifeless cliche

Underpowered David Michôd film fails to land the story of the groundbreaking 90s female boxing champion and the horrendous abuse she faced at home

An uninspired and undirected performance from Sydney Sweeney means there’s a fatal lack of force in this movie from director and co-writer David Michôd. It manages to be unsubtle without being powerful. His subject is Christy Salters Martin, who under the grinning tutelage of Don King became the world’s most successful female boxing champion in the 90s and 00s but faced a misogynist nightmare outside the ring.

The film fails to deliver the power of the traditional boxing movie, or the real importance of a story about domestic abuse and coercive control, or the sensory detail of true crime. It relies on the simple fact of a woman pioneeringly taking on what had once been solely a man’s sport and relapses into cliche. Christy, with her frizzy hair and brown contact lenses, doesn’t seem to plausibly develop as a character throughout the film, and it sometimes seems as if Michôd is slightly more engaged with her gargoyle of a husband-slash-manager Jim Martin, played by Ben Foster with a standard-issue combover and paunch.

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© Photograph: Black Bear Pictures/PA

© Photograph: Black Bear Pictures/PA

© Photograph: Black Bear Pictures/PA

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One Piece saison 3 : voici les acteurs qui vont incarner Mr. 1 et Miss Doublefinger dans la série Netflix

Alors que les personnages de One Piece vont reprendre la mer dès le 10 mars 2026, pour la saison 2 de la série Netflix, la suite se prépare déjà activement. Deux nouvelles recrues viennent ainsi de rejoindre les rangs : les comédiens qui interprèteront Mr. 1 et Miss Doublefinger dans la saison 3.

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Kirby Air Riders review – cute pink squishball challenges Mario for Nintendo racing supremacy

Nintendo Switch 2; Bandai Namco/Sora/HAL Laboratory/Nintendo
It takes some getting used to, but this Mario Kart challenger soon reveals a satisfyingly zen, minimalist approach to competitive racing

In the world of cartoonish racing games, it’s clear who is top dog. As Nintendo’s moustachioed plumber lords it up from his gilded go-kart, everyone from Crash Bandicoot to Sonic and Garfield has tried – and failed – to skid their way on to the podium. Now with no one left to challenge its karting dominance, Nintendo is attempting to beat itself at its own game.

The unexpected sequel to a critically panned 2003 GameCube game, Kirby Air Riders has the pink squishball and friends hanging on for dear life to floating race machines. With no Grand Prix to compete in, in the game’s titular mode you choose a track and compete to be the first of six players to cross the finish line, spin-attacking each other and unleashing weapons and special abilities to create cutesy, colourful chaos.

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© Photograph: Nintendo

© Photograph: Nintendo

© Photograph: Nintendo

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On sait enfin qui va incarner Tante Ophelia dans la saison 3 de Mercredi (et vous la connaissez déjà)

La saison 2 de Mercredi annonçait l'arrivée d'un personnage très important dans l'univers de la série Netflix : Tante Ophelia. Après des mois de suspense, la plateforme de streaming a enfin révélé le nom de l'actrice qui l'interprétera dans la saison 3. Et elle est déjà bien connue, en France, comme ailleurs.

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Service by John Tottenham review – comic confessions of a grumpy bookseller

Working in a bookshop while failing to write a novel, the narrator admits to being a ‘living cliche’ in this bitter black comedy

“I had become a living cliche: the cantankerous bookseller,” the narrator declares a third of the way through John Tottenham’s debut novel. “No book or movie that included a scene set in a bookstore was complete without such a stock ‘character’.” That’s one way to pre-empt criticism, and Sean Hangland is just such a stock figure. Embittered, rude, apathetic, resentful of the success and happiness of others and intellectually snobbish, he’s a 48-year-old aspiring writer who makes ends meet, just about, working in an independent bookshop in a gentrifying part of LA.

He worries about turning 50 having made nothing of his life. He notes, lugubriously, that he barely seems to get any writing done and that – having no gift for plot, characterisation or prose – the novel he claims to be trying to produce will be lousy anyway. He keeps bumping into old friends whose books are being published by hip independent presses or who have acquired nice girlfriends, or both. His teeth are in bad shape.

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© Photograph: Robert Ascroft

© Photograph: Robert Ascroft

© Photograph: Robert Ascroft

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On sait enfin qui va incarner Tante Ophelia dans la saison 3 de Mercredi (et vous la connaissez déjà)

La saison 2 de Mercredi annonçait l'arrivée d'un personnage très important dans l'univers de la série Netflix : Tante Ophelia. Après des mois de suspense, la plateforme de streaming a enfin révélé le nom de l'actrice qui l'interprétera dans la saison 3. Et elle est déjà bien connue, en France, comme ailleurs.

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