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Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers review – finally, Netflix makes a great, serious documentary

Twenty years on, this heart-racing four-part series reconstructs the terror attacks and the vast investigation that followed, without losing sight of the survivors. The detail about the bathtub is astonishing

Netflix is not always known for its restraint in the documentary genre, but with its outstanding recent film Grenfell: Uncovered, and now Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers, it appears to be finding a new maturity and seriousness in the field. There have been plenty of recent documentaries on the subject of the attacks and the sprawling investigation that followed – no surprise, given that it is the 20th anniversary this week – but there is still real depth to be found here.

Over four parts, this thorough series unravels the initial attacks on the London transport system, which killed 52 people and injured more than 700, then follows that febrile month into the failed bombings of 21 July, and then the police shooting of the innocent Jean Charles de Menezes, a day later. The first 25 minutes or so simply recount those first attacks, compiling the story using phone pictures, news footage, occasional reconstructions, the infamous photographs of the injured pouring out of tube stations and accounts from survivors and the families of victims. Though it is by now a familiar story, this evokes the fear, confusion and panic of that day in heart-racing detail.

Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers is on Netflix now.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

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Squid Game final season review – an ending so WTF it entirely beggars belief

After a wild new player is forced to join the game without consent, the action gets even more operatic and bloodthirsty. But if you can get on board with the twists – and that’s a big if – you will not believe what happens in the last minute

The two main talking points of the third and final season of Squid Game are both massive spoilers. This means that I won’t be able to mention the final minute of the whole thing, which contains a moment so WTF and genuinely surprising that I bet my editor a serious amount of money she wouldn’t be able to guess what happens. She couldn’t, thankfully, but such reckless gambling is the sort of behaviour that would land me in Squid Game in the first place, so it just shows that nobody here has learned any lessons from it whatsoever.

Nor should I talk about another key development, though in this case, it becomes so central that it needs to be mentioned somehow. So, vaguely speaking, a new player is forced to enter the games, without being capable of giving their consent, and becomes the focus of later episodes. It is odd to criticise Squid Game for not being credible, given that it is a hit show about an underground tournament in which children’s games are played until many or most of the participants die, but introducing this new player is completely out there, even by the standards of “hide-and-seek … but with knives?”

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© Photograph: Noh Ju-han/Netflix

© Photograph: Noh Ju-han/Netflix

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