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

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

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

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

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

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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Tell us your favourite confusing TV show

We would like to hear about the shows that leave you confused, yet entertained all the same

What is a TV show that leaves you confused, yet entertained all the same? The Guardian’s writers are compiling their favourites – and now we would like to hear yours.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

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© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

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‘What did I just watch?’ The TV shows that utterly baffle us – but we can’t switch off

From David Bowie being reincarnated as a kettle to Reese Witherspoon in space, our writers list the TV head-scratchers they can’t get enough of

With a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you with any degree of accuracy what Tim Robinson’s The Chair Company is actually about. In terms of straight plot, it’s the story of a man who is drawn into a conspiracy after a chair breaks when he sits on it. But beyond that, it’s honestly anyone’s guess.

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© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

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A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms review – this is the Game of Thrones we all need now

The real world is way worse than Westeros – so why not let this heartwarming underdog tale of a simple soul and his ethereal squire be your safe space

‘Bless their little cotton socks!” is not a response one expects to have to any of the inhabitants of Westeros, the land of the bloody, violent, incestuous and often depraved series of Game of Thrones. But the endearing protagonists of the latest spin-off of the franchise, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, invite it.

Their names, as in the George RR Martin novellas on which the series is based, are Dunk – short for Ser Duncan the Tall – and Egg. Dunk (Peter Claffey, a suitably tall former Irish rugby union player, last seen in Bad Sisters) was squire to a hedge – non-noble – knight, Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb), who took the boy under his wing but never quite got round to knighting the man before dying. We first meet Dunk burying his mentor under an old elm tree and taking up his arms against the sea of troubles that are about to engulf him. Dunk is a simple soul (very simple, some might say – he may look like a medieval Jack Reacher, but inside he is more of an eager but baffled labrador) and sets out to find a lord he can himself serve as a hedge knight.

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© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

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Tony Dokoupil’s Road Trip on CBS News Hits a Rough Patch

A stretch of big news revealed growing pains for CBS’s new evening anchor and problems with its Bari Weiss-era philosophy.

© CBS Evening News

Tony Dokoupil, the new anchor of “CBS Evening News,” interviewed President Trump in a factory near Detroit on Tuesday night. Dokoupil has been broadcasting from different cities since his debut last week.
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