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Reçu aujourd’hui — 3 juillet 2025

Gaza: Doctors Under Attack review – this crucial film is the stuff of nightmares. But the world needs to see it

3 juillet 2025 à 01:01

The film the BBC refused to air shows the targeting, detainment and torture of medics in Gaza. Its relentless timeline of horrors will never leave you

The biggest, and possibly only, failure of Gaza: Doctors Under Attack is that the circumstances of its broadcast threaten to overshadow its content.

A brief recap: this film was first commissioned by the BBC, only to be dropped when another documentary – Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone – sparked a furore over impartiality.

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© Photograph: Channel 4 / Basement Films

© Photograph: Channel 4 / Basement Films

Reçu hier — 2 juillet 2025

More than 400 media figures urge BBC board to remove Robbie Gibb over Gaza

2 juillet 2025 à 10:55

Miriam Margolyes, Alexei Sayle and Mike Leigh among signatories to letter criticising Jewish Chronicle ties

More than 400 stars and media figures including Miriam Margolyes, Alexei Sayle, Juliet Stevenson and Mike Leigh have signed a letter to BBC management calling for the removal of a board member, Robbie Gibb, over claims of conflict of interest regarding the Middle East.

The signatories also include 111 BBC journalists and Zawe Ashton, Khalid Abdalla, Shola Mos-Shogbamimu and the historian William Dalrymple, who express “concerns over opaque editorial decisions and censorship at the BBC on the reporting of Israel/Palestine”.

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© Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA WIRE

© Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA WIRE

To Catch a Stalker review – a charity tells one woman to abandon her toddler and flee

1 juillet 2025 à 22:45

Calling the interviewees in this documentary survivors suggests their ordeals are over – but due to paltry laws and police reluctance, that is appallingly far from the case

Hello and welcome to part 86,747,398,464 of the continuing cataloguing via television documentary of the apparently infinite series Ways in Which Largely Men Terrorise Largely Women and Prevent Countless Millions of Them from Living Their Lives in Freedom and Contentment. This one comprises two episodes and is entitled To Catch a Stalker.

It comes from the corporation’s most youth-oriented arm, BBC Three, which mandates a telegenic presenter better versed in sympathy with the programme’s interviewees than interrogation of wider issues, and who has usually come up through the ranks of reality TV rather than journalism. Here, it’s Zara McDermott (Love Island, Made in Chelsea, The X Factor: Celebrity), who previously fronted entries in the infinite series on “revenge porn”, rape culture and eating disorders.

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© Photograph: PHOTOGRAPHER:/CREDIT LINE:BBC/CHATTERBOX

© Photograph: PHOTOGRAPHER:/CREDIT LINE:BBC/CHATTERBOX

Reçu avant avant-hier

Squid Game season three breaks Netflix viewership record with 60.1m views

1 juillet 2025 à 22:46

Final season of the smash series scores a new record for the streaming platform in the first three days

The third and final season of the hit Korean series Squid Game has broken records to become the biggest-ever TV launch for Netflix.

Over its first three days, the series racked up more than 60.1m views, a new high for the streamer, with more than 368.4m hours viewed. The second season launched with 68m views but over a four-day period last December.

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© Photograph: ./Netflix

© Photograph: ./Netflix

‘I have a lot of sympathy for Elon Musk’: Succession creator Jesse Armstrong on his tech bros AI satire Mountainhead

1 juillet 2025 à 17:12

He is the master of ripped-from-the-headlines drama, a writer who skewers the billionaire class. As Mountainhead takes him into new territory, he talks about his nuanced view of the world’s richest man – and why a bonnet drama may be next

When he gets to his London office on the morning this piece is published, Jesse Armstrong will read it in print, or not at all. Though the building has wifi, he doesn’t use it. “If you’re a procrastinator, which most writers are, it’s just a killer.” Online rabbit holes swallow whole days. “In the end, it’s better to be left with the inadequacies of your thoughts.” He gives himself a mock pep talk. “‘It’s just you and me now, brain.’”

Today, the showrunner of Succession and co-creator of Peep Show is back at home, in walking distance of his workspace. He could be any London dad: 54, salt-and-pepper beard, summer striped T-shirt. But staying offline could feel like a statement too, given Armstrong is also the writer-director of Mountainhead, a film about tech bros. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Open AI’s Sam Altman, guru financiers Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen: all these and more are mixed up in the movie’s characters, sharing a comic hang in a ski mansion. Outside, an AI launched by one of the group has sparked global chaos. Inside, there is snippy friction about the intra-billionaire pecking order.

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© Photograph: Europa Press News/Europa Press/Getty Images

© Photograph: Europa Press News/Europa Press/Getty Images

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

1 juillet 2025 à 06:00

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

Crime Scene Cleaners review – Warning! This show is truly vomit-inducing

1 juillet 2025 à 00:05

In this astonishing and gross series, we stand witness as teams battle to clean up blood, guts and body fluids. Viewer discretion is very much advised – there will be maggots

It has been a while since we had a good, honest point-and-boke documentary, is it not? “Boke”, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, means to be sick. I use it here because the onomatopoeia gives a better sense of the fight that precedes the act, especially if – say – a programme is unspooling in front of you that keeps the nausea building until you are past the point of no return. Viewer discretion – and a plastic bowl – is advised.

So, then, to Crime Scene Cleaners, a 10-part documentary – yes, 10! – that does exactly what it says on the tin. It follows teams from British and American companies as they move in after bodies have been removed and evidence bagged and tagged by police to clean up anything left behind. “Anything” can mean blood – spattered, accumulated in the bottom of a bath tub, trailed along a floor, soaked into a carpet, stained into grouting, arterially sprayed along skirting boards. Hepatitis B, we are informed via a dramatic voiceover, can survive for up to seven days in dried blood, hepatitis C for up to six weeks on hard surfaces. Clever pathogens.

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© Photograph: Channel 4

© Photograph: Channel 4

‘What’s the world’s best actor doing there?’ The real reason the Squid Game finale is so bleak

30 juin 2025 à 16:14

The biggest show in Netflix history isn’t allowed to ride off into the sunset – it has to be exploited until its back breaks. It’s a tragedy

Spoiler warning: before we start, I need to make it clear that I’m about to discuss the ending of Squid Game. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading now. But if you have seen it, my goodness – what the hell just happened?

We knew the signs weren’t great going into the final season. Prior to its release, Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk – a man who takes his role so seriously that he lost eight teeth during the production due to stress – said that the series wouldn’t have a happy ending, going as far as calling it “bleak”.

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© Photograph: ./Netflix

© Photograph: ./Netflix

‘I’ve been incredibly lucky. I have heavy impostor syndrome’: Djo on viral fame, bad reviews, and life after Stranger Things

29 juin 2025 à 11:00

Actor and musician Joe Keery made his name on the Netflix hit as lovable jock Steve Harrington, but he never stopped making music. He discusses anxiety, his earnest new record and why he and his castmates are ‘bonded for life’

“It was a crazy situation – this song that I wrote was being linked to the head of the Catholic church!” Joe Keery sounds incredulous as he recalls his latest viral moment. The track in question was End of Beginning, the wistful indie anthem from his 2022 album Decide. It first became an online hit last year, taking on a new life soundtracking TikTok users’ videos of their home towns. As it happens, the home town – or university town, in Keery’s case – that he sings about in the song is Chicago. Fast forward to this May, when Illinois native Robert Francis Prevost was elected as the new pope. The song began to do the rounds all over, with fans overlaying the lyrics (“And when I’m back in Chicago, I feel it!”) over videos of the new pontiff.

It was just the latest surreal chapter in the 33-year-old’s career, which has seen him juggle musical success with acting megastardom, thanks to his breakout role as villainous jock, and later beloved fan favourite, Steve Harrington in Netflix’s retro sci-fi smash Stranger Things. Performing under the name Djo, he has released two albums of hazy psychedelic rock and angular electro respectively, plus that aforementioned, absolutely inescapable viral hit, which peaked at No 4 in the UK charts. He’s now on tour in support of recent third album The Crux, aptly named as he reaches the end of a nine-year stint in Stranger Things, whose extremely long-awaited final season will be released on 26 November.

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© Photograph: Zachary Gray

© Photograph: Zachary Gray

Free coffee, cut-price theatre tickets and birthday upgrades: 42 genius ways to beat the system

29 juin 2025 à 07:00

It pays to be in the know. These simple hacks will help you save money on entertainment, household bills and eating out

Culture

1 If you sign up to secret seat-filler sites such as Show Film First and Central Ticket, you’ll be alerted to last-minute tickets at rock-bottom prices – sometimes nothing at all. The only catch is you have to keep this on the quiet to maintain the illusion that performances are packed with paying punters.

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© Illustration: Hannah Robinson/The Guardian

© Illustration: Hannah Robinson/The Guardian

Such Brave Girls: TV so hilariously savage it will make you yowl with pleasure

28 juin 2025 à 08:00

Move over Julia Davies and Sharon Horgan – this devastating, ruthless sitcom is basically the British psyche on a screen. It’s just the medicine

I love watching real-life siblings on-screen. They bring a knotted history to every interaction, the way they look at one another, or don’t. They may love each other; they’re definitely stuck with each other. Daisy May and Charlie Cooper were the last to bottle such contradiction; I’m delighted we now have Such Brave Girls (BBC One, Wednesday 2 July, 11.40pm), returning for a second series, in which creator Kat Sadler stars alongside her sister Lizzie Davidson. Cattier than Longleat, it features some of the most savage writing on TV, and makes me yowl with pleasure.

It’s about traumatised women making terrible choices. Bear with. The ever-excellent Louise Brealey plays Deb, whose husband abandoned his family 10 years ago after popping to the shop for teabags. In financial trouble, she spends her time trying to lock down relations with drippy, slippery widower Dev, played by Paul Bazely, explicitly for his big house. Single-mindedness has made her grim, grasping and less maternal than a stressed hamster. Bad news for daughters Josie and Billie, who give off the stench of joint captivity, and have split into twin coping strategies: one depressed and passive, the other overconfident, bullish and equally lost.

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© Photograph: PHOTOGRAPHER:/CREDIT LINE:BBC/Various Artists Limited

© Photograph: PHOTOGRAPHER:/CREDIT LINE:BBC/Various Artists Limited

Summer sizzlers! It’s the 20 hottest TV shows of the season

27 juin 2025 à 14:00

Steamy love affairs! Joanna Lumley as the Addams Family gran! Liz Hurley’s big cash giveaway! Here are all the best shows coming your way

The big one. The uberviolent South Korean juggernaut – still Netflix’s most popular show ever – reaches the end point … and Player 456 is still in the game. What will happen after the armed rebellion? Will he figure out he’s playing alongside Frontman? And will he make it out alive? The show’s creator Hwang Dong-hyuk opened up about the denouement this week, telling fans it’s bleaker than ever. Apparently after watching, we’ll be left shaking and asking ourselves: “How much humanity do I have left in me?” One thing’s for sure: there’ll be no let-up. Expect gore galore.
Out now, Netflix

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© Composite: Guardian design

© Composite: Guardian design

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

27 juin 2025 à 09:00

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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