Late-night hosts discuss the Trump administration’s torrent of untruths over the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good
Late-night hosts expressed outrage over the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) officer in Minneapolis.
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© Photograph: Youtube
© Photograph: Youtube
© Photograph: Youtube
An afterlife sitcom, an angry penguin, tossed salad and scrambled eggs, and a Corby trouser press … our writers pick the shows they would happily watch on a loop for ever
I love every character and every aspect of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. There isn’t a weak link in the cast and they work together as seamlessly and apparently joyfully as you could wish.
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© Photograph: Gale Adler/Paramount/Getty Images
© Photograph: Gale Adler/Paramount/Getty Images
© Photograph: Gale Adler/Paramount/Getty Images
© Warrick Page/HBO Max
© Alex Welsh for The New York Times
Featuring Wood, her famous sidekicks Julie Walters and Celia Imrie and other female standups, this documentary is tender, moving and an absolute hoot
There is a moment at the start of this documentary about the comedian Victoria Wood when you realise what she was up against at the beginning of her career: a snippet from the archives of Melvyn Bragg hailing her as Britain’s first female standup comedian. That wasn’t entirely the case, but it seems unthinkable now that it took until the 1980s for women to break through in any numbers. In 1985, when season one of Wood’s sketch show As Seen on TV aired on BBC2, there were sniffs of doubt that a woman could front a comedy programme, let alone a northern woman. How wrong they were. Clips from the show, featuring Wood, Julie Walters and Celia Imrie, are a hoot: high on a tipsy energy, the performers are all on the edge of collapsing into giggles.
For those who grew up with Wood as a national treasure, Becoming Victoria Wood will be a revelation. Her standup routines in the 1980s blazed a trail, with jokes about tampons and cellulite. She had a lonely childhood, was ignored by her mother and was shy and self-conscious about her weight. (Later press coverage fixating on her size was vile.) She didn’t feel clever or good-looking enough but she had a fierce streak of ambition that seemed to come from nowhere.
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© Photograph: Amit Lennon/©Phil McIntyre Television
© Photograph: Amit Lennon/©Phil McIntyre Television
© Photograph: Amit Lennon/©Phil McIntyre Television
Late-night hosts discussed the Trump administration’s posturing over Greenland amid widespread condemnation of its actions in Venezuela
Late-night hosts mocked the Trump administration’s bullish rhetoric on Greenland after the surprise takeover of Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela.
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© Photograph: Youtube
© Photograph: Youtube
© Photograph: Youtube
An online conspiracy theory has left hysterical fans believing that the Netflix show’s finale was a fake. Could Vecna still come back with a secret episode?
In recent days, my 14-year-old daughter has been exhibiting signs of becoming a conspiracy theorist. But this isn’t your common or garden Twin-Towers-grassy-knoll-moon-landings business. She has fallen, entirely and joyfully, for a conjecture known as Conformity Gate – and she is not the only one.
For the non Gen-Zers out there, Conformity Gate is the theory that the much-vaunted finale of Netflix behemoth Stranger Things, released on 1 January in the UK, wasn’t the real finale at all.
Fuelled by energy drinks and pasty from lack of sunlight, fans of the show have been beavering away in basements around the world to produce a fantastical hypothesis that the finale’s rather soupy 40-minute epilogue was all an illusion created by the show’s mind-controlling villain Vecna. A secret final episode, showing what had really happened, would be released on 7 January, at 8pm US Eastern Time (1am in the UK).
Explaining the labyrinthine intricacies of the “evidence” cited by Conformiteers would take thousands of words. Essentially, it involves some people sitting with their hands in their lap wearing orange graduation gowns, too many people wearing glasses, a roll of dice totalling seven, a dial changing colour, a wonky milkshake-timeline, strategically positioned exit signs, a woman having short hair, a door handle switching sides, a character missing some scars, and one of the characters remarking that the town of Hawkins “feels different” – hardly surprising, as it’s no longer full of murderous monsters, cracks in the earth, and a psychopath made out of tree roots.
© Photograph: Courtesy Of Netflix/COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025
© Photograph: Courtesy Of Netflix/COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025
© Photograph: Courtesy Of Netflix/COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025
This six-part adaptation of the bestselling 2020 novel about a murder investigation is twisty, absurd and bingeable. It’s great January viewing
A woman lies bloodied and twitching her last on the bonnet of a car parked deep in a wood. Another woman arrives home bloodied, gasping with fear and for wine, and starts scrubbing her hands before clearing her flat of – well, everything.
A female voiceover intones that there are two sides to every story. “Which means someone is always lying.” Absolute nonsense, obviously, but it sounds great and more importantly it confirms what we were hoping: that we are in the presence of a glossy, efficient adaptation of a bestselling thriller and it is time to switch off our brains and enjoy (unless you are the type who likes to try to solve the mystery before the characters do, in which case, Godspeed and let me know where you get the energy from).
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© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
This tale of a family dealing with a kidnapped daughter is a deeply engaging, psychologically complex thriller that is a cut above the rest
A summary of Girl Taken is disheartening; a teenage girl is abducted by a man she trusted and kept for his own grim purposes in a remote secret location, and must use her wits to survive the depravities and maybe one day escape. But in full, Girl Taken, like the 2016 book Baby Doll by Hollie Overton on which it is based, is something much better. It takes the neglected parts of such stories – the sadder, quieter, far less titillating and voyeuristic aspects of what it means to take a person out of her home, her world and her life, and away from those of the people who love her – and fleshes all that out instead. It makes for a slower burn, but a much more deeply engaging and psychologically complex thriller than we customarily expect from such a setup, and – in asking what it really means to survive an act of profound violence – harrowing in a more valuable way.
Lily and Abby (played with depth and delicacy by Tallulah and Delphi Evans) are twin 17-year-olds, on the cusp of – well, everything really, as you are when you are happy teenage girls. We meet them on the last day of the summer term. Lily is set to enjoy the summer with her lovely boyfriend Wes (Levi Brown, who was so extraordinary in 2024’s This Town) and partying, and Abby is laying plans to go to university. She is the star pupil in Mr Hansen’s English class (“You can start calling me Rick now” he says as the final school bell goes) and the popular young teacher has always encouraged her ambitions.
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© Photograph: Clapperboard TV/Paramount + Paramount Global
© Photograph: Clapperboard TV/Paramount + Paramount Global
© Photograph: Clapperboard TV/Paramount + Paramount Global
© Daniel Cole/Reuters
Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic thriller and Apple’s comedy series lead nominations for the renamed Sag awards with an impressive showing for Sinners and Adolescence
One Battle After Another and The Studio lead the nominations for this year’s Actor awards.
The Actor awards were previously known as the Screen Actors Guild (Sag) awards but were renamed last year. The name change was to provide “clearer recognition in terms of what the show is about”, according to those involved.
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© Photograph: Christopher Polk/Variety/Getty Images
© Photograph: Christopher Polk/Variety/Getty Images
© Photograph: Christopher Polk/Variety/Getty Images
Actor who played the venal Maryland state governor Clay Davis in the US crime drama The Wire
Many fictional characters are known by their catchphrases. Few are identifiable by a single exclamation alone. Among the exceptions are Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (“A handbag?”) and the venal Maryland state senator Clay Davis, who appeared in all five series of the acclaimed US crime drama The Wire between 2002 and 2008.
Senator Davis, played by Isiah Whitlock Jr, who has died aged 71, was notable for his unique pronunciation of a monosyllabic expletive. On his lips, its central vowel was bent out of shape and stretched as thin as pizza dough: “Sheee-it”.
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© Photograph: HBO
© Photograph: HBO
© Photograph: HBO
On the fifth anniversary of the January 6 riots, late-night hosts discuss the Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite history as ‘peaceful protests’
Late-night hosts observed the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection and recapped Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s first day in a US court.
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© Photograph: YouTube
© Photograph: YouTube
© Photograph: YouTube
In this week’s newsletter: Stranger Things’ climactic showdown is the latest pop culture spectacle to feel like its been ported straight from a console. The industries’ reciprocally influential relationship can be to everyone’s gain
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It had begun to feel like an endurance test by the end, but nonetheless, like the sucker I am, I watched the Stranger Things finale last week. And spoiler warning: I’m going to talk about it in general terms in this newsletter. Because approximately 80% of the final season comprised twentysomething “teenagers” explaining things to each other while using random 1980s objects to illustrate convoluted plans and plot points, my expectations were not high. After an interminable hour, finally, something fun happens, as the not-kids arm themselves with machine guns and molotovs and face off against a monstrously gigantic demon-crab. Aha, I thought – the final boss battle!
The fight was like something out of Monster Hunter, all scale and spectacle with a touch of desperation. For a very long time, video games sought to imitate cinema. Now cinema (and TV) often feels like a video game. The structure of Stranger Things’ final season reminded me a lot of Resident Evil: long periods of walking slowly through corridors, with characters exchanging plot information aloud on their way to the action, and occasional explosions of gunfire, screeching monsters or car chases. Those long periods of relative inaction are much more tolerable when you’ve got a controller in your hands. I am all for TV and film embracing the excitement, spectacle and dynamism of video games, but do they have to embrace the unnecessary side-quests and open-world bloat, too?
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© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix/PA
© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix/PA
© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix/PA
Here are the wildest theories about who is beneath the red cloak. Brace yourself for handwriting analysis, Jekyll and Hyde vibes and crucial slips of the tongue
It’s the question on everyone’s lips. No, not “Why am I half a stone heavier and in dire need of an afternoon nap?” but “Who is the Secret Traitor?” And thankfully, we’re about to find out.
The curveball new role has proved a gamechanging twist in BBC mega hit The Traitors. Swishing around Ardross Castle in a red cloak, as opposed to the Traitors’ familiar green, the Secret Traitor’s identity is unknown to contestants and viewers alike. It hasn’t just stoked paranoia in the Traitors’ turret but enabled the audience to play along at home, turning us all into armchair sleuths as we try to crack the case.
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© Photograph: BBC
© Photograph: BBC
© Photograph: BBC
Is this big-money challenge cruel? Yes. But it’s mainly just tedious to watch these immature players and their teenage machinations as they battle for cash
The first season of Beast Games – the big-money reality challenge masterminded and hosted by internet personality Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast – prompted a lawsuit. Five anonymous contestants sued both the production companies behind the series and Donaldson himself, claiming that they had been kept “underfed and overtired”, and alleging an unsafe environment on the set of the Gladiators-ish, Squid Game-esque series (claims, of course, firmly denied by all parties). While the participants claimed they had been “shamelessly exploited” in the name of entertainment, this did little to impede the success of Beast Games, which went on to become Amazon’s most-watched unscripted series ever, garnering 50 million viewers in the month after its release.
You may well come to Beast Games with a sense that this is a slightly murky, mercenary endeavour, the $5m grand prize (“generational wealth!!!!” says Donaldson) distracting from potential ethical issues just below the surface. Weirdly, though, moral issues will probably be the least of viewers’ concerns. More than ever, in its second series Beast Games also happens to be mindless, vibeless television, flecked with Squiddy sadism but also borrowing heavily from the Love Island playbook. As they stay up into the wee hours building improbably high towers from foam blocks or playing convoluted games of dodgeball, the contestants couple up, crash out and even seek to avenge fallen players. Take Luisitin, playing to defend the honour of his wife from series one, by badmouthing her former nemesis, Karim, to anyone who will listen (“he and his brother gaslit my wife on television!”) People say things like “be careful who you trust!” and “he’s backpack boy … his girlfriend is carrying him over the finish line”. You don’t get this sort of feuding on Ninja Warrior, that’s for sure.
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© Photograph: David Scott Holloway/Amazon
© Photograph: David Scott Holloway/Amazon
© Photograph: David Scott Holloway/Amazon
Late-night hosts react to Trump’s shocking attack on Venezuela and surprise capture of Nicolás Maduro
Late-night hosts tore into the Trump administration’s surprise military attack on Caracas, capture of president Nicolás Maduro and vague plans to “run” Venezuela.
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© Photograph: Youtube
© Photograph: Youtube
© Photograph: Youtube
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