Netflix
Top tosh: The Diplomat reviewed
The Diplomat bears the same relationship to 21st-century ambassadorial geopolitics as Bridgerton does to the salons and social mores of…
Martin has worn down my defences
Provence My older, adopted sister came to stay. She suffers from peripheral neuropathy secondary to diabetes and is registered disabled.…
Is Coogan’s Dr Strangelove as good as Sellars’s? Of course not
Stanley Kubrick’s surreal movie Dr Strangelove is a response to the fear of nuclear annihilation which obsessed every citizen in…
Easy-on-the-eye tosh: Netflix’s The Perfect Couple reviewed
The Perfect Couple is an exemplar of that genre sometimes cynically known as ‘poverty programming’: dramas that train all of…
About as edgy as Banksy: Joe Rogan’s Netflix special reviewed
My resolution this summer was to see how far into the Olympics I could get without watching an event. It’s…
Am I slightly psychopathic to be so obsessed with gangster TV?
Most of my favourite TV shows seem to involve gangsters in one way or another: The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Top…
How a TikTok dance craze turned into a brainwashing cult
Because you don’t – I hope – use TikTok you will never have heard of the Wilking sisters. But back…
Sordid, ugly and threadbare: Jimmy Carr – Natural Born Killer reviewed
Here’s an offensive joke: ‘Jimmy Carr gets paid to do a Netflix special.’ All right, it’s not original – I…
Grey, gloomy, and utterly joyless: Ripley reviewed
If you’ve spent any time gawping at Netflix over the past half-decade or so, you’ll already know that human culture…
Have we all become slaves to algorithms?
Kyle Chayka sees their constant feeds as flattening our lives, but the spread of Americanisation, which began long before the internet, is the real steamroller
Surprisingly addictive and heartwarming: Netflix’s Beckham reviewed
If you’re not remotely interested in football or celebrity, I recommend Netflix’s four-part documentary series Beckham. Yes, I know it’s…
Arresting visual spectacle and superb fight scenes: Netflix’s One Piece reviewed
What would you say is the most successful comic-book series in history? If you’re thinking Tintin you’re not even close.…
Why I’m addicted to Australian MasterChef
Why is Australian MasterChef so much better than the English version? You’d think, with a population less than a third…
How to shock a Satanist
I wish I could be like actors and pretend to be bored by press junkets, but the truth is I…
Bags of charm and a gripping plot: Netflix’s The Chosen One reviewed
Some years ago, Mark Millar (the creator of Kick-Ass, Kingsman, etc.) hit on yet another brilliant conceit for one of…
Rewriting history
If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was…
Gratuitously twisty, turny nonsense: Sky Max’s Poker Face reviewed
Imagine if you had the power always to tell whether or not someone was lying. You’d have it made, wouldn’t…
The Recruit might be the worst show on Netflix
The Top Gun series received generous support from the US Navy because it was such an effective recruitment tool. I…
The makers of Fauda have another hit on their hands: Sky Atlantic's Munich Games reviewed
You’d have to pay me an awful lot more than I get for this column to review Monster: The Jeffrey…
Everyone involved should be in prison: Netflix's Persuasion reviewed
You may already have read early reviews of Netflix’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion saying it’s ‘the worst adaptation ever’…
Has identity politics had its day?
Have we reached peak woke? In Hollywood, that seems to be the emerging consensus. Thanks to the box office success…
Kim Kardashian is a better role model than Marilyn Monroe
When Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress to the Met Gala recently – the shimmering, crystal-studded, second-skin gown in which…
