Netflix
Why I’m glad to see the back of Call My Agent!
For the past few weeks I have been binge-watching the Netflix series Call My Agent! (or Dix pour cent, as…
The troubling history of Mormonism
Are Mormons prepared to ignore their troubled history?
Apple+'s new series damn near cost me my marriage: Calls reviewed
Calls is the very antithesis of televisual soma. In fact it’s so jarring and discomfiting and horrible that I think…
Our love affair with the Anglo-Saxons
Dan Hitchens on our love affair with the Anglo-Saxons
This is cinema as car ad, says Geoff Dyer: News of the World reviewed
It’s a premise with plenty of previous. Children whose parents were murdered by Indians on the frontier of the American…
How chess got cool
How chess got cool
Remarkably moving: The Dig reviewed
Just before the outbreak of the second world war a discovery was made in a riverside field at Sutton Hoo…
The truth about the vaccine ‘postcode lottery’
‘Postcode lottery!’ people scream when one area feels less well treated than another in a public service — in this…
So good I watched it twice: Netflix's The White Tiger reviewed
The White Tiger is adapted from the Booker-prize winning novel (2008) by Aravind Adiga. It is directed by Ramin Bahrani…
Superb but depraved: BBC1’s The Serpent reviewed
The Serpent is the best BBC drama series in ages — god knows how it slipped through the net —…
The rise and fall of Netflix
In 2010, Jeff Bewkes, then CEO of Time Warner, was asked if he thought Netflix had any chance of taking…
Netflix's Barbarians taught me those Romans had it coming
Of all the times and places to have been on the wrong side of history, I can’t imagine many worse…
Sets appeal: the distracting beauty of TV backdrops
The distracting beauty of TV backdrops
Like a never-ending episode of The Jerry Springer Show: Hillbilly Elegy reviewed
Hillbilly Elegy is an adaptation of the best-selling memoir, published in 2016, by J.D. Vance and it’s quite a story.…
The journalists who scripted the golden age of Hollywood
Tanya Gold on the journalists who scripted the golden age of Hollywood
Did any of this actually happen? The Crown, season four, reviewed
‘We have to stop it now!’ says Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter), smoking another cigarette, obviously. She’s talking about the…
In defence of Emily in Paris
A frothy new drama called Emily in Paris arrived on Netflix last month. Starring Lily Collins — daughter of Phil…
One zinger after another – but it’ll leave you cold: Trial of the Chicago 7 reviewed
Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 — don’t worry, you haven’t missed six earlier films — is a…
This is what cinema is for: Netflix’s Cuties reviewed
Cuties is the subject of a moral panic and a hashtag #CancelNetflix. It tells the story of Amy (Fathia Youssouf),…
The only things left worth watching on the BBC are foreign buy-ins like The Last Wave
Soon, very soon now — even sooner than I imagined, if A Suitable Boy turns out to be as lacklustre…
Why haven’t podcasts cracked the recipe for audio drama?
In Beeb-dominated Britain, the commercial triumph of podcasting — epitomised by Spotify’s recent £100 million deals with Joe Rogan and…
Messy but absolutely necessary: Da 5 Bloods reviewed
Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods is about four African-American vets who return to Vietnam to locate the body of their…
Jeffrey Epstein really was a streak of slime
Did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself or was he murdered — and frankly who cares? Actually, having watched the four-part Netflix…
Netflix’s Caliphate is all too frighteningly plausible
Sweden is now properly celebrated as the Land that Called Coronavirus Correctly. But in the distant past, those with long…
Joyous and very, very funny: Beastie Boys Story reviewed
The music of the Beastie Boys was entirely an expression of their personalities, a chance to delightedly splurge out on…
