© Andrew Leyden for The New York Times
The British actor on the genius of Bend It Like Beckham, the role she lost to Emma Thompson and why some actors get worse with age
What was the most Australian thing that you experienced while you were in the country filming Dustfall?
Working with a python? We don’t tend to work with snakes in the UK. I’m absolutely snake phobic but the python was very professional. Behaved better than I did.
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© Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
© Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
© Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
As streamers poach viral creators to appeal to children, digital whack-a-mole has become a new kind of family challenge
Exasperated dad Simon Hooper shakes his fist at the camera in a viral video. “We managed to get rid of YouTube in our household six months ago and the kids are finally OK with it,” he says – but Netflix is “now commissioning YouTubers to make their brain rot and putting it back in front of my kids’ faces”.
The precise “brain rot” he’s referring to is the arrival of a polarising show that’s lighting up parent chats around the globe. And while Salish and Jordan Matter might be new to Netflix Kids users, the father-daughter content creators are familiar to anyone who’s spent any time on the internet.
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© Composite: Pituk Loonhong/Getty Images/Guardian Design
© Composite: Pituk Loonhong/Getty Images/Guardian Design
© Composite: Pituk Loonhong/Getty Images/Guardian Design
The broadcaster on her days as a shoplifter, catastrophising, and a first kiss with her dance partner
Born in Luton, Bedfordshire, Stacey Dooley, 39, left school at 15 and worked as a shop assistant. In 2007 she was selected to take part in the BBC reality series Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts. This led to the series Stacey Dooley Investigates and her career as presenter of hard‑hitting documentaries. In 2018, her face-to-face confrontation with an Islamic State soldier won her the One World Media award and she also received the MBE for services to broadcasting. She has made three new investigative films for the BBC and presents BBC series Clickbait Clinic. She met dancer Kevin Clifton when they were partnered on Strictly Come Dancing; they have a daughter and live in Merseyside.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I’m quite greedy. I achieve something or something’s feeling really brilliant and I’m, like, “Right, what are we doing next? What are we getting next?”
© Photograph: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Expectation Entertainment
© Photograph: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Expectation Entertainment
© Photograph: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Expectation Entertainment
Jimmy McGovern’s grab-you-by-the-throat prison show is back and it could hardly be more urgent, prescient or excellent. Brace yourself though … Bake Off it is not
It takes a lot to drag me away from comfort TV in the autumn. Blame the shrinking hours of light or the apocalyptic news cycle but the closest thing I like to get to televisual trauma in October is watching comedians get into their own graves in The Celebrity Traitors. I doubt I’m alone. I don’t want to psychoanalyse the British public but I’d take a punt that collectively we are just about capable right now of looking at Josh Widdicombe trying to find a purpose next to Emma Willis on the Strictly dancefloor (and reportedly, even that’s a struggle).
Enter legendary Jimmy McGovern with a new series of the Bafta-winning prison drama Time (Sunday, 9pm, BBC One) to drag the nation out of its Bake Off-related coma. Having already covered the devastation of men’s and women’s prisons in the first two series, the good news is that McGovern and co-writer Samuel Bailey’s trilogy surely can’t get any more distressing. The new episodes will be set in *checks notes* a youth offending institution for boys. OK great. It’s about children in prison. Thank you, Jimmy! I hope you’re happy! No one else is going to be.
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© Photograph: PHOTOGRAPHER:/CREDIT LINE:BBC/BBC Studios/Peter Marley
© Photograph: PHOTOGRAPHER:/CREDIT LINE:BBC/BBC Studios/Peter Marley
© Photograph: PHOTOGRAPHER:/CREDIT LINE:BBC/BBC Studios/Peter Marley
Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg in Aaron Sorkin’s sequel to The Social Network, and the Last One Laughing star reckons with divorce in her new standup tour
The Social Reckoning
Out now
The David Fincher-directed The Social Network has only come to seem more canny over time, with the site co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg being held responsible for all manner of social ills. In this sequel from Aaron Sorkin (this time directing and writing) based on the incidents around the 2021 leak of internal Facebook memos, Zuck is embodied not by Jesse Eisenberg but Jeremy Strong.
© Photograph: THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection/3F1J0TW THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection Film still
© Photograph: THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection/3F1J0TW THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection Film still
© Photograph: THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection/3F1J0TW THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection Film still
Stephen King’s high-school scare-’em-up is reinvented for 2026, and the pop superstar brings the love in her feelgood live extravaganza. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews
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© Composite: Courtesy of Prime
© Composite: Courtesy of Prime
© Composite: Courtesy of Prime
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