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Christiane Amanpour announces she’s leaving CNN after 43 years

19 October 2026 at 13:21

Anchor’s departure not thought to be linked to company’s recent acquisition by David Ellison’s Skydance Media

Christiane Amanpour, one of CNN’s most decorated and venerated journalists, is leaving the network after 43 years, she said in a statement on Monday.

Amanpour, who began working for the then-fledging network as an assistant on the international assignment desk in 1983 and is now its chief international anchor, will end her show Amanpour in May and leave the network at the end of June. She also hosts a show for PBS, Amanpour and Company, that will conclude at the end of this year.

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© Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

Ofcom investigates Huw Edwards complaint over Channel 5 drama

19 October 2026 at 12:31

Former BBC presenter says programme starring Martin Clunes gave a misleading and unfair account of his downfall

Britain’s media regulator is investigating a complaint from the former BBC news presenter Huw Edwards about a Channel 5 drama depicting his downfall.

Ofcom said it was investigating Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards, which starred Martin Clunes and was broadcast earlier this year, under its “fairness and privacy” rules.

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© Photograph: Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

‘They pulled a guy’s face off. It’s my favourite bit!’ Linda Cardellini on Freaks and Geeks, Mad Men and slasher horror Crystal Lake

19 October 2026 at 11:46

She got to torment Don Draper in Mad Men and has just won an Emmy for DTF St Louis. But nothing prepared the star for all the gore as she switched to horror with the Friday the 13th prequel

‘The first time I had the tooth in my hand,” says Linda Cardellini, “I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is what I’m doing.’” The star of Freaks and Geeks, ER, Dead to Me, Mad Men and DTF St Louis (for which she recently won an Emmy) is talking about her pivot towards full-blown horror. In Crystal Lake, the prequel to the Friday the 13th movies, Cardellini plays Pamela Voorhees, the original slasher of the 1980 film. The tooth, by the way, is human and gets embedded in Pam’s knuckle – until she yanks it out with a gruesome, revolting slurping sound.

Casual filmgoers may associate Friday the 13th with Jason, the hockey-mask-wearing serial killer. But aficionados will know that Pam, Jason’s mother, is the villain of the first movie. “He didn’t even have the mask until the third movie,” says Cardellini, who has clearly done her homework. “Pam is the original killer, in vengeance of his death.” (There is some massaging of previous storylines in Crystal Lake, such as moving Jason’s drowning from the 1950s to the early 70s, but since the franchise is flexible enough to have sent Jason into space at one point, a bit of timeline tweaking feels fair game.)

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© Photograph: Peacock

© Photograph: Peacock

© Photograph: Peacock

How we made Come Dine With Me: ‘Someone served sushi off a guy’s naked chest!’

19 October 2026 at 10:09

‘We’re not there to humiliate or to sneer. Channel 4 insisted everyone had to be a decent cook – the threshold was that contestants had to know what coriander was’

It all started in the early 00s when I tried to throw a dinner party. I was an executive producer during the early days of reality TV – and a house-proud young mum. My posh cousin and her even posher husband came for a meal. I was rushing to get the kids to bed and tidy up, so the food was an afterthought. I’d never made couscous before but decided to serve it with chicken. It was awful. Dry chicken with congealed couscous. At one point, my cousin’s husband stuck his fork in this rock-solid lump, lifted it up and said: “What actually is this?”

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© Photograph: Channel 4

© Photograph: Channel 4

© Photograph: Channel 4

Emperor of Nothing by Blake J Harris review – the definitive portrait of Larry David

19 October 2026 at 02:00

The Seinfeld creator went from luckless standup to multi-millionaire – but what’s his secret?

Larry David agreed to this authorised biography with a five-word email: “Oh Jesus. If we must.” As Blake J Harris tells it, the comedy writer has always been adept at finding reasons not to do something, or to stop doing it, even when there’s nothing to fall back on. As a peppery standup in 1970s New York, David was notorious for storming off stage if the audience displeased him. He walked out of his first TV job, on the Saturday Night Live clone Fridays, because “I stunk.” He twice quit Seinfeld, the sitcom he co-created in 1989, over meddling by NBC executives and fantasised about the network giving him an excuse to leave for good. In 1992, just before it became the biggest show in America, he told friends, “Honestly, I would rather spend a year in prison than do another season of Seinfeld. It would be peaceful. Nobody would make me write anything.” He was only half joking.

David’s career proves that it is in fact possible to be immensely, groundbreakingly successful without ever displaying great ambition. Growing up in Brooklyn amid a boisterous extended family, Lawrence Gene David loved baseball and tall tales but, oddly, not making people laugh. “I can’t recall him ever saying a funny thing,” remembers his older brother Ken. After a spell in the army reserve, he drifted through low-effort jobs – limo driver, bra salesman – and dropped out of acting school, partly because his classmate Jeff Goldblum showed him what a real actor looked like. “Most of the time I was just waiting for other people to stop talking so that I could start talking,” he admits.

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© Photograph: John P. Johnson/HBO

© Photograph: John P. Johnson/HBO

© Photograph: John P. Johnson/HBO

TV tonight: Linda Cardellini stars in a Friday the 13th prequel from A24

Prepare for blood and guts galore in Crystal Lake. Plus: David Harewood’s great legal drama, Pierre. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Atlantic
A Friday the 13th prequel series produced by A24? Halloween has come early for gorefest fans. Linda Cardellini plays small-town single mother Pam Voorhees, who takes her son Jason (Callum Vinson) to summer camp where she works as a cook. But one day Jason drowns in the lake. Fast forward a year, and Pam is grieving but clings to a shred of hope as her son’s body still hasn’t been found. When two cops knock on her door to tell her they have discovered Jason’s remains, things take a huge turn – and it turns out there’s more to her and Jason’s story than meets the eye … It has all the jump-scare beats of a classic 70s slasher movie and Cardellini gets stuck in – blood, guts and all. Hollie Richardson

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© Photograph: PEACOCK/Sky Atlantic

© Photograph: PEACOCK/Sky Atlantic

© Photograph: PEACOCK/Sky Atlantic

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