Guz Khan: ‘What do I most dislike about my appearance? My breasts’ 13 December 2025 at 05:00

Guz Khan: ‘What do I most dislike about my appearance? My breasts’

13 December 2025 at 05:00

The actor, writer and comedian on turning his life around, fancying Cilla Black and his secret nose-picking

Born in Coventry, Guz Khan, 39, was working as a secondary school teacher when he began uploading comedy videos as the character Mobeen in 2014. The following year, he gave up teaching to pursue standup. In 2017, his show Man Like Mobeen was released by the BBC and ran for five series. He won a Royal Television Society award in 2020 and was Bafta-nominated twice. His films include Army of Thieves and The Bubble. Guz Khan’s Custom Cars starts on Quest on 19 January. He is married with five children and lives in the West Midlands.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Impulsivity. We end up in strange places, like right now – I am in the Middle East.

The Great Christmas Bake Off 2025: the Peep Show cast’s glorious reunion is the hottest TV event of the season 13 December 2025 at 02:00

The Great Christmas Bake Off 2025: the Peep Show cast’s glorious reunion is the hottest TV event of the season

The Guardian

By:Rhik Samadder

13 December 2025 at 02:00

It’s pure joy to see the beloved comedy’s crew get back together. It feels like a family reunion – but one where everyone is hugely charming

Peep Show is not really a TV show. It’s closer to an identity now, embedded in the collective British DNA. A decade after the show finished, many of us still call each other “Clean Shirt”, notice logos in foam or quip about crack being “very moreish”. The only show more emblematic of the UK’s national psyche is The Great British Bake Off. Therefore rejoice, for the hottest collab of the holiday is here! I’m calling this the real reason for the season. The true raisin for the praisin’, perhaps.

They’re so much part of our lives, it’s hard to see these bakers as actors. It feels more natural to say that this Christmas the Bake Off tent will host a reunion of Mark, Sophie, Big Suze, Super Hans and Dobby. Together again, like family, your family. It’s glorious to see them – older, some bearded, not one of them less charming. No proceeds from this are going to charity because there aren’t any. This is happening purely for joy.

Elastic limbs, fantastical accents and crackling sexual chemistry: Dick Van Dyke turns 100 13 December 2025 at 01:00

Elastic limbs, fantastical accents and crackling sexual chemistry: Dick Van Dyke turns 100

The Guardian

By:Xan Brooks

13 December 2025 at 01:00

The goofy star of Mary Poppins becomes a centenarian on Saturday. And what a precocious performer he has proved, sustaining scrappy mischief through seven decades of mainstream entertainment

All Hollywood stars grow old and die except perhaps one - Dick Van Dyke - who turns 100 today. The real world Peter Pan who used to trip over the ottoman on The Dick Van Dyke Show is still standing. The man who impersonated a wind-up toy in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang hasn’t wound down just yet. He has outlived mentors, co-stars, romantic partners and several studios. He’s even outlived the jokes about his performance in Mary Poppins. These days his mangled cockney accent is regarded with more fondness than contempt. It’s seen as one of the great charms of the 1964 classic, along with the carousel chase or the cartoon dancing penguins.

Charm is the magic ingredient of every popular entertainer and few have possessed it in such abundance as Van Dyke, the impoverished son of a travelling cookie salesman who dropped out of high school and educated himself at the movies. “His job in this life is to make a happier world,” his Broadway co-star Chita Rivera once said - and this may explain his stubborn refusal to quit, not while times are tough and he feels that audiences still need cheering up.

From Eleanor the Great to Emily in Paris: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead 13 December 2025 at 01:00

From Eleanor the Great to Emily in Paris: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

The Guardian

By:Guardian Staff

13 December 2025 at 01:00

Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut stars the 96-year-old June Squibb, while Netflix’s lovable tweefest sees its heroine move to Rome

Eleanor the Great
Out now
June Squibb stars in Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, which premiered at Cannes and tells the tale of the eponymous Eleanor, a senior citizen recently relocated to New York, who strikes up a friendship with a 19-year old – and then stumbles her way into pretending to be a Holocaust survivor.

Lurker
Out now
A hit at Sundance, this is the story of a lowly retail employee who happens to strike up a friendship with a rising pop star, becoming the Boswell to his Johnson, if Boswell was part of a pop star’s entourage. But the path of friendship with a famous person never did run smooth, and the uneven power dynamic soon prompts some desperate manoeuvring in this psychological thriller.

Ella McCay
Out now
Emma Mackey stars in the latest from James L Brooks (his first since 2010), a political comedy about an idealistic thirtysomething working in government and preparing to step into the shoes of her mentor, Governor Bill (Albert Brooks). Jamie Lee Curtis co-stars as Ella’s aunt.

Lurker to Our Girls: the week in rave reviews 13 December 2025 at 01:00

Lurker to Our Girls: the week in rave reviews

The Guardian

By:Guardian Staff

13 December 2025 at 01:00

A buzzy thriller about a Hollywood hanger-on and a moving documentary following the parents bereaved in last summer’s Southport attack. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Has Simon Cowell lost his mojo? Seven things you need to know about the music mogul’s new direction 13 December 2025 at 00:00

Has Simon Cowell lost his mojo? Seven things you need to know about the music mogul’s new direction

The Guardian

By:Elle Hunt

13 December 2025 at 00:00

The former X Factor judge is back, auditioning boyband wannabes for his latest talent show – but gen Z doesn’t seem to care very much, or even know who he is

Have we gone back in time to 2010? If only! No, Simon Cowell is just back in the headlines, reasserting his svengali status for his new Netflix show. Reviews suggest that Cowell’s attempted comeback, 15 years since his celebrity peak, highlights less his particular star power than how totally the world has moved on. But is there anything to learn from SyCo now, and will his new boyband work? Let’s see!

1. Cowell is chasing a new direction

Amadeus returns: can Sky’s miniseries attract a new generation to Mozart? 12 December 2025 at 14:26

Amadeus returns: can Sky’s miniseries attract a new generation to Mozart?

The Guardian

By:Imogen Tilden

12 December 2025 at 14:26

A reboot of Peter Shaffer’s play hopes to repeat the 1984 film’s magic and lure a fresh audience to classical music

Forty years ago, Amadeus won eight Oscars, four Baftas and four Golden Globes – and introduced a new generation to 18th-century music. Millions bought the film’s Mozart soundtrack and it remains one of the bestselling classical music albums of all time, shifting more than 6.5m copies globally, and earning 13 gold discs.

It even inspired a novelty hit when Falco mixed Europop with rap in Rock Me Amadeus – the first German-language song to top the US Billboard chart (Nena’s 99 Luftballons only reached No 2 in the US, pop-pickers).

The Revenge Club review – this starry divorce caper makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time 12 December 2025 at 10:00

The Revenge Club review – this starry divorce caper makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time

The Guardian

By:Lucy Mangan

12 December 2025 at 10:00

Martin Compston and Meera Syal are among the names in this tale of divorcees hitting back at their exes. It’s a thriller, comedy and psychodrama all at once – but could maybe do with being more simple

Sometimes three-in-one type things are good. Phone chargers with lots of leads for all your devices that have stupidly different ports. Those woolly hats that cover your neck and lower face, so you look daft but are impregnable to winter cold. The Nars blusher stick that is also a lipstick and eyeshadow.

When it comes to dramas, however, it’s best to stick to one field of endeavour. The Revenge Club is a gallimaufry of tones, styles and performances. Watching it is like looking through a kaleidoscope that someone twists for you every few minutes; it’s fun but quite disorienting after a while.

‘Astonishing’: how Stanley Baxter’s TV extravaganzas reached 20 million 12 December 2025 at 06:17

‘Astonishing’: how Stanley Baxter’s TV extravaganzas reached 20 million

The Guardian

By:Mark Lawson

12 December 2025 at 06:17

The Scottish star used his exceptional gift for impersonations to create genre-mashing specials that were as epic as the Hollywood films they parodied. He was a perfectionist performer with huge talent

Actor and comedian Stanley Baxter dies aged 99

The description “special” is overused in television schedules; Stanley Baxter’s programmes justify it. The comedian is one of the few stars whose reputation rests on a handful of astonishing one-offs – standalone comic extravaganzas screened in the 1970s and 1980s, first by ITV’s London Weekend Television and then the BBC.

In both cases, the networks ended their associations with Baxter not because of lack of audience interest – at their peak, the shows reached more than 20 million viewers – but due to the colossal costs demanded by the performer’s vast and perfectionist visual ambition. One of Baxter’s favourite conceits was to re-create, in witty pastiche, scenes from big-budget Hollywood movies that made it look as if his versions had also spent millions of dollars.

Taylor Swift: The End of an Era review – as she breaks down over the terror plot, it’s impossible not to feel her pain 12 December 2025 at 07:24

Taylor Swift: The End of an Era review – as she breaks down over the terror plot, it’s impossible not to feel her pain

The Guardian

By:Laura Snapes

12 December 2025 at 07:24

The singer’s tears over the Islamic State terrorist plot against her show and Southport attack make this behind-the-scenes docuseries about her world-conquering tour more moving than anyone could have anticipated

Swifties had long guessed that there would be a documentary going behind the scenes of Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras tour. The 2023 Eras Tour concert movie didn’t show any of the inner workings of this three-and-a-half-hour behemoth, which ran for 149 dates from 2023-24. Fans put some bits together, such as how Swift arrived on stage being pushed inside a cleaning cart. Plus, given the two albums she wrote during and about the Eras tour – 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department and this year’s The Life of a Showgirl – it wouldn’t be Swiftian to overlook another lucrative IP extension.

What fans could never have imagined was that Disney was set to start filming as the Eras tour was due to hit Vienna on 8 August 2023 – the first of three shows in the Austrian capital that were cancelled owing to an Islamic State terrorist plot. We learn this in episode one of the six-part docuseries The End of an Era, when Swift and her longtime friend Ed Sheeran are backstage at Wembley, hours before he guests at her first concert after the thwarted attack. “I didn’t even get to go,” Swift tells him of Vienna. “I was on the plane headed there. I just need to do this show and re-remember the joy of it because I’m a little bit just like …” She can’t find the words.

Son of a nutcracker! It’s the great Christmas film guide 2025 12 December 2025 at 07:00

Son of a nutcracker! It’s the great Christmas film guide 2025

The Guardian

By:Simon Wardell and Stuart Heritage

12 December 2025 at 07:00

Here are all the best movies to watch over the holidays – from favourites like Elf and Paddington to the latest from Mission: Impossible and Knives Out. Plus, two of the sexiest films ever made

***

Actor and comedian Stanley Baxter dies aged 99 12 December 2025 at 05:47

Actor and comedian Stanley Baxter dies aged 99

The Guardian

By:Hannah J Davies

12 December 2025 at 05:47

Baxter enjoyed a decades-spanning career on radio, TV and film, and was famous for impersonating famous people including Queen Elizabeth II

The actor and comedian Stanley Baxter has died at the age of 99.

Born in Glasgow in 1926, Baxter was best known for helming TV sketch series including The Stanley Baxter Show and The Stanley Baxter Picture Show.

TV tonight: Kieran Culkin, Josh Hartnett and Nick Mohammed do Gogglebox 12 December 2025 at 01:20

TV tonight: Kieran Culkin, Josh Hartnett and Nick Mohammed do Gogglebox

The Guardian

By:Phil Harrison · Alexi Duggins · Hannah J Davies and Ellen E Jones

12 December 2025 at 01:20

Stand Up to Cancer kicks off with unexpected Hollywood stars … and the beloved ‘hundys’ from The Celebrity Traitors. Plus: all-out luxury (and the best cheeses) at a Mayfair hotel. Here’s what to watch this evening

7.30pm, Channel 4
Davina McCall launches a run of programmes with the fight against cancer at their heart – including a Gogglebox special at 9.10pm with Kieran Culkin and Jazz Charton, Josh Hartnett and Tamsin Egerton, and Nick Mohammed and Joe Marler. Before that, there’s a documentary at 8pm from inside a cancer clinic at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, following patients and their families on their journeys through testing, diagnosis and treatment. It aims to offer an insight into the clinical and emotional experience of this disease. Phil Harrison

‘I live for playing cops and robbers!’ Martin Compston on love, Las Vegas and the new Line of Duty 12 December 2025 at 00:00

‘I live for playing cops and robbers!’ Martin Compston on love, Las Vegas and the new Line of Duty

The Guardian

By:Zoe Williams

12 December 2025 at 00:00

He’ll soon be going back on the hunt for bent coppers – but not before a wild revenge tale of divorcees going rogue. The star talks feeling inferior to Meera Syal, his life in the US and why he’s thrilled to be typecast

While we embark on the inhumanly long wait for the new season of Line of Duty, which starts shooting in January, you’ll see Martin Compston – the show’s hero and true north – a number of times. Twice as you’ve never seen him before, and once, in Red Eye, in the form that you’ve come to know and love him: brisk and taciturn, brave and speedy, the man you’d trust to save the world while the dopes all around him can’t even see it needs saving.

But first, The Revenge Club, in which he is a revelation. The setting is a support group for divorcees, a ragtag gang united by nothing but the fact that they’ve been summarily dismissed by their spouses. “There’s no other reason for these characters to be in each other’s lives,” Compston says from his home in Las Vegas (more on that later – much more). “They’re all desperate and lonely and in dire need of companionship. They’re all, in their own ways, broken, which makes for this explosive mix.”

Not one but two shows with a Bitch Lesbian lead? It’s a Christmas miracle | Rebecca Shaw 11 December 2025 at 09:00

Not one but two shows with a Bitch Lesbian lead? It’s a Christmas miracle | Rebecca Shaw

The Guardian

By:Rebecca Shaw

11 December 2025 at 09:00

It is really satisfying to see beautiful, cranky lesbians take the lead in TV’s buzziest new shows, Pluribus and The Beast in Me

I recently went on a holiday for a few days and, as part of that holiday, I caught up on a lot of television shows. Don’t judge me, we all relax in our own ways! I looked at nature too! It’s sort of part of my job! (and other defences).

I am someone who keeps up with new TV shows. I watch everything that is popping off – but I’m happy to admit that, as a didn’t-grow-up-with-women-kissing-each-other-on-TV lesbian, I will go out of my way to seek out ANY shows about queer people, especially if women are going to kiss each other.

‘Go ahead and sue me, I’m not afraid any more’: South Park’s festive special isn’t afraid of a fight 11 December 2025 at 07:08

‘Go ahead and sue me, I’m not afraid any more’: South Park’s festive special isn’t afraid of a fight

The Guardian

By:Zach Vasquez

11 December 2025 at 07:08

Trump and Vance head to South Park in Christmas gear for a big showdown – only for Jesus to show up. At one point, you can almost feel Trey Parker and Matt Stone taking a stand against the US government

Coming off its most controversial and highest rated season in years, South Park had high expectations to meet with its season finale. Given how infamously down-to-the-wire its production schedule is – showrunners Matt Stone and Trey Parker often don’t start writing scripts until the week they’re set to air, working up to the 11th hour to turn in a completed episode (a method that caused them to miss a deadline earlier this year) – there was some question as to whether they would be able to tie everything up at all, let alone in a satisfying manner.

Most viewers were probably anticipating a giant, apocalyptic climax to the various long-running storylines – chief among them Donald Trump’s attempts to kill his and his lover Satan’s soon-to-be-born spawn. Instead, Stone and Parker swerved expectations, delivering an introspective and ultimately melancholy climax, one that managed to balance hope and despair in equal measure, alongside the outrageous shock humour for which they’re famous.

At least there’s one thing we can all agree on: three cheers for Claudia Winkleman | Polly Hudson 11 December 2025 at 06:00

At least there’s one thing we can all agree on: three cheers for Claudia Winkleman | Polly Hudson

The Guardian

By:Polly Hudson

11 December 2025 at 06:00

The tan, the fringe, the warmth and wit – there’s no other TV host quite like her

When King Charles gave Claudia Winkleman her MBE on Tuesday, he looked more delighted than she did. And rightly so. It’s basically blasphemy at this point not to want to be her best friend.

The National Treasure of National Treasures’ rise to royal appointment, and superstardom, is all the more pleasing because, on paper, it’s so unlikely. She is an anomaly among TV presenters, and not only because reading the Autocue must be a challenge when you have a fringe that long.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

‘Ruined my Christmas spirit’: McDonald’s removes AI-generated ad after backlash 10 December 2025 at 21:01

‘Ruined my Christmas spirit’: McDonald’s removes AI-generated ad after backlash

The Guardian

By:Agence France-Presse

10 December 2025 at 21:01

Commercial in Netherlands depicting festival-season chaos at ‘most terrible time of year’ prompted flurry of criticism online

McDonald’s says it has removed an AI-generated Christmas advertisement in the Netherlands after it was criticised online.

The ad, titled “the most terrible time of the year”, depicts scenes of Christmas chaos, with Santa caught in a traffic jam and a gift-laden Dutch cyclist slipping in the snow. And the message? Retreat to a McDonald’s restaurant until January and ride out the festive season.

Man vs Baby review – Rowan Atkinson’s festive slapstick is the most trite Christmas show possible 11 December 2025 at 03:01

Man vs Baby review – Rowan Atkinson’s festive slapstick is the most trite Christmas show possible

The Guardian

By:Rachel Aroesti

11 December 2025 at 03:01

Even the ridiculous product placement isn’t the most cynical thing about this exercise in trading in Cosy British Christmascore. It’s a nauseatingly schmaltzy and nonsensical

Trevor Bingley is not Mr Bean, but the two have a few things in common. For a start, they are both self-destructively single-minded when it comes to overcoming trivial annoyances. In Netflix’s 2022 series Man vs Bee, Bingley ended up building a fake explosive-laced hive to destroy the insect who refused to vacate the swish home he was house-sitting; for Bean, life consists almost exclusively of finding absurd solutions to minor problems. Both are pitiable figures: Bean because he’s a walking disaster zone; Bingley because he’s lonely and broke, having lost numerous jobs due to general ineptitude. Last but not least, they are both embodied by Rowan Atkinson, who bestows the pair with his distinctive brand of sprightly ungainliness.

There are major differences, however. Bingley is a human who can talk, is aware of social niceties and has a backstory, which mainly features a teenage daughter he dotes on and gratingly refers to as “Sweetpea”. Bean, on the other hand, was essentially beamed in from space: some episodes of the original 1990s series open with him dropping from the sky bathed in an alien light source.

TV tonight: inside Prince Harry’s phone-hacking case against the Daily Mail 11 December 2025 at 01:15

TV tonight: inside Prince Harry’s phone-hacking case against the Daily Mail

The Guardian

By:Phil Harrison · Ellen E Jones · Alexi Duggins and Graeme Virtue

11 December 2025 at 01:15

Harry and six other public figures will have their day in court in January. Plus: Celia Imrie investigates Hitchcock’s Psycho. Here’s what to watch this evening

8pm, Channel 4
Expect legal fireworks in January as the case launched by Prince Harry (along with six other public figures including Doreen Lawrence and Elton John) against Associated Newspapers gets under way. This documentary presented by Cathy Newman offers a primer to the case – which involves accusations of phone hacking and bugging. Phil Harrison

Neighbours is ending – again. Why was Amazon’s gamble on the Australian soap so short-lived? 10 December 2025 at 09:00

Neighbours is ending – again. Why was Amazon’s gamble on the Australian soap so short-lived?

The Guardian

By:Anna Spargo-Ryan

10 December 2025 at 09:00

The reboot brought a parade of new and aged-up faces, multiple returns of Toadie and a violent siege at Harold’s. But in the end Ramsay Street faces death by freeway

Forty years ago, some plucky kids with broad accents rode their bikes around a quintessentially Australian cul-de-sac, lined with postwar houses that could have been any of ours. A catchy tune promised that, if we were there for one another, we could become good friends with the people next door. But now it’s over.

Neighbours has a habit of ending. After it was axed in 1985 by its first Australian broadcaster, Channel Seven, the network even destroyed the sets to make sure it was truly gone. We have, more than once, grieved the end of a community so tightknit that the school principal is also your estranged dad’s ex-wife’s former fake-son-in-law’s surrogate mother.

See No Evil review – this delicate documentary about an Anglican’s child abuse is deeply harrowing 10 December 2025 at 17:00

See No Evil review – this delicate documentary about an Anglican’s child abuse is deeply harrowing

The Guardian

By:Lucy Mangan

10 December 2025 at 17:00

It’s humbling to witness the eloquence and dignity of these survivors as they talk about their experiences with John Smyth – possibly the most prolific serial abuser ever associated with the Church of England

John Smyth was a sadistic predator who used to groom the boys in his care then beat them with such viciousness that he would have to provide adult nappies for them to wear afterwards lest they leave blood on the chairs in his home when he brought them back from his shed. He upgraded the shed at one point, to make it soundproof. One of the men who suffered at Smyth’s hands as a boy remembers bleeding for weeks after. Another says: “I honestly thought I was going to die.” Another says that despite the pain the worst part was afterwards, when Smyth would cover the boy’s bloodied body with his and nuzzle his sweaty face into the boy’s neck and give him butterfly kisses. In his nightmares it is “that draping” he relives.

Smyth, who died in 2018, was also a husband, a father of three children, a respected barrister, a prominent Christian evangelist, a moral campaigner, a man deeply involved with Winchester College (where he would give talks about the law and Anglicanism and invite interested boys to his family home for further discussions over Sunday lunches) and with the Church of England. He ran the Iwerne Christian summer camps for boys in Dorset and Zimbabwe throughout the 70s and 80s. All of this gave him uncountable opportunities to indulge his sadism. One boy in his care, Guide Nyachuru, died. An accidental drowning, said Smyth. Nyachuru was a strong swimmer. His family remains convinced that their 16-year-old boy died as a result of abuse by Smyth and was placed in the water afterwards. Smyth succeeded in discrediting the lawyer who was set to prosecute him for culpable homicide and fled back to England.

Trump’s Interest in Warner Bros. Deal Weighs On Justice Department 10 December 2025 at 14:20

Trump’s Interest in Warner Bros. Deal Weighs On Justice Department

NYT: Technology

By:David McCabe

10 December 2025 at 14:20

President Trump’s unusual decision to involve himself in the government’s review of the deal puts pressure on his antitrust chief.

Gail Slater is in charge of the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, which is expected to handle the government’s review of a Warner Bros. deal.

The 50 best TV shows of 2025: 50 to 41 10 December 2025 at 05:00

The 50 best TV shows of 2025: 50 to 41

The Guardian

By:Guardian Staff

10 December 2025 at 05:00

Howlingly funny comedy, jaw-dropping documentaries and astonishing drama … it’s been another fantastic year of TV. Our countdown of the very best kicks off here
• More on the best culture of 2025

***

Simon Cowell: The Next Act review – the billionth take on his one idea 10 December 2025 at 03:01

Simon Cowell: The Next Act review – the billionth take on his one idea

The Guardian

By:Stuart Heritage

10 December 2025 at 03:01

This Netflix show starts off feeling like a documentary, and winds up as another attempt to recreate The X-Factor. It really cannot be overstated how much of a rehash this boyband contest is

Ladies and gentlemen, the most cynical bait and switch of the year has finally arrived. To the casual viewer, Netflix’s new series Simon Cowell: The Next Act may appear to be yet another quasi-unvarnished authorised documentary series.

And that would make sense, because those things are everywhere at the moment. Everyone from David Beckham to Robbie Williams to Charlie Sheen has made one, allowing a film crew into their lives to offer just enough grit to fool people into thinking they are watching anything other than a heavily sanitised publicity project. And, really, who deserves one of these more than Simon Cowell?

TV tonight: the prolific child abuser who never faced justice 10 December 2025 at 01:15

TV tonight: the prolific child abuser who never faced justice

The Guardian

By:Phil Harrison · Ali Catterall · Jack Seale · Alexi Duggins and Simon Wardell

10 December 2025 at 01:15

A documentary about the cover-up of barrister John Smyth, who subjected more than 100 boys to abuse. Plus: Ellie Taylor’s standup special. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Channel 4
This devastating two-part documentary details the crimes of John Smyth, a barrister involved in conservative evangelical Christian camps. Over the course of four decades, Smyth subjected more than 100 boys to horrific sexual and physical abuse. Why wasn’t he stopped? Witnesses, including his victims and his own children, speak about life in close proximity to this monstrous man – and about the cover-up that meant he never faced justice. Phil Harrison

The hidden life of Matthew Perry: ‘He would say: I need to stop and get help’ 10 December 2025 at 00:00

The hidden life of Matthew Perry: ‘He would say: I need to stop and get help’

The Guardian

By:Emine Saner

10 December 2025 at 00:00

The actor’s publicist and manager worked with him for more than 30 years, before his death in 2023. They discuss the man behind the headlines – and why they are continuing his mission to help others struggling with addiction

Watch the third season of Friends, writes Matthew Perry in his memoir, and you can see how thin he had become by the end of it. “Opioids fuck with your appetite, plus they make you vomit constantly,” he writes. Look again, and yes – his fragile wrists emerge from a shirt that looks as if he has borrowed it from someone far larger, his trousers hang off him – and it’s unbearably sad now, with the knowledge that addiction would kill Perry nearly 30 years later, at the age of 54. At the time, most people watching probably wouldn’t have noticed, dazzled instead by Perry’s sharpness and immaculate comic timing as Chandler Bing, the show’s dry wit. He was having to take 55 Vicodin pills a day – an opioid - just to function and avoid terrible withdrawal symptoms, but he was never high while he was working, he writes in Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, which came out in 2022. He just had to make it to the end of the season so he could get help. Had the series lasted for more than its 25 episodes, he thought it would have killed him.

That was the first time Perry went into rehab. He was 26, and one of the biggest stars in the world. There would be more than 65 attempts to detox from drug and alcohol addiction over the next decades until his death in 2023. Last week, a doctor was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for supplying ketamine in the lead-up to Perry’s death (though not the ketamine that killed him); three others who have pleaded guilty will be sentenced in the coming months.

Our Girls: the Southport Families review – repeatedly leaves you in fountains of tears 9 December 2025 at 16:00

Our Girls: the Southport Families review – repeatedly leaves you in fountains of tears

The Guardian

By:Jack Seale

9 December 2025 at 16:00

This deeply moving documentary celebrates the lives of the three girls who were killed in an attack on their dance class last year – and becomes a miraculously powerful tale of turning heartbreak into hope

If losing a child is the worst thing, the very worst, that can happen to you, what must it be like to lose one in a tragedy that was national headline news? Alongside that insurmountable sadness comes the question of how to reconcile grief’s normally private, quiet bearing with the fact that your bereavement was a public event. Nobody would be blamed for staying out of sight, saying no to interviewers and documentary-makers, and holding the memories close. But in Our Girls: the Southport Families, we see how a loss shared can be miraculously powerful.

Nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and six-year-old Bebe King were all murdered on 29 July 2024, when a man invaded a holiday dance class in Southport, Merseyside and attacked children at random. The programme does not linger on the horror, or speak the killer’s name: instead it begins by introducing us to the girls as their parents remember them. Alice “was magic, she was wonder … the best daughter we could ask for”; Elsie “was unforgettable … she taught us how to be a mum and dad”; Bebe “was pure joy: everything was in a dance, everything was in a song”.

Growing pains: the struggle to make a must-see gen Z TV show 9 December 2025 at 05:03

Growing pains: the struggle to make a must-see gen Z TV show

The Guardian

By:Adrian Horton

9 December 2025 at 05:03

Hollywood is still trying to court younger audiences but this year’s crop of new comedies, from Adults to I Love LA, have yet to prove essential

This year, despite not particularly liking the show nor wanting to, I have thought a lot about the opening scene to Adults. The FX half-hour comedy about a group of recent college graduates in New York begins, naturally, on the subway; what seems like an over-studied portrait of early adulthood intimacy – tangled limbs, in-group references, aggressively relaxed banter – quickly devolves into a standoff between a creepy subway masturbator and the group’s instigator, Issa (Amita Rao), trying to out-masturbate him to make a wildly off point about feminism. “Is this the world you want?!?” she shouts at him, hand vigorously in pants.

The moment is intentionally off-putting, perhaps too much so – I’m as ripe as anyone for surprise, but found the try-hardness of this shock memorably irksome. Yet it’s also unintentionally revealing: this, it implicitly screams, is a show to get young people’s attention. A similar anxiety courses through the opening of I Love LA, HBO’s west-coast rejoinder to Adults that is similarly pitched as a zeitgeist-y take on the thrilling chaos of young adulthood. We meet Maia, played by creator and co-writer Rachel Sennott, mid-sex with her boyfriend, heedlessly determined to come before going to work, even if it means ignoring an earthquake.

‘A producer grabbed me, and I thought, Oh, for God’s sake’: Patricia Hodge on sexual harassment, drugs – and being in her prime at 79 8 December 2025 at 00:00

‘A producer grabbed me, and I thought, Oh, for God’s sake’: Patricia Hodge on sexual harassment, drugs – and being in her prime at 79

The Guardian

By:Emine Saner

8 December 2025 at 00:00

Until she reached her 50s, the actor was a constant presence on stage and screen. Then the offers disappeared. Now, as her renaissance continues, she is taking on Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals

After six decades as an actor, Patricia Hodge says she still gets nervous before a play opens. “I think nerves are always the fear of the unknown,” she says. “Particularly with comedy, where there is no knowing how the audience will react: you’ve got to surf that.”

We meet on a sunny winter morning at the Orange Tree theatre in Richmond, south-west London, where Hodge is about to appear in The Rivals, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Richard B Sheridan play, in which she plays the ironic – sorry, iconic – Mrs Malaprop. “You’re sort of in a tunnel, your entire being is focused on this,” she says. She was here in rehearsals until 11pm the night before. Today, she is sitting at a table with a large coffee. Does she enjoy this bit, the putting together of a play? “I think it’s love-hate actually. The process is really why I do theatre.” She says she finds it energising, “but it’s also very trying, and you just don’t want to be left with your own limitations”.

Netflix to Buy Warner Bros in $83 Billion Deal 5 December 2025 at 16:56

Netflix to Buy Warner Bros in $83 Billion Deal

NYT: Technology

By:Brooks Barnes · Lauren Hirsch and Nicole Sperling

5 December 2025 at 16:56

The deal to acquire the Hollywood behemoth’s television and film studios as well as HBO Max will bulk up the world’s biggest paid streaming service.

Netflix has never tried an acquisition even remotely close to this size.

Benoit Blanc takes on a “perfectly impossible crime” in Wake Up Dead Man trailer 17 November 2025 at 12:48

Benoit Blanc takes on a “perfectly impossible crime” in Wake Up Dead Man trailer

Ars Technica

By:Jennifer Ouellette

17 November 2025 at 12:48

Nothing says it’s holiday season quite like a new installment of Rian Johnson’s delightful Knives Out mystery series. The final trailer for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery was just released, featuring Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc in all his Southern gentleman detective glory. This time, he’s tackling the strange death of a parish priest in a spookily Gothic small-town setting.

As we’ve previously reported, the original Knives Out was a masterfully plotted winning mashup of Clue and Murder on the Orient Express—or any number of adaptations of novels by the grande dame of murder mysteries, Agatha Christie—along with other classics like Deathtrap, Gosford Park, and Murder by Death. Craig clearly found Blanc a refreshing counter to the 007 franchise, and he and Johnson soon committed to filming a sequel: 2022’s Glass Onion, inspired particularly by the Christie-based “tropical getaway” whodunnit Evil Under the Sun (1982) and an under-appreciated 1973 gem called The Last of Sheila.

And now we have Wake Up Dead Man. With this franchise, the less one knows going in, the better. But Johnson has assembled yet another winning all-star cast. Josh Brolin plays the victim, the fire-and-brimstone-spewing Monseigneur Jefferson Wicks; Josh O’Connor plays a young priest named Rev. Jud Duplenticy; Glenn Close plays a devout churchgoer named Martha Delacroix, Wick’s loyal helper; Mila Kunis plays local police chief Geraldine Scott; Jeremy Renner plays town doctor Nat Sharp; Kerry Washington plays uptight lawyer Vera Draven; Daryl McCormack plays aspiring politician Cy Draven; Thomas Haden Church plays groundskeeper Samson Holt; Andrew Scott plays bestselling author Lee Ross; and Cailee Spaeny plays Simone Vivane, a disabled former classical cellist.

Read full article

Comments

Civil war is brewing in the wasteland in Fallout S2 trailer 13 November 2025 at 13:24

Civil war is brewing in the wasteland in Fallout S2 trailer

Ars Technica

By:Jennifer Ouellette

13 November 2025 at 13:24

We got our first glimpse of the much-anticipated second season of Fallout (adapted from the popular video game franchise) in August when Prime Video released an extended teaser. We now have the official trailer, with all the deadpan humor, explosions, and mutant atrocities one could hope for—including ghoulish Elvis impersonators in New Vegas.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

As previously reported, in S1, we met Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), a young woman whose vault is raided by surface dwellers. The raiders kill many vault residents and kidnap her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), so the sheltered Lucy sets out on a quest to find him. Life on the surface is pretty brutal, but Lucy learns fast. Along the way, she finds an ally (and love interest) in Maximus (Aaron Moten), a squire masquerading as a knight of the Brotherhood of Steel. And she runs afoul of a gunslinger and bounty hunter known as the Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a former Hollywood actor named Cooper Howard who survived the original nuclear blast, but radiation exposure turned him into, well, a ghoul.

Read full article

Comments