Film, TV & Book Reviews

Boys and girls of every age, wouldn’t you like to see something strange? It is the spookiest time of the year once more, and we couldn’t be more ...

Wet Hot American Summer is an outrageously funny satirical comedy, with a cast that includes Elizabeth Banks, Bradley Cooper, Ken Marino and Paul Rudd, as well as hilarious guest appearances. ...

Ghost Flight by Eva Asprakis explores a “time of new beginnings” amid the “horrifying contrast” of abrupt loss brought about by the doomed Helios Airways flight in 2005 that saw 121 people ...

By Philippa Tracy It has been more than 10 years since Chimananda Ngozi Adichie’s last novel, Americanah, was published. In the intervening years, she has lost both of her parents, ...

State censorship and government oppression are terrifying and have no place in a democratic society. These are practices that belong in books and films as a cautionary tale. Here are ...

When I first started watching Atypical on Netflix, it seemed like Sam was the star of the show, and in many ways the storyline does revolve around him – a teenager ...

By Simon Demetriou There are so many situations where jargon can be off-putting. Thankfully, thriller novels about military intelligence are not one of these. Indeed, you want your novelist to ...

Shooting a television series is a stressful job. In the TV and film world, there are countless moving parts that must come together to make everything work. If one person ...

It’s a normal day for real estate agent Sheila Hammond until she vomits out gallons of goo and a smallish red ball while showing a house to potential buyers ...

Xenobe Purvis’ timely and exquisite little debut manages to deftly carry off its titular pun: this is a novel about five sisters who, it is claimed, turn into dogs – a ...

With the release of the second season of The Last of Us in April, it is worth revisiting the show that raised video game adaptation standards forever. Set in a ...

By Philippa Tracy Jean Hanff Korelitz’s eighth novel The Latecomer is a social satire on privilege and family dynamics. It focuses on the Oppenheimers, a wealthy New York Jewish ...

Depending on family situation, everyone perceives September differently: if you don’t have kids, it’s just the month after summer. If you have kids then it’s Zihuatanejo, the ...

Hostage, the new Netflix series, delivers a tense political thriller with a deeply personal edge. The story centres on British prime minister Abigail Dalton (played by Suranne Jones), whose husband ...

If one can believe the OED – and I refuse to countenance a world where this is not a given – then the frequency with which the word ‘autofiction’ crops up in ...

What have I been doing these past weeks? Who wants to know? Did Johnny Salami put you up to this? Have you been talking to Jimmy the Icepick? What have ...

What happens when the last survivors of a climate-ravaged Earth are confined to a single, endlessly circling train? In Snowpiercer, the post-apocalyptic premise becomes a stage for a chilling social ...

I like books that are funny. I like books that treat flawed characters tenderly. I like books about parents and children. I like books about human absurdity and folly. I ...

Sorry, I am still bitter about Locke and Co. With such a long production cycle, changes are bound to happen. Directors get hired, then fired. Writers come and go. Crew ...

Greek TV is having its moment on Netflix. There are now plenty of Greek series on the global streaming platform, and after the success of Maestro and other shows such ...

By Philippa Tracy Hallie Rubenhold’s book The Five is the story of the ‘canonical five’ victims of Jack the Ripper: Mary Ann or ‘Polly’ Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, ...

The Covid-19 era was completely insane. For months, we were stuck at home, unable to go out, doing absolutely nothing except playing video games all day and watching movies nonstop. ...

Before his retirement party has properly ended, CIA operative Luke Brunner (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is dragged back into action for one last job that turns his world upside down, as the ...

There is a line midway through Vera, or Faith, when the novel’s eponymous protagonist reflects that her family situation has become ‘worse than the time Daddy had gotten into ...