For the latest episode of At Home With... pop star Justin Jesso Zooms with Amira Hashish from his family home and gives an exclusive performance of his new single
Dreaming of loo roll, a tsunami or that you're wading through mud? A dream analyst decodes your night visions
Vodafone's new thermal detection cameras will help businesses scan the temperature of people entering the building
As this year's sartorial spectacle gets ready to go virtual, we round up the event's best-ever looks
Sales are soaring and recipes are going viral. We're going nuts for peanut butter, says Laura Hampson
With time on his hands to indulge in nostalgia, Jochan Embley realises his love for the beautiful game runs much deeper than half-time beers and the rush of a goal
Don't pretend you didn't notice it: that whisper-thin necklace glinting against Connell's chest
This year's digital-only festival has dropped nearly 600 events, but it will be completely free
Lizzie Edmonds speaks to travel expert Simon Calder about whether we should book summer holidays and how travel will be different
From learning Spanish to playing music, Happity is helping to keep toddlers occupied at home
Merry Christmas, glitterati! It’s a cracker of a lineup, but who will win that most sparkling of festive prizes, the Silver Star? Join us to find out
Afternoon all, hope you’re having a lovely Christmas day.
There’s no official liveblog for today’s Strictly Christmas special, but we’ve opened a blog so you can add your special brand of festive sparkle in the comments below. It’s a Christmas cracker of a lineup, featuring lots of our favourites from previous years – Chizzy Akudolu, Debbie McGee, Gemma Atkinson, Joe Sugg, Mark Wright and Richard Arnold. It’s also very much a couples’ choice – both Gemma and Joe will be dancing with their real-life partners Gorka and Dianne, which is all rather lovely.
Continue reading...H from Steps brought tears to the judges’ eyes with his performance. Now, more than ever, we must cherish these moments of LGBTQ visibility
One of the most peculiar aspects of realising that you are LGBTQ is the loneliness. Your immediate family is unlikely to belong to the minority you may feel you have been arbitrarily parachuted into. You may be fortunate that they have supportive attitudes; many are not. The odds are that you have heard derogatory terms about LGBTQ people thrown around the playground not once or twice but like confetti. On TV and film screens, on advertising billboards, in magazines and in books, society’s expectations about settling down with someone of a different gender will bellow at you. You may struggle to come out to yourself, let alone anyone else, and fear judgment and rejection.
That is why major cultural events, such as the first same-sex performance on ITV’s Dancing on Ice last night, are so important: they can be lifelines for the closeted, whether they are aged 13 or 78. Acceptance for LGBTQ people struggling with their sexuality is like water to a sponge: anything that showcases and values our existence has a profound impact. That’s why H from Steps – one half of the couple – told the judges that it was emotional, in part because “it means so much to so many people and the world is ready for this”. It’s why the actor John Barrowman broke down in tears “because of seeing two men who represent someone who is like me and to skate as well as you did”. What’s all the fuss, the usual suspects will cry, but it matters precisely because society, and particularly currently emboldened bigots, makes such a fuss about anyone who deviates from a heterosexual norm.
Continue reading...Fairfield Halls, London
In his show Taxi Tour, the comic from last year’s Britain’s Got Talent offers only standard-issue middle-aged standup
Kojo Anim was a star of the black standup circuit for years, but “Britain’s Got Talent changed my life,” he tells his Croydon crowd. The Londoner has booked his Taxi Tour off the back of an appearance in last year’s final, and recounts how that brush with fame – and his Christian faith, and new fatherhood – picked him back up after a grim period in his life. The emotional honesty is refreshing, but plays only a cameo role in an otherwise unadventurous show. Anim certainly does have talent, but – on this evidence – it’s for performing, not for writing distinctive material.
The show opens with a justification for appearing on BGT, and an account of his experience of overnight celebrity. But it soon devolves into standard issue middle-aged standup comparing his unglamorous childhood with that of today’s pampered youth. His parents play their expected role, giving their son broad accents to mimic when not walloping him for the slightest impertinence. “Only an African parent,” reports our host ruefully, “will beat their own child when they see another child doing something.”
Continue reading...TV and news website audiences are sky-high but, with few ads or new shows, future looks fraught
From TV channels running out of shows, to newspapers facing the threat of closure, the British media industry is facing a financial shock that will permanently reshape how we consume news and entertainment.
Media analysts and insiders warn the pandemic will have a long-lasting impact on the country’s cultural life, predicting that changes in consumer behaviour expected to take more than five years may have happened in five weeks, with many people unlikely to entirely return to their pre-lockdown habits.
Continue reading...Ricky Gervais’s After Life struggles second time round, as 21st-century London’s answer to Peaky Blinders gets off to a violent start. And how long can live shows survive via video-call?
After Life (Netflix)
Gangs of London (Sky Atlantic)
Emergence (Fox)
Twin (BBC Four) | iPlayer
The Graham Norton Show (BBC One) | iPlayer
The Mash Report (BBC Two) | iPlayer
Have I Got News for You (BBC One) | iPlayer
Ricky Gervais is, take your pick, ever reinventive (a la Madonna, Lady Gaga, the royals) or ever mutating (the worst kind of spirally viruses, the royals). A year ago, in Tony Johnson, subject of his latest drama, After Life, he combined aspects of past characters: The Office’s gloriously unself-aware Brent; the more savvy Andy Millman in Extras; the saccharine platitudes that sat so ill in Derek alongside gags about mental health or other disabilities. After Life was a surprising runaway hit on Netflix, for an arguably slight comedy about a very singular, small-town man’s depression after the loss of his wife, and how an angry man learned to be kind again.
Continue reading...As new actors revive the Talking Heads TV monologues, the poignant tales they tell will resonate more than ever with viewers in lockdown
The decision, announced last week by BBC Drama, to revive and recast Alan Bennett’s landmark Talking Heads series was driven as much by necessity as sentiment. Monologue, delivered to camera, is just about the only form of acting possible at the moment. But, still, there will be a special poignancy in hearing how the mini-dramas sound a generation later in their new voices – Imelda Staunton instead of Patricia Routledge, Kristen Scott Thomas in place of Eileen Atkins, Tamsin Greig for Penelope Wilton, Jodie Comer instead of Julie Walters.
Bennett wrote the first of the monologues in 1987, giving voice, in his 50s, to lives that in several cases were facing their last act. He himself turns 86 next week, about the same age as Thora Hird was when he cast her so memorably in Waiting for the Telegram in the last of the second series of monologues in 1998.
Related: Jodie Comer to star in new BBC production of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads
Continue reading...The sector is wrestling with issues such as staging plays with social distancing, or running rollercoasters half full
The row between cinema chains and Universal Studios over the digital-only release of Trolls World Tour is one of may crises racking the entertainment industry during the coronavirus lockdown. The challenges range from working out how to stage live performances to managing social distancing in queues for rollercoasters. Here are some of the issues they face.
Continue reading...Sticking to social isolation just became easier. Keeping the kids occupied and their creativity flowing during coronavirus lockdown has just …
Continue reading "‘Draw a Stickman: Epic 3’ is Here to Provide Your Lockdown Edutainment"
I love everything from developer Gionathan Pesaresi aka Neutronized, but I have an especially soft spot for the Super Cat …
The idea behind the TouchArcade Game of the Week is that every Friday afternoon we post the one game that …
Continue reading "TouchArcade Game of the Week: ‘Juicy Realm’"