Gareth Malone looks back: ‘After the Christmas No 1, I was meeting Simon Cowell, having tea with Gary Barlow and dinner with Andrew Lloyd Webber’
The choir leader and presenter on not fitting in at his all-boys grammar, how synthesisers changed everything, and his ‘dithering’ start on TVBorn in London in 1975, Gareth Malone is a choirmaster and broadcaster. He began his career running youth and…
Ray Gunn review – Brad Bird’s animated film-noir sci-fi caper is an old-school family classic
Sam Rockwell voices the gumshoe who becomes embroiled with Scarlett Johansson’s femme fatale in this big-hearted and beautifully designed fantasy spectacularBrad Bird, the Spielberg of animation, applies his masterly authorial touch to a terrific family…
Stacey Dooley: ‘My skirt fell down on the Strictly Live tour. I was wearing big borrowed stage briefs‘
The broadcaster on her days as a shoplifter, catastrophising, and a first kiss with her dance partnerBorn 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…
Time: David Tennant and Siobhan Finneran are stellar in this horrifying and exceptional TV drama
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 notIt takes a lot to drag me away from comfort TV in the autumn. Blame the shrinking hours of…
From The Social Reckoning to Harriet Kemsley: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
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 tourThe Social ReckoningOut nowThe David Fincher-directed The Social Network has only come to seem…
‘I’ve hit my midlife sexpot era!’ Romola Garai on marital misery, cheating … and sex scenes in cars
Layby hookups are all in a day’s work for Romola Garai in her steamy new drama Adultery. She talks faking orgasms, keeping secrets – and making audiences pass outIn a raging storm in the Peak District last winter, a blue Toyota Yaris was parked in a…
‘Me and the lads would not survive a day in here’: inside TV’s utterly stunning, Bafta-winning prison drama
The third series of Jimmy McGovern’s breathtaking series Time stars David Tennant – and just be its best ever. We go behind the scenes“I don’t think you would find a young offender institution (YOI) in which stories like these haven’t happened. Seventeen…
Below review – a killer snot-berg causes chaos for Josh Hartnett
Don your best plaid shirts for this supernatural thriller about a gang of beefy fishermen who tackle sea monsters. It is totally ridiculous – but you will have loads of daft funAbandon all hope, ye who enter Below. And jettison disbelief while ye be at…
Cruel torment, depraved violence, evil turns: where did TV’s real baddies go?
From Carrie’s bullies to Cathy Ames, sympathetic backstories have made villains boring. It’s time to bring back truly awful villains – in all their deliciously sinful gloryThe new Netflix adaptation of East of Eden largely sticks to the plot of the John…
The Uprising review – Paul Greengrass turns revolutionary rage into a Robin Hood origin myth
Andrew Garfield’s fictional ploughman joins the historical heroes of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in a dirt-caked, docudrama-style film with disconcertingly silly momentsPaul Greengrass has in fact already made his “uprising” film: United 93, the…