Saturday, February 1, 2025

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TV | Mo – Netflix

Immigrant trauma, the long shadow of conflict in the Middle East… clearly these are not the typical raw materials of a charming sitcom. But what's most impressive about Mohammed Amer's provocative yet sweet comedy is that it holds a mirror up to 21st-century America while delivering belly laughs at a regular clip. Making full use of the lead's teddy bear persona, this immensely likeable chuckle-fest proves humour can bring warmth and empathy to even the bleakest scenarios. 

Ed Power | TV critic

Music | The Weeknd – Hurry Up Tomorrow

"All I have is my legacy," Abel Tesfaye sings over the funereal opening bars of "Wake Me Up". Produced by French electronic pioneers Justice, it's a scene-setting moment for what, it soon emerges, is the Canadian artist's most ambitious project to date – a feature film-length album that supposedly serves as the final chapter for his enigmatic alter-ego The Weeknd. Later this year, he'll star opposite Wednesday actor Jenna Ortega and Saltburn's Barry Keoghan in an actual feature film inspired by this record – a psychological thriller underpinned by his restless, sprawling score. 

Roisin O'Connor | Music editor

Theatre | Inside No 9 Stage/Fright – Wydham's Theatre

For 10 years, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton bewitched and bewildered audiences with their BBC anthology series Inside No 9 – a black comedy masterclass in genre-clashing with twists to make M Night Shyamalan's head spin. When the series came to an end after nine (what else?) seasons, fans grieved the loss of one of TV's most inventive endeavours. Six months later, the dynamic duo are back – this time, and for the first time, on stage.

Fans of the series will not be disappointed, with this production – including a prologue that serves as the most violent and persuasive theatre etiquette PSA I've ever seen – recalling some of the series' best elements, notably the wonderful interplay between old pals Shearsmith and Pemberton who slip back into their roles as crank and goofball as comfortably as a well-worn cardigan.

Annabel Nugent | Commissioning Editor

TV | The Apprentice

With The Apprentice now in its 20th year on air, the bar for its contestants is somehow both lower and higher than ever. Any pretence that the BBC One competition, which is basically the Olympics for bulls***ters with a strong track record in B2B sales, is a genuine recruitment process for potential business highfliers faded long ago.

The selection criteria seem to be erratic at best: is it open to anyone who's ever listened to an episode of a motivational podcast, I wonder? Or perhaps to those who self-identify as "entrepreneurs" on LinkedIn? And yet this programme now has such a glorious track record when it comes to corporate stupidity that, in order to really grab our attention, Lord Sugar's latest batch of hopefuls need to be utterly, unapologetically woeful.

Katie Rosseinsky | Senior Features Writer

A new BBC drama explores one of the most vexing acts of sabotage in literary history: the decision by Jane Austen's sister Cassandra to burn nearly all the writer's letters after her death.

Keeley Hawes and the cast, as well as the series director, talk to Katie Rosseinsky about what might have motivated Cassandra, the perils of being unmarried and female in Regency England and the extraordinary love that existed between the two sisters. 

Read an extract from our Saturday Interview below…

Cassandra Austen is one of English literature's most notorious vandals. Towards the end of her life, in an act of near incomprehensible sabotage, the elder Austen sister burnt swathes of correspondence written by Jane, who had died almost 30 years earlier in 1817. Just 160 letters, out of the thousands Jane is thought to have written, and which together almost certainly would have provided invaluable information about one of our most inscrutable novelists, escaped the flames. This fiery obliteration has become Cassandra's defining act – and in the subsequent centuries it has left Austen fans and biographers weeping in frustration. 

How could Jane's closest confidante wipe out such a vital part of her writerly legacy, depriving future readers of the chance to better know and understand the woman behind those six exquisite books? What was Cassandra trying to hide? These questions are at the heart of Miss Austen, the BBC's star-studded, four-part adaptation of Gill Hornby's bestselling 2020 novel, yet it primarily seeks to understand Cassandra's actions through the startlingly close bond she shared with her sister. That sibling relationship, which both inspired and enabled Jane's writing career, is one of the most extraordinarily intimate in all of Western literature. "I think their love for each other [went] above and beyond most people's," says Keeley Hawes who plays Cassandra. "It's quite unusual, I think, that depth of love and devotion."

Read the full interview here

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New Boyzone documentary reveals 'damaging' rise to fame – here's how to watch.

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