Television

Television

Shady Sands is a place of promise, a renewal of humanity if they could only get their feet on solid ground. They've just found their balanceMaximus's father manages to unearth clean waterwhen a bomb is snuck into town and detonates, killing everyone except for Maximus. "We were just getting started," his mother tearfully says just before a radiant cloud glows right outside.

In the United States, it's the top-rated non-animated series HBO Max has acquired since its launch in 2020, and amongst the top five of all scripted debuts on the streaming service this year. The breakout TV series is spreading like flash frost across the nation. There's an entire TikTok cottage industry dedicated to the show (I bought my sister a shirt through it). The gay bar I occasionally work at won't stop playing "All The Things She Said" over the speakers.

Last Samurai Standing begins with a familiar premise. Desperate samurai dispossessed by the restoration of the emperor enter into a deadly game for a life-changing cash prize - all for the entertainment of anonymous elites. Unlike its inspirations Battle Royale and , however, Last Samurai Standing 's violence is chaotic, fast-paced, and kinetic, though it hides a careful choreography that makes the series a more electric proposition than its predecessors.

It was the year when Oasis finally gave us the reunion everyone wanted, 'that' couple from the Coldplay kiss cam felt the wrath of the social media morality police and the Musk/Trump bromance fell apart Meanwhile in Ireland, RTÉ radio gets a seismic shake-up, including Joe Duffy hanging up his headphones, Samantha Mumba is a sore loser - and Traitors Ireland gets the whole country talking.

A one-off Christmas special must have the following traditional ingredients to be entitled to the name. First and most vitally, it must have a grumpy character to soften over the hour. (And it must be an hour 75 minutes, tops. Anything longer and we're out of letting-the-children-stay-up-and-watch-as-a-treat territory and that disqualifies it as a contender. Yes it's a hangover from the days when television was broadcast at fixed points, instead of thrown into the digital ragbag to be pulled out at any time, but what is tradition if not such harkings-back? Come on).

Starring Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams as Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander, two rival ice hockey players who have a passionate years-long secret fling, the show is based on Rachel Reid's Game Changers novels. The show takes its name from the second of Reid's books, which focuses on Rozanov and Hollander as they start their steamy affair. Their story is continued in The Long Game, the last of Reid's six-book series.

Mr Brownlow's house is the archetype for a place that is safe, which I think is what everybody wants. It had a lasting impression on me and I have probably tried to make a Mr Brownlow's house in my own life somewhere to run back to. I like to watch that every Christmas and force the children and grandchildren to watch too.

The first time we meet Carol, she's in a Dallas Barnes & Noble reading from Bloodsongs of Wycaro, the fourth book in her wildly popular Wycaro series, which follows the adventures of the sand pirate Lucasia and the rogue who has captured her heart. The members of her audience technically aren't the living dead, but they all want a piece of the author. Carol, in turn, is barely able to mask her disdain even as she enjoys the spoils of their adoration.

For a while, Erin Doherty ignored Stephen Graham's calls. Not deliberately, she stresses with a laugh. I'm just really bad at my phone. I'm such a technophobe, and he knew that, she says. They had made the Disney+ show A Thousand Blows together, in which Doherty plays an East End crime boss in Victorian London, and Graham had talked about an idea he wanted to dramatise, about a teenage boy who is catastrophically radicalised by online misogyny.

The original Enterprise crew is nearly complete. When Strange New Worlds drops its final season in 2027, the classic crew will be complete. In a just-confirmed press release, Paramount+ has revealed that the characters of Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy and Hikaru Sulu, originated by DeForest Kelley and George Takei in Star Trek: The Original Series, will appear in the very last episode of Strange New Worlds Season 5.

When I received this assignment, my goal was to create a photo that not only mirrored the show's dystopian surrealness but also captured the intricate relationship triangle between Britt Lower, Adam Scott and Dichen Lachman's characters. Initially, it took a little time for everyone on set to see my vision, but once I shared a test image, everyone understood and was excited to collaborate. The entire shoot lasted around eight minutes, but that brief window was all we needed.

I expected that I would've been on the stage too with all of the other actors. When Garrett [Morris] and Laraine [Newman] went on the stage there, I was curious as to why I didn't. No one asked me to. Why was I left aside?

"I think this is one of Erica's craziest adventures,"

Mild trash-talk, underwhelming spectacle and mind-numbing repetition add up to a punishing watch

By the end, the sex scenes many and varied though they may be are just a bagatelle. Partly this is because there is no false hope offered here. None of the sexy set pieces are a full escape from reality. The series is based on a true story and the podcast made about Molly Kochan's decision to cram years of sexual experience into the little time she was told she had left before metastasised breast cancer killed her.

The golden bag competition for the Walter family dates back to 2006, when siblings - Jesse Walter, Rebecca Rutherford, Jeremy Walter and Sarah Bauer - observed their mother, Diane Walter, reusing a gold-colored gift bag and handing it to her "favorite" child. Since then, the competition has become a year-long campaign that results in a winner being crowned (and heckled!) at the family's annual Christmas gathering.

So it's easy to see Tea With Judi Dench as a sequel of sorts. Like the tree show, there isn't much on the surface to get excited about. It's a show where someone comes to visit Dench for a cup of tea and that's literally it. Which would be dispiriting another brilliant career lost to podcasts were it not for the punishing, relentless charm of the thing.

Cher made her musical return to Saturday Night Live after a 40-year hiatus to help ring in the holidays. The pop icon took the stage at SNL on December 20th, for the show's final episode of the year, and performed her holiday anthem, "DJ Play A Christmas Song." Surrounded by male dancers with faux snow falling in the background, Cher brought the festive cheer before closing the song by holding her fingers up in a heart.

I've known Bill since I was like 18, 19 years old, and I've never said this publicly, but f**k that guy.

It was in a market square in the Colombian city of Cartagena when Georgi Banks-Davies wondered if she had bitten off more than she could chew. The director of The Night Manager's second series was shooting a scene in the bustling location, with just a few minutes to capture the action. Her lead actors, Tom Hiddleston, who returns as the traumatised spy Jonathan Pine, and Diego Calva, his new nemesis, had to walk among market-goers who at first were peering down the camera lens.