3 h. ago AC/DC review – a thrilling show stuffed with classics and your eardrums will never be the same

Melbourne Cricket Ground, then touring AustraliaIn the band’s ‘ancestral homeland’, Accadacca’s first Australian concert in a decade shows Angus Young is still a frenzied force to be reckoned withOn Wednesday afternoon, 374 bagpipers gathered in Melbourne’s Federation Square to play AC/DC’s It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock’n’Roll), setting a new world record just up the road from where Bon Scott and the band famously played the song on the back of a flatbed truck riding up Swanston Street 50 years before.It’s the one hit AC/DC no longer plays live, retired out of respect to Scott after his death in 1980. But you barely notice it is missing when their live shows are this stuffed with classics: an audible thrill ripples through the 80,000 punters in Melbourne Cricket Ground when AC/DC opens with If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It) then tears straight into Back in Black. Who else could play such a huge hit so early in a show? But Accadacca can, in what is essentially a great...

Politics

5 d. ago All Her Fault review – Sarah Snook’s terrifying thriller is an absolute pleasure to watch

This extraordinarily tight child kidnap drama knits all its threads together brilliantly – and the mighty Snook of Succession fame shines as a mother whose son is missingLook, I am a mother, a neurotic and – if one of my HRT patches sloughs off without me noticing – very quickly a clinical paranoiac. But even if that were not true, this latest tale of a playdate gone unthinkably wrong would have me firmly in its grip. All Her Fault, an adaptation of bestselling thriller writer Andrea Mara’s 2021 book of the same name, braids a number of popular TV trends together, interrogating White Lotus-style the phenomenon of middle-class US affluence and the protections it offers and corruptions it encourages, a missing child narrative and an examination of the penalty women pay for motherhood. It is rare that all these things are held in balance, without at least one element becoming preachy or the thriller part becoming baggy or preposterous, but All Her Fault manages it brilliantly.We are pl...

Events

7 d. ago Odyssey review – estate agents, cocaine and mental collapse in a jagged London thriller

Odyssey review – estate agents, cocaine and mental collapse in a jagged London thriller  The Guardian

Politics

7 d. ago Odyssey review – estate agents, cocaine and mental collapse in a chaotic London thriller

Odyssey review – estate agents, cocaine and mental collapse in a chaotic London thriller  The Guardian

Politics

1 week ago Girlbands Forever review – a thrillingly gobby slice of must

With big reveals from All Saints, Sugababes, Eternal and more, this funny and sometimes horrifically frank documentary is super juicy especially when they slate Spice GirlsAs a pop-cultural moment, the turn-of-the-millennium girl group boom hasn’t exactly been flooded with solemn appraisal and analysis. Wisely, this fantastically entertaining three-part documentary doesn’t attempt to rectify that. Instead, Girlbands Forever reminisces in a manner that is equal parts meaty and frothy. And, yes, often about as stomach-churning as that combination sounds.At the heart of this series – the female-focused follow-up to 2024’s Boybands Forever – is a lot of old ground. Viewers of a certain age will know the trajectories retraced here (the head-spinning arrival of Spice Girls, the scrappy ascent of Atomic Kitten, the existentially challenging lineup rotation of Sugababes, the talent-show conception of Little Mix) and the dominant themes (tabloid hell, merciless management, relentless touring...

Politics

1 week ago Girlbands Forever: this shocking history of 90s female pop is packed with gossip, scandal – and bangers

Strap in for a nostalgia-stuffed jaunt through musical classics, featuring honest interviews with stars – the details of which make the record industry look appalling Girlbands, then. Shimmering icons of empowerment or Pygmalion projects for middle-aged A&R men? Here’s a radical idea – they’re both. Two become one, baby. That’s the sense you get from Girlbands Forever (Sat, 9.20pm, BBC Two), the documentary executive produced by Louis Theroux charting the fortunes of 90s bands such as All Saints, Eternal, Atomic Kitten and Mis-Teeq through to 00s stars Little Mix. If that lineup speaks to your elder millennial soul the way it does mine, climb on board, carefully. I need some nostalgia, like I’ve never needed nostalgia before.Of course we want the gossip, fallouts and scandals. Band members interviewed for the three-part series are happy to supply. Kelle Bryan from Eternal reveals they were sent to a facility in the countryside and put on controlled diets to manage their weight (...

Events

1 week ago Relay review: Lily James is enthralling but the year’s best thriller has one big problem

Netflix's Relay is a cat-and-mouse game of whistleblowing gone wrong, but it's more than just a thrilling chase movie

Politics

2 w. ago Down Cemetery Road review – Emma Thompson is magnificent in this thriller from Slow Horses’ creator

The Oscar winner’s turn as a no-nonsense private investigator is a role model for women everywhere. She really shines alongside Ruth Wilson in this pacy, twisty thriller based on Mick Herron’s debut novelI always forget how good Emma Thompson is. That is partly because she tends to work in film rather than television and I last made it to the cinema in the mid-90s. It is also partly because she is always so how can I put this? so Emma Thompson in all her interviews and award speeches that I can’t envisage her putting herself away enough for Proper Acting.But of course she can – and does as the private investigator Zoë Boehm, a woman of flint and diamond, in the new eight-part thriller Down Cemetery Road, Morwenna Banks’ adaptation of Mick Herron’s debut novel of the same name. Herron has since become known for Slow Horses, the series about the busted spies in Slough House pushing paper under the world-wearied eye of Jackson Lamb, ever hoping to get back in the game. Gary Oldman, who...

Politics

2 w. ago Inside the magical European theme park dubbed 'cheaper Disneyland'

Disneyland is the stuff of dreams, with rides galore, magical palaces, themed lands and classic park attractions. But with all this comes a hefty price tag.

Politics

3 w. ago Diamond Sky review – fairytale heist thriller has its head in the clouds

Mesmerising leads Hassan Najib and Elena Rivers play a pair of young hotel workers who carry out high-end robberies in this oddly unconvincing storyIt’s not fair to critics who want to avoid spoilers but there’s a twist at the end of this romance-focused crime thriller that partly explains why everything that has come before has been so oddly stilted, unconvincing and thinly sketched out. Presumably, writer-director Felix Mackenzie was hoping to create a fairytale-like atmosphere but with a present-day London setting.We’re supposed to feel enchanted by the tale of Lucan (Hassan Najib) and Alice (Elena Rivers), two crazy young kids pulling off heists while working day jobs as a bell boy and chambermaid, respectively, in a small hotel. But most viewers will just wonder why their high jinks are so incredibly unconvincing, why they trust their criminal mastermind handlers to show up with escape cars at exactly the moment needed, and why they live in a flat that looks as if it was hired ...

Politics

3 w. ago The Iris Affair review – it takes real guts to write TV this thrillingly preposterous. Strap in!

Tom Hollander and Niamh Algar star in this fun, propulsive tale of a genius code-cracker, an oddball entrepreneur and an evil supercomputer known as Charlie Big Potatoes trapped in a secret lair. Brace yourself for a wild rideThere’s in media res and then there’s the opening of The Iris Affair. The new caper-drama opens with a man being beaten half to death while a woman (Niamh Algar) looks on unmoved and refusing to hand over a MacGuffin to the man ordering the beating (Tom Hollander, channelling Michael Caine). They are watched by a rather more concerned teenager, Joy (Meréana Tomlinson), who becomes infinitely more concerned when Hollander-Caine’s character realises that jamming a gun into her neck might be a better way to elicit a response from MacGuffin lady. Then he realises he can’t quite bring himself to shoot the child. But he can order his heavy to do so. The hired gun swings around and we cut to Sardinia, Italy, the day before. And that, my friends, is how a prologue shou...

Politics

3 w. ago The Iris Affair review: Luther creator's absurd Sky thriller is ridiculously entertaining

The British tech thriller set in Italy is streaming from today on Sky

Politics

3 w. ago The Iris Affair review: Sky’s deliriously entertaining tech thriller is brilliantly silly

A glossy new sci-fi thriller from Luther creator Neil Cross is about to entertain and baffle Sky subscribers this week

Science