8 h. ago ROLAND WHITE reviews Civilisations: Rise And Fall: BBC turns the history of Rome into a lecture on immigration and equality

BBC series Civilisations Rise And Fall seems to believe its core audience struggles with detail and has the attention span of a hyperactive squirrel.

Events

31 h. ago ROLAND WHITE reviews Prisoner 951 on BBC1: Nazanin's Iran hell made me yearn for the days of gunboat diplomacy

The people at Panorama who doctored President Trump's speech have done more damage to the BBC than they can possibly imagine.

Events

3 d. ago Energy price cap: Ofgem confirms January 2026 UK bill rise despite predictions of a fall

Households are bracing for higher winter costs as government schemes and market volatility push up energy spending 🔌

Economics

5 d. ago ROLAND WHITE reviews Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks: Do the paintings really look like omelettes? Ronnie Wood disagrees

He drew our attention to the movement and thickness of the paint, and highlighted the way the artist expressed turbulence and unrest.

Events

5 d. ago EastEnders announces huge New Year's Day twist with Max Branning in BBC soap first

EastEnders has announced that the BBC One soap will make history with a special flashforward episode that will skip one year into the future, focusing on Max Branning

Politics

6 d. ago ROLAND WHITE reviews Cooper & Fry: Headless corpses? Evil spirits? All in a day's work for a Peak District cop

When people start new jobs in real life, they wait a few days to settle in. They're on their best behaviour, and they don't moan that it was much better at their old place.

Events

7 d. ago ROLAND WHITE reviews Celebrity MasterChef: Grace Dent's recipe for success? Make the cooks the stars

Celebrity MasterChef is further proof that you can make successful television from pretty much anything. The cooks' first task was to reveal a piece of food, and prepare something with that ingredient in question.

Society

8 d. ago Not OK? Booker winner Flesh ignites debate about state of masculinity

Toxic male behaviour of David Szalay’s protagonist reflects real-world concerns about a ‘crisis of masculinity’In the immediate aftermath of David Szalay’s book Flesh winning the Booker prize, one feature of the novel stood out: how often the protagonist utters the word “OK”.The 500 times István grunts out the response is part of a sparse prose style through which the British-Hungarian Szalay gives the reader few insights into the inner workings of a man whose fortunes rise and fall. Continue reading...

Politics

8 d. ago Emotional Countryfile host makes history in 'once in a lifetime' moment

Countryfile presenter Hamza Yassin was left stunned after he made history on the BBC show

Politics

8 d. ago When reality bites: the rapid rise and chaotic fall of Reform UK in Cornwall

Resignations, suspensions and infighting lead to party losing crown of highest number of seats in the county“I know whenever I come back here next,” Nigel Farage told a jubilant crowd of hundreds in a leisure centre in Redruth, “Reform UK will become a dominant force, not just in Cornwall politics, but in British politics.”That was in February and when the local elections arrived three months later it appeared Farage’s prophecy was in part coming true – Reform took 28 seats on Cornwall council, the highest number of any party. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Strictly Come Dancing's Balvinder Sopal breaks silence after making BBC show history

Balvinder Sopal and professional dance partner Julian Caillon appeared on Strictly spin off show It Takes Two on Wednesday night

Culture

1 week ago Global tuberculosis diagnoses rise to a record, but deaths fall, WHO reports

The number of people diagnosed with tuberculosis worldwide rose again last year, eclipsing 2023's record total

Events

1 week ago The inside story of Alan Sheehan's rise and fall as Swansea City boss

The Swans boss has been sacked after a disappointing start to the season

Politics

1 week ago ‘It’s notoriously hard to write about sex’: David Szalay on Flesh, his astounding Booker prize

The novel’s protagonist is violent, libidinous and so inarticulate he says ‘OK’ some 500 times. So how did the author turn his story into a tragic masterpiece?When we meet the morning after the announcement of this year’s Booker prize, David Szalay, the winner, seems an extremely genial and gentle author to have created one of the most morally ambiguous characters in recent contemporary fiction. His sixth novel, Flesh, about the rise and fall of a Hungarian immigrant to the UK, is unlike anything you have read before.Szalay (pronounced “Sol-oy”) is often described as “Hungarian-British”, but that has offended Canadians this morning, he says. His mother was Canadian and he was born in that country, where his Hungarian father had moved a few years earlier. “I’m arguably more Canadian than Hungarian.” Now 51, he grew up in England, graduated from Oxford University, and lived in Hungary for 15 years. To make things more confusing, he is over from Vienna, where he now lives with his wife...

Politics

2 w. ago The rise and fall of the BBC's Teflon Tim, the man who 'failed upwards': CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

Until the 58-year-old fell on his sword last night, it seemed nothing that happened on his watch as head of the British Broadcasting Corporation could shame him into quitting.

Events

2 w. ago Kingdom review – David Attenborough never fails to make nature awe

Attenborough’s latest extravaganza is packed with such high drama it’s like Game of Thrones if Cersei was a hyena. If only it hadn’t been bumped down the schedules because of StrictlyAs I watch a leopard hunt in Kingdom, the BBC’s latest David Attenborough-narrated documentary, I find myself thinking about a YouGov survey from a few years ago that found that half of Britons wouldn’t take a free trip to the moon, with 11% turning it down because “there isn’t enough to see and do”. As well as it providing a fantastic insight into the great British public’s psyche (would outer space be better if it had Alton Towers?), I can’t help but wonder if it also explains the pressure that TV commissioners feel under to find new ways to interest the pesky human race in sights that would previously have been greeted with wonder.Back in 2017, Blue Planet II was the most-watched programme of the year, with 14.1 million viewers tuning in to see dolphins surf on prime time. Today, the six-part Kingdom...

Events

2 w. ago Return to Paradise to explore DI Colin Cartwright's past and reason for leaving UK

Return to Paradise fans will get a peek into Colin's history in the latest series of the BBC show

Politics

3 w. ago BBC’s Kingdom series gets viewers ‘into the action’ with TV drama techniques

New David Attenborough show’s use of drones and moving cameras creates immersive experience like Adolescence David Attenborough’s new BBC series Kingdom has broken ground by using elements from TV dramas, such as cliffhangers and drone and moving-camera shots, to immerse viewers “into the action” like the hit Netflix drama Adolescence did.Since the advent of streaming services, there has been an increase in natural history TV shows thanks to the worldwide appeal of the genre popularised by Attenborough and the renowned BBC Studios natural history unit (NHU). Continue reading...

Events

4 w. ago Fans fear 'history repeating' for Amber Davies on BBC's Strictly Come Dancing

Strictly Come Dancing fans were left fearing for Amber Davies after she and pro partner Nikita Kuzmin found themselves in the dance-off for the first time

Culture