18 h. ago Watch Simon Cowell’s TV search for a new boyband – and see how our world has changed | Emma Brockes

Twenty years on, the social media-savvy contestants will have greater power. His brutal approach to judging them will have to change, tooThere is a moment in the trailer for Simon Cowell’s new Netflix show, The Next Act, that is almost touching in its adherence to the way things once were. Cowell, who we see on a variety of beige sofas primly clutching his knees, talks about how to curate a new boyband, 20 years after the launch of his first TV talent show. “There is a huge risk here,” he says, heavy with drama. “If this goes wrong, it will be: ‘Simon Cowell has lost it.’” In fact, as anyone who has an eye on dwindling audience figures for his existing shows knows, for the vast majority of 18- to 24-year-olds – or even for younger millennials – the more likely response will be, “Simon who?”Which doesn’t mean that a new generation of viewers can’t be lured in by Cowell’s expertise. The question of whether 66-year-old Cowell can tweak a dusty and decades-old model has less to do with ...

Culture

8 d. ago At last, TV about influencers that isn’t cringe – I Love LA is my show of the year | Emma Brockes

It gets into its twentysomething characters’ heads in a way that’s fresh and real. You either get it, or you don’tIt’s been a while since a TV show came along that people leaned into losing their minds about, but finally, and after a year of otherwise mediocre programming, we have one. I Love LA, the HBO comedy set among wannabe gen Z influencers, is only halfway through its eight-episode run, but it is already comfortably the best show of the year. And more importantly, it has triggered all the signifiers of event TV: obsessive repeat viewings, line-by-line coverage, big platform profiles of its stars and weekly recaps on Vulture, New York magazine’s website. Within days of each episode airing, people have transcribed and uploaded the entire script, which – with the best will in the world – no one’s doing for Riot Women.The surprising thing about this is not the fact that it’s the first show by Rachel Sennott, the show’s 30-year-old creator and star, or that the action takes place ...

Culture

2 w. ago Every time new emails drop, elites do the Epstein shuffle: ‘Yes I knew him, but I didn’t KNOW him’ | Emma Brockes

For the New York and Washington great and good who loved the company of wealth and power, all that glitters is no longer goldMany years ago, I went to a party in central London thrown by a host known for curating interesting and heavyweight guest lists and, on entering, encountered David Irving, the disgraced historian and Holocaust denier. As a marker of social pariahdom, Holocaust denial is up there with – or perhaps even more potent than – a conviction for sex offences, and I turned around and walked out; not through any particular moral superiority, but because I thought “notoriety” as a criteria for inclusion on a guest list was stupid and offensive. As I left, I remember looking across the room at the host and thinking: you silly bloody bint, I’m embarrassed for you.I thought about that party and Irving this week while reading, with grim amusement, the absolute scramble currently under way in the US among media and other public figures seeking to explain, justify, downplay and...

Politics

3 w. ago Celebrating literature is good – but I’m running out of patience with celebrity book clubs | Emma Brockes

Sarah Jessica Parker swept all before her at the Booker prize ceremony, but is fame the best way to encourage reading?In these turbulent times, we take small joys where we can find them. And this week we’ll take this: the spectacle of various literary people at the Booker prize award ceremony jamming themselves into photos alongside Sarah Jessica Parker. The actor – if you missed the long piece about it in the New York Times, or the many social media posts promoting Parker’s involvement – served as a judge for the Booker this year, a process that required her to read 153 books, some of them on the New York subway while being followed by a film crew. “Oh let me try!!!!” Parker had posted to Booker organisers last year, and for reasons that became obvious this week, they did.I know what you are going to say; that anything short of full-throated support for Parker’s adorable engagement with books in general and the Booker prize in particular is just unacceptable snobbery. There is noth...

Culture

3 w. ago Should I care what Sarah Jessica Parker thinks about books? | Emma Brockes

She swept all before her at the Booker prize ceremony, but I’m running out of patience with celebrity influence in publishingIn these turbulent times, we take small joys where we can find them. And this week we’ll take this: the spectacle of various literary people at the Booker prize award ceremony jamming themselves into photos alongside Sarah Jessica Parker. The actor – if you missed the long piece about it in the New York Times, or the many social media posts promoting Parker’s involvement – served as a judge for the Booker this year, a process that required her to read 153 books, some of them on the New York subway while being followed by a film crew. “Oh let me try!!!!” Parker had posted to Booker organisers last year, and for reasons that became obvious this week, they did.I know what you are going to say; that anything short of full-throated support for Parker’s adorable engagement with books in general and the Booker prize in particular is just unacceptable snobbery. There ...

Politics

4 w. ago Zohran Mamdani's biggest threat is not Donald Trump, it's the Democratic old guard | Emma Brockes

The New York mayor-elect sells a political message further to the left than any American politician has dared to in recent memoryThe morning after Zohran Mamdani’s startling mayoral victory in New York, the most arresting visual image was not of the mayor-elect celebrating in an applause-filled room, but the breakdown of voting patterns across the city. Street by street, practically building by building, you could index New Yorkers’ support for Mamdani or Andrew Cuomo to the probable amount of rent they were paying. A middle-income precinct on the Upper West Side, for example, showed up as a small island of Mamdani voters in a sea of Cuomo-voting wealthier neighbourhoods. Solid lower-income support for Mamdani in modest midtown gave way to the incredible banking wealth of Tribeca and its majority support of Cuomo.Allowing for large anomalies – Staten Island, a middle- to lower-income part of the city, voted heavily for Cuomo, as did lower-income Hassidic neighbourhoods in Brooklyn a...

Politics