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TV
If you only watch one, make it …
The Shards
Disney+; available now
Summed up in a sentence Ryan Murphy is back on top form with this slick adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s metafictional/autobiographical novel about a serial killer stalking LA private school teenagers.
What our reviewer said “I have not read the book. An enfant terrible’s reminiscences are too often simply terrible and I was exhausted by the very idea. But a TV version? Run through the Murphytron? That sounds like a very good idea – and so it has proved. Theirs is a marriage made in pop-culture heaven.” Lucy Mangan
Further reading Sex, drugs and serial killers: inside Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis’s lurid TV thriller
Pick of the rest
Sterling Point
Prime Video; available now
Summed up in a sentence An escapist YA drama from the makers of Gossip Girl about a teenager who inherits a house in Canada and sets off on a soul-searching adventure.
What our reviewer said “If escapism is the brief, then Sterling Point fulfils it expertly. Sure, it doesn’t carry the intensity or the existentialism of its edgier counterparts. But I was surprised by how long I wanted to stay with these characters and inhabit their island bubble. It kept subverting my expectations. I didn’t want to go home.” Micha Frazer-Carroll
The Salisbury Poisonings: A Spy Next Door
Sky Documentaries & Now TV; available now
Summed up in a sentence A gripping look at the poisonings of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, featuring interviews with Theresa May and Amber Rudd.
What our reviewer said “A not quite comprehensive but still nicely busy feature-length documentary that offers a compendium of ways in which the Salisbury attack was fascinating and deeply strange.” Jack Seale
You may have missed …
Richard E Grant’s Very Modern Odyssey
Channel 4; available now
Summed up in a sentence In a much more relaxed (and glamorous) alternative to Christpher Nolan’s blockbuster, the actor sets off on a moving, beautiful journey in the footsteps of Odysseus.
What our reviewer said “It’s a loose-limbed, easygoing thing that attempts to separate Homeric myth from reality but appears equally ‘chill’ with the fact that much of it remains fundamentally unknowable. ‘Essentially,’ says Grant, grinning hugely, ‘we’re dealing with an act of the imagination.’” Sarah Dempster
Film
If you only watch one, make it …
How to Feed a Dictator
Out now
Summed up in a sentence What was on the menu for the world’s most evil men? Andrew Neel’s documentary serves up interviews with the personal chefs to Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam, Pinochet and Kim Jong-il, and garnishes with chilling detail.
What our reviewer said “Each chef is in denial to varying degrees about their culpability in the repressive state apparatuses for which they worked. Ermanno Furlanis looks baffled how he ended up making pizza for Kim Jong-il while millions of North Koreans starved.” Leslie Felperin
Further reading ‘A man of great appetites’: what’s it like to be a dictator’s personal chef?
Pick of the rest
Bouchra
Out now
Summed up in a sentence Autobiographical animation about a gay anthropomorphised coyote film-maker in Brooklyn documenting her relationship with her mother in Casablanca.
What our reviewer said “Despite grappling with intergenerational tension, the film also makes space for the erotic thrill of sexual intimacy. And far from reiterating tired binaries – tradition v modernity, elders v youngsters – it embraces the beauty of contradictions with open arms.” Phuong Le
Practical Magic
Out now
Summed up in a sentence Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman’s 90s romcom fantasy about unlucky-in-love witches casts its spell once more – rereleased before a sequel manifests next month.
What our reviewer said “A zanier adventure in occult romance can hardly be imagined, and the elements of grownup noir violence only make it weirder. It is as if The Witches of Eastwick took on Thelma & Louise with a decaffeinated David Lynch.” Peter Bradshaw
Further reading ‘Reconciliation across difference’: why Practical Magic is my feelgood movie
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Out now
Summed up in a sentence A 10th-anniversary rerelease of Taika Waititi’s big-hearted comedy, with Sam Neill as a bushman on the lam with a 13-year-old runaway in the New Zealand wilderness.
What our reviewer said “The recent sad loss of Sam Neill is a great opportunity to revisit one of his greatest roles in this tremendous family film, a goofy mix of Butch and Sundance and Chaplin’s The Kid.” Peter Bradshaw
Further reading Sam Neill’s 20 best roles
Now streaming
A Child of My Own
Netflix
Summed up in a sentence Candy-coloured Netflix true-crime doc tells the stranger-than-fiction story of a woman whose desperation to be a mother leads her to take extreme measures.
What our reviewer said “Reminiscent of Bart Layton’s The Imposter in its portrayal of unfeasible auto-delusion, A Child of My Own is a refreshing branch-out for true-crime stories into less violent, more intimate enigmas.” Phil Hoad
Further reading ‘She wasn’t acting, she wanted to live it’: how a fake pregnancy resulted in the wildest true crime film of the year
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Books
If you only read one, make it …
The August Coup by Robert Service
Reviewed by John Simpson
Summed up in a sentence The comic and chaotic fall of the Soviet Union.
What our reviewer said “The acting president, Gennady Yanayev, was supposedly in charge, but he had been drinking solidly for an entire day.”
Pick of the rest
Children of the Wild by Kevin Powers
Reviewed by Marcel Theroux
Summed up in a sentence A mythic story of the first world war from the American author and army vet.
What our reviewer said “Powers has an amazing knack for storytelling that seems to unfold visually and conveys landscapes, gestures and complex military engagements with great flair.”
Sky City by Jacqueline Crooks
Review by Emma Loffhagen
Summed up in a sentence The follow-up to the Women’s prize-shortlisted Fire Rush.
What our reviewer said “This is a haunting, polyphonic meditation on trauma and belonging that hovers between realism and dream, asking how a person might rebuild a self after childhood has shattered it.”
The Ghost of the Mountains by Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi
Reviewed by Edward Posnett
Summed up in a sentence A conservationist’s brilliant study of the snow leopard.
What our reviewer said “The effect of this book is a gradual stripping away of mystification, revealing the snow leopard to be fragile and beautiful just like any other inhabitant of high mountain ranges.”
What Happened to Liberal Democracy? by Daron Acemoğlu
Reviewed by Steven Poole
Summed up in a sentence A Nobel-winning economist’s prescription for fixing the system.
What our reviewer said “Liberal democracy is in a crisis, largely owing to the abandonment of the working class by liberalism’s “progressive” wing. The left ceased to speak of economic class and spoke instead of identity.”
You may have missed …
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
Reviewed by Christopher Shrimpton
Summed up in a sentence Inspired by a real-life experiment, an out-of-work actor agrees to go through life covered in a black leather bag in this Booker-longlisted novel.
What our reviewer said “It is a campus novel for our end times, packed with keen insights into the current state of art, masculinity and friendship.”
Albums
If you only listen to one, make it …
Phoebe Bridgers: Lost Weekend
Out 14 August
Summed up in a sentence Six years since her last album, and with her influence growing via a tranche of new singer-songwriters that have arrived in her absence, Bridgers releases this complex and emotionally turbulent opus.
What our reviewer said “A heady, potent, occasionally wrenching album, albeit one flecked with optimism.” Alexis Petridis
Pick of the rest
Ravyn Lenae: Blue Island
Out now
Summed up in a sentence Following her viral success with 2024’s Love Me Not, and its accompanying accusations of “selling out”, R&B and alt-pop experimentalist Lenae returns with a third album full of attention-grabbing songs to silence the doubters.
What our reviewer said “Its collage of styles makes for an original, idiosyncratic pop album, something worth celebrating rather than picking apart for ulterior motives.” Alexis Petridis
Arun Sood and Angeline Morrison: Donn/Dubh
Out now
Summed up in a sentence Angeline Morrison and Arun Sood, AKA two of Britain’s most exciting folk practitioners, offer up this fascinating fusion of tradition and sonic experimentation.
What our reviewer said “Full of febrile layers, this album’s ambitions unpeel with every tantalising listen.” Jude Rogers
