Ahead of the official Academy nominations on Tuesday, Observer film critics pick their own favouritesAmid the hype over her acclaimed performance as Diana, Princess of Wales in Spencer, Kristen Stewart briefly stopped awards pundits dead in their tracks when, upon being asked about her Oscar buzz, she drily admitted, “I don’t give a shit.” Sacrilege! Some of the best films and performances of all time haven’t been considered by the Academy, she continued. “There’s five spots. What the fuck are you going to do?”Nobody disagrees with Stewart on any of this: just ask our critics, whose ideal Oscar ballots below are knowingly far from the expected reality of next week’s nominations. That the actor’s comments made showbiz headlines anyway speaks to the strange aura the Oscars maintain as a gold standard of cinematic achievement: for several months a year, people fret and discuss and strategise about them, while companies expensively campaign for them, only to spend the rest of the year complaining that they don’t mean anything anyway. Even Stewart’s scepticism emerged while on the campaign trail, being interviewed on a Variety podcast named Awards Circuit. Should she win for Spencer, she’ll doubtless turn up and give a humbly grateful speech anyway. That’s the game. Nobody gives a shit about the Oscars, after all, except when everyone does.

The Queen jokes at an event held in Sandringham House in the lead up to the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne. 'I don’t matter,' she said when she was told it had been positioned to face the press. 'I think I might just put a knife in it,' she added

In 1965, Teté-Michel Kpomassie left his African homeland for a new life in Greenland, swapping sunny beaches for icy fjords and spiced food for boiled seal. Now, at 80, he’s planning to retire to his ‘spiritual home’The warm living room of Tété-Michel Kpomassie’s otherwise neat Parisian home has a coffee table in the middle of it piled high with keepsakes – a mountain of black and white pictures, letters and handwritten diaries. It’s an archive of one remarkable man’s intrepidly adventurous and unconventional life to date. Balanced on top of the overloaded files and folders sits a tattered book, its pages faded. On its cover is a portrait of an Inuit in a sealskin jacket, standing next to an icy shore. The title reads Les Esquimaux du Groenland à l’Alaska (The Eskimos from Greenland to Alaska). It’s a 1947 work of nonfiction authored by French anthropologist Robert Gessain.Decades may have passed since the day Kpomassie first set his teenage eyes upon this image in his native Togo, but the 80-year-old remembers the precise moment as if it had happened just minutes before. How could he not? What he found inside has, since that day, consumed him entirely, shaping every chapter of his own story. He ran away from home at 16 to embark on an epic cross-continental mission that delivered him to Greenland, the world’s northernmost country. He was the first African man to set foot there. The adventure resulted in a travelogue, return visits and countless speaking invitations, and, more recently, a rather acrimonious divorce. Now, his very own sealskin jacket hangs by the door to his home in pride of place. Continue reading...

Former Tory leader says parties scandal and cost of living problems are PM’s responsibility to sort outBoris Johnson must stay in place to deal with the “hugely damaging” No 10 parties scandal and the cost of living crisis because they are his responsibility to fix, according to the former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith.The Conservative grandee said he wanted cabinet ministers to “temper their ambitions” and allow Johnson the time to sort out “the big, big crises that are hitting the government”. Continue reading...

Pyongyang still developing nuclear and ballistic programmes and seeking material and help abroad, says reportNorth Korea has continued to develop its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, including its capability to produce nuclear fissile materials in violation of UN security council resolutions, UN experts have said in a report.The panel of experts said in the executive summary of the report obtained on Saturday night by Associated Press that there was “a marked acceleration” of Pyongyang’s testing and demonstration of new short-range and possibly medium-range missiles through January, “incorporating both ballistic and guidance technologies and using both solid and liquid propellants”. Continue reading...

About half the country’s population is yet to receive a single dose of vaccine, despite availability

Hlaing Thayar was at the centre of Myanmar’s protests, but brutal crackdowns and the collapse of the local garment industry have taken their toll

Tourists who had their jabs more than 270 days ago need a booster to enter France, Spain and DenmarkTravellers have been warned to check their half-term holiday plans to make sure they meet Covid vaccination rules when travelling to EU destinations as a growing number of countries impose new restrictions.France joined Spain and Denmark last week in requiring anyone who completed their vaccination jabs more than 270 days ago to have a booster to enter the country – or be considered unvaccinated. Austria requires boosters after 180 days. Continue reading...

A recently unearthed interview with an old friend recalls how the actor was looked after by a kindly ‘foster mother’ who made sure he did the right thingThe extreme poverty endured by Charlie Chaplin while growing up in the slums of Victorian London reduced him to stealing and being scolded by the woman who took care of him, according to an interview with one of his childhood friends that has remained unheard in the British Film Institute for almost 40 years.Effie Wisdom, whose aunt gave him a home from home when he needed it most, lamented that Chaplin “had a terrible life” as a child, “always hungry”, dressed in “ragged”, filthy clothes – no doubt later inspiring the comic genius who created the Tramp, society’s eternal victim and one of cinema’s most memorable characters. Continue reading...

The remarkable rise of the viral sensation Wordle, which the New York Times recently bought, is just the latest in a very long line of word puzzles that have intrigued us down the centuriesI scored a two in Wordle the other day. God. The rush, as the five squares in the second line blinked green, one by one, touched on the sublime. I felt like Mary Magdalen in the Caravaggio painting, lost in ecstasy. Oh mama.Up until this point, I had considered that those who found the solution in two guesses were simply lucky. Consistent threes and fours – this was a surer marker of Wordle prowess. Once I had scored a two myself, however, I began to doubt this hypothesis. Surely, only the most elite players could manage such a feat. Surely, I was now part of this pantheon. Continue reading...

Campaigner and journalist Julie Bindel was the first to report on grooming scandals in the early 2000s. Here she talks exclusively to a survivor of ex-Labour peer Nazir Ahmed’s child sexual abuseIt was in 2016, that Mr B, a survivor of sexual abuse, heard that a female victim had reported his attacker for attempted rape. “I went mad when I heard that,” he says. “I could just about cope with knowing what he had done to me, but when I heard that I just thought: ‘You dirty bastard, you are not getting away with this any longer.’”The attacker was Nazir Ahmed, or Lord Ahmed of Rotherham as he prefers to be known, and last Friday he was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for child sex offences, namely the attempted rape of a young girl and sexual assault of a boy, during the 1970s. Continue reading...

On the eve of his new double album, the songwriter takes questions from Observer readers and celebrity fans on being a style icon, marrying young, and 20 years without boozeJohnny Marr calls himself “a lifer”. It’s a fair description of someone who started playing guitar in bands aged 13, founded the Smiths at 19, departed the band five years later, and went on to become an integral part of the sound of the Pretenders, Electronic, Modest Mouse and the Cribs. Latterly, Marr has contributed to soundtracks with Hans Zimmer, including the Billie Eilish song No Time to Die for last year’s Bond film, and made four solo albums. His latest is Fever Dreams Pts 1-4, a terrific, vigorous double album of 16 tracks that swoops from moody introspection to rousing anthems. So, yes, after 40 years in the business, it’s hard to deny Marr’s zeal and commitment.“When you get older, you learn that no matter whether your work is in or out of fashion, it’s all about whether you can stand behind it,” he says, “because you can’t do anything about the trends and fashions and the way you are perceived too much – that’s a really secondary load of baggage that just gets in the way. So there are definitely some advantages to the mentality of being older: you don’t really care too much about being liked, certainly not as much as how much you like the work.” Continue reading...

Painter Joe Machine ‘incensed’ by similarity to his own canvases, created a decade beforeOver the years, Damien Hirst has faced more than one accusation of copying someone else’s work, with artists variously claiming to have created his diamond skull, his medicine-cabinets and his spin-paintings before he did. The one-time enfant terrible of the British art world has always denied plagiarism, although he did go as far as saying in an interview in 2018 that “all my ideas are stolen anyway”.Now he is facing fresh allegations. His cherry blossom paintings in his latest exhibition, which has just closed in Paris, have prompted outrage from the English artist and writer Joe Machine, who says they look just like his own cherry blossom paintings. Continue reading...

Designs for official documents celebrate the country’s heritage – and are hard to forgeTrees, eagles, bears, turrets and towers: passport designs used to follow certain conventions. Not any more. From Monday, all new Belgian passports will feature Tintin, the Smurfs and other heroes of Belgian comic-strip art.With a 34-page standard passport, Belgian travellers will be accompanied by Lucky Luke, Blake and Mortimer, and Bob and Bobette. Many images are from the original strips, such as the 1954 Tintin serial, Explorers on the Moon, where the intrepid boy reporter took his first steps on the lunar surface 15 years before Neil Armstrong. Others were specially designed for the passport, such as a Smurf contemplating a globe, with its knapsack and maps spread on the ground. Continue reading...

Many Indians embark on often treacherous journeys to North America through agents who are now the focus of anti-human trafficking officersThe signs are painted on every wall and hang from every lamp-post of this small Gujarat village. “Easy Canada visa, student and immigration,” states one. “Study in Canada, free application, spouse can apply,” claims another.Indeed, in Dingucha, a village in rural west India, almost every house now has a family member either in Canada or the USA. It was a fact they used to proudly shout from the rooftops; but now, the village has fallen silent. Ask people about their relatives in north America – particularly the journey they took to get there – and they shrug their shoulders and walk off nervously. Continue reading...

At 30, Adeel Akhtar was all but homeless, now he’s been nominated for this year’s Baftas. Here, he talks about the beauty of ordinary livesAdeel Akhtar was living in a van, wondering if he should move back in with his parents. It was 2010. He’d recently appeared in Four Lions, the Chris Morris satire, in which he plays a Muslim extremist who, in an uncanny set of events, blows himself up in a Yorkshire sheep field. The film had been successful. (The New York Times called it “stiletto sharp”.) But it did not immediately become the career tipping point Akhtar hoped it might. So there he was: 30 years old, not well off, suffering after the break-up of a “messy” relationship, recording audition tapes from his van. The work had dried up, but he wasn’t hustling. Even when he got a gig, he sometimes wouldn’t bother learning his lines. “What is that?” he asks now. “Why would a person not apply themselves?” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I suppose a not-nice way of looking at my younger self is that I was lazy.”Akhtar does not seem lazy now. A few days before we meet, in a mid-market café near his south London home, he won Best Actor at the British Independent Film Awards, for his role in Ali & Ava, a Clio Barnard film about forbidden love. Akhtar plays Ali, a British Asian man – irrepressible, distressed, permanently on the edge of euphoria or breakdown – who falls for an older white woman. The film is set in and around the housing estates of Bradford, and across social and racial divides. At the awards ceremony, Akhtar praised Barnard for presenting ordinary lives as extraordinary, and for “looking at people who are traditionally overlooked”. This was important, he said, particularly for him, because, “I’m one of them.” Continue reading...

The director on yoga, films, football – and spending lazy sons with her grownup childrenWhat time are you up? I’m usually awake by 6am, with my sausage dog’s nose pressed against me; we sleep arm-in-paw. I recently moved house and painted my bedroom pink with pictures of Marilyn Monroe on the walls, because I’m single so I can. I light the fire, incense and candles. Sensory satisfaction is all at this stage in life.A morning routine? After 15 mind-calming minutes of Vipassanā yogic meditation, awakening my kundalini, I feel cleansed and calmer. Things are still, if only briefly. Then I chuck on my tracksuit and take the dog to the park while it’s quiet out. Continue reading...

With seven leftwing Élysée hopefuls in the running, next time the left might win over voters by shunning factionalismFrance’s presidential election is still two months away and the most likely winner, according to opinion polls, the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, has yet to declare his candidacy. Yet one result already appears certain: the vote will be another, perhaps terminal, disaster for the once-dominant Socialist party and, more broadly, the French left.Important lessons may be drawn from this impending failure by other European progressive, social democratic parties and also by Labour in Britain. The re-election victory in Portugal last week of António Costa’s Socialists, who improved on their 2019 performance, demonstrated it is still possible for the centre-left to win, govern and win again. Continue reading...

Nation records at least 45 Covid deaths with 28 in NSW, nine in Queensland, six in Victoria and one each in South Australia and Tasmania; Scott Morrison addresses relationship with Barnaby Joyce ahead of deputy PM facing colleagues in Canberra this week. This blog is now closed

The Sundance film festival revealed a growing challenge to the traditional casting of middle-aged men with much younger womenIt’s a contentious issue. The Hollywood age gap romance – the habitual casting of an older male actor and a much younger female actor, for so long accepted as the norm – is now meeting with increasing scrutiny and criticism from audiences. Some filmmakers, identifying a hot-button topic, have started to respond.At the Sundance film festival last month, age gaps in relationships were a recurring theme. But rather than the traditional approach, of hoping that people wouldn’t notice an age difference which could practically be measured on a geological time frame, filmmakers are instead emphasising and examining the issue. Continue reading...

Seek help from your GP and a therapist, says Philippa Perry. It is possible to change this pattern in relationshipsThe question I am in my 50s with children who all left home recently. I have been in a relationship with a patient and kind man – but it hasn’t always been easy, mostly because of my insecurities. We went away and I spoilt things by starting fights and, consequently, he decided to end it.Up until this episode, I was a friendly, easy-going, non-confrontational person. The problem is that I don’t recognise myself any more. When the relationship finished, I was out of control. I had created so much drama and upset, mostly drink-fuelled. Continue reading...

Network Ten to pause filming after Channel 5 announces it will stop airing the show in AugustThe Australian soap Neighbours, which launched the international careers of countless local stars including Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Margot Robbie and Guy Pearce, has been axed in the UK in a move likely to sound the death knell for the iconic show.The UK’s Channel 5 announced it would no longer air the program and unless it is picked up by another UK broadcaster the show will end its record-breaking 36-year run in August. Continue reading...

Fears an attack could lead to 50,000 casualties as US troops arrive in Poland and French and German leaders prepare to visit Kyiv and MoscowRussia has assembled at least 70% of the military firepower it intends to have in place by the middle of February to give President Vladimir Putin the option of launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, US officials have said.On Saturday, officials warned that a full Russian invasion could lead to the quick capture of Kyiv and potentially result in as many as 50,000 civilians killed or wounded, according to the New York Times and Washington Post. A US official confirmed that estimate to the Associated Press but it is not clear how US agencies determined those numbers. Continue reading...

Secretary general says he expects Xi Jinping to allow ‘credible’ visit to troubled region during meeting on Winter Olympics sidelinesUN secretary general Antonio Guterres told leaders in Beijing he expects them to allow UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet to make a “credible” visit to China including a stop in the Xinjiang region, his spokesman said on Saturday.Guterres met with Chinese president Xi Jinping and foreign minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics, according to a readout of their talks. Continue reading...

In a pre-recorded address, the New Zealand prime minister says while people cannot come together on the Treaty grounds this year due to Covid restrictions, 'the day remains of great importance to us as a nation'. Ardern acknowledges the government still has a way to go in turning around poverty, housing inequality and poor health outcomes for Māori. 'If we are to make progress as a nation, we have to be willing to question practices that have resulted over and over in the same or even worse outcomes', she says Continue reading...

King hails efforts to rescue Rayan Awram, aged five, who was trapped for four days after falling into the well in his village of IgharaA five-year-old boy in Morocco who was trapped for four days in a deep well, and whose plight captivated residents of the north African kingdom, has died, the royal palace has said.The boy, Rayan Awram, fell 32 metres (100ft) down the empty shaft in his home village of Ighrane on Tuesday afternoon. Since then, every detail of the complex and dangerous mission to reach him has garnered international headlines and an outpouring of sympathy online, with the Arabic version of the hashtag #SaveRayan going viral. Continue reading...

As gatherings and speeches are moved online, the chairman of the Waitangi National Trust Board sees a chance for further thought and changeOn the 182nd anniversary of the signing of Aotearoa New Zealand’s founding document, the Waitangi Treaty grounds – usually thronging with tens of thousands of people – were quiet and cloaked in a gloss of rain, a sign, or tohu, to some that it is a Waitangi Day like no other.National events were cancelled this year, and ceremonies, speeches and reflections moved online, as the country teeters on the edge of a widespread Omicron outbreak. Continue reading...

Héctor Valer confirms resignation just four days after being named for the postThe Peruvian prime minister Héctor Valer confirmed on Saturday that he will step down just four days after being named for the post, after allegations that he beat his daughter and late wife.On Friday, President Pedro Castillo said he would reshuffle the cabinet again, after just three days, amid widespread condemnation of his appointment of Valer as prime minister. Continue reading...

PM salutes Elizabeth II’s ‘unwavering dedication’ as she becomes first British monarch to celebrate platinum jubileeThe Queen’s platinum jubilee message in full: ‘These last seven decades have seen extraordinary progress’Boris Johnson has paid tribute to the Queen’s “unwavering dedication to this nation” as she became the first British monarch to celebrate a platinum jubilee.The Queen marks a historic 70 years on the throne on Sunday 6 February. Continue reading...

Total of 60,578 cases reported which includes reinfections in England and Northern Ireland; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and wife have mild symptoms

Website says it will refund all donations for convoy that began as protest against vaccine mandates in CanadaFundraising website GoFundMe has taken down a page accepting donations in support of truck drivers protesting against vaccine mandates in Canada, adding that it would refund all donations.The “Freedom Convoy 2022” began as a movement against a Canadian vaccine requirement for cross-border truckers, but has turned into a rallying point against public health measures in Canada. It has also gained increasing support among Republicans, including Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Thousands take to streets in major cities after murder of Congolese man on famous Rio beachThousands of protesters have hit the streets of some of Brazil’s biggest cities to denounce racist violence after the murder of a young Congolese refugee on one of Rio’s most famous beaches.On Saturday morning demonstrators flocked to the waterside bar where 24-year-old Moïse Mugenyi Kabagambe was beaten to death late last month with fists, feet and sticks. Continue reading...

The prime minister was widely criticised for repeating the slur that is widespread online – but extremists were delightedA network of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and antisemites has celebrated Boris Johnson’s false claim that Keir Starmer failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile.Johnson was roundly criticised, including by some Tory MPs, after he made the accusation during an ill-tempered exchange in the Commons last Monday. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron discuss worrying development of Ukraine crisis in phone call on SaturdayThe UK and its Nato allies will be united in their fight against Russian aggression “wherever and however it might occur”, Boris Johnson has agreed with Emmanuel Macron.During a phone call on Saturday the prime minister and the French president discussed the worrying development of the Ukraine crisis. Continue reading...

The police officer is charged with the murder of Kumanjayi Walker in a remote community north-west of Alice Springs

Andrew will face deposition in London on 10 March, the eve of the Queen’s platinum jubilee

South African icebreaker has departed for Weddell Sea in search of Endurance, crushed by pack ice in 1915A South African icebreaker has departed in search of Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, which sank off the coast of Antarctica in 1915 after being slowly crushed by pack ice.As part of the renowned polar explorer’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition between 1914 and 1917, Shackleton’s team were trying to make the first land crossing of Antarctica. Continue reading...

Abraham, 26, said he had prayed for God’s forgiveness after the incident in Maida ValeA father who was released without charge after ploughing his car into a knife attacker to try to stop him killing a woman has said it was his “duty” to act.Abraham, 26, who was originally arrested on suspicion of murder, said he had prayed for God’s forgiveness following the incident in Maida Vale, west London. Continue reading...

Culture secretary dismisses resignation calls over ‘partygate’ after another Tory says PM should goThe culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, has rejected calls for Boris Johnson to resign in order to restore trust after the “partygate” scandal, claiming that the “vast majority” of the party were behind the prime minister.It comes after the former schools minister, Nick Gibb, became the latest Conservative MP to publicly call for Johnson to go, citing constituents “furious about the double standards” and the prime minster’s “inaccurate” statements in the Commons. Continue reading...

The athlete, 48, on childhood asthma, dogs, Portaloos and the last mile of a marathonI had asthma as a kid and still do. I started blacking out a little at the end of training runs. Then, at 14, I was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma by a brilliant doctor who told me, “This isn’t going to stop you doing any of your sport, you’re just going to have to learn to control it.” I have inhalers in pretty much every bag.What makes me sad? Losing people I care about – I lost my dad in 2020. And hearing stories about kids who weren’t as lucky as my daughter, who beat cancer last year. I burst into tears when the doctor gave us the initial diagnosis, but she’s been so brave. The chemotherapy made her hair fall out, which was obviously difficult for a teenage girl. But she’s bounced back so quickly. Continue reading...

For seven years, the East German security service’s poetry group met in Berlin to discuss literature. But there was more to it than just learning about iambic pentameterAt the height of the tense second phase of the cold war, a group of Stasi majors, propaganda officers and border guards convened at a heavily fortified compound in socialist east Berlin. From spring 1982 until winter 1989, they gathered once every four weeks, from 4pm until 6pm, at the House of Culture inside the premises of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment (the Stasi’s paramilitary wing), in Berlin’s Adlershof district. They met in a first-floor room adorned with portraits of East German leader Erich Honecker and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin that was closed with a security seal overnight.But the Stasi men did not gather to gameplan nuclear war scenarios, work up disinformation campaigns or fine-tune infiltration techniques. They set out to learn about iambic pentameter, cross-rhyming schemes and Petrarchan sonnets. The group, which internal memos referred to as the Working Circle of Writing Chekists (a reference to the fearsome Bolshevist secret police, the Cheka), produced two anthologies over this seven-year period. I got hold of a copy of one shortly before I moved to Berlin in 2016. The slim paperback, its title Wir Über Uns (“We about us”) falling down the front page in curling calligraphic letters, felt like something out of a Monty Python sketch, or a spin-off from the film The Lives of Others. How had a secret police synonymous with the suppression of free thought ended up writing poetry? Over the coming months I tried to track down former members of the circles, and contacted them to see if they could tell me more. Continue reading...

Lawyers say delay in case against three defendants including a Briton is to avoid embarrassing ChinaThe trial in Greece of activists who protested against Beijing holding the Winter Olympics has been postponed amid accusations that proceedings were delayed to avoid embarrassing China on the eve of the Games.The highly anticipated hearing had been due to take place on Thursday in the town of Pyrgos, with human rights lawyers travelling from the UK and Athens to attend. The activists, who included a Briton, an American and a Tibetan-Canadian, were arrested when they briefly disrupted the Olympic flame lighting ceremony in October. Continue reading...

Police issue ‘desperate’ appeal for information after burglary on Friday in Garretts GreenPolice have appealed for help after a burglar stole an urn containing the ashes of a child.West Midlands police said the urn was taken on Friday after someone broke into a home on Clopton Road in Garrett’s Green, Birmingham. Continue reading...

Greater Manchester police called to report of stabbing of man, believed to be 20, in Dukinfield on Friday nightFour teenage boys have been arrested on suspicion of murder after a 20-year-old man was stabbed to death in a town near Manchester.Greater Manchester police were called at 9.30pm on Friday by the ambulance service responding to a report of a stabbing on Cheetham Hill Road, Dukinfield, in Tameside. Continue reading...

Headless bodies may have belonged to criminals or outcasts says HS2 Ltd after year-long excavationAbout 40 beheaded skeletons are among 425 bodies exhumed by HS2 archaeologists from a large Roman cemetery discovered on the route of the high-speed railway.The 50-strong team uncovered the remains at a cemetery in Fleet Marston near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, HS2 Ltd said. Continue reading...

Residents brace for powerful winds and torrential rains forecast to hit east of Indian Ocean island on SaturdayCyclone Batsirai was expected to reach eastern Madagascar on Saturday, posing a “very serious threat” to millions with powerful winds and torrential rains set to batter the large Indian Ocean island.Residents hunkered down before the storm’s arrival and winds of more than 124mph (200km/h) were forecast as it bore down on the country still recovering from the deadly Tropical Storm Ana in late January. Continue reading...

As her beloved character Rachel returns, older and sober, the Irish author discusses her own journey from addiction to recovery - and the sexist snobbery that surrounds her workMarian Keyes is in bed. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, but she has just got back from a funeral and was feeling chilly. “It was a beautiful send off,” she says in her southern Irish lilt, as reassurance that she’s OK to talk. She is wearing a lilac hoodie and flashes a pastel pink manicure (a Keyes heroine would know the shade) as she rearranges the pillows to get comfy. Within a few minutes it feels as if we are both having tea and biscuits under the duvet at her Dún Laoghaire home outside Dublin, as she gives me a virtual tour of her bedroom.So far, so Marian Keyes. Loved by readers for her chatty style and satisfying storylines, she was for many years dubbed the queen of chick lit, a phrase now as passé as Daniel Cleaver’s chat-up lines in Bridget Jones’s Diary. In fact, her novels have tackled hefty issues such as addiction (Rachel’s Holiday), bereavement (Anybody Out There), domestic violence (This Charming Man) and depression (The Mystery of Mercy Close), always with her trademark lightness of touch. Yet despite selling more than 35m copies over the years, she is too often dismissed as a popular writer of books with pink covers (both of which are fine by her, thanks for asking).

A decade ago this month, the streaming platform released its first original series, and never looked back since. But, with competition building, can it stay on top?“I’m a brand new guy over here,” said “Little” Steven Van Zandt in the first episode of Lilyhammer, back in January 2012. He wasn’t that new: Van Zandt was basically reprising the New Jersey mobster persona he’d successfully deployed for nearly a decade in The Sopranos. After ratting out his associates, his new character, Frank “the Fixer” Tagliano, had to begin a new life – in Lillehammer, Norway. The sleepy, snowy town didn’t know what was about to hit it. The same could be said for us: Lilyhammer was Netflix’s first original series.Ten years on, our entertainment landscape is almost unrecognisable. Netflix has changed what we watch and the way we watch it. It has successfully reorganised traditional broadcast television and theatrical cinema models and put itself at the centre, growing from 24 million subscribers in 2012 to 214 million this year. It is available in more than 190 countries (Netflix UK launched the same month as Lilyhammer). It has created more than 1,500 original series, including planet-straddlingly massive shows such as Stranger Things and Bridgerton. In 2021 alone it released over 150 original movies – three per week. Its competitors have been playing catchup ever since. So how did it take over entertainment in just 10 years? Continue reading...