Alexander Larman

For those disappointed by the humorless and deeply earnest treatment of the contemporary campus experience in the 2020 TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, the new Netflix series The Chair will be a welcome tonic. Over its punchy six half-hour episodes, the show, co-created by the actress Amanda Peet and produced by her husband

There are few aesthetic and literary pleasures that compare to browsing in a second-hand bookshop. While it is more or less a given what books will be found in a new bookshop, one of the chief joys of going second hand is that it’s entirely unpredictable what you’ll emerge with. Sometimes, the browser will leave

Last year, the apparently definitive biography of Harry and Meghan, Finding Freedom by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, was published, and immediately became a bestseller, despite Harry and Meghan only having reached the tender ages of 36 and 39. It seemed inevitable that as soon as the biography had hit the shelves, it would be

As lockdown shows early signs of (finally) coming to an end, there is the likelihood that, once again, early morning trains will be full of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed commuters, keen to leave their ‘home offices’ in favour of being around people who they are neither married to nor responsible for. And this means, one hopes,

There is something intrinsic to the British novel-writing tradition of a good espionage story. From its beginnings in the early twentieth century with Rudyard Kipling and Erskine Childers through to the thoroughly contemporary likes of Mick Herron and Charles Cumming, there is apparently no shortage of gripping, witty and brilliantly executed spy tales, all of

The days are short, the nights are dark and the temperature is freezing. Oh, and in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in an indefinite lockdown that shows no discernible signs of coming to an end. With most other pursuits thus denied to us, now is the perfect time to immerse yourself in a good book.

At the moment, there are two costume dramas that everyone is watching, namely Bridgerton and The Great. If you’re a fan of the former, then you’re in good company; it seems to be the Netflix streaming show du jour and millions are enjoying its soap operatic storylines. However, The Great is the real thing, if

‘May you live in interesting times’. So the Chinese curse goes, and we undeniably live in interesting times, alas. But that doesn’t mean the past has lost any of its allure; indeed, quite the opposite. Right now, it’s just the tonic we need. If you found history dull at school, being merely an endless parade of

At the best of times, January is a depressing month. Everyone is feeling poor and bloated after the Christmas extravaganza, and the days are still short and cold, with the nights drawing in far too early. Nobody has ever said ‘I’m really looking forward to January’. Which is why, with the spectre of illness and

One of the first films ever produced, 1903’s The Great Train Robbery, revolved around a robbery of a steam locomotive train, and ever since then the genre has continued to be one of the most enduring in cinema. It isn’t hard to see why. The core elements of the heist film are some of the

As Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending, time-travelling espionage extravaganza Tenet finally makes it to British cinemas (America, amusingly, has to wait a while longer) and with the much-delayed release of the new James Bond film No Time To Die apparently just a few months away now, big-budget films dealing with glossy espionage in all its forms are

‘Sequels are whores’ movies’, the great screenwriter William Goldman once opined. As with so much that Goldman said, it’s pithy, witty and often accurate. All of us have been lured into cinemas with the promise of the continuation of a great film, only to be sorely disappointed by the cynicism of a lazy cash-in. Several

This August, if all is well, Christopher Nolan’s eleventh film, Tenet, will be released in cinemas around the world. The storyline apparently involves aspects of time-travel, predetermination and espionage. As usual with Nolan, the details are shrouded in mystery. But it sounds as if it combines many of his usual tropes: a mixture of household

We live in a strange time. Forbidden to travel beyond our national borders for fear of infection and quarantine, we are nevertheless all too aware that we are connected to the wider world in all manner of ways. You might even call it chaos theory in action; a man eats a bat in a Chinese

Even as we experience a momentary hiatus from the onslaught of superhero films, it is hard not to feel that the whole genre has been unnecessarily debased. There is nothing especially wrong with the vast majority of Marvel films, but they are the cinematic equivalent of a visit to Byron or Nando’s; enjoyable while it

At the moment, what everyone needs is a good laugh. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the funniest comedies have to exist in their own bubble; many of the best examples of the genre have held a mirror up to society, in all its complexity and absurdity. But then many also manage to divert and entertain

In the midst of the greatest threat to individual liberty – not to mention health and livelihood – that most of us have experienced in our lives, it is a sad inevitability that the hospitality industry has taken the first economic hit. What we don’t know at the moment is if this is a recoverable,

As this year’s Oscar-winning films continue their box office reign, it’s salutary to remember that some excellent films have been honoured over the years. Even as many have faded from memory (Crash, anyone?), some of the award-winners that can be found on Netflix represent the very best in contemporary cinema. Here are some of our