Arts Reviews

It is now more than three decades since President Bush the First declared that American families should be “more like the Waltons, and less like the Simpsons.” In this, as in so many other things, Bush was to be disappointed. Thirty-three years after he made his remarks, the Waltons are now barely discussed in popular culture, if at all, while the exploits of America’s most famous yellow-skinned family have now moved into their 37th season with a further three, at least, planned. This is a degree of longevity that is unparalleled in any live-action sitcom equivalent, and the show’s creator Matt Groening could be forgiven for doing a victory lap.

One feature of President Trump’s second term in office is that when he says he’ll do something, he usually does it, no matter how outlandish or cockamamie it might seem. So it has proved with his threat to impose 100 percent tariffs on any films that have been filmed outside the United States. He first said that he would do this in May, and many industry pundits rushed to say that his scheme was impractical, unworkable, etc. Yet veteran Trump watchers would know that once he has an idea, it will not rest. He has now repeated himself, with greater vigor, writing on Truth Social that “our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby.

Since it launched in 2022, Slow Horses has been one of the most reliable television treats for all its four seasons. Based on the excellent novels by Mick Herron, it has focused on a group of “misfits and losers,” as none other than Mick Jagger sings over the credits, who have all been semi-exiled from MI5 for various misdeeds. They have ended up in the purgatory of Slough House, where they are stuck doing various soul-destroying administrative tasks until they quit. The joke is that most of them are good at their jobs (although not without some seriously challenging interpersonal issues), led by Gary Oldman’s superspy Jackson Lamb, whose belching, flatulent and deeply unhygienic exterior belies a razor-sharp mind and a keen grasp of human nature.

Amid the hullaballoo that surrounded Charlie Kirk’s memorial service last weekend, seemingly virtually every figure associated in any way with the MAGA movement appeared – yes, even Elon Musk, who was filmed shaking hands with President Trump in one of the more unexpected rapprochements of the year. But one man who many might have expected to be present was nowhere to be seen. The rapper, producer and professional controversialist Kanye “Ye” West, who might have added a certain grim luster to the predominantly Christian music played at the memorial, was absent, and so the potential for the carefully choreographed event being thrown into chaos was avoided. It might sound unlikely that West would ever have been invited, but a new documentary about him, In Whose Name?

When Bryan Cranston staggered on-screen in the opening scene of Breaking Bad in 2008, stumbling out of a crashed RV dressed only in his underpants, and addressed the camera with, “My name is Walter Hartwell White…to all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt,” he immediately changed perceptions of who he was as an actor. Previously, he was best known for being the goofy dad in Malcolm in the Middle, and despite some effective straight performances, most thought of him as a comedic performer, rather than the star of what became the most talked-about crime drama series since The Wire. Jason Bateman would, one presumes, like to follow Cranston’s lead.

The defenestration of the supposed talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, for the inflammatory remarks that he made during the monologue in his show on Monday night about Charlie Kirk, is both an unexpected and deeply predictable development. It was unexpected because Kimmel clearly believed that he was, like Lehman Brothers, “too big to fail,” and was therefore within his rights to make such comments as how “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” And it was deeply predictable because Kimmel now becomes the latest scalp that the right have seized this year, and perhaps the most high-profile yet.

The new comedy Splitsville amusingly diagnoses several urgent social ills. The film mocks those who treat marriage not as an expression of solemn vows but as a ticket to unfettered happiness to be discarded at the first sign of discontent; it also excoriates those who view the institution as so meaningless – just a piece of paper – as to persist in the midst of openly acknowledged affairs, romances and one-night stands. In its own coarse, fumbling way, Splitsville has an instinctive sense of how human beings long for monogamy and order even while they court freedom and licentiousness. Splitsville stars Kyle Marvin and Adria Arjona as Carey and Ashley, a young couple who, 14 months after getting hitched, find themselves with different notions about the success of their union.

When I previewed the 2025 Emmys in July, I wrote “it must feel pretty good to be Seth Rogen today.” His Hollywood satire, The Studio, had been nominated for a mighty 23 Emmy awards, and Rogen himself was up for acting, writing and directing. Well, today it must feel even better to be Seth Rogen. The show trampled over its competition to win a hugely impressive 13 awards – the most ever won by a comedy in a single season, let alone a debuting one – and Rogen himself won Best Actor, Best Director (for the self-consciously tricksy one-shot episode "The Oner”) and shared the Best Writing award with Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez.

The third and supposedly final Downton Abbey picture released in American cinemas this Friday. Ominously subtitled The Grand Finale – oh how I wish, given the residual camp elements within the show, that it had instead been called The Final Curtain! – it supposedly wraps up the story of the Grantham family, the privileged idlers who inhabit the eponymous grand house, and their unusually devoted and long-serving staff, all of whom converse with their superiors on easy and intimate terms that bear precisely no relation to how the English upper classes have ever spoken (or been spoken to) by their servants in history. Still, if you’re looking for historical accuracy from Julian Fellowes’ Downton, you are not going to find it.

Under normal circumstances, the author Stephen King should have been feeling pretty good about things and himself at the moment. The latest film of one of his works, Francis Lawrence’s horror-thriller The Long Walk, opened in American cinemas this weekend and has been met with almost unanimously rave reviews, many of which have called it a more socially aware, darker Hunger Games. He recently published a Maurice Sendak-illustrated retelling of Hansel and Gretel, which brings his trademark dark and macabre sensibilities to the age-old fairytale. And his last novel, Never Flinch, was, naturally, a bestseller – as all his books have been since he first published Carrie, over half a century ago in 1974.