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Deep in the backwaters of BBC iPlayer there lurks an American film with an all-star cast that time forgot. In its day I think it was all but forgotten, too – garnering some critical acclaim but bombing at the box office, presumably because it was too clever or just didn’t appeal enough to teenagers (I can’t see why). Fortunately, 25 years on, Wonder Boys, the campus-novel film starring Michael Douglas as a creative writing professor with writer’s block and an unravelling marriage, truly stands the test of time. You could even go so far as to say that it’s a modern classic. Directed by the late Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential,

Once Christmas Day’s out of the way and we’re stuck in that no man’s land between one year and the next – known, tweely, as ‘Twixmas’ or, if you’re posh, the ‘interregnum’ – one thing guaranteed to make the front pages is the announcement of the New Year’s Honours List. News of the worthy – and not-so-worthy – recipients will be released, and we’ll get to see who’s been elevated to the Lords, knighted or handed one of the lesser gongs. Among the very deserving recipients will be those who make you think: hang on a minute – how did that happen? When news broke that former prime minister Tony Blair was

The Gloucestershire yard of Ben Pauling has gone from strength to strength in recent seasons and today could see it reach a new high when the trainer sends his stable star to Kempton to compete in the Ladbrokes King George VI Chase (2.30 p.m.). THE JUKEBOX MAN will face seven talented rivals, including two hot-pots from the yard of Irish maestro Willie Mullins, when he runs in the Grade 1 contest over a distance of three miles. The Jukebox Man has plenty to find on official ratings with almost all his rivals but Pauling remains quietly confident that this lightly-raced seven-year-old gelding, owned by former football manager Harry Redknapp, is up

Christmas Day in a care home is often thought to be the saddest shift of the year: a place where staff trudge in reluctantly through the dark and cold, while the rest of the country unwraps presents and gets merry; where residents sit quietly, reminiscing about the happiness of Christmases past. And yet, for those of us who work these shifts year after year, that idea bears little resemblance to the truth. It is, strangely, one of the most joyous shifts to work. There is grief and gratitude, absence and presence, memory and forgetfulness, and moments of surprising hilarity. Someone will say something outrageous. Someone will fall asleep halfway through

Chloe Zhao may have co-written and directed Hamnet (a film about William Shakespeare’s son), but she claims that she couldn’t understand Shakespeare’s words and had to rely on the actor Paul Mescal to help her. You might have thought that Zhao, who spent her sixth form years at Brighton College (where, one hopes, she at least sniffed at some form of Shakespeare), could have bestirred herself to read one of the many editions with glossaries, or even to bone up on the CliffsNotes, but no. Instead, she is simply contributing to the enduring, frustrating idea that reading Shakespeare is ‘difficult’, as if it were on a par with analytical philosophy or Judith Butler wanging on about hegemonies.