Emerald fennell

Wednesday

Angus Colwell

Strewth! Australian culture is taking over Britain

Catherine and Heathcliff. These are surely roles that every attractive British actor should aspire to. Why mope between auditions for years if you don’t think it could be your windswept hair decorating bus posters one day? So the British director Emerald Fennell’s casting of two Australians – Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie – to play these parts in ‘Wuthering Heights’ feels unfair. But her decision is canny. Elordi and Robbie are both gorgeous, of course, but they also come bearing a new type of cultural clout. Their perfect hair and facial symmetry are nothing compared with the quirkiness of their being Australian, the aesthetic that’s seducing young Brits most of

Saturday

Tina Brown

Tina Brown, Travis Aaroe, Genevieve Gaunt & Deborah Ross

31 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Tina Brown explains her bafflement at how Jeff Bezos destroyed the Washington Post; Travis Aaroe warns against Britain putting its hopes in military man Al Carns MP; Genevieve Gaunt explores survival of the fittest as she reviews books by Justin Garcia and Paul Eastwick; and finally, Deborah Ross declares herself a purist as she reviews Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Lloyd Evans

Glib and snarky: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella, at Gillian Lynne Theatre, reviewed

It’s a rum beast the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Cinderella is set in Belleville, a European city of 18th-century vintage, whose inhabitants are fixated with the body beautiful. Cinderella, a pasty Goth, rejects this ethos and vandalises a statue that commemorates a handsome prince who recently died in battle. Cinders is punished by being chased into a forest and tied to a tree but she’s rescued by her best friend, Prince Sebastian, who will inherit the throne as soon as he marries. Sebastian and Cinders are pals whose friendship is destined to blossom into romance. They can’t see this. We can. And that’s the story. Oscar-winner Emerald Fennell has

Thursday

Deborah Ross

Clever, funny and stomach-knotting: Promising Young Woman reviewed

Promising Young Woman is a rape-revenge-thriller that has already proved divisive but is a wonderfully clever, darkly funny, stomach-knotting — my stomach may never unknot — exploration of what #notallmen seem to get: it isn’t OK to have sex with a woman who has had a few too many and isn’t in a position to give consent. Unless, of course, she is also out late at night and wearing a short skirt in which case: asking for it. We all know that. This is written and directed by the extraordinary polymath that is Emerald Fennell, who was head writer for the second series of Killing Eve, has collaborated with Andrew

Saturday

Fiona Mountford

The necessary politics of Promising Young Woman

Last month there occurred an event so culturally seismic that it made, well, a barely perceptible dent on the news headlines. Not just one but two actual women were nominated for the Best Director Award at the Oscars, a category that has for many years now been open to five nominees. It was the first time that two women have ever made it into contention in the same year and, by their audacious presence at the top table, Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) have at a stroke increased the number of women the Oscars have ever nominated for this prize from five to seven. (Only one,