Alexander Larman

News that the John Wick spin-off TV series The Continental has cast its lead actor has produced an unusual amount of vitriol. Was this because it was not an actor of color, a trans performer or some other member of a minority? No: it was because it was Mel Gibson, the walking bête noire for liberals in Hollywood. As many other outspoken conservative or simply unsavory figures (hello, Kevin Spacey! Greetings, Armie Hammer!) have found their careers curtailed for their antics, Mel Gibson’s continued ability to book high-profile acting roles has driven the sharp-fingered mob of social media into a frenzy of disdain. Granted, Gibson’s star has waned considerably since his heyday in the Eighties and Nineties.

The most eagerly anticipated television series of 2021 has finally returned. There are no dragons, or homicidal drug lords, or anachronistically liberal Georgian aristocrats in sight. Instead, the protagonists are a bunch of squabbling, backstabbing multi-millionaires so obsessed with obtaining advantage over one another that the casual cruelties they inflict on the 'little people' around them pass unnoticed. Welcome to the third season of Succession, the wittiest, most vicious show in recent memory. There are numerous reasons for its success.

Netflix’s biggest hits to date have been solidly middlebrow fare with a contemporary twist: Bridgerton, The Crown, Lupin. It’s surprising, then, that its all-conquering new success is an ultraviolent South Korean thriller laced with social satire. Squid Game isn’t just the Battle Royale/Hunger Games rip-off that its premise suggests. Instead, it combines cartoonish brutality with provocative digs at a society in which the acquisition of status has become all-important. This is served up in an addictive, cliffhanging format, which allows the audience to gasp in surprise at each new twist, even as the net tightens inexorably on its hapless protagonists.

The Emmys last night produced several controversies, as usual. The only person of color to win an acting award was Courtney B. Vance, for Lovecraft County, and there were complaints about predictability and a lack of daring. The dominance of Netflix and other streaming services suggests that the once-mighty HBO and other premium cable providers are now fighting for relevance and survival (although we can expect White Lotus to put up a strong showing next year). But the biggest story came in the regal dominance of The Crown, which swept the field with 11 awards. The fourth season of The Crown attracted both plaudits and controversy.

Hark, groundlings: Shakespeare, after decades of being found to be Problematic, is now being reclaimed as the wokemeister-in-chief. New York’s Shakespeare in the Park company returned to Central Park this summer with a staging of The Merry Wives of Windsor, adapted by the Ghanaian-American playwright Jocelyn Bioh. The action, traditionally located in the white-supremacist purlieus of 17th-century Windsor, is now transposed to 116th Street in Harlem. The cast is mostly black, the script has been updated to contain references to Black Lives Matter and the Bronx, and Jacob Ming-Trent portrays the portly knight-about-town Falstaff as a wannabe gangsta. The critics love the production.

There are many things that Britain has given America for which the United States will forever be grateful. The English language; representative democracy; irony; Monty Python; Downton Abbey. And there are other things which have been regarded with considerably less indulgence. I am unsure that there are many true-born Americans who weep into their breakfast cereal and wish that Piers Morgan could return to assure them that they are, essentially, second-class citizens. But to their number must be added another name. James Corden, it is time to pack your bags, say farewell to your Beverly Hills mansion, and return to Primrose Hill. Your days as an American entertainer are — must be — behind you. I bear no personal animosity towards Corden.