Alexander Larman

If you watched The Paper and, like most of its viewers, remained unimpressed by its comparatively limp updating of The Office – and I’m still haunted by the sheer awfulness of Sabrina Impacciatore’s performance in it – then you’ll be delighted to hear that Tim Robinson’s new show, The Chair Company, which is made by HBO, is the dark workplace comedy that the world needs right now. While it’s too early to say whether it’s a true classic along the lines of The Office, or a less impressive but still enjoyable achievement, it represents another success for Robinson, who is inexorably turning himself into one of the most interesting comedians and writers in the industry.

Over the past couple of weeks, two expensive, auteur-driven films with big stars have been released at the American box office, both conscious throwbacks to the kind of Seventies cinema that isn’t supposed to be made any longer. In the case of Paul Thomas Anderson, his Leo DiCaprio-starring Thomas Pynchon fantasia One Battle After Another seems to have been a success by the skin of its (yellowed) teeth: it has already made over $100 million worldwide, helped by excellent reviews and strong word of mouth. But in the case of another A-lister, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the critical and commercial reception of The Smashing Machine has been rather more muted, suggesting that audiences know what they want from Johnson, and it sure as hell isn’t arthouse fare.

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.