The team behind Fisherman’s Friends swap sea shanties for real ale, but this tale of rival West Country boozers serves up clunky exposition and sentiment on tap The Fisherman’s Friends team have found a modestly profitable post-Brexit niche: tales of culturally endangered Anglo-Saxon endeavours, nudged towards gentle uplift via a few songs and laughs, dollops of sentiment and some rabble-rousing populism. First it was half-forgotten sea shanties; now it’s the dwindling pub trade, represented here by rival West Country establishments. On one streetcorner, spit-and-sawdust local the DroversArms, overseen by salt-of-the-earth (read: emotionally repressed) widower Martin Clunes, who is slowly being strangled by his grasping brewery’s supply chain. On the other, that same brewery’s la-di-da gastropub, owned and somewhat implausibly operated by posho Pritchard (Luke Treadaway). The scene may have shifted indoors – gone, alas, is the Cornish scenery of Fisherman’s Friends – but the formula remains much the same: clunky exposition, upper-case “Issues”, variably groansome dad gags. Tension emerges between Clunes and prodigal son Jonno Davies, until the latter proposes a radical idea to save the business: homebrewing. Davies has an awkward reunion with old flame Gabriella Wilde, who is now shacked up with Treadaway and doubtless eating swan for breakfast. But the resolutions really are arbitrary: it takes barely 10 minutes for the villager who sabotages the microbrewery to crowdfund its replacement. Co-writer and director Nick Moorcroft must be praying that audience sympathy for rickety, no-frills structures like the Drovers will extend to the film itself. Continue reading...

Longlisted for the Women’s prize, this ambitious debut journeys into the inner world of a vulnerable teenager who is left traumatised by a toxic friendship Lucy Apps’s debut novel tells the story of 19-year-old Gloria, who is living in east London with her mum in the summer of 1999. Gloria has a learning disability and is past the age when the state might offer her support. Often she is happy enough “to stop outdoors where it is nice and busy, and watch things happen and be part of it”. But sometimes people steal from her, or shout abuse. Then she has a “heavy feeling inside her” because she has no option except “to walk around the parks and streets on her own trying not to attract too much attention”. When she develops a friendship with Jack, she is happy because: “He has no one to talk to and she has no one to listen to, so they can fit with each other.” Continue reading...

The economic ripples from the US-Israel attacks will soon become waves, engulfing everything from energy prices to food supplies In retaliation for the US-Israeli missile attacks, Iran has launched what amounts to all-out economic warfare. Should the conflict continue even for another week, its impacts will start to be felt around the world as the third price surge since the pandemic washes through global markets. For Britain, a further turn of the screw on living standards arrives just as political instability mounts at home, with the Labour and Conservative parties facing existential challenges to their left and right. Continue reading...

Updates from the Matildas Group A game on the Gold Coast Kick-off time at Robina Stadium is 7pm local/8pm AEDT Any thoughts? Get in touch with an email It’s obviously going to case a shadow over tonight’s match so, as a reminder, The Guardian is bringing you live updates on the crisis in the Middle East. “These women are prisoners,” says Cyrus Jones, a human rights activist who will be attending the match. “Iranian security is up on their floor [of the hotel] at night. They can’t leave their rooms. They can’t use the public bathrooms. They’re monitored when they go for breakfast, when they get on the bus. They’re monitored in a way no other players from other teams are. Continue reading...

This week’s events in the Middle East sent stock markets plummeting and energy prices soaring. But what does this mean for interest rates, inflation and your own finances? Post your question for the Guardian’s money and consumer editor now This week’s terrifying events in the Middle East have shaken global markets and caused huge fears about energy prices and the impact they will have on inflation and the cost of living. Hilary Osborne is the Guardian’s money and consumer editor and will be answering questions about wider economic fallout live from 1pm here. Please post your questions and discuss the subject below. Continue reading...

Regulator says failures that hit nearly 300,000 customers made worse by utility’s failure to maintain efficient supply system Business live – latest updates South East Water has been fined £22.5m by Ofwat for repeated supply failures in Kent and Sussex between 2020 and 2023 that affected more than 280,000 people. While the root cause of the water shortages was extreme weather, the water regulator for England and Wales found that they were “in part attributable to and/or exacerbated by failures by South East Water itself to develop and maintain an efficient water supply system”. Continue reading...

This adaptation of the 2022 novel – starring Weisz, Leo Woodall and John Slattery – fits it perfectly to television. It’s a proper show for proper grownups Vladimir is that rare visitor to the screen – proper television for proper grownups. The eight-part adaptation of Julia May Jonas’s provocative 2022 debut novel of the same name has not shied away from the properties that made the book great – black comedy, bleak insight, evisceration of accepted pieties – and fitted them perfectly to the new form. The screenwriter, Jeanie Bergen, who has obviously absorbed the book into her very bones, retains all of Jonas’s wit, confidence and, crucially, her willingness to dwell in grey areas and luxuriate in the complexities that govern life in middle age. She also has Rachel Weisz, giving an unswervingly brilliant performance as the unnamed protagonist, a tenured English professor beloved by her students, whose husband, John (John Slattery, playing his one part, but he does it so well and so much better than anyone else, who are we to object to seeing it again?), another tenured academic on the same campus – has just been suspended for sleeping with students. His defence is that this was before the rules changed. “It was a different time” is a recurring phrase – not just from him (for here is the beginning of Jonas and Bergen’s devotion to rug-pulling) but from his wife and other members of their faculty and peer group, male and female. Continue reading...

After major roles in horror hit Smile 2 and the live-action Aladdin, the actor is returning to her first love: music. She talks faith, fame and why singing is more freeing than cinema When Naomi Scott was 27 she had what she refers to now as a “quarter-life crisis”. She had been working as an actor since she was a teenager, swapping bit parts in adverts for plum roles in high-profile Disney TV shows and big-budget Hollywood blockbusters including Aladdin (she played Princess Jasmine) and Elizabeth Banks’s Charlie’s Angels remake. She had also married young, after meeting her husband, ex-professional footballer Jordan Spence, at her local church in east London. Worried that the path she’d taken had its destination already mapped out, she felt frustrated, as if she hadn’t really “mourned the other versions of my life”, as the now 32-year-old puts it. Part of that process, it turned out, was returning to her first love: music. “I felt I had to go back to basics, to a childlike writing process,” she explains, sipping a black coffee in a vast, sparsely decorated cafe in Hackney, east London, her faded red hair contrasting with the beige backdrop. “Just me on the piano at 14, allowing whatever comes naturally to come. So that’s what I did.” Music had always been in her orbit, be it via singing in a church choir or later working with the bonkers pop production house Xenomania. Somewhere along the way, however, acting had taken over. Continue reading...

Jenny wants to spread her wings and see the world, but Teddy is happy at home. Where do they go from here? You decide • Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror I worry about my carbon footprint, but you can’t go everywhere by train and I want to see the world It’s not an environmental issue. I’ve just had my fill of flying and don’t really enjoy being a tourist Continue reading...

From grappling at corners to VAR, the endless list of complaints reflects a wider sense of dislocation from ‘the product’ A terrible boredom stalks the land. Across the nation’s television studios and podcast armchairs, wearied men grizzle accursedly with forked tongues into branded microphones: entombed by a game they despise and yet are paid so generously to discuss. Out there in the wild digital beyond, the sickness festers still deeper. The game has gone, they type into a little white box. This is not the football I once loved, click send. The beautiful game is broken, pleads the Telegraph. They think it’s all over, and perhaps it always was. Arne Slot is no longer enjoying himself, and presumably a good proportion of the Liverpool fans at Molineux on Tuesday night know exactly how he feels. John Terry is no longer enjoying himself. Yaya Touré is “disappointed”. Ruud Gullit is so disgusted he has decided to stop watching. Chris Sutton thinks Arsenal will be the ugliest winners in Premier League history. Mark Goldbridge is bored out of his mind, albeit nowhere near as bored as you would presumably need to be to watch a Mark Goldbridge livestream. Continue reading...

New research suggests older people have more progressive views on women’s rights than younger generations. This direction of travel is deeply concerning It is usually assumed that young people are more liberal than older generations. Not according to startling new research carried out in 29 countries, including the UK, that suggests that almost a third of gen Z men believe that a wife should always obey her husband. A similar number say a husband should have the final say on important decisions. Although those stats are for a 29-country average, it seems to reflect worries about a masculinity crisis among young men in the UK. What century are we living in? It could be a snapshot from the 1970s, but even back then, men in the UK who expressed such views could expect to be laughed at. They were swimming against the tide, as legislation was passed outlawing sex discrimination and creating a (theoretical) right to equal pay. Joan Smith is an author, journalist and a former chair of the mayor of London’s VAWG board. Her latest book is Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Midfielder tapped into history while frustrated by injury but hopes to help a young side rediscover promising form Jonathan Varane’s 2026 didn’t get off to the best start. Four days into the new year, the QPR midfielder sprained a knee during a 3-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday and was a frustrated spectator for more than a month. Varane had been desperate to play his part, with QPR hoping to push for the playoffs, but the 24-year-old took the opportunity to indulge in two of his other passions: reading and history. That included a trip with his teammate Paul Nardi to the British Museum, where the ancient Egyptian artefacts proved of particular fascination. Continue reading...

Contains spoilers: Emma Stone’s hard-faced corporate CEO has a lot of explaining to do when she is kidnapped by Jesse Plemons’s conspiracy kook. But in this film, asking whether someone is an alien seems an ordinary inquiry Emma Stone as a kidnapped, shaven-headed pharmaceuticals CEO who might also be the ruler of an alien master race? It says a lot about director Yorgos Lanthimos that Bugonia was arguably his most straightforward film to date. For this remake of the cult 2003 South Korean movie Save the Green Planet! we were invited into the unkempt home of beekeeper Teddy (Jesse Plemons), a paranoid conspiracy theorist whose internet research has led him to believe that aliens are poisoning his bees – and that only he can save life on Earth from extinction. He enlists his neurodivergent cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) to kidnap high-flying Michelle Fuller (Stone), whose company Auxolith seems to have caused Teddy’s mother some kind of irreversible harm in the past. Continue reading...

With many lacking official documentation or unable to speak Ukrainian, the families of men killed in action are struggling to get the compensation they are owed As a father of four, Viktor Ilchak was not supposed to serve in the army. Ukraine does not mobilise men who have three or more children. His wife and children cried and begged him not to go to war. But he had made up his mind. “A typical Capricorn, so stubborn,” says his wife, Sveta. It was 2015, the war in Donbas was growing in intensity. “I heard someone on TV complaining that Roma aren’t defending their homeland. This pissed me off, and so I volunteered,” says Ilchak. In the territorial recruitment centre in Uzhhorod the Ukrainian soldiers were surprised, but they had to take him. Continue reading...

John Healey meets Cypriot counterpart after Shahed-style drone evaded defences and hit RAF base on island US-Israel war on Iran – live updates John Healey flew into Cyprus on Wednesday night to calm the diplomatic fallout over a drone that evaded detection and hit an RAF base, prompting fury from local ministers. UK officials believe a drone that hit an RAF base in Cyprus evaded detection by flying low and slow when it was launched by pro-Iranian militia in Lebanon or western Iraq. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news Middle East crisis live: Israel launches fresh strikes on Tehran; Iran claims to have targeted Kurdish groups in Iraq The oil price is rising again this morning. Brent crude is up 2.75% at $83.68 a barrel, approaching the 19-month high hit on Monday. That comes as the IRGC said they would intensify and expand strikes in the coming days, while the US confirmed it had sunk an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka. There was also little clarity over the war’s potential length, with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying “it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three” weeks. There’s also uncertainty on when shipping will resume through the Strait of Hormuz, and we’ve seen signs of oil importers beginning to adjust behaviour. Officials from the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner, met refinery executives and verbally called for a temporary suspension of refined product shipments that would begin immediately, according to people familiar with the matter. The refiners were asked to stop signing new contracts and to negotiate the cancellation of already-agreed shipments. the people said. An exception was made for jet and bunker fuel held in bonded storage and supplies to Hong Kong and Macau, they added. Continue reading...

Tehran says it hit groups ‘opposed to the revolution’, amid reports the US is looking to arm Kurdish militias. Follow the latest news Airstrikes hit Iran-Iraq border as US and Israeli plan to mobilise Kurds gathers pace US may not have capacity to take down full barrage of Iranian drones, officials warn Iran says it has targeted Kurdish groups in Iraq and warned “separatist groups” against action in the widening war. Tehran said on Thursday it had hit Iraq-based Kurdish groups “opposed to the revolution”, as reports said the US was looking to arm Kurdish militias to infiltrate Iran. We will not tolerate them in any way. Continue reading...

Quality camera, good software and long battery life, but you should just buy the Pixel 9a instead The latest smartphone in the lower-cost A-series Pixel line shows what makes Google phones so good, while undercutting the competition on price. The problem is that it differs little from its predecessor, which is still on sale. Priced from £499 (€549/$499/A$849), the Pixel 10a is more like a second edition of last year’s excellent Pixel 9a. The two phones share the same Tensor G4 chip, not the newer G5 in the rest of the £799 and up Pixel 10 line; the same memory, storage and cameras; the same size 6.3in OLED screen, though the Pixel 10a reaches a higher peak brightness making it slightly easier to read outside. Continue reading...

As the Peaky Blinders film is released this week, we follow in the footsteps of the Shelbys, make a heavy metal pilgrimage and find the city’s best places to eat, drink and dance The runaway success of the TV crime drama Peaky Blinders has been credited with boosting tourism to Birmingham and the West Midlands since it first aired in 2013, even though much of the series was actually shot farther north, in Merseyside, Yorkshire and Manchester. The release this week of the Peaky Blinders movie The Immortal Man (much of which was filmed in and around Birmingham this time) will undoubtedly generate a new wave of interest, particularly in the Black Country Living Museum in nearby Dudley, whose authentic recreations of streets, houses and industrial workshops appear in key scenes in the TV show and the film – most notably as the location for Charlie Strong’s yard (pictured below). Continue reading...

From London’s commuter belt to the country village gay club, these portraits of LGBTQ+ life are filled with humour, compassion and observational flair Generations of readers have loved Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City novels. His chronicle of queer life began in 1976 in the eclectic glamour of San Francisco’s Barbary Lane, where queer people learned who they were and how to live their lives. But even Maupin relocated in the end. The most recent instalment, Mona of the Manor, saw one of its key characters move to the Cotswolds to navigate a very different kind of village. The social historian John Grindrod nods to Maupin in this fantastically entertaining alternative history of queer life in Britain, which departs from the usual tales of city-based freedom and discovery to tell the stories of people who grew up in the suburbs. “The suburbs” resist easy definition, and Grindrod handles this lightly. Sometimes they’re marked out by social class, sometimes by geography, each facet blurring into the other. His locations range from London’s commuter belt to hamlets, farms and towns, from the edges of Portsmouth and Hull to pockets of Glasgow and Wilmslow and a tiny village in Lincolnshire, where a gay builder is protected from homophobic abuse in the pub by the local darts team. Continue reading...

A Palestine Red Crescent Society mental health centre provides one of the few places left where children in Gaza can play and feel safe Continue reading...

Fredrik Gertten travels the world meeting activists who have had enough of corruption, kleptocracy and structural inequality – while Bregman’s nuggets of wisdom are a joy Bicycling Dutch historian Rutger Bregman does not identify as an optimist. He says that optimism makes people lazy, complacent that history is going in the right direction. Instead he describes himself as a “possibilist”, a believer in the possibility that things can be different. Bregman is interviewed in this film about corruption, kleptocracy and structural inequality. The director is documentary-maker Fredrik Gertten who travels the world meeting activists who have had enough. First, the cold hard facts. Journalist and corruption expert Sarah Chayes, a former adviser to the Obama administration, does an impressive job summarising her analysis of global kleptocracy. In Malta, the son of the murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed after exposing corruption at the highest levels of government, investigates the new scandal of “golden passports”. The film’s main focus is activism in Chile and the US. Amazon workers in New York unionise (and have a good laugh at their boss Jeff Bezos’s trip to space). In Chile, feminists march and climate activists go into battle against mining companies responsible for drought. Continue reading...

First stop for the actor and comedian is Mumbai. Plus: it’s the halfway point of Alan Sugar’s don’t-get-sacked race The Apprentice. Here’s what to watch this evening 8pm, Channel 5 Mumbai is the first stop on an Indian odyssey for Alexander Armstrong – of the 90s and 00s comedy duo Armstrong and Miller. Estate agent Ravi shows him around a multimillion-pound apartment, and Raj takes him on a tour of the slum where he grew up. There’s also time to taste a food critic-approved “Mumbai burger” and visit the monumental waterfront Gateway of India in Mumbai where in 1948 colonial rule ended. Hollie Richardson Continue reading...

Japanese baby macaque, who appeared to find comfort in the djungelskog toy after being rejected by his mother, seems to be mixing more with his peers Punch, a baby macaque that stole the hearts of animal lovers around the world, is outgrowing his Ikea djungelskog plushie that comforted him after he was initially rejected by his mother and other monkeys at a zoo in Japan. Images of the seven-month-old dragging around a toy bigger than him drew attention to the residents of Ichikawa city zoo near Tokyo. When other monkeys shooed the baby away, Punch rushed back to the toy orangutan, hugging it for comfort. Continue reading...

Iranian blockade of the strategic strait of Hormuz is hitting global fertiliser supply chain The global fertiliser supply chain could face significant disruption if the effective closure by Iran of the strait of Hormuz persists, prompting concerns from analysts about crop production and food security. Passage through the waterway, located off Iran’s southern coast, has mostly stopped since the US and Israel launched their attacks at the weekend. Continue reading...