Whelan Barzey

On March 25, 1925, at London’s Selfridges department store in central London, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird made the first public demo of his latest creation: a way to broadcast visual information from a camera to a screen. A full century later, Baird’s discovery has led to perhaps the most vital, creative and popular mode of artistic expression in the entire world. But it’s only in the past 25 years that television has really fulfilled its artistic potential.  The result has been the so-called ‘Golden Age of Television’, a boom kickstarted roughly around the turn of the century with the rise of shows like The Sopranos and later Breaking Bad, and continuing with awards-winners from Succession to Shōgun to Slow Horses. So while our list of the 100 greatest TV shows may pay tribute to the unmissable programs of yesteryear, you’ll find that the majority hail from our own century – meaning there’s no excuse not to watch every single one. Paring the list down to only 100 was a painful process, so we decided to omit sketch shows, talk shows, news and non-fiction in order to focus on scripted drama and classic comedy. Time to go goggle-eyed.

Too rarely celebrated, African cinema and the movies of the African diaspora are getting their moment in an expansive, kaleidoscopic BFI season this summer. Alongside an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, ‘In the Black Fantastic’ will showcase films from visionaries based on the continent itself (Haile Gerima, Djibril Diop Mambety), and some, like Julie Dash and Kasi Lemmons, whose magic realist storytelling is set across the ocean. Curated by writer and journalist Ekow Eshun, the programme will blur boundaries between the present and the past in all sorts of mesmeric ways – with films infused with the supernatural and the spiritual, the realist and the dreamlike. ‘Fantasy might be the best way to explain the strange and fantastic experience of being Black in the world,’ explains Eshun, ‘and this is a collection of works that absolutely understands that.’ He took us through his five top picks on the BFI’s programme.   In the Black Fantastic runs concurrently at BFI Southbank throughout July and at the Hayward Gallery Jun 29-Sep 18. Head to the official site for programme info and tickets. Ekow Eshun’s Thames & Hudson book, ‘In the Black Fantastic’, is available now.

⭑⭑⭑⭑✩ Una combinación delirantemente alocada de risas, placeres culpables y follaje de la jungla, La ciudad perdida es lo que sucedería si Indiana Jones: El templo maldito y Miss Congeniality concibieran un hijo en un tablero de Jumanji. La imperecedera protagonista de Hollywood, Sandra Bullock, presenta una figura abatida como su problemática protagonista, Loretta Sage. Es la autora de una exitosa franquicia romántica en la que ya no ha invertido. Pero después de que su publicista Beth (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) la empujara, Loretta se embarca de mala gana en una gira para promocionar su último libro, La ciudad perdida de D, con la estrella de la portada del galán de la novela, Alan (Channing Tatum). La ciudad perdida se convierte en una metaaventura grande y desordenada cuando Loretta es secuestrada por la multimillonaria Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe) y se ve envuelta en una aventura sacada directamente de las páginas de uno de sus libros. Alan pronto adoptará su alter ego ficticio, Dash, con resultados mixtos. La siguiente hora es una hilarante procesión de puños voladores, buffets de charcutería destrozados y un cameo que se roba la escena de un despeinado Brad Pitt haciendo su mejor imitación de GI Joe. Bullock entabla un romance poco convencional pero tremendamente entretenido con Tatum mientras ella camina penosamente por la jungla vestida de punta en blanco. Tatum es una alegría como su caballero alérgico al agua con una armadura brillante, y el elenco secundario t

⭑⭑⭑⭑✩ Dilo en voz baja, pero ¿la calidad de la producción de Disney Animation está comenzando a superar a la de sus amigos de Pixar? Es una pregunta para reflexionar seriamente, con películas como Raya y el último dragón, Frozen II y Moana que superan las nuevas producciónes de Pixar en cuanto a habilidades narrativas, y la nueva cinta de Disney Animation; Encanto, un cuento mágico, divertido, bullicioso y atrevido que viene cargado de melodías de Lin-Manuel Miranda, no es una excepción. El escenario es el encantador pueblo colombiano de Encanto donde vive la familia magica Madrigal. En el corazón de su adorable conjunto de chamanes, adivinos y curanderos se encuentra la modesta adolescente Mirabel (con la voz de Stephanie Beatriz), la única niña de la familia que no tiene poderes. Su puerta a la magia se le cierró literalmente en la cara y se ve obligada a convertirse en una heroína cuando la magia del clan se ve amenazada. Encanto tiene ingeniosa trama y revelaciones sorprendentes, pero es la animación en sí la que se roba el espectáculo. Los codirectores de Zootopia, Jared Bush y Byron Howard, y sus animadores, realmente han vaciado la caja de crayones de Disney para representar sus deliciosas flores, texturas de cabello y tonos de piel. El resultado se siente como una auténtica carta de amor a la diversidad de América Latina.  Las canciones festivas y vibrantes de Lin-Manuel Miranda agregan otro sabor a la olla, desempaquetando de manera inteligente y pegadiza las debilid

‘Painful to watch’ isn’t often a term of praise, but this action-comedy about a man who loses the ability to feel physical discomfort channels its unusual, nerve-numbing premise into a fun and oddly romantic ride. Thankfully, intrigue and swagger aren’t prerequisites for its unlucky hero, because introvert Nate Cain (Companion’s Jack Quaid) would be bang out of luck. It isn’t just his dull day job as an assistant manager at a bank; Nate has been born with a sensory condition that means that he’s unable to feel pain or discomfort. Great in theory; in reality, it means a liquid diet so that he doesn’t bite his tongue off and alarms set to remind himself to urinate, so that his bladder doesn’t explode.  Enter co-worker Sherry (Prey’s Amber Midthunder), whose lust for life coaxes him out of his shell. Their burgeoning opposites-attract love story is powered by two charming leads. Jack Quaid put a fun new spin on his shocked everyman in The Boys, and Midthunder is a natural as the free-spirited apple of Nate’s eye.But just as things seem to be hitting a groove, she’s kidnapped in front of Nate in a brutal bank robbery led by a delightfully unhinged Ray ‘son of Jack’ Nicholson. Instead of retreating into his man cave and licking his many, many wounds, Nate embarks on a crusade of vigilantism through San Diego to save her. But this is not Liam Neeson in Taken: his particular set of skills don’t extend much further than checking credit scores, administering first aid and never saying

There’s an old adage about it taking more muscles to frown than to smile. Parker Finn’s unnerving follow-up to his hit 2022 horror film Smile more than makes up the difference by targeting every other muscle you can think of – particularly the ones that make your neck snap back. Anyone who’s watched the first instalment, will be well aware that easing-in periods don’t exist in this franchise. It’s bangs and bloodshed from the outset, as a nervy assailant bursts into a drug den and mercilessly slits the throat of a dealer before putting a bullet in the heart of another. Yet, the most haunting part of the encounter is the killer’s last words to unsuspecting onlooker Lewis (Lukas Gage): ‘I needed someone to pass it on to.’  The ‘it’ in question is a body-hopping spectre that gets its kicks from compelling its host to commit suicide with a sadistic smile on their face, before transferring into the consciousness of the witness – a narrative cue it takes from the likes of It Follows and The Ring. It’s probably not what Nat King Cole had in mind when he told us we should smile more. The first film followed psychiatrist Rosie Cutter (Sosie Bacon) through the sterile surrounds of medical facilities. This time, it’s the turn of Aladdin’s Naomi Scott as Skye Riley, a Sabrina Carpenter-alike pop sensation. The huge dance numbers and paparazzi circus of Skye’s world offer a perfect playground for Finn to showcase his upscaled budgets. It’s unhinged enough to keep you nicely on edge We mee

We’ve all heard the saying it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but what about those who dare to love again? It’s an audacious thought for anyone, but for a 70-year-old Iranian widow it’s a last-ditch effort to feel alive again. That’s the premise of a charming Iranian romantic-comedy that’s spiced up with unexpected radicalism. Every day is the same for Mahin (played by the delightful Lili Farhadpour): sleeping in until noon; scrambling to answer FaceTime calls from her daughter overseas; tending to her garden and making trips to the not-so-local market from her home on the outskirts of Tehran. It's a mundane setting but each moment is presented as a beautifully framed vignette by co-directors Maryam Moqadam and Behtash Sanaeeha. During a rare ladies’ get together at her house, Mahin and her friends playfully one-up each other with the growing list of aches that have plagued them in old age – think a poker table, but with prescriptions instead of playing cards. The pace quickly changes when one of Mahin’s friends regales the group with her no-strings attached fling with an unmarried taxi driver.  For Moqadam and Behtash Sanaeeha, these chats are for more than flights of fancy, they're acts of female rebellion. Iran’s morality police, a force that suppresses women’s rights and compromises their safety, is never far from the characters’ thoughts, especially when Mahin springs to the rescue of a young woman being arrested for not wearing her hijab

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who believe the moon landing was the greatest feat of ingenuity in human history, and the conspiracy theorists who think it was all a bunch of hogwash. Greg Berlanti’s (Love, Simon) feelgood, summer romcom is probably as close as we’ll ever get to calling a truce. Set long before smart phones and social media, the film’s recreation of 1969 is a simpler, cosier time. Well, for everyone except Cole Davies (Channing Tatum), the NASA launch director in charge of getting Apollo 11 to the moon. It’s a task complicated by his involvement in the ill-fated Apollo 1 mission just two years earlier. Arguably, the only job harder than getting a rocket to the moon is convincing Congress that trying it again is a good idea. Enter Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), a charismatic marketing exec with enough pizzazz to sell the story. While Cole is as dependable as grandma’s apple pie, Kelly likes to play things fast and loose. A shadowy White House figure, played by a delightfully off-beat Woody Harrelson, forces Kelly to stage a fake moon landing behind Cole’s back in case the mission fails (shades of 1979 conspiracy thriller Capricorn One here). It’s a juicy subplot that also introduces a scene-stealing as Community’s Jim Rash takes as a zany commercial director hired to orchestrate an elaborate production in place of  Stanley Kubrick – a playful nod to the moon landing conspiracy that the 2001: A Space Odyssey director was hired to direct th

If prison cells are built to contain the most reprehensible parts of human nature, is it a stretch to believe that they could contain joy too? The evidence is scattered throughout co-writers Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley’s (Jockey) compassionate, real-life-inspired window into incarceration. Joy isn’t just plausible here, it’s undeniable. As fans of old-school Hollywood gangster flicks will know, New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility is one of America’s most notorious maximum-security prisons. But behind its scarred walls, blaring sirens and courtyard scuffles is an unexpected soft side known as the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) programme, a space for inmates to connect with their emotions via theatrical and artistic expression. (Kwedar and Bentley both worked as volunteers on the programme, and the majority of the film’s cast are RTA alumni with equity in the production.) Alongside teaching artist Brent Buell (Sound of Metal’s Paul Raci), RTA founder John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield (Rustin’s Colman Domingo) has the programme’s members embracing the escapism of creativity, even with his own wrongful conviction hearing looming large. Joy isn’t just plausible here, it’s undeniable However, as Sing Sing neatly demonstrates, make-believe is trickier for some. Hot-headed newcomer Clarence ‘Divine Eye’ Maclin (playing himself) is reluctant to embrace the group’s unconventional methods, despite being cast as the lead in their upcoming play. He’s served 20 years beh

For every limitation that exists IRL, there’s an equal realm of wild possibilities that can be found in our dreams: from trippy unicorns, to poker tables people by card-dealing aliens, to, well, Nicolas Cage. That’s the premise of Kristoffer Borgli’s (Sick of Myself) offbeat, dark comedy that has Cage haunting the dreams of the entire planet.  Cage plays Paul Matthews, an unremarkable college professor with unrealised ambitions of publishing a paper on evolutionary biology. He’s no inspiring, Robin-Williams-in-Good-Will-Hunting type; his awkward demeanour, receding hairline and ill-fitting Parka hardly capture the attention of his class of yawning Z-ers. But much as he’d hate to admit it, Paul yearns for notoriety. There’s a testy exchange with a former colleague who won’t give him a co-credit in her research paper, despite his desperate whimpering and valid arguments. Then, suddenly, it happens: everyone seems to know who Paul is. Old acquaintances and new admirers begin crawling out of the woodwork, all with the same opening line: ‘I saw you in my dream.’ Dream Scenario ushers into those gonzo dream sequence in a flurry of mad visuals involving alligators and earthquakes that invite comparisons with fellow A24 production Everything, Everywhere All At Once. And while not as inherently funny as some of Cage’s more out-there characters, there’s still ample scope for him to flex his comedic muscles, including a runaway contender for cringeworthy sex scene of the year. As a show

Juel Taylor’s hilariously unhinged directorial debut plays out like a big ‘we know what you think about us’ public service announcement from the Black consciousness. A stylish conspiracy thriller, it finds its footing in The Glen, a Southern poster town for African-American disenfranchisement, filled with shoddy liquor stores, Tupac Shakur conspiracy theorists and a homeless fortune teller called Frog. The opening sequence introduces the complex character of Fontaine (John Boyega). He’s a local drug dealer who makes a concerted effort to fit in subtle acts of kindness alongside the day-to-day kerfuffle of his criminal capers. Soon he’s careering a car into a street rival, an event that leads to him being killed for the first time. Rather than staring at the walls of a pine box, Fontaine wakes up in his bedroom without a bullet wound in sight or any recollection of the encounter that cost him his life. But why? And how? The mystery unfolds as Fontaine makes his usual nightly rounds to debtors. He ends up on the doorstep of wise-cracking Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), a pimp with enough minks in his wardrobe to put PETA on high alert. Along with his Nancy Drew obsessed streetworker Yo-Yo (Candyman’s Teyonah Parris), the pair recount the cold-blooded motel shootout that Tyrone fell victim to. The trio’s madcap energy of impromptu karaoke sessions and sharp banter means that you’re laughing even when you’re not quite sure what’s going on.  They Cloned Tyrone revels in that ambiguity

The extent of most five-year-olds’ hardships begin and end with tying their shoelaces. But young Kurdish boy Lawand has already completed the inhumane obstacle course that has come to define the refugee journey – all while not being able to speak a single language. Born deaf to a hearing family in Kurdistan, without the educational means to learn sign language, Lawand’s dreams seem limited from the get-go. His parents are unable to accept this bleak reality and make the difficult decision to leave their homeland behind and take him and his brother in search of a better life. A treacherous journey of ferocious currents, barbed-wire fences and sleepless nights haunted by the screams of asylum-seekers leads them to the English city of Derby, where he’s enrolled at the Royal School for the Deaf.  Here, director Edward Lovelace shifts the perspective from Lawand’s family and lets him guide the story in an intimate style akin to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a key influence on the doc. Under the guidance of a kind-hearted British Sign Language teacher, we follow him blossoming into the spritely, inquisitive and playful boy he’s always been, but has rarely been able to show.  Lovelace’s camera captures every twitch, clasp and motion of Lawand’s remarkable BSL progress in riveting detail over the course of four years. We also see this beauty being initially lost on his parents, whose perception of deafness has been formed by the challenges of raising Lawand in Iraq where it has

If the music biopic usually bolsters the legacies of already beloved icons (Rocketman, Ray, I Wanna Dance With Somebody et al), this extroverted period drama takes its cues from a starker, more mysterious song sheet: the untold story of 18th century French composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges.  Young, Black and flamboyant, Bologne (Waves’ Kelvin Harrison Jr) is the antithesis of every problematic cliché that classical music has come to embody. Director Stephen Williams addresses the historic erasure of Black musicians immediately with a riotous, expectation-subverting opening sequence in which Bologne steps on stage to better the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Joseph Prowen) in a violin duel. Unfolding in front of Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton), a future benefactor, and the cream of Paris society, it’s a rare moment of universal embrace that goes against the grain of Joseph’s outlier status.  Flashbacks offer an insight into the virtuoso musician’s unconventional upbringing. The illegitimate son of a French plantation owner and an enslaved Senegalese housemaid (Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo), Bologne is sent to a French boarding school. Regrettably, bearing the lineage of both the oppressor and the oppressed does little to inform the complexity of his character. Instead, screenwriter Stefani Robinson zeroes in on his musical gifts and ability to attract beautiful women; including an ill-advised, Bridgerton-esque affair with a white married opera singer (Ready Or Not’s Sama

This hugely promising debut from Londoner Dionne Edwards takes that classic Hollywood garment – the red dress – and turns it from a Technicolor magnet for the male gaze and into a centrepiece for a frank, touching exploration of modern Black masculinity. Fresh from a stint behind bars, Travis ‘Mad T’s (Natey Jones) appetite for a return to the comforting familiarity of his South London neighbourhood couldn’t be stronger, but as many before him have found out, things are never the same as you left them. His partner Candice’s (one-time The X-Factor winner Alexandra Burke) has West End ambitions – she’s up for the role of Tina Turner in a new musical – and they’ve left her on the cusp of outgrowing her ‘bad boy’ phase. Their teenage daughter Kenisha (Temilola Olatunbosun), meanwhile, has a rebellious streak that has only worsened in his absence.  Travis scrounges together his earnings from his part-time job to buy Candice a dazzling red dress for her upcoming audition. Chivalry comes in all forms and Pretty Red Dress’s knight in shining armour just happens to wear a Nike hoodie and a battered ankle monitor; a poignant reflection of the film’s unpolished charm.  Candice’s pursuit of a musical career provides Burke with ample opportunities to showcase her vocal chops, including an electrifying rendition of the late Queen of Rock and Roll’s ‘River Deep, Mountain High’. But it’s in the couple’s Lambeth council flat where the dress comes into its own. With the coast seemingly clear,

There are few forces that are comparable to colonialism for its limitless capacity for destruction, but Mother Nature certainly comes close. Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason’s (A White, White Day) epic poses the question: who’d blink first in a coming together of the two? If Godland’s languid pacing has anything to do with it, it will probably be you. This 19th century tale of faith and frostbite sees fresh-faced Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) tasked with building a church in neighbouring Iceland before the arrival of an unforgiving winter. Despite the scale of the mission, he is given very little guidance from his superior, beyond learning the language and immersing himself in the local customs. His refusal to do either offers an eye-opening insight into the tensions between the Scandinavian nations. The stubborn priest’s outsider status quickly garners him the endearing nickname of ‘Danish devil’ from a congregation of Icelandic farmhands. That dynamic is distilled in Lucas’s mutually disdainful relationship with his hired chaperone Ragnar (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson). Worn down by the snowy abyss, the churchman’s unchristlike qualities slowly come to the fore, culminating in a brutal final act. You’d be hard pressed to find a more immersive Winter Wonderland experience  You’d be hard pressed to find a more immersive Winter Wonderland experience than Godland. Cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff’s mastery of scale renders human activity insignificant in compari

First terms at uni are pretty standard stuff: burning food in the oven, ruining multiple batches of laundry... and becoming embroiled in a Church vs State proxy war. Well, that last one might only be true of Tarik Saleh’s compelling, if slightly overcooked political thriller Cairo Conspiracy. The Cannes screenplay award winner opens with a powerful shot of a rickety raft being tossed around by tumultuous ocean waves, doubling as a neat metaphor for our protagonist Adam’s (Tawfeek Barhom) personal journey. The son of a widowed fisherman, his Islamic sensibilities have been nurtured – and sometimes beaten – into him over the course of his childhood, The result is a young man with a strong religious compass, but no backbone. It isn’t until Adam receives a scholarship to attend Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar University that he’s able to swim beyond the confines of his humble fishbowl. Despite being surrounded by devout Muslims at the world’s oldest Islamic educational institution, the young village boy’s innocence is glaringly obvious, so much so that his new friend Zizo (Mehdi Dehbi) offers him an ominous warning. ‘You have a pure soul, but every second in this place will corrupt it,’ he says, before proceeding to expose Adam to the pressure valve of Cairo’s steamy underground raves, as good friends do. The blaring traffic horns and bustling street markets represent the film’s most colourful moments. However, this rousing boy-meets-world adventure takes a dramatic turn into ‘Da Vi

Wormholes, spectacular VFX and Avirex jackets as far as the eye can see. No, this isn’t Marvel. We’re behind-the-scenes on Netflix’s new superhero epic ‘Supacell’. It’s a genre-twisting slice of London life that’s giving us superpowered heroes as we’ve never seen them before. And it’s the handiwork of Peckham’s own Andrew ‘Rapman’ Onwubolu. ‘Supacell’ is a long way from the rapper-writer-and-filmmaker’s guerilla-style ‘Shiro’s Story’. That attention-grabbing YouTube short signalled the arrival of a significant new talent back in 2018. If the bullish Londoner has anything to do with it, there’s a lot further to go. ‘I know the ting’s levels above anything we’ve seen come out of the UK,’ Rapman says of his new superhero series. ‘I’m going big! I’ve put everything into this and I’m expecting to get everything back: the accolades, the numbers, the critical acclaim. I want all of it.’ He’s staying true to his roots, which is why I’m talking to him on a freezing November day on a set in Hounslow and not in, say, Hawaii. Like ‘Shiro’s Story’ and his headline-grabbing feature debut ‘Blue Story’ — another urban drama that, uniquely, featured a rapping Greek chorus — ‘Supacell’ is set in the streets and estates of Deptford and Peckham, his old turf. ‘Top Boy’ meets ‘X-Men’? Maybe. Photograph: Olly Courtney/NetflixLondon’s new superheroes assemble Super civilians ‘Supacell’ follows five South Londoners who mysteriously gain superpowers and have their worlds turned upside down. For dru