Lando Norris needs a podium to win his first title and it has been suggested that McLaren could instruct Oscar Piastri to allow his teammate through and hand Norris the title, should the situation arise in Sunday’s title-decider
Britain’s energy watchdog gives go-ahead to initial £28bn of investment to upgrade UK energy infrastructure but reveals move will push up network charges
Icy mining magnate Gillian Anderson goes head to head with rebellious rancher Lena Headey in a drama that takes itself so very, very seriously
Angel’s Ridge, Washington Territory, 1854. It’s dusty, there’s a saloon bar, there’s horses, an ineffable sense of – I don’t know, let’s call it manifest destiny – about the place, and the only colour settlers have brought with them is sepia. But wait! What’s this? The owner of the local silver mine riding into town? And it’s a woman! In a western?
Yessir, it is. Not only that but she is played by Gillian Anderson (in full ice mode, despite the dust) and is clearly trouble. Not only that, but there is a second woman about to go toe-to-toe with her and do battle for the town’s soul over the eight episodes that comprise The Abandons, the latest venture from Sons of Anarchy’s Kurt Sutter. Its joint lead is Lena Headey as Fiona Nolan, a devout Irish Catholic woman who has gathered a misfit ragtag bunch of motley orphan crew outcasts about her and lives with this patchwork family in Jasper Hollow. Jasper Hollow, alas, is full of silver that Constance Van Ness (the local mine owner, played by Anderson) wishes to bring under her control to placate one of her investors.
Twenty years on, the social media-savvy contestants will have greater power. His brutal approach to judging them will have to change, too
There is a moment in the trailer for Simon Cowell’s new Netflix show, The Next Act, that is almost touching in its adherence to the way things once were. Cowell, who we see on a variety of beige sofas primly clutching his knees, talks about how to curate a new boyband, 20 years after the launch of his first TV talent show. “There is a huge risk here,” he says, heavy with drama. “If this goes wrong, it will be: ‘Simon Cowell has lost it.’” In fact, as anyone who has an eye on dwindling audience figures for his existing shows knows, for the vast majority of 18- to 24-year-olds – or even for younger millennials – the more likely response will be, “Simon who?”
Which doesn’t mean that a new generation of viewers can’t be lured in by Cowell’s expertise. The question of whether 66-year-old Cowell can tweak a dusty and decades-old model has less to do with current music trends – just as well, since pop music has moved from TV to TikTok, which Cowell says he hates – than the music executive’s extremely well-tested ability to make good TV and bend his persona to align with the times. In the rollout of publicity for the new show, Cowell has made a good fist of expressing regret at how rude he used to be to contestants, apologising in the New York Times, after some cajoling, for “being a dick”, and putting his eye-rolling, grimacing performance as a judge down to the tedium of audition days rather than what most of us understood it to be: the extraction of lolz out of confused individuals who had the misfortune to appear on his shows.
Tall, handsome and used to receiving fire emojis on his social media posts, the dancer has, with his partner Mayara Magri, been called ‘the Posh’n’Becks of ballet’. But there is suffering in his art: ‘I kind of enjoy negativity,’ he says
In the expensive hush of a hotel bar over the road from the Royal Ballet and Opera in Covent Garden, London, Matthew Ball asks for a mint tea. I’m having a white wine; Ball’s body is clearly more of a temple than mine, although you don’t need to know our drinks orders to see that: he has an effortlessly straight-backed posture, muscular arms under a white T-shirt. On stage, ballet dancers can seem like mighty gods and goddesses, but often IRL they are petite. Not so Ball, whose tall stature is part of why he’s much in demand for princely roles and partnering. With the fine features and strong angles of his face, and those piercing eyes, there’s a bit of the Robert Pattinson about him. Is he as brooding and romantic in his roles on stage? Certainly. Tortured? We’ll come to that.
At 31, Ball is riding the crest of a career that seems to have gone pretty smoothly so far. Growing up in Liverpool, he didn’t get much stick for being into ballet as a kid (the worst comments came from another girl in his ballet class). Joining the Royal Ballet School at 11, he graduated straight into the Royal Ballet company and was promoted each year, making it to the top rank of principal in 2018. He has loved getting his teeth into meaty dramatic roles, especially the psychological turmoil of Kenneth MacMillan’s ballets: the suicidal Crown Prince Rudolf in Mayerling or the doomed poet Des Grieux in Manon. As a guest star he was smouldering as The Stranger in Matthew Bourne’s popular Swan Lake and made a virtuoso cameo, spinning in a Paul Smith suit, in the recent Quadrophenia ballet. Plus, he dances at galas all over the world, often with his Brazilian girlfriend and fellow Royal Ballet principal Mayara Magri. He would groan at me telling you that Tatler called them “The Posh’n’Becks of ballet”. “They really went to town on that,” he shakes his head bashfully, “Golden Balls!”
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