The new project from the creator of Pulling and Utopia is the real-life tale of a teacher whose life is upended by working with inmates. ‘It upends your prejudices,’ he says

Writer Dennis Kelly has a few mantras he’s always lived by. They’re all there, clearly defined in his very earliest interviews, right from the start of his career. Write like you mean it (perhaps that’s why his plays have so much heart and drive). Never write for money and never compromise (maybe that’s why two of the best TV shows he had a hand in, the controversial conspiracy drama Utopia and the Sharon Horgan comedy Pulling, were cancelled after two series). And finally: make sure your writing always contains a secret.

In the case of Matilda, the smash-hit stage adaptation he wrote alongside Tim Minchin, Kelly only figured out the secret hidden inside his writing long after the awards came flooding in. It turns out that Matilda, a show that glows with love but also aches with a sense of a loss, was all about Kelly’s longing to be a father – a longing that was met just a few years after the premiere with the birth of Kelly’s now six-year-old daughter, Kezia.

Games such as Dragon Quest used to mobilize workers to back corporate goals including relaxing environmental rules

Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker, is using retro-style video games to rally its US workforce behind its corporate goals, including lobbying to relax environmental rules, the Guardian can reveal.

Through an internal platform called Toyota Policy Drivers, employees can play games with names such as Star Quest, Adventure Quest, and Dragon Quest, earning prizes by engaging with company messaging about policy and by contacting federal lawmakers using company-provided talking points.

Costume designer Marylin Fitoussi says Italy understands the show’s wardrobe is ‘about breaking rules and having fun’

Netflix’s famously frothy romcom Emily in Paris has long divided critics and Parisians alike, but as it returns for its fifth season it seems to have won a presidential seal of approval. On Monday, Emmanuel Macron named the series’ creator, Darren Star (best known for Sex and The City), a knight of the legion of honour for boosting France’s cultural prominence and soft power through the show’s global success.

It is a long way from the initial backlash, which partly centred on the brash wardrobe of Emily Cooper, the American in Paris played by Lily Collins. Brightly coloured, print-heavy and over the top, the outre outfits were received as a personal affront by many Parisians, who even objected to her embrace of archetypal French chic.

Clementines and cranberries sing Christmas carols in this classy festive premix

This is a home-friendly version of one of the drinks on our new cocktail menu. It’s a batch premix that’s packed with the flavours of Christmas, making it ideal for a festive party. Save the excess cordial for breakfast drinks or for puddings, or for another round of bikinis.

Tibor Krascsenics, group beverage director, La Petite Maison, London W1

After a decade away, Tom Hiddleston is going undercover again as Jonathan Pine and this time he’s getting into an explosive, sexually fluid power threesome. It’s just what Le Carré would have wanted

For screenwriter David Farr, The Night Manager’s return is a dream come true. Literally. “Having not thought about the show for five years, a vivid image came to me in bed one night,” he says. “I saw a boy in a Colombian monastery, waiting for a black car to come over the hill. For some bizarre reason, I knew who those characters were. Suddenly, I was half-awake and the rest came flying out of me. I wrote it all down in case I forgot. In the morning, I looked at my notes and thought: ‘This is good, actually.’”

He’s not wrong. It’s a special drama that can leave a decade-long gap between series but still be welcomed back with widespread excitement. It’s testament to The Night Manager’s quality that its comeback is the first must-watch show of 2026.

Alliance Defending Freedom has ramped up its global spending on litigation and other campaigns to push its ultra conservative Christian values

Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal advocacy group behind the overturning of Roe v Wade, has ramped up its global spending on litigation and other campaigns, in what appears to be an attempt to export what critics call its hard-right Christian theocratic values beyond US borders.

ADF and ADF International, a separate legal entity, spent a combined $10.9m on international grants and programs for the year ending June 2024, according to its most up to date public tax records, and appears to have increased by 70% year-on-year spending on Europe-related issues.

President says ‘I don’t rule it out’ when asked about the possibility of conflict during NBC interview

FBI director Kash Patel has said “no one is above the law” after a Wisconsin judge was found guilty on Thursday of helping a migrant evade a planned immigration arrest outside her courtroom.

Patel is the latest member of President Donald Trump’s administration to celebrate what it sees as a victory in its effort to deter interference with its hardline immigration tactics.

Ukrainian leader welcomes move and says it is critical Russian assets remain frozen

• EU leaders agree €90bn loan for Ukraine but without use of frozen Russian assets

In his first comments on Ukraine, Putin swiftly blames Kyiv for the continuing war, saying “they are basically refusing to finish this conflict via peaceful means” (whatever that means from the literally invading party).

But he says there are “some signals … indicating they are willing to engage in some type of dialogue.”

US president has been blatant in his appointment of relatives, close friends and big donors – almost none of whom have diplomatic experience

When your goal is to “help Europe correct its current trajectory” because it is “weak”, “decaying” and facing “civilisational erasure”, your choice of highly trained operatives for the mission is plainly of paramount importance.

In Donald Trump’s case they include: a former burger magnate; his eldest son’s former fiancee; the owner of the Houston Rockets basketball team; a producer of Broadway musicals; PayPal’s co-founder; and a convicted felon who is also his son-in-law’s father.

A breakout star of the underground rap scene shows vulnerability and wit in her genre-bending tracks

From Cambridgeshire
Recommended if you like Manga Saint Hilare, Kojey Radical, Little Simz
Up next Happiness from Agony out now

“One of the coldest writers but man don’t say it ’cause I’ve got vagina,” JayaHadADream raps on her recent track Bug, calling out those who underestimate her talent – and laying bare her lyrical confidence. In a fertile underground rap scene, the Jamaican-Irish, Cambridge-via-Nottingham artist has cut through thanks to her command and vulnerability, as well as a sharp eye for bullshit. The track Main Characters (featuring Big Zuu), also from her recent mixtape Happiness from Agony, is a critique of the fake love and hollow posturing that saturates the music industry.

Internal report shared with Guardian shows FBI has launched cases in 23 regions, some linked to Trump memo on thwarting ‘terroristic activities’

The FBI has launched “criminal and domestic terrorism investigations” into “threats against immigration enforcement activity” in at least 23 regions across the US, according to an internal report shared with the Guardian.

The two-page FBI document, dated 14 November, says some of the investigations are related to the “countering domestic terrorism” memo issued by Donald Trump in September.

Anointing a new Santa; a child refugee’s tale; a dangerous journey across frozen wastes; a YA roadtrip romance and more

The Great Christmas Tree Race by Naomi Jones, illustrated by James Jones, Ladybird, £7.99
Star always goes on top of the Christmas tree – until new decoration Sparkle kicks off a race. Who will win: Lights, Bauble, Snowflake or Reindeer? A festive picture-book caper with a child-pleasing twist.

The Boy Who Grew Dragons: A Christmas Delivery by Andy Shepherd, illustrated by Sarah Warburton, Templar, £12.99
Tomas, Lolli and the dragons in Grandad’s garden all love Christmas, but when a baby snow dragon hatches, her icy flurries make present-delivering impossible. Children and dragons team up to find a solution in this charming, funny picture-book introduction to the bestselling 5+ series.

Looking for a great supermarket champagne? Need an easy recipe to take to a party? Or just some really good cheese… Yotam Ottolenghi, Giorgio Locatelli, Ixta Belfrage and others reveal the best snacks, drinks and desserts to make and buy for the big day

Christmas is a time of overwhelming choice, especially when it comes to food. So, to help you navigate the festive feasting, we asked 16 top chefs and cooks to tell us what they buy or make to give to the people brave enough to invite them over.

Reassuringly, it turns out that even the most decorated chefs love a Ferrero Rocher, a nice glass of sherry, a good mince pie and a decent cheeseboard at this time of year. And everyone is attached to their own traditions, whether that’s the apple tart Matthew Ryle’s family loves in place of Christmas pudding, the hot chocolate-and marshmallow kit Yotam Ottolenghi’s kids can never resist, or Sabrina Ghayour’s favourite truffle-infused cheddar.

After a traumatic brain injury, Rita Buckley worries the skills she worked hard to regain will atrophy as the largest healthcare provider in the area closes clinics

After Rita Buckley slipped on a sidewalk, hitting her jaw so hard she broke four teeth and sustained a traumatic brain injury, she struggled to tell red and green apart. Turning her head could make her lightheaded or, worse, spark a devastating headache. She fought to remember basic daily tasks. Driving became impossible, as did the idea of continuing to work as a nurse.

But at Buffalo Therapy Services, a clinic near her home in the suburb of East Aurora, New York, Buckley felt hopeful. For more than a year, she worked diligently with the clinic’s cognitive and occupational therapists. They took her into the darkened staff room and flashed red and green lasers so she could relearn the difference. They taught her to write everything down, to help with her lack of short-term memory. They made a list of what she wanted to accomplish, and told her: “We’re not going to work on what you can’t do any more. We’re going to work on what you can do.”

Leonardo DiCaprio is a former revolutionary searching for his daughter in Paul Thomas Anderson’s exhilaratingly audacious counterculture epic
• The best movies of 2025 in the US
• More on the best culture of 2025

Paul Thomas Anderson’s countercultural drama-thriller One Battle After Another, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, is a formal enigma that has perplexed, provoked and entranced, and the year ends with no definitive consensus as to its exact meaning. A rare naysayer is screenwriter and film-maker Paul Schrader, who commented tersely online: “Film-making at level A+, but try as I might I couldn’t muster up an ounce of empathy for Leo DiCaprio or Sean Penn. I kept waiting for them to die.”

But that’s why the film is gripping: there is indeed no empathy for its two unlovely leading males, and their mortality and vulnerability has a kind of unwinding, entropic energy. They are heading for disaster. And yes, the film-making is A+ or A++; it is supercharged with pleasure at its own audacity and expertise. It is moviemaking with a late-Kubrick elegance and a knowing theatricality, culminating in an exhilarating but also eerily strange car chase on an undulating freeway. This isn’t the same as style without substance, but it’s certainly a movie that can’t help put promote its self-aware style to equal status with its subject matter: a petty-tyrannical America of the present and future, and those who will grow old in resisting it from within.

Japanese conglomerate raises to 80% its stake in firm that owns the intellectual property created by Charles Schulz

• Business live – latest updates

Sony has taken control of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts franchise including Snoopy and Charlie Brown in a deal worth C$630m (£340m).

The Japanese conglomerate has bought 41% of Peanuts Holdings, which owns the intellectual property Schulz created, from the Canadian children’s entertainment company WildBrain.

Morocco are the hosts and favourites for this year’s Afcon. How well do you remember previous tournaments?

• Which Premier League teams will be affected by Afcon?

The former Liverpool winger speaks about his hot start at Bayern, playing with Harry Kane, and hopes for the 2026 World Cup

After leaving Liverpool this past summer, Luis Díaz has had a strong start at Bayern Munich under Vincent Kompany, having accumulated 18 goal contributions (12 goals, six assists) in all competitions. Bayern manager Vincent Kompany gave Díaz a few days off to press the reset button after his sending off against PSG, but now the 28-year-old winger is back and ready to wrap up the year as Bayern play their final game of 2025 this Sunday when they travel to Heidenheim. I spoke to the Colombian star about his new club, life in Germany and next summer’s World Cup, which includes a headline matchup against Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

We need to remake the US high court so Americans don’t suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule

The justices of the US supreme court – even its conservatives – have traditionally valued their institution’s own standing. John Roberts, the current US chief justice, has always been praised – even by liberals – as a staunch advocate of the court’s image as a neutral arbiter. For decades, Americans believed the court soared above the fray of partisan contestation.

No more.

Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn teach law at Harvard and Yale

• Patel: ‘Bash is our No 1 guy and does a fantastic job’

• Coach plays down suspicions of injury to Stokes

England have doubled down on Shoaib Bashir’s status as their “No 1 spinner” despite omitting their two-year project from the third Test in Adelaide and watching Will Jacks struggle in his place.

Speaking after the close of play on day three, at which point Australia were closing in on an unassailable 3-0 series lead, England’s assistant coach Jeetan Patel said Bashir had been sacrificed to prop up a struggling batting lineup. But the tactic has backfired, with Jacks making just six during England’s sub-par first innings of 286 all out and, unable to command a steady line, sitting on overnight match figures of three for 212 from 39 overs.

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⚽ Premier League: 10 things to look out for | Mail Tom

Re the players that have made it to Afcon, this is a handy explainer of the extent to which Premier League teams will be affected.

Some of the names not featuring at Afcon are remarkable, and feature some of the most talented footballers from the continent. The main reason for this is that their nation has not qualified (for example, Ghana), but there have also been omissions from squads that have made it (unexpectedly Ivory Coast’s Simon Adingra, who was voted the best young player at Afcon 2023, providing a fine assist for the winner in the final) and there has even been an unexpected retirement on the eve of the tournament (Nigeria’s William Troost-Ekong, who was voted the player of the tournament at the last Afcon).

After being held for 24 hours, the men say they had been driving to a holiday rental when they were detained by police

Seven men with suspected links to Islamic extremism have been released from police custody after their dramatic arrest on a street.

The Victorian-based group were travelling in convoy through south-west Sydney, potentially to the scene of the shooting massacre at Bondi beach, when tactical police rammed their cars and took them into custody on Thursday.

• Forward thought to favour move to Liverpool

• Release clause understood to be a bit less than £65m

Manchester United are vying with Liverpool and Manchester City to sign Antoine Semenyo from Bournemouth in early January, with Ruben Amorim having first expressed an interest in the 25-year-old last summer. The forward is thought to favour joining Liverpool, with City his second choice, so United’s head coach faces a fight to convince him.

Semenyo, who scored in Monday’s 4-4 draw at Old Trafford, has a release clause understood to be slightly less than £65m, with the sum including loyalty money and agent payments. It has to be triggered early next month, the Guardian understands. Tottenham are also interested but appear to have a slim chance of landing the former Bristol City player.

Hollywood is betting big on vertical microdramas told in chunks under two minutes. Can a gimmick turn into a new form of entertainment?

If you have been anywhere close to the social media blast radius of The Summer I Turned Pretty, Amazon Prime’s breakout YA series on a tortuous teen love triangle, you may be familiar with the plight of Henley and Luca. The star-crossed lovers of a short-form video series called Loving My Brother’s Best Friend – plot self-explanatory – have made waves on TikTok with yearning stares and “I/we can’t do this” drama that echo the many fan edits of beloved TV couple Belly and Conrad. But whereas The Summer I Turned Pretty explored its central tension over 40-minute episodes on streaming, Loving My Brother’s Best Friend, produced by a short-form company called CandyJar, distilled its appeal to its barest essences: sexual tension hook, escalating line and cliffhanger sinker, all within two-minute “episodes” on your phone. Without even meaning to or really wanting to, I watched the first 10 chapters (of 44) in one 15-minute gulp – and I’m not the only one.

Hollywood is hoping that you, too, will be hooked. Though Loving My Brother’s Best Friend may not look like a typical Hollywood product – in fact, it resembles some mix of teen show, soap opera and amateur fan-cam edit – the industry is investing heavily in the future of series like it: low-budget, mobile-only “microdramas” with episodes between 60 and 90 seconds. These shows, also known as “verticals” for their phone orientation, have already become widely popular in China, where mobile screens dominate entertainment even more than in the US. In just three years, revenue for serialized short-form drama in China rose from $500m in 2021 to $7bn in 2024, and is projected to reach $16.2bn by 2030. The global microdrama market for 2025 is estimated at anywhere from $7bn to 15bn – and booming, with nearly triple revenue growth for microdrama companies outside China in the past year.