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  BAIT From Garry Shandling to Larry David, Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan to John Malkovich, there's always something fascinating about watching actors sending themselves up in movies or TV. Now we can add Riz Ahmed to the list as he plays a version of himself on the cusp of fame. 'Bait' is a comedy drama about a neurotic London born rapper and actor of Pakistani origin juggling career ambition with a chaotic family life. At the start of the six part show, Ahmed's Shah Latif is auditioning for the role of James Bond. Unfortunately the audition in front of Maxine Peake's director Helen doesn't go well. Hearing the paparazzi are camped outside the front of the building as he is being escorted out the back, Shah makes a shrewd move. Pretending he's left his phone charger behind, he engineers a departure instead in front of the photographers. The possibility of producers casting an Asian actor in the role of 007, generates a swell of excitement on social media and...

  SHRINKING, SEASON THREE Sometimes it takes a few seasons for a show to hit its stride - especially sitcoms. Before they do, you can see the potential but it requires patience - a quality most streaming service commissioners tend not to have. Fortunately for Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein's 'Shrinking' is on AppleTV which has been given the sitcom time and space to find its top gear. Season One  of a show about the messy personal lives of three psychiatrists and their friends got off to a pretty strong start. Segel gave audiences a typically likable performance as the emotionally fragile, fortysomething, widowed father, Jimmy Laird. Jessica Williams was a ball of energy as his quick witted, fellow psychiatrist Gaby Evans. But it was Harrison Ford who stole the show as the wonderfully grumpy head of their practice, Paul Rhoades. And while the three principals shone, Lawrence, Segel and Goldstein were smart enough to assemble around them a delightful supporti...

  THE DRAMA We live in an age of outrage. Fuelled by social media, people are quick to lecture others about how they should live and how they should think. Some of the outrage  is performative. A lot of it is self serving and just plain attention seeking. Attempts at brutal takedowns online are what make X, Facebook and many other online platforms particularly insufferable - especially if you value reasoned debate. Politics has also been impacted, with  politicians chasing votes by creating rage bait. Rather than focus on fixing problems, populist leaders choose instead to harangue their rivals over how incompetent they are and even how evil. Against this backdrop, writer director Kristoffer Borgli has waded in with a new movie about cancel culture. Having tackled the subject before in his 2013 movie ' Dream Scenario ' with Nicolas Cage, he's back at it again with a new darkly comic parable 'The Drama'. A sort of anti-romcom, the movie starts with a " meet cute...

MIDWINTER BREAK Here's two stories about faltering marriages - both featuring Ciaran Hinds. First up is 'Midwinter Break,' Olivier award winning theatre director Polly Findlay's debut feature. An adaptation of Bernard MacLaverty's acclaimed. 2017 novel of the same name, it has been brought to the screen by the author and the Olivier and Tony Award nominated playwright Nick Payne. Lesley Manville and Hinds play Stella and Gerry, a couple entering the winter of a long marriage. Stella's a devout Catholic.  Gerry has lost his faith and is fond of music, art and a glass of whisky or three. Originally from Northern Ireland, they fled the Troubles in the 1970s with their infant son after a heavily pregnant Stella was wounded in an IRA gun attack on the British Army. Miraculously, the bullet passed through her belly but she and her son somehow survived. In the present day, Stella gives Gerry a Christmas present of a short break in Amsterdam - booking flights and a hote...

RORY McILROY: THE MASTERS WAIT Is there any professional sportsman more compelling than Rory McIlroy? A terrific ambassador for golf, by the age of 35 the Northern Irishman won just about every major tournament in the game. But the journey getting there has been arduous. While McIlroy has won 40 tournaments, including five Major championships in his career, there have been so many near misses including four runner up spots in the Majors. Expectations that he'd just slot into the space occupied by Tiger Woods surged when he won the US Open in 2011, the PGA Championship in 2012 and the Open and PGA again in 2014. Just one Major win away from taking his place alongside the greats of the game who completed the career Grand Slam - Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Woods - all he had to do was win the US Masters. But what looks easy on paper is more difficult on grass. It would be 11 years before McIlroy would complete the career Grand Slam or even win another Major...

  POWER: THE DOWNFALL OF HUW EDWARDS It's a fair bet that Channel 5's drama 'Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards' was always going to be a difficult watch. However the other challenge facing writer Marc Burt, the cast and crew of the one-off docudrama is how to fashion a convincing retelling of one of the most high profile celebrity scandals in the UK of recent times. Welshman Huw Edwards was one of the most recognisable faces in British broadcasting until his downfall in July 2023. Just months before, BBC News' main  anchorman sombrely announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II  to the nation in September 2022. Within a year,  his career collapsed   when The Sun newspaper revealed an unnamed, high profile BBC presenter had paid a young man from the age of 17 a total of £35,000 for a series of 'sordid images' . While the daily newspaper did not name him,  Edwards was eventually outed by his own wife Vicki  after days of fevered speculation on social medi...