How we made Human Traffic: ‘The first question I asked in the auditions was: have you ever taken drugs?’
John Simm: ‘Danny Dyer and I went to Creamfields and every clubber had seen the film. We got hundreds of off-their-nut people coming up and hugging us’
September 2020
Mangrove review – Steve McQueen takes axe to racial prejudice
The notorious 1970 prosecution that exposed police harassment of black Britons is brilliantly evoked as part of the director’s Small Axe project
April 2020
Clap for carers: doctors and nurses on stage – in pictures
The nation has been pausing on Thursday evenings to applaud our NHS heroes – here’s a roundup of medical dramas snapped by our theatre photographer
March 2019
The Fight review – Jessica Hynes boxes clever in punchy drama
Hynes’s debut as writer and director is an engaging story about a woman facing her daughter’s fears – and her own – in the ring
July 2010
Observer TV reviews
TV review: Dive; Identity; To Kill a Mockingbird at 50
A sporting love story with mesmerising performances from young British actors and a Spooks-type drama make great summer offerings, says Euan Ferguson
March 2009
Theatre blog
I will not put another dead young black man on stage
Patricia Cumper: Forget the vogue for tales of knife crime and hoodies – I’m interested in the full range of the black British experience
February 2009
TV tonight
Watch this
Kathryn Flett on television
A world without adults? Good idea!
TV review
Last night's TV
TV tonight
Watch this
Gareth McLean
June 2006
Eat your heart out, Tarantino
Titus Andronicus
May 2005
Hackney rebel
Theatre: After a sell-out run at the National in 2003, this new production of Elmina's Kitchen, with writer Kwame Kwei-Armah now in the lead as Deli, has lost none of its force.