Patrick Stewart’s Many Roles, From ‘Star Trek’ to ‘Avengers: Doomsday’

29 October 2026 at 23:30

The actor’s long and varied career included Shakespearean roles, “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” comedy and a stint in the Marvel Universe.

Patrick Stewart has played many memorable roles.

Patrick Stewart, Star Trek actor and acclaimed thespian, dies aged 86

World news | The Guardian

By: Adrian Horton and Benjamin Lee

30 October 2026 at 00:02

Star Trek: the Next Generation and X-Men actor died at his home after ‘a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia’

Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed British stage and screen actor renowned for both Shakespeare and sci-fi, has died. He was 86.

The Star Trek: the Next Generation and X-Men star died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles after “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia”, said Kelly Bush Novak, his longtime spokesperson, to the Hollywood Reporter.

Patrick Stewart, Star Trek and X-Men actor and acclaimed thespian, dies aged 86

The Guardian

By: Adrian Horton and Benjamin Lee

30 October 2026 at 00:02

Star Trek: the Next Generation star died at his home after ‘a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia’

Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed British stage and screen actor renowned for both Shakespeare and sci-fi, has died. He was 86.

The Star Trek: the Next Generation and X-Men star died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles after “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia”, said Kelly Bush Novak, his longtime spokesperson, to the Hollywood Reporter.

Patrick Stewart, ‘Star Trek’ Captain and Professor X on ‘X-Men,’ Dies at 86

NYT > Top Stories

By: Anita Gates and William McDonald

29 October 2026 at 23:49

The British actor was 86. He achieved pop-culture stardom as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

Patrick Stewart was Professor X in five “X-Men” movies, Macbeth on Broadway and, recently, the voice of a wise ram in “The Sheep Detectives.”

Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s racist remarks at rallies: ‘really takes you back about 200 years’

The Guardian

By: Guardian staff

29 October 2026 at 18:01

Late-night hosts discussed the president’s weird campaign behaviour and his out-of-touch comments about wealth

Late-night hosts expressed disgust at Donald Trump’s latest racist attacks while also taking aim at his comments about money.

Late Night Teases Trump Over His Invite to Mar-a-Lago

NYT > Top Stories

By: Trish Bendix

29 October 2026 at 09:58

“Why are you telling these people who gathered to see you in their Chinese-made, American-flag, Hawaiian shirts that they can’t afford to eat at your house?” Jimmy Kimmel asked.

Nocturne review – Stephen Graham is TV’s most evil serial killer … and it’s impossible to stop watching him

The Guardian

By: Lucy Mangan

29 October 2026 at 08:00

The star plays a sadistic murderer still pulling the strings from behind bars. With his high-pitched giggles and fatal whispers, it is a perfectly terrifying show for Halloween

It has taken a while, but I think the torch may finally have passed from Anthony Hopkins as the screen’s most profoundly unsettling and instantly-absorbed-by-the-cultural-imagination serial killer. From Hannibal’s hitherto unfailing hands it has been thrown to Stephen Graham, who plays multiple murderer Jurek Walter in the new 10-part psychological thriller Nocturne.

Walter, who draws out the deaths of his victims in order to torture their families as much as the individuals themselves, is incarcerated for life in the bowels of Riverside psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He passes the time by doing push-ups, stashing contraband behind his toilet bowl for as-yet-unspecified purposes, and driving fellow inmates to suicide by whispering to them through the pipes. Graham – muscle-bound, preternaturally still and occasionally emitting a high-pitched giggle – is mesmerising and utterly terrifying.

South Park turns to America’s beef shortage – and explodes in diarrhea

The Guardian

By: Jesse Hassenger

29 October 2026 at 07:48

The 29th season has begun to slightly spin its wheels, but this poo-splattered episode suggests an imminent story arc: the release of Grand Theft Auto VI

Are record beef shortages simply not that rich a topic for South Park to riff off? The show’s 29th season had its first outright middling episode this week with a zigzaggy outing that gestured vaguely toward the performative eating of particular foods, nodded slightly at a father-son story development, and wound it all up by repeating and amplifying a funny season-long running gag that increasingly seems like it will actually serve as a makeshift story arc.

But let’s jump back to the beginning, perhaps the most laugh-out-loud moment of the episode: Cartman in a fugue of delight over the impending meal of sloppy joes at the school cafeteria, to which he forms a tribute in the form of a sloppy-joe-themed version of Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part Two – a music clearance reaffirming that Trey Parker and Matt Stone don’t care if a song choice might make people tut-tut (because the singer is a serial sex offender) or just annoyed (because that song sucks). Cartman’s infectious glee is short-lived, however, when he’s informed that the lunch special for the day isn’t a sloppy joe after all, or anything beef-related, but cuy – Guinea Pig on a stick.

CNN, MS Now and Politico Update Lawsuit Against Trump Over White House Access

NYT > Top Stories

By: Erik Wemple

28 October 2026 at 23:47

The news outlets argued in an updated lawsuit that they should be granted access to the White House reporting pools.

Betsy Klein, a CNN reporter, in the White House in September.

I’ve been watching the 7 Up TV series. And one change in the way we behave really struck me | Adrian Chiles

The Guardian

By: Adrian Chiles

28 October 2026 at 20:59

Before mobile phones, being filmed was very rare – and if you were, you acted naturally. Today, our relationship to the camera is very, very different

Not for the first time, I got something wrong. As someone who made a living being on camera, I developed theories about what it takes to be yourself on screen. My main thought was that everyone in the world would soon be able to do it, because they’d be getting so much practice.

Once upon a time, hardly anybody was filmed or videoed. When the head of my middle school announced in assembly one morning that there would be television cameras in the dinner hall at lunchtime, every child woke up. For once the headteacher had our full and undivided attention. Consternation was in the air. This would have been about 1979. Regional television news probably needed pictures to cover a story about school dinners or something. Nobody, but nobody, in the school that day missed that evening’s edition of Midlands Today. It was a big deal. I saw the back of my head, and was agog.

Castle Walls review – Prime’s first fully AI-generated show is here, and it’s a Vaseline-smeared mess

The Guardian

By: Luke Buckmaster

28 October 2026 at 17:00

Billed as the first end-to-end AI-created series on a major streaming service, this Turkish show looks like the result of the prompt ‘make it cinematic’

Just as the world reels from Elon Musk’s AI-powered The Odyssey remake – though “remake” feels rather generous for a seven-minute splat of synthetic sludge – another bucket of AI gunk is dropped on to our faces. For Prime Video’s AI-generated TV series Castle Walls, produced by Turkish production studio Ay Yapım using a melange of generative video tools, has arrived, billed as the first end-to-end AI-created series to premiere on a major streaming platform.

It’s certainly more epic than Musk’s production, consisting of two 17-minute episodes. Set in the 11th century, the show revolves around the historic Alamut Castle, although it’s entirely absent of any real sense of time or place. I was briefly intrigued by the opening images, with their bold palette of blues and mustard browns and yellows – but as soon as the “people” appeared, looking like Vaseline-smeared Madame Tussauds creations slowly melting in the sun, everything came crashing down.

Jimmy Kimmel Turns Trump Heckler’s Taunt Into a T-Shirt

NYT > Top Stories

By: Trish Bendix

28 October 2026 at 09:12

Kimmel was inspired after the president’s “‘Tone-Deaf Comedy Jam’ got tripped up by a heckler.”

Danny Masterson loses appeal against rape conviction after arguing judge was biased against Scientology

World news | The Guardian

By: Sian Cain

28 October 2026 at 03:22

That ’70s Show actor was sentenced to 30 years in prison for two counts of rape against two women, who were also Scientologists

Danny Masterson has lost the appeal of his rape conviction, meaning his 30-year prison sentence has been upheld.

The actor, best known for his role on That ’70s Show, was convicted in 2023 of two counts of rape against two women in 2003, while a third charge relating to a third plaintiff, who alleged she was raped by Masterson in 2001, was quashed.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

Susan Saint James, Emmy Winner Who Starred in ‘Kate & Allie,’ Dies at 80

NYT > Top Stories

By: Christine Hauser

27 October 2026 at 23:17

In a long career, she was best known for starring opposite Jane Curtin in “Kate & Allie,” a 1980s sitcom about two divorced women raising three children in New York City.

Susan Saint James in 2025. Kate McArdle, her character on “Kate & Allie,” was “a free spirit caught up in the radical movement” of the 1960s, a publicist said, while Allie (Jane Curtin) was a “traditionalist.”

Jane Schoenbrun’s First Novel is Another Exploration of Weird Pop Culture

NYT > Top Stories

By: Eric Grode

27 October 2026 at 14:19

The filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun envisioned a sci-fi TV series about a sinister video store. “Public Access Afterworld” is the ambitious 600-page result.

Elizabeth Holmes mania: how the buzziest film of the year has resurrected a gut-twisting TV drama

The Guardian

By: Hannah J Davies

27 October 2026 at 17:34

The Theranos fraudster is the subject of Nathan Fielder’s mind-bending You Can See Everything documentary. It is now driving audiences to watch Disney/Hulu’s 2022 series, The Dropout – and they’re seeing it in a whole new light

There are surprise smash hits, and then there’s You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder’s documentary-cum-psychodrama about the disgraced US entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes. It arrived in US cinemas with much buzz: this was, after all, an A24 production, helmed by one of TV’s leading performance-art pranksters. But You Can See Everything has surpassed all expectations to become an undeniable hit, and is now the highest-grossing US documentary in 15 years just two weeks after its release.

Co-directed by Lance Oppenheim, it is a surreal and masterly epic; at a press screening in London, the audience appeared to be alternately spellbound by its comedic elements and repulsed by the sheer grossness of some of its characters. That grossness, it should be mentioned, doesn’t pertain only to Holmes, who was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison (this has since been reduced several times) for defrauding investors, after the collapse of her sham blood-testing startup Theranos). It has also – perhaps unsurprisingly – led audiences towards other media inspired by Holmes’s downfall. Journalist John Carreyrou’s book, Bad Blood, has returned to the bestseller lists; the ABC News podcast The Dropout, hosted by Rebecca Jarvis reported a 900% surge in listeners; while the Disney/Hulu TV series of the same name enjoyed a 700% bump in viewers, and is now ranked #47 on IMDb’s “Most popular TV shows” list, despite having been released in 2022.

The Twilight Zone: this Halloween, try the spooky supernatural series that changed pop culture forever

The Guardian

By: Paul F Verhoeven

27 October 2026 at 17:00

There are ghouls, gremlins and the grotesque but through its five seasons the anthology show really focuses on the human condition

A man with a stern expression and a shock of slick black hair, wearing a crisp black suit, cigarette in hand, approaches the camera. In his clipped, precise patter, he’s about to welcome you … to The Twilight Zone.

This is how each episode of The Twilight Zone typically began, with its creator, Rod Serling, delivering a brief, cryptic opening monologue before throwing to a stand-alone story.

Jimmy Kimmel Proposes a Battle of Wits Between Trump and Obama

NYT > Top Stories

By: Trish Bendix

27 October 2026 at 09:51

“There is only one way to settle this: roast battle on the White House lawn, live,” Kimmel offered, after former President Barack Obama mocked President Trump.