Last modified on Sat 30 Jan 2021 19.42 EST
Netflix
Film, US, 2021 – out 5 February
Style. Utter style. Those were the first words that sprang to my mind while watching writer/director Sam Levinson’s slickly shot (on 8mm cameras) monochrome two-hander about a vain film director, Malcolm (John David Washington), and his significantly younger girlfriend, Marie (Zendaya). But as the tone of the drama oscillates from celebration – starting immediately after the premiere of Malcolm’s new film, which is a hit – to confrontation, my response became more like: “Pipe down, some of us have to work in the morning.”
Zendaya as Marie and John David Washington as Malcolm in Malcolm and Marie. Photograph: Dominic Miller/Netflix
Chewing Gum, which was originally a one-woman stage show, follows 24-year-old Tracey Gordon, a Beyoncé-obsessed virgin living in a London council estate with her devout Christian family.
When we first meet her she’s trying to convince her strictly religious (and closeted) boyfriend of six years, Ronald (John Macmillan), to finally have sex with her. By the end of that first episode she’s got her eye on someone new: Connor (Robert Lonsdale), an unemployed poet. Repressed and horny, Tracey squirts blood out of her nostrils when she’s aroused. Once she’s got Ronald out of the way, there’s plenty of blood-squirting to come as she embarks on a quest to lose her virginity and find her place in the world.
Last modified on Fri 8 Jan 2021 06.18 EST
British consumers spent a record £9bn on entertainment last year as the pandemic fuelled a boom in the popularity of digital services such as Netflix, Amazon and Spotify while the public sought to alleviate lockdown boredom.
Overall spending on entertainment, which covers digital and physical video, music and gaming including sales of CDs, DVDs and video games software, soared by 17% year-on-year in 2020 – the fastest annual rate in the 25 years the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) has been compiling figures. Frozen II was the best selling video, with Fifa 21 topping the game charts and Lewis Capaldi’s Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent the biggest album.