night

Hugh Laurie left quite the impression when he starred as villainous Richard Roper in The Night Manager 10 years ago.

Hugh Laurie, the legendary star of The Night Manager, is set to appear alongside a Westworld icon in a forthcoming crime thriller.

After initially rising to prominence in the Blackadder franchise with Rowan Atkinson and Stephen Fry, Laurie has since featured in numerous major dramas including Veep, House, and naturally, The Night Manager.

While his previous co-stars Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman return to the BBC thriller, Laurie has been busy filming his latest project, The Wanted Man, for Apple TV+, which is presently in post-production.

The 66 year old will portray crime boss Felix Carmichael, who lands behind bars after running the infamous criminal organisation The Capital for two decades.

The official synopsis reveals: “Upon discovering internal betrayal while locked up, he plots his breakout to seek vengeance and restore his criminal empire.”

The eight-episode series has been created by Hijack’s George Kay and also features Mission Impossible and Westworld star Thandiwe Newton.

However, they won’t be the only recognisable names, as Laurie and Newton will be accompanied by Game of Thrones actor Stephen Dillane, Say Nothing’s Hazel Doupe, and Dunkirk star Fionn Whitehead.

No official release date has been confirmed yet, though reports suggest The Wanted Man could launch around May 2026.

Meanwhile, fans’ focus has returned to Laurie following his memorable role in The Night Manager, which has made its comeback to British television screens. In the 2016 BBC thriller, he played the villainous Richard Roper, starring alongside leading man Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine and Colman as Angela Burr.

After a decade-long hiatus, The Night Manager has made a comeback for its second season, but with an unexpected twist – Roper was killed off-screen.

Laurie does make an appearance in the first episode through a dream sequence, but he hasn’t been seen in The Night Manager since and isn’t expected to return.

However, Laurie remains involved with The Night Manager behind the scenes, serving as an executive producer alongside Hiddleston.

The Wanted Man is slated to premiere on Apple TV+ in spring 2026.

When Liz Wilson saw the Eaton fire advancing, from her home in Pasadena last year, she knew that life would never be the same in her corner of Southern California. On Wednesday, the one-year anniversary of the disaster, A Concert for Altadena felt like the most optimistic place to be.

“People didn’t just lose their homes, they lost their community,” Wilson said, in the lobby of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium where scores of local acts had gathered for the benefit show. Organizers booked it to raise funds for the Altadena Builds Back Foundation, and to give locals something hopeful to attend on the painful day of Jan. 7.

“This is not just a fundraiser, but a way to reconnect and show support for community that’s surviving,” she said. “Altadena was and is an arts community, that’s a big part of it. We have so many friends and neighbors continuing to figure out if they’re coming back, if they’re able to rebuild. The more distant you get from it, you may forget. But we haven’t.”

The anniversary of the Eaton and Palisades fires, beginning one of the city’s most difficult years in recent history, was largely marked by quieter reflections on the loss and how much work still laid ahead. But Altadena in particular was a historic community for musicians and artists. For them, getting together for a show felt like a natural way to honor the occasion and look ahead.

Kevin Lyman, the Vans Warped Tour founder and USC music industry professor, is a two-decade Altadena resident who was displaced from his home for four months after the Eaton fire. He organized the concert for the community to use the day to reconnect, and keep focus on the work left to do.

“In this business, I’ve got to be an optimist, and every day I see more trucks coming into Altadena with lumber and workers. You go away for a few days and see a frame of a new home. But then you go to the next block, and there are five empty lots,” he said.

“One of the hardest parts is that if you’re living up there, you can go two miles away and life just goes on,” he added. “You’ve got to remind people that we’re still here, people still can still use help. Artists that survived and reestablished themselves are here supporting artists that haven’t been.”

Altadena resident and actor John C. Reilly hosted the night, noting the resilience of rebuilding efforts and tossing barbs at the utility company Southern California Edison, whose equipment ignited the fire: “A company that prioritized profits for shareholders over improving infrastructure,” as he put it. He pilloried President Trump’s reactions to the blaze: “He told us to go rake leaves? Go f— yourself, dude.”

The night highlighted ground-level activism from organizers like Heavenly Hughes of My Tribe Rise, who led the crowd in a raucous chant of “Altadena’s not for sale.” But the live performances found poignancy in the city’s spirit as a music town. L.A. Latin rock group Ozomatli started the night with a jubilant jam down the aisles, while Everclear’s Art Alexakis noted between riffs that after the Eaton fire displaced him, “I had to live in a hotel for five months, but I’m lucky.”

Travis Cooper drove down from Northern California for the show, moved by the ways Altadena held to its cultural identity after the Eaton fire. His parents lost a home in a fire in Redding a few years back, so “I can relate to how devastating that feels,” he said. “Even the threat of it growing up was horrific, so to have that actually happen was another level. But my parents had people donate clothes, places to stay, and that meant a lot to them, so we wanted to come support this community too.”

The headline act of the night was the Altadena folk-rock group Dawes, whose founders lost homes and gear in the Eaton fire. They’ve become emissaries for the neighborhood within the music industry, performing at last year’s Grammys just weeks after the fire.

At the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, they led a round robin of acts including Brad Paisley, the Killers’ Brandon Flowers, Aloe Blacc, Jenny Lewis and Rufus Wainwright. They were accompanied by vocal virtuosos Lucius and blues-rock rippers Judith Hill and Eric Krasno, each fixtures in the local music community trying to rebuild itself in the wake of the Eaton fire.

Altadena is a deeply intergenerational community, and the crowd felt the decades of L.A. music history in Stephen Stills coming out for Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” next to a younger act like Lord Huron covering the Kinks’ “Strangers.”

Dawes is a veteran L.A. act, and songs like “All Your Favorite Bands” had new texture in the light of how the fire upended the lives of so many artists. “I hope the world sees the same person that you always were to me,” Taylor Goldsmith sang. “May all your favorite bands stay together.”

For those bands still trying to stay together, the night was redemptive. Jeffrey Paradise, the Poolside frontman who lost his home in the Palisades fire, DJed the concert’s official after-party. He’s since relocated to Glassell Park, and acknowledged that the fires are still a challenging topic, for him and for friends trying to support those displaced.

“It’s hard to talk about because so many things are mixed up in it,” he said. “It was the worst year of my life, but also great and heartwarming to see support from people. It’s so hard to answer how you’re doing because I don’t have an easy answer,” he said.

A concert like this was one way to acknowledge the gravity of last year’s loss, but also to raise money to help everyone get back to the land, people and music they love.

“It’s a disaster, and we’re getting through a disaster. I want to be resilient and help others, and do what I can to move forward,” he said. “It forces you to reinvent who you are and redefine what matters. I don’t have an option not to.”

L.A. has a long, storied history of hotels with deep musical connections. From the Hyatt House (now the Andaz) on Sunset Boulevard, known as the infamous “Riot House” as remembered in Cameron Crowe’s Oscar-winning “Almost Famous,” to Chateau Marmont and the iconic Sunset Marquis, both famed homes to touring rock stars for decades. But few, if any, have ever been as ambitious musically as West Hollywood’s Sun Rose Hotel.

Opening as the Pendry Hotel in 2021 on the location of the former House of Blues, the Sunset Boulevard property established its music credentials immediately by including Live at the Sun Rose, a state-of-the-art music venue inside the hotel. Four years later, last August, the Pendry was rebranded as the Sun Rose Hotel and the entire hotel became a sort of musical destination according to Grammy-winning musician/creative director Adam Blackstone.

Inside the lobby at the Sun Rose West Hollywood

(The Sun Rose West Hollywood)

“We have the atrium, the downstairs foyer, we have a bowling alley. There are so many things we can offer to the music space that other venues can’t. We’re going to use the entire rooftop, sometimes maybe play on top of the pool. Things like that are going to be an attraction to people that allow us to do some very incredible things,” Blackstone says. As Grammy season approaches, Blackstone says the hotel/venue will be offering full shows and events that you don’t have to leave the property for and will include more one-of-a-kind performances. “People can come play a 90-minute set that is not what they did the night before. Whoever is in that room gets a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Blackstone, who has played with everyone from Rihanna, Janet Jackson and Demi Lovato to Eminem, Dr. Dre and Al Green, prides himself on bringing the same diversity and surprise to the Sun Rose. “That’s how my legacy shows have been going — you never know who’s going to pop up, but you don’t want to miss it.”

To back up his claim, he cites bringing in surprise guests like John Legend, multiple times, Stevie Wonder, Justin Timberlake and more, as well as Dre for a live Q&A. That is only the beginning of his ambitious plans to make the Sun Rose a treasure trove of unexpected musical moments. “I am so excited about this partnership with Sun Rose. I think we have the power to be expansive in a way bigger role than anything in L.A. It’s not a jazz spot, a country spot or a gospel spot — we can do whatever there. We could have a DJ with a salsa band; I’ve had a Q&A with Dr. Dre and Marsha Ambrosius. That’s one of the highlights, and attractions the Sun Rose brings to L.A. for me, any time you walk in there, if you don’t know what you’re going for, you’re going to be in for an experience,” he says.

As for what some of those experiences might be, Blackstone references his wide range of gigs, like a recent one working with Andrea Bocelli at the Vatican, as an example of how creative he can get. “All of these things that are in my mind I’m going to do for other people, I’m going to be able to do at my spot,” he says. “And it won’t be weird coming from me because that is who I am, that is who I embody in music, that is who I’ve been able to work with. I’m thankful the Sun Rose is welcoming that with the mindset I have to be as creative and expansive as possible.”

Bowie’s Piano Man, Mike Garson, at Live at The Sun Rose

(Michelle Shiers/The Sun Rose West Hollywood)

To their credit, the Sun Rose is embracing that kind of artistic expression. It starts with Sharyn Goldyn, who books the music at the venue. She set the tone early by making pianist Mike Garson, best known for his work with David Bowie, but well versed in jazz and classical, the first artist she spoke to. She says he is exactly the type of artist she wanted to build the venue on.

“I knew I wanted to have a backbone of the best musicians in the world, and of legacy artists. So, Mike was the first person I met with, and he was just so open to ideas and building something,” she says.

Garson, the venue’s artist in residence, loves the core of him, Blackstone and Goldyn, as well as not being on the road all year.

“Adam is a wonderful musical director, and we bring what we bring. I was flattered that I was the original person Sharyn came to. But I had done so much touring with Bowie alumni after he passed, I somewhat got burnt out on it. I’m 80, so it’s nice to be home in 20 minutes. I do 30 or 40 shows a year and I do 10 at the Sun Rose and there’s nothing being compromised about my music,” he says. “I do whatever I want at the Sun Rose because I open up most of the sets with a jazz piece because that is my roots, then we move into the vocals. The vocals become duets like I did with David and not just me accompanying some song. I look for, ‘What can I add to “Space Oddity’” today?’ I stretch the limits, which is what David would have wanted me to do. He never believed in the comfort zone.”

Bowie will be celebrated in a special three-night residency this Thursday, which is his birthday, Friday and Saturday, the 10-year anniversary of his passing. Just as Blackstone does, Garson will be bringing in a number of friends. “This club’s really special because we work it with great singers. I’ve had Judith Hill there, I’ve had Luke Spiller, Evan Rachel Wood and now of course for David’s birthday and the 10-year celebration, we have a lot of great people,” he says. “We’ll have Billy Corgan [on] Saturday night and Andra Day on Friday and Judith Hill and Luke Spiller’s coming again, and a lovely singer named Debby Holiday. I’ll have Chad Smith stop in on Saturday night to play some drums from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And I’m going to do a lot of the Bowie hits and a few obscure ones.”

Garson will be traveling to Dublin in February and celebrating his near 50-year friendship and musical relationship with Bowie. But he is choosing to spend Bowie’s birthday at the Sun Rose. It is not only the proximity to his home that appeals to Garson. “I’ve been the resident artist there for three years and I’ve done 46 shows there. I like the intimacy, I like the piano in the center stage of the room and I love working with Sharyn. After playing the Hollywood Bowl and Madison Square Garden with Bowie and Duran Duran, whatever, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, I like the small clubs now,” he says.

Similar to Vegas hotels that book the biggest music superstars, like Adele or Rod Stewart, for extended residencies, the Sun Rose will make the Bowie experience a weekend retreat in the whole hotel.

“We’re able to bring the Bowie experience to other things, such as Bowie cocktails named after different songs and maybe changing our menu and maybe changing the suite names of the hotels. This celebration, particularly, we’re doing a hotel package. Because Mike only plays these particular shows at the Sun Rose, a lot of people fly in for it,” Goldyn says.

Rooftop pool at the Sun Rose in West Hollywood

(The Sun Rose West Hollywood)

Fans can expect that more as the hotel takes on the identity of the club. “Now that the hotel has taken on the name of the music venue, they really want the music venue to be a focus and something that the hotel is really proud of and highlighting. We’re going to really try and push a full property experience so you can get tickets to the show, stay at the hotel and never really leave the property,” she says.

Blackstone believes the success of the music club, under his artistic guidance, is what ultimately inspired the hotel’s name change. “I think what prompted the name change of the hotel was just seeing how the music space has impacted the hotel space in a great way. So, if we can continue the music experience going throughout the whole hotel, what better way to do that than have me curate not just the music room, but curate the entire hotel space?” he says.

After so many years on the road with other artists, Blackstone is thrilled to have what he calls his “playground.” “It feels so incredible; I’m able to try out some new ideas. One of the first things I want to do is to use the rooftop or bowling alley to do an all-day showcase of new music, new styles and new genres in different areas of the hotel. We’re going to start that, I’m going to curate that, get some incredible artists that always end up being your new favorite artist once you hear them,” he says. “I think that’s the other component I failed to mention: My reach has been able to permeate the entire globe. Now I can bring that reach directly to the Sun Rose.”

Images showing an MH-6 Little Bird taking part in today’s operation to seize the runaway Russian-flagged oil tanker Marinera, hundreds of miles away from the nearest land, were widely met with befuddlement. This is a relatively tiny special operations helicopter that cannot be refueled in flight and has a short range. However, its small size and incredible transportability means that it can appear from virtually anywhere, on land or at sea. These are among the capabilities that have long endeared the type to the U.S. Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), better known as the Night Stalkers.

Readers can get up to speed on the operation targeting the Marinera with our reporting here.

Russian news outlet RT first published imagery said to have been taken from the deck of the reflagged Marinera, showing at least one MH-6 Little Bird approaching the ship. Fox News and CBS News have now reported that helicopters from the 160th SOAR brought in U.S. Navy SEALs to board the ship as it sailed in the North Atlantic. TWZ has been working to independently confirm the employment of the Little Birds, specifically, as well as other details about the operation. U.S. aviation assets, especially various special operations types, had been spotted pouring into the United Kingdom amid reports that an attempt to seize the tanker, formerly known as the Bella 1, looked increasingly imminent. The Night Stalkers had already had a monumental past week with their role in the operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro over the weekend.

U.S. Navy SEALs flown by TF 160 (“Night Stalkers”) commandeered the oil tanker previously named Bella 1 at sea between Iceland and Britain, officials say.

— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) January 7, 2026

Marinera (IMO 9230880) formally Bella 1 made a sudden southbound turn at 11:26 UTC near 60.9386N, 16.37014W, slowing from ~9 kn to ~8 kn.

US special operations aircraft are heading north pic.twitter.com/u44FqyfjHG

— Faytuks Network (@FaytuksNetwork) January 7, 2026

The 160th SOAR currently operates a fleet of what are formally known as Mission Enhanced Little Birds (MELB), produced by Boeing. The MELBs are heavily modified with specialized avionics built to help with flying at very low-levels in complex environments and at night, as well as defensive systems and other capabilities that increase the egg-shaped helicopter’s survivability.

The MELBs can be readily configured and reconfigured as either MH-6 or AH-6 subvariants. The MH-6 is described as an “assault” configuration with planks on either side for special operators to ride on. The helicopters can land to insert those operators, or they can use the Fast Rope Insertion Extraction System (FRIES) to rappel down to their objective.

The AH-6 is a light attack configuration that swaps the personnel planks for mounting systems enabling the helicopter to carry an array of weapons, including Gatling-type machine guns, Hellfire missiles, and 70mm rockets.

Where the Little Birds that took part in the Marinera boarding operation launched from is still unknown. As noted, 160th SOAR’s AH/MH-6s cannot refuel in flight and have relatively limited unrefueled range (officially stated to be 250 miles, per the 2025 edition of U.S. Special Operations Command’s Fact Book). Night Stalker Little Birds can be fitted with various types of range-extending auxiliary fuel tanks. Even so, whether they would have been able to fly to the tanker from a base on land in the region is unclear, but it seems unlikely, especially with special operators strapped to their outsides.

As already mentioned, the helicopters more likely flew from the decks of one of the vessels that supported the mission, which included a U.S. Coast Guard Legend class cutter and the British Tide class replenishment tanker RFA Tideforce. It is possible the Little Birds could have already been embarked on the Coast Guard cutter for a prolonged period before the actual operation today, and the 160th has trained for such operations in the past.

You don’t need Ocean Trader for this, they can go anywhere. You also stuff half a dozen in the Cutter’s hangar bay.

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) January 7, 2026

Regardless, the tanker seizure operation puts a spotlight on the unique operational independence and flexibility that the 160th’s Little Birds offer.

“It is your street fighter,” Paul Kylander, the product manager for the AH/MH-6s within U.S. Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) Program Executive Office-Rotary Wing (PEO-RW), told TWZ and others at the annual SOF Week conference last year. “When the operators want to get to your front door, this is the aircraft that they’re going to use. Very surgical strike, very precision attack, is what you’re going to get from these platforms.”

The Night Stalker’s nimble Little Birds excel at getting in and out of extremely tight spots where no other helicopter can go. They are often seen dropping commandos off on building ledges and landing in very confined areas, or even flying down the streets of huge cities.

Though they have limited reach on their own, the small size of the Little Birds means significant numbers of them can be carried inside fixed-wing transport aircraft. Air Force Special Operations MC-130 tanker-transports can carry two in a near ready-to-fly configuration at once, while larger C-17s can transport at least five at a time. The helicopters have folding rotors and other features specifically designed to allow personnel on the ground to roll them off of larger aircraft and then get them operational very quickly. This is measured in minutes, not hours.

Transport aircraft can carry the AH/MH-6 helicopters across distances of thousands of miles, directly to forward operating locations far closer to their intended objectives. Those destinations could include far-flung sites with little, if any established infrastructure, including rough landing strips. With far less requirements for fuel and other support compared to the MH-60 Black Hawks and MH-47 Chinooks in the 160th’s inventory, the Little Birds also offer a different degree of ability to operate independently for prolonged periods after arriving in a forward area. AH/MH-6s do, of course, also regularly operate directly together with other Night Stalkers helicopters in highly integrated, seamless formations, as well as with other U.S. military aircraft, to a lesser degree.

The benefits that the Little Birds offer apply to operations from ships, as well as bases on land. AH-6/MH-6s require much less deck space than most other helicopters in service across the U.S. military, and more of them can also be tucked into hangars or in the holds on vessels that were designed to accommodate larger types or even no aircraft at all. They can also just be stowed in an area on the deck of a ship. They just need enough room to takeoff from. This unlocks a near endless list of vessel types they can operate from, which drastically expands their operational flexibility and can spell real trouble for an adversary.

Some of the diminutive helicopters famously operated from U.S. Navy warships, as well as barges turned into floating bases, during the so-called “Tanker War” sideshow to the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s. In that instance, then-new “AH-58” Kiowa Warrior armed scout helicopters operated by conventional U.S. Army units eventually took the place of the Little Birds. Last year, TWZ explored the particular value of the 160th’s AH/MH-6s in maritime operations in more detail after one of the helicopters emerged wearing a blue camouflage wrap.

In addition, all of this allows for the employment of Little Birds, in general, with a very different level of discretion, as they can more readily be concealed even after being deployed. There have been claims that the 160th’s repertoire of tactics, techniques, and procedures has included being prepared to bring the helicopters to forward locations clandestinely inside civilian trucks, which we will come back to in a moment.

There is a long history of the use of members of the extended Little Bird family by U.S. special operations forces and intelligence agencies to support covert and clandestine missions, as TWZ has explored on several occasions in the past. With non-military style paint schemes, the helicopters can even blend in to a degree in the open. Versions of the Little Bird continue to see widespread civilian and commercial use globally, with the helicopter type being made famous after starring in Magnum, P.I. in the 1980s.

In his 2015 book Relentless Strike, author Sean Naylor offers a Little Bird anecdote that is especially relevant in relation to planning for a covert operation into Laos to rescue Americans captured during the Vietnam War, which was ultimately aborted. He writes:

“JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] rehearsed extensively in Hawaii for the mission, which would involve a task force launching from the tiny Pacific island of Tinian in the Northern Marianas and using an abandoned and overgrown U.S. military airfield in Thailand as a forward staging base. With the airfield under control, C-5 transport planes would have landed, bearing JSOC’s own version of a Trojan horse: white, civilian-style eighteen-wheel trucks, each hiding two TF 160 [Task Force 160; another term used to refer to the 160th SOAR] AH-6 Little Birds with folded rotor blades. As Delta operators made their way overland to the prison camp TF 160 personnel would have driven the trucks close to the Laotian border, before stopping and launching the helicopters. TF 160 kept this rarely used technique known in JSOC as ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ after the 1977 trucker comedy starring Burt Reynolds up its sleeve for decades, because it offered a clandestine way to move a lethal capability close to a target. ‘Our guys were trained and even had the truck licenses,’ said a TF 160 veteran. The unit had its own trucks, but locally obtained vehicles would suffice ‘with maybe a couple of days’ work and some welding,’ he said. When the time came to launch the aircraft, the crew would roll them off the back of the truck and have them flying within three minutes. ‘You have to be really well trained,’ the TF 160 veteran said. ‘It’s absolutely an incredible capability.’

Go160thSOAR USASOAC Night Stalkers AH-6

While TWZ cannot confirm the details in Naylor’s book, specifics about the planned prisoner of war rescue operation, nicknamed Operation Pocket Change, including the expected use of Little Birds, have been reported elsewhere over the years. The prospect that Americans remained in captivity in Southeast Asia for years or decades following the end of the Vietnam War has been and continues to be a controversial topic.

Regardless, Little Birds can be trucked clandestinely in commercial vehicles or shipping containers, even behind enemy lines, something other helicopters within the 160th SOAR’s stable can’t come close to doing.

All this speaks to why the 160th SOAR has continued to operate Little Birds long after non-special operations units with the U.S. military stopped flying other versions of the helicopter. Night Stalker AH/MH-6s now look set to remain in service even longer than might have been expected following the cancellation of the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program in 2024. There had been plans to replace roughly half of the Little Birds with a special operations variant of the FARA aircraft.

It’s also worth noting here that Boeing announced its intention to shutter its Little Bird production line and “transition to a focus on sustainment and support for the platform’s customer base.” Separate production of versions of the Little Bird will continue through MD Helicopters.

Overall, much is still to be learned about the U.S. operation today to seize the tanker Marinera, and the role played by the 160th SOAR. However, what has already emerged has highlighted the ability of the Little Birds to do things, go places, and hide in areas that no other Night Stalkers helicopters can.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

WHEN I ask my friends how much they think a week-long, round-trip cruise from Los Angeles to Mexico will be, all guesses are upwards of £3,000.

So their jaws drop when I reveal that my sailing is just £215 for seven days at a last-minute price – that’s just £30 a night (a sum that might not even get you three margaritas in London).

Norwegian Cruise Line‘s Mexican Riviera itinerary includes three sun-drenched, taco-packed port stops plus accommodation, food and entertainment.

Of course, it doesn’t come with flights so Brits will have to splash out on those to get to LA first.

But why is a holiday on the Norwegian Bliss so cheap?

Firstly, sailing on older ships is an easy way to secure lower fares.

ZIP OVER

The epic French holiday resort with kids club and laid back vibes

BEACHY KEEN

Sun readers’ favourite family attractions in Lincolnshire’s seaside resorts

Norwegian Bliss was built in 2018 and, although refurbished in 2025, doesn’t quite have the sparkling modernity of its newer siblings.

The 4,010-guest vessel (it’s the largest in the NCL fleet) has a darker, more
traditional feel to it.

You won’t find any swanky technology like wearable keys or iPads in your room, nor any robots, sports courts or high-diving shows either.

Instead, daily entertainment is classic cruising with a lime-splash of retro.

Think balloon twisting workshops, fruit and vegetable carving demos, Pictionary, and all manner of game shows that even the lure of Cabo San
Lucas’ iconic beaches can’t tempt some guests away from.

But crucially, they’re all free – as are the comedy acts, dance classes, live music, glow parties, musical theatre and more.

I can’t believe it when a Mr Sexy Legs contest starts up by the pool – have I time-travelled to the early noughties?

But it’s hugely popular and I can’t pull my eyes away as a parade of (far
from youthful but deeply confident) men strut, squat, kick and lunge before ‘judges’.

It’s anything but sexy, though – no matter how hard the R&B vocals of Pony by Ginuwine try.

It’s not all cheesy activities. NCL’s standout attraction onboard is Bliss Speedway, a two-level go-karting race track on the top deck, complete with hairpin bends and high-up views.

I take a zoom around at sunset (£11 for 10 minutes) and blame the distractingly peachy pretty sky on how bad my driving is; Lewis Hamilton can safely keep his job.

Waterslides, meanwhile, deliver thrills gratis. I try the Aqua Racer water slide, whooshing past bright lights and chirpy colours as though I’m being flushed through a Skittles factory, before braving the Ocean Loops drop slide (and I mean braving – multiple people get stuck while I queue).

For a different kind of liquid courage, NCL’s bargain drink package gets rave reviews during my Pacific voyage.

Currently, on seven to eight-day cruises, you can upgrade from just £119
per person and get unlimited premium spirits, cocktails, wines, draft beer and soft drinks (as well as three speciality dining experiences, Wi-Fi and excursion credits).

That’s just £17 a day – so perhaps its no surprise I see a couple brandishing a pint and a Prosecco between them at 8.15am.

The biggest explanations for the cantina-cheap fare on my Mexican Riviera cruise, though?

The price dropped as the departure date approached, and it applied to an Inside Cabin (which means no windows in your room).

What’s more, the holiday took place during shoulder season which was before the Christmas holidays.

This is when cruise lines slash prices to fill up cabins.

So if you want to find your own bargain break, remember to find older cruise ships and last-minute sailings to save the most pennies.

Other bargain deals currently include a five-night sailing on Norwegian Jade for £225pp, with stops in Mexico.

And we’ve rounded some purse pleasing cruises you can lock in for under £500 without having to hop on a plane from the UK.

Cruises Under £500 From The UK

Ambassador Cruise Line has no-fly deals from Bristol and Tilbury for as little as £455p.

Covering France, Spain, Ireland and festive markets, all have free drinks packages and up to 25 per cent off.

See ambassadorcruiseline.com.

P&O Cruises offers short breaks from Southampton.

This includes a 5-night adult-only sailing and a 4-night Amsterdam stay from £479pp.

See www.pocruises.com.

Cunard’s Queen Anne and Queen Mary 2 have short hops to Hamburg, Zeebrugge and Rotterdam.

Start from £169pp, they come with £30 off. Or there is a seven-night transatlantic to New York from £499pp with extra onboard credit.

See www.cunard.com.

MSC Cruises has seven-night sailings from Southampton to Northern Europe, Iberia and Fjords sailings from Southampton from £399pp with up to 30 per cent off and extra loyalty savings.

See msccruises.co.uk

Marella Cruises runs a 2-night adults-only all-inclusive Canaries break from £349pp with flights and savings up to £328.

For more see https://www.tui.co.uk/cruise/deals/all-inclusive-cruises

Royal Caribbean’s 5-night Hamburg & Bruges trip from Southampton starts from £449pp with Black Friday fare and upgrade reductions.

For more see https://www.royalcaribbean.com/gbr/en/cruises

Cruises Under £500 (Fly-Cruises)

Princess Cruises offers Alaska, Caribbean and Med fly-cruises from £198–£499pp with up to £600 off or added onboard credit.

For more see https://www.princess.com/cruise-search/

Celebrity Cruises features Western Caribbean, Pacific Coastal and Southern Caribbean sailings from £349–£406pp with up to 75% off the second guest and up to £500 instant savings.

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For more on cruises, here are our favourites for cruises 2026 – with hidden speakeasies, West End shows and 24-hour restaurants.

And here are the five of the best January cruise deals – from discounts and upgrades to bargain drink packages.

US President Donald Trump says the US “successfully captured” Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro and his wife “in the dead of night” and they will “face American justice” for alleged narcoterrorism. Trump said the US will run Venezuela until there is a “safe… and judicious” transition of power.

Viewers have been praising a BBC drama that’s been gripping them for months. Some say it’s so good they keep rewatching it, with it being deemed “better than Night Manager”

If you’re hunting for gripping viewing to see you through the bleak January evenings, BBC viewers are currently singing the praises of a particular drama series. While the broadcaster’s iPlayer platform boasts an impressive catalogue, certain shows have a knack for completely capturing audiences.

One such gem recently sparked discussion on Reddit when a user shared their obsession with a particular miniseries. They revealed they’d become utterly absorbed by it, watching it multiple times and discovering something new with each viewing. Since then, others have admitted how gripping it is, with some claiming it’s “even better than Night Manager”.

It’s not the only BBC drama to have audiences enthralled recently. Another adaptation of a well-known novel earned widespread acclaim just months back.

The Reddit user gushed: “The Little Drummer Girl is superb. At the risk of being a pretentious bore, the show really struck a chord with me. I watched it, and then immediately rewatched it. Now I’m watching it again.

“There’s a huge amount of depth here. It’s not Homeland, but it’s seriously good. Strongly recommended.”

The post triggered an enthusiastic response, with another viewer saying: “I agree with everything you just said! I LOVED Little Drummer Girl. Florence Pugh is fantastic in it. Very moving.”

On a separate thread, someone else declared: “I thought it was fantastic, one of the best spy thrillers I’ve ever seen. I chase the high of that show sometimes from other things, but nothing ever quite scratches the itch.”

A third gushed: “It’s a classic. My first exposure to Florence Pugh and loved her moments in just as she’s sassing Skarsgård. All episodes enraptured me to the very end. Excellent acting from everyone, excellent story, plot, masterful directing. Definitely would rewatch again. Recommended to anyone who enjoys political thrillers, espionage and/or spy fiction.”

Meanwhile, a fourth shared: “I watched the show first because I am a huge Park Chan-Wook fan and that is actually how I discovered Le Carré. I absolutely loved it. I thought the performances, cinematography and direction were phenomenal.

“Funnily enough, I haven’t actually read the book yet. When I tried to, I only read a few pages and put it down. Wasn’t in the right headspace for it, and was afraid I might dislike it.”

Other viewers have hailed the series as “magnificent”, calling it essential viewing. The stellar cast has also received widespread acclaim.

What’s the storyline?

For those unfamiliar, The Little Drummer Girl is a British spy thriller series adapted from John le Carré’s 1983 novel of the same title. The initial six-part series premiered on BBC One in 2018 and remains popular with audiences, still streaming on iPlayer.

The narrative unfolds in 1979, following a young English actress who gets recruited by Mossad. Her mission involves going undercover to infiltrate and dismantle a Palestinian organisation planning terrorist attacks across London and elsewhere in Europe.

The series features an exceptional cast, with stars such as Michael Shannon, Alexander Skarsgård and Florence Pugh all earning acclaim from viewers for their performances.

In certain cases, audiences have gone so far as to suggest the adaptation surpasses the original novel – remarkable praise by any measure. One viewer commented: “The book is a bit too long and meandering in parts, but the TV series definitely is worth watching.”

Another added: “Thought it was more engaging than Night Manager.”

The Night Manager has returned to BBC One, with a tense clip from episode two showing villain Teddy Dos Santos complaining about someone making his life difficult

The Night Manager could be in for a shocking twist, with a teaser clip showing baddie Teddy Dos Santos hinting that he wants someone killed.

The BBC drama, which stars Tom Hiddleston as MI6 agent Jonathan Pine, has returned for its second series, a decade after the first series captivated audiences. The initial series followed Pine, a night manager at a Cairo hotel, who was enlisted by Angela Burr from the Foreign Office (Olivia Colman) to infiltrate the inner circle of arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie).

The second series, which premiered on New Year’s Day, picks up several years later, and a gripping snippet from the second episode shows Pine coming face-to-face with his new adversary.

Pine is now a low-ranking MI6 officer overseeing a discreet surveillance unit in London. However, things take a turn when he identifies one of Roper’s former mercenaries, with a synopsis stating it “prompts a call to action and leads Pine to a violent encounter with a new player: Colombian businessman Teddy Dos Santos.”

An exclusive preview of the second episode reveals him covertly listening in as Teddy (Diego Calva) engages in a sinister conversation with a General, reports the Express.

Teddy informs the General that a man named Alejandro Gualteros is “making my life difficult”, claiming that he has frozen his bank accounts and is attempting to inspect one of his shipments.

“That cannot happen,” he cautions.

The General reassures Teddy that he’ll handle it, to which the arms dealer responds: “Make it quick. No money. No operation.”

In a conversation between Teddy and Pine, Pine masquerades as a businessman who has spent his career in a Hong Kong bank, aiming to gain the villain’s trust.

“You’re English?” Teddy asks during their encounter at a tennis club. “I’m from Hong Kong,” Pine responds. “Swiss Bank. I’ve been there for 10 years.”

When questioned about his presence in Colombia, he coolly answers: “Let’s just say it’s getting more complex to work with our Chinese friends. So I’m seeking new opportunities.”

“You are a risk taker,” Teddy observes. “In life as in on the court,” Pine retorts with a smile.

The latest series of the drama also stars actress and model Camila Morrone as Roxana Bolaños. She portrays a businesswoman who is close to Teddy and reluctantly assists Pine in penetrating his arms operation.

The plot summary concludes: “As allegiances splinter, Pine races to expose a conspiracy designed to destabilise a nation. And with betrayal lurking around every corner, he must decide whose trust he needs to earn and how far he’s willing to go before it’s too late.”

For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new Everything Gossip website.

The Night Manager is broadcast on BBC One.

Has the new series of BBC’s The Traitors got you yearning for a Scottish staycation? We took a history-filled trip to Edinburgh and found a surprisingly affordable hotel

Looming over the city from up high and lit up in dramatic red lights at night, Edinburgh Castle looks like it could be straight out of a Traitors scene. Tickets (£21.50 for adults) get you access to all parts of the 900-year-old site, including the Scottish crown jewels, St Margaret’s Chapel (the oldest building in Edinburgh, dating back to 1130) and the Prisons of War exhibit.

It’s off The Royal Mile, however, that we found our favourite tourist attraction in Edinburgh: The Real Mary King’s Close. This guided tour takes you back in time through some of the city’s former residential streets, which were built over in 1753 to construct the Royal Exchange above them. Interesting for adults and older children alike, the guides are engaging and it’s fascinating to see how people lived here over 400 years ago, including through devastating plague years.

Where to eat in Edinburgh

When it was time to rest weary feet – and Edinburgh’s streets are notoriously steep – and fill up rumbling stomachs, we loved Ka Pao for its delicious Southeast Asian sharing dishes (don’t skip over the fried Brussels sprouts, which even had our party’s sprout-hater converted). Booking is essential, as there was a two-hour wait for walk-ins on the Friday night we visited.

For traditional pubs, head to the historic Grassmarket area and nearby Rose Street. For fancier cocktails served with flair, we loved Commons Club (part of the Virgin Hotel), Panda & Co, a cool, speakeasy-style establishment posing as a barber shop, and The Last Word, a romantic, candle-lit gem with an impressive whiskey list in Edinburgh’s upmarket Stockbridge area.

Where to stay in Edinburgh

We stayed at The Bruntsfield, about half an hour’s walk from the city centre, or a cheap taxi ride. Although the hotel could do with a bit of an update (we’re told there are plans for this), the rooms are very big for an affordable city hotel, and come with a complimentary dram of whiskey and square of crumbly Scottish fudge. There’s also a bar and kitchen downstairs serving casual pub-style dishes.

Perhaps the highlight of our stay, however, was the warm and friendly reception staff that welcomed us, pointing out a bowl of help-yourself Tunnock’s Teacakes, handing us a map of the city and, later, helping us successfully locate a bag we’d left in the back of a taxi.

The Bruntsfield Hotel

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From £90 a night

Booking.com

Book here

An excellent value hotel near to Edinburgh’s city centre with spacious rooms and friendly staff.

How much does it cost to stay at The Bruntsfield?

Rooms at The Bruntsfield start from £90 per night.

Has the new series of BBC’s The Traitors got you yearning for a Scottish staycation? We took a history-filled trip to Edinburgh and found a surprisingly affordable hotel

Looming over the city from up high and lit up in dramatic red lights at night, Edinburgh Castle looks like it could be straight out of a Traitors scene. Tickets (£21.50 for adults) get you access to all parts of the 900-year-old site, including the Scottish crown jewels, St Margaret’s Chapel (the oldest building in Edinburgh, dating back to 1130) and the Prisons of War exhibit.

It’s off The Royal Mile, however, that we found our favourite tourist attraction in Edinburgh: The Real Mary King’s Close. This guided tour takes you back in time through some of the city’s former residential streets, which were built over in 1753 to construct the Royal Exchange above them. Interesting for adults and older children alike, the guides are engaging and it’s fascinating to see how people lived here over 400 years ago, including through devastating plague years.

Where to eat in Edinburgh

When it was time to rest weary feet – and Edinburgh’s streets are notoriously steep – and fill up rumbling stomachs, we loved Ka Pao for its delicious Southeast Asian sharing dishes (don’t skip over the fried Brussels sprouts, which even had our party’s sprout-hater converted). Booking is essential, as there was a two-hour wait for walk-ins on the Friday night we visited.

For traditional pubs, head to the historic Grassmarket area and nearby Rose Street. For fancier cocktails served with flair, we loved Commons Club (part of the Virgin Hotel), Panda & Co, a cool, speakeasy-style establishment posing as a barber shop, and The Last Word, a romantic, candle-lit gem with an impressive whiskey list in Edinburgh’s upmarket Stockbridge area.

Where to stay in Edinburgh

We stayed at The Bruntsfield, about half an hour’s walk from the city centre, or a cheap taxi ride. Although the hotel could do with a bit of an update (we’re told there are plans for this), the rooms are very big for an affordable city hotel, and come with a complimentary dram of whiskey and square of crumbly Scottish fudge. There’s also a bar and kitchen downstairs serving casual pub-style dishes.

Perhaps the highlight of our stay, however, was the warm and friendly reception staff that welcomed us, pointing out a bowl of help-yourself Tunnock’s Teacakes, handing us a map of the city and, later, helping us successfully locate a bag we’d left in the back of a taxi.

The Bruntsfield Hotel

This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it. Learn more

From £90 a night

Booking.com

Book here

An excellent value hotel near to Edinburgh’s city centre with spacious rooms and friendly staff.

How much does it cost to stay at The Bruntsfield?

Rooms at The Bruntsfield start from £90 per night.

The Night Manager has returned with both Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie as executive producers.

The Night Manager season two has landed, but it didn’t take fans long to complain about a glaring problem.

Tom Hiddleston fans have been eagerly awaiting his return to The Night Manager, an unforgettable BBC drama that originally aired in February 2016.

Starring opposite Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman, The Night Manager season one revolved around ex-soldier Jonathan Pine (played by Tom Hiddleston), who was hired to infiltrate the inner circle of a secretive arms dealer.

Despite series one getting rave reviews, viewers had given up hope that it would return for a second season, but to everyone’s delight, the series two renewal came in April 2024.

The Night Manager season two finally made its debut this evening, Thursday, January 1, once again focusing on Pine, now known as Alex Goodwin, who works as part of the nocturnal surveillance unit, the Night Owls.

But it isn’t too long before he spots a familiar face from his past with Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), taking him down yet another dangerous path.

Fans couldn’t wait to tune into the new series, but many couldn’t help but make the same complaint on X, formerly Twitter, as they struggled to remember season one.

“Watching #TheNightManagerS2 when you already have a notoriously bad memory,” someone joked.

A second echoed: “Was going to watch the #TheNightManagerS2 but I can’t remember #thenightmanager so will have to rewatch series one. Anyone else doing the same thing?”

“I have no idea what is going on”, a third began.

“Not sure if it would be easier to follow if they didn’t keep cutting back to characters from 10 years ago that I have forgotten about.”

A fellow user remarked: “Was struggling to understand why I couldn’t for the life of me remember what happened in season 1 of #TheNightManagerS2 only to Google it and see that it aired TEN years ago?????? Girl bye.”

Someone else posted: “The recap hardly helped, I can’t remember what happened last week, let alone what I watched on TV 10 years ago”, as another added: “The Night Manager is really testing everyone’s memory right now.”

Despite fans having an issue with remembering what happened in series one, others have also been praising the new season.

Someone labelled the debut episode as “outstanding” and “brilliant”, while a fellow viewer commented: “Well that didn’t disappoint!!! Episode 1 of The Night Manager- Phew – must resist the temptation to binge!”

Thankfully, fans won’t have to wait very long for the second episode, with the next instalment set to air on Sunday, January 4, at 9pm.

After this, The Night Manager will continue to be shown every Sunday in the same timeslot.

The Night Manager is available to watch on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

When musician Cary Brothers found out that the Hotel Cafe was shutting down, he felt like he’d been told his parents were selling his childhood home.

The beloved music venue, which kick-started the careers of then-little-known singer-songwriters Adele, Sara Bareilles and Damien Rice, is closing its doors in early 2026, its co-founders Marko Shafer and Max Mamikunian announced in November. For those like Brothers, who considered the Hotel Cafe a second home, the news of the closure was a heavy blow.

Luckily for them, Shafer and Mamikunian plan to open a new location in the nearby Lumina Hollywood tower in early 2027. Brothers said it provides consolation, but not complete comfort.

“Yeah, they’re buying a great new house, but it’s not our house,” he said.

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Elected the “mayor of the Hotel Cafe,” Brothers discovered the Hollywood haunt before it even had a liquor license. In those days, the cafe had a BYOB policy and sold buckets of ice for visitors to chill the alcohol they brought in with them, and jazz legends pouring out of local bars after last call capped off their nights with a 3 a.m. jam session in the Hotel Cafe’s piano room (or smoking room, depending on whom you ask).

Every penny they made went back into the venue, Shafer said.

Brothers has always likened the Hotel Cafe in that era to “‘Cheers’ with guitars,” where he could show up any night and a dozen of his closest friends would be there. Eagles songwriter Jack Tempchin used to say it was the closest thing to the front bar at the Troubadour in the ’70s.

“Nobody became the Eagles, sure, but the spirit was the same,” Brothers said.

Dave Navarro, left, and Billy Corgan perform with Spirits in the Sky at the Hotel Cafe in 2009. The venue was a launching pad for many prominent singer-songwriters in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

(Tiffany Rose / WireImage via Getty Images)

Beginnings on Cahuenga Boulevard

The owners attribute much of Hotel Cafe’s success to good timing.

At the turn of the century, Mamikunian said, “Word on the street in Los Angeles was, it’s an industry town and music venues don’t work here.”

Mamikunian, on the other hand, believed the city was teeming with raw talent, but there was no place for it to develop. Judging by the laundry list of musicians who flocked to the Hotel Cafe in those early years, his hunch was spot-on.

“We hit it right when it needed to happen,” he said.

For independent artist Kevin Garrett, the Hotel Cafe was a “gym” where he could flex his creative muscles and experiment with his sound, judgment-free. For local folk singer Lucy Clearwater, it was her sign that moving to L.A. was the right decision for her career.

And for Ingrid Michaelson, the spot was ahead of its time in championing female artists. When the Hotel Cafe asked Michaelson to headline its 2008 all-female tour, she thought, “When does that ever happen, except for Lilith Fair?”

In Michaelson’s native New York, there were a handful of venues that cradled early-career musicians: the Living Room, the Bitter End, Kenny’s Castaways.

“But in L.A., there really was just the Hotel Cafe,” Michaelson, behind such 2000s hits as “The Way I Am” and “You and I,” said. “So it was this distilling of all the singer-songwriters in L.A., kind of coming through this one port.”

Patrons enter the Hotel Cafe through a back alleyway along Cahuenga Boulevard.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Through the musical generations

In its 25 years of operation, the Hotel Cafe has seen several generations of musicians shuffle through the space, Shafer said. Production manager Gia Hughes calls them the “graduating classes.”

In Brothers’ days, it was Joshua Radin, Bareilles, Meiko and other late 2000s singer-songwriters whose music regularly landed on shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” — or in Brothers’ case, the indie cult classic “Garden State,” directed by and starring fellow Northwestern alum Zach Braff.

Next came residencies from breakouts Johnnyswim and JP Saxe, and later, folksters Clearwater and her close confidant Rett Madison. Clearwater said that during her tenure, she would often join her fellow performers onstage to sing backing vocals or play a violin solo.

“Every four years it’s like a different kind of community that comes about,” Hughes said. “And it’s different, but it’s also not.”

It’s why Shafer and Mamikunian aren’t worried about losing the magic they created on Cahuenga. In their eyes, it was never confined to the space itself.

“I remember when we first talked about expanding the Hotel Cafe and everybody said, ‘Don’t do it. You’re going to ruin what you have,’” Shafer said, referencing the venue’s 2004 acquisition of additional space next door. (They expanded again in 2016 with their Second Stage annex, about half the capacity of the main stage.)

“When we did it, it changed the room so much for the better, and gave us access to bigger artists but still didn’t lose the intimacy,” he said about the expansion.

Shafer and Mamikunian thought they’d outgrown the Cahuenga space and had long been pondering a move. This year, the logistics lined up, Mamikunian said.

“It wasn’t anything dramatic,” he said. It was just time.

Hughes called the move “an opportunity to pursue a space that can check a lot more boxes for us, for the long term”: more parking, increased room capacity, greater accessibility.

L.A. singer-songwriter Maris performs in the Second Stage performance room at the Hotel Cafe.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

A new beginning around the corner

Zoning clearances are still pending for the new location in Lumina Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard, a high-rise apartment building set to be upgraded by Morguard Corp. And although the new venue is slated for a 2027 opening, the timeline depends on an upcoming zoning hearing, expected in March or April, Mamikunian said.

But Shafer and Mamikunian opted to announce the closure while details were still being worked out rather than wait and risk information leaking to the public. Plus, this way, both artists and patrons have time to say their goodbyes.

After Clearwater heard the news, she rushed to a “Monday Monday” weekly showcase and immediately felt like she’d been transported back to 2017, when she spent four-plus nights a week at the joint.

“So many of my old friends from that time — some of [whom] I had fallen out of touch with — I saw all of them there,” the Bay Area-bred folk singer said. “You could feel everybody loving it so much.”

The singer said she couldn’t help but wonder whether things would have panned out differently had people shown out like that before Shafer and Mamikunian made their choice. But sipping red wine in the green room that night, she felt lucky just to be there.

“It’s the wood, it’s the bar, the backstage chairs, the little lanterns,” she said. “I’m just going to miss what it looks and smells like, but the people, that’s never gonna go away.”

The Hotel Cafe hosted its annual holiday showcase on Dec. 19, with proceeds benefiting the Recording Academy’s nonprofit arm, MusiCares.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Farewell for now

Earlier this month, the Hotel Cafe hosted its last-ever holiday event at the Cahuenga location. Hughes, with the help of her interior designer sister, Nina Hughes, spent hours that day decking the halls with carnival lights and ribbons galore.

Even before the night’s performances began, attendees were clinking glasses and giving lingering hugs — the kind befitting the last day of summer camp.

“It’s going to be a love fest,” Hughes predicted.

As heartfelt as that night’s musicians were in their speeches, bartender Dan Shapiro said waxing sentimental onstage has been the norm for weeks.

“People are always doing eulogies to the place,” Shapiro said with a chuckle. As he surveyed the lineup posted at the bar, he said he’d put his money on performer Lily Kershaw shedding a few tears. Fellow bartender Dave Greve concurred.

Against the odds, Kershaw didn’t cry as she led the crowd through a rendition of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Our House” a few hours later. Subsequent performers stayed on theme with songs composed of resonant lyrics like “So long stranger / I like to think I know you best” and “Hold on tight / don’t let go.”

As Brothers crooned his own tribute, he closed his eyes, as though praying.

“It’s never gonna be what it was, but it’ll be something new and different, and I’m really excited to see what that is,” Lucy Clearwater said about the Hotel Cafe’s relocation to Sunset Boulevard.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

James Babson, a longtime doorman at the Hotel Cafe, said its staff and attendees alike have always been reverent toward performers. For some, he said, the listening experience is “spiritual.”

“Maybe they’re not churchgoers, so they have this sense of community and transcendence, where that song touches them on this level, which takes them somewhere else,” he said.

Peter Malek felt it the first time he stepped inside the Hotel Cafe 20 years ago. Hooked on that feeling, he started visiting the venue several times a week. Sometimes, he never even made it inside, content to chat with Babson for hours at the door; other evenings he spent in the staff offices, cramming for his medical school exams.

According to Malek’s last tally, he’s been to the Hotel Cafe 1,333 times. Although he was saddened when he heard the news of the relocation — several months before almost everyone else found out — he said he isn’t expecting Shafer and Mamikunian to replicate what they built at the Cahuenga site.

Instead, Malek said, he’s left “happy that he witnessed it.”

The Hotel Cafe was packed with regulars and first-time attendees at its farewell holiday performance in December.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

All night at the Hotel Cafe’s holiday party, attendees wondered whether penultimate performer Dan Wilson, of the pop-rock band Semisonic, would play “the song.” No one had to name it.

When Wilson finally sang the magic words, “Closing time, open all the doors / And let you out into the world,” the room erupted into cheers.

It was the closest Brothers came to crying, but he held it in. There would be time for that later.

Tom Hiddleston is set to make his anticipated return to The Night Manager after almost 10 years

Almost a decade after its explosive finale captivated over 10 million viewers, hit BBC spy thriller The Night Manager is officially back with a bang.

Based on the characters created by John le Carré, the series followed Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), a night manager of a luxury hotel in Cairo and a former British soldier, who was recruited by the manager of a Foreign Office task force to infiltrate the inner circle of a dangerous arms dealer.

The award-winning drama returns to BBC One tonight (January 1) at 9pm as Pine takes on an explosive new case. The official synopsis teases: “Jonathan Pine thought he’d buried his past. Now living as Alex Goodwin – a low-level MI6 officer running a quiet surveillance unit in London – his life is comfortingly uneventful.

“Then one night, a chance sighting of an old Roper mercenary prompts a call to action and leads Pine to a violent encounter with a new player: Colombian businessman Teddy Dos Santos.”

Pine later meets a businesswoman who reluctantly helps him infiltrate Teddy’s Colombian arms operation. Once in Colombia, Pine is plunged deep into a deadly plot involving the training of a guerrilla army.

The logline concludes: “As allegiances splinter, Pine races to expose a conspiracy designed to destabilise a nation. And with betrayal at every turn, he must decide whose trust he needs to earn and how far he’s willing to go before it’s too late.”

Alongside Tom Hiddleston, the new season also stars Diego Calva as Teddy, as well as Camila Morrone as Roxana, Indira Varma as Mayra, Paul Chahidi as Basil, and Hayley Squires as Sally.

Olivia Colman reprises her role as Angela Burr, alongside returning cast members Alistair Petrie as Sandy Langbourne, Douglas Hodge as Rex Mayhew, Michael Nardone as Frisky, and Noah Jupe as Daniel Roper.

Where was The Night Manager filmed?

The Night Manager filmed across several diverse locations for season two, including the UK, Spain, Colombia and France.

Colombia serves as a major backdrop for the new storyline, with filming taking place at a villa in Girardot – four hours from the capital of Bogotá.

On the preparations that took place before production began in South America, screenwriter David Farr explained at the season two premiere: “Colombia is a very, very complex country, massively misunderstood. Everyone thinks it’s just completely dangerous and it’s totally not true. But for me, I think it was really important to sort of engage in that seriously. So we did.

“We went there properly, we met people, fantastic people. That’s the great luxury of being writers.”

Director Georgi Banks-Davies added: “We went on a massive global adventure because I’m a realist… I think we shot 96, 97 days across six months because of the travel.

“That meant going to the depths of every place, and that’s brutal. It’s really, really hard. You just can’t fake it, and my god, it was hot!”

Executive producer Stephen Garrett concluded: “We ended up slightly mad, Georgi and I and a couple of others. There were a few of us who ended up in daily shirt wars, just because they would be destroyed on a daily basis, because we got, sorry to say, so sweaty.

“Weirdly, one of the challenges we had in post [production] was communicating the heat that we were actually experiencing.”

The Night Manager season 2 premieres on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 9pm on Thursday, January 1

For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new Everything Gossip website

It was the last story I wrote before everything changed.

It was Jan. 5, 2025, and I was marveling at the Rams gumption in their short-handed loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

“It was weird,” I wrote. “It was wild.”

I was so witty. I was so wrong.

Two days later, I was fleeing for my life, steering my car down narrow Altadena streets with a fireball at my back and a nightmarish future sprawled across the smoke-filled streets ahead.

Now that was weird and wild.

The year 2025 was more tumultuous than any silly football game and its accompanying overwrought metaphors. It was a year that knocked me flat, tearing me apart from so many things that once anchored me, setting me afloat in a sea of guilt and despair and ultimate uncertainty.

Today, I have a home but no home. My days are filled with the beeps and growls of bulldozers. My nights are draped in the silence of emptiness. What was once one of the coolest secrets in Los Angeles has become a veritable ghost town, the vast empty spaces populated by howling coyotes and scrounging bears.

And I’m one of the lucky ones.

A lot has changed in the 12 months since the Eaton Fire spared my house but destroyed my Altadena neighborhood. I say a daily prayer of thanks that I did not endure the horror of the 19 people who lost their lives and thousands more who lost their homes. I am beyond fortunate to live in what was left behind.

But virtually nothing was left behind. Venerable manicured homes have been replaced by weed-choked vacant lots. Familiar local businesses are now empty parking lots. There is the occasional sighting of new construction, but far more prevalent is “For Sale” signs that have seemingly been there for months.

After living in the limbo of hotels and Airbnbs for two months while my home was remediated, I was blessed to return to four walls and running water, but beset with the guilt of having a front-row seat to the pain of so many who lost everything. I was spared, but nobody in Los Angeles was spared, and it wasn’t until halfway through the year that I noticed a consistent light from the strangest source.

Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani points as he rounds the bases after hitting a solo home run during Game 3 of the World Series.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Every night, I would watch the Dodgers. At least once every couple of weeks, I would attend a Sparks game with my daughter, MC. Soon, there would be Saturdays with one of our college football teams, then Sundays with the NFL then, the baseball playoffs, leading to the insane Game 7 and morphing into the annual Lakers winter drama.

By the final weeks of December, I realized that one thing has consistently kept my spirits strong, perhaps the same thing that has helped keep our city upright through trials much tougher than mine.

Sports.

The highs, the lows, the dramatics, the desperation, it was all there when nothing was there, it was the feeling that even with everything gone, you still belonged to something.

UCLA women’s basketball players celebrate as confetti falls after they beat USC to win the Big Ten tournament title.

(Michael Conroy/AP)

From Dodgers exhilaration to Laker despair, from USC football frustration to UCLA women’s basketball greatness, sports has been the bright wallpaper on a year of Southland darkness.

It is sports that kept me grounded, kept me steady and somehow kept me believing.

In the worst year of my life, it was sports that saved me.

The path back to normalcy began two weeks after the Eaton fire, when I left my temporary hotel room to attend a press conference for the Dodgers’ latest Japanese import, Roki Sasaki.

“Invincible,” I wrote about the team’s rebuilt roster, a word that was so comforting during such a time when everything in life felt tenuous.

I came back to the hotel after the press conference, wrote my story then, like thousands of others in my situation, packed up and moved to another hotel.

Lakers guard Luka Doncic claps hands with forward LeBron James during a game against the Clippers on March 2.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

Soon thereafter I was awakened late one night with the news of the Lakers stunning acquisition of Luka Doncic. I wrote this column from a rental house while preparing to move to yet another new place. My clothes were in a plastic grocery bag. My house was still in shambles. In Doncic, as least, there was hope.

Several days later I attended the Doncic press conference, asked a question, and Doncic asked me to repeat it. Turns out, it wasn’t a language barrier, it was a sound barrier. I was speaking too softly. It was then I noticed that the trauma from the fire had exacerbated my Parkinson’s Disease, which affected my voice, one of the many symptoms which later led me to acknowledging my condition in a difficult mid-summer column.

Yeah, it was a helluva year.

Good news returned in early March when it was announced that the Dodgers had made Dave Roberts the richest manager in baseball, giving him a new four-year, $32.4 million contract. In a bit of dumb luck that hasn’t stopped me from bragging about it since, 10 years ago I was the first one to publicly push for Roberts’ hiring. In such unstable times in our city, Roberts had become the new Tommy Lasorda, and his presence became a needed jolt of smile.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts salutes fans during the team’s World Series celebration at Dodger Stadium on Nov. 3.

(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)

In early April, I wrote a column I never thought I’d write — that Bronny James had been transformed from circus to contributor. I also wrote a column that I maybe wish I hadn’t written so soon, that JJ Redick was a Laker success.

By then, writing stories about Laker conflicts was a refreshing respite from dealing with fire hassles. We were back in the house, but were we safe? Did we test enough for toxins? And how can we look our next-door neighbor in the eye when she comes to examine the giant empty scar where her house once stood?

In late May I sadly said goodbye to my second family when I wrote about the end of my 22-year run on ESPN’s popular “Around the Horn” game show. It wasn’t the first time in 2025 that a column brought me to tears, witness the video immediately after the fire. Agreed, I spent the year showing so much emotion for someone who had gotten so lucky. But I’m guessing I wasn’t alone.

Two weeks later I wrote about my new family, the group of boxers I have joined in my fight against Parkinson’s. That was the toughest column I have ever written, as I was acknowledging something I refused to admit for five years. But the fire had seemingly set the disease ablaze, and I could hide it no longer.

The year continued with columns about the soon-to-be-retiring Clayton Kershaw, the greatest Dodger pitcher with the greatest entrance song. Hearing “We Are Young” when he took the mound consistently gave me hope that, through the treacheries of a summer that marked the escalation of those insane ICE raids, we can continue to strive for rebirth.

That’s what sports consistently provided in 2025, the hope that from beneath the rubble, we could all fly again.

I voiced this hope in a Rams preview column that predicted they would go to the Super Bowl. I later wrote a Rams column predicting they would actually win the Super Bowl. I stand by my stories.

All of which led to a series of Dodger playoff columns that hopefully reflected the building energy of a town enthralled. After their Game 7 victory against the Toronto Blue Jays, I was so spent that I hyperventilated for what felt like an hour.

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto holds up the MVP trophy after beating the Blue Jays and winning the World Series.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

“In the end, they not only ran it back, they sprinted it back, they slugged it back, and then, finally, they literally Will-ed it back,” I wrote.

In hindsight those words could have been written not only about a team, but a city, fighting back, staying strong, the results of its struggle mirroring the Dodgers’ consecutive championships, punching through desperation, from struggle to strength.

In 2025, sports showed me that life can get better, life will be better, that if we hang in there long enough we can all hit that Miggy Ro homer, make that Andy Pages catch, stay forever young.

And thus I offer a heartiest and hopeful welcome to 2026.

Bring it on.

MOLLY-MAE Hague and Tommy Fury have jetted to an exclusive resort for the super rich – splashing £6,000 a night to relax in the Maldives over the festive break.

The luxury trip includes a stay at the One & Only Reethi Rah resort, where villas lead straight into the Indian Ocean.

Previous A-list guests include Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe, The Beckhams and former TopShop owner Phillip Green.

Molly-Mae and Tommy booked into a Grand Water Villa that costs £6,000 a night over the New Year period.

They opted to forgo a private pool, likely to keep a close eye on their two-year-old daughter Bambi.

The resort is nestled on North Male Atoll with villas having access into the beautiful Indian Ocean.

READ MORE ON MOLLY AND TOMMY

FESTIVE FURYS

Molly-Mae Hague reveals Christmas plans at £5m Cheshire mansion –

BITING BACK

Tommy Fury dad-shamed for saying he taught Bambi to ‘use fists’ instead of bite

The resport was previously voted the best in the world 2007 by Conde Nast Traveller Magazine.

Tommy showed fans the jaw-dropping views from their sitting room, opening the doors onto a private veranda.

Molly-Mae also revealed their new digs on her Story, showing Tommy and Bambi in the sea.

She penned: “Can we stay forever.”

It is her seventh trip this year after a booming 2025 for the Maebe fashion founder.

The star was called out over the summer for moaning about “not having enough fun”.

But Molly-Mae flew to St Moritz in January, Budapest in April, Dubai in May, Disneyland Paris via private jet in May, Turkey in August, and St Tropez again via private jet in August.

The star also enjoyed a motorhome holiday to the Isle of Man in July.

However, many of her trips are for work – and she often shares a glimpse of the action, including photo shoots in lavish locations like St Moritz earlier this year.

The social media mogul has seen the cash come flowing in after launching her brand, Maebe.

New accounts for her firm MMH International Ltd have laid bare just how much money she is making.

The millionaire Love Island star made around £300,000 in profit for the 12 months to the end of March this year.

Currently, cash deposits in the firm stand at £231,155, having risen from £65,071 last year.

The firm’s documents also go on to reveal that Molly currently has around £700,000 worth of stock.

At present, Molly currently sells a variety of items on Maebe, with some items such as jackets costing £150, as well as jeans and dresses which range up to £90.

The Big Night of Musicals Christmas special aired on BBC One on Saturday night (December 27) with viewers spotting a vital detail

Big Night of Musicals viewers were left scratching their heads after spotting a glaring detail during the festive BBC programme.

On Saturday night (December 27), Jason Manford presented what was billed as the Christmas compilation of this year’s finest stage musicals.

The show featured performances from the casts of Matilda, Mary Poppins, and Wicked, alongside numbers from cherished films such as Back to the Future, and tributes to music legends like Tina Turner.

However, within minutes of the broadcast beginning, sharp-eyed fans noticed a dead giveaway that this wasn’t actually a fresh compilation but rather a repeat.

Flocking to X – previously Twitter – numerous viewers highlighted that several audience members could be seen wearing face masks throughout the performances, reports the Express.

It wasn’t long before astute watchers realised this television round-up contained footage filmed during the coronavirus pandemic.

One viewer wrote: “When was the Tina Turner bit filmed if people are in masks?” whilst another questioned: “Erm… I’ve seen this exact performance before? ? ? Is this a repeat?”

A third viewer confirmed their suspicions, stating: “YUP… This entire this was a repeat.”

Nevertheless, despite the programme being a rerun from a previous year, many fans still relished the musical spectacular and flocked to social media to heap praise upon it.

One enthusiastic viewer wrote: “Loving Big Night of Musicals with @JasonManford, great that the schools and colleges have been shown too, not just established productions. I’m looking forward to next month even more now [musical notes emoji].”

Another fan concurred: “Really enjoying watching #BigNightOfMusicals on @BBCOne with @JasonManford,” while a third chimed in: “That was brilliant @JasonManford [green heart emoji]. Only problem is now I want to book to see Wicked, Matilda, and Mary Poppins again [crying emoji, laughing emoji].”

The National Lottery’s Big Night of Musicals is gearing up for its fifth dazzling instalment next month, featuring showstopping performances from West End smashes including Wicked, Miss Saigon, Jesus Christ Superstar and many more.

The show will once again be hosted by Jason Manford and will take place at Manchester’s AO Arena on 26 January 2026. Speaking about the upcoming extravaganza, Manford enthused: “I’m absolutely thrilled to be hosting The National Lottery’s Big Night of Musicals for the fifth year running.

“The 2026 line-up is phenomenal; some of the biggest shows in the world are coming together for one night only, and I can’t wait for audiences to experience it. This event is also a huge thank you to National Lottery players whose support keeps theatre alive and accessible.

“Without their contributions, so many productions, training programmes, and venue restorations simply wouldn’t be possible.”

For those unable to attend the event, the fifth instalment will be broadcast on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in Spring 2026.

Big Night of Musicals is available on BBC iPlayer

BBC thriller The Night Manager is set to return to screens after its successful debut back in 2016

BBC thriller The Night Manager is set to return to screens for its second season.

Based on the characters created by John le Carré, the series followed Jonathan Pine, a night manager of a luxury hotel in Cairo and a former British soldier, who was recruited by the manager of a Foreign Office task force to infiltrate the inner circle of a dangerous arms dealer.

The show won multiple BAFTAs, Emmy Awards, and Golden Globes, including Best Actor for Tom Hiddleston as Pine.

Almost ten years after its explosive finale captivated over ten million viewers, the hit BBC spy thriller is now back with a bang as Pine takes on an explosive new case.

The official synopsis teases: “Jonathan Pine thought he’d buried his past. Now living as Alex Goodwin – a low-level MI6 officer running a quiet surveillance unit in London – his life is comfortingly uneventful.

“Then one night, a chance sighting of an old Roper mercenary prompts a call to action and leads Pine to a violent encounter with a new player: Colombian businessman Teddy Dos Santos.

“On this perilous new journey, Pine meets Roxana Bolaños, a businesswoman who reluctantly helps him infiltrate Teddy’s Colombian arms operation. Once in Colombia, Pine is plunged deep into a deadly plot involving arms and training of a guerrilla army.”

The logline concludes: “As allegiances splinter, Pine races to expose a conspiracy designed to destabilise a nation. And with betrayal at every turn, he must decide whose trust he needs to earn and how far he’s willing to go before it’s too late.”

Here’s everything you need to know about the BBC thriller’s return, including release date, cast, and episode details.

When will The Night Manager be released?

The first episode of season two is set to premiere on BBC One on Thursday, January 1 at 9pm. The new series will then be available to stream on Prime Video from January 11.

Who is in the cast of The Night Manager?

Tom Hiddleston returns as former British intelligence operative, Jonathan Pine, with Diego Calva as Teddy, and Camila Morrone as Roxana. They are joined by Indira Varma as Mayra, Paul Chahidi as Basil, and Hayley Squires as Sally.

Olivia Colman reprises her role as Angela Burr, alongside returning cast members Alistair Petrie as Sandy Langbourne, Douglas Hodge as Rex Mayhew, Michael Nardone as Frisky, and Noah Jupe as Daniel Roper.

The cast and creatives have promised “danger, espionage, betrayal, love, heartbreak, drama, and suspense” in the next chapter of Pine’s story.

How many episodes are in The Night Manager?

The Night Manager season two consists of six hour-long episodes. After the first episode premieres on New Year’s Day, the drama will continue three days later on Sunday, January 4 at 9pm on BBC One.

The following four episodes will air every Sunday at 9pm, with the explosive finale expected to air on February 1.

For international viewers, the first three episodes will drop on Prime Video on Sunday, January 11, with subsequent instalments premiering every Sunday through to February 1.

The Night Manager season 2 premieres on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 9pm on Thursday, January 1

For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new Everything Gossip website

We want to wish our commenting crew the most wonderful holiday with their families and friends! Enjoy, relax, discuss, and have a very merry Christmas!

Welcome to Bunker Talk. This is a weekend open discussion post for the best commenting crew on the net, in which we can chat about all the stuff that went on this week that we didn’t cover. We can also talk about the stuff we did or whatever else grabs your interest. In other words, it’s an off-topic thread.

This week’s caption reads:

Boys at a Dr Barnardo’s home have fun in the air raid shelter they built themselves at Christmas, 17th December 1940. (Photo by David Parker/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Also a reminder:

Prime Directives!

• If you want to talk politics, do so respectfully and know that there’s always somebody that isn’t going to agree with you. 
• If you have political differences, hash it out respectfully, stick to the facts, and no childish name-calling or personal attacks of any kind. If you can’t handle yourself in that manner, then please, discuss virtually anything else.
• No drive-by garbage political memes. No conspiracy theory rants. Links to crackpot sites will be axed, too. Trolling and shitposting will not be tolerated. No obsessive behavior about other users. Just don’t interact with folks you don’t like. 
• Do not be a sucker and feed trolls! That’s as much on you as on them. Use the mute button if you don’t like what you see.  
• So unless you have something of quality to say, know how to treat people with respect, understand that everyone isn’t going to subscribe to your exact same worldview, and have come to terms with the reality that there is no perfect solution when it comes to moderation of a community like this, it’s probably best to just move on. 
• Finally, as always, report offenders, please. This doesn’t mean reporting people who don’t share your political views, but we really need your help in this regard

Bowen Yang, a fan-favorite cast member of “Saturday Night Live,” is leaving the series after this week’s episode.

Representatives for Yang and “Saturday Night Live” did not comment on the move Friday. However, on Saturday, he confirmed his upcoming departure via a post on his Instagram account. “i loved working at SNL, and most of all i loved the people. i was there at a time when many things in the world started to seem futile, but working at 30 rock taught me the value in showing up anyway when people make it worthwile,” he wrote. “i’m grateful for every minute of my time there.”

Yang also thanked Ariana Grande, this week’s host and his “Wicked” co-star,” for “sending me off in the dreamiest way I could imagine.” The pair, alongside musical guest Cher, were seen in promos for Saturday’s episode.

There has been recent speculation about whether Yang would finish the current season of the show. He has appeared on “SNL” since Season 45 after a year of working on the writing staff.

Yang took on a variety of roles in the NBC sketch comedy series, including impersonating Vice President J.D. Vance, Fran Lebowitz and pygmy hippopotamus Moo Deng. Yang received his fifth Emmy nomination for his work on “SNL’s” historic 50th season.

Outside of “SNL,” Yang has appeared in several other projects recently. He co-hosts the popular podcast “Las Culturistas,” with fellow comedian Matt Rogers, and their seminal Las Culturistas Culture Awards was televised for the first time this year, airing on Bravo and streaming on Peacock. Yang also appeared in the “Wicked” film and its recent sequel, “Wicked: For Good,” and has starred in several other feature films, including “The Wedding Banquet,” “Fire Island” and “Dicks the Musical.”

In early December, Yang confirmed he and Rogers would be co-writing and starring in an untitled comedy for Searchlight Pictures. The movie will reportedly follow two Americans who fly across the world to try to get into the exclusive Berghain nightclub in Berlin.

Yang is not the first “Saturday Night Live” cast member to leave midseason — he joins the company of past “SNL” greats like Cecily Strong, Molly Shannon, Amy Poehler and a handful of others who exited the show outside of the traditional period for departures while the show is on summer hiatus.

Prior to the start of Season 51, NBC and executive producer Lorne Michaels made some major cast changes, adding five featured players after a series of departures. Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker and Emil Wakim exited the series before the season premiere in October.

Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall, Kam Patterson and Veronika Slowikowska joined the cast for the current season. Marshall was previously on the “SNL” writing staff and is known for his on-camera appearances as a part of the Please Don’t Destroy comedy trio.

The 51st season of “Saturday Night Live” will continue in early 2026 and run through the end of the television season in May.

Therapy often gets mined for comedy but we don’t often see comedy treated as sincere therapy. “Is This Thing On?” from director and co-writer Bradley Cooper, makes the case that glum dad Alex (Will Arnett), new to Splitsville after he and his wife of 20 years, Tess (Laura Dern), mutually agree to separate, may have figured out an ideal coping mechanism by signing up for open mic night.

Not that we see this by-day finance guy reject professional help in favor of some untapped passion. (Vamping for five minutes in front of strangers negates the cover charge.) But in bringing his marital woes to the stage and getting some chuckles, Alex believes he’s hit upon something: a talking cure that comes with a fresh identity, new friends, an acceptable level of risk and a way out of unhappiness.

It’s such a frisky, alluring idea for a character study — meeting failure with the potential for more failure (and night after night to boot) — that when the movie proves to actually be about whether the marriage can be saved, instead of the granular, temperamental world of stand-up newbies, it almost feels like a bait and switch. Fortunately, the divorce saga is interesting too, featuring Dern at her best, and is plenty intelligent about the nuances of couples who have built something solid (stable lives, nice 10-year-old twin boys, etc.) at the same time they’ve grown apart. “Is This Thing On?” is that rarity: a perfectly worthy dramedy that sometimes feels off because it’s trying to cram two good movies into one.

The confidence comes from Cooper, who, after only two films in the director’s chair (“A Star Is Born,” “Maestro”), has shown himself to be not only a powerful chronicler of artistic lives but especially couples in the showbiz sphere. This time, he tantalizes us with the milieu of nightclub self-expression and a group of regular amateurs Alex gets comfortable hanging with. But over two hours Cooper makes it clear he’s simply followed his protagonist into a safe space of encouragement (featuring Amy Sedaris as a helpful veteran comic), not necessarily a complex world of personality types to be navigated. It’s codified by Cooper’s visual approach, a handheld intimacy reminiscent of European movies, in which Matthew Libatique’s camera rarely strays from tight shots of Arnett’s face, looking for change — circling it, centering it, trailing it when Alex is on the move.

Though Alex is earnest if a tad hacky with his relationship jokes, Arnett (credited as a co-screenwriter with Mark Chappell, from a story they created with John Bishop) captures a fizzy, awkward energy of midlife discovery. Invariably, the movie is unconcerned with whether Alex might be any good as a stand-up because soon it’s about how this new pep in his step registers with Tess, who’s struggling with her own sense of personal fulfillment as a former volleyball legend turned mom and how it affects their on-the-brink married friends, Christine (Andra Day) and Balls (Cooper, hilarious as a spacy actor). Christine Ebersole and Ciarán Hinds, as Alex’s parents, humorously weigh in too on what long-term togetherness entails.

After a narrative coincidence that’s entertainingly handled, “Is This Thing On?” aims to be a more serious-minded, less rom-com-ish “It’s Complicated,” with Tess and Alex seeing if there’s a new way for them to acknowledge where they went astray. The actors sell it, especially when Dern is unafraid to mix revitalized pleasure with pushing for answers. But the stand-up storyline, so promising, is dropped and it feels like a missed opportunity. Still, the highs and lows of marriage aren’t merely a punch line in “Is This Thing On?” — and that’s good.

BROOKS Nader has left very little to the imagination in a sexy ensemble while on a night out with pals.

The reality star and model bared all in a totally see-through black dress on a wild night in Hollywood, while looking sensational in the process.

The former Dancing with the Stars starlet, 28, donned a tiny minidress made of an incredibly flimsy fabric.

The black minidress was made of an extremely sheer chiffon.

Brooks risked it all by going completely braless for the occasion, which meant her breasts and nipples were on full display.

She wore her blonde locks down and in a sleek style, with her makeup glamorous yet natural.

Brooks completed the look with a red clutch bag and some gold earrings.

On the night out, Brooks was seen beaming beside Jeff Bezos’ wife Lauren Sanchez.

Lauren was seen rocking all navy in the form of a lace top and oversized long-line double-breasted coat.

This isn’t the first time Brooks has bared all.

Back in October, Brooks showcased her bare breasts once again in an entirely see-through top while leaving a talk show appearance in New York City.

Photos obtained by The U.S. Sun captured the reality star donning the sexy ensemble.

Brooks paused to acknowledge the cameras, showing off her sheer black top, exposing her boobs, and a short black skirt.

She completed the look with a black blazer, pointed-toe black high heels, and her blonde hair flowing straight down.

Brooks became a household name after winning the Sports Illustrated Swim Search competition in 2019, which skyrocketed her modeling career.

Dancing With The Stars fans would also remember her from last season, when she competed with her pro partner, Gleb Savchenko – who she struck up a romance with on the show.

The pair were eliminated after reaching ninth place, but their names continued to circulate in the media due to their romance.

However, their relationship ended not long after when Brooks accused Gleb of cheating on her, which he vehemently denied.

Brooks is now romantically linked to Spanish professional tennis player Carlos Alcaraz.

In addition to her modeling career and stint on DWTS, Brooks stars on the new reality TV series, Love Thy Nader, which premiered on Hulu earlier this year.

The show follows Brooks and her sisters —Mary Holland, Grace Ann, and Sarah Jane —as they navigate building careers in the Big Apple.

A different type of British invasion had EDM fans in a trance at the Queen Mary in Long Beach.

Armed with turntables, social media-star-turned-professional-party-starter Fish56Octagon made his U.S. festival debut Nov. 21 and 22 at Insomniac’s Dreamstate SoCal, where he performed alongside some of the world’s most preeminent electronic artists, including Tiësto, Paul Oakenfold, Gareth Emery, Ferry Corsten and Chicane.

Fish, as he’s called, is a 46-year-old from the London suburbs who joined TikTok on a drunken whim after being introduced to the app by friends in 2021. Now boasting over a million followers across platforms, he’s seen his life flip because of that choice — quitting a full-time marketing career to become a DJ, produce music and play sets at some of the world’s biggest music festivals in the four years since he uploaded his first video.

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Though his initial post was about his watch collection, the self-described “petrol head” quickly went deep into creating content about cars and made a successful side hustle within a couple years. Crossover between auto enthusiasts and the music lovers in his audience meant the dance songs he used to soundtrack his car videos and sporadic vinyl-haul unboxings spawned passionate discussion in the comments about the classic rave songs Fish was sharing with the world.

He also benefited from an accidental, scroll-stopping visual hook repeated across videos born from his employer asking him to ensure it didn’t look like he was posting during business hours: middle-aged, thin and bald, dropping dad moves in front of his sprawling Technics decks and pumping his fists to the beat between bites of Weetabix biscuits, all while wearing a red and black dressing gown (what Americans would call a robe), gifted to Fish’s wife by his mother.

Screen shot of Fish DJing on TikTok in his bathrobe

(TikTok)

“That gown is elegant,” wrote a fan in the comments.

“It was legit my mum’s but she found it too hot,” Fish responded.

“You the same build as your mum” another person wrote back, punctuating the comment with a sweating smiley face emoji.

Fish also began to livestream on TikTok late into the night, playing his own mixes for the first time in 20 years.

“I remember seeing people commenting on the Live going, ‘Mate, we were watching you before we went out. We’ve just gone on a whole night out in our city, come back and you’re still here playing,’” Fish said. “I just love it. Sharing and being able to get out those obscure records. Sometimes it’s the big anthems everyone knows and sometimes it’s a tune that was an anthem to me.”

He’s had a decades-long education in electronic music. Fish was introduced to the genre on the cusp of his teen years through an episode of the British detective show “Inspector Morse.” One episode took place in the illegal rave scene and he thought it looked like fun to party in an old warehouse.

Fish’s taste quickly developed by listening to pirate radio and vinyl. He pieced together his first setup with two hi-fi record players his dad had in the attic. Only one had pitch control. He learned to beatmatch by plugging a player into each side of his amplifier and using the balance knob to fade between them. He was given Soundlab DLP-1 belt-driven turntables for his birthday and his obsession accelerated over the next several years.

Fish56Octagon performing at the Dreamstate music festival in Long Beach.

(Niyaz Pirani)

“By then I was just spending every penny that I had on vinyl building my record collection up. It was all rave music, early old school, hardcore jungle, and then happy hardcore, drum and bass around that sort of time, early to mid-’90s,” he said. “I played quite a few house parties.”

He became a de-facto resident DJ in college, spinning vinyl in the student union, and dabbled in music production at the same time. He eventually sold his analog kit and synthesizers when he switched to Ableton. He downsized his record collection as he converted them to MP3s.

The demands of his post-college marketing career meant the DJ dream disappeared for many years. That was until his TikTok Live sets gave him a second chance as club promoters reached out in the hope of booking him. Fish admits a lack of confidence caused him to stay on the sidelines. It was an offer in February 2024 to play a solo show at Hidden in Manchester — about the same time he switched his channel over entirely to music — that got him out of his house and onto a stage.

“Even if I wasn’t sure that people would come, I knew that anyone that did come would be coming to see me,” he said. “ … I ended up putting a night on where I played for five hours straight, just me from the start to the end. When the tickets went on sale, it sold out a good couple of months before the event.”

Fish wondered if it was a one-off event or the beginning of a life-changing run. Then the offers came in from other big U.K. cities — FishTales in Newcastle; acid techno at Beaverworks in Leeds; raves in Liverpool and Birmingham. He hired an agent. Dropped some merch.

“Not sure how this happened! But I’m here for it and hope you are too,” he wrote online.

A 20-date summer tour featured three different sets at the famed Glastonbury Festival, and appearances at Reading and Creamfields. He also traveled to Ireland, Scotland and Malta, marking his first time playing professionally outside of England.

He quit his day job in August 2024 to DJ and focus on music production full time with the support of his wife, children and parents.

“They support me even though it comes at a cost that I can’t always spend as much time with them, but they understand that I’m following my dream, following my passion, and doing something positive,” he said.

He’s gained an appreciation as a historian of the genre. Fish’s followers have grown to include Skrillex, David Guetta, Disclosure, Bicep and more of the artists he has admired and now counts among his peers.

“For about the first year, I often would wake up in the morning — I’m gonna get a little bit emotional just talking about this — but I’d wake up in the morning and just think, ‘Wow, that was all a dream, wasn’t it?” he said. “Then I look at my phone. I can see that actually it was real.”

Fish attributes his success to social media, though he said it’s a mistake to think just having social media followers guarantees bookings and the upward trajectory of one’s career.

“They’re actually a function of each other. It’s because I was making content that proved to be popular about music that I managed to build up a following and have those opportunities come my way,” he said. “I’ve now played, getting on for, 200 professional gigs at various clubs, festivals, events, raves, all around the world.”

Fish waited until November 2025 to make his first trek to North America with an 11-date run featuring his first U.S. festival booking. He chose Dreamstate because he’s always had a special place in his heart for trance and the emotional connection people have with the music.

“I love all dance music, but trance is the one that can kind of tug at your heartstrings a bit with those melodies, and the chord progression, and the way that the beats can be so crisp when they come in, and the way the bass hits,” he said.

Fish performed Friday night on “The Vision.” It’s the same stage played by legends Chicane and Paul Oakenfold this year and Darude last. He also co-headlined an hour-long B2B with Night 1 Dreamstate headliner Gareth Emery early Sunday morning, as the top-billed act for the festival’s afterparty in the Grand Salon of the iconic Queen Mary.

He made his way to LAX after stepping off stage at 3 a.m. to fly to New York and play the last three hours of a 24-hour rave.

Chicane and Fish56Octagon run into each other in the lobby of the Long Beach Hilton after playing the same stage Night 1 of Dreamstate.

(Niyaz Pirani)

Fish has tour dates in New Zealand and Australia toward the end of the year, plus the largest show of his career March 28 at London’s O2 Academy Brixton. He’s also releasing music for himself and others under his record label Octagon Discs.

As his audience multiplies, Fish’s earliest followers remain enthralled by his seemingly infinite rise.

“How did the dude who recommends second-hand cars get to this. So happy for you dude,” one fan wrote in the comments of his Dreamstate recap video post.

“Music was my number 1 passion but i thought I was too old. Thanks for the support bro,” Fish replied.

“Amazing,” another chimed in. “But I would not recognize u in the wild without the bathrobe.”