This taut psychological two-hander between Danes and Matthew Rhys will surely win awards. You cannot look away

It comes as a great surprise to learn that The Beast in Me is its creator, writer and executive producer Gabe Rotter’s first major work for the screen. Because it is, simply put, so very, very good. Even without two astonishing performances from the lead actors – Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys – the script, the sheer style and confidence of it all, would be things of beauty. But add what that pair are doing, and this clever, taut eight-part psychological thriller moves seamlessly into top-tier television.

Danes plays Aggie Wiggs (Rotter may still have some work to do honing his naming skills), a writer who made her name with a book about her troubled relationship with her father. She is currently stuck on her next book, about the friendship between supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her fellow judge but polar political opposite Antonin Scalia, not least because she is grieving the eight-year-old son she and her now ex-wife Shelley (Natalie Morales) lost to a drunk driver four years earlier. The driver, a young man called Teddy, who lives locally and frequent sightings of whom negate any chance of peace for Aggie, managed to delay a breathalyser test at the time and avoid being charged with the boy’s death. Aggie lives alone with her rage and grief in the large, empty house that was supposed to overflow with family.

This is no single bloc marching under one ideology, or even a mass of ‘red-wall’ voters. What unites them is a desire for something different

• Who supports Reform and why? The charts that show who favours Farage’s party

Who are Nigel Farage’s army, the voters who want him as our next prime minister? Few questions are as important in British politics. Were an election called tomorrow, the favourite for No 10 would be Farage, whose immigration policies are in some ways more extreme than those of the BNP were. His party’s role model for government would be Donald Trump’s US: Elon Musk-style cuts to our public services and masked agents snatching families off the streets.

A few months ago, many in Westminster and across the country would have considered this a cautionary nightmare, a catastrophe that would unfold if Keir Starmer failed. But in the week of another red-on-red assault and after 150 opinion polls in a row topped by Farage’s Reform UK, it’s no longer a scare story. It’s the most likely prospect.

From Peach to Riot to Aquaman, anything goes now when it comes to kids’ names. There are even companies to help you pick one …

“I’m lucky I’m not a lawyer or an accountant or something professional,” says Peach Martine, a 23-year-old musician whose Instagram feed is a kaleidoscope of colourful faux fur and leopard-print outfits. “People sometimes have trouble taking my name seriously.” First, there are the jokey comments (“Is your sister named Papaya?”) and then the assumption that she must be “a bit silly”. And don’t get her started on going to Starbucks. “They always put Paige on the cup!”

Martine wouldn’t dream of changing her first name though. She likes the fact that she has an unusual name. As a singer, she says, it has helped her to be more recognisable. If she had children, she would consider naming them something unique too.

It is often assumed that people of retirement age will no longer have housing costs to cover. But for a significant and growing group, this is far from the case

Now that she is retired, Deborah Herring’s days are hers to fill – usually with leisurely walks, museums and trips to the theatre. But she still manages to spare a thought for her ex-colleagues at the private boarding school where she taught religious studies for 14 years. “In their nice, expensive Oxfordshire village, I think they’d be frankly horrified about my situation,” she says with a laugh.

Horrified that a few weeks ago she came home to find two strangers asleep on her sofa; horrified that she has to put up with an overflowing litter tray belonging to a cat that isn’t hers; above all, horrified that at the age of 65, she is about to leave a two-bedroom flatshare to move into a four-bedroom one where she will “probably be living with people whose combined age is less than my own”.

When dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was imprisoned, her husband went on hunger strike – to force Britain to act. Narges Rashidi and Joseph Fiennes reveal how they brought their nightmare to the small screen

When Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in Iran in 2016, it wasn’t immediately obvious what had happened – but within 100 days, we had the contours of the story. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, held a press conference. He had amassed 780,000 signatures on a petition for her release, and delivered a letter urging the same thing to former PM David Cameron. This, it transpired much later, was after murky meetings with the Foreign Office in which civil servants insisted that the best thing, both for Nazanin’s release and the safety of her parents and brother in Iran, was to lay low and let diplomacy take its course.

“It was state hostage-taking,” says Joseph Fiennes, who plays Richard Ratcliffe in the BBC’s four-part drama Prisoner 951. “It clearly goes on, and innocent people and families are completely disrupted and tarred for life. And now I’ve told this story, I look at anyone that might be accused of something, and I don’t quite believe it.”

England’s keeper and a 19-year-old French forward are part of our selection of players who are essential to their clubs

Unless his arms suddenly enjoy a miraculous growth spurt the T rex jibes will never fully be banished, but Jordan Pickford has been one of the Premier League’s most reliable goalkeepers for some time. His long passing and shot-stopping have always been of decent standard, but, over time, he’s developed his short game, able to keep the ball moving and begin attacks by picking out teammates at closer range. His handling is tidier, meaning mistakes are fewer, and he is no longer as affected by his emotions as he was in his youth.

Cabinet minister says PM would not have backed attacks on Wes Streeting but briefing is ‘longstanding aspect of politics’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Ed Miliband has said he was certain Keir Starmer would sack whoever had briefed against Wes Streeting, after a chaotic 48 hours in which No 10 launched an operation to shore up the prime minister against an anticipated leadership challenge.

The prime minister apologised to the health secretary in a phone call with him late on Wednesday. Starmer is facing mounting calls to sack his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, over the row.

Messages sent months after former prince said he ended relations and also appear to confirm Virginia Giuffre photo

Newly released Jeffrey Epstein emails have cast further doubt on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s account of when he cut ties with the child sex offender and his denials about meeting his accuser Virginia Giuffre.

In March 2011, four months after he later claimed to have ended his relationship with Epstein, the former prince told him and the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell: “I can’t take any more of this,” in response to allegations put to him by the Mail on Sunday.

Reading undershoots forecasts, with crippling Jaguar Land Rover hack helping pull September GDP down by 0.1%

• Business live – latest updates
• Amid disappointing UK growth, how can Reeves escape the doom loop?

The UK economy expanded by just 0.1% in the quarter from July to September as the crippling cyber-attack on Jaguar Land Rover hit manufacturing.

The latest official figures, issued as Rachel Reeves prepares for a crunch budget on 26 November, show gross domestic product fell by 0.1% in September as car production was dragged down to a 73-year low by the fallout from the hack.

Education secretary says report highlights ‘glaring failures and missed opportunities’ by various agencies

Services in Surrey failed to identify that Sara Sharif was at risk of abuse, did not question unexplained bruising, and staff members visited the wrong address the day before her murder, a safeguarding review has found.

Sara, 10, was killed by her father, Urfan Sharif, and her stepmother, Beinash Batool, in August 2023 after years of escalating brutality that left her with bruises, burns, human bite marks and at least 25 fractures.