Whelan Barzey

Most movie years post-pandemic have felt like rollercoasters, but 2026 so far has been particularly up-and-down – and at its highest points, especially exciting. Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day disappointed while Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey took on one of the oldest epics in literature and surpassed even the loftiest expectations. Several titanic franchises flopped hard, while smaller films like Obsession and Backrooms, made by total unknowns,  have come bursting through the box-office glass ceiling. The likes of Project Hail Mary and Toy Story 5 may not qualify as ‘original stories’, but both displayed an intelligence, emotionality and sense of crowd-pleasing fun missing from many of the IP-flogging blockbusters of the recent past. All in all, a pretty good year – and we haven’t even hit awards season yet. For now, though, here’s the best of what we’ve seen to date. 📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2026 (so far)😂 The best comedy movies of 2026📕 15 book-to-movie adaptations to get excited about in 2026🔥 The 100 greatest movies ever made

Updated for 2026: Whatever you think of Netflix’s theatrical strategy, it continues to produce some of television’s most formally daring works, including Adolescence, a hard-to-watch but impossible to ignore limited series about an unimaginable crime. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s HBO’s hilariously profane The Righteous Gemstones, which stuck the landing in 2025 with its final season. In addition, we have moved Andor into the top 20 after its astounding second and final season.  Television used to be considered one of the lowest forms of entertainment. It was derided as ‘the idiot box’ and ‘the boob tube’. Edward R Murrow referred to it as ‘the opiate of the masses’, and the phrase ‘I don’t even own a TV’ was considered a major bragging right.  A lot has changed. Television is now the dominant medium in basically all of entertainment. The shift in perception is widely credited to the arrival of The Sopranos, which completely reinvented the notion of what a TV show could do. But that doesn’t mean everything that came before is primordial slurry. While this list of the greatest TV shows ever is dominated by 21st century programs, from The Wire to Succession to Adolescence, there are many shows that deserve credit for laying the groundwork for this current golden age.  Chiseling them down to a neat top 100 is difficult, so we elected to leave off talk shows, variety shows and sketch comedy, focusing on scripted, episodic dramas, comedies and miniseries. So don’t touc

Too rarely celebrated, African cinema and the movies of the African diaspora are getting their moment in an expansive, kaleidoscopic BFI season this summer. Alongside an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, ‘In the Black Fantastic’ will showcase films from visionaries based on the continent itself (Haile Gerima, Djibril Diop Mambety), and some, like Julie Dash and Kasi Lemmons, whose magic realist storytelling is set across the ocean. Curated by writer and journalist Ekow Eshun, the programme will blur boundaries between the present and the past in all sorts of mesmeric ways – with films infused with the supernatural and the spiritual, the realist and the dreamlike. ‘Fantasy might be the best way to explain the strange and fantastic experience of being Black in the world,’ explains Eshun, ‘and this is a collection of works that absolutely understands that.’ He took us through his five top picks on the BFI’s programme.   In the Black Fantastic runs concurrently at BFI Southbank throughout July and at the Hayward Gallery Jun 29-Sep 18. Head to the official site for programme info and tickets. Ekow Eshun’s Thames & Hudson book, ‘In the Black Fantastic’, is available now.

⭑⭑⭑⭑✩ Una combinación delirantemente alocada de risas, placeres culpables y follaje de la jungla, La ciudad perdida es lo que sucedería si Indiana Jones: El templo maldito y Miss Congeniality concibieran un hijo en un tablero de Jumanji. La imperecedera protagonista de Hollywood, Sandra Bullock, presenta una figura abatida como su problemática protagonista, Loretta Sage. Es la autora de una exitosa franquicia romántica en la que ya no ha invertido. Pero después de que su publicista Beth (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) la empujara, Loretta se embarca de mala gana en una gira para promocionar su último libro, La ciudad perdida de D, con la estrella de la portada del galán de la novela, Alan (Channing Tatum). La ciudad perdida se convierte en una metaaventura grande y desordenada cuando Loretta es secuestrada por la multimillonaria Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe) y se ve envuelta en una aventura sacada directamente de las páginas de uno de sus libros. Alan pronto adoptará su alter ego ficticio, Dash, con resultados mixtos. La siguiente hora es una hilarante procesión de puños voladores, buffets de charcutería destrozados y un cameo que se roba la escena de un despeinado Brad Pitt haciendo su mejor imitación de GI Joe. Bullock entabla un romance poco convencional pero tremendamente entretenido con Tatum mientras ella camina penosamente por la jungla vestida de punta en blanco. Tatum es una alegría como su caballero alérgico al agua con una armadura brillante, y el elenco secundario t

⭑⭑⭑⭑✩ Dilo en voz baja, pero ¿la calidad de la producción de Disney Animation está comenzando a superar a la de sus amigos de Pixar? Es una pregunta para reflexionar seriamente, con películas como Raya y el último dragón, Frozen II y Moana que superan las nuevas producciónes de Pixar en cuanto a habilidades narrativas, y la nueva cinta de Disney Animation; Encanto, un cuento mágico, divertido, bullicioso y atrevido que viene cargado de melodías de Lin-Manuel Miranda, no es una excepción. El escenario es el encantador pueblo colombiano de Encanto donde vive la familia magica Madrigal. En el corazón de su adorable conjunto de chamanes, adivinos y curanderos se encuentra la modesta adolescente Mirabel (con la voz de Stephanie Beatriz), la única niña de la familia que no tiene poderes. Su puerta a la magia se le cierró literalmente en la cara y se ve obligada a convertirse en una heroína cuando la magia del clan se ve amenazada. Encanto tiene ingeniosa trama y revelaciones sorprendentes, pero es la animación en sí la que se roba el espectáculo. Los codirectores de Zootopia, Jared Bush y Byron Howard, y sus animadores, realmente han vaciado la caja de crayones de Disney para representar sus deliciosas flores, texturas de cabello y tonos de piel. El resultado se siente como una auténtica carta de amor a la diversidad de América Latina.  Las canciones festivas y vibrantes de Lin-Manuel Miranda agregan otro sabor a la olla, desempaquetando de manera inteligente y pegadiza las debilid

‘I had to sacrifice a lot for the greater good. Aren’t you glad I did?’ There aren’t many people who could stare down the barrel of a camera and say this without coming across as cocky or unlikeable. Billie Jean King is an exception. Liz Garbus (Love, Marilyn) and Elizabeth Wolff's exhilarating documentary, part of ESPN’s acclaimed 30 for 30 series, pulls apart the complicated relationship between sporting greatness and social responsibility. King never set out to become a trailblazer. Give Me The Ball! takes its title from the phrase a young Billie Jean King would shout whenever there was a ball to be caught, chased or hit.  That desire to compete would later manifest in activism. Despite dominating the tennis circuit from the outset, King didn’t receive the financial rewards enjoyed by her male counterparts, routinely paying for her own travel to tournaments and working side hustles to get by. With the support of her then-husband Larry, she took matters into her own hands to secure sponsorship and create the foundation for what would become women's professional tennis. The focus of the documentary is 1973, the year of ‘the Battle of the Sexes’, when she took on chauvinist Bobby Riggs in a highly-publicised match to prove that women could compete with men on the court. Rather than rehash the film of the same name, the lens is widened to show everything else the year demanded of King. ‘Everything else’ amounted to the collapse of her 20-year relationship, the pressures of car

In a world where adolescence is so often reduced to doomscrolling, six-sevens and brainrot, debut director Imran Perretta’s tender coming-of-age drama puts forward a strong case that children today are still capable of feeling deeply. Rather than retread London’s streets, co-writers Perretta and playwright Enda Walsh (I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning) take us a smidge north to Luton. The town’s unkempt woodlands make the perfect playground for 12-year-old friends, Ish (Farhan Hasnat) and Maram (Yahya Kitana). There we find the Muslim boys roughhousing, stuffing their faces with unidentified berries and building forts with stray mattresses. Like the planes that fly overhead from the local airport, there’s a sense of weightlessness to their imagination. But like the contrails trailing behind them, it’s fleeting. Their tiny frames already bear adult struggles. For Ish, it’s the loss of his mother; for Maram, who is of Palestinian descent, it’s the conflict in Gaza, leaving him convinced the ‘war is coming’. Back in Luton’s urban centre, the sound of sirens should be unnerving, but neither of them even flinches. Police sirens have already become part of the soundtrack of their childhood, a familiar reality for many Brown and Black communities in the UK. An artist and composer too, Perretta’s musical ear is evident in the film’s devastating sound design. The clipped chatter of police radios referring to Muslim passersby as ‘suspects’ and ‘targets’, and discussions about Islamop

History’s most devastating crises are often defined by the suffering of a single child. For the Vietnam War, the fleeing figure of Kim Phuc (‘Napalm Girl’); for Gaza, that voice belongs to six-year-old Hind Rajab. Tunisian writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania’s docudrama, The Voice of Hind Rajab, takes us onto the frontlines on January 29, 2024, when Hind Rajab and her family came under fire from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Roughly 335 bullets hit the vehicle, killing six of her family members and leaving her to make a series of emergency calls until her death was confirmed 12 days later. Ben Hania makes the daring choice to use these blood-curdling recordings as the spine of her film, expanding the back-and-forth with Palestinian actors playing the roles of Red Crescent dispatchers. Even with Hind’s mother’s blessing, some may question the film’s rapid 18-month turnaround, but in the context of atrocities in Gaza, urgency feels not only justified but essential. Its release during the ongoing crisis turns the docudrama into more than documentation, it becomes an act of intervention. Omar (Motaz Malhees), a wide-eyed Red Crescent responder, barely settles into his desk when he’s hit with a life-changing call. It’s the terrified voice of Hind Rajab. ‘Help me. I’m scared. Please come and get me,’ she pleads, flinching at nearby gunfire as she begs to be freed from the cocoon of mangled metal and deceased family members. Omar’s eyes flood instantly, as do those of his departin

‘Painful to watch’ isn’t often a term of praise, but this action-comedy about a man who loses the ability to feel physical discomfort channels its unusual, nerve-numbing premise into a fun and oddly romantic ride. Thankfully, intrigue and swagger aren’t prerequisites for its unlucky hero, because introvert Nate Cain (Companion’s Jack Quaid) would be bang out of luck. It isn’t just his dull day job as an assistant manager at a bank; Nate has been born with a sensory condition that means that he’s unable to feel pain or discomfort. Great in theory; in reality, it means a liquid diet so that he doesn’t bite his tongue off and alarms set to remind himself to urinate, so that his bladder doesn’t explode.  Enter co-worker Sherry (Prey’s Amber Midthunder), whose lust for life coaxes him out of his shell. Their burgeoning opposites-attract love story is powered by two charming leads. Jack Quaid put a fun new spin on his shocked everyman in The Boys, and Midthunder is a natural as the free-spirited apple of Nate’s eye.But just as things seem to be hitting a groove, she’s kidnapped in front of Nate in a brutal bank robbery led by a delightfully unhinged Ray ‘son of Jack’ Nicholson. Instead of retreating into his man cave and licking his many, many wounds, Nate embarks on a crusade of vigilantism through San Diego to save her. But this is not Liam Neeson in Taken: his particular set of skills don’t extend much further than checking credit scores, administering first aid and never saying

There’s an old adage about it taking more muscles to frown than to smile. Parker Finn’s unnerving follow-up to his hit 2022 horror film Smile more than makes up the difference by targeting every other muscle you can think of – particularly the ones that make your neck snap back. Anyone who’s watched the first instalment, will be well aware that easing-in periods don’t exist in this franchise. It’s bangs and bloodshed from the outset, as a nervy assailant bursts into a drug den and mercilessly slits the throat of a dealer before putting a bullet in the heart of another. Yet, the most haunting part of the encounter is the killer’s last words to unsuspecting onlooker Lewis (Lukas Gage): ‘I needed someone to pass it on to.’  The ‘it’ in question is a body-hopping spectre that gets its kicks from compelling its host to commit suicide with a sadistic smile on their face, before transferring into the consciousness of the witness – a narrative cue it takes from the likes of It Follows and The Ring. It’s probably not what Nat King Cole had in mind when he told us we should smile more. The first film followed psychiatrist Rosie Cutter (Sosie Bacon) through the sterile surrounds of medical facilities. This time, it’s the turn of Aladdin’s Naomi Scott as Skye Riley, a Sabrina Carpenter-alike pop sensation. The huge dance numbers and paparazzi circus of Skye’s world offer a perfect playground for Finn to showcase his upscaled budgets. It’s unhinged enough to keep you nicely on edge We mee

We’ve all heard the saying it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but what about those who dare to love again? It’s an audacious thought for anyone, but for a 70-year-old Iranian widow it’s a last-ditch effort to feel alive again. That’s the premise of a charming Iranian romantic-comedy that’s spiced up with unexpected radicalism. Every day is the same for Mahin (played by the delightful Lili Farhadpour): sleeping in until noon; scrambling to answer FaceTime calls from her daughter overseas; tending to her garden and making trips to the not-so-local market from her home on the outskirts of Tehran. It's a mundane setting but each moment is presented as a beautifully framed vignette by co-directors Maryam Moqadam and Behtash Sanaeeha. During a rare ladies’ get together at her house, Mahin and her friends playfully one-up each other with the growing list of aches that have plagued them in old age – think a poker table, but with prescriptions instead of playing cards. The pace quickly changes when one of Mahin’s friends regales the group with her no-strings attached fling with an unmarried taxi driver.  For Moqadam and Behtash Sanaeeha, these chats are for more than flights of fancy, they're acts of female rebellion. Iran’s morality police, a force that suppresses women’s rights and compromises their safety, is never far from the characters’ thoughts, especially when Mahin springs to the rescue of a young woman being arrested for not wearing her hijab

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who believe the moon landing was the greatest feat of ingenuity in human history, and the conspiracy theorists who think it was all a bunch of hogwash. Greg Berlanti’s (Love, Simon) feelgood, summer romcom is probably as close as we’ll ever get to calling a truce. Set long before smart phones and social media, the film’s recreation of 1969 is a simpler, cosier time. Well, for everyone except Cole Davies (Channing Tatum), the NASA launch director in charge of getting Apollo 11 to the moon. It’s a task complicated by his involvement in the ill-fated Apollo 1 mission just two years earlier. Arguably, the only job harder than getting a rocket to the moon is convincing Congress that trying it again is a good idea. Enter Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), a charismatic marketing exec with enough pizzazz to sell the story. While Cole is as dependable as grandma’s apple pie, Kelly likes to play things fast and loose. A shadowy White House figure, played by a delightfully off-beat Woody Harrelson, forces Kelly to stage a fake moon landing behind Cole’s back in case the mission fails (shades of 1979 conspiracy thriller Capricorn One here). It’s a juicy subplot that also introduces a scene-stealing as Community’s Jim Rash takes as a zany commercial director hired to orchestrate an elaborate production in place of  Stanley Kubrick – a playful nod to the moon landing conspiracy that the 2001: A Space Odyssey director was hired to direct th

If prison cells are built to contain the most reprehensible parts of human nature, is it a stretch to believe that they could contain joy too? The evidence is scattered throughout co-writers Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley’s (Jockey) compassionate, real-life-inspired window into incarceration. Joy isn’t just plausible here, it’s undeniable. As fans of old-school Hollywood gangster flicks will know, New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility is one of America’s most notorious maximum-security prisons. But behind its scarred walls, blaring sirens and courtyard scuffles is an unexpected soft side known as the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) programme, a space for inmates to connect with their emotions via theatrical and artistic expression. (Kwedar and Bentley both worked as volunteers on the programme, and the majority of the film’s cast are RTA alumni with equity in the production.) Alongside teaching artist Brent Buell (Sound of Metal’s Paul Raci), RTA founder John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield (Rustin’s Colman Domingo) has the programme’s members embracing the escapism of creativity, even with his own wrongful conviction hearing looming large. Joy isn’t just plausible here, it’s undeniable However, as Sing Sing neatly demonstrates, make-believe is trickier for some. Hot-headed newcomer Clarence ‘Divine Eye’ Maclin (playing himself) is reluctant to embrace the group’s unconventional methods, despite being cast as the lead in their upcoming play. He’s served 20 years beh

For every limitation that exists IRL, there’s an equal realm of wild possibilities that can be found in our dreams: from trippy unicorns, to poker tables people by card-dealing aliens, to, well, Nicolas Cage. That’s the premise of Kristoffer Borgli’s (Sick of Myself) offbeat, dark comedy that has Cage haunting the dreams of the entire planet.  Cage plays Paul Matthews, an unremarkable college professor with unrealised ambitions of publishing a paper on evolutionary biology. He’s no inspiring, Robin-Williams-in-Good-Will-Hunting type; his awkward demeanour, receding hairline and ill-fitting Parka hardly capture the attention of his class of yawning Z-ers. But much as he’d hate to admit it, Paul yearns for notoriety. There’s a testy exchange with a former colleague who won’t give him a co-credit in her research paper, despite his desperate whimpering and valid arguments. Then, suddenly, it happens: everyone seems to know who Paul is. Old acquaintances and new admirers begin crawling out of the woodwork, all with the same opening line: ‘I saw you in my dream.’ Dream Scenario ushers into those gonzo dream sequence in a flurry of mad visuals involving alligators and earthquakes that invite comparisons with fellow A24 production Everything, Everywhere All At Once. And while not as inherently funny as some of Cage’s more out-there characters, there’s still ample scope for him to flex his comedic muscles, including a runaway contender for cringeworthy sex scene of the year. As a show

Juel Taylor’s hilariously unhinged directorial debut plays out like a big ‘we know what you think about us’ public service announcement from the Black consciousness. A stylish conspiracy thriller, it finds its footing in The Glen, a Southern poster town for African-American disenfranchisement, filled with shoddy liquor stores, Tupac Shakur conspiracy theorists and a homeless fortune teller called Frog. The opening sequence introduces the complex character of Fontaine (John Boyega). He’s a local drug dealer who makes a concerted effort to fit in subtle acts of kindness alongside the day-to-day kerfuffle of his criminal capers. Soon he’s careering a car into a street rival, an event that leads to him being killed for the first time. Rather than staring at the walls of a pine box, Fontaine wakes up in his bedroom without a bullet wound in sight or any recollection of the encounter that cost him his life. But why? And how? The mystery unfolds as Fontaine makes his usual nightly rounds to debtors. He ends up on the doorstep of wise-cracking Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), a pimp with enough minks in his wardrobe to put PETA on high alert. Along with his Nancy Drew obsessed streetworker Yo-Yo (Candyman’s Teyonah Parris), the pair recount the cold-blooded motel shootout that Tyrone fell victim to. The trio’s madcap energy of impromptu karaoke sessions and sharp banter means that you’re laughing even when you’re not quite sure what’s going on.  They Cloned Tyrone revels in that ambiguity

The extent of most five-year-olds’ hardships begin and end with tying their shoelaces. But young Kurdish boy Lawand has already completed the inhumane obstacle course that has come to define the refugee journey – all while not being able to speak a single language. Born deaf to a hearing family in Kurdistan, without the educational means to learn sign language, Lawand’s dreams seem limited from the get-go. His parents are unable to accept this bleak reality and make the difficult decision to leave their homeland behind and take him and his brother in search of a better life. A treacherous journey of ferocious currents, barbed-wire fences and sleepless nights haunted by the screams of asylum-seekers leads them to the English city of Derby, where he’s enrolled at the Royal School for the Deaf.  Here, director Edward Lovelace shifts the perspective from Lawand’s family and lets him guide the story in an intimate style akin to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a key influence on the doc. Under the guidance of a kind-hearted British Sign Language teacher, we follow him blossoming into the spritely, inquisitive and playful boy he’s always been, but has rarely been able to show.  Lovelace’s camera captures every twitch, clasp and motion of Lawand’s remarkable BSL progress in riveting detail over the course of four years. We also see this beauty being initially lost on his parents, whose perception of deafness has been formed by the challenges of raising Lawand in Iraq where it has

If the music biopic usually bolsters the legacies of already beloved icons (Rocketman, Ray, I Wanna Dance With Somebody et al), this extroverted period drama takes its cues from a starker, more mysterious song sheet: the untold story of 18th century French composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges.  Young, Black and flamboyant, Bologne (Waves’ Kelvin Harrison Jr) is the antithesis of every problematic cliché that classical music has come to embody. Director Stephen Williams addresses the historic erasure of Black musicians immediately with a riotous, expectation-subverting opening sequence in which Bologne steps on stage to better the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Joseph Prowen) in a violin duel. Unfolding in front of Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton), a future benefactor, and the cream of Paris society, it’s a rare moment of universal embrace that goes against the grain of Joseph’s outlier status.  Flashbacks offer an insight into the virtuoso musician’s unconventional upbringing. The illegitimate son of a French plantation owner and an enslaved Senegalese housemaid (Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo), Bologne is sent to a French boarding school. Regrettably, bearing the lineage of both the oppressor and the oppressed does little to inform the complexity of his character. Instead, screenwriter Stefani Robinson zeroes in on his musical gifts and ability to attract beautiful women; including an ill-advised, Bridgerton-esque affair with a white married opera singer (Ready Or Not’s Sama

"Ah don lan na di airport. Usay you dey?" O som da língua materna dos meus pais de Serra Leoa, o Krio, não era algo que eu esperava ouvir em Copenhaga – uma cidade onde apenas cerca de 3% da população é africana – mas lá estava ele. Saiu da boca de uma mulher de meia-idade visivelmente irritada: “Já estou no aeroporto, onde estás tu?”. O que parecia uma coincidência curiosa tornou-se um fio condutor da viagem: pequenos bolsos de diversidade a fazer-se notar da forma mais genuína e encantadora. Estou na capital dinamarquesa com um único objectivo: comer. Ao longo dos próximos dias, vou seguir os passos de Carmy e Marcus, personagens da série The Bear, o fenómeno sobre um grupo de chefs a tentar ressuscitar um restaurante em Chicago, que regressa agora com a quarta temporada na Disney+. Embora a série se passe, na sua maioria, nos Estados Unidos, a cultura gastronómica de excelência de Copenhaga tem uma presença marcante em The Bear. O restaurante Noma, de três estrelas Michelin e símbolo da gastronomia nórdica contemporânea, foi onde Carmy (interpretado por Jeremy Allen White) começou o seu percurso na alta cozinha, e os restaurantes e cozinhas desta cidade surgem em vários momentos da série. Broens Street Food: comida de rua com curadoria de especialistas de fine dining A primeira paragem é o Broens Street Food. Ao contrário das típicas bancas de comida de rua, este mercado é curado pelo Noma – e a selecção, como seria de esperar, é de fazer crescer água na boca. Há pastelari

‘Ah don lan na di airport. Usay you dey?’ The sound of my Sierra Leonean parents’ mother tongue, Krio, was not on the bingo list of things I expected to hear in Copenhagen – a city with an estimated 3 percent African population – but there it was. It came from a perturbed middle-aged woman and translated to ‘I’m at the airport, where are you?’. What felt like a quirky coincidence became a defining theme of my trip: pockets of diversity making their presence known in the most unapologetic and endearing way. I’m in Denmark’s capital for one thing: to eat. Over the next few days, I’ll be retracing the steps of Carmy and Marcus in The Bear,  the hit show about a scrappy group of chefs getting a Chicago restaurant off the ground, now back on Disney+ for its fourth season.  While the show is primarily set in the States, the Danish capital and its world-renowned fine dining culture are heavily influential in The Bear. Three-Michelin-star New Nordic restaurant Noma is where main character Carmy (played by Jeremy Allen White) cut his teeth in fine dining, and the city’s restaurants and kitchens make several appearances throughout the series. Broens Street Food: A food market curated by fine-dining specialists My first stop is Broens Street Food. Unlike your classic grab-and-go stalls, this food market is curated by Noma – and its selection is, as you’d expect, mouthwatering. There’s Crêpes à la Cart’s French pastries topped with fresh strawberries and milk chocolate; Fuego’s perfectly

Wormholes, spectacular VFX and Avirex jackets as far as the eye can see. No, this isn’t Marvel. We’re behind-the-scenes on Netflix’s new superhero epic ‘Supacell’. It’s a genre-twisting slice of London life that’s giving us superpowered heroes as we’ve never seen them before. And it’s the handiwork of Peckham’s own Andrew ‘Rapman’ Onwubolu. ‘Supacell’ is a long way from the rapper-writer-and-filmmaker’s guerilla-style ‘Shiro’s Story’. That attention-grabbing YouTube short signalled the arrival of a significant new talent back in 2018. If the bullish Londoner has anything to do with it, there’s a lot further to go. ‘I know the ting’s levels above anything we’ve seen come out of the UK,’ Rapman says of his new superhero series. ‘I’m going big! I’ve put everything into this and I’m expecting to get everything back: the accolades, the numbers, the critical acclaim. I want all of it.’ He’s staying true to his roots, which is why I’m talking to him on a freezing November day on a set in Hounslow and not in, say, Hawaii. Like ‘Shiro’s Story’ and his headline-grabbing feature debut ‘Blue Story’ — another urban drama that, uniquely, featured a rapping Greek chorus — ‘Supacell’ is set in the streets and estates of Deptford and Peckham, his old turf. ‘Top Boy’ meets ‘X-Men’? Maybe. Photograph: Olly Courtney/NetflixLondon’s new superheroes assemble Super civilians ‘Supacell’ follows five South Londoners who mysteriously gain superpowers and have their worlds turned upside down. For dru