Spectator Life

Spectator Life

An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.

The best underrated shows on Netflix

With over 160 million subscribers – which ranks somewhere between the population of Bangladesh and Nigeria – Netflix’s biggest shows command staggering audiences worldwide. But the streaming platform has also snapped up the rights to hundreds of lesser known series, some of which are just as good. Here’s our pick of the undiscovered gems: Rectify

The best Oscar-winning films to watch on Netflix

As this year’s Oscar-winning films continue their box office reign, it’s salutary to remember that some excellent films have been honoured over the years. Even as many have faded from memory (Crash, anyone?), some of the award-winners that can be found on Netflix represent the very best in contemporary cinema. Here are some of our

The best foreign language films to watch on Netflix

With South Korean film Parasite taking home the Best Picture gong at this year’s Oscars, it’s clear that foreign language films and series are having a bit of a moment. Keen to polish your language skills whilst devouring a good box-set at the same time – or just looking to sound more cultured at your

Four defences of free speech that everyone should read

Every generation, and individual, has to rediscover the arguments for free speech for themselves. Some people learn from major incidents. Some when the censors come for someone close to them, or an opinion that they hold. Others come to believe in free speech because they realise that while being offended on occasion might be terrible,

The best war films to watch on Netflix

1917, the World War One epic that has picked up 10 Oscar nominations (including for Best Picture and Best Director for Sam Mendes), is currently going great guns in cinema. If it has put you in the mood for more war on screen, then fire up Netflix, where there are plenty of military flicks to

7 alternative jobs for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex

Lords, Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages: the moment you’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are calling time on their membership of the royal family, deciding to live a financially independent existence, and flying off into the sunset for the snowy wilds

The best political shows to watch on Netflix

These days we political anoraks can usually get more than our fill of drama – and laughs – from the real world. Just look at what’s happening in Westminster – not to mention the White House. But what if you’re still craving more? Here’s our list of the best Netflix choices, including documentaries, dramas and

The best crime series to watch on Netflix

It’s no secret that people are fascinated by crime. Nor is this a new phenomenon: writing in 1946, Orwell noted that murder gave a ‘great amount of pleasure to the public’, and proceeded to identify the common features of the gruesome and grisly crimes that gave the British most satisfaction. Psychologists, meanwhile, say that murder

The six wittiest conservatives

Left-wing people are funny and Conservatives are not. That’s the myth the Left like to perpetuate – particularly left-wing “comedians”, usually with all the wit and subtlety of John McDonnell at a Palestine Solidarity rally. We have in Boris Johnson a Conservative Prime Minister famous for his wit and wordplay – a man who famously

Five TV sitcoms that are ripe for banning

So we’ve come to it once again: busybodies fretting about what the kids are watching on TV. It’s one of those things that comes around at least once every decade, alongside video games, rap music, pornography and social media — a medium that needs to be strictly controlled, lest it infest the suggestible lesser minds

6 reasons why women aren’t funny

1. Being funny is the main way men attract women; we can’t take that away from them. There’s nothing better then a man who makes you laugh – it’s a quality women value highly and one used to describe every successful date and suggested set up. If women were funny it would be unfair, I

Has Jordan Peterson lost his spark?

For the poor souls who paid to live-stream the Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Žižek debate, the $15 ticket price must now seem like an act of grand larceny. In what was rather cringingly billed as the ‘debate of the century’—premature in 2019, if nothing else—the psychologist and bestselling author of 12 Rules for Lifeshared a

Gus Carter

The truth about the Cambridges’ anniversary video

In celebration of their tenth wedding anniversary, the Cambridges have released a 40 second vignette of their painfully British existence. It’s all Barbour jackets, laughing children and windswept beaches. It is, in other words, a John Lewis nightmare. But who wants an aspirational royal family? That’s kind of the point isn’t it, that they’re not like

Joanna Rossiter

The Best Talks and Debates on the Internet

The internet has changed beyond recognition in recent years. In the noughties we consumed short, digestible bursts of information online. But now there’s a growing appetite for long-form intellectual content – the internet is chockablock with podcasts, discussions and debates. People are going online to explore ideas that, before, would never have been found beyond

The portrait that Churchill couldn’t face

Winston Churchill was no Adonis but most of his portraitists did what they could to flatter him. However, when the British artist Graham Sutherland (1903–80) was commissioned to paint a full-length portrait of Churchill in 1954 for 1,000 guineas (about £27,000 today), paid by the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and to

7 easy steps to becoming a male feminist

Most men have been appalled at the abusive behaviour unveiled by the #MeToo movement. We have reflected on past indiscretions, salacious conduct and incidents of raw maleness and we feel shame. We wish to show contrition and demonstrate our commitment to feminism but we just don’t know how. We feel excluded by third-wave feminism and

Inside the intellectual dark web

In January, Channel 4’s Cathy Newman interviewed the Canadian academic Jordan Peterson. The channel broadcast a short version of the interview on the evening news bulletin, where it would have been seen by the few hundred thousand people who watch the programme nightly. But to its credit, Channel 4 also published online the full half-hour

The very thing keeping tourists safe in Jamaica? Crime

Are you looking at your tickets to Jamaica and thinking: why on earth did I decide to go there, with its army curfew, state of emergency and spiralling homicide rate? The Jamaican government has just extended its state of emergency until May and has advised tourists not to leave their hotels unaccompanied. But don’t go

10 easy steps to becoming a New Progressive

How did we arrive in this new golden era? We have advanced, become more open-minded, more accepting and more considerate. On the whole, people are treated as equals, regardless of gender, race or sexuality. We cherish our freedom. We like to be treated, and treat others, as individuals. However, you must understand the world from

Laura Freeman

The dying art of owning a decent pen

‘I’m afraid you do not like your pen,’ says Miss Bingley to Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. ‘Let me mend it for you. I mend pens remarkably well.’ You know then — if you didn’t suspect it already — that Mr Darcy could never marry Miss Bingley. Is there anything so maddening as someone

Meet Emma Dent Coad, Kensington’s class warrior

Emma Dent Coad, Kensington’s new Labour MP, has a rule: ‘Don’t do personal.’ Except, that is, when it comes to David Cameron (‘Camoron’), George Osborne (‘double dipstick’), Boris Johnson (‘baby-daddy’), Nick Clegg (‘puny’), a local Tory rival (‘freeloading scumbag’), politicians generally (‘knaves, sophists, deceivers’), the judge running the Grenfell Tower inquiry (doesn’t ‘understand human beings’),

Jacob Rees-Mogg: a sartorial standard-bearer

The best-dressed politician of all time was Anthony Eden. His style was something out of an Apparel Arts illustration; long jackets, peaked lapels on single-breasted jackets (a good 60 years before Tom Ford would revive it), high-waist trousers and double-breasted waistcoats. Even the fabled hatter Lock and Co renamed the Homburg hat ‘the Eden’. Those

My great-grandfather, the World War I hero

I am not a patriotic person. I felt joy at London 2012 and like it when our sports teams and players win things; so much of Britain’s history is rich, eclectic, and impressive. But given the fact I barely have a drop of British blood in me, I don’t feel a huge amount of pride

Philip K Dick: Five of his best books

Most science fiction writers got the future wrong. That’s OK. We don’t read sci-fi for predictions and, often, books set in the future tell us far more about the times they written in. But two 20th Century authors stand out as both relevant and prescient to anyone living in 2017. The great JG Ballard is

Jordan Peterson and the transgender wars

After Google employee James Damore was sacked for suggesting that inborn differences in likes and dislikes (such as preferring people to things) might explain why there were fewer female employees working in technology than men, the first person he gave an interview to was a relatively unknown Canadian professor, Jordan Peterson. To some it might

James Delingpole

Unlike father, unlike son: the Whitehalls’ double act

‘Oh really I don’t mind. Whatever you want to pay me. I just want to do this job and I’m really looking forward it. How much were you thinking?’ says Michael Whitehall in an unctuous, good-natured, amenable voice. Then, in an instant, having been told the imaginary amount, he turns savagely nasty and bangs his