Latest news with #EllaAlShamahi
The Guardian
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
TV tonight: hurrah for the return of Diane Morgan's hapless heroine
10pm, BBC TwoHurrah for the return of Diane Morgan's gormless heroine in this fourth series. Mandy – quite believably – still hasn't got a job, so in the first of this week's double-bill, she needs to enrol on the Restart scheme. Cue a Pretty Woman style makeover, a run-in with an old school bully ('I've got mental health cos of you!') and a Martin Lewis cameo. Sian Gibson and Cheryl Fergison (Heather from EastEnders) also guest star. Hollie Richardson 8pm, Channel 4In Okinawa, Japan, they're living much longer: it's home to more centenarians than anywhere else on the globe. Filmed before he died, Michael Mosley uncovers a possible explanation. On the Faroe Islands, he joins a women's football team studying bone density, then in Halifax he meets an 84-year-old ballerina who reveals what's really behind muscle strength. Ali Catterall 9pm, BBC TwoElla Al-Shamahi's mind-blowing evolution series continues, and she's showing us how we became the only global species of human – including being the first to make the crossing to Australia about 45,000 years ago. She also learns more about Homo floresiensis, fondly referred to as Hobbits. HR 9pm, ITV1 It's 50 years since Jaws – and ITV claims to be on a mission to celebrate the magnificence of a much-maligned marine species, by encouraging celebrities to swim with 900kg tiger sharks. This episode may have you questioning if there isn't something else going on: because some of these celebrities are quite annoying, aren't they? Ellen E Jones 9pm, Channel 4We're halfway through the steamy thriller and it's the morning after the threesome before. Charlotte (Annabel Scholey) wants to forget about it, Jacob (Sam Palladio) is clearly chuffed about it happening, and Mia (Aggy K Adams) is distracted by learning that her photo is in the local paper. Who is she scared of finding her? More flashbacks give clues. HR 11.05pm, Channel 4A new documentary series gets inside the world of the notorious biker club, with first-hand accounts of the gang's criminal activities. The double-bill fires up by talking with ATF agent Jay Dobyns, who went undercover as an Angel, and biker Jay, who dreams of becoming 'fully patched'. HR
The Guardian
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Justin Bieber to Human: the week in rave reviews
BBC iPlayer Summed up in a sentence Explorer, paleoanthropologist and standup comedian Ella Al-Shamahi delivers a wonder-filled, joyful look at the origins of humanity that is never short of fascinating. What our reviewer said 'It feels as if a presenting star is being born here.' Jack Seale Read the full review Further reading 'Forever chemicals' are killing whales – and harming us U&Alibi Summed up in a sentence Mark Gatiss leaps into the world of cosy crime dramas as a postwar bookseller with a mysterious 'letter from Churchill' that lets him assist the police with investigations. What our reviewer said 'Bookish is a fine piece of entertainment – meticulously worked, beautifully paced and decidedly moreish. A joy.' Lucy Mangan Read the full review Further reading Mark Gatiss: 'What does Benedict Cumberbatch smell like? Strawberries' Sky Documentaries Summed up in a sentence A touching, beautiful and sad biopic of film star Jayne Mansfield, created by the daughter who lost her mother to a car crash aged three. What our reviewer said 'My Mom Jayne is tender rather than schmaltzy, compassionate rather than hagiographic and an evident labour of love for all involved.' Lucy Mangan Read the full review BBC iPlayer Summed up in a sentence A three-part retrospective of the era-defining 80s charity concerts, filled with startling archive clips and soul-baring modern-day interviews. What our reviewer said 'A fascinating portrait of a complex man's imperfect attempt to solve an impossible problem.' Jack Seale Read the full review Further reading Live Aid campaigner Bob Geldof was 'scathing about African leaders', files reveal In cinemas now Summed up in a sentence Tim Robinson is magnificently cringeworthy as a man in thrall to his cool neighbour Paul Rudd in Andrew DeYoung's comedy bromance. What our reviewer said 'This is a shaggy dog tale of ineffable silliness, operating ostensibly on the realist lines of indie US cinema but sauntering sideways from its initial premise, getting further and further from what had appeared to be a real issue: how difficult it is for grown men to make new friends.' Peter Bradshaw Read the full review Further reading 'A case study on psychosis': men on why Tim Robinson's Friendship feels a little too real In cinemas now Summed up in a sentence Jennifer Love-Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr return for a goofy, slickly made legacy sequel to the classic 90s slasher. What our reviewer said 'There's something charmingly deranged about this kind of hyper-specific fan service, appealing to a select few with the brash confidence that everyone knows exactly what you're talking about.' Benjamin Lee Read the full review In cinemas now Summed up in a sentence Reissue of 90s one-crazy-night clubbing comedy, a loved-up ensemble piece that is cheerfully apolitical, pro-drugs and pro-hedonism. What our reviewer said 'A reminder of that interesting 90s moment when euphoria and uncomplicated fun had cultural cachet.' Peter Bradshaw Read the full review Further reading How we made Human Traffic: 'The first question I asked in the auditions was: have you ever taken drugs?' In cinemas now Summed up in a sentence Stanley Kubrick's hypnotic masterpiece, adapted from Thackeray, follows the fluctuating fortunes of Ryan O'Neal's humble Irish hero. What our reviewer said 'Barry Lyndon is an intimate epic of utter lucidity and command. The final intertitle drily noting that all the characters are 'equal now' in death is exquisitely judged.' Peter Bradshaw Read the full review Further reading Stanley Kubrick: the Barry Lyndon archives – in pictures Mubi; available now Summed up in a sentence Gripping thriller about an Austrian ex-cage fighter called Sarah who goes to Dubai to work with three teenage sisters, and realises they are trapped. What our reviewer said 'It's easy to imagine the Hollywood version of this story, with a heroic escape orchestrated by Sarah. But Moon is gripping in its own understated way as it presents the unvarnished reality: that standing up to injustice is harder than it looks in the movies.' Cath Clarke Read the full review Out now Summed up in a sentence A black comedy about endangered snails and the Ukraine marriage industry is disrupted, in terms of both narrative and form, by Russia's full-scale invasion. What our reviewer said 'Rather than feeling distracting or tricksy, the author's intervention heightens the impact of the story, giving it a discomfiting intensity and a new, more intimate register. We all have skin in the game at this point.' Marcel Theroux Read the full review Reviewed by Lara Feigel Summed up in a sentence A flamboyant tale of fakery and forgers that delights in queering the Victorian era. What our reviewer said 'In book after book, Stevens is showing herself to be that rare thing: a writer who we can think alongside, even while she's making things up.' Read the full review Further reading Nell Stevens: penguins, paranoia and an old potato on the island of Bleaker Reviewed by Christopher Shrimpton Summed up in a sentence The perfect lives of wealthy New Yorkers are shattered by a violent act on a birthday weekend. What our reviewer said 'A bracingly honest and affectingly intimate depiction of abuse, family dynamics and self-deceit… it upends its characters' lives so ruthlessly and revealingly that it is hard not to take pleasure in a false facade being finally smashed.' Read the full review Reviewed by Joe Moran Summed up in a sentence Behind the scenes at the Guardian, 1986-1995. What our reviewer said 'Few events in these years, from the fatwa on Rushdie to the first Gulf war, failed to provoke fierce disagreements in the newsroom.' Joe Moran Read the full review Reviewed by Alex Clark Summed up in a sentence Life on the women's wards of Iran's infamous prison. What our reviewer said It is unclear how many of these dishes are materially realised within the confines of the prison, and how many are acts of fantasy, a dream of what life might be like in the future. Alex Clark Read the full review Further reading I endured Evin, Iran's most notorious jail. I can't understand how Sweden can leave its citizen to die there Out now Summed up in a sentence The London rapper and producer doubles down on his vaulting style, lurching from alt-rock to distortion and chipmunk soul on an astonishingly coherent and melodic third record. What our reviewer said 'It feels like the work of someone who has grown up with the all-you-can-eat buffet of streaming as standard, hurling contrasting ideas and inspirations at you in a way that recalls someone continually pressing fast-forward in a state of excitement … That it doesn't result in an annoying mess comes down to Legxacy's skills as a producer, which allow him to weave it all into something coherent, and to his songwriting.'. Alexis Petridis Read the full review Out now Summed up in a sentence While the sonic invention and off-kilter details remain, on his 10th album the cult musician eschews distortion for melancholic melodies and crooked love songs. What our reviewer said 'The sonic invention remains, but it is deployed with increased subtlety, serving the timeless, melancholic soft-rock rather than overpowering it.' Rachel Aroesti Read the full review Out now Summed up in a sentence Ruth Clinton of Landless and Cormac MacDiarmada and John Dermody of Lankum contrast hauntological synths with robust noise on this playful debut. What our reviewer said 'Poor Creature comprises three musicians expert in heightening and managing atmosphere … Within Clinton and MacDiarmada's dense harmonies, Dermody's drums and the track's cacophonous final minutes, you sense folk rocketing somewhere poppy, wild and new.' Jude Rogers Read the full review Further reading 'We are extreme' … how Lankum's heavy mutant folk made them Mercury favourites Out now Summed up in a sentence Bieber reverts to his first love, R&B, in what seems to be a genuine passion project. What our reviewer said 'It's all very considered, cleverly nostalgic and subtly satisfying – there's not a craven chart smash in earshot.' Rachel Aroesti Read the full review Out now Summed up in a sentence The Portuguese producer and British-Italian drummer united last year for a characterful, polyrhythmic debut; this redux sees each song remixed by a different producer, from Sherelle to Kelman Duran. What our reviewer said 'These transformations yank the source material in all kinds of different directions, from baile funk to breakbeat. My favourite is the brooding, bubbling take on the title track by Chinese producer Yu Su.' Laura Snapes Further reading 'Drumming is full of machismo, so vulgar, so dumb': Valentina Magaletti, the musician giving the underground its rhythm
Daily Mail
15-07-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV: Are your neighbours Neanderthals? They really were 300,000 years ago
Before the wheel, before language and art, before farming or anything else that made us civilised, mankind invented the Neighbours From Hell. Ella Al-Shamahi, tracing the development of Homo sapiens across 300,000 years of prehistory in the first of a five-part series, Human, discovered two caves on the side of Mount Carmel in Israel. In one, called Skhul cave, the remains of early modern humans similar to ourselves have been found. In the other, known as Tabun cave, Neanderthal fossils have been uncovered. 'We don't know if they interacted,' Dr Al-Shamahi said. 'But we do know that while Neanderthals remained in the region, all traces of this group of Homo sapiens vanished.' It's pretty obvious the two families didn't get on. I'm guessing the Neanderthals left all kinds of rubbish strewn around their cave — half-eaten antelopes, bits of rubble, general detritus. Their kids probably ran around without any furs on, and on Saturday night, their teenagers stayed up till all hours banging rocks together. This nightmare must have dragged on for years. The Homo sapiens tribe put their cave on the market, but no one was buying... so in the end, they gave up and left. I'm speculating, of course, but that's the fun of ancient anthropology. Dr Al-Shamahi indulged in some guesswork herself, at another cave in Botswana, where a hoard of stone tools was discovered next to a rocky outcrop that resembled, in some lights, a snake. The flints, she suggested, could have been 'offerings' — implying the snake was worshipped as a god. It seems perfectly feasible: no doubt, families of Homo sapiens across half the planet were praying, 'Dear Lord Snake, please smite the Neanderthals next-door, or at least get them to stop banging those bloody rocks together.' Inevitably, much of the evidence about human evolution is based on fragments, with scientists building their theories from scattered finds and the odd bone. A handful of tiny shells with traces of red ochre was proof enough for Dr Al-Shamahi to suggest that people were wearing beads as jewellery, up to 70,000 years ago. To help us envisage this, soft-focus scenes of our nomadic ancestors were shot against gorgeous sunsets and wild African landscapes. Much of this photography was absolutely sumptuous, with the human figures picked out in blurred silhouettes. It was hard to see exactly what was going on, but the end credits listed an 'intimacy co-ordinator', so perhaps we should be grateful for the soft-focus. BBC science shows can sometimes become overloaded with information, but this was well-paced, giving us a chance to enjoy the stunning pictures while mulling over what we'd just learned. Though she has presented documentaries before, on the ancient Egyptians and other lost civilisations, this is Ella Al-Shamahi's first landmark series, and she handled it confidently: informative without being didactic, awed without being pretentious.
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Human review – history at its most irresistibly infectious
'I can't help it,' says Ella Al-Shamahi. 'It reminds me of The Lord of the Rings!' It's not easy to make prehistory accessible, but a Tolkien comparison works for the time before Homo sapiens ruled the world. Al-Shamahi's five-part documentary traces the rise of humanity, beginning with the era when Homo neanderthalensis, Homo floresiensis and Homo erectus each staked a claim in their own ragged domain. Before written history, when our story was 'written in our bones and DNA', some early humans were in Europe and Asia and had adapted to the cold. Some were learning to harness the power of fire. Some were only about 3ft 6in (1 metre) tall. Others wore hard hats and polo shirts – wait, no, that is one of the archaeologists on a dig in Morocco, where a skull named Jebel Irhoud 1 holds many secrets about our early ancestors. It's the start of a journey that will, in an illuminating first episode, take Al-Shamahi to spectacular locations across Africa and the Middle East. At the risk of repeating what some critics said seven years ago when Al-Shamahi fronted Neanderthals – Meet Your Ancestors on BBC Two (she has popped up in the odd thing since then), it feels as if a presenting star is being born here. An explorer, paleoanthropologist and standup comedian, she passes all the tests that the job of helming a major science or history series throws up. Her bits to camera borrow the old Kevin McCloud trick of pretending to come up with big thoughts on the fly and being delighted by them: she will break eye contact, look away to gather something fascinating, then meet our gaze again to emphasise the key point. It's theatre, but it helps to achieve her main goal, which is to transmit the wonder she experiences as a learned expert to us, the keen but ignorant at home. The urgent whisper she employs in her voiceover – where a less adept presenter would reveal any weaknesses in their intonation – has the same effect. So we are in the company of the best teacher most of us never had, one who joyfully shares knowledge that is too interesting to be intimidating and who trusts us to keep up. Al-Shamahi is unafraid to toss in arcane paleoanthropological terms if the viewer can draw meaning from context – 'gracile' and 'prognathic' are about to slide into your vocabulary – or to converse with Moroccan scientists in Arabic. Her best work here has her cradling the Jebel Irhoud skull and using her own head to illustrate how this ancient creature is different from us, yet almost the same. Someone like Homo sapiens, the upright, tool-and-weapon-using primate that became us, existed as far back as 350,000 years ago, much earlier than was once thought. From there we trace the little breakthroughs that, put together across many millennia, constitute our evolution. Al-Shamahi visits the Great Rift valley in eastern Africa to explain how, 200,000 years ago, climate crises (it was humid in the east and arid in the west, then vice versa) forced communities to move around and mingle, sharing fresh discoveries and their best genes. In Israel, however, we find evidence of one of countless false starts, when Homo sapiens tried to live in the cave next door to neanderthals – a nightmare-neighbour scenario so bad that this branch of Homo sapiens didn't survive it. But we persevered. Al-Shamahi highlights the surprising details of how we gained hegemony. In the Tsodilo Hills of Botswana, there are stone tools that, 100,000 years ago, their owners broke. Why? Because they were offerings to a god, made by primates who were starting to 'see beyond the tangible' and were developing ceremonies and rituals nourished by abstract thought. In the words of Al-Shamahi, who can turn a lyrical phrase when it's warranted, we were 'venturing into the unknown and into the unseen'. This expansion of the brain delivered practical benefits when, only 30 or so millennia later, curiosity about 'the power held in wood and string' saw us move on from axes and spears to the bow and arrow. The programme's landscape shots are frequently stunning. On a perfectly unspoiled, dune-flanked African beach, even the tiniest seashells hold a narrative: about 70,000 years ago we started turning them into necklaces decorated with red ochre, a sign that cultural exchanges were under way. Al-Shamahi's delight in this revelation is irresistibly infectious. In Human, the leap of imagination necessary to understand our very distant past is no distance at all. Human airs on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer
Times
12-07-2025
- Science
- Times
Where are the right-wing scientists? Everyone's on the left like me
Trust in science has been eroded because the field is so dominated by left-wing academics, a leading evolutionary biologist has warned. Ella Al-Shamahi, presenter of the BBC's science series Human, which starts tomorrow night, said people who lean towards the right, or have strong religious beliefs, feel alienated by mainstream science. 'We do have to be a little bit honest and say that, to many, it seems like left-leaning atheists have a monopoly on science,' she said. The dominance of a single school of political thought in science is an important context to President Trump's withdrawal of funding from universities in America, she said. 'If you can't demonstrate that scientists and research labs don't belong to just one tribe, then suddenly it doesn't become a priority to fund them.'
