From the inside track on the Salt Path scandal to one…
By WEEKEND MAGAZINE
Published: 17:01, 19 December 2025 | Updated: 17:01, 19 December 2025
As the final weekend before Christmas[1], things can be hectic, with in-laws driving you wild and the kids buzzing with excitement. So there's no better way to buy a few hours of peace by getting everyone settled down in front of a good film or bingebale TV series. Here, our experts pick the 19 best films and shows to watch right now and where to stream them.
Murder In Monaco
The tangled true story of the death of billionaire banker Edmond Safra
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
[embedded content]In 1999, the billionaire banker Edmond Safra died after a fire at his penthouse in Monaco.
Who wanted him dead, and why? The circumstances suggested a couple of suspects. One is his American nurse Ted Maher, who is interviewed for this documentary and suggests that the Russians were behind the murder of Safra, in revenge for him giving information about the Russian mob to the FBI.
The other suggested suspect is his wife Lily Safra, who stood to inherit billions and is described by Lady Colin Campbell during this film as a 'praying mantis'.
Campbell makes for a fiery interviewee here - walking out swearing at one point - in a true-crime documentary that clearly relishes its luxurious setting and twisty story.
Indeed, there are a lot of intriguing angles to this story and we'd suggest not reading too much about it beforehand if you want to be surprised. Notable details include that Maher is an ex-Green Beret, Safra had Parkinson's disease and that there has already been a trial and a conviction. It's a tangled story for sure, and makes for fascinating viewing here.
Emily in Paris
Lily Collins in a rom-com about an American girl in the French capital, now back for series five
Year: 2020-
Certificate: 15
[embedded content]Sheer escapism meets every French (and American) cliche going in a gentle romantic comedy about an American marketeer let loose in Paris.
Made by the same team as Sex and the City, there is plenty of froth to enjoy but underneath it all is also a story of friendship, ambition and love with plenty of heart.
Lily Collins is a delight as Emily Cooper, an American who has been sent to Paris to work at a luxury marketing firm. While the first series is big on culture clashes as Emily thrashes her way around the capital, seasons two to four dig deeper into the characters, including Emily's enigmatic boss Sylvie, played by Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu. It also sees her find love in an unusual place.
Paris has rarely looked more beautiful, while the clothes are a reliable joy.
The latest fifth series finds our Emily in Italy for both love and work, hopping between Rome, Venice and wherever else she so desires - but Paris is still on the itinerary, too. La dolce vita indeed. (Five series)
The Imposter (2025 series)
Coronation Street favourite Kym Marsh stars in a five-part thriller
Year: 2025
[embedded content]Here's another one of those Channel 5 dramas featuring a famous former soap star (think Lie With Me with Charlie Brooks and The Wives with Jo Joyner and Tamzin Outhwaite). This time, it's ex-Coronation Street favourite Kym Marsh in the lead role, and here, the clue is in the title.
When Amanda (Marsh) arrives Down Under, claiming to be the long-lost daughter of hotel owner Helen (Neighbours star Jackie Woodburne), we know that she's lying from pretty early on.
The thrust of this five-parter, then, isn't so much what Amanda is up to, but how her disruptive influence will affect Helen and her family. Helen's grown-up children are all more than capable of causing their own ructions, anyway: Simon is lazy and can't be trusted; Kate is dutiful but has a husband who's dodgier than a nine-bob note; and Ian is desperate to have a baby with his former drug-dealing boyfriend. All have their reasons for wanting money, and poor old Helen is in their sights ...
Stay tuned for an appearance by actress and singer Dannii Minogue later in the run. (Five episodes)
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
The swansong to Tom Cruise's great action franchise
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
[embedded content]Unless you've got a huge TV and the sound system to match, it almost seems unfair watching the Mission Impossible movies at home - they're so clearly designed to be watched in a cinema.
Still, the swansong to Tom Cruise's Mission franchise, which pits him against a deadly AI known as 'The Entity' while also featuring a lot of nice small details, brings Ethan Hunt's adventures to a close, recalling moments from across the franchise in a way that is satisfying as well as fun. (If you remember that desk jockey from the heist in the first film, for instance, you're in for a treat).
This self-regard also has a downside - the movie takes itself way too seriously for the first hour or so, explaining bits of the plot we should just have been able to breeze past. Some action sequences go on for much longer than you could expect - the sequence in the submarine is epic in a way that will delight some and bore others.
All that said, the thing that's marked the Mission movies out is how real they can feel compared to other action movies. One of the big final stunts involves Cruise hanging off a plane and, like so much in this film, this is something he actually did.
The Final Reckoning, like Cruise's hunt against the AI in this film, is a champion of what's real in the world, and it also has a restraint you don't always see in the genre. Watch out for the fight scene that unfolds almost entirely in the reaction shots of Hayley Atwell's character. It's a franchise that will be missed. (170 minutes)
Irish Blood
Mystery starring Alicia Silverstone as an LA lawyer drawn to Ireland
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
[embedded content]Alicia Silverstone stars as Fiona, an LA divorce lawyer with trust issues.
One day, she receives a package from her Irish father whom she's not seen hide nor hair of in more than 30 years, then heads to Ireland to figure out why he abandoned her. Plenty of lovely footage of the Emerald Isle is the result, along with a little culture clash humour and some mysteries for her to solve as she digs into the biggest one of all: her dad (Irish-American actor Jason O'Mara).
It's a charming and stronger show than many of its kind, that benefits hugely from actually filming in Ireland, and its wandering tone keeps it unpredictable. Silverstone is a likeable lead with a knack for comedy, and look out for Celebrity Traitor Ruth Codd as one of the local officers of the law, and these six episodes aren't the end - it's been picked up for a second series in the US. (Six episodes)
The Salt Path Scandal
Documentary following the reporting into the true story behind The Salt Path
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
When Raynor Winn's book The Salt Path was released in 2018, it purported to describe the inspirational true story of Winn and her husband, Moth.
Homeless and apparently reeling from a bad investment with an old friend, not to mention the diagnosis of a fatal disease for Moth, the pair - then in their early 50s - set out on what turned into a journey of salvation along the 630-mile South West Coast Path.
It was a wonderful underdog tale that appealed to many. The first book sold more than two million copies, two more tomes followed (The Wild Silence and Landlines) and then a feature film in 2024, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs as Raynor and Moth. It was then that the story started to fall under serious scrutiny.
Journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou received an anonymous tip and began to pick apart the details of the book, publishing a report on its apparent inconsistencies in July 2025. For this one-off documentary, Hadjimatheou takes us inside her reporting and into the next stage of the story, speaking to people who knew Winn and Moth and dissecting the timeline of the book with a forensic eye.
It's a fascinating ride and, along with the steady drip of information that's revealed, the film also does a great job of showing us the emotional impact of it all. This ranges from Hadjimatheou's excitement as she realises that that anonymous tip (which she'd initially distrusted) was leading to something big, to the clear feelings of anger in the people she interviews, both those who knew the couple and who had been deeply moved by the book - particularly the parts about Moth's recovery from illness.
Taken together, it has the feel of watching a detective story unfold before your eyes, with Hadjimatheou as a kind of private eye.
If you want to see the Gillian Anderson-Jason Isaacs film, that's recently gone up on Prime Video. (73 minutes) [10]
The Salt Path
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs star in the film based on the controversial memoir
Year: 2024
Certificate: 12
[embedded content]The film is based on a best-selling but controversial memoir by Raynor Winn (played here by Gillian Anderson), which recorded the tribulations she and her husband Moth (Jason Isaacs) suffered after losing their family home, a disaster compounded by the diagnosis in Moth of a rare degenerative disease.
Homeless and penniless, yet undaunted by his health problems, the Winns decide to do something positive, so they take a tent and walk the mighty South West Coast Path through Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall.
The film chronicles their highs and lows along the way, and it's moving enough stuff, but the journey is too often a slog for us as well as for them, and you have to wonder if feature-film debutante Marianne Elliott - whose many credits are all in the theatre - was the correct choice of director?
The coastal scenery is certainly spectacular on the eye, while Isaacs and especially Anderson are both superb (if perhaps a little too handsome and well-groomed to wholly convince as a couple on their uppers). But the story could have been kept a lot more taut as the Winns encounter not just the kindness, but also the complacency, hostility and oddness of strangers.
After the film's cinema release in the middle of 2025, Winn's book has come in for some serious journalistic scrutiny - that may make watching the film now a little different. (115 minutes)
Death Cap: The Mushroom Murders
The extraordinary true story of a deadly poisoning in Australia
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
[embedded content]As true crime cases go, the 2023 story of a deadly mushroom poisoning in Australia is surely one of the most extraordinary out there. At first it all seemed like a terrible accident as, in July, toxic mushrooms eaten as part of a beef Wellington lunch led to the deaths of three people: 70-year-old Gail, her 70-year-old husband Don, and 66-year-old Heather Wilkinson - Gail's sister.
The deadly repast left another man, the Reverend Ian Wilkinson (Heather's husband), comatose in hospital, but he eventually woke up.
This wasn't a case of foraging gone awry, though, and detectives soon brought in the preparer of the meal, 48-year-old Erin Patterson, for questioning. Patterson was a stay-at-home mum who'd separated from her husband, and Don and Gail were her former in-laws. Why would she want to poison them, though?
We'll leave the documentary to reveal the rest of the story, especially because it does so with such aplomb, bringing in locals and journalists who covered the case.
It fleshes it out with style, too, and with a vein of dry Aussie wit running through some of the interviews - that's especially welcome because, in true crime, a little levity goes a long way. The footage of the local area isn't what you'd expect of rural Australia, either. The area of Victoria where the poisoning happened is called Gippsland and looks more like the Yorkshire Dales than some parched outback backwater.
It's certainly not the first place you'd expect a triple murder to occur over lunch, that's for sure. (Three episodes)
Born To Be Wild
Wildlife series following small endangered animals being raised by humans
Year: 2025
Certificate: PG
[embedded content]An entire wildlife series devoted to the raising of endangered animals by humans? This six-parter from Apple is on to a winner with that premise, showing oodles of footage of fluffy little lemurs, penguins and moon bears, along with lynx kittens, cheetah cubs and elephant calves being cared for by delicate human hands with the hope that, someday, they'll be ready to live in the wild.
The moon bears in particular are delightful but life doesn't always run smoothly for these sweet-looking creatures, so viewers both young and old should be steeled for the odd bit of tragedy. The overall tone of the series is reassuring and hopeful though, knitted together by the soothing tones of Hugh Bonneville as its narrator.
Expect to learn plenty along the way, starting in the jungles of north-east India with the adorable aforementioned bear cub, three-month-old Sagalee.
He was found scared and hungry, and is one of just 6,000 of his kind in the country - so the stakes of saving him are high. (Six episodes)
Fallout
Explosive video game adaptation from the creators of the HBO Westworld show, now back for series two
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
[embedded content]Video game adaptations used to have a bad name - does anyone remember Bob Hoskins playing the Italian plumber Mario in 1993's Super Mario Bros film? It's probably best that you don't.
Those days are now long gone, especially after HBO's The Last Of Us upped the dramatic ante in 2023 and won eight Emmy Awards for its trouble. Fallout looks set to continue that trend, coming as it does from Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, a producing duo with great expertise in serving TV audiences big and complex worlds.
And Fallout is certainly that - the games are set in a sprawling, post-apocalyptic wasteland centuries after a nuclear war has devastated the planet's surface.
Underneath that wasteland are The Vaults, in which cheery survivors have been living lives of order and relative luxury while those above scrabbled for scraps.
That culture clash is at the centre of the series, following Lucy (Yellowjackets' Ella Purnell) as she leaves the safety of The Vaults for the chaos above. 'Practically every person I've met up here has tried to kill me,' she despairs in her opening week. There's a lot of comedy in that clash and we meet a lot of eccentric characters as it unfolds, too, especially Justified's Walton Goggins as a roaming bounty hunter.
Fallout is primarily an epic action game though, and this ambitious and visually impressive series keeps that very much in mind. It should certainly please those in search of a little popcorn entertainment and, even if it doesn't quite reach the dramatic heights of The Last Of Us, it's also a rich evocation of an exciting world.
The latest second series returns to the life of Lucy, journeys to the city of New Vegas and adds a character played by Macaulay Culkin. (Two series)
IT: Welcome To Derry
Terrifying prequel series to Stephen King's clown story, set in small-town 1960s US
Year: 2025
Certificate: 18
[embedded content]Brace yourselves for this terrifying prequel series to Stephen King's clown story IT, which is set - as so many King tales are - in seemingly sleepy small-town Maine.
The town of Derry is a superficially cheery place where fear runs deep, from the school to the police department to the hatred of anything 'other' that sits in the eyes of its residents as they walk the streets.
Set mostly during the Cold War panic of the 1960s but also jumping around in time, Welcome To Derry gives us two plots to follow - first, the Stranger Things-style investigations by a number of troubled schoolchildren after one of their own goes missing, and second, the suspicious goings-on at the nearby US Air Force base, where African-American war veteran Major Hanlon (British actor Jovan Adepo) has just started a new job. How do those plots intertwine? You'll have to watch to find out.
Mixing a steady drip of jump scares into a near constant sense of tension, Welcome To Derry is a detailed, weirdly cosy viewing experience that places you right in the middle of a world filled with fear.
The young cast are varied and excellent, while Bill Skarsgard reprises his role as Pennywise the Clown from the two films and Madeleine Stowe has an intriguing role later on. The finish is strong, too - and hints at exciting things to come. Listen out for the links to The Shining, via the character of Dick Hallorann, as the series goes on. (Eight episodes)
Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber
Energetic telling of the origins of the ride-sharing app, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Year: 2022
Certificate: 15
[embedded content]Joseph Gordon-Levitt leads the cast of this industry biodrama charting the rise of ride-sharing giant Uber and the big personality behind it: Travis Kalanick, the since-disgraced co-founder of the company that was a unicorn disruptor of the taxi space, fighting every step of the way to get to the top and stay there.
Genius to some, narcissistic maniac to others, Kalanick (Gordon-Levitt) was ruthless in business, profligate with company money and ultimately presided over a toxic culture at Uber.
Don't feel sorry for him, when he resigned and sold his shares, he made £2.5billion.
This has excess written into it, with a zippy, self-congratulatory style like The Big Short, and a narrator (Quentin Tarantino) 'Englishing it up' with explainers of what the tech bros are actually up to.
It comes from the team behind Billions, a more fictionalised dive into the egos and dysfunction of big finance, and similarly explores how making the big bucks might be bold and exhilarating and a driver of change, but also frequently involves flirting with illegality and unethical practices. (Seven episodes)
The Princess Bride
Rob Reiner's twist on the classic fairytale story of true love, free to watch on YouTube
Year: 1987
Certificate: PG
[embedded content]It's always a pleasure to see this charming family film - the fairytale plot will keep young ones enchanted, while the script by William Goldman (who won Oscars for Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and All The President's Men) and direction from Rob Reiner will keep grown-ups on their toes.
Robin Wright and Cary Elwes play the star-crossed couple at the centre of its true love tale, while Mandy Patinkin - who later went on to a rather different role on TV, brooding away as FBI profiler Gideon in Criminal Minds - steals the show as revenge-obsessed fencing 'wizard' Inigo Montoya.
And then there's Andre the Giant as gentle thug Fezzik, Peter Cook as the Impressive Clergyman ('Mawwiage'), Billy Crystal as forest charlatan Miracle Max, Wallace Shawn as know-it-all Vizzini - the list of what's great about this film just goes on and on. Long story short? It's a real treat. (98 minutes)
Relay
Lily James and Riz Ahmed star in a thriller about corporate whistleblowers
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
[embedded content]You can tell you're in good hands from the confident opening scenes of this New York-set thriller.
Directed by David Mackenzie, who was also behind Starred Up and Taylor Sheridan's Hell Or High Water, it stars Lily James, Riz Ahmed and Sam Worthington, and is set in the world of corporate whistleblowers.
Ahmed plays a fixer who acts as an anonymous bridge between said whistleblowers (one of them played by James) and the companies they're trying to expose, while Worthington plays Dawson, a thug working for the company in question. The result is a tense cat-and-mouse thriller that's patiently directed and played throughout, and has a creative twist up its sleeve: the calls between Sarah (James) and Ash (Ahmed) take place through a relay service for the deaf, so the two barely interact with each other - at least at first.
Relay is proof, if proof were needed, that you don't need big action to make a modern thriller work (although there is a bit of that before the end), or even for its main characters to spend much time on screen together. Among the cast, the quietly charismatic Ahmed is particularly good at making this apparent absence seem like a real plus. (111 minutes)
The Great Flood
South Korean disaster epic about the creation of a new humanity
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
[embedded content]'Everything outside's a swimming pool,' says the little boy at the start of this South Korean disaster movie.
That's called 'foreshadowing' folks and, when his mother pulls the curtains on their high-rise home, she's in for a shock. Everything outside really is a swimming pool, and so we roll into The Great Flood, Netflix's disaster epic for Christmas 2025.
In 2024 they brought us La Palma, if you remember - that series about the Norwegians whose trip to the Canary Islands was blighted by volcanoes and tsunamis - but that took a while to actually get to the disaster. In The Great Flood, it's under way within the first ten minutes.
The flood is just the opening gambit, too - the film has plenty more up its sleeve as the mother, Gu An-na, is a research scientist and turns out to be crucial to the very survival of humanity.
The flood is the result of an asteroid impact and our future, dear reader, is now in the stars... (108 minutes)
Our Girls: The Southport Families
Moving documentary that hears from the parents of the three girls killed at a dance class in Southport
Year: 2025
We all have loved ones who are no longer with us and are dearly missed, so this special film will be relatable to everyone - but there is a matter of scale. It visits the families of three little girls - Alice da Silva Aguiar (aged nine), Elsie Dot Stancombe (aged seven) and Bebe King (aged six) - who were stabbed to death at their dance class in Southport on 29 July in 2024.
Their parents talk bravely about the horror of that day, but they also share joyful memories of their beautiful children. Lauren and Ben, for example, describe how their daughter, Bebe, was 'being very sassy about what to wear' on the morning of the class, while dads Sergio and David share their plans to raise funds and build a playground at the school attended by two of the girls to be a space for joy, remembrance and community.
It's not an easy watch by any means, but all of the parents are unanimous in their desire for their children to be remembered for who they were, not for what happened to them. (59 minutes)
Rob & Romesh Vs
The comic duo are well and truly out of their comfort zone in a show that's back for a new run
Year: 2019-
Certificate: 18
[embedded content]Watching a pair of comedians thrown in at the deep end has been a rich source of laughs for Sky's challenge show, although it wouldn't work nearly as well as it does were it not for the chemistry of the comics in question.
Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan have been friends for years and, as they haplessly try their hands at worlds as varied as art, the Olympics and Disney on Ice, will mercilessly wind each other up when one proves just slightly less useless at an activity than the other.
If you're after a couple of highlights to sample, we'd recommend the episode in which they're coached by tennis great Andy Murray (series three, episode four) and the duo's disastrous foray into the world of restaurants (series four, episodes three and four), in which it's genuinely lucky that no one died.
Series five opens with another corker, as Penn and Teller try to school Rob and Romesh in the ways of magic. Rob turns out to be so, so awful at it that Teller - usually a strictly silent man - is forced to speak in order to help him. Forays into K-pop, Crufts and classical music follow in that series, while the latest seventh run features the duo trying their hilariously hapless hands at Hollywood stunts on the set of The Fall Guy and trying to make it big in darts.
The most recent series opens with the duo in Bollywood where Romesh believes that Rob, against all expectations, could well make it big in the Indian film industry.
Is he just winding him up? This run will also feature them tackling the worlds of hip hop, Shakespeare and venturing into the jungle. (Eight series)
The Revenge Club
Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Martin Compston star in a comic thriller about exes exacting revenge
Year: 2025
Certificate: 18
[embedded content]Based on JD Pennington's novel The Othello Club, The Revenge Club is the story of a divorce support group that results in murder. Our way into this twisted tale is Emily (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), a betrayed and divorced PA we first see being interviewed by the police - what did she do, and why?
After that we're introduced to other divorcees, including quirky dog sitter Rachel (Sharon Rooney), brooding co-parent Calum (Martin Compston), intense ex-military man Steve (Douglas Henshall) and barely-there Rita (Meera Syal).
The Revenge Club is essentially a drama but it's got darkly comic blood flowing through its veins, especially as the group bond over their mutual bitterness and decide that, just maybe, 'an eye for an eye' might make them feel better than talking therapy.
This 'pound shop Ocean's 11' embark on a string of complicated revenge operations that are quite fun until, suddenly, they aren't. Edwards and Compston have a neat chemistry at the centre of it all and sell the anger of their sympathetic but twisted characters very neatly in a show that always seems to have a twist up its sleeve. On the downside, those of an already tense disposition may find themselves keen to fast forward some of the 'heists'. (Six episodes)
Soulmates (2020 series)
Succession's Sarah Snook and Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton star in the sci-fi anthology
Year: 2020
Certificate: 15
[embedded content]Clever and intriguing anthology series set 15 years after it was released in 2020.
In this heady time, Tinder has been dispensed with, as a scientist has discovered a seemingly foolproof way of matching humans to their true soulmate through the existence of 'soul particles'.
The path to true love proves to be extremely complicated, though, as people of all ages, sexualities and proclivities set out to try to find their other half in the show.
The first story opens with Sarah Snook playing Nikki, who thought she was happily married until science tempted her into the idea of finding a better match.
Throughout the series questions are asked about the nature of soulmates and whether knowing who yours is would actually be a good thing.
The largely British cast also includes Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton - in the story of a man attending a grief counselling session for people whose soulmate died before they could meet - and The Pale Horse's Georgina Campbell, who plays a woman surprised to discover that her match is also a woman.
Only one series was made of Soulmates but the film All Of You, which was released on Apple TV in September 2025, is set in the same world. (Six episodes)
References
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