Episode description

Actor Paul Giamatti and director Alexander Payne on The Holdovers, their award-winning film about the unlikely friendship between a curmudgeonly teacher, a grieving mum and a troubled teen that forms when they’re stuck together over Christmas at a New England prep school.

Critics Stephanie Merritt and Max Liu review a new novel, The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez. Nunez has won many prizes for her fiction and in The Vulnerables turns her attention to the pandemic through a tale that focuses on a woman, a parrot, and a Manhattan penthouse apartment. They also review the new Disney+ television series, The Artful Dodger, in which Jack Dawkins has moved to Australia leaving behind his youthful pickpocketing and becoming a respected doctor. However the arrival of Fagin threatens to return him to criminality.

Presented by Tom Sutcliffe Produced by Olivia Skinner