Fandom memes, influencers and TikTok deal helped secure industry’s holy grail: gen Z loyalty

There are not many plaudits left for The Celebrity Traitors, which has delivered tension, crowd-pleasing ineptitude and the most famous fart in television history.

Yet for all the show’s achievements, one in particular – a feat that TV executives across the globe have been desperate to deliver – may stand out as the most impressive: it has got gen Z watching live TV.

It starts with singing, banter or enthusiastic goal celebrations – and leads to so much more. Six groups of fan friends share how they met

Like so many football fans, I have my own routines and rituals with which I tie together the home games of a league season. Last year, one such routine involved the older gentleman in the seat to my right. I’d nod hello and, above the strains of pre-match music, ask him what he thought of Norwich’s chances – 23 times I asked, and 23 times he replied along the lines of: “We’ll probably get thumped” or “I don’t see where our goals are coming from.” A shred of contempt would be spared for the referee. Always, the referee was known to him and, always, I’d be forewarned that this or that referee was an “arsehole”, a “wanker”, or – once – “an arsehole and a wanker”.

This neighbour of mine was a retired engineer, a Norfolk boy, and a follower of both first team and academy, home and away. He was just one of thousands with a season ticket at the back of Carrow Road’s lower Barclay stand: a Saturday afternoon companion, a stranger at the start of the last season who became a little less strange as the matches went by. I was able to glean, for example, that after decades of loyal (if pessimistic) fandom, he would soon be moving to Yorkshire with his partner, unable to ignore his dreams of the Dales. He had already decided that he wouldn’t be renewing his season ticket. My first year in this part of the ground was his last.

This extraordinarily tight child kidnap drama knits all its threads together brilliantly – and the mighty Snook of Succession fame shines as a mother whose son is missing

Look, I am a mother, a neurotic and – if one of my HRT patches sloughs off without me noticing – very quickly a clinical paranoiac. But even if that were not true, this latest tale of a playdate gone unthinkably wrong would have me firmly in its grip. All Her Fault, an adaptation of bestselling thriller writer Andrea Mara’s 2021 book of the same name, braids a number of popular TV trends together, interrogating White Lotus-style the phenomenon of middle-class US affluence and the protections it offers and corruptions it encourages, a missing child narrative and an examination of the penalty women pay for motherhood. It is rare that all these things are held in balance, without at least one element becoming preachy or the thriller part becoming baggy or preposterous, but All Her Fault manages it brilliantly.

We are plunged straight into the thick of things as wealthy wealth manager Marissa Irvine (Succession’s mighty Sarah Snook) arrives to pick up her five-year-old son Milo from a playdate at the home of another school mum, Jenny (Dakota Fanning). But when she reaches the supposed address, the woman who answers the door is not Jenny, has never heard of her, or Jenny’s nanny Carrie (Sophia Lillis) who was in charge of the playdate, or Milo. It soon becomes clear that no one has seen Milo since Carrie picked him up from school. He’s gone, his online tracker found smashed to bits in the school car park, and he stays gone even after the time a ransom demand would usually have been received.

Money talks – and his essay denouncing ‘near-term emissions goals’ at Cop30 mostly argues the case for letting the ultra-rich off the hook

Let’s begin with the fundamental problem: Bill Gates is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about political realities. His latest essay on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He writes as if there were no such thing as political power, and no such thing as billionaires.

His main contention is that funds are very limited, so the delegates at this month’s climate summit in Brazil should direct money away from “near-term emissions goals” towards climate “adaptation” and spending on poverty and disease.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Two midweek matches in England had a backdrop of war and geopolitics, but only one drew large protests

How would you feel if the owner of the football club you support was implicated, even as those implications are repeatedly denied, in famine, ethnic cleansing and the deaths of 1,500 men, women and children?

Compare this with the more familiar list of bad things football club owners do, the real sack‑the‑board stuff. Failure to buy a striker. Inadequate Showing Of Ambition. The hiring and/or firing of David Moyes. Mike Ashley was pretty annoying. He had shops full of quilted coats hung really high up close to the ceiling.

Popularity of Britain’s top mouser – ‘the guy to meet in No 10’ – to feature in documentary series

He’s on his sixth prime minister, has watched presidents and princes walk through the black door of No 10, and will soon become the longest continuous resident of Downing Street since Pitt the Younger.

The landscape of British politics has changed a lot in the past 15 years, but Larry the cat has remained a reassuring constant. Now his enduring popularity – the like of which some of his temporary owners would kill for – is to feature in a new Channel 4 documentary series exploring Britain’s love of cats. For his fans, the spotlight has been a long time coming.

Energy firms and charities urge chancellor to avoid short-term fix that could also harm low-income households

Rachel Reeves has been told that cutting funding for home insulation at the budget would risk the UK’s climate goals and hurt low-income households in a joint intervention by energy firms, fuel poverty charities and environmental groups.

In a letter to the chancellor, more than 60 groups and companies urged Reeves not to take such a damaging “short-term fix” to slash funding for more energy-efficient homes to pay for a reduction in energy bills.

Exclusive: Detainees at Rakefet include nurse and teenager who have been deprived of natural light since January

Israel is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza isolated in an underground jail where they never see daylight, are deprived of adequate food and barred from receiving news of their families or the outside world.

The detainees include at least two civilians who are being held without charge or trial: a nurse detained in his scrubs, and a young food seller, according to lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) who represent both men.

Government and water companies are devising emergency plans for worst water shortage in decades

Water companies and the government are drawing up emergency plans for a drought next year more extreme than we have seen in decades.

Executives at one major water company told the Guardian they were extremely concerned about the prospect of a winter with lower than average rainfall, which the Met Office’s long-term forecast says is likely. They said if this happened, the water shortfall would mean taking drastic water use curtailment measures “going beyond hosepipe bans”.

Exclusive: Imran Patel, who resigned last year after reports about his conduct, is being investigated by the IOPC

A former Metropolitan police officer allegedly used sex workers while on duty in the midst of a major investigation into behavioural standards, the Guardian can reveal.

Britain’s largest police force has been described as “institutionally misogynistic” after widespread claims that a “toxic” sexist culture has been allowed to thrive for decades.