Stay on the couch: The Love Hypothesis
Ali Hazelwood’s bestselling 2021 novel, which famously began life as Star Wars fan fiction, gets the rom-com treatment on Prime Video. Set in the world of STEM education, a grad student’s fake relationship with a professor inevitably becomes rather less fake. Sweet, funny and knowingly nostalgic for the great rom-coms of the late 1990s and early 2000s, soundtrack included. Pure Sunday-afternoon comfort. Just add snacks and bubbles.
Best to binge: Air Ambulance ER
If there’s one thing Air Ambulance ER proves, it’s that humans are remarkably good at having accidents. Bike crashes, car collisions, horse falls and, in one considerably less dramatic case, an unfortunate encounter with an ice-cream stick. On Prime Video, Britain’s doctor-led helicopter teams swoop in when things get serious. The medicine is remarkable, and it’s impossible to stop watching, slightly guiltily. One episode quickly becomes five.
Series delight: Ludwig
One of modern life’s reliable pleasures is discovering a favourite series is back. Slow Horses gets us every time, and so does the cosier Ludwig. Comedian, actor and prolific writer David Mitchell is gloriously cast as John “Ludwig” Taylor, a reclusive puzzle-setter who ends up impersonating his missing detective twin and proves alarmingly good at solving murders.
Series two finds him officially employed as a police consultant, though his brother’s disappearance continues to occupy him and his sister-in-law, played by Anna Maxwell Martin. There are fresh murders to untangle, an enjoyable police team and familiar faces popping up, including Stephen Merchant as a cocky snooker champion. Cambridge’s beautiful scenery makes the whole business particularly lovely to watch, but Mitchell’s genius for being the cleverest and most uncomfortable person in the room remains the attraction.
On the page: A Second Shot, Tom Eaton, Penguin Random House
If your idea of a good time involves a Richard Osman novel and a chair in the sun, well-known columnist and author Tom Eaton’s Arnold Prinsloo mysteries should be right up your alley. There’s an extra pleasure in finding this sort of funny, clever whodunit set on home turf, with people and places you recognise.
Following last year’s An Act of Murder, in which struggling actor Prinsloo had to clear his name related to a Joburg killing, A Second Shot finds him hiding from trouble at his mother’s house in the Karoo town of Victoria. Naturally, someone gets murdered.
An antique fair, small-town secrets and the threat of violence from back home keep things moving, but Eaton’s wit is the great delight. Perhaps not quite as good as the first outing, it’s nevertheless thoroughly engaging, with passages that make you laugh out loud. And we do mean actual guffaws, rather than the ones often promised by book jackets that never manifest.
On repeat: Orville Peck, Mule
A little yeehaw from Jozi. Joburg-born singer-songwriter Orville Peck is an international country star, known for his fringed masks, deep baritone and proudly queer take on the genre. Mule gets personal, taking on break-ups, burnout and rehab. It’s a raw, beautiful album and made to be listened to from start to finish. Start with Already Gone and A Little Too Late.
Go to the movies: Sense and Sensibility
We went in apprehensive: who could top Ang Lee and Emma Thompson’s joyous 1995 Sense and Sensibility? Georgia Oakley’s earthy, sober-minded new take is beautifully filmed, with excellent turns from actresses Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles. There’s a terrific supporting cast, too, and a thoughtful focus on the bond between the sisters — and the grim predicament of women whose futures depended so heavily on inheritance, marriage and men behaving decently. Enough, frankly, to make anyone take to their bed and stay there.
But Alan Rickman’s character, Colonel Brandon, and Hugh Laurie’s Mr Palmer of the previous version remain unbeaten; Sting and Trudie Styler’s nepo baby Eliot Sumner makes a particularly discombobulating replacement for the latter. There’s much to admire, but we missed the levity, warmth and sheer pleasure of the earlier film. Worth a cinema ticket, not a permanent place in the DVD collection.
The new cool thing: Mahjong
Move over, bridge. Friends in Australia, New Zealand and the US are raving about mahjong, the Chinese tile game of strategy, skill and luck. Now Jozi girl Debbie Wright is back in Joburg after discovering the US version in North Carolina. Her business, The Mahjong Social, offers beautiful sets, accessories and online beginner lessons, with a community growing around the table. Friendly competition and something to do over wine besides pretending to talk about books? Sign us up.
In our ears: The New Yorker and Rosebud
There’s no shortage of good podcasts. In fact, the problem is to choose one, so we’ve picked two.
First up, The New Yorker Radio Hour. Each standalone episode dives into something worth knowing about through interviews, reporting and conversations with writers, artists, filmmakers and political figures. Recent favourites range from Malcolm Gladwell on the US’s gun problem to Bernie Sanders on data centres, which had us Googling the location of our nearest one. Smart, curious and likely to send you down a rabbit hole.
For something completely different, try Rosebud. Veteran British broadcaster and master raconteur Gyles Brandreth asks famous and fascinating people one deceptively simple question: “What is your very first memory?” From David Mitchell and Richard Ayoade to Gary Oldman and Joanna Lumley, it sparks conversations that wander through childhood, careers and entire lives. Charming, funny and often unexpectedly moving.
Find both wherever you get your podcasts.
On our radar: Yung Lean x GENER8ION
To many FM readers, Yung Lean x GENER8ION may sound like a random string of words. Bear with us. Swedish rapper Yung Lean has teamed up with GENER8ION, the electronic music project of French producer Surkin and filmmaker Romain Gavras. Their explosive US TV debut at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards brought the viral STORM video’s prep-school chaos to the stage, complete with a mesmerising dance crew. Impressive? Absolutely. But we can’t help thinking South Africans have seen something rather similar before. A bloody good war cry, anyone? YouTube it immediately. You’ll see what we mean.
