Log on to lockdown lifelines for parents

Ellie Gibson and Helen Thorn from Scummy Mummies podcast give us their sage - and realistic - advice...

'Practising mindfulness is like going to a gym, you have to exercise the muscle and it works with anxiety'

Time to get moving again

A widow, a millennial and a cup of Lapsang tea

Don't buy new — stitch it. Vicky Frost has a guide to becoming a sewing machine

How to look after your body physically while WFH

Transform your home with these festive decorations

It's not too late to join

Think time-restricted eating is just another diet trend? Think again...

The former First Lady has always been a believer that being highly educated and having an interest in high fashion don't have to be mutually exclusive

From learning Spanish to playing music, Happity is helping to keep toddlers occupied at home

We could all do with a strong dose of escapism right now, so each week we'll be highlighting a banging boutique to bookmark for when the world presses play again

Work up a sweat while protecting your locks

For the latest episode of At Home With...JP Saxe opens up about his song with girlfriend Julia Michaels and challenges Amira Hashish to sing her verse of If The World Was Ending

From Ayurvedic cooking to traybake heroes, these are the cookbooks we've turned to over the last seven weeks

Merry Christmas, glitterati! It’s a cracker of a lineup, but who will win that most sparkling of festive prizes, the Silver Star? Join us to find out

Afternoon all, hope you’re having a lovely Christmas day.

There’s no official liveblog for today’s Strictly Christmas special, but we’ve opened a blog so you can add your special brand of festive sparkle in the comments below. It’s a Christmas cracker of a lineup, featuring lots of our favourites from previous years – Chizzy Akudolu, Debbie McGee, Gemma Atkinson, Joe Sugg, Mark Wright and Richard Arnold. It’s also very much a couples’ choice – both Gemma and Joe will be dancing with their real-life partners Gorka and Dianne, which is all rather lovely.

The massive popularity of horror films like Joker and It have been a real downer for happy, family clowns. Mark Wilding hears how the entertainers are fighting back

In the corner of Matthew Indge’s kitchen is a photograph of the entertainer Kerby Drill. For many years, Drill was both a clown and a comic voice of authority. He toured the nation’s schools and appeared on television shows, often promoting road safety, until he passed away last year, aged 97. Indge describes him as his “clown hero”, but he recognises that Drill represents a very different era of clowning. “The truth is,” Indge says, “these days, I don’t know if kids are going to listen to a clown saying be careful on the road.”

Indge has been clowning for 32 years, since he was eight years old. In a way that wasn’t necessary for Drill, Indge must now take steps to prove to his audiences that he doesn’t represent a dark and sinister threat. When we meet, he’s preparing for a performance as Zaz the Clown at a five-year-old’s birthday party, and “just to save me any problems,” he says, “I’ll make up in front of the kids” – an attempt to provide reassurance that there’s a benign performer behind the mask.

H from Steps brought tears to the judges’ eyes with his performance. Now, more than ever, we must cherish these moments of LGBTQ visibility

One of the most peculiar aspects of realising that you are LGBTQ is the loneliness. Your immediate family is unlikely to belong to the minority you may feel you have been arbitrarily parachuted into. You may be fortunate that they have supportive attitudes; many are not. The odds are that you have heard derogatory terms about LGBTQ people thrown around the playground not once or twice but like confetti. On TV and film screens, on advertising billboards, in magazines and in books, society’s expectations about settling down with someone of a different gender will bellow at you. You may struggle to come out to yourself, let alone anyone else, and fear judgment and rejection.

That is why major cultural events, such as the first same-sex performance on ITV’s Dancing on Ice last night, are so important: they can be lifelines for the closeted, whether they are aged 13 or 78. Acceptance for LGBTQ people struggling with their sexuality is like water to a sponge: anything that showcases and values our existence has a profound impact. That’s why H from Steps – one half of the couple – told the judges that it was emotional, in part because “it means so much to so many people and the world is ready for this”. It’s why the actor John Barrowman broke down in tears “because of seeing two men who represent someone who is like me and to skate as well as you did”. What’s all the fuss, the usual suspects will cry, but it matters precisely because society, and particularly currently emboldened bigots, makes such a fuss about anyone who deviates from a heterosexual norm.

The ‘queen of daytime television’ created the two soap operas with her husband William Bell

The co-creator of The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful, Lee Phillip Bell, has died aged 91.

Bell, an accomplished broadcast journalist and talk show host, and her husband William created two of the world’s most prominent soap operas, which have run continuously for over 47 years, and aired more than nearly 20,000 combined episodes.

We are all devastated by the passing of Lee Phillip Bell. A television pioneer and powerhouse in her own right, she elevated daytime television in co-creating “The Young and the Restless” with her equally iconic husband, Bill Bell. We sadly mourn our true matriarch. pic.twitter.com/V5nUaz4N5E

Lee Phillip Bell, Rest In Peace....Queen of Daytime Television https://t.co/4wIueloEF0

We are deeply saddened by the news of the passing of a member of our CBS family and Daytime community, Emmy Award winning broadcast journalist, and co-creator of Y&R and B&B, Lee Phillip Bell. She was a pioneer in television and will be missed dearly. pic.twitter.com/6BYpUYQwaU

Netflix is cutting down traffic to ease internet capacity as more people work from home. Here’s what it means for Australians’ streaming experience

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Netflix has agreed to reduce the data it uses to stream movies and TV shows across Australia as more and more people are working from home due to the coronavirus shutdown. But what will it mean for your viewing habits while you’re staying at home?

Related: Australian government asks Netflix and Stan to reduce data to avoid broadband overload

Related: As cinemas go dark, the film industry may go straight to Netflix

TV and news website audiences are sky-high but, with few ads or new shows, future looks fraught

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From TV channels running out of shows, to newspapers facing the threat of closure, the British media industry is facing a financial shock that will permanently reshape how we consume news and entertainment.

Media analysts and insiders warn the pandemic will have a long-lasting impact on the country’s cultural life, predicting that changes in consumer behaviour expected to take more than five years may have happened in five weeks, with many people unlikely to entirely return to their pre-lockdown habits.

A comedy that never quite whinges about new motherhood, but is frank and self-deprecating about its difficulties

I know this is a column about shows you recommend watching in isolation, but I’m not sure if this one is comforting or excruciating right now. Maybe both! But if you’re self-isolating with small children, it’s almost definitely the latter.

The Letdown is the story of a new mum, Audrey (Alison Bell), struggling to cope with her changed circumstances. As the primary caregiver to her daughter Stevie, she’s largely confined to her home. She feels inadequate, out of control, confused, and frustrated as her previous life – friends, parties, a semi-stable career! – slips out of grasp.

Related: Orphan Black: gripping sci-fi series shows that in dark times, family (or a 'clone club') prevails

Related: The Bold Type: candy-coloured take on millennial women shines with hope and comfort

Ricky Gervais’s After Life struggles second time round, as 21st-century London’s answer to Peaky Blinders gets off to a violent start. And how long can live shows survive via video-call?

After Life (Netflix)
Gangs of London (Sky Atlantic)
Emergence (Fox)
Twin (BBC Four) | iPlayer
The Graham Norton Show (BBC One) | iPlayer
The Mash Report (BBC Two) | iPlayer
Have I Got News for You (BBC One) | iPlayer

Ricky Gervais is, take your pick, ever reinventive (a la Madonna, Lady Gaga, the royals) or ever mutating (the worst kind of spirally viruses, the royals). A year ago, in Tony Johnson, subject of his latest drama, After Life, he combined aspects of past characters: The Office’s gloriously unself-aware Brent; the more savvy Andy Millman in Extras; the saccharine platitudes that sat so ill in Derek alongside gags about mental health or other disabilities. After Life was a surprising runaway hit on Netflix, for an arguably slight comedy about a very singular, small-town man’s depression after the loss of his wife, and how an angry man learned to be kind again.

Broadcaster considers plans to restart production on many TV series halted by pandemic

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The BBC could put actors and directors in quarantine and remove the studio audience from Strictly Come Dancing under plans to help restart television production after the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the industry.

The proposals, which could affect everything from EastEnders to light entertainment and high-end dramas, are being considered as broadcasters face up to the prospect of enormous gaps in their schedules after much of British television production was stopped dead in mid-March.

Related: No Señor Agüero, but BBC Bitesize kicks it out of the park

Related: How TV news hosts get camera-ready in lockdown

Earlier this week, Tencent announced a big new update for PUBG Mobile (Free) on iOS and Android. The version 0.18.0 …

Continue reading "‘PUBG Mobile’ 0.18.0 Is Rolling Out Now on iOS and Android with Mad Miramar, a New Results UI, and a Whole Lot More"

Pokemon GO (Free) from Niantic has been improving with letting people play the game in one place or at home. …

Continue reading "PokeCoin System Changes Are Coming to ‘Pokemon GO’ as Niantic Begins Testing in Australia"

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for May 7th, 2020. Like most Thursdays, today is mostly about …

Continue reading "SwitchArcade Round-Up: ‘Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath’ Coming May 26th, ‘Slayin 2’ and Today’s Other New Releases, the Latest Sales, and More"

Last year, Square Enix brought two SaGa games to the west on PC, console, and mobile platforms. Romancing SaGa Re;universe …

Continue reading "‘Romancing SaGa Re;Universe’ Pre-Orders Are Now Live on the App Store Revealing the Release Date for iOS and Android"

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for May 8th, 2020. Today was basically a nightmare scenario for …

Continue reading "SwitchArcade Round-Up: ‘Fury Unleashed’, ‘Stone’, and Today’s Other New Releases, the Latest Sales Featuring ‘Saints Row IV’ and More"

Chess-based, card-based, roguelike dungeon crawler. And you might as well throw puzzler on top of it too. That’s quite a …

Continue reading "‘Pawnbarian’ is a Chess-Based, Card-Based, Roguelike Dungeon Crawler Coming to Mobile and Desktop"