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THE MAN:  Four ordinary, sebaceous teenage boys go to a comprehensive school in a dreary British suburb. Their clothes are bad, their social lives worse. They try to gatecrash a party; they go caravanning; one of them forgets his PE kit. From such unpromising material Iain Morris fashioned “The Inbetweeners”, a slow-burn comedy of post-pubescent failure and embarrassment that was launched on Channel 4’s baby sister E4 in 2008, and has become its most successful programme yet. The show has been sold to 90 countries, MTV has made a pilot version for America, and a film featuring the quartet on holiday in Crete is coming in August.

Though he says that “pretty much everything” that happens in the show is based on his own, or friends’, teenage misadventures, Morris bears little resemblance to his characters. Will, the hapless, tank top-wearing anti-hero of “The Inbetweeners”, is a mess of thwarted ambition who can barely get a snog. His creator, on the other hand, is an urbane and witty 37-year-old, about to get married, who has had a hand in some of television’s finest recent comedies, including a stint as commissioning editor on “Peep Show”, and working, with his co-writer Damon Beesley, for “Flight of the Conchords”.  read more »

It is always a pleasure to peek into the lives of the rich, successful and good-looking. Better still if they're talented; better yet if they're strange. Valentino Garavani, a star Italian fashion designer (couturier is the more appropriate term) of the past 45 years and the subject of Matt Tyrnauer's documentary, "Valentino: The Last Emperor", delivers on all counts.

It's easy to see why Tyrnauer, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, alighted on his subject. Valentino––who looks like Michael Douglas baked at 450º for three hours--oozes "icon" from every pore. There's the coppery helmet of hair, the baronial manner, the villas and chateaux and ski trips in Gstaad. There is the quintet of pugs, the yacht, and the penchant for aphorism. "I love beauty," Valentino explains in an early moment of the film. "Is not my fault."

The film's purview extends beyond the designer's personality quirks, of course. If Valentino is imperious and unabashedly snobbish, he is also one of the last men to know the ins and outs of haute couture. Karl Lagerfeld--who makes an appearance in the film--is another one of these dwindling creatures. When they go, couture as high art will go with them.  read more »