It has been a huge week for fans of Squid Game, the enormously popular dystopian Netflix series about a competition turned death match. On Monday, the show’s creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, announced that there would be a second season of the drama. “Join us once more for a whole new round,” he said, to which any sane person who watched it would reply: “No thank you, it was quite horrific enough last time.”
Then, two days later, Netflix announced that not only can we watch more Squid Game, we can take part in it, as it has greenlit a real-life version and is looking for participants. If you have watched the series and yet still willingly sign a contract I suspect you might not possess the strategic genius Netflix claims to require.
Squid Game: The Challenge will offer, it’s said, the largest cast and cash prize in reality TV history, with 456 players (just like the show) and a prize of $4.56m (£3.7m). It was inevitable that there would be an official attempt to make its challenges “real” before some cheeky entrepreneur with a couple of acres of land and a tractor tried to do their own knock-off Squid Game experience, like those waterparks in the style of Total Wipeout or my favourite Christmas tradition, Disappointing Winter Wonderlands, with a chihuahua in reindeer antlers and children paying to sit on the knee of the nearest man with a beard. Official it is, then. Squid Game: The Challenge promises 10 episodes and “a series of games inspired by the original show – plus surprising new additions”, though I’m not sure that the original, which surprised its participants by letting them watch each other die, needed to be even more surprising. Presumably, the whole “to the death” thing will be left out. Health and safety gone mad, if you ask me. Without the threat of dying horribly, what remains, except 456 people playing hopscotch and marbles?
Perhaps the clue lies in Netflix calling this a “reality competition” rather than a straightforward game show; anyone with a passing interest in reality TV could argue that it is something of a bloodsport anyway. And if Squid Game: The Challenge works out, does this mean that Netflix will delve into its pockets for more series-to-competition type progressions? I look forward to Maid: The Challenge, in which contestants navigate a punishing benefits system while trying to look after a baby and hold down a job.
Lashana Lynch: a Miss Honey to delight Matilda’s newest fans
In the world of film news, the release of the first teaser trailer for Matilda the Musical was only slightly overshadowed by the release of a single photograph from the Barbie movie, of Ryan Gosling as Ken, which inspired more wholesome memes than I expected it to.
As beloved childhood memories go, Matilda is near-sacred territory, its characters still adored by bookish children of all ages. The film is an adaptation of the West End musical, so it promises not to tread on the toes of the 1996 film, which was a more straightforward (though American) take on Roald Dahl’s 1988 classic.
Even so, it is odd to see new actors playing those roles. Emma Thompson is the brutal Miss Trunchbull, casually shotputting children over the school fence, while Lashana Lynch is the new Miss Honey, the sweetest character in all of children’s literature.
I think back to the sheer pleasure of watching the old Matilda with my niece for the first time, or what turned out to be the first time of many, and how excited she’s going to be to see this at Christmas, with a new Miss Trunchbull and a new Miss Honey to call her own.
Beyoncé: back with a bang, not a whimper
Beyoncé has not released an album since Lemonade, in April 2016. I would say a lot has happened in the meantime, but to put it into context, back then people still thought Hillary Clinton would be the next president of the United States, Britain was still a member of the European Union and a pandemic was still something that bumped off Gwyneth Paltrow in the opening few minutes of Contagion.
Fans became suspicious that Beyoncé was about to release new material after she deleted the banners on her social media sites, which is the digital equivalent of a typewritten bulletin on a golden easel announcing the birth of a new royal baby. The royal baby is in fact a new album, her seventh, to be called Renaissance, a title that, if nothing else, will guarantee a sturdy spellcheck for anyone who has to write it down. It will be out at the end of July, which gives fans plenty of time to get truly hysterical about it, unlike when she stealth-released Beyoncé in 2013, causing mass panic among those who could not listen until they got home from work and therefore did not know why everyone was saying “surfboard”. Ah, innocent times.
It is, of course, a classy way of announcing an album (and pity poor Drake, releasing his aptly titled surprise album Honestly, Nevermind the next day), though if her overstated covershoot for British Vogue is any indication, it looks as if it isn’t going to be shy and retiring. Bring on the excess. I cannot wait.
• Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist
