From Rockstar Chefs to La Bola Negra: The Week's Rave Reviews

Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay reunite on BBC iPlayer in Rise of the Rockstar Chefs, the week's top-rated television pick. The documentary details their journeys to culinary stardom and their infamous feud, with Heston Blumenthal also appearing. Reviewer Michael Hogan called it "a tasty tale of pan-throwing, precision plating and the obsessive pursuit of perfection," adding: "If you enjoy watching angry men grating truffles and tweezing micro-herbs, Christmas has come early."

What else is worth watching?

Blue Planet III is streaming now on BBC iPlayer, presented by David Attenborough, who is now 100 years old. Jack Seale wrote: "If we stop requiring it to be another landmark and appreciate it as just another wildlife series, Blue Planet III is a corker." The series shows shrimp sawing off a starfish's arm.

Stick returns to Apple TV for a second season, with Owen Wilson's ageing golf pro Pryce Cahi weighing a comeback. Black Doves brings Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw back to Netflix for a spy thriller, with Ambika Mod joining as a new assassin. Rachel Aroesti praised Whishaw as "magnetic," a hitman who "offs people with a sweet melancholy that makes you feel as if he's the real victim." HBO Max's folk horror Yaga stars Hudson Williams in two roles, with Carrie-Anne Moss as a possible witch.

Which film leads the pack?

La Bola Negra, in cinemas now, threads three stories from distinct eras into a triptych about gay sexuality in Spain. Peter Bradshaw called it "handsomely produced, lovingly detailed and confidently constructed, a rich and rewarding movie." The film is already tipped for Oscar contention.

Bradshaw also reviewed three more releases:

• I Play Rocky: Anthony Ippolito plays the young Sylvester Stallone in the making-of tale, "an eerie likeness" with "the same seductively slurred voice."
• Ramayana: Rise of a Legend: India's most expensive film ever, blending Lord of the Rings and The Lion King.
• Raise the Red Lantern: Zhang Yimou's 1991 drama, rereleased, with Gong Li "superb" as the fourth mistress.

One in a Million, from directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes, follows a Syrian mother and daughter over a decade. Phil Hoad called it "a wrenchingly immediate demonstration of the neglected flip side" of immigration debates.

Who won the book prizes?

Alexander: God, King, Man by Edmund Richardson won the £50,000 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction this week. Reviewer Ioan Marc Jones called it "a riot from start to finish... full of horror and violence, but laced with wonder and comedy."

China Miéville's 1,200-page epic The Rouse won the Goldsmiths prize. Stuart Kelly argued Miéville should be compared to Roberto Bolaño: "maximalist, dense, disorienting and discomfiting." Other picks include Min Jin Lee's American Hagwon, compared to Middlemarch; Marina Litvinenko's memoir A Life in Fragments, published twenty years after her husband's murder; and Laura Kuenssberg's Pay Attention.

What should you listen to?

La Roux's Old Flames tops the album list, with Elly Jackson "more interested in journeying to the other side of heartbreak than relitigating it," wrote Alim Kheraj. Simon Rattle's third recording of Stravinsky's complete 1910 Firebird score with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is "the swiftest," per Clive Paget. Jazz trumpeter Enrico Rava's Fearless Five with Joe Lovano release Corners, and Bassvictim deliver their fourth project in two years. Gilla Band's Pugnello packs 42 minutes of noise into what Alexis Petridis called "an appropriately anxious, unpredictable soundtrack" — or an "exhilaratingly cathartic" one.