Journalist | Writer | Critic
OUT 2 July 2026
In Rate This Book Benji Wilson – who both rates and gets rated as part of his job as a critic – looks at how star ratings have become as much a part of modern discourse as language itself.
We rate everything, we get rated and a dropped star here or there can make or break products and people. The importance of a five-star rating has seen the system gamed so that, ironically, an emblem of trust can no longer be trusted. Reviews are now used as both bait and blackmail.
But how did we get here? How has the pandemic and a corresponding lack of human connection increased our reliance on a number between one and five for our understanding of the world? And what has this reliance on something so reductive done to our ability to assess things for ourselves?
In Rate This Book Benji Wilson unpicks the history, psychology and impact of star ratings and asks what, if anything, should replace them.
ABOUT
Benji Wilson is a journalist based in London. He is a feature writer and interviewer for The Sunday Times, TV critic for The Telegraph and a columnist and critic for Private Eye. He is also the London correspondent for Emmy magazine as well as writing for USA Today and the Sydney Morning Herald.
Benji writes about television, books, film, sport, tech and media. He is a regular TV reviewer on BBC Radio, chairs panels for Bafta, the BFI, HBO, Netflix and Amazon, and writes film and television production notes for the BBC's Natural History Unit, Sixteen Films and all broadcasters.
recent work
Charlie Brooker
Kate Winslet
House of the Dragon