From a rugby great to a former MP, LGBTQ stars spill the beans on the shows, songs and films that made them understand their identity

Bronski Beat – Smalltown Boy

The comedian, 41, talks about parents, children, her hot blonde cheerleader days and not lying about her love of money

I was an anxious child. I wanted to please everyone and do everything perfectly. My mother pretty much treated me as an equal and I had a lot of really cool feminist women to look up to. The men were not so impressive.

My childhood was very happy. My parents had full-time jobs and my dad also had golf, so my two younger sisters and I were left to our own devices a lot of the time, which was a good thing. We didn’t have screens, so we’d come up with our own little games.

My parents divorced when I was 15. It was acrimonious and they’ve never been in the same room together since. It helped me when I left the father of my eldest daughter, Violet. I knew from experience there’s a peaceful and kind way to split.

I got the message early on that the best thing you could be as a young woman was pretty, because all the female role models in my family were glamorous. But I wasn’t pretty: I was awkward and said the wrong things. So I changed gears as a teenager: I decided to become a hot blonde cheerleader who prioritised boys and partying. There were poor choices.

I have not had surgery on my face, but I think I will have a facelift in the next 10 years. I acknowledge that I am poisoned by my culture. I do still value being pretty and I do get rewarded for looking glamorous.

Biology pulled me into having two more children [with husband and former high school sweetheart Bobby Kootstra] by saying, “You’re 35. Do you want to have more kids or not?” So that’s the road I went down, but I think I’d be equally fulfilled had I continued on my previous path: Violet and I could be living in New York City. I could be on a jet right now.

My love language is intimacy. I want to tell people about my life and I want them to tell me about theirs. That’s what my comedy is about. I don’t have a choice, but to be authentic. That is what people are attracted to.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love money. It makes me feel safe and accomplished. I feel very lucky to be offered huge sums, comparatively, to go and have fun. It seems rude to say no.

Any time I’ve stuck my head above the parapet, I’ve done it unknowingly – almost. If I think something is unfair and it’s happening right in front of me, then I do what I think is right in the moment. I don’t properly consider the outcomes of things. Maybe that’s the best way to be.

I am very mentally robust. It makes me impervious to criticism. I’m not trying to anticipate how people might want me to behave. Some of that comes with age. I go to bed every night and there are no voices in my head giving me anxiety about anything, because every day I do myself as honestly proud as I can.

Battleaxe, Katherine Ryan’s new tour, will be in venues across the UK from September (livenation.co.uk)

The British musician’s new album is everywhere but it took her 15 years to go from Myspace to the White House

As someone who existed outside the mainstream for much of her early career, Charli xcx has come a long way. The British pop star who was first noticed via her Myspace page is not only responsible for the meme of the summer, she has even become an influential factor in the turbulent presidential elections across the Atlantic.

“Can’t believe Charli xcx is successfully doing foreign intervention in a US election as an album marketing tactic,” one fan posted on X after Kamala Harris’s campaign fully embraced the singer’s endorsement.

Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman’s superhero odd couple are flung together in a gagtastic if sloppy action comedy that maxes out its 15 certificate

If there’s a more obnoxious film this year, I’ll book myself on an all-expenses trip to “the Void” (a dumping ground for reject mutants, superheroes and sundry franchise miscellanea, which Deadpool, irreverent scamp that he is, describes as “a bit Mad Maxy”). This isn’t unexpected. Obviously this movie is obnoxious. It’s directed by Shawn Levy (Free Guy), whose approach is to deploy cinematic winks and ironic air quotes, and it stars Ryan Reynolds, who has made a career from walking the precarious line that divides lovable from punchable. It isn’t even necessarily a bad thing: a film can be obnoxious and simultaneously very funny, and Deadpool & Wolverine is frequently hilarious. But it’s also slapdash, repetitive and shoddy looking, with an overreliance on meme-derived gags and achingly meta comic fan in-jokes. It’s going to be huge.

Already paired up in a series of Marvel comic books, Deadpool (Reynolds) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) make for an entertaining, if explosive movie double act. They have plenty in common: both are self-healers, both have authority issues, both have monster-sized substance abuse problems. But their differences – slashed, stabbed and punched out in close combat in the back of a Honda minivan – are what gives the film its juice. And by juice I mean blood; what with the gore and the risque gags, the film earns every last month of its 15 certificate.

Their song about Manchester buses got them a Foo Fighters support slot. Now the four-piece punk band are hoping to pack in their day jobs

Not every up-and-coming band gets hand-picked to support the Foo Fighters at Old Trafford cricket ground. Even fewer earn that accolade off the back of a song, Buses, decrying the cost of public transport in their home city. Yet that’s what happened in June to all-female four-piece Loose Articles. Ahead of the show, bassist and singer Natalie Wardle told Manchester World that they apparently got the gig after Dave Grohl and co had heard a song “about why we hate a bus in Manchester, and they must have loved that. It was crazy.”

A going concern since 2019, Loose Articles have only just released their debut album, nine lurching punk vignettes of quotidian reportage with nods to the Raincoats and the Fall. Their songs are not afraid to embrace humour and politics – as Wardle told 360° Sound: “We go from talking about karaoke to talking about climate change.”

Scream if You Wanna Go Faster is out now on Alcopop! Loose Articles play Rough Trade Nottingham on 30 July and Rough Trade Liverpool, 1 August

The future is here, whether some like it or not, and artificial intelligence is already impacting the film industry. But just how far can, and should, it go?

Last year, Rachel Antell, an archival producer for documentary films, started noticing AI-generated images mixed in with authentic photos. There are always holes or limitations in an archive; in one case, film-makers got around a shortage of images for a barely photographed 19th-century woman by using AI to generate what looked like old photos. Which brought up the question: should they? And if they did, what sort of transparency is required? The capability and availability of generative AI – the type that can produce text, images and video – have changed so rapidly, and the conversations around it have been so fraught, that film-makers’ ability to use it far outpaces any consensus on how.

“We realized it was kind of the wild west, and film-makers without any mal-intent were getting themselves into situations where they could be misleading to an audience,” said Antell. “And we thought, what’s needed here is some real guidance.”

Marvel get sweary as Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman snap on the spandex, and TikTok’s favourite rap star finally releases her debut album

Deadpool & Wolverine
Out now
Way back when, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) was the irreverent, rebellious one, in contrast to the more earnest X-Men such as Professor Xavier. Now he’s paired with Deadpool, the guy who represents the zenith (or nadir) of snook-cocking superhero snark. Comic-book quippery with Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman.

The jeopardy of a zombie show is surely whether the characters get bitten to death or not – but somehow the stars manage to survive endlessly. Will the spinoffs ever cease?

Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there. You just caught me writing a script for AMC’s mega-franchise The Walking Dead, which finally finished in 2022 after 177 episodes and has now splintered into a number of spin-off shows which are basically just the same. I’ve got the most obvious thing in there early (a scene where someone desperately tugs on another character’s arm and goes: “Please, we have to go!” while a mass of zombies get closer and closer to pushing the door down), so just need to pad out the other 55 minutes.

What else? Oh, of course: I need someone to get bitten by a zombie and slowly transform into a zombie but the person who has to kill them is also their brother or sister or wife, so they dilly-dally and either they do kill them in the end but become a shell of a person afterwards – or they mess about so long that they also get bitten by a zombie and die. Got to have an adult having an unbearable conversation with a child, obviously. A scene where a man gets a rifle out of the flatbed of a truck and goes: “No, you stay here – it’s safer,” before messing up their mission in a way where a second person could have been really helpful. A rumour about another city actually being safe, someone’s lost their husband and can’t find them, and the group taking refuge in a building you wouldn’t expect them to take refuge in. Right, that’s 60 pages. AMC, I’ll send you an invoice.

Singer says she feels honoured to have been part of event, her first live on-stage performance since 2020

• Céline Dion at the Paris Olympics review – a dazzling and emotional return

Céline Dion has said she is “so full of joy” after making a triumphant return to the stage in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

The star, who has been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a neurological disorder, sang Édith Piaf’s Hymne à l’amour on the Eiffel Tower for a global audience of millions in her first live onstage performance since early 2020.

Former first lady, who has been mostly absent as her husband campaigns, has never told her own story at length before

The former first lady Melania Trump has a memoir coming out this fall, Melania, billed by her office as “a powerful and inspiring story of a woman who has carved her own path, overcome adversity and defined personal excellence”.

It’s the first memoir by Trump, who has been mostly absent as her husband, the former president Donald Trump, seeks to return to the White House.

Artist known for photographic work was commissioned to create A Taste of Home in Terminal 4 tube station

The UK needs more public art that confronts the major issues of the day, according to Joy Gregory, the award-winning artist who has just unveiled a new project at Heathrow airport inspired by more than 100 asylum seekers.

Gregory, who is known for her photographic work and won the £110,000 Freelands award recently, was commissioned by Transport for London (Tfl) to create 24 billboards mounted in the airport’s Terminal 4 underground station ticket hall.

Pixar’s sequel to its 2015 hit has now overtaken Frozen II and Barbie in global ticket sales, reaching $1bn in only 19 days

Inside Out 2 has overtaken Frozen II to become the highest-grossing animation of all time. Pixar’s sequel to its 2015 smash about emotions battling for primacy inside the head of a preteen girl has taken $1.46bn (£1.13bn) over its first six weeks of release; Disney’s follow-up to its wintry hit took $1.45bn (£1.12bn) over its entire theatrical run in 2019.

A third Disney film, the 2019 remake of The Lion King, made $1.65bn (£1.28bn) but was categorised by Disney as live-action, despite being computer-generated. Nonetheless, even if that film were on the list, the odds of Inside Out 2 bumping it down in coming weeks look high.

The star of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is standing down in order to spend more time with his family

Former James Bond actor George Lazenby has announced his retirement at the age of 84. The Australian actor, best known for playing 007 in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, made the statement on X on Thursday.

“This hasn’t been an easy decision but it’s time to announce my retirement from work,” he wrote. “Therefore, I won’t be doing any more acting or making public appearances, doing any more interviews or signing any more autographs as of today.”

The actor criticised Trump’s running mate’s views on Kamala Harris and other Democratic politicians in the US – adding that she hoped his daughter never needed IVF

Jennifer Aniston has taken issue with JD Vance’s description of some of the most powerful people in US politics as “childless cat ladies”.

Writing on Instagram, the actor said: “I truly cannot believe this is coming from a potential VP. All I can say is … Mr Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day”.

The British music industry’s award for outstanding albums features eight debuts, from the likes of Nia Archives and Barry Can’t Swim, as the prize fails to find a sponsor

Charli xcx has crowned the so-called summer of Brat – the name of her sixth album album, whose lurid green aesthetic has even reached the US presidential race – with a nomination for this year’s Mercury prize. It is the Hertfordshire musician’s second nod, following one in 2020 for her lockdown album, How I’m Feeling Now.

She is one of four musicians nominated this year to have been previously recognised by the UK music industry’s flagship prize for albums by British and Irish artists, alongside Trinidad-born, London-raised rapper Berwyn, for his debut album Who Am I (following a nod for his mixtape Demotape/Vega in 2021); Leeds songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae, for her fourth album, the psychedelic opus Black Rainbows; and London rapper Ghetts, for his fourth album On Purpose, With Purpose.

Conductor, artistic director and founder steps down from MCO over ‘deeply regrettable incident’ last year

The conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner has announced he will step down as leader and artistic director of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras after an allegation he hit a singer.

The conductor withdrew from engagements including a BBC Prom after the incident last August and said he was seeking specialist help.

In Ascension takes prestigious science fiction prize for a story that follows a marine biologist exploring the ocean depths

Scottish writer Martin MacInnes has taken home this year’s Arthur C Clarke award for what judges described as an “intense trip” of a novel, moving from the depths of the ocean to outer space.

In Ascension, MacInnes’s third novel, was revealed as the winner of the award, recognising the best science fiction novel of the year, at a ceremony in London on Wednesday.

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes (Atlantic Books, £9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

(10K Projects/Capitol)
It’s all killer, no filler on the Bronx MC’s long-awaited debut album

Bronx rapper Ice Spice’s vertiginous rise has already produced viral hits, several A-list collaborations and four Grammy nominations to date – not to mention gossip fodder, most recently on the back of Did It First, her tendentious two-hander about cheating with UK rapper Central Cee. The release of her debut studio album (Like..?, in 2023, was an EP) feels like a done deal.

These are 10 tracks of unabashed party trap by the current master of the genre. Everything is a flex, no tune outstays its welcome, and few thoughts uttered are more than an inch deep, but all are delivered with brio. One of the tracklist’s standouts, Think U the Shit (Fart) – only one of many poo-related rhymes here – makes the braggadocious point that all the pretenders to Ice Spice’s crown are just hot air. Somehow, though, Ice’s relentless, did-she-just-say-that couplets, and producer RiotUSA’s never-not-nagging beats, elevate everything to banger status.

Documentary expertly follows the only woman to have climbed the mountain 10 times through spectacular scenery and a traumatic personal life

This portrait of title subject Lhakpa Sherpa, the only woman to have summited Mount Everest 10 times, is so densely packed with uplifting moments that at times it feels like emotional mountaineering – but the climb has terrific views. British director Lucy Walker (Waste Land, Blindsight, Bring Your Own Brigade) toggles back and forth between on-the-snow-face footage of Lhakpa’s latest ascent and interview material where she recounts her life, a story full of extraordinary achievement but also the most tragically quotidian misfortune when she gets married to an abusive alcoholic. Interestingly, like a climb, the getting-to-the-top part is only half the story and as Lhakpa heads back down, footage shot at other times hints at a complex parallel story about an immigrant woman and her daughters’ struggles to process trauma and multicultural life. In some ways, that second strand is more interesting but doesn’t have such soaring landscapes.

The daughter of yak farmers who grew up in the shadow of the world’s tallest mountain, Lhakpa was drawn to the climbing life from a young age, despite the lack of encouragement from her parents and society at large which didn’t see climbing as something women did. But, as they say, she persisted and was soon setting records. When she met Romanian George Dijmarescu, a climber like herself, they became both a romantic and climbing partnership. But George had a very dark side, one that was exposed when Michael Kodas, an embedded journalist, wrote about Dijmarescu’s violence towards Lhakpa while they were in the middle of an ascent; these reports were published while the climb was going on, which made things even worse for Lhakpa. (The reportage eventually produced a book, High Crimes, and Kodas is interviewed here.) Eventually, Lhakpa realised the situation was untenable for her and her two young daughters, Sunny and Shiny, who in the film’s present are still working through what went on.

The latest film from the Turkish film-maker is a studied, Chekhovian film about a schoolteacher accused of abuse by a female student

Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan has delivered another of his expansive, ruminative and distinctly Chekhovian character-driven dramas. Again it is spread out across the landscape of Anatolia, and again there is Ceylan’s emphasis on still photography and portraiture. This film does however have one very atypical touch: a very startling and Brechtian meta-moment when we are reminded this is a film we’re watching, and the tiny and flickeringly firelit interiors are created on a soundstage.

It certainly does however have a very typical title: that is, forbidding and slightly disconcerting. In About Dry Grasses’s final section, its lead character is to ponder the fact that the gauntly beautiful terrain of Anatolia seems to have only two seasons. The first is the snow-covered winter in which we get Ceylan’s signature shot of a lonely figure plodding towards the camera in the snow. This suddenly gives way to bright summer, ahe ground will reveal itself to be covered in a featureless dry grass, which has a mysterious fascination in its austere beauty.

O2 Forum Kentish Town, London
Katie Crutchfield and her band bask in a rolling sound with smoky twangs and divine harmonies, creating affinity among her fans by leaning into the lessons of mid-30s life

Waxahatchee’s fifth album, Saint Cloud, came out on 27 March 2020, arriving into a changed world. Having made her name on crunchy indie rock, here Katie Crutchfield’s embraced the country music of her Alabama youth, as well as the storytelling Americana of formative influence Lucinda Williams. It was a full band affair, richly produced and wistful, that was sorely deprived of its rightful live incarnation while gigs were off limits.

That April, a viral tweet from author Jia Tolentino perfectly summed up the experience that Crutchfield’s newly expanded fanbase was craving: “Just imagine … you’re standing in a big warm crowd, two songs into hearing this Waxahatchee album live, your friend wiggles back through next to you and hands you a beer, you say ‘thanks dog I got the next one,’ you take simultaneous sips and go on vibing :’)”

Grosvenor Park, Chester
In this open-air production, audiences become citizens of an unruly city in which violence and corruption abound

The prize for adventurous programming goes to Chester’s Storyhouse, whose lineup in Grosvenor Park’s outdoor theatre-in-the-round includes this vision of a lawless America where fist fights, gambling and bribery abound. Quite a contrast to the familiar summer fare of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (don’t worry: they’re doing them as well). And quite refreshing to see a large audience lapping it up without qualm.

True, it is based on Herbert Asbury’s 1928 nonfiction book rather than Martin Scorsese’s bleak 2002 movie, which frees playwright Kieran Lynn to up the romance and push towards something like a happy ending. But that is not to understate the themes of violence, anti-Irish racism and political corruption that define this picture of mid-19th century New York.

At Grosvenor Park, Chester, until 31 August

(EMI)
Eight years on from their last album, the Australian duo’s fabulist nostalgia-pop is a triumph of feeling over artifice

The music industry doesn’t offer participation prizes, but if it did, Australian duo Luke “Emperor” Steele and Nick “Lord” Littlemore, AKA Empire of the Sun, deserve flowers. Their work comes freighted with so much cape-swishing, astral-travelling effort. The pair’s speciality is fabulist nostalgia-pop: songs with as few sharp edges as possible, swaddled in sleek, shiny futurist imagery reminiscent of 80s fantasy movies such as Labyrinth. Their lyrics brim with the thrill of kids on a beach digging up amulets. Eight years since solid last album Two Vines, that spell is largely unbroken.

Like their three previous projects, this one contains at least two elite tunes (Changes, Cherry Blossom) interspersed with effervescent yet evanescent second-tier tracks (Revolve, Music on the Radio, Ask That God) and smoothly produced non-bangers (everything else). As usual, there’s a ballad seeking the vibe of a romcom’s penultimate scene – the tear-soaked tux at the graduation ball – that’s fatally hobbled by Steele’s effect-laden vocal. His candyfloss tones sound strangely insincere whenever the tempo drops. Mostly, though, Empire of the Sun make you forget all the artifice that’s gone into creating their music and let you collapse happily into the emotions it evokes.

A frazzled dachshund; a rebellious goatherd; standing up to your family; a dystopian vision of marriage and more

Hot Dog by Doug Salati, Pushkin, £12.99
When the summer city is just too hot, a frazzled dachshund is whisked away for a restorative adventure in this witty, gorgeous picture book effortlessly evoking heat, noise and overwhelm, sparkling seaside coolness and human-dog affection.

Changing Tides by Júlia Moscardó, Little Tiger, £12.99
Lula’s not sure about sharing her summer holiday with her new big brother Theo – until she discovers that together they can build the biggest and best of sandcastles. But what will happen when the tide comes in? A radiant, captivating picture book gently exploring the shifting dynamics of blended families.

The author on a musical tribute to Andy Warhol, the book that made her swear out loud, and an exciting new restaurant in Peckham

Born in London in 1980, the author Evie Wyld grew up between her home town and Australia. Named one of Granta’s best of young British novelists in 2013, her debut, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice (2009), won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize and a Betty Trask award, while her follow-up, All the Birds, Singing (2013), received the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize. Her latest novel, The Echoes (Vintage), is a ghost story set between London and Australia. She lives with her husband and son in south London, where she runs a small independent bookshop called Review.

As they gear up for a 20th anniversary tour, Daniel Kessler and Paul Banks answer your questions on getting stuck for two days in snow, playing Glastonbury in the mud and which Killers song they would cover

Around the time of Antics [2004] your stage persona was very much inline with the music: atmospheric, brooding, serious. Eight years later there was lots of smiling and laughter. What changed for you? davetinsel
Daniel Kessler [guitar, backing vocals]: I feel like the brooding, serious stuff is still there, but I’ve learned to take into account the craziness and privilege of playing music, people coming to the concerts and having a reaction. You start to really appreciate that connection, which is happening in real time.
Paul Banks [vocals, guitar]: On our first tour especially, I think I had a chip on my shoulder about any criticism we encountered, so it was a little bit us vs them. But it’s not a pressure situation now. It feels like a party. Giving a toast at dinner or something, there’s this social pressure to be fun or relatable. But performing in a rock band I always feel like the authority on my own lyrics, so that whichever way I choose to deliver them is the right way. I always felt relaxed on stage … much less so off stage, probably.

What’s your fondest memory from recording or touring Antics? Monica_
PB: The record had leaked and some fans in Spain came up to us talking about it. Having people hear your unreleased record isn’t usually good news, but it was to me because we were on our second record and I could feel this building energy.
DK: We recorded it in Connecticut and were right up to the deadline if we wanted it to be released on time. Matador sent a limousine to get us back to New York for mastering at 9am. We had six or seven hours to master it and sequenced the track listing in the car – remarkably, we all agreed, so the last two hours of the drive were very enjoyable.
PB: Limo well spent!

In anticipation of his 77th birthday, we appraise the monolithically musclebound Austrian’s action-packed oeuvre

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito play twins separated at birth. That’s it, that’s the film. The first of three comedies Schwarzenegger made for director-producer Ivan Reitman proved the action star didn’t take himself as seriously as, say, Sylvester Stallone, and recast him as Mr Family Entertainment.

‘Top of the Pops showed our video at the end of one show – just as millions of people were tuning in for EastEnders. Soon after, we went to No 1’

When the band formed we were just out of the same school and trying to find our way in music. Growing up in England with West Indian parents, we’d listened to the Rolling Stones or Rod Stewart as well as reggae. My first band was a school rock group with some white friends.

The TV chef on Oasis lyrics, listening to Johnny Mathis as a child and loving Simply Red back when he was a broke chef

The first song I remember hearing
I grew up in a farmhouse in Welburn, a little village in North Yorkshire. My mother had an old record player, and I remember her playing Johnny Mathis and Barry Manilow.

The song I do at karaoke
Last tour, the guys at the promoters Live Nation said: “We need a strong ending to the show.” I remember Lee Evans playing the piano at Wembley Arena. So I learned to play the guitar so we could play Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey. Thousands of people stand up with their mobile phone torches on, which is very rock’n’roll. Now it’s our signature. We do it every night.

The London-born standup on a magical Netflix animation, Joe Lycett’s activist T-shirt, and how she fell in love with pole dancing

The comedian Sophie Duker was born in London in 1990. She studied French and English at Oxford, where she got into improv, and in 2018 performed her first standup show, Diet Woke. Appearances followed on TV comedy stalwarts such as 8 Out of 10 Cats, and in 2022 she won the 13th series of Taskmaster. Duker’s new show, But Daddy I Love Her – about father/daughter therapy and sugar daddies – will run at the Pleasance Courtyard Cabaret Bar in Edinburgh from 31 July to 25 August, and then tours. Her Sugar Daddy scheme will provide 250 £5 tickets via the Pleasance website to people of colour and anyone unwaged or on a low income, available with the code SUGARDADDY.

The American comedian returns to the big screen next week in Deadpool & Wolverine. He answers your questions on comic-book heroes, the end of Catastrophe, being attractive, Richard Linklater and full English breakfasts

You have no superpowers in Deadpool. If you could have one superpower in real life, what would it be? TopTramp
Time travel. Even if I could go back 15 years and walk around the neighbourhood we’re in right now, that would just be amazing. And then do 30 years, 80 years, 1,000 years; I would never get tired of that. Then I would try to climb a pyramid. I don’t know if they let you do that or if they were guarded. Or go to an early Stevie Wonder concert.

If someone were to write you a lead in your own superhero movie, what would that role’s power be? What would they be called? Would you like a catchphrase? And who would play his sidekick/patsy? ShivvieMullen
Time travel guy, but I wouldn’t do anything helpful. I would just go to Stevie Wonder concerts and climb pyramids. And they’d be like: “That guy screwed up! My mom wasn’t born because instead of killing Mussolini or Hitler, that guy decided to climb a pyramid.” So they would chase me through time. My catchphrase would be: “Hmm, this is terrific,” right before I get shot by a time warrior. Samuel L Jackson would be my boss, who’d operate the time travel software and chastise me regularly. His catchphrase would be: “Come on, man! Again?!”

Swimming, cycling and hockey in Paris. Plus: another double-bill of sturdy Aussie crime drama High Country. Here’s what to watch this evening

8am, BBC One

Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley indulge in some sensational swearing in a hugely enjoyable comedy, while Stanley Kubrick’s iconoclastic horror still packs a punch

When a series of anonymous poison pen letters are sent to prim coastal town resident Edith (Olivia Colman), suspicion immediately falls on her neighbour Rose (Jessie Buckley), an Irish single mother with a boisterous, proto-feminist attitude. There is something inherently hilarious about Colman swearing, and Thea Sharrock’s fact-based 1920s comedy ladles on the creative insults as the writer’s vitriol widens to take in the whole community. Hidden behind the curtain-twitching scandal is a cautionary tale about how the victims of bullying and repression can find distorted outlets for their rage, but watching Colman and Buckley go at it is almost enough in itself.
Out now, Netflix

The warm, likable tale of Mexican women joining the police to catch a serial killer, plus Shaun Ryder asks Bez to plan his funeral – with predictably eccentric results

Mexico City, 1971. A serial killer known as the Undresser is murdering women and the police are nowhere near catching him. With the situation becoming politically difficult, a plan is hatched: women are invited to join the police. It’s a publicity stunt, but the force hope it will take the heat off them for a while. Based on real events, this series tells the story of four of the recruits: Gabina, Maria, Ángeles and Valentina, who are all, in different ways, chafing against the patriarchy. As the Undresser continues his rampage, they glimpse the possibility of redemption by catching him. It’s occasionally melodramatic and not particularly subtle, but it is a warm, likable story.
Apple TV+, from Wednesday

From cold war subcultures to topless bridesmaids, a new exhibition at Kicken Berlin features half a century of groundbreaking images

Taken in a vacant lot behind photographer Jordan Baumgarten’s home in Philadelphia, these images capture the joy of a tight neighbourhood community

From Cornish thatchers to Polish apple pickers and Hungarian hand-milkers, these images capture the essence – and difficulty – of farm life

Demolished flats, boarded-up cinemas, disused buildings … Mitchell’s photographs of Yorkshire (and beyond) have established him as a key chronicler of a changing Britain

Sainsbury Centre, Norwich
While undeniably powerful, this show of often horrifying photographs from global conflicts and crises needs more context and a more questioning approach to their takers’ status as truth-tellers

At the entry, there’s a wall smattered with some of the most shocking photographs ever taken. In these images, which belong to The Incite Project collection, mankind’s capacity for evil is magnified and feels immutable, an unfathomable sea of carnage and chaos. Ticking every trigger warning box, these famous photographs – mostly taken by white, foreign photojournalists – depict global conflicts and crisis: Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer-prize-winning The Vulture and the Little Girl, the definitive image of the famine that devastated South Sudan in the 1990s; Malcolm Browne’s photograph of a Buddhist monk shortly after he set himself alight, in protest against the South Vietnamese government in Saigon.

The latter is another Pulitzer-prize-winner, published in papers, on postcards and on Rage Against the Machine’s debut studio album in 1992. There is also Richard Drew’s The Falling Man, the image of someone plummeting from the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks, a shot that came to represent the fall of America. Here too is the photograph of two-year-old Alan Kurdi, washed up on the Turkish shore. There is an inescapable sensation of an unequal world, of wordless, senseless brutality.

‘This was one of 40 pictures of Yemen I showed at an exhibition in Brussels. The Yemeni ambassador came to me with tears in his eyes and said: “No one has shown my country like this”’

When I started out as a photographer in my home country of Bangladesh, my focus was on social documentary. Later, I developed personal projects and travelled more widely but in 2013 and 2014, the political situation in Bangladesh became unstable, with attacks on protesters, secular people and LGBT activists. Images of atrocities were widely shared on social media and I developed a love-hate relationship with my own work. I didn’t know how to convey the horror of disasters, both man-made and natural, without it becoming normalised. It was a very dark time for me.

I took a step back and, early in 2019, joined the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) in Bangladesh as a communications officer. Three years later, I moved to WFP Yemen, and this is one of many pictures I took there, photographing alongside my comms work. I got to travel to five provinces – more places than many of my Yemeni colleagues will have been able to visit in the 10 years since the start of the civil war. Even then, I could not go to the north and journeys involved armoured vehicles and armed escorts.

The photographer escaped Pinochet’s Chile to turn his lens on a country obsessed with freedom, guns and consumerism

For over a decade Jamie Hawkesworth hopped on trains to random parts of the country to photograph people and places. These unique portraits tell his story

The KL International Photoawards 2024 celebrates artists of all levels and genres. This year’s theme, Make It Real: Staged Narrative in Portraiture, focuses on alternative realities and make-believe. Winning entries are on show in Malaysia until August