Long-distance couples meet for the first time, including a pair who started out in a Game of Thrones roleplay chatroom. It is bizarre but strangely sweet to witness

When the internet was invented nobody used their real names on it, and I am starting to wonder if breaking that covenant was a mistake. “Starting to wonder” – correction, I am fully sure that was an error. We need to go back to usernames – xX_tha_0rin0c0_Xx, that sort of thing – and anonymity and no webcams and, ideally, screeching 56k modems. The internet is too fast, too accessible, too always-on. Our phones can suck internet out of the sky and the idea of “logging off” is extinct. I am planning to start one of those one-topic political parties that always get obliterated at London mayoral elections about this, by the way, so keep your eyes out.

Anyway. As we all know, what Channel 4 excels at is documentaries that can be described as “sweet but weird”, and this week The Nevermets starts (Friday 24 May, 10pm), which is a classic of the genre. The Nevermets follows a series of, as narrator Dawn French keeps describing them, “ordinary Brits”, as they look at their phone screens and smile in bed. This is because they are all in love with someone across the world who they met in a chatroom or on Snapchat, or from extended Instagram or Facebook conversations, and – despite, in many cases, the couples professing to be in love with each other – they have never actually, you know, met. So we get to see them meet.

John Krasinski and Ryan Reynolds go family-friendly in their new imaginary-friends comedy, while the singer swaps introspection for lust on her long-awaited new album

If
Out now
In what has to be one of the more enviable showbiz lives, John Krasinski has played Jim in The Office, married Emily Blunt, and written and directed acclaimed horror franchise A Quiet Place. Now he turns his hand to family entertainment, writing and directing this part-animated fantasy about imaginary friends made visible with a little help from Ryan Reynolds and Steve Carell.

Firm asked to back up claims about Fiona Harvey after executive’s appearance before select committee

An MP has asked Netflix to provide evidence that the woman who inspired the character Martha Scott in Baby Reindeer is a “convicted stalker”, claiming that a record of her conviction has not yet been found.

Netflix’s director of public policy, Benjamin King, told the culture media and sport committee on 8 May that the show was “the true story of the horrific abuse that the writer and protagonist, Richard Gadd, suffered at the hands of a convicted stalker”.

Daf James’s life was upended when he and his husband adopted three kids – and he knew he had to write about it. As Lost Boys & Fairies hits the screen, the writer and cast talk about queer lives, Welshness and what makes a family click

Lost Boys & Fairies is not a true story. But like most drama and fiction, it draws heavily on the real-life experiences of the people who made it. Daf James, the Welsh playwright and screenwriter behind the story, also adopted three children with his husband when those children were aged between two and five. As in the show, he went to activity days to meet children who needed carers, got interrogated by social workers and had plenty of sleepless nights. So when we see his protagonist Gabriel getting hit in the head with a football by a seven-year-old in a Cardiff park, are we watching fiction here or reality?

“Everything I write is personally inspired,” Daf tells me, over Zoom from his attic bedroom, just minutes after we have both put our children to bed. “But I’ve learned how to adapt my lived experience into fiction. Andy is a fictitious character; the father is a fictitious character; the children are fictitious characters.” Andy, the saint-like husband of Gabriel, is played by Hawkeye star and Northern Irish actor Fra Fee, who tells me that his role in Lost Boys & Fairies was “genuinely the honour of my life”. It’s a statement that, like the show itself, hits a note of radical sentimentality. “I’ve never played a gay man on screen before,” Fee goes on, “which sounds a bit mad as a gay man myself. So to get the opportunity to do something that felt so positive was such a gift.”

What seemed like another lazy nostalgia cash grab became a favorite, with lessons that Marvel’s universe could learn from

It should have been what Magneto refers to as a “nostalgic parlor trick” – reviving the X-Men cartoon that aired on Saturday mornings throughout much of the 90s for the Disney+ streaming service. Isn’t this what all streaming services do? They comb through their back catalog to see what IP can be exploited, promising both nostalgia and, of course, a fresh new spin on whatever thing you’ve already seen before. So while it was a given that a certain number of X-Men fans would be on board for X-Men ’97, which just completed its 10-episode first season with a second already on the way, it’s still a bit surprising that a revival of an ambitious, sometimes-clunky 90s-kid object of obsession would become one of the year’s most beloved TV shows.

Some of it may be hunger for any kind of ongoing X-Men series outside of the comics, which remain, as ever, a relatively niche interest. (For every restart at issue no 1, there’s several volumes of backstory that must be summarized to even begin to understand what the hell is going on.) After the Fox network aired the X-Men cartoon, the live-action movie studio adapted the characters into the first major superhero movies of the new millennium, helping to kickstart a major cultural trend. The Fox X-Men movies ran for an impressive 20 years, but Disney’s purchase of the studio coincided with a couple of box office flops in the form of Dark Phoenix and the much-delayed, pandemic-released The New Mutants. A curtain call of sorts is coming this summer with Deadpool & Wolverine, but that movie will also integrate the wisecracking Ryan Reynolds mercenary (who spun off from the X-Men movies) into the broader MCU. As such, it’s been four years since there was an X-Men movie in theaters – and longer since the last one that really connected with audiences, 2017’s Logan.

This drama about a fake movie fabricated to let Black Panther fugitive Huey P Newton flee to Cuba in the 70s not only dilutes the story of a Black leader – it centres the white characters. Eyes will roll

A few years back, in conversation with three Chicago-area Black Lives Matter activists, I brought up the then-forthcoming film Judas and the Black Messiah, starring Daniel Kaluuya as Fred Hampton, the deputy chairman of the Black Panther party in Illinois, who was assassinated by Chicago police, with help from the FBI, in 1969, aged 21. Were they excited to see this hometown hero brought to the big screen? Their collective eye-roll was so hard it nearly put a hole through the wall. “I mean, the CIA has a liaison office in Hollywood,” said one. “It’s impossible to go through that system and expect an authentic portrayal of an anticapitalist revolutionary.”

The Big Cigar is the latest attempt to pull off such a portrayal, regardless. It stars Moonlight’s André Holland as Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P Newton and tells the (sort of) true story of Newton’s 1974 flight to Cuba to escape a murder charge, with the help of Hollywood producer Bert Schneider (Alessandro Nivola) and an entirely fake movie codenamed The Big Cigar. It sounds similar to the plot of 2012 Oscar-winner Argo, because it is, and because both were originally optioned from magazine features written by the same hot-shot long-read reporter, Joshuah Bearman.

How can one broom tear apart a Canadian curling community? John Cullen investigates in Broomgate. Plus: five of the best post-apocalyptic podcasts

• Don’t get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Broomgate
Widely available, episodes weekly
Never before has a broom been responsible for so much scandal – in 2015, the Canadian curling community was rocked by a team that used one instead of two. “To not have the other person out front cleaning in a frosty situation doesn’t make sense,” said one shocked commentator. The full story has never been told, so comedian and curling geek John Cullen investigates the switch to the “super broom” that caused a furore. Hannah Verdier

What happens to the 2bn bottles we consume in the UK every year? Plus, Sian Gibson’s murder mystery comedy has some stellar cameos. Here’s what to watch this evening

8pm, Channel 4
The brand is considered socially evil in more ways than one, but Coca-Cola’s environmental impact is the specific focus of this report. Ellie Flynn – a self-confessed Coca-Cola addict – investigates the reality of what happens to the 2bn bottles of the product consumed every year in the UK, and its claims about recycled plastic and water sustainability. Hollie Richardson

Nicola Coughlan is sensational as Penelope Featherington, whose long-simmering romance with Colin Bridgerton reaches boiling point – and the bonking is scarce but seriously steamy

Always a pleasure, never a chore (but sometimes an over-saccharine trifle): Bridgerton is back! Having lassoed the zeitgeist upon its 2020 debut – and fast-tracked its young stars to household names in the process – it feels odd to note that this is merely the third outing for Netflix’s costume drama for people who don’t like costume dramas. That is a real credit to the show: Bridgerton has established its arresting yet soothing take on Regency Mayfair with aplomb. It’s an immaculately constructed dreamland; the pinnacle of comfort TV.

It’s also immediately clear that Bridgerton is benefiting from having two seasons under its corset already, laying the foundations for the most captivating courtship yet. Thus far, each series has focused on different members of the Bridgerton children as per Julia Quinn’s novels: Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) found love with Regé-Jean Page’s Duke of Hastings, before eldest son Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) met his match in 26-year-old “spinster” Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley). This season sees Francesca Bridgerton, a composed pianist with a businesslike approach to marriage, make her society debut. Yet the real beating-heart of these first four episodes (the final four will be released in mid-June) is the long-simmering romance between Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and his neighbour Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan).

Apollo theatre, London
John Cleese’s transposition of his TV sitcom to the theatre has pitch perfect performances, but it never quite becomes a play

What should we hope for when TV hits of yesteryear are revived onstage? Director Caroline Jay Ranger insists in the programme notes that her Fawlty Towers cast “not only provide the essence of the roles required [but also] offer something fresh and unique”. But do they? And is anyone actually here for fresh and unique? I’m not so sure. If the performances in this revamp of the Torquay hotel sitcom aren’t impersonations per se, they’re near as dammit. But they’re very good ones, and audiences who already love the material (most of them, let’s face it) will not be disappointed.

That’s no mean achievement. The danger in trying to recreate the original, as Ranger’s production (of an adaptation by John Cleese) does, is that the performances of Cleese, Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs and co cannot, at least as far as fans are concerned, be bettered. So why not just watch the DVD? This revival makes the answer self-evident. Cleese and Connie Booth’s series had its roots in theatrical farce, so its frantic comings and goings, its slapstick and mounting chaos feel at home onstage. And the DVD wouldn’t afford you the pleasure, a very keen one, of seeing Adam Jackson-Smith in the Basil role, as astonishing an act of mimicry-cum-resurrection as you’re ever likely to encounter.

Cannes film festival
First-time actor Agathe Riedinger is a wannabe influencer from the wrong side of the tracks in this forthright and fluent film

Feature first-timer Agathe Riedinger is bringing the TikTok energy for this story of a wannabe Insta influencer-princess from the wrong side of the tracks – but the director is also bringing some pretty old school social realism, exerting its downward gravitational pull. The result is forthright and fluent and fiercely acted by a newcomer lead who, in the time-honoured style of movies like this, is defiant, vulnerable and front and centre of almost every shot. But it also sometimes treads water in terms of narrative, running out of ideas before the end, and its final ambiguity about an ultimate success that is there to be hallucinated rather than achieved feels anticlimactic.

Liane, played by Malou Khebizi, is a 19-year-old with a French and Italian background living in Fréjus in the south of France. She was once given up for foster care by her troubled mother but now taken back home and is now in charge of babysitting her kid sister, whom she is busily turning into a mini-me version of her own brassy, sexualised image. Liane shoplifts and sells the stolen goods – which has paid for her breast-implant surgery and she has also had her lips done. She hangs out with her friends, getting drunk, but is fastidious about how and with whom she’s having sex; she has thousands of followers on her Only-Fans-type insta (although oddly, it doesn’t occur to her to have an actual Only Fans account). Liane also has a poignantly religious sense of her own heroic martyrdom, her ill-treatment at the hands of online haters, men and her appalling mother.

Show follows origins of Bene Gesserit sect as seen in Denis Villeneuve’s movies, with Emily Watson and Olivia Williams

The first trailer for the much-anticipated TV prequel to the recent Dune movies promises a female-fronted look at life 10,000 years before.

Dune: Prophecy will follow the roots of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood led by the Harkonnen siblings, played by Emily Watson and Olivia Williams. Later members of the sect are played by Rebecca Ferguson and Charlotte Rampling on the big screen.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Guardian photographer Sarah Lee gets an exclusive look behind the scenes at the 2024 TV Baftas, with Timothy Spall, Floella Benjamin, Jeff Goldblum and … Queen Elizabeth I

Enlarge / Ncuti Gatwa is the Fifteenth Doctor, and Millie Gibson is his new companion, Ruby Sunday, in new season of Doctor Who. (credit: Disney+)

A new season of Doctor Who is almost upon us, featuring Ncuti Gatwa's first full run as the 15th Doctor, with a shiny new companion. It's also the first time Doctor Who will stream on Disney+, after the platform acquired the international broadcasting rights. That could translate into a whole new generation of fans for this beloved British sci-fi series.

(Spoilers for "The Power of the Doctor," "The Giggle," and "The Church on Ruby Road" below.)

Here's a brief summation for the benefit of those who may not have kept up with the more recent seasons. Russell T. Davies—who revived the series in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor—has returned as showrunner. Davies lost no time introducing a few new twists. When it came time for Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor to regenerate, fans had expected Gatwa to be introduced. Instead, the new Fourteenth Doctor was played by former Tenth Doctor David Tennant, reuniting with former companion Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) for three specials.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

You could call them "sky flowers," but that doesn't really make sense either—after all, the faded blue behind each squiggle is water, not sky, and the squiggles themselves don't represent solid objects in any tangible, meaningful way. But they look right. The reds and greens and yellows add life and color in a way that a flat blue might not. Those odd shapes, suspended motionless with no clear reason or value, establish a tone. There are a lot of things that don't make sense on SpongeBob SquarePants. But there's a clear and coherent vision that runs through the entire show, from the design of SpongeBob's kitchen-sponge body down to the squeaky-balloon sound of his footsteps. It's a perspective, and a warm, specific, crazy little world. Of course it has sky flowers in it. What else would be up there?

Season 1: part one - part two - part three Season 2: part one - part two - part three - part four Season 3: part one - part two - part three - part four

Like all postmodern "texts", Spongebob Squarepants doesn't deny the absurdity of existence. The show is filled with absurd and surreal moments, far too many to describe here. And as a postmodern show, Spongebob has its nihilistic moments as well. One in particular that stands out is from season three's episode "Doing Time", when Spongebob and Patrick attempt to break Mrs. Puff out of jail. After she refuses to leave, Spongebob wonders to Patrick if maybe she'd forgotten what it's like to "live in the outside world". The scene then cuts to a montage of typical postmodern malaise — a man (fish, rather) going to work, sitting in rush hour traffic, then gazing dejectedly out of his window as a woman asks if he's coming to bed. Depressing, hopeless, and completely nihilistic, this moment reminds viewers of their own mortality and the dangers of routine... or, if you're just a kid, you'll realize that being an adult can suck.

On Monday, SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg died after a recent diagnosis with ALS. Nickelodeon confirmed the news on Twitter Tuesday afternoon. What followed was an outpouring of grief for the man behind one of the most recognizable and beloved cartoon characters of all time. [...] Through his show, Hilleburg was an evangelist of sorts for the unstoppable power of positive thinking, which he usually dramatized with absurd scenarios. Think of the time SpongeBob sculpts a perfect marble sculpture with a crack of the chisel, or when he wins a fast foodery face-off against the Flying Dutchman—the undead daddy of burger grilling—with the special ingredient of love. SpongeBob tackles everything in life—work, driving school, friendship, pain, lifeguarding, climate change—with a level of zealous breeziness usually reserved zen monks and six-year-old kids.

It's hard to overstate just how popular SpongeBob SquarePants memes are. On Reddit, r/BikiniBottomTwitter — which exists mainly so that people can screencap the memes from Twitter and share them on Reddit — has more than 1.7 million subscribers, making it one of the site's most popular meme subreddits. (By comparison, the more general r/Spongebob subreddit only has 74,000 subscribers.) And SpongeBob memes don't just appear and then die; as Digg's editors noted in the site's 2018 SpongeBob retrospective, the biggest SpongeBob memes "are all pretty much meme superhits. There are no deep cuts here." What exactly is it about SpongeBob memes that make them so enduring and enjoyable?

Season 1: Opening Theme - Livin' In The Sunlight, Lovin' In The Moon Light - Ripped Pants - Jelly Fish Jam [CW: flashing lights] - The F.U.N. Song - Doing the Sponge - I Wanna Go Home Season 2: Loop de Loop - This Grill is Not a Home - Sweet Victory - Hey All You People - Hey Mean Mr. Bossman [Happy May Day, btw] Season 3: Striped Sweater - Electric Zoo - Underwater Sun - When Worlds Collide - You're Old - The Campfire Song Song

Help Wanted (S1E1): Reimagined as a collaborative ReAnimation and as a black-and-white classic cartoon Pizza Delivery (S1E5): This Is What A Perfect Episode Of Spongebob Looks Like - A whole playlist of live-action remakes SB-129 (S1E14): How Spongebob Explored Existential Nihilism ("SB-129") Rock Bottom (S1E17): "Rock Bottom" reimagined as a Gothic claymation - Podcast discussion Hooky (S1E20): The Powerful Message In This Episode of Spongebob: Don't Get "Hooked" On Drugs Squirrel Jokes (S2E11): The Smartest Episode of Spongebob Squarepants (an Analysis) Shanghaied (S2E13): Live-action remake Band Geeks (S2E15): Band Geeks Is The Best Spongebob Episode - Band Geeks ReAnimated - the disappointing Super Bowl LIII cameo (and the improved LVIII version) Procrastination (S2E17): This SpongeBob Episode Will Make You Stop Procrastinating Sailor Mouth (S2E18): SpongeBob SwearPants: A Look At Moralization Of Swearing - Why "Sailor Mouth" Was So Controversial Squidville (S2E26): Spongebob's Darkest Episode Wet Painters (S3E10): Bubbles of Thought - Full storyboard recap Krusty Krab Training Video (S3E10): The Brilliance of Krusty Krab Training Video - Live-action remake Chocolate With Nuts (S3E12): Live-action (puppet!) remake Graveyard Shift (S3E24): How 'Nosferatu' turned up in SpongeBob SquarePants - Why a Painting of SpongeBob SquarePants Just Sold for $6 Million

I DON'T NEED IT - How to blow a bubble - FIRMLY GRASP IT - 1% Evil, 99% Hot Gas - The gang's all here - We serve food here, sir - Krusty Krab Pizza - The pioneers used to ride these babies for miles - He's just standing there... MENACINGLY - Are there any other Squidwards I should know about? -Too hot... Too wet... Toulouse Lautrec - Everything is chrome in the future! - Photosynthesis -"MY LEG" - Advanced darkness - Steppin' on the beach - You used me... for LAND DEVELOPMENT - Stop starin' at me with them big ol' eyes - Have you finished those errands? - The story of the Ugly Barnacle - "No, this is Patrick" - Leif Ericsson Day - The boy cries him a sweater of tears, and you kill him - Ravioli Ravioli, give me the formuoli - Freeform jazz - That's OK, take your time - WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE - What I learned in boating school is... - Going on dry land - How does he dooo that? - DoodleBob - The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma - Is mayonnaise an instrument? - Flag twirlers - BIG... MEATY... CLAWS - That's his... eager face - Sweet Victory - Nosferatu! - - Sentence enhancers - Bold and Brash - MY NAME'S... NOT... RIIICK! - One Eternity Later... - Push it somewhere else - I'll remember you all in therapy - The Magic Conch - You like Krabby Patties, don't you, Squidward? - We've been smeckledorfed! - IMAGINATION - Wumbo - Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen - Striped Sweater - The French Narrator's time cards - Welcome to the Salty Spittoon, how tough are ya? - Weenie Hut, Jr.'s - The world's smallest violin - A clever visual metaphor used to personify the abstract concept of thought - Robots have taken over the world! - Spongebob and Patrick as parents - We're not cavemen -- we have technology! - HOOPLA! - Maximum Overdrive - It's time for the moment you've been waiting for - CHOCOLATE - Is your mother home? - Flatter the customer! - Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy - What do you normally do when I'm gone? - That's a 4/4 string ostinato in D minor! Every sailor knows that means death! - Are you feeling it now, Mr. Krabs? -