Auditorium to remove bacon and sausages from cafe during stage run after request from campaign group

Campaigners are calling on theatre bosses to stop serving bacon, sausages and ham in their cafes – at least while Peppa Pig and her family are performing in the same building.

Grimsby Auditorium in Lincolnshire said this week it would remove pork from the menu when Peppa Pig’s Big Family Show opens next month, after a request from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta UK). The campaign group is sending the venue vegan ham as an alternative.

Moth, Toastie and Conkers battle it with their microphones. Plus, the story of Sarah Ferguson’s former dresser who was found guilty of murder. Here’s what to watch this evening

7pm, ITV1

Emerald Fennell’s film brings the raunch to Brontë’s romance, while Nintendo’s beloved plumber stars in a colourful, family-friendly sports game

Wuthering Heights
Out now
Out on the wily, windy moors, writer-director Emerald Fennell has constructed a new interpretation of the Emily Brontë classic. Margot Robbie is Cathy while Jacob Elordi takes on Heathcliff, and as you might expect from the film-maker behind Saltburn, the passionate pair are set to leave no height unwuthered.

With just seven weeks before its funding runs out, the UK’s greatest cultural asset and most trusted international news organisation must be supported

“The programmes will neither be very interesting nor very good,” said the then BBC director general John Reith, when he launched its Empire Service in December 1932. Nearly a century later, the BBC World Service, as it is now known, broadcasts in 43 languages, reaches 313 million people a week and is one of the UK’s most influential cultural assets. It is also a lifeline for millions. “Perhaps Britain’s greatest gift to the world” in the 20th century, as Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, once put it.

But this week Tim Davie, the corporation’s director general, announced that the World Service will run out of funding in just seven weeks. Most of its £400m budget comes from the licence fee, although the Foreign Office – which funded it entirely until 2014 – contributed £137m in the last year. The funding arrangement with the Foreign Office finishes at the end of March. There is no plan for what happens next.

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From Blue Lights gossip to How to Get to Heaven from Belfast cocktails, the city has become a small-screen hotspot – and is basking in its newfound fame

‘I love them!” Minutes after I jump into a taxi at Belfast International airport, the driver is beaming about Derry Girls. So many tourists he picks up want to talk about the hit comedy and, as a fan himself, he’s happy to oblige.

We’re stuck in traffic, which is odd for this small city on a wet Tuesday morning. “It’s because all the media are here,” he jokes. But there is some truth to it. I’m visiting for the world premiere of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, the new series from Derry Girls mastermind Lisa McGee, and to see how the capital became home to the best TV.

Director revered by actor’s character in Dawson’s Creek is among film industry figures – also including Zoe Saldaña and John M Chu – to make large donation to family

The film director Steven Spielberg has donated $25,000 (£18,365) to a crowdfunder to help the widow and six children of the actor James Van Der Beek, who died this week after being diagnosed with cancer in 2023.

Dawson Leery, Van Der Beek’s character in Dawson’s Creek, the 90s teen soap that shot him to fame, was an aspiring director who idolised Spielberg. Show creator Kevin Williamson had based the character on himself; he went on to write the horror-comedy Scream and other films in the franchise.

Who is your favourite television couple, and why?

From sparks flying during The OC’s Spider-Man snog to love stories so powerful they make you weep, Guardian writers have picked the television couples whose tales never fail to make hearts pound. Now we would like to hear yours. What is your favourite TV romance, and why?

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In Emerald Fennell’s BDSM-tinged film, critics have praised Clunes’s turn as the ‘devout misogynist’ Mr Earnshaw

It has been billed as the sexiest adaptation of Wuthering Heights, with bodices ripped to shreds and a flirtation with BDSM. And yet the standout star of Emerald Fennell’s new film isn’t one of its smouldering young lovers, played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, but British television’s most affable grump – Martin Clunes.

Clunes plays Mr Earnshaw, the patriarch of the Earnshaw household whose decision to bring home a destitute young Heathcliff from Liverpool to the Yorkshire Moors sets in motion the destructive love story at the centre of Wuthering Heights. In Fennell’s reworking, Cathy’s elder brother, Hindley, is abolished entirely, with his cruelty, boozing and gambling folded into the father instead.

The award-winning French foodie romance is a perfect filmic feast for Valentine’s Day, while Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner serve up an adventurous rom-com ride

Skip the Valentine’s Day restaurant booking and treat your beloved to this filmic feast instead. French-Vietnamese filmmaker Tràn Anh Hùng (The Scent of Green Papaya) won Best Director at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival for this study of a slow-simmering love affair between French gourmand Dodin (Benoît Magimel) and his cook, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche). They spend their days at Dodin’s country estate, dreaming up new dishes with which to wow his coterie of dining companions, who meet regularly to admire Eugénie’s artistry as well as her beauty. Hung’s unhurried camera savours every delicious morsel, but alas, even a nine-course meal cannot last forever.
Saturday 14 February, 9.35pm, BBC Four

The morally questionable drama and meltdowns of the 00’s pop-culture phenomenon gets an exposé, while Gordon Ramsay serves up a feast of swearing

There’s now a secondary industry around huge, morally questionable shows from the gold-rush era of post-millennial reality TV. After last year’s Netflix expose of fat-shaming behemoth The Biggest Loser comes this series exploring the chequered story of America’s Next Top Model. It’s a depressing insight into the values of the times, tracing the trajectory of a show which began as a source of Black and LGBTQ+ empowerment but lost its ethical bearings. Many former contestants contribute (the story of Shandi Sullivan is particularly grotesque) as does creator Tyra Banks, who seems alternately sheepish and weirdly accusatory. “You guys were demanding it,” she claims. “So we kept pushing.”
Netflix, from Monday 16 February

Rafe Spall’s detective continues his inquiries in Sky’s moody crime thriller. Plus: could you spell ‘testicular torsion’? Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Atlantic
After Nessa’s body was found in the landfill, local farmer Solomon (Jonathan Pryce) left us with a confession cliffhanger – but what part did he really play in the little girl’s death? While detective Bull (Rafe Spall) questions him, Jackie (Kelly Reilly) grieves her niece and attempts to reconnect with her sister after years of guilt. The village needs to evacuate for the killer storm that’s coming – but it will take more than a natural disaster to ruin Jackie’s perfectly bedhead-tousled mop of hair. Hollie Richardson

Actor pens emotional handwritten letter to remember late Dawson’s Creek co-star as show creator also shares his grief

• James Van Der Beek was so much more than just Dawson

• James Van Der Beek: a life in pictures

Katie Holmes has shared a handwritten letter to her late Dawson’s Creek co-star James Van Der Beek.

The actor, who played Joey in the era-defining teen drama series, posted a tribute on Instagram addressed to Van Der Beek, who died this week at the age of 48.

When old school friends reunite at a funeral, they suspect foul play. Cue this frenetic, witty caper from Derry Girls’ Lisa McGee – complete with a sensational performance from Saoirse-Monica Jackson

Three middle-aged women may be all you need for anything. To run a business, raise a village, end a war, retool a civilisation, empty the loft. Even more usefully, you can make a great murder-mystery caper with them, as Lisa McGee (a fourth woman! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it) has done with her new series How to Get to Heaven from Belfast.

McGee made her name, of course, with Derry Girls – a nigh-on perfect sitcom that followed the trials and tribulations of a group of Northern Irish Catholic schoolgirls (and a beleaguered English cousin) as they went about the chaotic business of growing up in the mid-90s at the tail end of the Troubles. The main characters of the new offering don’t map precisely on to the previous one but the DNA of Derry Girls as an entity remains gloriously alive (is DNA alive? I feel a curious urge to consult Sister Michael). How to Get to Heaven has all of the verve, acuity and havoc dancing on top of the immaculate plotting that you find in McGee’s masterwork. The only difference is that one of the schoolgirls is dead. Probably. Maybe. Perhaps not.

As fans mourn the death of James Van Der Beek, we look back at the show he made a teen sensation

• James Van Der Beek was so much more than just Dawson | Stuart Heritage

• James Van Der Beek: a life in pictures

James Van Der Beek has died at 48, leaving a Dawson-shaped hole in the heart of many a millennial TV fanatic. A role model to all of a certain age, Dawson Leery taught us how to break and enter, how to be a bad friend and, most importantly, how to yearn. His years-long pursuit of the girl next door is still, for some of us, the reason we keep sending late-night texts to people who absolutely do not want to hear from us.

So, as we grieve the floppy-haired man who became the less-hot lead as the series went on, let’s look back at some of the most iconic moments spent in Capeside.