Founded by a $10,000 loan from a dentist, the label has had an extraordinary array of groundbreakers from Aretha Franklin to the Drifters, from Abba to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

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A devastating documentary about the teenager’s life, murder and legacy. Plus: the people trying to flee Putin’s kill list. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, ITV1
The last text Esther Ghey sent to her daughter, Brianna, said “how good it was” that she was going out and re-entering society. Esther doesn’t know if she ever saw that message – Brianna was murdered in 2023 by two 15-year-olds, one who she believed was her friend, in a brutal attack partly motivated by her transgender identity. This devastating and brave documentary tells Brianna’s story, from the sparkling, beloved girl she was to how the disturbing online world affected her wellbeing. It also examines the legacy she has left, as her mother continues to campaign for social media reform. Her friends help paint a picture of her, while journalists and police give insights into a case that shocked and saddened the nation. Hollie Richardson

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Decades of detective work have uncovered Joan Miró’s hidden act of rebellion: painting over his mother’s portrait. But why did the artist do it?

Three clumps of raised paint, an old X-ray and months of scientific analysis and dogged detective work have revealed that a portrait of Joan Miró ’s mother has lurked, undetected, beneath the cobalt-blue surface of one of the Spanish artist’s inimitable works for the best part of a century.

Between 1925 and 1927, Miró created a small, oil-on-canvas picture, titled Pintura (Painting) , which he gave to his great friend, the art promoter Joan Prats.

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The Strictly winner’s attempt to teach British Sign Language to a retirement home is far from a fairytale. But it is a smart, nuanced documentary that blossoms into something profound

There is a neat trick, used sparingly but to great effect, in Rose Ayling-Ellis: Old Hands New Tricks. According to the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, 80% of adults over the age of 70 will have some hearing loss. To demonstrate what this loss might be like for hearing viewers, the programme-makers amplify the background noise until it obfuscates the conversations that are taking place. The point is made simply and well.

Ayling-Ellis made her name as an actor on EastEnders, but became something of a national treasure when she won Strictly Come Dancing, as the programme’s first deaf contestant. Her sensational Couple’s Choice dance with Giovanni Pernice, in which the music cut out while the dance continued in silence, is one of the show’s all-time great moments.

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The duo will join Chris Hemsworth, Paul Rudd, Letitia Wright, Vanessa Kirby and many more in Avengers: Doomsday

Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are set to reprise their X-Men roles in Avengers: Doomsday.

Marvel kicked off a live stream today to announce the long list of actors who will star in the first Avengers film in six years.

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The reliable bruiser re-teams with director David Ayer for a bland Sylvester Stallone-scripted thriller of fisticuffs and familiarity

The new Jason Statham movie is based on a novel called Levon’s Trade, which is a pretty good title. But A Working Man is a better Jason Statham title, because who’s better, or at least more reliable, at punching in for duty at the genre factory than Stath? Pushing 60, he’s still throwing those punches, sometimes aided by Jackie Chan-like props, and increasingly aided by those old-guy action-movie crutches of firearms and grenades.

A Working Man is Statham’s insta-follow-up to his biggest hit in years, 2024’s January-movie ideal The Beekeeper; it’s not a sequel, but it’s also directed by David Ayer, extending his break from cops and gangs to send Statham off to combat some more broadly agreed-upon social ills with vaguely QAnon undertones. Last time, Statham fought back against phone scammers and a conspiracy that led all the way to, well, you know; this time, he’s taking on sex trafficking. He’s narrowed his focus, though: There’s one particular act of sex trafficking that really gets his goat. The bad guys have the ill fortune to target Jenny Garcia (Arianna Rivas), the college-aged daughter of Joe (Michael Peña), owner of the construction outfit where Levon Cade (Statham) makes his no-fuss living. Levon is saving up for a lawyer to fight for better custody of his own young daughter, so when Jenny is kidnapped from a bar outing, he reluctantly agrees to dust off the Royal Marine skills that never really went anywhere and track her down. (Joe also offers him a huge sum of cash, a potential boon for his custody battle with his dead wife’s supercilious father.)

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Ahead of the Black British book festival, literary figures say the number of books being published by Black writers has ‘plummeted’

UK publishing is less accessible to Black authors now than it was five years ago, according to some of the biggest names in the industry.

The Black Lives Matter movement of 2020 led to many publishing houses making commitments to address the longstanding racial inequality in the industry. But, ahead of the Black British book festival (BBBF) this weekend, a number of Black literary figures say there has been a noticeable downward shift in the number of Black writers being published.

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Longlisted for the Women’s prize, this powerful dystopian novel imagines people jailed for their potential to commit crimes

Arriving home at Los Angeles international airport, Sara Hussein is asked by immigration and customs officers to step aside, then taken to an interview room. The fundamentals of this scene are familiar – you’ve probably watched something like it in a film, or dreamed about it happening to you; perhaps it already has. But Sara lives in a new world, several decades in the future, and she is being arrested because Scout, the state’s AI security system, has flagged something irregular inside her mind.

Sara seems unexceptional: she’s a museum archivist, married and mother to young twins. She once had an argument with her husband Elias after he impulsively part-exchanged the family Toyota for a Volvo. Sara sees herself as a person who “couldn’t possibly be considered a member of the lawbreaking classes”, until the moment at the airport when an officer informs her that her “risk score” is too high, and sends her to Madison, a California women’s retention centre housed in a former elementary school. At Madison, a record of good behaviour will lower her score; however, this record lies in the hands of her guards. She is not sufficiently subordinate, and can’t get her number down.

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New documentary looks back on the career and personal life of the unusual comedian whose brand of performance art made him a true original

The stereotype of comedians is that they’re compulsively “on”, finding it difficult to revert to normal off-stage behavior when so much of their life revolves around getting laughs from a crowd. That makes Andy Kaufman particularly unusual, even this many years later: he is a comedian who worked so hard to raise questions about whether or not he was “on” that those questions lingered well after his death.

The creator of characters such as Foreign Man, who would unexpectedly break into a spot-on Elvis impression; Latka Gravas, the sitcom version of that character he did for the beloved show Taxi; the grotesquely abusive lounge singer never-was Tony Clifton; and the misogynist woman-wrestling showboat named, uh, Andy Kaufman constructed so many clever hoaxes to house his work that many assumed he must not actually have died young at the age of 35. (Some of his collaborators insisted on perpetuating that illusion, though his death certificate is widely viewable.)

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