Taron Egerton and Jurnee Smollett hit every ball out of the park in this smart, mesmerising crime drama about arson investigators. It’s hugely entertaining – if you can make it through the shaky start

I never want to include spoilers, but sometimes they cannot be avoided. So, because I want you to stick with the new miniseries by Dennis Lehane, starring Taron Egerton (the pair reuniting after their great success with 2022’s Black Bird ), and enjoy the myriad benefits it will reap, I urge you to ignore any misgivings you have about the first two episodes of Smoke. Most of them will fall away. The tonal inconsistencies, the apparent self-indulgence of Lehane with his protagonist’s hobby, the dabs of bad characterisation – just keep the faith. If you can’t, then Google the true crime podcast on which Smoke is based and work out what must be happening from there. I’m not giving you the title because you’ll be ruining a lot of fun for yourself.

It is not as though sticking with it will be too much of a hardship, even if you do have loads of questions. At its inception, Smoke is at the very least a solid police procedural. Egerton plays Dave Gudsen, a former firefighter who became an arson investigator after a traumatic callout put an end to his original career. When two serial arsonists start setting fires all over his patch and his searches for them stall, a detective from the local police department, Michelle Calderon (Jurnee Smollett), is brought in to help. She is in effect being punished for ending an affair with her captain (Rafe Spall) and is eager to catch the bad guys and restore her standing. Further complications to her private life include a mother in jail for an act first suggested by Calderon’s flashbacks to a terrifying experience in her childhood, then confirmed by her attendance at her mother’s parole hearing, in the face of deep hostility from her siblings.

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The final was me and a guy in a Dune outfit. I got the loudest cheer

When I first saw the flyer for the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest last October, I thought it was a joke. Lookalike contests were not mainstream yet. It was also taking place in New York’s Washington Square Park – a place I usually associate with chaos. But last year a TikTok of me at a London barbershop went viral before because people thought I resembled Timothée. So, a day before the contest, I headed to a charity shop and picked out an outfit that made me look like Timothée’s Willy Wonka. Why not?

I was shocked by the size of the crowd on the day. There were thousands there and I was swarmed by people wanting photos. Before the contest even began, the police had arrived to shut it down. We relocated to a nearby park. It was later announced that Timothée had crashed the contest but left when the cops arrived. I missed his visit entirely.

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The Argentinian composer also wrote the scores for Cool Hand Luke and Dirty Harry, and wrote one of the biggest-selling works in the history of classical music

Lalo Schifrin, the composer who wrote the endlessly catchy theme for Mission: Impossible and more than 100 other arrangements for film and television, has died aged 93.

Schifrin’s sons, William and Ryan, confirmed the composer died on Thursday of complications from pneumonia.

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(Universal)
After her last album embraced switching off, the musician returns to pop’s fray to revel in the mess of late-20s angst with a strikingly unsettled sound

In April, Lorde launched her fourth album with a brief guerrilla gig in New York. A message telling fans to meet her at Washington Square Park – ostensibly for a video shoot – caused chaos, happily of the variety that gets filmed on multiple cameraphones and goes viral on social media. Thousands turned up and the police shut the event down, but those that evaded them were eventually rewarded by Lorde performing to new single What Was That with impressive gusto given that she was standing on a small wooden table at the time.

It was surprising. Lorde’s last release, 2021’s Solar Power , wasn’t the only album of that period on which a female artist who had become famous in her teens strongly suggested that doing so was a living nightmare – Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever and Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts did, too – but it was the only one that sounded like a resignation letter, sent from a beach in Ella Yelich-O’Connor’s native New Zealand: “Won’t take a call if it’s the label or the radio,” she sang at one point. At another: “If you’re looking for a saviour, well that’s not me.” But Solar Power turned out to be merely an out-of-office message. Four years on and Lorde isn’t just back, but apparently back in the sharp-eyed party girl mode of 2017’s Melodrama . What Was That compares falling in love to the sensation of smoking while on MDMA. “It’s a beautiful life, so why play truant?” she shrugs on opener Hammer. “I jerk tears and they pay me to do it.”

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Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield
From a goat sculpture to a giant bronze ampersand, via a filmed argument about sardines between two Kentridges, there is no rest for this dazzling artist’s imagination

How’s this for vanity art: William Kentridge sits astride a horse, like a Roman emperor, his profile beakily aloft as he controls his steed. Except this statue is not as solid as it sounds but a photographic mural of Kentridge in horse-riding pose behind a skeletal wooden horse constructed from parts of artist’s easels with a saddle slung over its cardboard tube of a body. Kentridge mocks himself, and mocks the pretensions of sculpture. Or does he? There’s a confident, showoff brilliance to this illusion and the parallel with a previous great artist is obvious.

Another sculpture, a more solid one, Goat, is a swirling tangle of lines solidified in space, capped with a goat’s head. It’s a homage to Picasso’s 1950 sculpture The She Goat. When you see Picasso’s art it’s not so much one specific work that awes you as the boundless flow of creativity that moves from one style to another in an inexhaustible, playful stream. Kentridge lays claim to that legacy here – and with justification. He is just about the only artist now who can dizzy you in a comparable way with the abundance of his creativity as his impulses dance from drawing to film to collage and back to drawing.

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For one of the most prominent names in global fashion, this is not the end of her role but rather an elevation

Anna Wintour , one of the most prominent names in global fashion, is seeking a new head of editorial content at American Vogue , the magazine she has directed for 37 years.

British-born Wintour, 75, made the announcement at a staff meeting on Thursday. But hiring a new head of editorial content at American Vogue does not mean the end of her role – rather, it is an elevation.

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Judges praise County Durham attraction’s ‘remarkable attention to detail’ in bringing history to life

Beamish, the Living Museum of the North, has won the prestigious Art Fund museum of the year award, the largest such prize in the world.

Awarding it the £120,000 prize, judges called Beamish a “joyous, immersive and unique place shaped by the stories and experiences of its community”.

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The annual list of creatives invited to join the Academy also includes Andrew Scott, Gillian Anderson, Mikey Madison and Jason Momoa

Stephen Graham, Jodie Comer and Ariana Grande are among the names invited to join the film Academy in this year’s just announced list.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has extended the invite to 534 names this year, up from last year’s total of 487.

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Nick Merriman’s exit, for personal reasons, welcomed by some after redundancies and winter closures aimed at ‘financial sustainability’

The chief executive of English Heritage has stepped down, to relief from some staff angered by cost cutting under his watch.

News of Nick Merriman’s departure was welcomed by some heritage experts and others who had been adversely affected by his restructuring plans.

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