Art review | ‘Worser’ in Shakespeare | Youth hostelling | Driverless taxis | Egregious Americanism | Outage outrage

Jonathan Jones, in his review of the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition ( Letters, 10 June ), describes Tracey Emin’s The Crucifixion as a “masterpiece … the greatest new painting that’s been seen since Lucian Freud died”. Spare us this spurious hyperbole! The art critic Robert Hughes will be turning in his grave. Or as Jim, the grumpy philosopher in The Royle Family, would say: “Masterpiece my arse!’
John Rattigan
Doveridge, Derbyshire

• Re Iain Fenton’s racked brain ( Letters, 9 June ), yes, Shakespeare did use “worser”, multiple times in a dozen different plays. Cleopatra: “I cannot hate thee worser than I do.” Juliet: “Some word worser than Tybalt’s death.” Gloucester to King Lear: “Let not my worser spirit tempt me again.”
Sally Smith
Redruth, Cornwall

Musician, who suffered from mental health problems, wrote and produced the 1966 album Pet Sounds – seen by many as the greatest album of all time

Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys musician, songwriter and producer who created some of history’s most purely beautiful pop music, has died aged 82.

In a post shared on Instagram on Wednesday, Wilson’s family wrote: “We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away. We are at a loss for words right now. Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world. Love & Mercy.”

I’m fed up of watching endless dramas about tech bros. Give me a perimenopausal Norwegian woman any day

The current TV landscape leans heavily towards shows that skewer the rich from the point of view of writers who wildly, if sneakily, admire them. To be less polite: if shows such as the most recent White Lotus, the Apple TV+ show Your Friends & Neighbours and movies such as Mountainhead are all enraptured with themselves and the people they dramatise – targets who have been known to become the shows’ biggest fans – then for those viewers who have had enough, there is an alternative. It’s in Norwegian, and while watching it will force you uncomfortably close to using the phrase “hymn to middle age”, it does at least avoid the 360 degrees of glorified douchebags presently dominating TV.

The Norwegian dramedy Pernille unfolds over five seasons, recently made available on Netflix, and is part of a small but marked trend around women in middle age that offers a buffer against universal bro culture. In my experience, people don’t generally like to be told they are having a moment, since it draws attention to the fact that they weren’t previously having a moment and likely won’t get another moment any time soon – but the fact remains that middle-aged women are having a moment.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Royal Albert Hall, London
Davies uses his ostentatiously puerile sense of humour to fine comic effect, with a series of stories capturing his long struggle to get over himself

Hold forth for two hours about your low self-worth, and you can start to look very self-involved. Is that the problem, or the point, of Greg Davies’ new show? Ostensibly, Full Fat Legend poses the question “What the hell am I?”, as the Taskmaster man looks past his professional title and family roles to reveal the true Greg beneath. Practically, that means a retread of Davies’ life from 1970s Shropshire via a brief teaching career and nascent celebrity, and around more adventures in poo, pee and wanking than you’d wish on anybody.

You might marvel that a 57-year-old’s gaze remains so directed at the navel, and below. But 12-year-old in a (very) outsized body has always been Davies’ shtick . I found the fixation on bums and willies a bit much in this latest offering, perhaps because it goes on so long. But if, after six decades, Davies’ sense of humour remains juvenilely self-absorbed, at least he has the good grace to acknowledge it, and the craft to often turn it to fine comic effect. See the “face full of new freckles” image-making that accompanies one anecdote about attempting to clean his “baggy bumhole”.

Touring until 11 April

A gruesome monster munching through a luckless body was just one of the horrors I shuddered at in a brief snippet of the forthcoming Resident Evil 9. Be afraid – and excited

A surprise announcement at the end of the 6 June Summer Game Fest presentation revealed the ninth entry in the iconic Capcom survival horror series: Resident Evil Requiem, coming early next year.

Diehard fans of the series (which has spawned films, television shows and more) immediately began picking apart the trailer, which highlights protagonist Grace Ashcroft, the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, featured in 2003’s Resident Evil Outbreak. Requiem appears to be set in Racoon City, the fictional location in the franchise that was famously nuked to try and stop the spread of the zombifying T-Virus.

Resident Evil Requiem is out on 27 February 2026 on Xbox, PlayStation 5, and PC.

By slashing time and cost of restoration, technique could be used on paintings not valuable enough for traditional approach

The centuries can leave their mark on oil paintings as wear and tear and natural ageing produce cracks, discoloration and patches where pieces of pigment have flaked off.

Repairing the damage can take conservators years, so the effort is reserved for the most valuable works, but a fresh approach promises to transform the process by restoring aged artworks in hours.

‘My sister used to have all these fashion posters in her bedroom – Nick Wright photographs, pictures of Naomi Campbell. Those references have become important in my work’

I was raised in a single-parent household by my mum and we’re very close. She is a nurse, but she also did a lot of flower-arranging. I would often go to hang around the florists with her and her arrangements were always around the house. When I was a kid she was also a Sunday school teacher and would run arts and crafts workshops at church. I think I began to appreciate colour, how to match things, and develop taste, from there. My sister also studied fashion – and I was always in her bedroom as that’s where I would go to watch TV. She would have all these posters from Dazed and Vogue, Nick Knight photographs, pictures of Naomi Campbell. I thought it was rubbish at the time, but in hindsight I can understand how those references have become important.

This image was the cover of my book, Regina, which was a massive moment in my career, featuring all the work I have done up to now, aged 26. A lot of it, and the way I see the world in general, is down to the women in my life. This image was an opportunity to celebrate them and show the strength of motherhood.

Foundation , Apple TV+'s lavish adaptation (or re-mix, if you prefer) of Isaac Asimov's seminal sci-fi series, returns for its third season next month, and the streaming platform has dropped an official trailer to give us a taste of what's in store.

As previously reported , the first season ended with a major time jump of 138 years, and S2 focused on the Second Crisis: imminent war between Empire and the Foundation, along with an enemy seeking to destroy Empire from within. The Foundation, meanwhile, adopted the propaganda tactics of religion to recruit new acolytes to the cause. We also met a colony of "Mentalics" with psionic abilities. We're getting another mega time jump for the Third Crisis.

Per the official premise:

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The internet is already exploding about Katherine Parkinson, John Lithgow and Paapa Essiedu signing up to the new Hogwarts adventures – and it hasn’t even started filming

HBO announced on Monday that it has cast nine further roles for its Harry Potter series. Recognisable faces such as Katherine Parkinson (Molly Weasley), Johnny Flynn (Lucius Malfoy) and Daniel Rigby (Vernon Dursley) have been joined by the newcomers Leo Earley, Alessia Leoni and Sienna Moosah. Well, RIP their mentions.

We have been here before – recently and often. Harry Potter has become such a febrile battleground that the pattern has already become well worn. When John Lithgow was announced as Dumbledore, he revealed that a friend had sent him a link to an article entitled: “An open letter to John Lithgow: Please walk away from Harry Potter.”