It was the political satire that gave us omnishambles, pet asbos and the terrifying Malcolm Tucker. Two decades on, creator Armando Iannucci and stars including Peter Capaldi and Rebecca Front lift the lid on its chaotic creation

Twenty years ago this month we were plunged straight into the middle of an omnishambles. It was a moment in time when petrified politicians lurched from crisis to crisis, scrambling desperately to control the narrative as their endless gaffes derailed even the vaguest attempts to change this country for the better. But am I talking about the tail-end of the Blair years or the televisual tour-de-force that was Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of It?

It could be either. It could even be right now – such was the show’s prescient genius. This was a satire that didn’t just mimic the government’s calamities but seemed somehow to foresee them. Over its seven-year run, The Thick of It came up with farcical policies that the government went on to adopt (pet asbos, anyone?), coined new words in the dictionary (the aforementioned omnishambles) and, in Malcolm Tucker, created one of the great malevolent forces of British comedy. Here’s how they did it …

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Exclusive: In The Mood For Love, curated by grandson of early Hockney champion and art dealer, John Kasmin, will feature works from 1960-63

When one of David Hockney’s iconic swimming pool pictures sold for $90.3m (£70.3m) in 2013, he became the world’s most highly valued contemporary artist. Now paintings, drawings and prints that he sold for a few pounds in the 1960s are being brought together for the first time in a new exhibition.

John Kasmin, an art dealer who first recognised Hockney’s potential in the early 1960s when the artist was studying at the Royal College of Art (RCA), told the Guardian that Hockney’s prices then “rarely ever went above 20 quid”.

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The chef, author and presenter wants to be John Bonham and might be found busting out Baker Street at karaoke, but which song reminds him of lost love?

The first single I bought
I Don’t Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats from Sounds Nice on Birtley High Street, when I was in my teens. I know it was about a school shooting, but at the time, I thought: I have a visceral reaction to Mondays as well.

The first song I fell in love with
Still in Love With You from Thin Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous album. I was learning to play drums and Brian Downey, Thin Lizzy’s drummer, used to do this wonderful shuffle beat because it’s a relatively slow track, and his playing is beautiful. I still play the drums. I’ve never stopped being a musician.

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The full horror of what happened is realised in this moving series. Plus: a gripping crime story with Rose Ayling-Ellis. Here’s what to watch this evening

Sunday, 9pm, BBC One

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Israel finished second, with Estonia third and the pre-contest favourites from Sweden fourth

Austria has won the Eurovision song contest after JJ triumphed in Basel with their song Wasted Love, an operatic ballad with soaring vocals that mutates into a club anthem for the finale. It is the third time the country has won, with JJ following in the footsteps of Udo Jürgens in 1965 and Conchita Wurst in 2014.

Switzerland, which hosted the first ever Eurovision song contest in 1956, was the venue this year after Nemo won in Malmö last year with their song The Code. Austria will be expected to host in 2026, with Vienna having twice held the competition before.

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Lawrence excels as a woman whose bipolar disorder is exacerbated by husband Robert Pattinson’s infidelity, with super-strength direction from Lynne Ramsay

Lynne Ramsay brings the Gothic-realist steam heat, some violent shocks and deafening music slams to this movie, adapted by her with co-writers Alice Birch and Enda Walsh from the 2012 novel by Ariana Harwicz . It’s a ferociously intense study of a lonely, passionate woman and her descent into bipolar disorder as she is left alone all day with a new baby in a rambling Montana house originally belonging to her husband’s uncle, who took his own life in a gruesome way that we are not permitted to discover until some way into the movie.

Die My Love is another film to remind you that Ramsay believes you should make movies the way VS Naipaul believed you should write books: from a position of strength. There is, simply, overwhelming muscular strength in this picture: in her direction, in Paul Davies’s sound design, in the saturated colour of Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography, and of course in the performances themselves. Robert Pattinson is Jackson, a guy whose job takes him away from home a lot of the time with a box of condoms in the glove-compartment, and Jennifer Lawrence is Grace, who is supposedly going to write a novel during the baby’s nap times – though, worryingly, there isn’t a single book in the house. Sissy Spacek brings her unfakeable presence to the role of Jackson’s mum Pam, who lives in the neighbouring property, a woman for whom the stress of caring for her husband Harry (Nick Nolte), who has dementia, has caused her to sleepwalk, laughing maniacally and carrying a loaded gun.

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As a song contest on a space station descends into terror, Ncuti Gatwa gives his most disturbing performance yet – and the Doctor in rage mode is terrifying

For an episode that started out like a joyfully camp romp into the world of Eurovision, Juno Dawson turned in a script that truly had ice in its heart, in just the way the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) told Kid (Freddie Fox) that the Time Lord now had ice in his hearts.

Doctor Who stories often feature alien invasions, conquest, destruction and the desire for revenge, but they have seldom so bleakly painted the determination to carry out a mass casualty terrorism event. That in turn provoked one of the most extreme reactions we have ever seen from the lead character.

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Linklater recreates the making of the landmark French New Wave classic with an awestruck tastefulness that smooths over any disruptiveness

Breathless, deathless … and pointless? Here is Richard Linklater’s impeccably submissive, tastefully cinephile period drama about the making of Godard’s debut 1960 classic À Bout de Souffle, that starred Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo as the star-crossed lovers in Paris. Linklater’s homage has credits in French and is beautifully shot in monochrome, as opposed to the boring old colour of real life in which the events were actually happening; he even cutely fabricates cue marks in the corner of the screen, those things that once told projectionists when to changeover the reels. But Linklater smoothly avoids any disruptive jump-cuts.

It’s a good natured, intelligent effort for which Godard himself, were he still alive, would undoubtedly have ripped Linklater a new one. (When Michel Hazanavicius made Redoubtable in 2017 about Godard’s making of his 1967 film La Chinoise, the man himself called that “a stupid, stupid idea”; Hazanavicius wasn’t even making a film about Godard’s first and biggest hit.

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It’s time for the world’s biggest musical extravaganza! Follow along with us live – and brace yourself for a wild night …

Bonsoir et bienvenue à la couverture en direct du 69e Eurovision par le Guardian.

That is about as much French as I can manage which may be a little tricky tonight as Switzerland is sure to serve up some multi-lingual hosting this evening.

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