The historian’s unflinching Holocaust documentary doesn't just chronicle horror. It also asks: how much was Europe to blame – and is any nation immune from antisemitism?

It is 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. That means it won’t be long before all the people who lived through the Holocaust are gone. It is now left to those who weren’t there – such as the historian Simon Schama, born in London two weeks after the liberation – to ensure it is never forgotten or misremembered, and to preserve its lessons for future generations.

But how to go about it? In his new show, one of Schama’s main methods is to unflinchingly relive the depravity. The Road to Auschwitz holds you in its grip and forces you to absorb the details. We hear of Jewish people being murdered using high-pressure water hoses. We see photographs of the cramped, repellent ghettoes, in which they were starved until they resembled walking skeletons as children froze to death in the streets. We see the piles of shrivelled corpses in Auschwitz. We hear that the slaughter was so prolific that the camp’s purpose-built crematoriums became clogged with fat; in Schama’s words, “the furnaces were gagging”. An inmate of Auschwitz – who buried his testimony in the ground before he perished – describes the burning of corpses: the skin blisters and bursts in seconds, the stomach explodes, blue flames come out from the eye sockets, the head burns longest.

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The performances – including that of Rose Ayling-Ellis – are outstanding, while the way it switches between spoken and signed language is utterly seamless. It feels shocking that it's taken so long for a show like this to exist

In many ways, Reunion is a fairly conventional thriller. Daniel Brennan (Matthew Gurney) is released from prison after serving a long sentence for killing his childhood friend Ray (Ace Mahbaz). He confessed to the murder but has never explained why he did it. Brennan’s wife died when he was inside and he is now trying to reconnect with his daughter, Carly (Lara Peake), while seeking vengeance (also unexplained) on a figure from his past and putting himself in danger of being recalled to prison as he does so.

Beyond Brennan himself, we have Anne-Marie Duff as Ray’s widow, Christine, and Rose Ayling-Ellis as their daughter, Miri, whose fragile new life is hit hard by the news that the killer of their beloved husband and father is out on probation. Christine’s boyfriend, Stephen (Eddie Marsan), is a former police officer and promises to look out for them.

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After giving CinemaCon attendees a sneak peek last week, Paramount Pictures has publicly released the trailer for Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning , the eighth installment of the blockbuster spy franchise starring Tom Cruise as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, and a sequel to the events that played out in 2023's Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning .

This may, or may not, end up being Cruise's last film in the franchise; everyone's being pretty cagey about that question. But the trailer certainly gives us everything we've come to expect from the Mission: Impossible films: high stakes, global political intrigue, and of course, lots and lots of spectacular stunt work, including Cruise hanging precariously mid-air from a 1930s Boeing Stearman biplane.

(Spoilers for Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning below.)

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Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, founding members of the new wave hitmakers, pay tribute to their bandmate, who has died of cancer

Clem Burke, the drummer whose backbeats powered Blondie to huge chart success across multiple decades, has died aged 70.

He died following what his bandmates Debbie Harry and Chris Stein called “a private battle with cancer”, in a tribute posted to Instagram.

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The country’s best-known director was refused by Greece’s culture ministry when he applied to shoot scenes for sci-fi comedy Bugonia at iconic Athens site

Greece’s leading contemporary director has had a request to shoot footage for his new film at the Acropolis in Athens denied by his country’s culture ministry.

Yorgos Lanthimos had filed a request to film scenes for sci-fi comedy Bugonia at the fifth-century BC site in April. But in a statement on Thursday, the culture ministry said permission had been refused because “the proposed scenes are incompatible with the symbolism … and the values the Acropolis represents”.

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First-weekend takings of $163m in North America puts the adaptation of the wildly popular video game ahead of previous record holder The Super Mario Bros Movie

A Minecraft Movie has broken box office records to record the highest ever first weekend total for a video game adaptation.

According to the Hollywood Reporter , the film took $163m (£128m) on its first three days at the North American box office (including approximately $10m for preview screenings on Thursday), which puts it well ahead of the previous record holder The Super Mario Bros Movie, which took $146m on its opening weekend in the US and Canada in 2023.

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A pair of electrifying London shows bagged four prizes at the Olivier awards. Both were developed by Dutch company ITA, which has an eye for British talent

• Olivier awards: full list of winners
• Backstage at the Oliviers – in pictures
• Giant, Benjamin Button and Fiddler on the Roof triumph

The Royal Court and Regent’s Park Open Air theatre were among the victorious venues at Sunday’s Olivier awards, which recognise the cream of London’s Theatreland. But there was reason to celebrate in the Netherlands, too. The bold West End productions Oedipus and The Years, which picked up four awards between them, have their origins at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA) .

The theatre’s artistic director is Eline Arbo, who adapted and staged a version of Nobel prize-winner Annie Ernaux’s The Years for an all-female cast. After its success in the Netherlands, Arbo was invited to London’s Almeida theatre to direct the show with British actors. Among them was Romola Garai, who won the Olivier award for best actress in a supporting role, while Arbo was named best director. The production received rapturous reviews and has transferred to the West End where its run ( which ends on 19 April ) has been accompanied by regular reports of audiences fainting during its abortion scene.

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He made the ‘manky British’ set for Austin Powers, droppable ones for Mrs Doubtfire – and fangs for Tom Cruise. Gary Archer on crafting amazing gnashers for stars

Aimee Lou Wood has been one of the standout stars of the third series of The White Lotus, stealing almost every scene with her character’s wild one-liners and wide-eyed obsession with astrology. But the Bafta winner from Stockport has in recent weeks been getting as much attention for her teeth as for her winning turn in the hit show about a luxury resort. Vanity Fair and the New York Times have been notable fans of Wood’s natural look but there has also been a backlash, with beauty magazine Allure saying that “fawning over a rejection of perfection is misplaced”.

Gary Archer doesn’t know what the fuss is about. “They look all right to me,” he says of Wood’s teeth. He would know, because after working on 350 films and TV shows, plus 200 adverts, he is called the Godfather of FX Teeth in Hollywood and beyond. It was Archer who fashioned the unforgettable gnashers that Mike Myers sported in the Austin Powers films, a design that he feels actually led to the term “British teeth”.

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‘The demo had my singing on it. When I played it to the band, the look on their faces said, “We’re in trouble, boys”’

I was a pop producer working with the likes of Sheena Easton and Dollar. Mike Rutherford was a prog rock musician with Genesis. But the band’s publishing company thought the two of us – the yin and yang – would do well together. And they were right. We hit it off immediately.

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