Olivier theatre, London
James Graham has rewritten parts of his hit play to reflect the 2024 Euros, and the gaffer emerges as a progressive, gentle, alternative national leader

It’s unusual for an award-winning, commercially successful play to be revived with a substantially rewritten second half and multiple new characters. James Graham’s reason for dismantling a hit is that his story of Gareth Southgate’s renewal of the England men’s football team was, in effect, written at half-time.

The 2023 premiere had an implied triumphant coda in which the manager’s methods of psychology and motivation won the 2024 Euros. A 2-1 defeat to Spain in the final last July has made this version of the play more reflective than celebratory, although the fact that the Spanish winner was scored by a substitute after an agonising offside review confirms a strong theme: football as a metaphor for life’s tiny margins between good and bad outcomes.

The Orbital and Morningside authors join Abi Daré, Roz Dineen and Kaliane Bradley in the running for the £10,000 award, for inspiring ways to ‘rise to the challenges of the climate crisis with hope and inventiveness’

Samantha Harvey and Téa Obreht are among the writers in the running for the inaugural Climate fiction prize.

Harvey’s Orbital, her Booker-winning novel set on the International Space Station, and Obreht’s novel The Morningside , about refugees from an unnamed country, have both been shortlisted for the new prize, which aims to “celebrate the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis”.

Dan Reed’s world-rocking 2019 documentary detailed the experiences of survivors Wade Robson and James Safechuck – perhaps too definitively for this sequel to have anything new to say. If only it had waited for their trial …

Leaving Neverland, Dan Reed’s 2019 film , which laid out accusations that the singer Michael Jackson sexually abused children, is among the most impactful and important documentaries of the past 10 years; the view of one of the 20th century’s biggest stars irreversibly changed, as rumour and innuendo were replaced by a detailed narrative that was hard for all but Jackson’s most committed fans to doubt. As well as altering Jackson’s reputation for ever, Leaving Neverland offered a wider look at how abusers groom their victims, why those victims can choose to protect their abuser, and how and why the parents of victims might fail to protect their child.

It was also about the extremes of fame. His celebrity allowed Jackson to bewitch young fans, and disarm families who would otherwise have balked at an adult stranger befriending their child. It gave him the drivers, bodyguards, hotel suites and mansions he needed to spend time with young boys. (Nobody denies that a series of children were alone with him for long periods, and shared his bed, although his estate strongly denies all allegations of sexual abuse.) And his fame gave him the power to settle lawsuits. It helped Jackson deflect public suspicion too, since it was just about plausible for his eccentrically childlike persona to include being seen with a string of pre-pubescent companions. The mega-famous can hide in plain sight.

Police and protesters clashed at Hollywood ceremony for Israeli Wonder Woman star who has been vocal in support

Pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony for Israeli actor Gal Gadot on Tuesday, delaying the event and inciting police response.

Several dozen protesters gathered ahead of the ceremony for the Wonder Woman star, who is an outspoken supporter of the Israeli military. According to Variety , pro-Palestinian protesters held signs that read “Heroes Fight Like Palestinians,” “Viva Viva Palestina” and “No Other Land Won Oscar,” referring to the documentary on Israeli incursions onto Palestinian land in the West Bank that won the award for best documentary this month.

PlayStation 5 (version played), Xbox, PC; Ubisoft
Ubisoft’s historical fiction series returns with its best adventure in years

Japan, 1581: Iga province is burning down around you. You watch on, injured and helpless as the Oda Nobunaga - the warlord responsible for numerous civil wars and the eventual unification of the country - smirks from a nearby hill. You draw your katana, the blade shining in the flickering light of the flames. This is Assassin’s Creed: Shadows – part exciting ninja game, part history lesson. It’s an odd combination but it comes together in a sprawling historical-fiction adventure full of discovery and deception.

The tumultuous period that saw the unification of Japan and the fall of Nobunaga in the late 1500s is an ideal setting in which to play around as a sneaky shinobi and a brave samurai. The series’ science-fictiony framing device is that you, the player, are diving into your ancestor’s memories to hunt down a mysterious artefact by taking down a group of menacing masked samurai, one at a time. But mostly the game leaves you alone to enjoy feudal Japan.

Adored by Björk, Massive Attack and Elton John, the cult avant-popsters are back with an album that takes in everything from Greek church bells to Ukraine. We meet the Barnett twins among the Southend amusement arcades

Jack and George Barnett arrange to meet me at the Hope Hotel, an 18th-century pub in their native Southend. With Talking Heads on the jukebox and pints already flowing at midday, it feels like we’ve stepped back into the good-time Essex seaside town of old. The twins arrive, Jack in a dark grey tweed and black fleece, George in knitwear and leather jacket. They suggest going outside so we don’t have to shout over 1980s hits, but if anything the sonic interference of Southend – all amusement arcades and revving motors – is worse.

It turns out this chimes with the creation of Crooked Wing, the fifth album from their band These New Puritans. Jack was living on an industrial estate in Tottenham, London, between factories and evangelical churches. “I think some of the loudness,” he says, “comes from trying to compete with all the machinery and religious ecstasy.”

They came out of the blue and electrified Edinburgh with absurdist takes on Americana. Now the US pair are doing all three hits back to back – and dreaming of not having to share a room

It’s a story to keep Edinburgh fringe dreams alive. On their own dime, Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland rocked up at the festival in 2022 to try their luck. The US duo’s queer western clown show, And Then the Rodeo Burned Down , went from an audience of seven to winning a Fringe First award and selling out. They repeated both feats with another two-hander in 2023. And another in 2024. This summer, the best friends – who perform as Xhloe and Natasha – will stage all three prize winners in Edinburgh.

That is, if they can afford to get there. “We haven’t bought our flight tickets yet,” says Rice, highlighting the grim economic truth behind fringe success. “We have to wait until we make a bit more money.”

For fans, sexy, female-centered entertainment is a welcome escape from reality

• How much do you spend on health and wellness a month?

When it was released in late January, Onyx Storm – the third book in Rebecca Yarros’s The Empyrean series – became the fastest selling adult novel in 20 years. It sold more than 2.7m copies in its first week, according to the New York Times . Across the US, fans lined up in the cold outside of Target stores to nab special edition copies. In the UK, there were midnight-release parties where attendees wore costumes, made friendship bracelets and applied dragon-themed temporary tattoos.

The Empyrean series is a prime example of romantasy – a genre that blends high fantasy and romance. It follows the cadet Violet Sorrengail as she trains to be a dragon rider. Fast-paced and detailed, the books boast mythical creatures and magic. There’s also a lot of sex. On more than one occasion, sturdy wooden furniture is broken during vigorous bouts of lovemaking. Violet climaxes every time with her generous lover, Xaden. Violet and Xaden’s dragons are mates – and they have sex too.

Researching mine and Stephen Graham’s Netflix drama, I realised the brains of under 16s are unable to cope with ideas as dangerous as those in the ‘manosphere’. The government needs to ban smartphones for children

Two and a half years ago, Stephen Graham phoned me up to ask if I was interested in writing a show about knife crime. He wanted to talk about young male violence towards women and he had two stipulations: he wanted to do it in a series of single shots, and he didn’t want to blame the parents.

I enthusiastically got involved and suggested we write together. At first, we didn’t know why Jamie, the perpetrator of the attack, did it. We knew he wasn’t a product of abuse or parental trauma. But we couldn’t figure out a motive. Then someone I work with, Mariella Johnson, said: “I think you should look into ‘incel’ culture.”