An exhibition of works by the 19th-century artist shows his role in creating a sense of Mexican identity – revealing that he was more polymath than painter

Due to the longstanding political and territorial anxieties that emanate from the border between Mexico and the US, both countries often choose to define themselves in terms of their relationship to the other. We mostly get to see the American side of this ever evolving story, but a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London gives a rare opportunity to examine a Mexican perspective on its own terrain, and by implication on that of its neighbour.

Before Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo developed and exported their 20th-century Mexican aesthetics, there was José María Velasco (1840-1912), who produced a body of landscape paintings that was widely regarded as integral to the creation of a Mexican identity and nationhood.

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Ullapool is a tiny Scottish fishing village in the north-west Highlands ringed by beautiful mountains. And when the tourists move out, the DJs move in. We meet the team making Baile/Baile boom boom

It’s late on a Saturday night in the tiny Scottish fishing village of Ullapool, well past 1am, and bass is pulsing out into the otherwise quiet streets from a quaking function room. This is Baile/Baile, possibly the most remote regular club night in the UK.

Located about 60 miles northwest of Inverness, and the same distance from the very top of Scotland, Ullapool has long been an important hub for the surrounding villages. Despite only having a population of around 1,500, it has plenty of art studios, cafes, galleries and a museum. Plus, it’s home to a highly regarded school for traditional arts and Gaelic language. There’s an annual book festival and, from 2005 to 2019, there was a two-day music festival called Loopallu, headlined over the years by Mumford & Sons, Franz Ferdinand and Idlewild. The village is packed over summer thanks to the North Coast 500, a 516-mile scenic driving route around the northern peripheries of Scotland.

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The singer-songwriter and Blur guitarist belts out Elton and karaoke and is a recent Abba convert, but which song does he think would make people hurl at his funeral?

The first song I fell in love with
My dad used to have Beatles evenings that he referred to as Abbey Road Nights. I was only two or three, so I couldn’t read but I could use the record player. Sometimes when I wanted Strawberry Fields Forever, I’d get Turn! Turn! Turn! by Mary Hopkin and wonder why it didn’t sound like the Beatles.

The first single I bought
Roxanne by the Police, from Lion Records in Colchester.

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A documentary follows the controversial water company on the verge of collapsing. Plus: the long-term effects of lockdown on our kids. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm , BBC Two

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Exclusive: How one historian’s investigative work led to artwork finally being returned to ‘English Versailles’

In 1951, a leading British art expert visited a stately home in Northamptonshire and viewed its paintings by old masters alone because the owner was ill.

Six years later, the wife of Boughton House’s owner popped into an American museum, where she was struck by a vivid portrait of a German prince by Anthony van Dyck that looked just like theirs. She was to discover that it was the very same painting by the 17th-century Flemish court painter to King Charles I, stolen from them.

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Anthony and Joe Russo's new sci-fi adventure film, The Electric State , is adapted from the graphic novel by Swedish artist/designer Simon Stålenhag . So naturally the directors wanted to create their own distinctive look and tone—complete with a colorful array of quirky misfit robots who team up with their human counterparts to take down an evil corporation.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

The Electric State is Stålenhag's third book, published in 2018. Like much of work, it's set in a dystopian, ravaged landscape: a reimagined America in an alternate 1990s where a war between robots and humans has devastated the country. Paragraphs of text, accompanied by larger artworks, tell the story of a teen girl named Michelle (Milly Bobby Brown) who must travel across the country with her robot companion, Cosmo (Alan Tudyk), to find her long-lost genius brother, Christopher (Woody Norman), while being pursued by a federal agent (Giancarlo Esposito).

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Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, and they previously brought that knowledge to bear as they recapped each first season episode and second season episode of Amazon's WoT TV series. Now we're back in the saddle for season three—along with insights, jokes, and the occasional wild theory.

These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. We'll do our best to not spoil major future events from the books, but there's always the danger that something might slip out. If you want to stay completely unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you .

New episodes of The Wheel of Time season three will be posted for Amazon Prime subscribers every Thursday. This write-up covers the entire three-episode season premiere, which was released on March 13.

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HBO released a one-minute teaser of the hotly anticipated second season of The Last of Us —based on Naughty Dog's hugely popular video game franchise—during CES in January . We now have a full trailer, unveiled at SXSW after the footage leaked over the weekend, chock-full of Easter eggs for gaming fans of The Last of Us Part II .

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

The series takes place in the 20-year aftermath of a deadly outbreak of mutant fungus ( Cordyceps ) that turns humans into monstrous zombie-like creatures (the Infected, or Clickers). The world has become a series of separate totalitarian quarantine zones and independent settlements, with a thriving black market and a rebel militia known as the Fireflies making life complicated for the survivors. Joel (Pedro Pascal) is a hardened smuggler tasked with escorting the teenage Ellie (Bella Ramsay) across the devastated US, battling hostile forces and hordes of zombies, to a Fireflies unit outside the quarantine zone. Ellie is special: She is immune to the deadly fungus, and the hope is that her immunity holds the key to beating the disease.

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Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-Ho returns to the big screen this weekend with the sci-fi film Mickey 17 . If you're expecting the subtly devastating social commentary of his 2019 drama/horror/thriller-hybrid Parasite , I suspect you'll be disappointed. Mickey 17 is a very different beast in both aesthetic and tone. When the first trailer dropped, I wrote that the film felt like a darkly comedic version of Duncan Jones' 2009 film Moon , with a dash of the surreal absurdity of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) thrown in for good measure. I stand by that assessment, and it proves to be a winning combination.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

The film is based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Ashton's inspiration for the novel was the teletransportation paradox —a thought experiment pondering the philosophy of identity that challenges certain notions of the self and consciousness. It started as a short story about what Ashton called "a crappy immortality" and expanded from there into a full-length novel. (Ashton also penned a sequel, Antimatter Blues , which was published in 2023.)

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