Stevie Webb, an actor in the production of Here You Come Again, said ‘a woman was so disgusted there was a gay character’

A Dolly Parton-themed musical had to be suspended mid-show in Manchester due to homophobic abuse, an actor in the production has said.

Stevie Webb, who plays a superfan of the country music icon in Here You Come Again, said an incident at the Opera House last Wednesday resulted in the whole cast having to “leave the stage, because a woman was so disgusted there was a gay character”.

Weed? Moss tied in thread. Crack? Organic shea butter. Cocaine bricks? Shrink-wrapped foam blocks. Designers reveal the secrets of faking drugs onscreen – from popping sugar pills to snorting vitamin D

‘Suitcases of drugs are not exactly something you’d expect to bring to work,” says Paul Cross, who was the production designer of Supacell , the crime-laced superhero series that launched last year. Cross has had to handle quite a few in his time though, albeit fake. He recently found himself driving around London with a vanload of fake cocaine bricks. “It’s quite an odd feeling,” he says. “Not something you’d do in your day-to-day life.”

From hip teen shows to crime dramas, scenes involving drugs are often pivotal in modern TV series – and ensuring these moments are safe, legal and realistic has become so important to producers that thousands of pounds can be spent on getting it right. For every brick of fake cocaine off-loaded into a fake drug den, someone like Cross has spent weeks crafting the perfect powder texture. For every pill taken by an actor, a huge amount of toil has gone into making sure it’s not harmful.

Rapper’s blue-washed pair by Celine were object of derision and lust in momentous performance

The game on the pitch at Super Bowl on Sunday night was only half the story. As the Philadelphia Eagles led 24-0 over the Kansas City Chiefs, a pair of jeans worn by the American rapper and Pulitzer prize winner Kendrick Lamar for his half-time performance commanded their own crowd online.

Variously identified as bootcut, flared and bell-bottomed, the pair of blue-wash jeans were the object of derision and lust. “Kendrick wearing bootcut jeans was so special,” said the writer and comedian Sophia Benoit on social media. “I could not take my eyes off his hems,” said another user.

When EA surprise-dropped a rerelease of The Sims 1 and 2, I was delighted to return to a defining video game of millennial childhoods – but it feels different 25 years later

When I was growing up, the genre-defining dollhouse sim The Sims was the ultimate escape. I’d build dream homes, cultivate a neighbourhood of weird and wonderful friends and live out a fantasy adult life.

So when EA surprise-dropped a rerelease of The Sims 1 and 2 last weekend to celebrate the series’ 25th anniversary, with all expansions included (my nine-year-old self’s dream) naturally I was compelled to return to my happy place, revisiting my 10-hour pyjama-clad marathon sessions micromanaging the lives of the Newbies, Roomies, and the Goths, and occasionally removing their pool ladders when they were taking a little swim, and only taking a necessary pause for mum’s roast dinner.

‘When we did Top of the Pops, I found the perfect dress – except it was too tight. If I’d moved, everyone would have had an eyeful’

St Etienne did a club tour in early 1991 and we were hearing all these dance hits like DJ H featuring Stefy’s I Like It and (I Wanna Give You) Devotion by Nomad . We thought: “Let’s go home and write something that will work in a club.” We made the song as basic as possible, with a memorable hook.

The US’s biggest TV night of the year saw new looks at 2025’s most anticipated movies, costing studios $8m a spot

While there might have been a brief uptick in the viewership for recent awards ceremonies, the act of communal live TV watching is still not what it ever used to be. In the US, the one constant is sport and while weekly games might only appeal to an impassioned subset of fans, the Super Bowl’s broader appeal makes it the most attractive night of the year to advertisers, their big chance to make an impression with an audience that’s typically over 100 million.

It’s also inevitably the most expensive with a 30-second spot costing around $8m this year – a record amount – and so it’s left up to the biggest of the big companies to get involved. On the film side, that translated to just Paramount, Disney, Universal and Warners flashing the cash but was it money well spent?

Every year of human history has a dedicated Wikipedia entry. But surf far enough into the future, and you’ll find evaporating oceans, planetary collisions, and the ultimate apocalypse: the Big Slurp

• See more from our column Internet wormhole , where writers share their favourite corner of the internet

This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but with a … slurp? According to my favourite Wikipedia wormhole, that’s just one of the many possible ways our universe could bite the bullet some 100 quindecillion (give or take a few septillion) years from now.

To me, Wikipedia’s seemingly innocuous Timeline of the far future page (along with its existentially harrowing cousin, Ultimate fate of the universe ) is the perfect encapsulation of the internet’s inbuilt dissonance: monolithic in meaning but oh-so pedestrian in its presentation. It offers a snapshot of mind-boggling scientific theory wrapped up in a boring, colour-coded spreadsheet, built and tended to by faceless back-end contributors who are probably goosing up Elon Musk’s own Wikipedia page at the same time as they’re casually cataloguing the theoretical extinction of the Y chromosome 5 million years from now.

Barbican, London
An all-British programme – of Maconchy, Walton and Vaughan Williams – brought vivid colours and plenty of atmosphere

‘Behold, the sea itself,” declares Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony, but it could equally apply to any of the works in this carefully crafted concert of British music. The latest instalment in Antonio Pappano’s ongoing odyssey opened with Elizabeth Maconchy , a gifted yet neglected contemporary of Shostakovich and Tippett, whose impressionistic Nocturne owed more of a debt to Holst and Debussy. A cinematic soundscape, complete with moody undertow and opulent climaxes, hinted at moon, clouds and waves in a spellbinding musical watercolour.

William Walton’s Cello Concerto sings of warmer waters, especially the shimmering finale, which seems to end in a balmy Mediterranean sunset. The spirit of Prokofiev hovered over the ticking opening, Pappano and orchestra relishing the smouldering harmonies flecked with vibraphone, harp and celesta. LSO principal cello Rebecca Gilliver , a natural team player, was at her finest in the third movement where double stopping and extended trills were rendered with pinpoint accuracy. Elsewhere, she took a more self-effacing approach, a touch smudgy in the spiky scherzo, though always warm of tone.

Can a small-screen spin-off ever better the original? From Daria to Endeavour, here are the 10 that came closest – and a few that actually managed it

Sometimes on TV, the second time’s a charm. If the broadcasting stars align, a spin-off can breathe new life into familiar intellectual property and become beloved in its own right. Or else it can be Joanie Loves Chachi. Or HolbyBlue. Or Baywatch Nights. Or insert any number of best-forgotten flops.

Whether it’s a sequel or a prequel, creating something new from a previous hit is a risky business, but it can reap rewards. In the week that the BBC successfully launched Amandaland , an offshoot of Motherland, and the Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul celebrated its 10th anniversary, we’ve selected the 10 best TV spin-offs of all time.