The India-based photographer worked quietly so that he didn’t disturb this blissful moment

Sagar Pavale’s cats are sunseekers. Pavale, who lives in Bengaluru, India, had just finished some jobs around the house when he spotted the pair in their favourite spot, on a couch near a window.

“They love it there, I think because it gets just the right amount of afternoon light,” Pavale says. “They often nap together, especially when the weather is calm. Kalya the black cat, who was four at the time, is a little reserved, but incredibly affectionate when he trusts you. The lighter one, Mani, was two. She’s playful and a bit mischievous. Despite the age gap, and the fact that they’re not littermates, they’ve formed a really strong bond. Kalya has a protective, big-brother energy about him, and they’re always grooming, chasing or cuddling.”

The migration debate reflects deep uncertainties about the realities now facing these communities. That feels perilous to me

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In 2016, on the day after the Brexit vote, my home town’s pub opened early and celebratory pints were drunk underneath union flags. I was in a rehearsal room in London surrounded by the shellshocked and outraged. The media I read on the tube home reiterated what I’d heard all day: these leave voters were ignorant and racist. My town voted just over 70% for leave . Three years later the constituency voted Conservative for the first time in its history. In a recent council election it voted Reform . There comes a time when the unthinkable becomes inevitable.

My town is in the East Midlands. Where it was once coal mining and manufacturing that provided work for many people, it is now a huge distribution warehouse for Sports Direct . Many eastern European people have made Shirebrook their home and work at the warehouse. I have been thinking about towns such as mine – and there are many of them – with the recent outpouring of anger and xenophobia towards asylum seekers and migrants.

The Alien: Earth star on the joys of kissing, disliking his forehead, and the time he tried (and failed) to get arrested

Born in Hampshire, Alex Lawther, 30, made his West End debut in David Hare’s South Downs at 16. In 2014 he played the young Alan Turing in the film The Imitation Game, earning him a London Critics’ Circle award. In 2016, he starred in the Black Mirror episode Shut Up and Dance, and from 2017 he played the lead in Channel 4’s The End of the F***ing World . He appears in the series Alien: Earth, a prequel to the 1979 Alien film, which is streaming on Hulu. He lives in London with his partner.

When were you happiest?
Last year, during four days in January, when I directed Rhoda, my second short film, in a tiny house in Camberwell with Juliet Stevenson and Emma D’Arcy.

As the hit thriller returns to our screens, its creator talks about false starts, surprise inspirations – and why he never looks inside Jackson Lamb’s head

It is hard to imagine anyone less like the slovenly, has-been MI5 agent Jackson Lamb than his creator, Mick Herron. “He must come deep out of my subconscious,” the 62-year-old thriller writer jokes, sipping mineral water at a rooftop bar in his home city of Oxford, a world away from London’s Aldersgate where his bestselling Slough House series is set. In a “blue shirt, white tee” (fans will get the reference), he is softly spoken with a hint of a Geordie accent. Herron is often described as the heir to John le Carré and “the best spy novelist of his generation” , according to the New Yorker. Unlike le Carré, he’s not, and never has been, a spy. Mysteriously, though, Wikipedia has given him “an entirely fictitious” birthday. “I got cards. I got a cake,” he says.

For the uninitiated, the novels and award-winning TV series follow a bunch of misfit spooks exiled to Slough House from MI5 for various mishaps and misdemeanours, so far away from the shiny HQ in Regent’s Park that it may as well be in Slough. The joke is that these hapless underdogs (nicknamed “slow horses”), under the grubby reins of Lamb, always triumph over the slicker agents and “the Dogs” at the Park.

Big brands use red carpets and gondolas in Italian city to show looks from newly installed designers

After a year of musical chairs in the fashion industry, September is poised to be one of its biggest show months ever, with debut collections from 15 creative directors.

Rather than waiting for the catwalk, over the past 10 days brands including Chanel and Dior have given themselves a head start at the Venice film festival, using its starry red carpets and even gondolas to soft launch looks from their newly installed designers.

Once considered progressive, then later derided, a new exhibition is exploring the developments’ place as part of a collective experience

Communist East Germany’s high-rise prefab residential blocks and their political and cultural impact in what was one of the biggest social housing experiments in history is the focus of a new art exhibition, in which the unspoken challenges of today’s housing crisis loom large.

Wohnkomplex (living complex) Art and Life in Prefabs explores the legacy of the collective experience of millions of East Germans, as well as serving as a poignant reminder that the “housing question”, whether under dictatorship or democracy, is far from being solved.

In this week’s newsletter: First shown in the UK 35 years ago, the landmark cartoon has wormed its way into our culture, from parliament put-downs to Bartman mania

Mum wouldn’t have Bart Simpson in our house. When, 35 years ago this month, The Simpsons first drifted across the Atlantic and on to UK screens, they brought with them a bad reputation. In the US, Matt Groening’s peerless animation had quickly become a ratings sensation after it debuted in 1989, but it was also a controversy magnet, particularly over its breakout delinquent star. The Simpsons was seen by the more conservative end of the US media as a bad influence on kids (a viewpoint famously echoed by President Ronald Reagan a few years later with his call for American families to be “more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons”). Plenty of US schools banned a massive-selling T-shirt with Bart declaring himself an “underachiever and proud of it, man”.

It’s unclear whether mum had read reports of these T-shirt bans – it’s just as likely that she simply saw The Simpsons as another brash American cartoon import at a time when UK TV was drowning in them (and airing on Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV, to boot). Either way, the show was viewed with suspicion bordering on contempt. It would take a while for its subversive, satirical charms to be recognised.

Since I saw a VHS of Rush Hour at a sleepover as a kid, the martial art has given me increased body positivity and helped me find a community

When I was 12, following my parents’ divorce, I moved with my mum and sister from London to Australia, leaving behind my dad and a large extended family. It was destabilising and demoralising. Throughout high school I was bullied for my accent, clothes and looks. While Australian girls seemed like flowers thriving under the brutal sun, I felt like a sweaty, acne-prone gremlin who craved the dark and cold of home.

Shortly after moving, I befriended a girl who had lost her mum. Suffering in our own ways, we found release in watching the 1998 action comedy Rush Hour, starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker as detectives trying to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Chinese diplomat. My friend had the film on VHS, and we put it on one night when I was sleeping over. This became a regular activity, and we would fling ourselves around her living room recreating fight scenes. It was the silly, uninhibited fun we both desperately needed, and my first taste of kung fu.

Robin Wright has a steamy relationship with her son as he embarks on a new romance with Olivia Cooke. This drama is the perfect show – and I say this with love – for perverts

The thriller genre is amazingly malleable. You can start with an escaped monkey, a mystery corpse in frozen tundra, or just two women who can’t bear to be in a room together. You can make your own rules, as long as you do it with style, and take us somewhere surprising. Like using a tricycle to break into the Met Gala.

The Girlfriend (Prime Video, from Wednesday 10 September), is a great example. It takes a relatable premise – what if your mother and your partner don’t get on? – and pushes it to extremity. When privileged surgeon Daniel takes new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cooke , to meet his family, things are tense from the outset. Daniel’s mother, Laura, is extremely protective, and senses Cherry is hiding something. The women strain to remain outwardly polite while their real relationship grows into one of covert threats, secrets and lies, outmanoeuvring and betrayal. There are chills. But it’s also hot.