Sisters 360, Khan’s new play for children, tells the story of two hijab-wearing skateboarding sisters in Bradford. He hopes it will upend lazy ideas around Muslim girls – and bring new audiences to the theatre

Asif Khan first heard about Lena, Maysa and Ameya – the three Muslim skateboarding sisters from Hull who became social media stars in 2022 with their skills – from his mother-in-law. “She does this a lot. She’ll send me an article and say: ‘You could write a play about this,’” laughs Khan. But there was something about this particular story that piqued his interest. “They all wore the hijab, lived with their mum and had an Instagram account where they did their own raps and filmed skateboarding tricks … I immediately thought: Oh OK, this is a good premise for a play.”

So, he set about adapting it for the stage. He contacted the girls’ parents and had a “good, long hour’s chat”. “They were excited that someone was interested in doing a play about them,” says Khan, 44, who also works as an actor. The result of those chats is Sisters 360, a play about two Bradford-based hijab-wearing, skateboarding stepsisters, Fatima and Salima, aimed at audiences between the ages of eight and 12.

A Mancunian in supported housing uses heroin to manage his intrusive thoughts in this well-researched but horribly violent examination of mental health issues

Gino Evans makes his feature debut with this painful and disturbing drama which has some unwatchably horrible and violent moments. It’s set in Manchester and tells the story of a heroin user fresh out of prison and struggling to sort himself out. That might sound like a pretty standard beginning for gritty British social-realism, but with maturity and what looks like solid research, Evans turns his film into an examination of mental health issues. It’s not for the faint-hearted though, with some scenes in which people hurt other people very realistically.

Ex-Emmerdale actor Joe Gill plays Danny, who is released from prison into supported living after a short stretch for theft. Danny starts using again immediately, and he says in voiceover that he takes heroin to feel normal; it manages his OCD and intrusive thoughts (“I feel fucked up for even thinking them”). We are shown the intrusive thoughts that pop into his head: sitting opposite the manager of his supported housing, out of nowhere Danny pictures himself punching her repeatedly in the face. It’s brutal, and there are more scenes like this – realistic-looking and photographed with cold intensity by cinematographer Sam Cronin. I watched it clenched and tense – which is presumably the point, to show what it feels like to live like Danny, uncomfortably alert with adrenaline.

F Scott Fitzgerald’s Long Island novel has become a grand stage production at the London Coliseum

Visitors to Buckingham Palace will be able to see works by official tour artists who accompanied visits to 96 countries

Forty years ago the then Prince of Wales invited, at his own expense, the artist John Ward to join an official visit to Italy as an official tour artist, with the brief to draw or paint whatever inspired him.

Since then, 42 artists to have undertaken this role, collectively visiting 95 countries during 69 tours, with their work now going on display at Buckingham Palace.

Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt upends audience expectations in a feature debut that’s hyper-aware of the origin story’s sexual and patriarchal imagery

Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt makes her feature debut with an ingenious revisionist body-horror version of Cinderella, lavishly costumed and designed. There are twists in the style of David Cronenberg and Walerian Borowczyk, with (maybe inevitably) echoes of Carrie and Alien. In one scene, there could even be a nod to Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Cynical widow Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) remarries a well-heeled widower somewhere in 18th-century central Europe; he then makes her a widow for the second time by fatally gorging on cake at the wedding breakfast. As a result, Rebekka is left financially embarrassed with her plain daughter Elvira (Lea Myren), Elvira’s kid sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) and a new stepdaughter Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess), a beautiful young woman who haughtily resents the ugly Elvira. Instead of paying for a funeral for her late husband, Rebekka lets his body rot somewhere in the house while spending money on bizarre cosmetic treatments for Elvira – brutal nose- and eyelash-remodelling – in the hope that Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth) will choose her for his bride at his forthcoming ball. But Elvira rashly swallows a tapeworm to allow her to indulge a passion for cakes (Ozempic not being available in those days) and calamity approaches.

In this blazingly honest collection, the Canadian poet catalogues humanity’s destructive impact on the natural world

It is human nature to prefer our landscapes neatly framed – walls and wooden fences create the illusion that the great outdoors can be controlled and contained. Yet Karen Solie’s wildly unpredictable collection Wellwater flips the script. In this blazingly honest catalogue of human-made hazard and harm, we celebrate instead the contemporary landscapes refusing to be tamed.

Solie, who teaches at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, in western Canada, where vast prairies supply much of the world’s pulse crops. This fertile expanse in Wellwater , however, seems tired of endless service. The poem Red Spring witnesses how “weeds jump up unbidden, each year a little smarter”. They are trying, almost courageously, to outwit what Solie condemns as “zombie technology”, whose genetically modified “terminator seeds” sprout terrifying plants that are “more dead than alive”.

Broadcaster says corporation wants to bring in new people, and says he does not regret criticism of Tory asylum policy

Gary Lineker has suggested the BBC wanted him to leave Match of the Day, ahead of his departure next month after more than a quarter of the century at the helm of the show.

In an interview with Amol Rajan for the BBC, Lineker discussed his departure from the football highlights programme, which was announced late last year .

After the death of Pope Francis, experts weigh in on how much the real-life papal election will mirror the hit Oscar-winning movie

I confess: my first thought this morning, when I heard the news that Pope Francis died at the age of 88, was of Conclave . As in both the lowercase, technical meaning – the sequestration of cardinals to elect a new pope with a two-thirds majority – and the capital-C film of the same name from last year, which allowed viewers to vicariously participate in a process long shrouded in secrecy and reverence. (And premiering during the US vote, to experience election thrills without grim disappointment.)

The film, directed by Edward Berger, luxuriated in process both sacred and profane – the orderly processions and cafeteria run-ins, the ceremonial burning of paper votes and security screenings, the white smoke and the complimentary toiletries bags. The hallowed halls of the Vatican and the gossip that flits among them, especially as different factions compete to see their vision cemented by the most powerful religious leader in the world. As a deft and highly entertaining thriller on the furtive process of electing a new pope, well, you can expect people to consider Conclave as close to documentary as laypeople can get to the action. But how accurate is it?

The arts centre’s artistic director is on a mission to bring new audiences to the joys of classical music. He explains why mixing it with circus, grime, poetry, and film might be the way to do it

Can you name the UK’s top five most visited attractions? A 2024 survey placed the British Museum and Natural History Museum in the top two spots, then Windsor Great Park and the Tate Modern. No surprises there. But the fifth is perhaps less expected: the Southbank Centre, with 3.7 million annual visitors.

“If you come down in the summer, it’s like a 21st-century version of the Victorian pleasure garden,” says its artistic director, Mark Ball. “It’s like the whole world is here. Skateboarders mixed with poets mixed with the classical musicians, mixed with the dancers – it’s what gives this space its vibrancy and why I love it so much.”