The proud Brummie has a weird but wonderful new travel series. Plus: Andrew Garfield’s family tree discoveries move him to tears. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Max
“It feels very profound but also completely worthless at the same time.” Only proud Brummie Joe Lycett could come up with this concept: visit all 18 places called Birmingham in the US and Canada and get them to sign an internationally recognised friendship agreement. Why? He wants to put his beloved city back on the global map – and he has the blessing of the lord mayor. First, he visits Birmingham in Pemberton Township, New Jersey, which boasts “a disused chemical plant and a post office” and where the “only hotel burned down 100 years ago”. Can he get the town to sign the agreement? Hopefully – there’s an International Day of Birmingham party at the end of the series for all to attend. Hollie Richardson

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Disney+ series revisits killing of Brazilian man wrongly identified as a terrorist by Met police officers in 2005

The mother of a man shot dead by police in a London Underground station after being mistaken for a terrorist has said “everyone should watch” a new dramatisation of her son’s killing.

Jean Charles de Menezes was shot seven times by two police marksmen in Stockwell tube station on 22 July 2005. De Menezes was wrongly identified as one of the fugitives involved in a failed bombing two weeks after the 7/7 attack in London, which killed 52 people.

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Actor claims working with Oscar nominee on set of thriller Girl is ‘one of the all time worst experiences’ of her life

Bella Thorne has accused fellow US actor Mickey Rourke of bruising her genitals with a metal grinder on the set of a movie that they filmed together during what she described as “one of the all time worst experiences” of her career.

In a story on her Instagram account on Friday, Thorne alleged that the episode was part of a broader campaign to humiliate her while they collaborated on the 2020 thriller Girl. She wrote: “This fucking dude. GROSS” and relayed the account in writing over a copy of a BBC article reporting that Celebrity Big Brother’s producers had reprimanded him for aiming homophobic comments at the singer JoJo Siwa while they competed on the reality show.

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The aftermath of Trump’s tariffs, Russian airstrikes in Ukraine, raids in the West Bank and Indigenous people in Brasilia: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

• Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

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Timothy X Atack thinks AI models are imitation engines – and they do not celebrate their sources, they conceal them. Abie Longstaff says Meta has stolen far more books than any author could read

Andrew Vincent makes a good point in that, very often, artists are already expected to behave like artificial intelligence ( Letters, 6 April ). But of course creativity is not simply a matter of training on the work of others. Innovative artists make decisions towards low-probability outcomes; imitation, meanwhile, seeks high-probability outcomes.

As things stand, generative AI models are imitation engines – and they do not celebrate their sources, they conceal them. Writers carry forward ideas and techniques, yes, but an immeasurable part of human creativity comes from the certain knowledge that we will one day die. AI does not have that gift. For all it consumes, it does not choose what to remember or believe or feel. Authors are as much up in arms about the extreme-capitalist assumption that we’re simply machines, regurgitating content, as we are about the systemic theft of our work. Human authors also tend to worry about the difference between inspiration and plagiarism. AI has not yet been programmed to care, and no one’s holding their breath on that count.
Timothy X Atack
Bristol

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A rogue cyborg security (SEC) unit gains autonomy and must learn to interact with humans while hiding its new capability in the trailer for Murderbot , Apple TV+'s new 10-episode sci-fi comedic thriller starring Alexander Skarsgård. It's based on the bestselling book series The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. And judging from the trailer, Murderbot looks like it will strike just the right balance between humor and action.

There are seven books in Wells' series thus far. All are narrated by Murderbot, who is technically owned by a megacorporation but manages to hack and override its governor module. Rather than rising up and killing its former masters, Murderbot just goes about performing its security work, relieving the boredom by watching a lot of entertainment media.

In the first book, All Systems Red , Murderbot saves a scientific expedition on an alien planet when they are attacked by a giant alien creature. During the ensuing investigation, the cyborg uncovers a plot against the expedition, as well as a second team, by yet another team intent on killing their rivals for some reason. Murderbot joins the humans in foiling those murderous plans but escapes onto a cargo ship at the end rather than give up its hard-earned autonomy.

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The elusive 87-year-old author’s new book is a noir caper set during the big band era following a detective in search of a cheese heiress

Thomas Pynchon has written his first novel in more than a decade, publisher Penguin Random House (PRH) has announced.

Shadow Ticket, due out in October, will be the American novelist’s 10th book. Like his previous two, Inherent Vice (2009) and Bleeding Edge (2013), this new work is a noir novel about a private eye.

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Barbican, London
Jessie Buckley, Olly Alexander and Will Young read from the artist and film-maker’s diaries, capturing a life of defiance, joy and vitality

Is Derek Jarman the first director to be more famous for his foliage than his films? At Prospect Cottage , his black-and-yellow sanctuary squatting in the shadow of the nuclear power station at Dungeness on the Kent coast, Jarman nurtured a garden in the inauspicious shingle; plants thrived between the jagged upturned stones he likened to dragon’s teeth. Thanks to his writings – notably the diaries published as Modern Nature in 1991, three years before his death – and the 2020 crowdfunding campaign to preserve the dwelling for the nation, the cottage and its gardens are now familiar and accessible to people who have never seen Sebastiane or Edward II, and may never want to.

Film is the flickering backdrop to the Barbican’s evening of music and readings celebrating Modern Nature, rather than its focal point, though Super 8 footage of a youthful Tilda Swinton (Jarman’s muse) provides a neat counterpoint to the pre-recorded sound of her 21st-century voice. Here in person are performers including the musician Simon Fisher Turner – a Jarman collaborator – along with Jessie Buckley, Shaun Evans and Will Young as well as It’s a Sin co-stars Olly Alexander and Omari Douglas.

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A follow-up to the record-breaking Netflix series might be in the works with hopes that it will ‘not be repetitive’

Brad Pitt ’s production company Plan B is in talks to develop another season of Adolescence , after the British show became a runaway hit on Netflix.

Speaking to Deadline in their first interview since the show took off on the streaming platform last month, co-presidents Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner said they are speaking to director Philip Barantini about the “next iteration” of the show, a critical success that has ignited conversations about children’s susceptibility to toxic masculinity online.

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