Domhnall Gleeson stars as a clueless local newspaper editor in the mockumentary comedy’s latest creation. His talents can’t outdo the one-note dialogue and lack of hilarity

Two years after the British version concluded with a second brilliantly mortifying Christmas special in 2003 , American viewers got their own take on The Office. Set at the Dunder Mifflin paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, it was very much in the spirit of the original, at least initially: a deadpan mockumentary centred on a megalomaniac manager (Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott), who like Ricky Gervais’s David Brent before him was “a friend first, and a boss second … and probably an entertainer third”. The Office: An American Workplace ran for nine seasons, setting aside some of the original’s cringe comedy aspects in favour of something with a little more heart. By the time it ended in 2013, it was an award-winning sitcom juggernaut in its own right – hugely popular but bearing little resemblance to its Slough-based sibling.

It is in this US Office universe that showrunner Greg Daniels’s new spinoff is set, with the camera crew that followed Dunder Mifflin for a decade now decamping to a floundering local news outlet a state away (Oscar Nunez’s judgy accountant Oscar Martinez is the only character to transfer from Pennsylvania to Ohio). The Toledo Truth Teller is a newspaper struggling to survive in the digital age: cue the arrival of plucky new editor Ned Sampson (a very un-Irish Domhnall Gleeson). Ned hasn’t actually worked for a newspaper before, but he has risen the ranks selling high-end cardboard at the Truth Teller’s parent company, Enervate, which specialises in different types of paper (hence the link with Dunder Mifflin, and cue a recurring bit about the Truth Teller being less popular than toilet roll).

Saturnine frontman blames ‘disagreeable and vexatious characters’ for decision to cut ties with band

In a sullen episode befitting some of his more gloomy lyrics, Morrissey, lead singer of the Smiths, has abruptly shut down an email address he was promoting to sell his business interests in the band.

The notoriously saturnine frontman blamed “disagreeable and vexatious characters” involved with the band for his sudden decision, and claimed he had endured decades of misery, in a post on Friday on his website morrisseycentral.com.

After 27 years, the presenter is leaving one of BBC Radio’s finest programmes. He never talked down, and never dumbed down either

Over the years, a select few BBC radio programmes have carved out distinctive niches in the nation’s affections. High on many people’s lists of such radio treasures are probably programmes like the Archers, Desert Island Discs and, now into its second century, the Shipping Forecast. Another shoo-in member of this small and exclusive club – broadcasting’s equivalent of the Order of Merit – is surely Melvyn Bragg’s long-running Radio 4 programme In Our Time .

In Our Time embodies something fundamental to media. It is living proof that it is possible to be both serious and popular . So good was the programme, right from the start, that Lord Bragg and his guests managed to turn one of radio’s traditional “graveyard” slots – the hour after 9am on a weekday – into one of the BBC’s most enduring jewels. They did it by the simple expedient of talking interestingly about important and sometimes difficult subjects. Who would have guessed?

British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan describes the intricate planning that has been taking place. But Mark Vaughan thinks an animated display would be better

For the first time in almost 1,000 years, the Bayeux tapestry will come to Britain. In 2026, it will be displayed at the British Museum as part of a landmark cultural partnership with France, while the Bayeux Tapestry Museum in Normandy is closed during the construction of a landmark new building. In return, some of the UK’s greatest treasures – including the Lewis chessmen, the Sutton Hoo helmet, the Mold gold cape, and the Dunaverney flesh hook – will travel to Normandy.

Understandably, there has been interest in how these priceless items will be moved and concerns about their safety ( ‘La tapisserie, c’est moi’: Macron accused of putting politics first in Bayeux tapestry loan, 30 August ). I want to be clear about the detailed work under way in both countries. Since a partnership agreement was signed earlier this summer, experts on both sides of the Channel have been carrying out rigorous planning and due diligence to ensure the safe transport and conservation of the tapestry. Colleagues in France are preparing for its careful removal before work begins on their new museum, and intricate plans are being made for its journey to London. This expert-led collaboration – indeed, supported for 12 years by one of our leading specialists on the Bayeux scientific committee – will guide every stage, including a full dry run of the journey.

(BMG)
Great 10th albums are rare – but that is exactly what the band’s killer riffs, eerie atmosphere and midlife reflections achieve

Suede’s fifth album since their 2013 reformation continues their creative resurgence. Singer Brett Anderson suggests that if 2022’s Autofiction – their best post-reunion album until now – was their punk album, Antidepressants is its post-punk sibling. Influences such as Magazine, Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees feed into edgier but otherwise trademark Suede guitar anthems. Helmed again by longtime producer Ed Buller, Richard Oakes’s killer riffs maraud and jostle, Anderson’s moods run the gamut from impassioned to reflective and the rhythm section brew up a right old stomp.

The 57-year-old singer has spoken about his keenness to not be seen as a heritage act and to attract younger audiences. Antidepressants is no throwback. It’s thoroughly postmodern. The eerie background noises and sonic atmospheres chime perfectly with Anderson’s lyrics about what he calls “tensions of modern life, the paranoia, the anxiety, the neurosis” as the band extol the virtues of connection in a dislocated world.

Stars waved as usual from the city’s water taxis, but there was a repeated focus on films that help audiences interpret a chaotic world

For most of its 82 years, Venice has been perceived as the world’s most glamorous film festival. This year was no exception: stars including Julia Roberts, Cate Blanchett, Jude Law and George Clooney dutifully waved from canals and trooped down red carpets (although Law tripped while on a water taxi and Clooney got ill).

But the films themselves struck a different note. Jury president Alexander Payne may have rebutted questions about current affairs during his opening press conference, declaring himself concerned only with discussing cinema, but cinema at Venice this year was concerned largely, it turned out, with discussing current events.

Royal Court theatre, London
Ukrainian-born Ilya Kaminsky’s book-length poem is a potent theatrical force of many moving parts – signing, speech, surtitles, even a drone hovering over the audience

A town under military occupation refuses to buckle under. After a young deaf boy is shot while watching a puppet show, the citizens of Vasenka fall deaf themselves: refusing to speak, respond, even to hear military orders.

The dramatic, book-length poem from 2019 by Ukrainian-born Ilya Kaminsky becomes an elaborately imagined theatrical fable from Dublin’s Dead Centre: not consoling, sometimes laborious, always demanding vigilance.

Film-making studio Fable has announced it will attempt to recreate the 43 minutes cut from the auteur’s 1942 film using AI

An AI company is to reconstruct the missing portions of Orson Welles’ legendary mutilated masterwork The Magnificent Ambersons, it has been announced.

According to the Hollywood Reporter , the Showrunner platform is planning to use its AI tools to assist in a recreation of the lost 43 minutes of Welles’ 1942 film, removed and subsequently destroyed by Hollywood studio RKO.

St Mary’s Church, Haddington, East Lothian
Jacopo Spirei’s double-bill of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and William Walton’s The Bear is huge fun, with baritone Daniel Barrett particularly impressive

From the perfectly enunciated “Merde!” with which Jamie MacDougall’s cuckolded clockmaker Torquemada prefaces the overture to Ravel’s L’heure espagnole, this double-bill pairing the knockabout farce of infidelity with Walton’s lesser-known work is enormous fun.

MacDougall, a company stalwart, is the most experienced in a cast of current and recent Scottish Opera Emerging Artists, but the youth of the singers belies the depth of the characterisation they brought to Jacopo Spirei’s staging (adapted to fit the restrictions of St Mary’s church) that made musical and theatrical sense of the pairing.