He once sang, ‘if you ever need a stranger to sing at your wedding ... then I am your man’. Couples took him at his word. Now, he’s turned the experience into an album and novel

On a video call from his Gothenburg apartment, Jens Lekman is contemplating the 132 weddings at which he has performed. “When you play a normal show, everything follows a schedule. At a wedding, you never know if you’re going to get punched by someone’s uncle or go skinny dipping with the couple.” He pauses. “And that’s what I like: putting myself in weird, awkward situations.”

These include passing out inside a large but poorly ventilated wedding cake. “It was a small wedding and a lot of stuff was DIY. It wasn’t fun to realise they had forgotten the air holes.” Or a man nearly dying on the dancefloor. “Yeah, that happened, too. But he made it.”

The humanist historian brings objects to life beautifully, but falters when it comes to people and their beliefs

Domination tells the story of how a tiny local cult became one of the greatest cultural and political forces in history. Alice Roberts puts the case that the Roman empire lived on in a different form in the church.

It is not an original idea – after all the foundation prayer of Christianity says “thy Kingdom come” – but Roberts tells the story from the point of view of individual parishes and even buildings. It’s a revelation, like watching those stop-motion films of how a plant grows and blooms. There’s a section about how a Roman villa might transform into a parish, the long barn providing the footprint, the web of relationships providing the social connection, the very tiles and columns providing the building materials. I can’t think of anyone who writes better about the way objects can speak to us. There’s a passage here describing her joy on grasping what it means that an ordinary-looking clay lamp found in Carlisle is purple on the inside; there’s a beautiful afterword about the history of bells.

Robin Wright and Olivia Cooke go head to head in a steamy new drama, plus an explosive tell-all documentary about the star’s tumultuous life that talks to everyone from his ex wife … to his ex drug dealer

Tense, jumpy music. An oddly intense mother-son relationship. Plenty of conversational cut and thrust. This melodramatic psychological thriller parades its genre signifiers like a badge of honour. It centres on the relationship between Cherry ( Olivia Cooke ) and Danny (Laurie Davidson). She’s an ambitious, cunning, thwarted estate agent who is looking for a shortcut up London’s social ladder; he’s a slightly gormless, grinning rich boy. When Danny brings Cherry home to meet his parents, his uptight, manipulative mother Laura ( Robin Wright ) smells a rat. Thus begins a battle of wills between two women whose mutual suspicion quickly turns into deep antipathy.
Prime Video, from Wednesday 10 September

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

The Gervais- and Merchant-produced comedy The Paper pokes fun at US journalism. Plus, Mitchell and Webb reunite for a new sketch show. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Max
The joke is on journalism in this mockumentary by the writers of the US version of The Office, with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant as executive producers. Cameras follow life at the Toledo Truth Teller, a historic midwestern newspaper that now only prides itself on articles about how much Ben Affleck tips. But Domhnall Gleeson’s Ned Sampson comes in as editor to shake things up. Look out for The White Lotus star Sabrina Impacciatore, whose comedy chops once again steal the show. Hollie Richardson

Fans of the 28 Days Later franchise were thrilled to finally get a follow-up this year with 28 Years Later —and they weren't disappointed. Sony Pictures has already wrapped filming on a sequel: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple , slated for release early next year and directed by Nia DaCosta. The first trailer just dropped and the film looks as grimly compelling as its predecessor, while hopefully also retaining something of the 2025 film's heart.

(Spoilers for 28 Years Later below.)

As previously reported , the critically acclaimed 2002 film 28 Days Later is often credited with sparking the 21st-century revival of the zombie genre. In that film, a highly contagious "Rage Virus" was accidentally released from a lab in Cambridge, England. Those infected turned into violent, mindless monsters who brutally attacked the uninfected—so-called "fast zombies." Transmitted by bites, scratches, or even just by getting a drop of infected blood in one's system, the virus spreads rapidly, effectively collapsing society.

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Marvel Studios has (mercifully) slowed the pace of new releases of late, but this month we're getting the miniseries Marvel Zombies —and the studio just dropped the official trailer. It's adapted from the Marvel Comics series and a spinoff of the 2021 What If...? episode featuring several Avengers in zombified form. It's part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase Six.

(Spoilers for the 2021 What If...? episode below.)

In the What If...? episode—which retconned the events of Ant-Man and the Wasp and Avengers: Infinity War —the trouble started when Hank Pym entered the quantum realm to rescue his wife, Janet. Alas, Janet was now a zombie due to a mysterious quantum virus. Hank was infected in turn right before the pair returned to the lab; Scott Lang/Ant-Man was attacked, but Hank and Janet's daughter, Hope Pym, escaped. Within 24 hours, much of the northwestern US was infected, including many members of the Avengers who showed up to thwart the zombie apocalypse.

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Blade Runner's third live-action entry will be a streaming miniseries on Amazon Prime Video, and Deadline reports that it is now slated for release in 2026.

"The update was provided by Laura Lancaster, Head of US SVOD TV Development and Series – Co-Productions at Amazon MGM Studios, in an internal memo announcing promotions for two executives, Kara Smith and Tom Lieber," Deadline explained.

We previously reported that the series, titled Blade Runner 2099 , had been greenlit under original film director Ridley Scott back in 2022.

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The Toxic Avenger , a semi-reboot of the 1984 superhero splatter-fest , made the rounds of the festival circuit back in 2023. But all the violence and gore scared off most distributors, so the film—starring Peter Dinklage ( Game of Thrones ) in the title role—has been languishing in the vault for much of the last two years.

Thanks to Cineverse, The Toxic Avenger is finally coming to select theaters this weekend. And thanks to the folks at Bloody Disgusting (a Cineverse subsidiary), we've got a trailer by producer/actor and horror movie fan Wilson Cleveland , rendered in a gloriously goofy-yet-gory grindhouse style that pays homage to the original trailer . (You can watch the red-band trailer below.)

(Minor spoilers for original 1984 film below.)

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