They are comedy sparring partners from Green Wing. Can the duo play stricken lovers in The Deep Blue Sea, the eviscerating play Rattigan poured his own heartbreak into? Warning: contains spoilersOn 8 May 1956, Terence Rattigan stood outside the Royal Court theatre in London after the opening night of a revolutionary new drama. This was not one of his...

Tiger Stripes, about a girl who turns into a jungle cat when her periods start, was chosen by Malaysia as its Oscar entry. But they wanted cuts. Amanda Nell Eu relives a ‘painful and comedic’ experienceThe director Amanda Nell Eu has always been a bit of a rebel, she says over video chat from her home in Kuala Lumpur. “When I was a teenager, I was sometimes...

The easy freedom of this medium allowed the artist to range over subjects as diverse as tarot, male nudes at Fire Island and a friend’s flat – and offer clues to his more public feature filmsThirty years after his death in February 1994, it is perhaps unexpected that Derek Jarman – multi-faceted artist, activist, film-maker, socialiser – is probably...

Netflix’s hit show The Circle recently introduced an AI chatbot contestant, a potentially worrying sign of where we’re headingAccording to his profile, Max, a contestant on season six of the Netflix reality show The Circle, is 26 years old, brunette and into his Australian shepherd, Pippa. He is a veterinary intern from Pismo Beach, California, and...

From a man with a mullet letting off fireworks to a Slovenian witch, this year’s Eurovision has some of the wildest entries ever. It makes our own entry look rather bland …The bookies’ favourite, and you can see why. For one thing, it addresses a hot-button social issue – the lyrics deal with Nemo Mettler’s non-binary gender identity – that’s also very...

Restored 1976 doc of Connolly’s tour of Ireland shows that, despite his bombastic stage presence, he is impeccably polite. But his naughtier material hasn’t aged wellHere is a 70s time capsule as pungent as a brimming pub ashtray. Restored and rereleased, Big Banana Feet is the 1976 documentary about Billy Connolly’s live shows in Dublin and Belfast...