From The Friend to Taskmaster: your complete entertainment guide for the week ahead

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The FriendOut now Starring Naomi Watts and Bill Murray, this adaptation of the acclaimed novel sees a New York-based writer (Watts) processing the suicide of a close friend who has bequeathed her his 150lb great dane, which proceeds to create multiple issues in her life as well as creating a poignant link to the past,Wind, Tide & OarOut now Shot on real film over a three-year timespan, and taking in oceans, rivers and the coastline around France, the UK and the Netherlands, Huw Wahl’s documentary is a homage to the art of sailing – and other engineless techniques such as rowing,As the title puts it, it’s all about wind, tide and oar,AprilOut now Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Venice festival prize winner begins with a delivery-room tragedy at a hospital in Georgia, where Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili) works as an obstetrician,She also moonlights by helping women with illegal abortions, but with a negligence investigation hanging over her, her two worlds threaten to collide.

Until DawnOut now What if you woke up just after being horrifically slaughtered and had to carry right on, knowing it could happen again? That’s the time-loop premise of this survival horror,Based on the video game, this standalone adaptation will be hoping for a bit of the goldrush success that Minecraft managed recently,Catherine BrayPolygon LiveCrystal Palace Park, London, 2 to 4 May This three-day event, billed as the UK’s largest outdoor 360-degree spatial audio event, features a stellar lineup of music experimentalists, from Tuareg collective Tinariwen to dance musician Jon Hopkins, all housed in a hemispherical dome,MCDie Walküre Royal Opera House, London, 1 to 17 May The Royal Opera’s production of Wagner’s Ring cycle, directed by Barrie Kosky and conducted by Antonio Pappano, continues with the second work,Christopher Maltman once again takes the role of Wotan, with Marina Prudenskaya as Fricka.

Andrew ClementsChase & Status29 April to 8 May; tour starts Glasgow Enduring dance act Saul Milton (Chase) and Will Kennard (Status) have been in a rich vein of commercial form over the last few years, scoring two Top 5 albums and a No 1 single with Stormzy.Expect that drum’n’bass monster, Backbone, to blow the roof off these arenas.MCNeil Cowley TrioGlasshouse, Gateshead, 26 April; RNCM theatre, Manchester, 27 April; Turner Sims Concert Hall, Southampton, 1 May; touring to 6 May Former funk pianist Neil Cowley formed a hard-rocking jazz trio in 2006, made six albums, then quit to explore contemporary classical and electronica.This tour is the lineup’s long-awaited comeback, with their signature mix of delicacy, ambiance and earthshaking grooves.John FordhamHiroshigeThe British Museum, London, 1 May to 7 September Revered by Van Gogh and other artists in 19th-century France, Hiroshige grips us as a precociously modern painter of life’s passing pleasures.

Cherry blossoms and kimonos, sunlit seas and crowded river scenes fill his work.The colours of his prints are so intense they inject you with joy.The World of King James VI and I Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 26 April to 14 September James VI of Scotland also became James I of England in 1603 – but his increasing fame today is for more intimate reasons.James had gay love affairs, most famously with his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham.This exhibition is a delve into the life and court of a queer monarch.

Do Ho SuhTate Modern, London, 1 May to 19 October Installations recreate the feeling of home, by a Korea-born artist based in London.Suh’s architectural sculptures range from replicas of traditional Korean houses to more abstract and suggestive transparent structures you can walk through.This is art that questions what it is now to be “at home”.Graham CrowleyWalker Art Gallery, Liverpool, to 13 July This painter has found a new twist on an old obsession: how to shape space in light and shade.Crowley maps out interior and exterior places using strong black shadows over which he smears a single bright colour, often yellow.

An unholy marriage of Turner and Warhol.Jonathan JonesSarah SilvermanThe London Palladium, 28 April In the 00s, Silverman’s shtick was heavily deadpan and ironically offensive.Nowadays, she is less faux-ignorant and far more heartfelt, but still gravitates towards darkness.Her new show, Postmortem, revolves round the deaths of her stepmother and father.Rachel AroestiHamlet Hail to the ThiefAviva Studios, Manchester, 27 April to 18 May Radiohead and Shakespeare? The two collide for the RSC’s experimental new musical.

Thom Yorke has deconstructed the band’s album Hail to the Thief for a gig-theatre rendition of the tragedy,Kate WyverLittle DeathsTheatre503, London, 29 April to 3 May Charlie and Debs will be best friends for ever,Won’t they? Amy Powell Yeates’s drama explores the limits of friendship as the years pass,It’s always worth taking a punt on a show at Theatre503,You never know when you might find the next big star.

KWSongs of the BulbulCurve theatre, Leicester, 29 & 30 April; touring to 19 July A national tour for Aakash Odedra’s hit show, which was a joyful surprise at last year’s Edinburgh festival.Odedra is a fine classical Indian dancer, and this solo brings together Rani Khanam’s choreography with a score from Rushil Ranjan that really makes the piece soar.Lyndsey WinshipSign up to Inside SaturdayThe only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine.Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.after newsletter promotionThe Four SeasonsNetflix, 1 May Post-White Lotus, get your Americans-on-bad-holidays fix with this adaptation of Alan Alda’s 1981 comedy about three couples who vacation together.

With Tina Fey at the helm – plus a cast that includes Will Forte, Steve Carell and Colman Domingo – a good time for the viewer is guaranteed.Carême Apple TV+, 30 April Ian Kelly’s biography of 19th-century cook Antonin Carême christens him the “first celebrity chef”.In this adaptation, he is also the bad-boy heartthrob of France’s exquisitely indulgent cuisine, seducing women with his renegade charm.Man Like MobeenBBC Three & iPlayer, 1 May The final series of Guz Khan’s comedy about a reformed drug dealer is certainly action packed.This instalment sees Mobeen released from jail only to cross swords with the Turkish mafia while trying to rescue his sister, who is trapped in the UAE with evil uncle Khan.

TaskmasterChannel 4, 1 May, 9pm Series 19 of the offbeat gameshow may have the most wildcard-heavy cast yet.In the elder statesman slot we have US comic Jason Mantzoukas, Stevie Martin takes the millennial standup role, Fatiha El-Ghorri is the promising newbie, Ghosts’ Mathew Baynton is the resident actor, and podcaster Rosie Ramsey brings mainstream appeal.RABadlands CrewOut 28 April; PC If you’ve ever dreamed of living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, constructing your own armoured trucks and battling with marauding gangs, this is the PC strategy survival game for you.With tons of customisation options and amusing cartoon-visuals, Badlands Crew is the Wacky Races/Mad Max crossover we’ve been begging for.Skin DeepOut 30 April; PC In this era of relentlessly dark first-person shooters, this effort from the makers of the excellent Quadrilateral Cowboy is a welcome oddity – a slapstick immersive space opera, where your job is to clear space cruisers of pirates with any weapons at your disposal, be they guns or judiciously placed banana skins.

Keith StuartSelf Esteem – A Complicated WomanOut now Four years after her breakthrough album, Prioritise Pleasure, singer, songwriter and actor Rebecca Lucy Taylor returns with more pop-focused emotional exorcisms.Focus Is Power marries a lyric about survival to a choir-backed swell, while the cheeky 69 heads to the dancefloor for a ranking of various sex positions.Femi Kuti – Journey Through LifeOut nowThe legendary London-born, Nigeria-raised musician refers to this 11th studio album as an encapsulation of his life so far, with a particular focus on his family.The ebbs and flows are captured in the undulating rhythms of songs such as After 24 Years.Samia – BloodlessOut now LA-based singer Samia has a knack for dropping you into her life, zooming in on the details.

That continues on her third album of delicate indie folk, specifically on closer Pants, which turns a pair of jeans into an existential exploration,Lizard, meanwhile, wrestles with a desire to sabotage over sun-kissed guitars,Viagra Boys – Viagr Aboys Out now “I am a man that’s made of meat / You’re on the internet looking at feet,” So goes the chorus to Man Made of Meat, the ferocious lead single from the Swedish post-punkers’ not-quite-self-titled fourth album,While 2022’s Cave World skewered politics, this follow-up turns the spotlight inwards with a surrealist eye.

MCPablo Torre Finds OutPodcast Sportscaster Pablo Torre’s podcast delves into fascinating sports stories but is also a vehicle for his own curiosity, producing excellent esoteric episodes including an recent investigation into why Netflix canned a nine-hour documentary on Prince,Hochelaga YouTube Billing itself as a video essay channel covering “obscure topics that deserve more attention”, Hochelaga’s brief and accessible videos still manage to uncover engrossing details including an account of a 3,400-year-old song, notated only in 1972,Indispensable Relations Radio 4, Monday, 11am An illuminating three-part series examining the relationship between Israel and the US,Beginning with President Truman’s opinions on the country in 1947, host Tom Bateman’s history reveals the nuances behind the decisions made today,Ammar Kalia
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Indie brewers kept out of UK bars and pubs by multinationals, study finds

Global beer corporations are using their financial muscle to elbow smaller competitors off the bar, according to research that found independent breweries have been shut out of most of their local pubs.The number of breweries in the UK that are not owned by a larger business or multinational is already in decline, falling by 100 last year to 1,715, according to figures released earlier this year by the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates (Siba).In its annual independent beer report, parts of which have been shared with the Guardian, the trade body for British indie brewers said tough conditions were exacerbated by difficulty selling to local pubs.Siba members told a survey that 60% of the pubs within 40 miles were inaccessible to them, choking off potential sources of revenue and reducing choice for consumers thirsty for more interesting options at the bar.They blamed conditions imposed by large breweries and some pub chains, including financial agreements that impose conditions on what beers pubs can sell

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Vodafone whistleblowers warned executives about plight of high street store staff

Whistleblowers warned a series of senior Vodafone executives – including the current chief executive, Margherita Della Valle – that scores of its franchised store owners faced financial ruin about two years before a high court claim accused the company of “unjustly enriching” itself.Vodafone employees made repeated complaints to their superiors about the company slashing commissions paid to the small businesses running the company’s high street retail network, according to a string of current and former Vodafone employees. The cost-cutting tactics resulted in a group of 62 of about 150 Vodafone franchise operators filing a £120m-plus legal claim last December.The telecoms company, which is valued at about £17bn on the London Stock Exchange, has said: “We refute the [legal] claims but will be fully engaging in [a mediation] process with a view to resolving this commercial dispute.”However, the emergence of warnings to senior management reveals for the first time how some of the mobile operator’s own staff appeared to support the franchisees over their own employer

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Meta faces Ghana lawsuits over impact of extreme content on moderators

Meta is facing a second set of lawsuits in Africa over the psychological distress experienced by content moderators employed to take down disturbing social media content including depictions of murders, extreme violence and child sexual abuse.Lawyers are gearing up for court action against a company contracted by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, after meeting moderators at a facility in Ghana that is understood to employ about 150 people.Moderators working for Majorel in Accra claim they have suffered from depression, anxiety, insomnia and substance abuse as a direct consequence of the work they do checking extreme content.The allegedly gruelling conditions endured by workers in Ghana are revealed in a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.It comes after more than 140 Facebook content moderators in Kenya were diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content

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Microsoft says everyone will be a boss in the future – of AI employees

Microsoft has good news for anyone with corner office ambitions. In the future we’re all going to be bosses – of AI employees.The tech company is predicting the rise of a new kind of business, called a “frontier firm”, where ultimately a human worker directs autonomous artificial intelligence agents to carry out tasks.Everyone, according to Microsoft, will become an agent boss.“As agents increasingly join the workforce, we’ll see the rise of the agent boss: someone who builds, delegates to and manages agents to amplify their impact and take control of their career in the age of AI,” wrote Jared Spataro, a Microsoft executive, in a blogpost this week

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London Marathon 2025: Tigst Assefa and Sabastian Sawe win elite races – as it happened

Righto! That, my friends, is us. Thanks for your company and comments, and enjoy the rest of the weekend. Peace out.Deborah from Belfast has just told us that “London is the friendliest place”. Runners’ buzz is for real!My goodness we’re spoiling you today

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‘The secret is trusting the process’: Sawe wins London Marathon as Assefa digs in

On one of the hottest days in London marathon history, it was a novice over 26.2 miles who played it coolest of all. As temperatures climbed towards 20c, almost everyone in the elite men’s field – including Eliud Kipchoge, the greatest ever, and the Olympic champion Tamirat Tola – slowed at the 30km drinks station to grab their bottles and quench their thirst.But one athlete, the 30-year-old Kenyan Sabastian Sawe, decided water could wait and in only his second marathon he summoned a kick so devastating that he left everyone else floundering within seconds. “I saw that I had an opportunity to push and I did,” Sawe said after crossing the line in 2hr 2min 27sec, the second quickest time in London marathon history