HBO’s era-defining comedy is set for a new five-episode series. Its bleakness and warmth couldn’t be more welcome

It’s a pop culture emergency. A millennial-quake that shook my social feed to its core. Girls, the HBO show that stole the zeitgeist in the early Instagram era and made Lena Dunham a generational star, is returning for a five-episode revival series. The project was announced via a mock video call with some of the original cast: Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet and Andrew Rannells. They’re all returning for the reboot, which will pick up the story 10 years after the 2017 finale.

Girls captured such a specific era when it premiered in 2012. Social media still felt new and exciting, Barack Obama was president and so-called “woke 1” felt like it was going to be the new normal. The show’s characters navigated that terrifying twentysomething period when you’re searching for an identity, where it feels like everyone has it figured out but you. Dunham’s realistic approach to sex scenes – sticky, awkward, unflinching – made the show one of the first to be “discoursed” on social media, spawning endless think-pieces and Twitter threads. She was declared the voice of her generation, but she also became a figure of controversy who didn’t always seem suited to such intense, era-defining fame.

Would you pay thousands to meet the love of your life? In an age of app fatigue, many singles are hiring coaches to help them find partners. But are they chancers preying on the lovelorn, or do they hold the key to true romance?

Modern dating is a hellscape. Just ask any single person, who will probably regale you with stories of endless swiping, ghosting, cringe Hinge dates and unfulfilling “situationships”. But what if there was a way to escape all this and put yourself on a fast track to finding The One?

That very aim is driving the rise of dating coaches – people who make money from helping their clients to find a partner. According to the New York Times, now is a better time than ever to be a relationship coach, with the widespread dissatisfaction with dating apps and a growing sense of “heteropessimism” fuelling their popularity. In 2023, Shirley Williams, a then 37‑year‑old from New York, went viral when she posted a video sharing that she spent $10,000 on a dating coach, and got engaged within a year. Her post sparked intense debate between people who thought it was a ridiculous expense, and others who wondered why this was so much more controversial than, say, investing in education, travel and work.

The ruthless female characters of The Gentlemen, Beef and Peaky Blinders bring new depth to the evil matriarch stereotype

Television loves a gangster story – and apparently so does the Duchess of Sussex. This week, Netflix’s The Gentlemen – Guy Ritchie’s latest addition to the gangster canon, which stars Theo James as a distractingly handsome aristocrat who becomes embroiled in the world of organized crime – returns for its second season. And in August, the show hit the headlines after rumors that Meghan was reportedly in early talks to join its third season when she and Prince Harry made their highly unexpected return to the UK.

At first, Meghan’s potential role seemed like a random pivot for the former Suits star, who now seems far more at home holding a jar of her Montecito-made jam than brandishing a gun. But really, these casting rumours are indicative of a wider shift in the traditionally machismo-fueled gangster genre, where it’s now more common to see women stealing the spotlight – and calling the shots.

He was a telecoms engineer by day – and documented the Scottish city’s leather scene by night. Now the 79-year-old has opened his erotic archives and received his first ever solo exhibition

What is the story behind John Wood’s photographs? Some might guess that his portraits, which capture male subjects in various states of undress, very often wearing black leather jackets, gloves and boots, were taken in New York in the era of BDSM photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and Studio 54. Or maybe they were created in a very different kind of darkroom – the type of spaces that inspired the homoerotic imagery of the artist Tom of Finland? If you were given a hundred tries, you’d probably never guess that these erotic, intimate, kinky portraits were taken in a converted attic in the West End of Glasgow, unbeknown to the world (and the neighbours) for decades.

The story of Wood himself is equally unusual. At 79, he is showcasing his first ever solo show at Celine gallery in Glasgow. To say it has been a long time coming would be an understatement: Wood has been making photographs since his teens, when he began teaching himself by studying the images in magazines. The portraits in the show span a 20-year period, from ‘Cal’, a small Polaroid of a man standing nude next to a white doorway, taken in 1982, to ‘June 2002’, a gelatin silver print of an unnamed man clad in a leather waistcoat, while a black leather military-style cap and a cigarette obscure most of his face.

From gritty criminals to teens coming to terms with their identity, pride month sees Guardian writers on their most beloved queer characters

Forget about dimly lit period dramas where miserable women with no access to electricity gently sob in their heaving corsets and accidentally-on-purpose brush hands in the trembling candlelight; overblown, bombastic heist-capers and brooding, butch anti-heroes are far more up my street when it comes to lesbian cinema. What, after all, could be more intensely gay than immediately committing to a life of crime with someone you’ve only just set eyes on? My favourite of the entire bunch has to be the swaggering ex-con turned plumber Corky, who helps to save Violet from the clutches of her mob boss husband in 1996’s cult classic Bound. Though we first meet Corky trussed up in a literal closet, the metaphor doesn’t play out how you might expect: unapologetic and visible in a time when few films explored queerness full stop, she flexes a labrys tattoo, spends her down time swigging beer in grotty dive bars, and eventually drives off into the sunset, her new partner-in-crime in tow, in a beaten-up Chevy pick-up. The sheer simplicity of Corky as a queer heartthrob was, somehow, ridiculously ahead of its time, and her magnetic influence has played out everywhere from Bottoms to Love Lies Bleeding. El Hunt

He challenged homophobia not through sexualised imagery but by reshaping ideas of beauty, intimacy and desire. The result? From posters to cushion covers, A Bigger Splash has become an essential presence in countless gay households

• ‘He changed the world just by looking at it’

• Obituary: David Hockney

Six decades after David Hockney painted A Bigger Splash, his most famous painting, reproductions have become a visual motif in gay domestic life. I’ve seen framed posters, prints and postcards of the work – which captures the moment after a person jumps off a diving board into an otherwise still cyan blue swimming pool – in countless gay households. In my flat, it appears on a cushion cover that I bought after seeing the real thing at Hockney’s 2017 Tate Britain retrospective.

It’s fitting that A Bigger Splash is now emblematic of this pioneer. As an out gay artist who depicted same-sex desire in his work long before male homosexuality was partly decriminalised in England and Wales, Hockney and his paintings challenged the homophobia within the artistic establishment and beyond. And he did so not through the use of highly sexualised imagery, like the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, or with the activist themes of painter Keith Haring, but by reshaping our ideas of beauty, intimacy and desire. That’s how he made the biggest splash.

Sam Levinson’s HBO show went to garish new extremes to show the hollowness of the American Dream

This article contains spoilers

Ahead of the series finale, I didn’t think there was much more that Euphoria could do to shock me. Since season three of the HBO drama picked up its story five years after the group of teens graduated high school, Sam Levinson’s brainchild has made jaw-dropping scenes its raison d’etre. From Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) cosplaying as a dog and making mega bucks on OnlyFans, to Nate (Jacob Elordi) getting his fingers and toes chopped off before being buried alive, and Jules (Hunter Schafer) being mummified in plastic by her sugar daddy, the last eight episodes have demanded our attention in a media landscape where that very thing is valued above all else.

But as I watched the final episode, it once again delivered something unexpected. The 88-minute finale felt like a standalone feature film, with no shortage of biblical references. It even ended with the final words: “May God bless us all.” The sudden pivot into a nostalgic, star-spangled morality is indicative of a confused show that, right up until the last moment, hasn’t been sure what it’s trying to tell us. As a lesson in ethics, it falls flat. Yet looking more deeply, there is something more complicated going on.

As its third season ends, Sam Levinson’s HBO show reflects the grim future that gen Z faces. Its rage-bait is precisely the point

The third season of Euphoria has been almost impossible to ignore for anyone with a smartphone. The HBO drama, which started off in 2019 following a group of hedonistic, privileged teens, has evolved into television’s answer to rage-bait, creating moments that are specifically designed to dominate the news feed with memes and outrage. Even before we reach the season finale, we’ve seen OnlyFans storylines, pup play, sugar daddies, mummification fetishes, a disastrous wedding, fingers and toes being sliced off, venomous snake attacks, cockatoo assassinations (RIP Paladin), gangster shootouts and (several) characters being buried alive.

In season three, Euphoria picked up its story five years after the characters graduated from high school. At times, the show has felt lost outside of the high school setting, exploring a confusing mishmash of genres and plots, some of which have been called out for glamorising misogyny and violence. Yet despite these criticisms, the show has a track record of taking bold artistic risks, which is becoming rarer in a content landscape that values quantity over quality. It turned Sam Levinson, its creator, into one of Hollywood’s most exciting (and polarising) visionaries, and catapulted a new generation of actors into the A-list to the point where it now seems like they have outgrown the show). As season three concludes, Euphoria represents a strange – and very “2026” – contradiction, where it feels both ridiculous and undeniably influential.

The film’s villain is a conniving tech oligarch seeking to buy his way into fashion’s inner circle. Sound familiar?

In The Devil Wears Prada 2, we’re introduced to a very different Miranda Priestly. There was a time where the all-powerful queen of fashion – who is played by Meryl Streep and based on Vogue’s longest-serving editor, Anna Wintour – could end careers with a glance. But this time, she spends most of the movie taking orders herself. First, we see her at the behest of advertisers, then publishing magnate Irv Ravitz and his irritating nepo baby son. And it isn’t long before Benji Barnes, an eccentric billionaire, shows up and threatens to dismantle the excellence she has spent her entire career championing.

In the film, Benji is played – scarily well, I should add – by Justin Theroux. After a high-profile divorce, he has had a “glow-up”, which loosely translates to losing weight and boasting a deep mahogany tan. Post-divorce, he is now in a relationship with Emily – Miranda’s acerbic former assistant, played by the scene-stealing Emily Blunt, who is described as “every girl who ignored him in high school”. Benji’s inclusion in the story feels representative of the wider media landscape, where the whims of billionaires decide which parts of the old, pre-social media world get to survive. And for Emily, she’s learning that being associated with someone so powerful has the potential to help her finally step out of Miranda’s shadow. The romance between these diametric opposites – Type A fashion queen and a nerd who grew up to become one of the world’s richest men – provides a stream of comic relief. But beyond the laughs are a deeper – and bleaker – statement about how people with enough money can buy cultural power.

Sam Levinson’s HBO show has always aimed to ruffle feathers. But its new season’s provocations ring hollow

• ‘A husband expects a yes’: how wife schools are shaping submissive Christian women

“You’re not a man!” screams Cassie Howard in the latest episode of Euphoria, HBO’s hedonistic, no-longer-high-school drama. “Men provide.” Cassie, who is brilliantly played by the human discourse magnet Sydney Sweeney, is furious with her new husband, Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi). She’s just found out that Nate, the all-grown-up high school jock, has been borrowing huge sums of money to fund their luxury lifestyle. In the middle of their wedding reception – a soiree she now realises has been paid for using illicit means – she is loudly berating him as their guests awkwardly pretend not to hear.

The wedding of Cassie and Nate was, somewhat unconventionally, revealed months ahead of Euphoria’s third season by Sam Levinson, the show’s equally unconventional writer and creator. As expected, it was a cinematic and expensive-looking spectacle that descended into disaster. Yet for much of Euphoria’s first three episodes, I’ve been wondering what the show – now picking up five years after the last season, with the cast navigating their early 20s – is trying to say. Episode three, like its predecessors, continued a portrayal of women that feels both old-fashioned and eerily prescient, projecting a shallow, manosphere-inflected fantasy of their motives. In a confusing jumble of plots, the only constant is an overarching disdain for the young women who made the show great.

No indignity is too great for the leads of these darkly funny shows as they pursue a comeback at any cost

In the fifth and final season of sitcom Hacks, the legendary comedian Deborah Vance has once again been plunged into crisis. After leaving America’s number one late-night talkshow in a flurry of controversy, a vengeful non-compete clause is barring her from performing new material. Season four of the Emmy-winning comedy ended on a cliffhanger, with TMZ mistakenly reporting that Deborah (Jean Smart) had died. Freshly resurrected for season five, the prodigal mother of comedy worries that her lifetime of work will be defined by her premature late-night exit. To secure her legacy, she sets her sights on staging a major comeback show at Madison Square Garden – and she’ll stop at nothing to make it happen.

Not uncoincidentally, the final season of The Comeback begins on a similar note of desperation. Valerie Cherish – the high-cringe sitcom star played by a red-haired Lisa Kudrow – is handed a career lifeline when she scores the lead role in a new sitcom. There’s just one catch: the script has been written by AI, and this is a secret that Valerie is forbidden from sharing. It’s the type of toe-curling scenario that could only come from Kudrow and her collaborator, Michael Patrick King, who is back on form after terrorising the world with And Just Like That.