Are we doomscrolling our way into a democratic crisis? That’s what the playwright James Graham fears may be happening, as he suggests that our algorithms have led us into ‘a massive crisis of the new’ and are preventing us from imagining a different future

Aditya suggested reading (and watching) list for James Graham 

James Graham has written a shaming amount. I’ve listed below three  

1. Dear England: about England’s football team

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002qktz/dear-england

2. Sherwood: mentioned in the conversation, set in the village where James Graham grew up in the shadow of the miners’ strike

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0c724lz/sherwood

3. Quiz: set on the British quiz show, Who wants to be a millionaire, where a contestant wins a million quid  

https://www.itv.com/watch/quiz/2a7854

On cultural stagnation: 

A lot of people say culture is stuck, although few sketch out the political consequences of that stagnation as well as James Graham does in our chat.

Many also disagree on why:

For ‘it was the algorithm that did it’, read Filterworld: How algorithms flattened culture by Kyle Chayka

For a wider ranging explantaion look at Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century by W. David Marx

Those two are fairly recent. Much earlier and truly magnificent is the much-missed Mark Fisher on what he called the slow cancellation of the future

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgkLICTskQ 

On the same theme this essay by Adam Mastroianni is great

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-decline-of-deviance

Osipova plays the wife of bisexual economist John Maynard Keynes in a new play. The ballerina talks about the allure of her Russian character, dismissed as a ‘frivolous foghorn of a chorus girl’

When Natalia Osipova started rehearsals for her first ever play, it didn’t go well. “I cry. I’m shaking. I’m stressed and completely lost on the first day,” she reports. “I think, ‘I’m a piece of shit!’ I want to take a taxi and run away.”

It’s the second week of rehearsals when we meet, and Osipova is still here. The Royal Ballet principal plays a Russian ballerina from a previous age: Lydia Lopokova, who danced with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, then in 1925 unexpectedly married British economist John Maynard Keynes, who is the protagonist of James Graham’s The Standard of Living – a play about, among other things, taking risks and imagining a brave new future.

Acting is central to ballet’s appeal for Osipova. “Maybe I’ll never be super perfect for classical ballet because I love stories so much,” she says. Even so, she demurred when former colleague Edward Watson suggested she audition. “You’re stupid!” was his retort. “You need to try because it’s amazing opportunity.”

A delicate silver necklace shines beneath frank brown eyes. Osipova requested a translator in our previous interviews, but today speaks in an idiosyncratic gallop not unlike Lopokova’s own. Entering Nicholas Hytner’s rehearsal room, joining a classy cast led by Rory Kinnear, she felt like Lydia among Keynes’s sneery Bloomsbury friends. “I left rehearsal and cried,” she says, “because I feel, ‘Oh my god, I’m so bad.’ But you learn and listen and every day, step by step, I do better.”

Venice film festival
Jack O’Connell is terrific as editor Larry Lamb in James Graham’s tale of Rupert Murdoch, Page 3 and the newspaper that transformed Fleet Street

Danny Boyle presents us with a lurid, violent and thumpingly unsubtle movie full of Dutch angles, cartoony shocks and gargoyle closeups. It’s a chapter in the prehistory of modern media, adapted by James Graham from his 2017 stage play, filled with shame and fear and self-hate. It is in fact the story of the Sun newspaper, and how Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce) bought the ailing minor title in the late 60s and hired a tough Yorkshire newspaperman, Larry Lamb, to turn it into a raucous and gleefully vulgar circulation powerhouse.

Ink summons up the energy and frenzy of tabloid papers of the era, but also – and not entirely intentionally – how strangely depressing they were. Audiences used to the super-rich anomie of the Roy family from TV’s Succession might find all this very unsexy. This is a world of officer-class Fleet Street execs having expense-account meals at Rules and the Savoy Grill in pinstripe suits, smoking and drinking and impassively writing salary offers on paper napkins and silently passing them across to each other. Meanwhile, the other ranks of journalists and print unions are covered in sweat and ink.

Swinton takes a dead man’s identity, Glasgow’s heir to Billy Connolly heads on tour and Gillian Anderson, Keira Knightley and Natalia Osipova all hit the stage
• See all of our unmissable autumn arts recommendations here

He’s played English titans from William Shakespeare to Gareth Southgate, but what does the actor really think about the country today?

We are at a corner table in a breakfast place in Chelsea, Joseph Fiennes opposite me on the banquette with his jack russell, Noa. “Dog duty,” he says, apologetic. Noa looks at me, brown eyes also apologetic. They’ve been in Hyde Park, he says, he lost track, didn’t have time to take her home. Nature is where he’s at his best, where he feels cleansed, connected, observant – his sentences are decorative like this. “It’s when I’m at my happiest, on hours-long, rain-drenched walks. Hot cheeks, freezing hands.” In an ideal world he’d be trekking or wild swimming in the rugged landscape of the Tramuntana in Spain. But if it must be London, “nothing beats Hyde Park”. Fiennes is tidy in a cashmere cardie and thick twill chinos. Noa has a snazzy yellow collar. Anyway, she’s well-behaved, he says: “Aren’t you, Noa?” She curls up to prove it. The scene is a masterclass in unhurried wholesomeness. Until he says Noa will savage me if I’m mean.

Fiennes was launched into the national consciousness as the doe-eyed, luscious-lashed 28-year-old star of Shakespeare in Love opposite Gwyneth Paltrow. He’s self-deprecating about his career since, saying to one interviewer that it condemned him to a decade of “flouncy shirts and horses” and to me that he’s been “pretty much a supporting actor for an actress throughout”. While he’s worked alongside impressive women – Cate Blanchett, Helen Mirren, Elisabeth Moss, Rachel Weisz, Eva Green – his own standout roles include the chilling Commander Waterford in The Handmaid’s Tale (whom he describes as “insidious”). Now 55, he jokes, he’s mostly “playing dads”. Not least Young Sherlock’s dad in the Amazon series – young Sherlock being his real-life nephew Hero Fiennes Tiffin – but also a gripping portrayal of Richard Ratcliffe, husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was held hostage in Iran for six years, in Prisoner 951.

West End spectacular about beloved bear wins seven prizes, while Rachel Zegler, Rosamund Pike and Paapa Essiedu all recognised

• Olivier awards 2026: full list of winners

It was a night of sweet victory for Michael Bond’s marmalade-loving bear as Paddington: The Musical dominated the Olivier awards on Sunday. Amid the tuxes and gowns of a glittering ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the duffle coat-wearing bear got his sticky paws all over seven prizes including best new musical.

The award for best actor in a musical went to the duo who play Paddington: James Hameed provides the lovable hero’s voice and is the remote puppeteer, while Arti Shah performs in the furry costume. The show’s baddies, Tom Edden (as the busybody Mr Curry) and Victoria Hamilton-Barritt (as Millicent Clyde, who wants Paddington to literally get stuffed), won best supporting actor and best supporting actress in a musical respectively. Luke Sheppard was named best director for the production, which also picked up awards for costume design (Gabriella Slade and Tahra Zafar) and set design (Tom Pye and Ash J Woodward).

Other winners include Inter Alia’s Rosamund Pike, Ivo van Hove for All My Sons and Hayley Atwell who beat her Much Ado co-star Tom Hiddleston to best Shakespearean performance

Brendan Gleeson has been named best actor at the Critics’ Circle theatre awards for his West End debut in Conor McPherson’s pub drama The Weir. He beat fellow nominees including Bryan Cranston and Paapa Essiedu, both recognised for All My Sons, and James Hameed and Arti Shah, the duo who together portray Paddington in the new musical about Michael Bond’s bear. The Weir, directed by McPherson, was entirely omitted from the nominations for this year’s Olivier awards and is being turned into a film with Gleeson and the rest of the West End cast.

All My Sons, a critically adored production of Arthur Miller’s 1946 classic at Wyndham’s theatre, won in two categories at the Critics’ Circle awards: best revival of a play or musical and best director for Ivo van Hove. A new production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods, directed by Jordan Fein at the Bridge theatre, also won two prizes – best designer (Tom Scutt) and the inaugural award for best ensemble or cast.