From the silliest concept ever to killer thrillers so dull Villanelle would roll her eyes, there have been plenty of televisual duds in 2024. Here are the biggest turkeys

Yes, the Prince Andrew/Emily Maitlis head-to-head was the TV moment of 2019, and it is unlikely that any television interview will ever be as jawdropping again. But why did we need not just one but two screen recreations of it this year? This one came with Maitlis’s blessing, but sadly already existed in the shadow of Netflix’s Scoop. Despite excellent turns by Michael Sheen and Ruth Wilson, it never felt anything other than slight and superfluous.

Their new album Constellations for the Lonely ranks among their best work. But as they prepare to go on the road, the Williams brothers talk about their momentous decision to play without Goodwin

Just over four years ago, Doves were on the crest of a wave. Their first album in more than a decade – The Universal Want – had been rapturously received, helping them notch up their third UK No 1. All set to perform it live, the tour was suddenly cancelled due to frontman Jimi Goodwin’s mental health – he has since said he is in recovery from substance abuse.

The cancellation “was heartbreaking for us because this is all we’ve ever wanted to do,” explains guitarist Jez Williams, who formed Doves with drummer brother Andy and schoolfriend Goodwin in Wilmslow, Cheshire in 1998. Sat alongside him in a Manchester eaterie, Andy explains: “You can get away with that once, but if we had to pull a tour again it would be curtains.” Thus, in late 2023, with a new album on the way, and Goodwin telling them he still wasn’t up to touring, they made the momentous decision to go on the road without him.

A dazzling exhibition of Pakistan’s art and architecture – some of it never before loaned outside the country – shows how the repressive 11-year regime of Zia-ul-Haq triggered an extraordinary resistance

The 11-year religious dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq profoundly shaped the art of Pakistan. After the general’s successful coup in 1977, his regime ushered in martial law, trampled on women’s rights, enforced strict censorship and placed draconian restrictions on artistic expression.

Ascent of Man, an abstract painting by Quddus Mirza, is inspired by the controversial trial and hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the democratically elected prime minister overthrown by the coup. The painting, part of a groundbreaking exhibition of Pakistan’s art and architecture, depicts a man sitting in a chair while a headless body floats in the sky. It blends elements of magic realism with an allusion to the seventh-century martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad whose death was a major episode in Islam’s history that still resonates today.

Actor who was catapulted to fame as one of the teen stars of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet in 1968

When Franco Zeffirelli’s film version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was released in 1968, it made the two lead actors, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, into instant stars. Hussey, who has died aged 73, later said that “while it brought me fame – for whatever that’s worth – and glamour, it also thrust me into a spotlight that, while intoxicating, was at times too bright and too revealing”.

At the time of the filming in Italy of Romeo and Juliet, Whiting was 17 years old, Hussey 16 (in the 1936 Hollywood version, the lead actors were 43 and 34). Zeffirelli was determined that his star-crossed lovers be credible teenagers. In his autobiography, Zeffirelli remembered that he was not immediately impressed with Hussey, saying “she was unfortunately overweight, clumsy-looking and bit her nails constantly”. But later he took a second look, and found that “she was a new woman: she had lost weight dramatically. Her magnificent bone structure was becoming apparent, with those wide expressive eyes and her whole angular self. She was now the real Juliet, a gawky colt of a girl waiting for life to begin.”

Openings across Africa and Asia offer new cultural experiences in stunning architectural surroundings

From a noisy, performative and unapologetically non-European Yorùbá cultural centre in Lagos, Nigeria, to the much-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, 2024 was a big year for museums opening in the developing world. A number of projects will also be inaugurated in 2025, offering an abundance of new museums to visit in 2025. Here are some of the best of them:

An anecdote about a mother and daughter running everyday errands turns into a parable about time passing

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Film director and producer who worked with Salvador Dalí and the Pet Shop Boys

The Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí refused to cooperate with anyone wanting to make a film about him – until 1965, when he was finally persuaded to agree by the British director Jack Bond. Like Dalí, Bond, who has died of a stroke aged 87, brought an idiosyncratic style to his work. He was sometimes likened to Ken Russell, another a graduate of BBC arts documentaries, for his wild imagination.

Invited to tea with Dalí at the St Regis hotel in New York, the artist’s winter home, Bond was asked why he wanted to make a film. “My intention would have been to mentally take an electric drill and get inside your head to destroy you and your subconscious and your ego once and for all,” he replied. Dalí’s manager dropped the teapot, but Dalí said: “We will make a film, then.”

The latest in a series of writers paying tribute to their go-to comfort watches is a recommendation of 1992’s satisfying con movie

To quote the late, great Leonard Cohen: everybody knows the dice are loaded, everybody knows the fight is fixed. That’s a cynical outlook, but one to which I fully adhere. Which perhaps explains why so many of my go-to comfort movies are about con artists.

Granted, not every classic con movie makes for a breezy watch – no one throws on The Grifters when they need a pick-me-up – but many do. The Lady Eve, Paper Moon, The Sting, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Ocean’s 11 – with their myriad twists and turns, hip earworm dialog, and stacked casts playing lovable rogues sticking it to the man, they prove endlessly rewatchable.

Two others charged with drug supply in connection with One Direction singer’s fall from Buenos Aires hotel balcony

Three people have been charged with manslaughter, and two others with drug supply, in connection with the death of Liam Payne, who was allegedly seen being “dragged to his room” while unconscious moments before he fell from his balcony in Argentina earlier this year.

The 31-year-old former One Direction singer fell from the third floor of the Casa Sur hotel in Buenos Aires on 16 October.

The writer and director worked on a string of successful comedies in the 1980s and 90s, including Private Benjamin and The Parent Trap, frequently with then wife Nancy Meyers

Charles Shyer, the director of Father of the Bride and Baby Boom, who formed a successful comedy film-making partnership with his then wife Nancy Meyers, has died aged 83. His family confirmed his death in a statement to Deadline, and his daughter, film-maker Hallie Meyers-Shyer, told the Hollywood Reporter he died in hospital in Los Angeles “after a brief illness”.

Shyer had a hand in a string of successful comedies made over four decades, often in conjunction with Meyers, whom he married in 1980. The son of studio executive Melville Shyer, he cut his teeth as a writer on the TV series The Odd Couple (starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman), before breaking into movies with a writing credit on Smokey and the Bandit. He co-wrote the Goldie Hawn comedy Private Benjamin with Myers and his fellow Odd Couple writer Harvey Miller. Directed by Howard Zieff, Private Benjamin was a huge hit on its release in 1980, earning Shyer an Oscar nomination and enabling him to move into the director’s chair.

UK culture minister says government wants to ‘open a dialogue’, but will intervene if platforms do not comply

The UK culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has written to video-sharing platforms, such as YouTube and TikTok, urging them to promote higher quality educational content to children.

Recent statistics suggest that although a decade ago children watched an average of two hours’ television a day, that has since dropped by more than 70%. Instead, children were migrating to YouTube, TikTok and other streaming platforms between the ages of four and eight, Nandy said.

Media mogul launched Home Box Office in 1972 and started the US’s first 24-hour cable local news channel in New York

Charles F Dolan, who founded some of the most prominent US media companies including Home Box Office Inc and Cablevision Systems Corp, has died at age 98, according to a news report.

A statement issued on Saturday by his family said Dolan died of natural causes, Newsday reported late on Saturday.

Prolific US hip-hop artists have used the track Watermelon Fantasy, created in 2018 by Daylight Studio

Snoop Dogg has worked with artists including Stevie Wonder, Katy Perry and Mariah Carey – and now a small London charity for people with learning disabilities has joined that list.

The rapper, with Dr Dre, sampled the song Watermelon Fantasy, released by the charity Daylight Studio in 2018, for the single Outta Da Blue from their new album, Missionary, which was released on 13 December.

Golden Globe-winning actor ‘lived a life full of passion, love and dedication to the arts’, says family in statement

Olivia Hussey, who starred as a teenage Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, garnering her a Golden Globe, died peacefully at her home on Friday at age 73, her family has announced.

“Olivia was a remarkable person whose warmth, wisdom, and pure kindness touched the lives of all who knew her,” her family said in a statement posted to her Instagram account. “Olivia lived a life full of passion, love, and dedication to the arts, spirituality, and kindness towards animals.

Twisty crime drama set in ‘unfailingly friendly’ border city that is finally emerging from Cardiff’s shadow

The Welsh capital is often used as a setting for film and television drama, as are the country’s mountains, forests and coastlines, but a city sometimes seen as Cardiff’s poorer relative is starring in a new Welsh-language Celtic noir drama.

Newport, with its muddy river and post-industrial landscape, is the backdrop for Ar y Ffin (meaning on the edge or on the border), a twisty tale of a magistrate who uncovers a web of criminality, putting her and her family at risk.

Producer says ‘courage has gone out of broadcasting’ and audiences want to see grittier issues

The creator of some of Britain’s best-loved soaps has said the “courage has gone out of broadcasting” and suggested that television bosses should not be afraid to flout Ofcom rules.

Phil Redmond – the brains behind Hollyoaks, Grange Hill and Brookside – said there was “too much risk aversion” in television, with producers afraid to upset regulators even if it meant pleasing audiences.

Family plans to livestream memorial service for teenage actor who died two days after getting hurt in Vestavia Hills, Alabama

The teenage actor Hudson Meek has died after he fell out of a moving vehicle in Alabama, authorities said.

Meek, 16, was hurt on December 19 while on a street in Vestavia Hills, a suburb of Birmingham. He died two days later, according to the Jefferson county coroner’s office.

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
This hotch-potch musical with disappointingly broad characters, jarring over-acting and lack of emotional impact falls flat

This tale about a town whose grownups mysteriously disappear plays on the concept of children “Home Alone” but with added scares and a climate message. All the elements of an appealing children’s show are in this adaptation of Tom Fletcher’s book, from puppetry to song and dance, yet it fails to create magic.

Under Tom Jackson Greaves’s direction, the story is too slow to set off, with the Creakers – rubbish-loving monsters, of sorts – not emerging in fullness until the end of the first act. When they do reveal themselves they are an interesting mix of the cuddly and grotesque, but not characterful enough.

The Other Palace, London
This winningly lo-fi musical with catchy songs, original choreography and a quirky spirit brings out the directness and humour of Rick Riordan’s mythical quest

Since Rick Riordan first conceived his story about a “half-blood” son of a Greek god with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, the Percy Jackson phenomenon has grown bigger and bigger. The first book, in 2005, has been followed up by a multi-part series, two films, a Disney+ spin-off and a video game.

Now a musical is reprising the first story in the series, in which Percy discovers that his absent father is Poseidon, the god of the sea. After being sent to a camp for young demigods, he sets off on a quest to retrieve Zeus’s stolen lightning bolt.

A Polish ex-soldier returns to his home town and takes on local gangsters in an exhausting barrage of violence in humourless action film

Here is a film from Poland that is proof that when a macho action hero has a canine sidekick, it makes him at least 64% more likable. The dog – a veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – is called Tiny (the name is ironic, she’s huge). Her human is Maks (Eryk Lubos), a brooding loner who served 25 years in an elite special forces unit. Maks doesn’t say much and betrays less emotion than his dog. The pair of them live off-grid deep in the forest until, one wintry afternoon, news arrives that Maks’s father is dead.

Back in his home town, Maks is greeted like a returning hero. But after the funeral, before he can slip back into his lumberjack shirt, he disturbs a break-in at his father’s house. He instantly switches into fighting-machine mode, biffing the bad guys and breaking the nose of a local gangland thug’s son. So begins an exhausting barrage of violence, all of it far-fetched, as Maks relentlessly punches and shoots his way through enough men to fill a prison.

The first stirrings of revolt behind the Iron Curtain are retold in this intriguing documentary hybrid

If the fall of the Berlin Wall has a prehistory, maybe there is an integral part, or even the beginning: the December 1970 protests in Poland against food price-rises, the brutal suppression of which is here satirically reimagined by film-maker Tomasz Wolski using archive black-and-white footage of the street scenes with ambient sound effects. Wolski intersperses these with stop-motion-animated puppets of the mediocre party apparatchiks in charge, blandly directing the massacre from their smoke-filled rooms, having grumpy and panicky arguments, mouthing in sync to recently recovered audiotapes of their tapped phones; not so much Team America as Team Soviet Poland.

The effect is that of a bad dream, though less of a nightmare than living through it must have been. The protests became a colossal movement in many cities, including Gdańsk, and were brutally suppressed by the Polish authorities who deployed massive amounts of military hardware, killed 44 people and injured more than a thousand, though they finally made concessions by reversing the price-hikes and premier Władysław Gomułka resigned.

A Mongolian family is forced to trade the splendour of the desert for the sprawl of the city in this exquisitely filmed documentary

Like generations before them, Mongolian herders Davaa and Zaya lead a nomadic life in the Gobi desert, where they tend to their livestock; and life with their four children is a tough but contented one. Moving between the sweeping and the intimate, Gabrielle Brady’s hybrid film juxtaposes the vast splendour of the Mongolian landscape with moments of domestic warmth as the family huddle up together for a nap or a meal, filling the simple shed where they live with laughter.

In one scene, the young children take turns telling scary stories of mythical happenings and deadly potions. Reality, however, has become much more frightening than fiction. As a result of the climate crisis, unprecedented natural disasters have wiped out countless herds, including Davaa and Zaya’s own. Left without their animals, the family reluctantly moves to the city for better opportunities. Here, Davaa swaps his horse for a bulky excavator as he makes ends meet loading rocks for construction projects. Somewhere in the chasm between his past and current lives, his identity has become lost in limbo, swept up by forces of environmental collapse and economic precariousness.

The star’s relentless gurning adds frenzy but little else to this third spin-off from the video game franchise

Three garrulous alien critters – Sonic, Tails and Knuckles – each with their own distinct skill set and fur colour so lurid that it scorches your optic nerves, are summoned to protect humanity from an evil space hedgehog named Shadow (voiced by Keanu Reeves). Shadow has rage issues, super speed and a gloomy emo-black colour palette. But in this frenetically empty sequel, cluttered with pinballing animated extraterrestrial varmints, the most cartoonish performance comes from a member of the human cast: Jim Carrey reprises his role as the villainous inventor Doctor Robotnik, and takes on a new character, Robotnik’s demented grandfather Gerald.

While I had more time than many of my fellow critics for the two previous movie spin-offs from the Sega video game series, it turns out that you can, in fact, have too much of a good thing. Two Jim Carreys, each of them turning every individual line of dialogue into an extravagant pantomime of gurning and grandstanding, is categorically one too many.

In UK and Irish cinemas

The actor excels as an FBI agent hunting far-right terrorists in this solemn thriller based on real events in 1980s America

In his film-making career, Australian director Justin Kurzel has dealt with murder sprees (Snowtown), massacres (Nitram), outlaws (True History of the Kelly Gang) and, in his latest picture, The Order, far-right domestic terror organisations in the US. But Kurzel is not drawn to crime for crime’s sake. Rather, he is fascinated by the context of it all – by the reverberations set in motion by an act of violence; by the links between atrocities past and those of the present. He pointedly draws parallels between the events explored in The Order, which unfolds in the Pacific Northwest of the early 1980s, and more recent actions such as the 6 January Capitol attack.

This sober, factually based FBI procedural stars an excellent Jude Law, sporting standard issue US law enforcement paunch and moustache combo. The action starts with a spate of bank robberies. Careworn FBI agent Terry Husk (Law) suspects that there’s a link between the crimes and a burgeoning white nationalist movement in the region. What follows is a wary game of cat and mouse, with Husk tracking the charismatic leader of the underground militia, a wholesome, apple-cheeked farm boy named Bob Matthews (an impressive Nicholas Hoult), who is always a few steps ahead of the veteran FBI man on his tail.

In UK and Irish cinemas

Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama was chilling, Lily Farhadpour charmed in Iran and Paul Mescal was tremendous in a fantasy-romance as our critics select their standout picks of the year
• The best films in the US
• More on the best culture of 2024

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What a year of telly! A true story made for groundbreaking (and controversial) viewing, a chalk-and-cheese pair finally got it on – and a gorgeous Japanese epic became an instant classic
• More on the best culture of 2024

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Topped with Charli xcx’s swaggering yet vulnerable Brat, here are the year’s finest LPs as decided by 26 Guardian music writers
• More best music of 2024
• More on the best culture of 2024

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It was a year of thrills, revelations and fresh takes, with Bruckner’s birthday, Puccini in a laundry and Britten on a trapeze

• Our classical critics pick their highlights of the year
• Exquisite Elgar to razor-sharp Cage: our classical recordings of the year
• Tristram Kenton’s opera pictures of the year

It was a year of many endings and fewer beginnings. Mark Elder left the Hallé after 24 years as the Manchester orchestra’s music director, during which time he has taken the group to ever greater heights. Kirill Karabits ended his 15-year tenure as the principal conductor of Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra; Judith Weir’s decade as Master of Royal Music came to a close (Errollyn Wallen now wears that crown). Radio 3’s Sean Rafferty hung up his In Tune headphones after 28 years. Roger Wright curated his final Aldeburgh festival and David Pickard stepped away from his role as BBC Proms director.

Pickard had overseen one of the most enjoyable Proms seasons of recent years, even if starry international orchestras are noticeably fewer than a decade ago. Naysayers bemoaned the non-classical elements of the eight-week festival, but packed events that included a tribute to Nick Drake, late night desert-blues from Tinariwen and Florence + the Machine’s ecstatic performance of 2009 debut Lungs brought new audiences and found all concerned at the tops of their games.

Our critics’ highlights include magnificently rough portraits by the late Frank Auerbach, Caravaggio’s final painting and a 1930s silo reborn as a museum of modern art

• More on the best culture of 2024

Sarah Snook put Succession behind her, Hofesh Shechter found horror in Albion and Rhod Gilbert was ecstatic to be alive, in our critics’ picks of the best stage shows of the year

• More on the best culture of 2024

10. Please Right Back
This dark, psychedelic story of childhood adventure and estrangement was staged by the company 1927 which is known for using a whimsical blend of forms. It incorporated handcrafted animation with live performances, including song, dance and surrealist clowning, with bewitching results. At Southbank Centre, London, until 5 January. Read the review

From a Hitchcockian thriller to a shocking documentary, Guardian writers pick their lesser-known movies of the year

I can’t really blame anyone for not seeing Drugstore June in theaters, considering that scattered, super-limited run lasted just a few weeks. (I caught it in a near-empty cinema, on a weekday-afternoon whim, the day after belatedly seeing the trailer online.) But now that it’s streaming on Hulu in the US, you can check out one of the least-discussed but funniest mainstream comedies in ages. Built around the standup persona of comedian Esther Povitsky, Drugstore June is very much a throwback to a time when any emerging comic figure might be awarded their own thinly conceived vehicle. It wasn’t a great trend – Drugstore June’s director, Nicholaus Goossen, made Grandma’s Boy, to cite one example among many – yet here, revived absent big-studio attention (or maybe just with extra love for the game), it produces an idiosyncratic townie detective comedy, with sheltered, self-centered, snacks-obsessed June (Povitsky) trying to figure out who trashed the pharmacy where she (barely) works. Unlike its many Sandler-crew predecessors, Drugstore June has a genuine sense of place, a playful sense of generational self-satire, and an original persona at its center. It’s all the more miraculous at a time when studios big and small don’t care much for making comedies. Jesse Hassenger

Now the Guardian’s Top 50 countdowns, as voted for by the whole film team, have announced their No 1s, here are our chief critic’s personal choices, in no particular order
• The 50 best films of 2024 in the UK
• The 50 best movies of 2024 in the US
• More on the best culture of 2024

The time has come once more for me to present my “Braddies”, a strictly personal awards list for films getting a UK release in the calendar year just gone – quite distinct from the Guardian’s collegiate best-of-year critics’ poll.

It’s been 12 months in which the big-worry issue refuses to go away, two little letters that until recently, didn’t mean anything much at all and now reduce us to a quiver of anxiety: AI. The conclusion of the writers’ strike was supposed to have provided for the primacy of creative humanity, and for keeping AI in its place as a tool. But studios are keen to find efficient and profitable ways to exploit their intellectual property and Lionsgate has actually signed a deal with artificial intelligence firm Runway to engage with their back catalogue. An uneasy thought. I was one of those who winced at the film Alien: Romulus which used AI to revive a very distinguished British actor for a major role and seemed very pleased with itself about how clever this was. What happened to originality?

The Gavin and Stacey star associates Paul Weller with dolphins and doesn’t think Fleetwood Mac are sexy. But who does she swear along to to in the car?

The first song I fell in love with
Wild Wood by Paul Weller, when I was in the National Youth Theatre of Wales, staying away from home for the first time, spotting dolphins in the sea in Aberystwyth.

The first single I bought
My grampa bought me Joanna by Kool & the Gang and Mickey by Toni Basil from Woolworths in Swansea. When I got older, I bought Push It! by Salt-N-Pepa, which I played on the big silver record player in the living room.

The Turner prize-winner on the art of the Gaza Biennale, the joys of a queer community choir, and a poet who speaks to today’s injustices

The artist Jasleen Kaur was born in Glasgow in 1986. She studied at Glasgow School of Art and later at the Royal College, and had her first solo show, Be Like Teflon, in London in 2021. She works mainly with installations, using everyday objects to explore identity, cultural memory and political belonging. Earlier this month, Kaur won the Turner prize for her 2023 exhibition Alter Altar at the Tramway in Glasgow, which memorably featured a replica of her dad’s red Ford Escort covered in an outsized doily. A group show of this year’s shortlisted artists’ work is at Tate Britain until 16 February. Kaur lives and works in London.

The actor and writer used to be obsessed with Michael Jackson and loves Teddy Pendergrass, but which rap banger does truly inhabit when passed the mic?

The first song I fell in love with
I was obsessed with Michael Jackson as a kid, to the point where we went to Butlin’s and there was a thing where they’d record you in a music video in front of a green screen, and I did Thriller. I just loved the synths, funk and disco but also the horror.

My karaoke go-to
Juicy by Notorious BIG. I take it very seriously. It’s not a karaoke, it is a performance. This is my moment. I might ask a female to do the chorus, if not, I’ll do it. I’ve got a good falsetto.

The Royal Ballet principal dancer on a mesmerising Wimbledon final, the fragrance that gets him into character, and a 91-year-old dancing legend

Reece Clarke was born in North Lanarkshire in 1995 to a steelworker father and a mother who worked as a childminder. Growing up in Airdrie, he began ballet classes aged three and later joined his three older brothers at the Royal Ballet School. He won young British dancer of the year in 2012 and has since performed – often as a prince – in Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. In 2022 the Royal Ballet promoted Clarke to principal dancer. On 28 and 31 December he performs in Cinderella at the Royal Ballet and Opera, and plays the title role in Pushkin’s Onegin on the opening night, 22 January, and again on 7 and 13 February.

‘Grace has just jumped off the swing and her hair is all over the place but she doesn’t care. It’s a moment that encapsulates everything freeing about living on the island’

Wherever I am, I always take particular interest in the way people relate to each other and their surroundings. Last spring, having just returned from Ukraine, I wanted to start a personal project a little closer to home and explore the lives of people who had done something different and come up against challenges. I looked at a few options before remembering Hugh, who employed me as a graphic designer when I was just starting out, before I got into photography.

Many years after I’d moved on, Hugh moved with his dog to the isle of Jura in the Inner Hebrides, where he’d spent holidays as a kid in a tiny stone cottage rented by his family. Back then, the cottage had just been a summer retreat – there was no power and they’d boil up water on the little stove. Hugh bought the place and stayed there while he did it up. He’s been living there ever since.

Brian Harvey said, ‘I’m not singing this shit!’ – and threw his headphones on the floor. It took two days to get the performance out of him

I didn’t see the band going much further than two or three singles, but our early dance hits built up such a fanbase that we had to keep going. The dance era was coming to an end and Britpop was exploding, but then this American rock band Extreme had a huge hit with a power ballad, More Than Words, so I thought it would be OK to break the mould.

The Sopranos and Goodfellas star danced to Sinatra as a child and bought the Turtles with her babysitting money. But which rocker makes her cry?

The first song I remember hearing
Fly Me to the Moon by Frank Sinatra because of my parents. I grew up in Brooklyn and I remember dancing to that in the house.

The first song I fell in love with
At Christmas time, we would all gather round and watch The Wizard of Oz. When the witch came on, I would jump into my father or mother’s lap. I remember watching Judy Garland sing Over the Rainbow and thinking she was so beautiful. Then being scared to death by the witch was such an array of emotions.

Diane Morgan’s big thinker asks what the point of life is. Plus: what did 2024 look like from space? Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two

A glorious and intimate look at the run-up to the Britpop band’s big Wembley reunion, plus Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt flex their comedic muscles in a fun stuntman flick

“The less we do, the bigger we get.” As Blur prepare for, surprisingly, their first ever gig at Wembley, drummer Dave Rowntree reflects on the Britpop band’s reunion in 2023 after 10 years apart. In this intimate documentary, cameras loiter in singer Damon Albarn’s rural Devon studio as the quartet congregate to finesse their most recent album, then follow the run-up to the big concert. They are in reflective mood, dissecting their relationships and past rock star behaviour – from Alex James’s worries about parenthood (and cheese) to the newly separated Albarn veering between workaholic intensity and sheer exhaustion. But on stage, it all comes gloriously together.
Sunday 29 December, 9pm, Sky Arts

Rosalind Eleazar stars in the latest twisty murder mystery from Harlan Coben, and Martin Compston’s oil drama is back with more admirably OTT action

DI Kat Donovan (Rosalind Eleazar) isn’t a woman who makes life easy for herself. Her dad’s murderer is about to die, so she’s decided to go and visit him on his deathbed. Her ex – who disappeared when she was grieving, 11 years earlier – has matched with her on a dating app and rather than running a mile, she’s swiped right. This thriller, adapted from a novel by Harlan Coben, relies heavily on such contrivances to build its narrative. It’s equal parts a twisty murder mystery and a study in trauma – as such, takes itself incredibly seriously. But the fine ensemble cast, which also includes Ashley Walters, Lenny Henry and a cartoonishly villainous Marc Warren, keep things interesting.
Netflix, from New Year’s Day

Our photographer selects his favourite images of the opera productions he has shot in 2024; from Rossini in a deli to an athletic rake

• All pictures: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Wayne McGregor’s MaddAddam, the RSC’s School for Scandal and Robin/Red/Breast with Maxine Peake are among the highlights of the photographer’s work for the Guardian this year

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

Interned after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese photographer eventually developed his singular style on the streets of Chicago – before taking it back to his native country

Photographer Tony Dočekal spent six years speaking to those on society’s margins. She heard tales of robbery, rejection and survival

Marvel at Dutch photographer’s suggestive Champagne explosions and naked cyclists! But Olaf’s work could also be intensely personal …

Lars Tunbjörk spent the 1990s photographing offices in Stockholm, Toyko and New York – the result was an iconic series that captured the soul-sapping mundanity of modern work

For more than 25 years, Horace Lindezey has been making art at Venture Arts, a Manchester-based studio working with learning disabled artists. In his ever-growing collection of ceramic blue plaques, created with the assistance of ceramicist Caroline Tattersall, he celebrates people who have meant something to him – family members, friends, TV personalities and musicians – focusing on life’s central milestones: births, marriages and deaths. “I feel happy with making the plaques,” says Lindezey. “I roll the clay on to the mould, paint it white, then I put the letters on it. I like showing them in exhibitions, in Blackburn and London. I like to see them out there – they are nice memories of some people that have died.”

• A limited edition book of The Blue Plaques (£25), signed by the artist, is available at venturearts.org

From Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s ‘life on a plate’ to Rose Matafeo introducing our puzzle special, the best original photographs from the Observer commissioned in December 2024