TV tonight: cracking scouse coming-of-age comedy G'wed is back
This scouse coming-of-age comedy drama was an unsung gem when it aired last year, so hurrah for a cracking second series. The school students of Wirral continue to navigate teenage life, with first loves, struggling parents, battenberg cakes and karaoke nights providing plenty of raucous gags. But there are bigger themes at play, too, as a thoughtful anorexia storyline is explored through 14-year-old Albie, who is mentored by Ted, an older student, in this strong opening episode. Hollie Richardson
9pm, Channel 4
Are we doomed to be dominated by tech‑bro billionaires? It's a terrifying, but increasingly plausible, thought, as the bromance between Donald Trump and his 'first buddy' Elon Musk proves. Why is Musk taking on the British government? Has he been sitting in on calls between Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy? Channel 4 News's Matt Frei asks what Musk has planned for the US and beyond. Hollie Richardson
8pm, Channel 4
It's not always love at first sight when it comes to doggy-owner matchmaking: a traumatised cockapoo needs a good haircut and snuggles before getting out there, while Coco the dachshund is a nervous wreck before a first date with a potential new owner. HR
9pm, Channel 5
This thriller is inspired by Ireland's 'Vanishing Triangle' – eight women who disappeared without a trace from the east of the country during the 80s and 90s. While a journalist, Lisa (India Mullen from Normal People), and a detective, David (Allen Leech from Downton Abbey) work together to find one woman, others go missing. HR
9pm, Sky Documentaries
The sobering documentary series about US vlogging family the Stauffers reaches its middle episode, and the central, tragic event: the household's adopted son Huxley stops appearing in their extremely popular videos. A dark tale unfolds. Jack Seale
10pm, U&Alibi
This tonally peculiar New Zealand crime drama continues to veer uneasily between comedy and darkness as the denouement approaches. Ed and Heather do their best to derail the meth deal. But with the ship's crew essentially at death's door, might it derail itself without anyone else's help? Phil Harrison
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Times
39 minutes ago
- Times
Enjoyed the holiday? Now buy the swanky vintage poster
If Jeremy Sacher tires of looking at a verdant Queen's Park through the windows of his west London home, he needs only to step into his kitchen to find a view of New York's Times Square or an Imperial Airways flying boat heading for Cape Town. Sacher, you see, is an avid collector of travel posters created during the early decades of the 20th century to entice the adventurous into a world gradually being made smaller by trains, planes and automobiles. Back then such ephemera was used as a cheap, cheerful and entirely disposable way to promote the services of shipping companies, airlines and railways. But now surviving examples of the best vintage travel posters have become valuable and highly sought-after. Sacher began collecting more than 40 years ago when, as the head of a design company, he found himself making regular trips to studios in New York. 'There were many more poster dealers in the US than there were in the UK, so I became familiar with the world of collecting and with the names of the top graphic artists. 'Howard Hughes employed many of them when he owned Trans World Airlines during the 1940s and 1950s, so I started collecting posters advertising the airline's routes,' he explains. In recent years Sacher has bought through the art agents Nicolette Tomkinson and Sophie Churcher, who set up the specialist art agency Tomkinson Churcher in 2016 following the closure of Christie's South Kensington saleroom, which ran a vintage poster department. Travel posters first became seriously collectable after New York's Swann Galleries staged the first dedicated auction in 1979. Now the best examples by leading graphic artists such as the Frenchmen Roger Broders and Adolphe Mouron Cassandre, the Brits Norman Wilkinson and Frank H Mason, or the Irishman Paul Henry can fetch as much as £15,000 apiece. Tomkinson says the golden age of Britain's railways during the 1920s and 1930s resulted in some of the best images but, by the very nature of their role as short-lived advertisements, few have survived — and getting hold of good ones is becoming increasingly difficult. 'Sometimes travel posters are numbered but in most cases we never really know what the print runs were,' she explains. 'What is certain is that only a fraction of those produced actually survived, because they were either pasted over or torn down. And when collectors get hold of the best, they tend to hold on to them.' But some big collections saved by people who had connections with the printers, the artists or the firms that commissioned the designs do occasionally come on to the market. One spectacular cache emerged in Australia about 20 years ago, having been amassed by the owner's father, a teacher, who had written to the country's various train companies during the 1920s asking for travel posters to use in geography lessons. He received more than 200, which were dispersed at auction for in excess of £200,000. And while posters promoting trips to once-popular British holiday resorts such as Skegness and St Andrews continue to sell for as much as £5,000, it's those depicting more glamorous continental destinations that many collectors find most uplifting. Tomkinson says several such images have been consigned to a Lyon & Turnbull auction (happening on October 29) and include a 1957 lithograph of Cote d'Azur, 'after Pablo Picasso', which is estimated to fetch £1,500. And at his by appointment gallery in south London, the dealer James Manning is offering a striking 1930s image by the top artist AE Halliwell promoting 'cruises to Norway' for £4,000. However, travel posters are not categorised only by country but also by modes of transport and activities, meaning there are images that hold appeal to fans of cars, trains and aeroplanes, others that attract those drawn to the glamour of steam-driven liners and still others that are bought by regular visitors to top ski resorts such as St Moritz and Gstaad. Buying vintage originals is not, however, the only route to getting some uplifting travel posters on to your walls, as there are now several firms, such as Stick No Bills and the north London gallery Pullman Editions, that sell brand-new, top quality images that are either in a vintage style or licensed fine art prints of exceptional posters from the golden era of graphic advertising. Uniquely, Stick No Bills has been granted access to the historic archives of travel companies such as Pan American Airways, British Overseas Air Corporation (BOAC), Lufthansa, the Fomento del Turismo Mallorca and Braniff International Airways in order to recreate the best of their vintage posters. Sizes range from postcard-format works to unique Master editions featuring 24-carat gold lettering applied by the Spanish royal family's yacht gilder — and costing as much as £16,000. Which might be the price of a darned good holiday. But the poster will last a whole lot longer — and there's no need to endure the journey…
Times
3 hours ago
- Times
Topshop is back! A fashion editor's guide to the best buys
I t's the British high street label beloved by every shopper over 30 — and whose London Fashion Week catwalk shows once had enough gravitas to pull Kate Moss to its front row. In the five years since Topshop closed its doors, millennials have kept a tender flame of hope alive that it might stage a comeback. Now they have to decide if its official relaunch lives up. Topshop is back, after months of rumours and social media teasing. The brand that gave us Jamie jeggings and the Oxford Street store more commonly known as 'mecca' to those who made fashion pilgrimages there every weekend reintroduced itself to customers this weekend with a highly anticipated catwalk show staged in Trafalgar Square on Saturday afternoon. Cara Delevingne, the supermodel face of its new Autumn 2025 campaign, sat front row. So did the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. British editors elbowed their way through heavy crowds of the public to get a view of their former favourite label's much-hyped new look. Among the chattering throngs were women of every age who represented the broad church appeal Topshop always had, from teenagers through to Gen X.
Times
3 hours ago
- Times
Mary, Queen of Scots review — a wacky look at history's famous monarch
Scottish Ballet has scored a hit with the world premiere of Mary, Queen of Scots, at the Edinburgh International Festival. The company's resident choreographer Sophie Laplane, and her co-creator, the director James Bonas, have fashioned an audaciously bold, assured and sometimes downright wacky take on Scotland's passionate monarch, filtered through the troubled memories of Queen Elizabeth 1. The staging (at the Festival Theatre) is streamlined, dominated by the designer Soutra Gilmour's simple set: a three-sided grey wall that can be raised and lowered as needed. The storytelling is episodic yet fleet, even driven, its stateliness consistently marked by a quirky sense of humour that in no way detracts from the material's emotional gravitas. All of it is lent a great deal of spark by Mikael Karlsson and Michael P Atkinson's original score, an eclectic stream of lively, sometimes dark and always propulsive music played live. • Read more dance reviews, guides and interviews This handsome, stylish Mary is a lot of fun but also has dramatic chops. But be warned: the first act is potentially challenging, especially for anyone with a fuzzy grasp of this period of British history. It commences with a prologue for the aged Elizabeth (guest artist Charlotta Ofverholm in a powerhouse supporting performance) deliriously circling in her underwear. Everything that ensues stems from her troubled mind. We then are plunged into a breathless trot through Mary's personal relationships alongside the political intrigue swirling around and between her and the royal cousin she famously never met. Courtiers come and go, clad by Gilmour in black velvet or pleated lavender, some with mohawk-like helmet plumes and others with bulbous eye coverings. The narrative is, however, largely character-driven. Laplane gives us two genuinely sexy duets, one for Mary (Roseanna Leney, dynamic and elegant) and her second husband Darnley (Evan Loudon) and the other for the bisexual Darnley and his lover Rizzio (Javier Andreu). There is also, in a brilliant touch, a younger Elizabeth, played on opening night with regal yet camp subtlety by the towering Harvey Littlefield in pantaloons, a ruff and, at one point, on stilts. • Edinburgh festivals 2025: the best theatre, music and dance shows The real pay-off in Scottish Ballet's treatment of Mary's life comes in the second act, principally via two scenes: one a beautiful, abstract dance between the proxies of Mary and Elizabeth, and the other the lead-up to Elizabeth's critical decision to execute Mary. By then this fizzing production has expanded and deepened. It is that rare thing, a work I felt I would gladly revisit even as I was watching it.★★★★☆130minTouring to Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen and Edinburgh to Oct 18, Follow @timesculture to read the latest reviews
