With their perfect hair, kindly demeanour and songs about thrilling romance, boybands such as One Direction induce feelings that have much to teach us about life

The first time I fell in love, I was 13. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach constantly. I took any opportunity to mention my love, no matter how tangential to the conversation. If the subject came up organically, I felt as if I could burst with joy. I never met them, but that didn’t make the feelings any less real. That I was in love with Take That was irrelevant: it was love all the same.

When the British boyband split up in 1996, the press conference was broadcast live. During the Q&A, a journalist from BBC Manchester told the sombre group: “We’ve just had a 14-year-old fan phone in tears. What’s your message to her?” Looking a little befuddled, Mark Owen replied: “Erm ... we’re sorry, I suppose.”

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In this week’s newsletter: Once deemed ‘too niche’ for telly, the adaptation of Bernardine Evaristo’s novel signals an exciting chapter for diverse, imaginative shows

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This week the BBC released Mr Loverman , an eight-part drama that features two septuagenarian Caribbean Londoners who have been engaged in a homosexual love affair since they were teens in Antigua. Perhaps you think nothing of this. But a series with scenes depicting two Black, greying men reflecting on their forbidden romance, declaring themselves “cocksuckers”, and bending themselves into sexual positions occupying a primetime Monday evening slot is worth reflection. Not purely because of discussions about the constraints of compulsory heterosexuality on a generation of Black men, but also the specificity of this drama – the freedom for Black British television to be what it wants to be.

That the show is an adaptation of Booker-prize winner Bernardine Evaristo’s novel would have helped it over the line of “marketability”, not to mention the all-star cast of Lennie James, Ariyon Bakare, and Sharon D Clarke. But the idea that Mr Loverman could find a billing and an audience has never been a given. Particularly since the show is not about the interplay between Windrush-era migrants with a hostile, white society but a more complex and internal exploration of the Black family, class mobility, and secrets. Evaristo herself had been told on publication that Mr Loverman was too “niche” for TV .

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Todd Phillips’ superhero sequel might have been a box-office flop, but some readers see a lot to cherish in the performances of Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga

I thought that this was a daring, subversive, melancholic and thought provoking film. Phillips’ decision to avoid simply churning out a repeat of the first film is admirable and Joaquin Phoenix adds more layers to the character of Arthur Fleck. Lady Gaga was captivating as Harley Quinn and together the two leads offer a compelling portrait of loneliness, yearning and human frailty. Once again, Hildur Guðnadóttir’s masterful score adds gravitas and underlines the despair at play. It’s certainly not a perfect film, but its ambition should be applauded and I’m really surprised by the coverage it has received. I’m sure it will come to be seen in a more positive light. David Markham, 37, Sheffield

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Rare depiction of love between two elderly black men stirs emotions and realisations among its audience

The phrase “TV moment” is often used, but for viewers unused to seeing their lives reflected on screen, Mr Loverman was more than that.

The eight-part drama, based on Bernardine Evaristo’s novel , has a rare depiction of a love affair between two elderly black men at its heart.

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The Walker gallery only had two artworks by Black women out of a 13,000-strong collection. A new exhibition marks the beginning of an attempt to redress the balance

Artist and curator Sumuyya Khader sits on the wooden benches of the Walker Gallery in Liverpool and scans the room. “We are surrounded by deceased white males,” she says, laughing while pointing out the portraits and landscapes on the walls around and above us.

“I was always told when I was younger to look up,” she adds. “But you get to the point where you look up and think these histories are so torrid. I want people to go in, hear the beat and the bass and be like, ‘Ohhhhh!’”

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(Fiction)
The band are at an artistic peak on their first album in 16 years: movingly melancholic, with a punchy sound to match the lyrics’ emotional impact

The latter-day history of the Cure is a peculiar thing. They ended the 90s in apparent disarray – the disappointing Wild Mood Swings drew their peak commercial years to a close, and a series of festival shows degenerated into drunken farce – yet the 21st century found them more revered than ever. You couldn’t move for younger artists paying homage: everyone from heavy metal bands to dance producers seemed to want to collaborate with frontman Robert Smith.

It was a kind of renaissance, and evidence of how hugely influential they were, but the Cure seemed unable to fully capitalise on it. They could always draw vast crowds, but a new album to rank alongside their back catalogue’s high points proved frustratingly elusive, and you wondered how many people were at their gigs to hear stuff from their eponymous 2004 album or 2008’s 4:13 Dream, both sprawling and uneven. Thereafter, their gigs came flecked with new songs but the release schedule fell silent. Last year, Simon Price’s definitive book Curepedia opened its entry on a prospective new album with the not unreasonable question: “Will it ever happen?”

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After Starstruck and Taskmaster, the new project sees Sidi play a profane, lowbrow version of Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff. She explains why her latest comedy creation is breaking-news proof

When Emma Sidi was in year seven, a classmate predicted she would one day become a comedian. Her reaction was one of total horror. “I was like: no! I thought she was being really rude and saying I was like an old man. I thought: wow, I really am so ugly and uncool.”

Twenty-one years later, on an unseasonably warm September afternoon, Sidi can appreciate the prescient compliment. She did become a comedian, and has spent the past decade refining her own gratifyingly flamboyant character comedy while making scene-stealing appearances in a slew of great British sitcoms ( Starstruck , Ghosts , Black Ops , Stath Lets Flats , W1A , Pls Like ). Even so, the 33-year-old does understand where her former self was coming from: there were vanishingly few comic female role models around in the early 2000s, and it’s not difficult to imagine why a preteen girl might have feared she was being likened to a sweaty middle-aged man ranting into a microphone.

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Pop legend calls for more kindness and empathy from public, and discusses his history of addiction

Robbie Williams has shared an impassioned tribute to the One Direction singer Liam Payne, who died this week after falling from a balcony in a Buenos Aires hotel.

Williams acted as a mentor to One Direction when the band competed on The X Factor in 2010, and continued a friendship with Payne and the group.

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Delia Balmer spent four days as the hostage of her murderer boyfriend, only to survive his axe attack – and get him put away. The team behind a challenging drama about her horrific experience tell all

Nick Stevens is remembering the first time he met Delia Balmer, the only known survivor of serial killer John Sweeney , whose story he wanted to dramatise. The meeting went very badly. “She was half an hour late,” recalls the screenwriter. “She wouldn’t look me in the eye. She was very agitated and angry.”

Even though Stevens was familiar with the sensitivities of true-crime stories from his previous dramas In Plain Sight and The Pembrokeshire Murders , this was extreme. But he soon realised that the behaviour of Balmer – played by Anna Maxwell Martin in new drama Until I Kill You – reflected the PTSD she suffers due to Sweeney. In 1994, after she ended their three-year relationship, he held her hostage tied to a bed for four days and later attacked her with an axe, as recounted in her memoir Living With a Serial Killer, on which the show is based.

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