Globe-trotting in search of picture-perfect scenes for the screen is not always as glamorous as it sounds. But to better understand these unsung heroes’ shadowy art, you first have to track them down …

The script called for a tree: a magical kind that looked like no tree on Earth. It would need to look like it had been standing for thousands of years. It would need to be in a wood full of dark twisty branches and dense canopies. It would need to seem like the place that a hardened nobleman might escape to for a moment of quiet. And Robert Boake knew just the one.

Boake had been working as a location scout in Northern Ireland for a few years, when in 2008 a producer sent him the script for the pilot episode of Game of Thrones . The producer “got me in my car exploring Ireland”, Boake explains, his excitement clear over the phone. “He said: ‘Go anywhere you want, and find me cool stuff and send it back to me.’ It was an unbelievable time of exploring and getting lost and photographing castles. There’s such an array of different looks. You’ve got Georgian stuff, Victorian stuff. You’ve got cliffs, you’ve got forests, you’ve got big open plains, big grasslands.”

Amy Poehler narrates this soft, soul-cleansing delight – which will make you go for a chic black coffee then throw away nine boxes of rubbish. Blessed relief!

Very rare a TV show affects me anymore, of course. I have seen, simply, too many of them. I have seen every configuration of dating show and every possible ITV2 Love Island spin-off reality format. I’ve seen every Channel 4 property programme and every doomed BBC One attempt at a Saturday night light entertainment blockbuster. I was the person who watched every single British odd couple road trip show they made in the wake of Covid. I’ve seen those shows on Apple TV+ that even the executives at Apple TV+ forgot they commissioned (“Hold on, what’s this line on the balance sheet marked ‘Joseph Gordon-Levitt’? We paid him for that?”). Every brown-and-grey “the enemy is at the gates, my lord!” attempt at an epic franchise in the wake of Game of Thrones and all the spin-off stuff Prime has done since The Boys. TV can’t get me any more. I’m TV-proof. I cannot be swung by TV! My nervous system is too dulled!

But I do have to concede that W’s new US import, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (Thursday, 9pm), did make me go round my office with a bin bag and not stop until I’d filled it with detritus (as ever, the thought is: “how long have I been living surrounded by a bin bag full of detritus?”). It’s a simple remix of Marie Kondo’s massive Netflix hit from a couple of years ago, which you might remember from that weekend you got all weird and said goodbye to your old socks one by one. Based on a New York Times bestselling book, Death Cleaning … explains the Swedish philosophy of clearing your house out of all your collected crap well in time for your death, a sort of semi-holy ceremonial tidy-up that allows you to confront the end of your life in a pragmatic way as well as gift treasured items to those in your family who might remember you by them. It does not feel like you need to be dying to get something out of this, though: in truth, it’s just another self-help book that uses a load of quirky terms and umlauts to tell you to just – for goodness sake, come on! – tidy up your loft a bit, please.

Sport fans could face choice between watching eagerly awaited tennis match and Euros quarter-final

Andy Murray’s final Wimbledon flourish could clash with England’s quarter-final match at Euro 2024 on Saturday evening, forcing sport fans and BBC schedulers into a tricky dilemma.

Murray and Emma Raducanu will team up in a mixed doubles match against Marcelo Arévalo and Shuai Zhang on No 1 Court. The match, which is the last one scheduled to play there on Saturday, looks likely to start in the early evening while England face off against Switzerland at the Merkur Spiel-Arena in Düsseldorf.

House of the Dragon just made eyes pop with an erect penis – but it’s not the only show going to great lengths to challenge television’s nudity equality problem

It’s not just winter that’s coming. This week’s episode of House of the Dragon featured not one but two penises: one mid-fellatio, the other post-coital. If original fantasy epic Game of Thrones became known for “sexposition” – advancing the plot against a backdrop of bare bodies – its prequel seems to be dealing in “dicksposition”.

Just past the midway mark of episode three, as a tipsy King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) arrived at a King’s Landing brothel with his jeering entourage, he strolled past a sizeable erection in the process of receiving a blowjob. The bratty monarch didn’t seem to notice. Viewers certainly did.

It won’t be long till everything from Drag Race to Keeping Up With the Kardashians could be written without humans – and you might be able to write yourself as the hero of a new show. But will robot TV ever be up to snuff?

Justine Bateman won’t name names, but a TV showrunner friend once came to her with a dilemma: their show’s team was well into filming its second season when a network executive had an idea. A character in the pilot hadn’t tested well with audiences, so they were just going to go in, use a little AI, and swap in someone else.

The showrunner – and Bateman, an actor and director – were understandably incensed. “When you change the beginning of something, you change the creative trajectory,” says Bateman. “There’s going to be whiplash for the viewer when they get to episode three or four because what was set up in the pilot got messed with and now doesn’t make sense.” Using AI might have seemed like a simple solution to the executive, but to the showrunner, it was catastrophic.

As Douglas Is Cancelled prepares to air, Moffat talks about career implosions, Bonneville relives past nude scenes – and Kingston recalls the ‘wandering hands’ warnings she used to be given

When Douglas, a nationally trusted news host, suffers a social media pile-on about a private comment revealed online, he consults his agent, who warns him – with a vagueness that may have pleased ITV’s lawyers – that he risks the fate of fellow broadcasters “whatsisname and the other one”. Many viewers will substitute the names Phillip Schofield and Huw Edwards, whose careers were cancelled after controversies about their conduct.

“They may well do,” admits Steven Moffat, writer of ITV’s four-part Douglas Is Cancelled. “But I wrote the first version of this – as a stage play that didn’t get put on – five years ago, long before the cases you mention. It doesn’t matter which period you put this story in: there will be somebody who fell from grace in TV.”

You’ve loved Ncuti Gatwa making the Doctor fun again, lapped up the sexiest season of Bridgerton – and discovered the new Mighty Boosh. Here are Guardian readers’ top TV shows of 2024 to date

Prime Video
Clarkson’s Farm is the funniest programme on TV. My father, who was a teacher after the war, always wanted to be a farmer and this is how I think it would have turned out. Clarkson’s ability to strike out on his own, only to be reined in by his more savvy “staff” make this show a joy. The scene with him using a Mr Henry to collect blackberries is only surpassed by it actually working and Kaleb’s visit to Downing Street should have warned us all about the soon-to-be-former prime minister. Nicholas Johnson, Brentford

The Game of Thrones prequel is back – and everyone is hungry for revenge. Plus: a shocking tale of deaths in the Mediterranean. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Atlantic
The first rule of Westeros? Don’t mess with a Targaryen queen’s children. In the case of this fiery Game of Thrones prequel, don’t let your dragon gobble up Rhaenyra Targaryen’s son. That was the cliff on which we were left hanging at the end of the first season – and it is sure to lead to all-out war between Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and her rival Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke). Don’t expect too much action in this slow-burn opener, though: there is plenty of plotting, alliance-making and world-building to set things up first. But an attention-grabbing payoff reminds us just how seriously George RR Martin’s characters take the act of seeking revenge. Hollie Richardson

The Peacock and People Just Do Nothing star on using food to connect to his Kurdish roots, his mental block with seafood and why he looks up to Anthony Bourdain

I’ve always been into food – and I sort of forget sometimes . Because food was so prominent in my household: my dad’s Kurdish, my mum’s Czech, but my mum spent 15 years living in Baghdad before I was born, so she’s an expert on both sides. She’d always be cooking: a simpler dish would be a goulash with dumplings, or, from the Kurdish side, a lamb stew either with okra or potatoes or beans. I was spoiled.

I used to be a little bit ashamed of being a foreigner and not feeling like everyone else. When my friends were coming over, I’d be like: “Don’t show them sauerkraut, they’ll think it’s weird.” Trying to get the pizzas out of the freezer so they couldn’t see – in my mind – the strange foreign food. And I smoked lots of weed, so I just wanted to eat pizzas and frankfurters, like freezer meals and shit.