With its fun new series, Julian Fellowes’ preposterous ‘transatlantic’ Downton has morphed from joylessly pompous to truly joyful TV. Consider me a convert!

The Gilded Age is a curious, unwieldy thing. It is rich in qualities that I love, such as Broadway stars of a certain pedigree and truly extravagant hats. But, for a series that clearly takes a great effort to make, at what appears to be an enormous expense, it is oddly slight. The events of New York society in the late 19th century glide on by, as women dressed in fine, frilly clothing dip in and out of dramas that are sometimes important, sometimes entirely trivial, but almost always afforded equal weight, regardless of how much they matter. To watch it is to sink into a comfortable fugue, and think mostly about the hats.

The household of the sisters Agnes Van Rhijn (Christine Baranksi) and Ada Forte (Cynthia Nixon) has undergone a significant shift in power. After their nephew Oscar (Blake Ritson) almost ruined the family by losing Agnes’s fortune, the crisis of impending poverty was averted at the last minute by the revelation that Ada’s husband, the Rev Luke Forte, who died not long after they were married, was actually stinking rich thanks to a profitable textiles business, leaving Ada a fortune. Fancy that! The Gilded Age can be so soapy that the suds practically foam on the screen.

The foreign secretary was trying to catch up, unsure whether it would be better to have been in on the plan, or have deniability

The situation was, said the foreign secretary, “fast-moving”. Fast-moving as in totally suboptimal. Fast-moving as in completely out of his control. Fast-moving as in he would rather have pulled the duvet over his head and pretended the whole thing had been a bad dream. That he could go back to sleep for a while and wake up to the world as it was.

Maybe we all wish we could do that. These are the days that many of us would rather had never happened. Does the world feel any safer to you today?

‘We knew the prize money had to go up fast. No one would say, “Better not put the kettle on in case somebody wins a quid”’

I was responsible for the schedule. I’d listened to Chris Tarrant doing this game on the radio – Double or Quits – which was brilliant. I was intrigued by its TV version, called Cash Mountain, because it was well known in the industry that various people had turned it down. I invited the producer, Paul Smith, to pitch the full idea to me and Claudia Rosencrantz, ITV’s controller of entertainment.

The heatwave media formula is still extravagantly weird: all stock photos of ice-creams and suns with their hats on. It is time we recognised this extreme weather for exactly what it is

I think I must be on someone’s Rolodex of killjoys, because whenever something good happens – schools break up, summer holidays start, the weather’s nice, it’s Christmas, it’s Easter – I get a call from a talk radio show asking if I’ll come on and explain why that’s bad, actually. Usually I say, in the nicest possible way, that I don’t want to: sure, kids are much more annoying when they’re not at school; yes, it’s irresponsible to fly; no, Christmas isn’t magic, it’s an orgy of overconsumption; yes, Easter was pillaged from pagans (probably?), and Christianity itself is the imperialist template (arguably?) – in which case, the last way we should mark it is with a Creme Egg. But I just don’t want to be that person. Let someone else ruin everything for a change.

On Friday, however, I agreed to make the argument the next morning on LBC that heatwaves aren’t a treat, they’re a problem. We have to do more than just ready our infrastructure for the more intense temperatures to come: we have to bring our narrative a bit closer to reality. The climate crisis isn’t tomorrow’s problem, it’s today’s, and its impacts aren’t better conditions for vineyards in Kent, they are a broad-spectrum enshittification, in which everything, from bus journeys to growing dahlias, becomes harder, and takes longer, and is worse. It was, in other words, exactly the kind of true, unlovely thing that I don’t like being the person to say, and I don’t know why I said yes – it’s possible that I was just too hot.

As the shockingly violent anticapitalist hit returns, its star and creator talk about spinoffs, the dangers of desensitisation, David Fincher’s mooted remake – and why they couldn’t say no to tie-ins with McDonald’s and Uber

When season two of Squid Game dropped, fans were split in their response to Netflix’s hit Korean drama. While some viewers loved the dialled-up-to-11 intensity of everything – more characters, more drama, more staggering brutality – others found the tone relentlessly bleak. And this was a show whose original concept – a cabal of rich benefactors recruit poor people to compete in bloodsports for cash – was already plenty dark. Anyone hoping the show’s third and final season, arriving this week, will provide a reprieve should probably just rewatch Emily in Paris instead.

“The tone is going to be more dark and bleak,” says series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, through an interpreter. “The world, as I observe it, has less hope. I wanted to explore questions like, ‘What is the very last resort of humankind? And do we have the will to give future generations something better?’ After watching all three seasons, I hope we can each ask ourselves, ‘What kind of humanity do I have left in me?’”

There are more than 3,000 performances to choose between at this year’s giant pan-genre jamboree. From pop A-listers to underground ones-to-watch, here are our picks

‘Not a vintage year,” came the usual grumbles about the Glastonbury lineup when it was announced in March – and it’s perhaps only in England where people would moan about the lack of quality on offer at a festival with more than 3,000 performances across five days. In reality, Glastonbury remains stacked with varied, progressive, boundlessly vital artists, and the real challenge is picking your way through them: here are some of our tips.

A senior White House official said Trump had brokered the deal in a call with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu

• Full report: Trump says Israel and Iran have negotiated ‘complete’ ceasefire

Israel’s Magen David Adom nation emergency service says in a post on X that three people are in critical condition after recent sirens.

“At the scene in southern Israel, MDA EMTs and paramedics are currently providing treatment to 3 people in critical condition—a man around 40, a woman around 30, and a man around 20, as well as 1 in moderate condition, and 5 others with minor injuries.”

International Atomic Energy Agency head says no one in a position to fully assess damage to Iran’s nuclear capabilities

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has doubled down on claims “monumental damage” had been done to Iran’s nuclear sites, as the head of the UN’s nuclear agency said that while he anticipated “very significant damage” at the underground Fordow site, the agency had not been able to assess it.

Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that Iran had told the agency it had planned to take “special measures” to protect equipment and nuclear materials on 13 June.

Anahita, a Tehran resident in her 30s, tells of fears over retaliation to US strikes, regime arrests, and shortages

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The internet in Iran was down for a full three days [at the end of last week], and there was no way to communicate with others. This outage has added to people’s fear and anxiety, as we no longer knew which cities had been bombed or which areas were under evacuation orders.

If the internet outage continues, many jobs will be lost.

UK foreign secretary wants Iran to return to negotiating table but refuses to endorse strikes by US and Israel

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Any Iranian move to close the strait of Hormuz waterway would be an act of monumental self-harm, said David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, as he continued to refuse to endorse the Israeli and American strikes on Iran, or lay out the UK view of their lawfulness.

Lammy said there was no need for the British government to say if the strikes were legal since the UK was not involved in the action and had not been asked by the US to take part, or to allow the US to use the UK’s Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean to target Iran.