From Blue Lights gossip to How to Get to Heaven from Belfast cocktails, the city has become a small-screen hotspot – and is basking in its newfound fame

‘I love them!” Minutes after I jump into a taxi at Belfast International airport, the driver is beaming about Derry Girls. So many tourists he picks up want to talk about the hit comedy and, as a fan himself, he’s happy to oblige.

We’re stuck in traffic, which is odd for this small city on a wet Tuesday morning. “It’s because all the media are here,” he jokes. But there is some truth to it. I’m visiting for the world premiere of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, the new series from Derry Girls mastermind Lisa McGee, and to see how the capital became home to the best TV.

(Atlantic)
Casting off her Bratty cigarettes and sunglasses, the pop visionary channels the torments of Heathcliff and Cathy and the tumult of the Velvet Underground on her latest captivating pivot

In the catalogues of rock and pop artists, film soundtracks usually seem like interstitial releases. For every career highlight Shaft or Superfly, there’s a plethora of soundtrack albums that carry the tang of the side-hustle. It was doubtless flattering to be asked in the first place – who doesn’t want to feel like a polymath? – but the results are doomed to languish in the footnotes, alongside the compilations of B-sides and outtakes, where only diehard fans spend extended amounts of time.

But the release of House, the first single taken from Charli xcx’s soundtrack to Wuthering Heights, strongly suggested that its author saw Emerald Fennell’s take on Emily Brontë as a chance for a reset. In 2024’s Brat, she made an album you could genuinely call era-defining without fear of embarrassment: if an album makes an impact on the US presidential campaign and its title ends up refashioned as an adjective in the Collins English Dictionary, then it’s definitely era-defining.

The home secretary has vowed to fight the judgment, but she and the government are on the wrong side of history

This is a day of humiliation for those who facilitated Israel’s genocide in Gaza – and a moment of vindication for those who stood against “the crime of crimes”. It is worth underlining what the high court in London has today ruled to be unlawful: our government’s decision to place the direct-action group Palestine Action on the same legal footing as al-Qaida and Islamic State. Legally speaking, simply showing support for it risked a jail sentence of up to 14 years. The consequences? More than 2,700 people arrested for holding placards opposing genocide and supporting Palestine Action, many of them elderly, including a retired octogenarian priest.

No one who engages in criminal damage for a political cause imagines they will avoid arrest. As the court ruling makes clear, normal criminal law remains available for such acts. But when a government applies the badge of “terrorism” to movements that, however disorderly, are clearly not terrorist movements, an alarming precedent is set. As the court recognised, the proscription interferes with rights to freedom of expression, to peaceful assembly and free associations with others. You do not need a fevered imagination to see how a future Reform UK government could build on such a precedent. (As things stand, the ban on the group remains in effect so the government has time to appeal.)

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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From handheld to corded, self-emptying to stick models, these are our resident cleaner’s favourite vacuums for a spotless home

• The best cordless vacuum cleaners, tested
• How to make your vacuum cleaner last longer

Buying a vacuum cleaner isn’t as easy as you might think. With so many brands and models to choose from, it can be bewildering. Sticking with established brands isn’t necessarily a safe bet, with past performance being no guarantee that the latest models will be as good. Meanwhile, prices can be deceptive, with some affordable models now closing the gap on top-of-the-range brands when it comes to cleaning performance.

You can’t know all this by browsing through a department store or online. The ideal thing to do would be to take a few models home to try them out – but good luck persuading anyone to let you do that. Thankfully, you won’t have to try because I’ve tested an array of models for you. I’ve measured each one’s ability to perform a range of real-world cleaning jobs, so you can discover the best vacuum cleaner for you.

Best corded vacuum cleaner overall:
Shark Detect XL Car + Pet LA791UKT

Best cordless vacuum cleaner overall:
Shark PowerDetect Clean & Empty IP3251UKT

From sparks flying during The OC’s Spider-Man snog to love stories so powerful they make you weep, Guardian writers pick the television couples whose tales never fail to make hearts pound

As TV romances go, it’s not the most original. Nerdy teen boy finally gets the queen bee he’s loved since they still had baby teeth – and off we pop on a four-season cycle of dramatic breakups and grand-gesture-fuelled reunions. Yet through all of the faintly ridiculous plotlines, their romance is anchored by that most elusive of on-screen tricks: actual, palpable chemistry. There is the sarcastic sparring, the physical spark (who could ever forget that Spiderman snog?) but also a feeling of deep care and genuine friendship – one that helps both characters grow into promising mini-grownups by the end. Watching the pair navigate insecurities, battle identity crises and generally make some spectacularly poor choices, lets us all feel better about the emotional dumpster fires of our own adolescence. And the fact that they keep on choosing each other speaks to that part of our teen selves that longed to find someone who might jump on to a coffee cart and declare their love for us – or at least wait around all summer while we campaigned to save sea otters. Lucinda Everett

Bad boy Heathcliff is described as ethnically ambiguous and ‘dark’ in the novel, yet is played by a pretty straightforward white Australian Elordi

Tired of movies for kids? Superhero capes and flatulent animated squirrels? Me too. Fortunately, you and I are in luck. This weekend brings the wide release of Saltburn director Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. As is befitting Fennell’s established style, the movie offers over-the-top sexual titillation (though, crucially, zero nudity) and elaborate production design. Plus, a contemporary pop soundtrack from Charli xcx. A horny film version of a 19th-century novel is as adult-skewing as it gets at the box office these days.

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi suck face and stand around in the rain in expensive costumes for over two hours in a movie that Fennell proudly declares a loose translation from the page. It excises a large portion of the book’s story and focuses its eye primarily on the illicit romance between Cathy Earnshaw and swarthy Heathcliff. Crucially, it should be pointed out that Heathcliff is technically Cathy’s foster brother, which allows Wuthering Heights to fit comfortably into one of the most popular genres of online video in the world.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

Thousands arrested for supporting group since proscription are now in legal limbo as Mahmood says she will appeal

Three senior judges have ruled that the ban on the direct action group Palestine Action under anti-terrorism laws was disproportionate and unlawful, handing the home secretary a humiliating defeat.

Shabana Mahmood was urged to respect the court’s decision after the judges said the ban, introduced by her predecessor Yvette Cooper, impinged on the right to protest and should be quashed.

An undercover operative stopped Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein carrying out deadly terror attack

Two men have been jailed for life after attempting to stage one of the UK’s deadliest terrorist attacks before it was thwarted by an undercover operative.

Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, who had sworn allegiance to Islamic State (IS), planned a marauding firearms attack targeting Greater Manchester’s Jewish community.

Ex-husband of Nicola Sturgeon and former CEO of party is due to appear in Glasgow court next Friday

The former chief executive of the Scottish National party (SNP) Peter Murrell has been accused of embezzling £459,000 from the party over a period of more than 12 years, according to court documents that emerged ahead of a hearing.

Murrell, the ex-husband of the former first minister and party leader Nicola Sturgeon, is due to appear at the high court in Glasgow next Friday for a preliminary hearing in the case.

Anas Sarwar said that he stood by what he said when he announced on Monday that he wanted the prime minister to stand down

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has welcomed a high court ruling defending the interim guidance it issued to organisations about the implications of the supreme court judgement saying that, when the Equality Act refers to sex, it means biological sex.

The guidance – described as an “interim update” – was controversial because it was seen as over-prescriptive, and the Good Law Project launched a legal challenge.

We welcome the court’s conclusion that the interim update was lawful and the EHRC did not act in breach of its statutory duties.

We issued the interim update in response to a high level of demand immediately after the supreme court’s ruling. We were concerned that organisations and individuals could be subject to misinformation and misrepresentation of the judgment and its consequences. That might have led to them failing to comply with the law: adopting or maintaining discriminatory policies or practices, to the detriment of those the law is supposed to protect.

It is wrong because it reduces trans people to a third sex. It is wrong because it gives little or no weight to the harm done to trans people by excluding them. And it is wrong because it is not interested enough in the rights of people who are trans to keep their status private.

The tragic irony for [Morgan] McSweeney [Starmer’s chief of staff until Sunday] was that Starmer’s 18 months as prime minister have only vindicated Blair’s central analysis of their project. McSweeney and Starmer might have identified what they disliked most about the excesses of New Labour, but they never developed an alternative political economy of their own that might replace it. In place of Blairism there was no theory of political reform or coherent critique of British state failure, no analysis of Britain’s future place in the world or any kind of distinct moral mission. All there was was a promise to “clean things up” as Starmer put it to me. The mission became, in essence, conservative: to protect the settlement erected by Blair and eroded over the 20 years since his departure. Britain could thrive if it could only begin to live within its means, attract more foreign investment, reassure the bond markets and return a sense of “service” to government. After years of chaos, mere stability would be change. And this would be enough.

Where there was distinct radicalism – from McSweeney’s Blue Labour instincts – there was no mandate. McSweeney and Starmer had not fought an ideological battle to bring Blue Labour to government, as Wilson had done for socialist modernisation in the 1960s and Blair for liberal progressivism 30 years later. This was largely because Starmer never really believed in it in the first place and McSweeney, though a reflective thinker, was always more of an operator than political theorist. And so, the pair offered a programme without a programme, a government without ideas or the mandate to enact them.

Another of those who worked for [Stamer] adds: ‘He’s completely incurious. He’s not interested in policy or politics. He thinks his job is to sit in a room and be serious, be presented with something and say “Yes” or “No” – invariably “Yes” – rather than be persuader–in-chief.’ Even before he fell out with Starmer, Mandelson told friends and colleagues that the Prime Minister had never once asked him ‘What really makes Trump tick?’ or ‘How will he react to this?’.

Others dispute the claim of incuriosity. ‘There are subjects when he drills down and he’s really, really good,’ says another aide. ‘The idea he can’t think politically is also wrong. He will often think ahead.’ But even these loyalists admit Starmer lacks a ‘philosophical worldview’.