‘We’re hunky in our own way’: Modern Family’s Mitch and Cam on their hilarious and groundbreaking love

1 September 2026 at 14:59

Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet proved that opposites really do attract in the smash hit sitcom. But beyond the bickering and and pranks, there was a romance so special that it changed many fans’ lives

Opposites attract. And spend most of their time arguing. But the love between Cameron and Mitchell Tucker-Pritchett remained strong throughout the 11 years of Modern Family.

The two met at a games night when Mitch rolled his eyes every time Cam “got a little boisterous”. They married in two of the most romantic and near-disastrous TV episodes in living memory and raised two adopted children, Lily and Rexford. Being a groundbreaking gay TV couple came at a price: critics wanted more PDAs and less fighting, but Cam and Mitch’s love shone bright.

Summer box office 2026: what can we learn from the hits and misses?

The Guardian

By: Benjamin Lee

1 September 2026 at 12:00

It was a bumper season for Hollywood, almost back to pre-pandemic levels, with Tom Holland blockbusters winning out, but there was still a string of disappointments

As the world continued to burn and temperatures reached worrying highs, most of us decided to take refuge in the cinema this summer. It provided some relief for audiences, but even more so for the industry at large, with the season pushing past the magic $4bn mark to become the biggest since 2019, up 20% from last year. There were the expected hits (Spider-Man never misses), but there were also unprecedented breakouts (we were obsessed with Obsession) and surprise underperformers (are kids Minions-ed out?)

So at the end of a season with epic highs and cavernous lows, what lessons can Hollywood learn?

‘I was miserable for a lot of this century’: Stewart Lee on divorce, his adoption and the twisted children’s poem that explains his life

The Guardian

By: Zoe Williams

30 August 2026 at 08:00

After a rocky few decades, the standup is nearing 60 – and finding contentment at last. But what does his grotesque retelling of The Owl and the Pussy-cat tell us about his inability to connect with people?

Stewart Lee is somewhat fretfully tidying his kitchen. Nothing is exactly where he left it two months ago to go on tour. Plus, he says, “I’ve come back with a load of records that need to be alphabetised, and that’s really stressing me out.” His house is miles from minimalist – posters everywhere, for spaghetti westerns, avant-garde Welsh harpists, the Fall (who he said in an interview in 2005 were the love of his life) – but if anything was an inch out of place, he’d notice. He puts things away with theatrical flourish, like a guy doing an impression of a guy who needs things just-so, for the comic effect of how absolutely impossible that guy would be, but at the same time, it’s funny because it’s true.

In the show he’s been away for, Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf, he – a 58-year-old lefty – enters into breakneck dialectic with toxic masculinity in werewolf form (age unknown). “Things have got worse in the 18 months I’ve been doing it,” he says. “I need to really amp the werewolf up. He would be much more explicitly racist and homophobic and transphobic now. But you don’t want people to be really upset in the room.” It feels quite a 2026 dilemma, being unable to even satirise the right without causing the distress it lives for.

Fourth time lucky as Chris Cantrill’s spoof whodunnit wins Edinburgh comedy award 2026

World news | The Guardian

By: Brian Logan

29 August 2026 at 15:50

Nominated in three previous years, the rambunctious standup – one half of The Delightful Sausage – wins the prize for his show Rewilding while Marty Gleeson is named best newcomer

The annual Edinburgh comedy award has been won by the standup Chris Cantrill, two years after his comedy partner Amy Gledhill – in the raucous northern double act The Delightful Sausage – won the same prize.

Cantrill, 42 and from Bradford, received the so-called “Oscar of live comedy” for a show, Rewilding, about his new life in rural Northumberland, where an act of vandalism shocks the local community – and a spoof whodunnit ensues. It builds on the foundations laid in 2024 by Easily Swayed, which documented his move to the countryside and secured what was then Cantrill’s third nomination (but first as a solo act) for the award.

Chris Cantrill: Rewilding review – a rural whodunnit told with midlife mirth

The Guardian

By: Brian Logan

29 August 2026 at 07:00

Monkey Barrel Comedy, Edinburgh
Cantrill shares his struggles descending into middle age and his awkward interactions with fellow villagers in a fun show

Now a four-time nominee for the Edinburgh comedy award, Chris Cantrill is bearing down on James Acaster’s always-the-bridesmaid record – unless 2026 proves to be his year. Would it be merited? Well, there are few comedians in whose company it is more reliably fun to spend time. And that’s resoundingly the case with Rewilding, the follow-up to 2024’s Easily Swayed, in which Cantrill gave an uproarious account of turning 40, moving to the countryside and having (the male, northern, emotionally stunted equivalent of) a breakdown.

The sequel is scarcely less entertaining, but it’s not as well constructed, and its story is less resonant. It begins with this ebullient Bradford native explaining how bad he is at introducing himself, with reference to “drinks and nibs” his wife has coerced him to attend in their Northumbrian village. Cantrill is chronic at small talk, he tells us, yet adept at code-switching – as demonstrated in the company of the “gen Z girls and gays” who love him, rural workers whose opinions he meekly opposes in the pub, and the private-school boys who (as per one gloriously indiscreet section) call the shots where Cantrill works, on Saturday Night Live UK.

At Monkey Barrel Comedy, Edinburgh, until 30 August

All our Edinburgh festival reviews

How the Mayo Clinic is using improv to engage dementia patients

PBS News Hour - The Latest

By: Megan Thompson

28 August 2026 at 01:25

The medical community is trying many approaches to help push back against the advance of Alzheimer's and dementia. One leading institution is taking a different and unconventional approach to supplement the traditional treatments. Special Correspondent Megan Thompson reports for our coverage of the intersection of health and arts, part of our CANVAS series.

My Arms Are Longer Now – comedy stealth game sends lawlessness into new territory

The Guardian

By: Bex April May

24 August 2026 at 11:00

Developers who met through Australia’s improv scene and publishers of comedic party games have united for this slithering challenge in which you play as one extended limb

Most stealth games cast you as a spy, an assassin or a master thief. My Arms Are Longer Now dispenses with most of the criminal person, to send in just one spectacularly badly behaved limb. It slithers across floors, winds around furniture, steals things and slaps anyone within reach – finally answering the question nobody asked: what if your own arm turned to crime?

As Toot Games co-founder Matthew Jackson puts it: “You are the bad thing that happens to the people.”

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