It influenced The Simpsons and sparked the careers of Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, John Candy and many others. Now this extraordinary Canadian series is finally getting its due

SCTV – short for Second City Television – is one of most influential comedy shows ever created. In the 1970s and 80s, while North American comedy fans worshipped at the altar of Saturday Night Live, the comedy nerds loved SCTV. The Canadian sketch show was weird. It was dark. It was multilayered and years ahead of its time.

Dave Thomas, head writer and an original cast member, was there from the start. “Conan O’Brien said that he used to watch and he thought, ‘This show is being written specifically for me,’” Thomas tells me. “There were references in it that he was absolutely sure only he got. We wrote at the top of our reference level. And the idea was to see if the audience would meet us there.”

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© Photograph: NETFLIX

© Photograph: NETFLIX

© Photograph: NETFLIX

Scraping copyrighted material from internet could ‘potentially’ amount to acquisition of property by government, Anne Twomey says

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Altering copyright law to allow AI companies to scrape music, books and journalism could trigger a constitutional breach, Coalition senators and the recording industry have warned, as they raise new fears it could open Australia to massive legal action and compensation claims from rights holders worldwide.

The attorney general’s department admitted it was “extremely alive” to the issue, and Australia’s leading constitutional expert, Anne Twomey, agreed there was “potentially” a concern – depending how legislation was drafted – that granting AI companies permission to scrape copyrighted material from the internet could amount to an acquisition of property by the government.

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© Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

© Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

© Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

The star takes on her biggest challenge yet: resurrecting her family’s Cantonese restaurant. She discusses the stress of rewatching her sitcom, nearly becoming a meat inspector … and her beloved matriarch, who passed away after filming

I’m embarrassed I didn’t bring anything. It’s 10-something in the morning, and I’m meeting Nora Lum, 38 – best known as rapper, comic actor and writer Awkwafina – the morning after the Bafta TV awards. I feel that I should have brought her a pastry pick-me-up. Yet here I am empty-handed. “It could have been Chinese buns,” she playfully suggests.

Yes, it could have been. Especially because we are meeting to discuss her new series on Apple TV, Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook. It sees the star of box-office hits Crazy Rich Asians and Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings travel across the US to learn from a new generation of Asian American chefs, in the hope that she might revive her own family’s long-closed Cantonese restaurant. But there’s one problem: she can’t cook.

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© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

As Jean-Luc Picard in seven seasons, four films and a sequel, Stewart made us believe the most interesting person in the room might also be the most humane

• Patrick Stewart dies age 86

• His life in pictures

• Patrick Stewart brought gravitas and complexity to the screen, from Star Trek to X-Men

• ‘He stood for the best of us’: William Shatner and more pay tribute

What might humanity look like in 400 years’ time if we really do become wiser and more compassionate with each passing decade? The creators of Star Trek: The Next Generation clearly felt the answer closely resembled Patrick Stewart, who has died aged 86 after a short illness. Their decision may well have opened up an entirely new future for Gene Roddenberry’s enduring, resolutely utopian space saga.

Prior to the casting of the classically trained Yorkshireman in 1987, Star Trek was best known for the interplay between William Shatner’s charismatic, impulsive Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy’s drily logical Spock. Stewart brought something of both men to the captain’s chair as Jean-Luc Picard, combining analytical rigour with a depth of feeling his imposing formality could never quite conceal.

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© Photograph: George Rose/Getty Images

© Photograph: George Rose/Getty Images

© Photograph: George Rose/Getty Images

Emily McGonagle was watching cartoons with her sons when she decided to embark on a career change. A decade on, she is a star of a globally popular children’s series

Emily McGonagle was on maternity leave from her job as a lawyer, juggling the care of her new baby and her toddler son, when the daily diet of TV cartoons made her think about an unlikely career change.

Watching Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol, her older son’s favourites, “it occurred to me: who does this job?”, says the 42-year-old from Essex. “How do you get into it? Even when I was watching TV commercials, I’d think: well, how do you do that?”

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© Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

© Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

© Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

Keira Knightley returns for more chaos and thrills with guns in an espionage drama. Plus, Owen Wilson is back as charming washed-up golf pro Pryce Cahill

Helen Webb (Keira Knightley) is now the prime minister’s wife. Will that temper her treachery? Not a bit of it. This hugely entertaining espionage thriller returns with Helen cracking a safe (and adding to her spectacular body count) at an official engagement. The Black Doves spy ring is now in chaos after a key disappearance and, worse still, Sam (Ben Whishaw) has become a loose cannon, forced to take on hit jobs without much due diligence. Soon, absolutely everyone is somehow on a direct collision course. It’s a glorious mess of motive, morality and murder, and the superb cast – which now includes Ambika Mod and Babou Ceesay – are clearly having a ball. So will you.
Netflix, from Thursday 5 November

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© Photograph: Matthew Towers/Courtesy of Matthew Towers/Netflix

© Photograph: Matthew Towers/Courtesy of Matthew Towers/Netflix

© Photograph: Matthew Towers/Courtesy of Matthew Towers/Netflix

“He’s working on material for his next special, ‘Hussein in the Membrane,’” Meyers said after the former president ruffled feathers with jokes about the Cheesecake Factory.

From Jean-Luc Picard to Charles Xavier, the actor’s Shakespearean training – and that sonorous voice – made him a unique charismatic force in Hollywood

• Patrick Stewart dies age 86

• His life in pictures

• O Captain, our Captain: on Star Trek, Patrick Stewart could make anyone feel hopeful for humanity

• ‘He stood for the best of us’: William Shatner and more pay tribute

No actor showed the commercial potential of blue-chip British classical training like Patrick Stewart. With style, technique and the most minutely self-aware, almost vaudevillian sense of mimicry, Shakespearean thesps can turn their hand to American movies and high-end American television and show the American method actors how it’s done – sometimes, even, at the beginning of their screen careers, at a competitively low wage.

Stewart was one of the thoroughbreds of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1970s stage generation who had also had classy small screen roles, such as his intimidating Sejanus in I, Claudius opposite Derek Jacobi. But he effected a warp-speed leap to pop culture stardom by getting the role of Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Federation starship USS Enterprise, in TV’s Star Trek: The Next Generation, the hugely successful reboot of Star Trek that ran from 1987 to 1994, spawning four separate feature films and then another series, Star Trek: Picard.

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© Photograph: MARVEL/Allstar

© Photograph: MARVEL/Allstar

© Photograph: MARVEL/Allstar

The motley mix of roles that won the British actor acclaim includes a Shakespearean hero, a “Star Trek” captain and an “X-Men” mutant.

© Aaron Rapoport/Corbis, via Getty Images

Led by the Shakespearean veteran in his role as Jean-Luc Picard, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” gracefully went where the franchise had never gone before.

© CBS Photo Archive

The actor’s long and varied career included Shakespearean roles, “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” comedy and a stint in the Marvel Universe.

© NBC, Sara Krulwich/The New York Times, Fox, Kerry Hayes/20th Century Fox, CBS via Getty Images, Sesame Street Workshop

Star Trek: the Next Generation and X-Men actor died at his home after ‘a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia’

• Patrick Stewart – a life in pictures

• Patrick Stewart brought gravitas and complexity to the screen, from Star Trek to X-Men

Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed British stage and screen actor renowned for both Shakespeare and sci-fi, has died. He was 86.

The Star Trek: the Next Generation and X-Men star died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles after “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia”, said Kelly Bush Novak, his longtime spokesperson, to the Hollywood Reporter.

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© Photograph: Philip Cheung/The Guardian

© Photograph: Philip Cheung/The Guardian

© Photograph: Philip Cheung/The Guardian

Star Trek: the Next Generation star died at his home after ‘a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia’

• His life in pictures

• Patrick Stewart brought gravitas and complexity to the screen

• O Captain, our Captain: on Star Trek, Patrick Stewart could make anyone feel hopeful for humanity

• ‘He stood for the best of us’: William Shatner and more pay tribute

Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed British stage and screen actor renowned for both Shakespeare and sci-fi, has died. He was 86.

The Star Trek: the Next Generation and X-Men star died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles after “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia”, said Kelly Bush Novak, his longtime spokesperson, to the Hollywood Reporter.

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© Photograph: Philip Cheung/The Guardian

© Photograph: Philip Cheung/The Guardian

© Photograph: Philip Cheung/The Guardian

The British actor was 86. He achieved pop-culture stardom as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

© Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times

Late-night hosts discussed the president’s weird campaign behaviour and his out-of-touch comments about wealth

Late-night hosts expressed disgust at Donald Trump’s latest racist attacks while also taking aim at his comments about money.

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© Photograph: YouTube

© Photograph: YouTube

© Photograph: YouTube

“Why are you telling these people who gathered to see you in their Chinese-made, American-flag, Hawaiian shirts that they can’t afford to eat at your house?” Jimmy Kimmel asked.

The star plays a sadistic murderer still pulling the strings from behind bars. With his high-pitched giggles and fatal whispers, it is a perfectly terrifying show for Halloween

It has taken a while, but I think the torch may finally have passed from Anthony Hopkins as the screen’s most profoundly unsettling and instantly-absorbed-by-the-cultural-imagination serial killer. From Hannibal’s hitherto unfailing hands it has been thrown to Stephen Graham, who plays multiple murderer Jurek Walter in the new 10-part psychological thriller Nocturne.

Walter, who draws out the deaths of his victims in order to torture their families as much as the individuals themselves, is incarcerated for life in the bowels of Riverside psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He passes the time by doing push-ups, stashing contraband behind his toilet bowl for as-yet-unspecified purposes, and driving fellow inmates to suicide by whispering to them through the pipes. Graham – muscle-bound, preternaturally still and occasionally emitting a high-pitched giggle – is mesmerising and utterly terrifying.

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© Photograph: Dennis P Mong Jr/Apple TV

© Photograph: Dennis P Mong Jr/Apple TV

© Photograph: Dennis P Mong Jr/Apple TV

The 29th season has begun to slightly spin its wheels, but this poo-splattered episode suggests an imminent story arc: the release of Grand Theft Auto VI

Are record beef shortages simply not that rich a topic for South Park to riff off? The show’s 29th season had its first outright middling episode this week with a zigzaggy outing that gestured vaguely toward the performative eating of particular foods, nodded slightly at a father-son story development, and wound it all up by repeating and amplifying a funny season-long running gag that increasingly seems like it will actually serve as a makeshift story arc.

But let’s jump back to the beginning, perhaps the most laugh-out-loud moment of the episode: Cartman in a fugue of delight over the impending meal of sloppy joes at the school cafeteria, to which he forms a tribute in the form of a sloppy-joe-themed version of Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part Two – a music clearance reaffirming that Trey Parker and Matt Stone don’t care if a song choice might make people tut-tut (because the singer is a serial sex offender) or just annoyed (because that song sucks). Cartman’s infectious glee is short-lived, however, when he’s informed that the lunch special for the day isn’t a sloppy joe after all, or anything beef-related, but cuy – Guinea Pig on a stick.

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© Photograph: Paramount

© Photograph: Paramount

© Photograph: Paramount

The news outlets argued in an updated lawsuit that they should be granted access to the White House reporting pools.

© Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Before mobile phones, being filmed was very rare – and if you were, you acted naturally. Today, our relationship to the camera is very, very different

Not for the first time, I got something wrong. As someone who made a living being on camera, I developed theories about what it takes to be yourself on screen. My main thought was that everyone in the world would soon be able to do it, because they’d be getting so much practice.

Once upon a time, hardly anybody was filmed or videoed. When the head of my middle school announced in assembly one morning that there would be television cameras in the dinner hall at lunchtime, every child woke up. For once the headteacher had our full and undivided attention. Consternation was in the air. This would have been about 1979. Regional television news probably needed pictures to cover a story about school dinners or something. Nobody, but nobody, in the school that day missed that evening’s edition of Midlands Today. It was a big deal. I saw the back of my head, and was agog.

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© Photograph: Reka Olga/Getty Images/iStockphoto

© Photograph: Reka Olga/Getty Images/iStockphoto

© Photograph: Reka Olga/Getty Images/iStockphoto