The novelist on a comedic TikTok sensation, the importance of a good suit and his favourite educational app

Andrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968, grew up in a working-class Ayrshire family and studied English at Strathclyde University. His first book was The Missing (1995), which told the story of people who disappeared. In 2003 he was included on Granta’s list of best young British novelists. He has written 10 books, including Our Fathers and Mayflies , with three of his novels being Booker nominated. His most recent, Caledonian Road , a state-of-the-nation tale, is published by Faber. He will be talking at Hay festival on 30 May.

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The combined star power of Gosling and Emily Blunt can’t lift Bullet Train director David Leitch’s action-heavy spectacle into meaningful entertainment

Like the Lee Majors-starring 80s TV show on which this bombastic action comedy is based, The Fall Guy is pitched as a celebration of the work of the stunt crew: the unheralded men and women who take the movie-set risks so that the stars can take the credit. But in fact the film tumbles into the same pitfalls as any other enthusiastically pyrotechnic, action-heavy extravaganza: the sheer volume of stunt sequences means that the skills on show start to lose all meaning. Individually, the shots of a tiny figure dangling from a bucking, spinning, malfunctioning helicopter are impressive. But the relentless pace at which director (and former stuntman) David Leitch ( Bullet Train ) works through his ostentatious action set piece checklist means that it all turns into empty noise; spectacles strung together by a dizzy, slapdash screenplay that feels as though it has sustained a few too many bumps to the head.

Ryan Gosling is curiously half-baked as Colt Seavers, a top stunt professional whose career and burgeoning romantic relationship are both derailed by a broken back from a botched fall. Now Jody ( Emily Blunt ), the ex-girlfriend he ghosted after the incident, is directing her first movie (an absolutely shocking-looking sci-fi western titled Metal Storm). And Colt is tempted out of retirement at her express request. Except she didn’t ask for him and she wants nothing more to do with him. Meanwhile, the film’s star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), is missing and the fate of Jody’s debut hangs in the balance. It’s up to Colt to do his best work – he’s repeatedly kicked in the face, ignited and shot at – in the name of bad art. Which, I suppose, neatly sums up the stunt performer paradox.

In UK and Irish cinemas now

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Cliffs Pavilion, Southend
The standup delivers an unstructured show with autobiographical anecdotes and routines about henpecked husbands and women called Fanny

How hard should a comedian try when they’re already a household name? Some still go the extra yard: Peter Kay on his last tour , for example. Some – such as Romesh Ranganathan – turn on cruise control, but are at least cruising at high altitude. And for some, there is a drop-off. John Bishop promises a show proper after the interval of Back at It, whose first half is “the mess-about bit”. But there’s not much structure or significance in Act Two either, nor are the jokes good enough to compensate.

That’s not to say audiences won’t enjoy the scouser’s shtick: it’s personable enough, and tickles in places that many like to be tickled. There are jokes about how henpecked Bishop is in his marriage, some of which feel, as he rages on about “fucking compromises”, uncomfortably emphatic. There’s material about his midlife crisis and his wife’s menopause. (Sample gag: “that woman you thought had a hot body really has a hot body.”) There are jokes about a woman being called Fanny and about how ill-at-ease Bishop was about snogging Ian McKellen in a panto .

Touring until 3 April

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The pair, whose final season of the hit horror-comedy will air on the BBC this month, say the West End production will feature familiar characters and fresh surprises

As the ninth and final series of their BBC hit Inside No 9 begins this month, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have announced a new stage version of the show for the West End next year.

The pair will star in Inside No 9 Stage/Fright which will feature familiar characters and fresh surprises or, in their words, “something old, something new, something butchered and something … boo!”. They added: “We want to deliver the perfect West End night at the theatre … we might even crack out a song if you’re lucky.”

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Hit sitcom back for last time five years after dramatic cliffhanger that was watched by 11.6m people

The last-ever episode of the hit sitcom Gavin and Stacey will be shown on Christmas Day, the BBC has confirmed.

The show, which has been watched by more than a quarter of the UK’s population, making it the most popular scripted programme of the last 10 years, will make a final return five years on from a dramatic cliffhanger.

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The history of how the all-American breakfast snack was created is served up with lashings of goofiness in this comedy caper

Standup veteran Jerry Seinfeld makes his directing debut with this decent family comedy that puts a surreal twist on the history of Pop-Tarts, one of the US’s most beloved snacks: the sheer goofiness and disposable pointlessness are entertaining.

Seinfeld created the film with co-writers Spike Feresten, Andy Robin and Barry Marder, the same writing team that worked on Bee Movie , the animation that Seinfeld starred in, produced and co-wrote in 2007. Unfrosted doesn’t quite have the flair of Bee Movie, but there’s a steady stream of excellent gags, creating a rising crescendo of silliness similar in effect to Seinfeld’s own distinctive falsetto-hysterical declamation at the moment of ultimate joke-awareness. There are also nice supporting roles and cameos, including an extraordinary dual walk-on from Jon Hamm and John Slattery, recreating their ad exec Mad Men personae Don Draper and Roger Sterling.

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Speaking at launch for West End adaptation, Cleese complains about literal-minded viewers ‘not playing with a full deck’

John Cleese said that he decided to cut the N-word from a scene in his West End Fawlty Towers revival because in contemporary Britain there are too many “literal minded people” who “don’t understand irony”.

Cleese was speaking at the media launch for the West End theatrical adaptation of the classic comedy, which follows a repressed hotelier trying to control his chaotic staff. The TV show finished in 1979 after two series that are widely regarded to contain some of the best-ever British sitcom writing.

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Soho theatre, London
A lesser act might have struggled to follow the brilliant Sydnee Washington, but Faustin’s swaggering, gossipy shtick is superb

Has Marie Faustin blundered? Support acts are supposed to be warmup funny, not red-hot funny. Faustin’s NYC pal Sydnee Washington is red hot here, and 10 minutes in, one wonders whether Faustin might play second fiddle at her own show. It’s a measure of her ability, and confidence, that Faustin raises the comic temperature still further after Washington’s set, with a thoroughly irresistible hour on ageing, gossip and relationships v “situationships”. She makes a stellar impression: it’s hard to imagine a personality more obviously – infectiously, gloriously – cut out for standup comedy.

Does that mean she has a coherent show? Not really, but no one minds. Are all her jokes well worked? Certainly not. Several anecdotes (the one about triggering a bomb scare at a bus station; the one about auditioning for a Maybelline ad) fizzle out where one might expect a climax. But when the journey’s as much fun as this, who cares about the destination? Faustin takes enormous pleasure in her stories, animating them with self-ridiculous swagger, sassy stylings and phraseology, and the most contagious mwa-hah-hah laugh in comedy.

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Gosling does the dirty work in this entertaining action film, which has moments of tenderness with Blunt among the crashes, leaps and fireballs

You might need to get your indulgent smile firmly in place for this colossal action comedy – not unlike the adorable smirks on the faces of its male and female leads, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, who play the daredevil movie stuntman and the stern director with whom he is in love. It’s a goofy summer crowd-pleaser (and you can never have too many of those) that is very far from the edgier and more satirical mien of Richard Rush’s 1980 movie The Stunt Man , in which a Vietnam draft evader hides out on a movie location, doing dangerous stunts in return for anonymity. Actually, this one is loosely inspired by a 1980s TV show, also called The Fall Guy , about a stuntman with a parallel career as a bounty hunter – starring Lee Majors, a legend who puts in a tongue-in-cheek cameo here along with his co-star, Heather Thomas.

Gosling plays seasoned stunt maestro Colt Seavers, utterly unafraid of any physical challenges, self-effacingly doubling for insufferably conceited star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who outrageously claims to do all his own stunts. Colt is having a passionate affair with beautiful, talented camera operator Jody Moreno (Blunt), but when he is involved in a catastrophic and career-ending failed stunt, he is overwhelmed with macho shame, thinking the accident was his fault because his infatuation with Jody made him take his eye off the ball.

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