Oscar-winning actor criticized an upcoming two-part expose in the UK detailing alleged incidents that go back to his youth

Kevin Spacey has attacked an upcoming documentary detailing years of his alleged sexual abuse, saying he was not given adequate time to respond.

The two-part documentary Spacey Unmasked, which will broadcast on Channel 4 on 6 and 7 May in the UK and will stream on Max in the US, claims to feature “never-seen-before interviews and archive” to examine the Oscar-winning actor’s life “from childhood to early success on Broadway and subsequent meteoric rise to stardom”.

I took on a pseudoscientist because misinformation about history too often goes unchallenged

It’s important to start strong. That’s true of a lot of things in life, but doubly so when you’re an archaeologist starting off a conversation with Graham Hancock, the famed pseudoarchaeology author, in a venue such as the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

For the last decade, scholars and experts have dealt with misinformation and pseudoscience either by trying to ignore it in order not to amplify it or by debunking it once it has spread far enough. But recent misinformation research highlights the importance of prebunking rather than debunking . An audience primed with real facts is armed to understand the issues with pseudoscientific narratives.

There’s plenty of great stuff in this documentary to keep super fans happy – but you only need to know 80s banger Livin’ on a Prayer to get emotional as the ageing band break down before your very eyes

Every pop biography has the same dilemma: fans of the artist want to know all the details, while viewers with only a passing interest just want to get to the good stuff. You can tell which side of the line Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story falls on by looking at the running time. Its four episodes are all well over an hour long.

By far the strongest instalment is the opener, which can be watched in isolation as an evocative charge through the period leading up to the band’s formation and breakthrough. The best rockumentaries have the power to pitch us into a past moment we wish we could hang out in – the place and time here that crackles with fantastic potential is New Jersey in the back half of the 1970s.

The Oscar-winner’s powerful documentary proves how fragile the earth’s ecosystems are. From angry hippos to salmon swimming on tarmac, it is truly valuable television

Our Living World begins with a cheesy inspirational quote: “Realise that everything connects to everything else.” Leonardo da Vinci said that, possibly. Soon, this nature series has glowing blue lines running across the screen, and Cate Blanchett on the voiceover, authoritatively announcing that the planet’s species are dependent on each other in ways we cannot immediately see and might not have imagined.

It sounds as if this programme thinks it has discovered the concept of ecosystems, and across four episodes it makes repeated use of the same trick: it shows us one animal or plant, then shocks us with how that one helps another. Gradually, however, the show builds this into a powerful lecture on the climate crisis, conservation and, in particular, the importance of small gestures and how they can have larger effects down the line. In an age when we urgently need to act but the task of maintaining a survivable planet can seem too big for an individual to contemplate, let alone tackle, it’s a valuable lesson.

This thoroughly sweet look at the grime artist and TV chef making a pilgrimage is that rarest of things – an intimate profile of being male and Muslim

There’s no one way to be a religious person. For some, it’s all about a deeply personal connection between you and God. For others, its value comes from how it places you within a larger community of like-minded believers. Either can bring comfort and meaning to a person’s life, and in the case of the grime musician and award-winning TV chef Big Zuu, he is fortified by both as he makes a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Big Zuu is a thoughtful and charming host who is able to find the heart and humour in even the most typically solemn moments. This hour-long BBC documentary follows him through Ramadan, where he is giving up his “sinful” ways – even as a committed Muslim, he loves the ladies, a bit of hash and the odd tipple. Despite being “westernised” and not the most pious of believers, he decides to go on the umrah pilgrimage to Mecca (in contrast to the hajj, this can be undertaken at any point in the year) to work out what Islam means to him. He is surrounded at most points by a small group of friends (his “mandem”) who are also Muslims and just as endearing as Big Zuu himself. For him, this experience isn’t about being a perfect, sin-free person. “This ain’t some fake religion documentary where I’m pretending to be some great Muslim and convert the world,” he tells us. Instead, he is sincerely trying to figure out his faith and become the very best version of himself.

Big Zuu Goes to Mecca aired on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer

A candid documentary tells how a generation of activists from Asian communities confronted prejudice

I can still remember the chill I felt on first hearing of the murders of Parveen Khan and her three young children, Aqsa, Kamran and Imran. It was July 1981. In the middle of the night, someone had poured petrol through the letter box of their house in Walthamstow, north-east London, and set it alight. The only person to escape the inferno was Parveen’s husband, Yunus, who had jumped from an upstairs window, his injuries leaving him hospitalised for several weeks.

The perpetrators were never caught. Don Gibson was one of the investigating officers. Now, as then, he insists the arsonist was most likely Yunus Khan himself. For this to be true, observes Pete Hope, a firefighter who attended the scene, Khan must have gone out of the house, poured petrol through the letter box, come inside, set the petrol ablaze, gone upstairs, waited until the fire made escape almost impossible and then thrown himself out of a window.

This documentary about the Nirvana singer’s demise is at its best when it uses archive interviews with fans to show the scale of their loss. Otherwise, it struggles to really convey his impact

Unfathomably, for those of us who remember it, Kurt Cobain died 30 years ago this month, at the age of 27. Kurt Cobain: Moments That Shook Music has been scheduled as the centrepiece for an evening of programming that celebrates Nirvana’s music and legacy, but the emphasis of the documentary itself is firmly on Cobain killing himself and the days surrounding his death. It uses archive video of news reports and amateur footage from people attending a vigil held in his memory, in a Seattle park, just days after his body was found. There is no Nirvana music, other than their covers of other people’s songs.

Presumably this is a rights issue, and no fault of the film-makers, but the absence of the band’s original music does highlight the documentary’s singular focus. It spends less than five minutes on the astonishing, world-dominating success that Nirvana achieved in just a few short years – and, for Cobain, the concomitant dread that seems to have accompanied that – but, at the beginning, it does contextualise them as a band concisely. There is an old Reddit thread about how 1991’s Nevermind was released closer to the Beatles’ Love Me Do than to today, and this is a stark reminder of how long ago it was that Nirvana were the biggest band in the world. We see footage of Tiananmen Square, of President George HW Bush talking about the menace of crack cocaine. There is a news report about the band’s second album, Nevermind, knocking Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the Billboard charts. It is all bookended by a short, sweet interview with Cobain, conducted in the summer before he died, in which he reflects on marriage, love and being a father.

Kurt Cobain: Moments That Shook Music aired on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer

The successful clothing store is the focus of a new film that uncovers shadowy business practices and a bigger picture of environmental damage

If you haven’t heard of Brandy Melville, you probably don’t have a teenage girl in your life. The clothing brand – confusingly named for two characters, an American girl named Brandy and an Englishman named Melville who fall in love in Rome – is synonymous with a certain large swath of Gen Z, very online and inundated since consciousness with images of very skinny celebrities like Bella Hadid. As one ex-store associate puts it in a new HBO documentary on the brand: Brandy Melville was for the kinda basic, but very trend-aware, girl.

Over the past decade and a half, the brand built a giant following via Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok posts of and by teenage girls channeling a certain recognizable aesthetic: tiny outfits accentuating pre-adult metabolisms, exposed midriffs so taut they seem to be begging for a tape measure, long hair flowing cheerily in motion, overwhelmingly white. Most of the brand’s pieces sold for less than $40, in “one size fits all”, that size being small. What Abercrombie & Fitch was to millennials at the mall, Brandy Melville was to teenage girls on their phone – organically popular, ubiquitous and reinforcing existing, retrograde ideas of what’s cool and popular. A divisive status symbol spotted on such rail-thin celebrities as Kaia Gerber and Kendall Jenner that many people love to hate, and also secretly want.

At 80, the comedian, author and presenter is off on his travels again - this time to Nigeria. He discusses grief, comedy and confrontation

The strange thing about Michael Palin is you feel you know him; that he’s an old friend or much-loved uncle you’ve not seen for a while. He decides to come to Guardian HQ for our interview, and nobody seems surprised to see him, despite the fact that it’s his first time in the building. People smile at Palin with easy familiarity: ah, Michael’s popped in. He smiles back with that fabulously genial smile: a little bit cheeky, a little bit shy, and very warm.

We have never met before. But he’s been in my life for 50-odd years. First as part of Monty Python, the surrealist comedy troupe I quoted ad nauseam as a youngster (“Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!”), then as star of the wonderful TV series Ripping Yarns, which I also quoted ad nauseam (“Oh shut up, you boring little tit!”). There were also the films: Time Bandits, A Private Function, A Fish Called Wanda and, more recently, The Death of Stalin. For the past 35 years, he has travelled the globe for TV shows, and written books to accompany his odysseys. In 2019, he was knighted for services to travel, culture and geography – the only Python to receive a knighthood.