The crown passes to Liverpool – Eurovision is here

The Independent’s entertainment newsletter [SUBSCRIBE]( [SUBSCRIBE]( May 13, 2023 [View in browser](   From one very important royal ceremony to another: this weekend the crown passes to Liverpool, where the Eurovision final is taking place. The Indy sends all the luck and boppy dance moves in the world to our entrant, [Mae Muller](, who represents us with “I Wrote a Song”. ([Don't miss Isobel Lewis's interview with Muller here](.) I actually think – for the second year in a row – it’s a banger!?! Are we… actually getting good at this? I better not jinx it. What we can say for sure, though, is that host Hannah Waddingham is a new national hero. At this week's semi-finals, she completely stole the show, prompting tweets such as, "Whoever hired Hannah Waddingham for Eurovision should probably be made director general of the BBC". The Ted Lasso star has long deserved her moment in the spotlight, and [I wrote about why her homecoming moment in the sun feels overdue](. From L-R: Eurovision hosts Alesha Dixon, Julia Sanina and Waddingham (PA) One thing I’d be curious to see is if anyone can manage to wear a dress as shiny as the one Katy Perry donned for the coronation concert. Roisin O’Connor [reviewed the sparkly event](, which she described as “inexplicably random” but also “a lot of fun”. My highlight? Prince George and Princess Charlotte discovering the delights of dancing to Lionel Richie classics. Elsewhere this week, Adam White [chatted to Alison Goldfrapp]( about going solo and her weird encounter with Simon Cowell, the brilliant [Hammed Animashaun spoke]( to Nicole Vassell about his new BBC comedy Black Ops, and Ed Power explored why Gen Z bands [have become so influenced by Hole, Pixies and Nirvana](. And for this week's State of the Arts column, I've [written about the strange double standard]( in the backlash to hyped up new band The Last Dinner party. Meanwhile, Succession went full Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as Shiv and Tom faced off on their fancy balcony. The scene has shaken my WhatsApp groups all week. Read Philippa Snow’s [brilliant recap here](. Jessie [@jessiecath](   What to do this weekend Art | [Photo London]( Britain’s biggest photography fair climaxes with the latest images from the master of suburban unease, Martin Parr, continuing his 50 year exploration of his “love-hate relationship” with Britain. Also standing out among the multitude of displays are exhibitions on pioneering British women photographers and the seedy side of Tokyo explored by Japanese veteran Seiji Kurata. Somerset House, until 14 May Mark Hudson | Chief art critic   Theatre | [Operation Mincemeat]( Having started life on the fringe, SpitLip’s acclaimed wartime musical has found its way to the West End. It’s based on the secret World War Two plan to fool Hitler by planting fake but convincing looking documents on… a corpse. An unlikely topic for a musical, perhaps, but this isn’t an unlikely hit: it’s carving out a place as one of the most popular new British musicals we’ve seen for a while. Jessie Thompson | Arts editor [@jessiecath](   Film | [Love Again]( Quite possibly the most insane movie of the year, Love Again stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas as a beautiful widow who continues to text her dead husband’s phone number… which has just been taken over by a chiselled dream hunk played by Outlander’s Sam Heughan. Will he be convinced to woo in reality this mysterious correspondent? Will he listen to the encouraging romantic words of Céline Dion, playing herself, who has been digitally inserted into each of her scenes here? Will we hear five original songs by Dion plus dialogue ripe with references to her extensive back catalogue? Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. In cinemas now Adam White | Film editor [@__adamwhite](   TV | [I Kissed a Boy]( “The path to love is never straight. It’s loud, it’s proud… and it all starts with a kiss.” So goes the tagline of the first ever (ever!) gay dating show in the UK. It’s set in a luxury Italian villa, Dannii Minogue is the fabulous host, and the first rule is the contestants must lock lips before they utter a word to each other – need I say any more? On BBC iPlayer on Saturday and BBC Three on Sunday Ellie Harrison | TV editor [@Ellie_Harrison](   Books | [The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley]( If wild swimming has swum close to becoming a middle-class lifestyle fad, this moving memoir serves as a reminder of why the braving cold water became a craze in the first place. Dealing with the grief of her brother’s death, she decided to swim in every tidal pool in Britain, and writes about the transformative power she found in the water. Jessie Thompson | Arts editor [@jessiecath](     [The Saturday Interview – Rachel Bloom]( [Oscars image]( Rachel Bloom performs her new show in London next week Not only is Rachel Bloom one of the funniest people ever, but she's also extremely adept at writing about mental health in a way that's humourous and relatable - so why can't the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend creator land a new show anywhere? Ahead of live shows in London next week,[she talked to Isobel Lewis]( about why she backs the writers' strikes and her traumatic experience of being publicly shamed. Bloom as Rebecca Bunch in 'Craxy Ex-Girlfriend' (Robert Voets/The CW) Read an extract from our Saturday Interview below… Death came knocking on Bloom’s door in March 2020. Weeks into the pandemic, the comedian gave birth, her daughter spending her first days in the neo-natal intensive care unit. A week later, Bloom’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend songwriting partner, Fountains of Wayne guitarist Adam Schlesinger, died of Covid. “It was this flood of emotions that I’ve never felt before,” she says, still incredulous at the pain three years later. “I feel like I’ve studied mental health a lot more because it’s been present for so much of my life and it’s been a way to understand myself. The idea of grief and loss, I’m much newer to it… I’m not the authority on grief. This just happened to me.” On stage, Bloom is treating grief the same way she’s always depicted mental health: realistically and empathetically. On Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Bloom’s protagonist Rebecca imagines her life through a series of glossy, joke-a-minute musical numbers, parodying everything from Springsteen to La La Land (these scenes are later revealed to be a side effect of Rebecca’s Borderline Personality Disorder). Fans came for the songs but stayed for the frank discussion of mental health and rich character development. Viewers were few, but fierce, with Bloom often joking that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was the least watched show to ever run for four seasons. [Read the full interview here](   HowTheLightGetsIn Hay 2023 HowTheLightGetsIn Festival 2023 preview: The event looking to overhaul the UK’s ‘suspicion of philosophy’ No one can accuse HowTheLightGetsIn Festival of lacking ambition, writes Louis Chilton. The annual philosophy and music event, held just across the Welsh border in the town of Hay-on-Wye, has always insisted on differentiating itself from the swathes of other literary and cultural festivals, where self-promotion is all too often the name of the game. Instead, over the course of four days and more than 300 events, HowTheLightGetsIn seeks to bring a warm accessibility to a cold and all-too-often foreboding area of study. For the full preview of the festival [click here](. All the debates and talks from the festival will gradually be released online in the months following the festival on the Institute of Art and Ideas online platform, [IAI.TV](. PICK OF THE WEEK: HOWTHELIGHTGETSIN HAY 2023 As a festival partner, The Independent is offering a 20 per cent discount on tickets with the code INDY23. Don’t miss out on tickets [here](. Weekend Shelf-Care Weekend Shelf-Care Helen Mort I've lost track of the amount of times I've (probably quite badly) recited Helen Mort's poems during whiskey-fuelled Burns Night dinners. The Sheffield poet's collection No Map Could Show Them is one of my all-time favourites. Equally good is her first memoir, A Line in the Sky, a beautifully written book about Helen's love of mountain-climbing, and her experience of becoming a mother for the first time. It's a mind-expanding meditation on risk and why we choose to push ourselves to the limit, as well as a love letter to the great outdoors. A book I recently read and loved is… I tend to love every book I read and get that excited, fizzing "tell everyone" feeling each time. I think the last one I got really enthusiastic about (to the point that I wanted to shout sections out loud on the train from Sheffield to London) was Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated from Catalan by Julia Sanches. The International Booker Prize Judging Panel said it was "a sensuous, sexy, intense book" and I totally agree – queer love, motherhood, self-deceptions, the pull of travel. Its only about a hundred pages long but it packs a huge punch. If I love a book that much, I immediately have to give my copy to someone I care about after I finish it, so the gaps in my bookshelves tell their own story. My three fantasy literary dinner party guests would be… I think I would invite three poets: poet Kim Addonizzio, Jackie Kay and Nobel prize winner Wisława Szymborska. I don't know what I'd cook for them but there would definitely be a dram of whisky on offer. Not finishing books: my stance is… You should always give a book a chance, and I believe we learn huge amounts from things we don't enjoy, so its fairly unusual for me to leave a book unfinished, even if I'm finding it hard going. But sometimes I do give up. And those times I tell myself: "life is too short and there are so many spine-tinglingly great books out there, why not move on and maybe come back to this one later". My writing routine is… ...sporadic and unpredictable. I have a four-year-old and a parent with complex care needs, so I have to be fairly flexible about when I can write. If an idea for a piece is really important to me though, it ambushes me and forces me to spend time with it! I get a lot of my best ideas while running, walking the dog or driving. And occasionally a poem or a story can give me that 'drop everything and write' urge. A Line Above the Sky is out now in paperback £99 £20 for 1 year ✓ Full access to Premium news analysis ✓ Advert-free reading across web and app ✓ The Independent Daily Edition newspaper ✓ Puzzles, virtual event tickets and more [SUBSCRIBE NOW](   [INDYBEST]( / [BEST BUYS]( [Best online sales live now on beauty, fashion and homeware]( From [H&M](and [John Lewis]( to [Currys]( and [Very](, savvy shoppers take note on the [best buys]( we've found online now. 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