Baltimore returns to prime time and it does so on the most prestigious stage in American television: Sunday nights on HBO, the home of The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. The news is that The Wire, a 13-week series about life on both sides of a major drug investigation in the Baltimore housing projects, deserves to breathe that rarefied air.

It's not just the Emmy award judges who love TV's 'Mad Men'. Fashion designers are falling over themselves to recreate its 50s chic. David Usborne reports on a cultural phenomenon

The Prime Minister has announced that it is time we had more competitive sport at school, choosing the Olympic closing ceremony as a good moment to repudiate the received opinion that left-wing administrations are hostile to the divisive business of saying one child has done better than another. The Government had now begun to "correct the tragic mistake of reducing the competitive element in school sports", he said, rather implying that this was a new initiative.

If you ever wondered who dreamed up Cosmo Kramer, the hipster doofus with a mistrust of authority at the centre of one of American television's most successful comedies, Seinfeld, then look no further than Larry Charles, a Jewish-American comedian with an encyclopedic brain and ZZ Top beard.

The cream of Britain's television directing talent met last week to set up Directors UK, aimed at protecting their rights and influence over the production process. The Independent was there to see them in action

Comedy and music mix as well as oil and water, but Flight of the Conchords – the Grammy-winning New Zealand duo of Radio 4/HBO fame – are one of the rare and precious exceptions.

The winners of the 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards were announced today. Read the full list below

LENNOX LEWIS and Evander Holyfield traded verbal punches on American television yesterday as plans for a re-match got underway.

NASEEM HAMED is being backed to finally win over American audiences after signing a six-fight deal with cable television network Home Box Office.

Oscar De La Hoya this weekend starts a series of title fights that could make him the greatest boxer of his era.

TWO OF the world's biggest boxing promoters sat feet from each other in the High Court yesterday to hear that the Briton Frank Warren is to pay his US counterpart Don King $12m (pounds 7.5m) in settlement of their partnership, which began in September 1994.

NATURALLY, THE new Oxford Dictionary of Slang includes a section on pregnancy, with such phrases as "up the duff", "in pig" and "in the spud line" - but not the nimbler infanticipate.

PRINCE NASEEM HAMED, the WBO featherweight champion, has stepped in to tone down his macabre ring entrance in his title defence against Ireland's Wayne McCullough at the Boardwalk Convention Centre in Atlantic City in the early hours of tomorrow morning.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD has signed a contract with the promoter Don King for the world heavyweight title unification bout with Lennox Lewis.