John Humphrys will today receive a prestigious broadcasting award following the Today programme interview in which his ruthless grilling of George Entwistle prompted the resignation of the BBC Director-General.

Women led the laughs, both in the NHS and the Hamptons, but even Claire can't save 'Homeland'

Stoppard's glorious gem puts Downton Abbey to shame

Books: As usual, I have several books on the go. The current crop includes Kishwar Desai's 'Witness The Night', which won the Costa first novel prize; George Eliot's 'Daniel Deronda', which I'm re-reading skipping most of the ponderous faith/Jewish culture bits; and Colin Thubron's 'A Mountain in Tibet' – he's such a writer, and my late pa got halfway to Lhasa from Delhi in 1944, when he hadn't enough wartime leave to come home in.

The actress Maxine Peake has attacked what she believes is the continuing class snobbery within the television industry.

Ben Affleck follows up Gone Baby Gone with his second film as director, and it's another blue-collar Boston crime drama.

Ben Affleck proves the excellent Gone Baby Gone was no fluke with this never-less-than-gripping bank-robber saga.

Peter Hall's return to the National Theatre to direct his daughter Rebecca as Viola is a sad disappointment

Let us set the scene for a tragedy – if not a horror story.

It's amusingly typical of this workaholic giant of the British theatre that Sir Peter Hall's idea of an 80th-birthday treat is being given the chance to direct his fourth production of Twelfth Night. He mounted what was, by all accounts, a landmark interpretation in Stratford in 1958, some 24 years before his daughter Rebecca emerged from life's wings. Now she stars as Viola in this latest version.

Gift of a role: Rebecca Hall stars in her father's play to mark his 80th birthday

"We buy from the children of dead people." Shrewd Manhattan couple Kate and Alex (Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt) run a lucrative vintage furniture store where the stock is acquired from the recently deceased.

The liberties film-makers take with characters and plot when they adapt well-loved novels too often spoil the stories for fans of the originals, argues Arifa Akbar