“If you could put anything in front of him yesterday, he would have signed it,” said Ronny Chieng. “Melania, now’s your chance to update the prenup.”

Utterly preposterous and brilliant fun, Leo Woodall’s turn as a maths genius hunted by shadowy forces is glorious, confident escapism. It’s as enjoyable as it is ludicrous

Prime Target is one of those endeavours that gives you the inescapable feeling that someone came up with the title first and worked backwards from there.

Edward Brooks (Leo Woodall) is a brilliant young postgrad mathematician at Cambridge. We know he is brilliant because various maths professors keep saying that his is the best mind they have come across in 30 years of teaching. He works into the night, frantically scribbling in real notebooks with real pencils (“Computers aren’t fast enough”), even when there is sex on offer from hot barmen or young women yearning for him to come to their birthday parties and fall in love with them. And we know we’re in Cambridge because everywhere is covered in ivy outside with antique brass instruments and oak panelling inside. Everyone is in layers of brown cord and tweed. They look like very large, very clever sparrows.

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© Photograph: Nick Wall/Apple TV +

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© Photograph: Nick Wall/Apple TV +

The wildly popular gameshow has torn up its genre’s rulebook to become one of the best things on television. Its secret? Letting us indulge our fantasies of treachery

In the latest episode of The Traitors UK, the final eight players gathered at a candlelit dinner party. After weeks of fraught gameplay, they shared what they would do with the prize money if they were to win. Their teary stories were emotional: donations to disability charities, IVF journeys, putting kids through university and long-overdue honeymoons. The message was clear: these are good people. But suddenly, the game recommenced and we once again wondered: are they?

“To finish that dinner and say goodnight to everyone, knowing one of them might be ‘murdered’ that night …” says Minah Shannon, one of the titular traitors who will be secretly deciding which faithfuls to kill off that night, before breaking out into laughter. “Oh my god, I’m a psychopath!” Alongside her fellow traitors, the 29-year-old call centre manager from Liverpool has betrayed and backstabbed her way through the game. But far from being considered a villain, she has become a fan favourite. This surprising turn is mostly down to the format of The Traitors. For its viewers, the show upends the usual experience of watching a reality TV show – and that’s what makes it so captivating.

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© Photograph: Euan Cherry/BBC/Studio Lambert

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© Photograph: Euan Cherry/BBC/Studio Lambert

The actor’s husband has announced ‘with a heavy heart’ that she will step back from public duties

Actor Pauline Quirke, best known for starring in BBC sitcom Birds of a Feather, has dementia, her husband has announced. In a statement, Steve Sheen confirmed that she was diagnosed a number of years ago and she will no longer be doing any public-facing work.

“It is with a heavy heart that I announce my wife Pauline’s decision to step back from all professional and commercial duties due to her diagnosis of Dementia in 2021,” said Sheen.

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© Photograph: Handout

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© Photograph: Handout

Got something you’d love to ask the former Baywatch star about her life and new career directions? Now’s your chance

Director Gia Coppola had only one actor in mind to star in The Last Showgirl: Pamela Anderson. Having watched Ryan White’s Netflix documentary Pamela, A Love Story, Coppola knew she would be perfect as Shelly Gardner, an ageing Las Vegas dancer facing the closure of Le Razzle Dazzle, the classic revue she has starred in for three decades. The problem was, Anderson’s (now former) agent threw the script in the bin. Coppola did not take no for an answer. She got in touch with Anderson’s son Brandon Thomas Lee, who made sure the pitch reached his mum. Now trailing accolades, award nominations and an Oscar buzz, the film is bringing the 57-year-old icon something she struggled to find earlier in her career: respect.

Having risen to fame as a Playboy Playmate, Anderson became an international superstar in the 1990s in Baywatch, which cemented the sex-symbol image she struggled for years to shake off. Recently, however, her public persona has morphed into something much more multilayered, thanks not only to the Netflix doc but also to her thoughtful 2023 memoir Love, Pamela and her well-received Broadway debut the previous year as Roxie Hart in Chicago. As she said in a recent magazine interview: “The stars have aligned.”

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© Photograph: Aeon/GC Images

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© Photograph: Aeon/GC Images