This week, Race Across the World returns to our screens, with five teams setting off from the Great Wall of China.
But that’s not all the week has in store.
Self Esteem‘s new album is out, the next series of The Mangione Trial drops on BBC Sounds, and gaming fans have Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to look forward to.
Read on for what’s coming up this week…
Race Across the World is back
Another frenetic Race Across the World starts on Wednesday.
For anyone who hasn’t seen the Bafta-winning BBC One show, it showcases five duos racing around the globe for a £20,000 prize.
Without phones, flights or bank cards, this year’s pairs must travel more than 14,000km – starting at the Great Wall of China and finishing at Kanniyakumari, the southernmost tip of India.
I’ve had a sneak preview of the new series, and can tell you the scenery is absolutely breathtaking. But language barriers quickly pose a challenge.
So who’s competing this year? The teams include sisters Elizabeth and Letitia, former married couple Yin and Gaz, and teenage couple Fin and Sioned.
Completing the line up, we have brothers Brian and Melvyn, and mother and son Caroline and Tom.
Race Across the World is as much about its contestants as the race and travelling. I’m mostly excited for the inevitable moving moments, as we see the teams pushed to their absolute limits.
Self Esteem is A Complicated Woman
By Mark Savage, music correspondent
“This album is going to get terrible reviews,” Self Esteem predicted when I caught up with her last Christmas.
Why? “Because people hate women doing well,” she laughed. “I’m very ready for a male journalist to say it doesn’t make sense, because it’s a lot.”
That’s kind of the point, though. Out on Friday, A Complicated Woman is an attempt to capture womanhood in all its complexities and contradictions – and that means moving through musical genres, modes and attitudes with almost whiplash-inducing speed.
But Self Esteem, aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor, is too clever to mess it up. Her trademark wit and sincerity are firmly in place, as she talks candidly about social anxiety, crises of confidence, infantilised men, her least favourite sexual positions and being beaten down for speaking up.
Highlights include The Curse, a stadium-sized ballad about using alcohol as an emotional crutch; and closing track The Deep Blue Okay, where she eventually finds a modicum of inner peace. Along the way, there are guest appearances from Nadine Shah, Moonchild Sanelly and even Coronation Street’s Julie Hesmondhalgh.
She launched the album with a flashy West End residency last week – where fans were delighted to discover that A Complicated Woman was an uncomplicated delight.
More on the Mangione trial
Luigi Mangione’s case went viral after he was charged with killing healthcare chief executive Brian Thompson in New York City in December.
He has pleaded not guilty to state charges, and has yet to enter a plea for separate federal charges.
Some on social media have celebrated the 26-year-old, and shared anger at America’s private health insurers.
So what are the facts, and what are the conspiracies?
The Mangione Trial, on BBC Sounds, aims to unpick this. The latest episode drops on Wednesday, and looks at how the US healthcare system works.
It hears from a mother who says she spent $40,000 (£30,000) on her daughter’s treatment while also battling for her insurance to cover it.
Future episodes will dive into what conspiracy theories are, and why people become so obsessed with them.
Defying destiny in Clair Obscur and Until Dawn
By Tom Richardson, Newsbeat reporter
Dark fantasy Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, out Thursday for PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Game Pass, quite literally caught people’s eyes when it was first revealed at last year’s Summer Game Fest.
As video games go, it’s a stunner, with gorgeous art direction heavily inspired by France’s 19th century Belle Époque era.
Players control a crew of characters on a quest to destroy the Paintress – a being who emerges once a year and scrawls a number onto a monolith. If someone’s age matches the digits, they die (hence the 33 in the title).
Somehow, the 30-person team at French developer Sandfall Interactive has also managed to attract some top-tier acting talent to the role-playing game (RPG) project, including Daredevil’s Charlie Cox, Gollum actor Andy Serkis, Final Fantasy XVI’s Ben Starr and Baldur’s Gate 3’s Jennifer English.
But the thing that’s arguably generated most excitement is the game’s focus on old-school turn-based combat. It was a staple of classic 1990s and early 2000s RPG series such as Final Fantasy that’s fallen out of fashion in the blockbuster space of late. If the studio sticks the landing with their debut title, expect to hear about Expedition 33 when Game of the Year season rolls around.
If that doesn’t take your fancy, video game adaptation Until Dawn is out in cinemas on Friday. Passionate fans of the 2015 “interactive horror movie” were concerned when the first trailer revealed the film’s makers had swapped the game’s trademark choose-your-own-adventure device for a Happy Death Day-style time loop.
But with Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation director David F Sandberg and prolific horror writer Gary Dauberman on board, and a buzzy cast including Love, Victor star Michael Cimino and up-and-comer Ella Rubin, Until Dawn’s fate isn’t necessarily sealed yet.
