This week's home entertainment: from Muppets Now to The Umbrella Academy

Television

Muppets Now

The world’s funniest puppets are back with a new weekly unscripted show. Teased by a series of typically meta trailers involving a new character, Joe, a weasel from the legal department, expect all your favourites – Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo – interacting with a series of special guests including Seth Rogen, Aubrey Plaza and RuPaul.
Friday 31 July, Disney+

Anthony

Written by Jimmy McGovern, this drama mixes reality and fiction to pay tribute to Anthony Walker, the Liverpool teenager who was murdered in a racist attack in 2005. Inspired by conversations with Anthony’s mother, it imagines the life he could have lived.
Monday 27 July, 8.30pm, BBC One

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Centre Stage Collection

Missing a trip to the theatre? This updated BritBox offering now includes a treasure trove of filmed RSC performances, from David Tennant’s 2013 Richard II to Christopher Eccleston’s 2018 Macbeth. Aside from the Bard, there are also offerings from David Bowie and the Royal Ballet.
Available now, BritBox

Prodigal Son

A top cast, including Michael Sheen, Halston Sage and Lou Diamond Phillips, star in this high-body-count crime drama. Tom Payne’s NYPD officer Malcolm Bright has the ability to think like a killer, having been raised by Dr Martin Whitley, AKA the Surgeon, a man responsible for murdering 23 people. But can he stop himself from turning into his father?
Tuesday 28 July, 9pm, Sky One

Eric Andre Does Paris

Comic and chaotic provocateur Eric Andre takes his unpredictable talkshow to the streets of the French capital in this special. There’s his usual man-on-the-street interviews with bemused bystanders, much poking of fun at French sensibilities and even some nudity.
Friday 31 July, All 4

The British Academy Television Awards

Richard Ayoade hosts this year’s socially distanced ceremony, with winners accepting their gongs virtually, hopefully in front of glitzy Zoom backdrops. Chernobyl leads the charge with 14 nods, while the likes of Fleabag, The Crown and Giri/Haji are also in the mix.
Friday 31 July, 7pm, BBC One

Fort Salem

The BBC has snapped up this US supernatural thriller about three witches who, as part of a pact made 300 years prior regarding the Salem witch trials, are now frontline soldiers. The trio not only have to deal with the looming danger of terrorist threats but also underhand supernatural tactics.
Sunday 26 July, BBC Three

Our Baby: A Modern Miracle

This heartfelt documentary tells the story of Hannah and Jake Graf, a transgender couple, as they start a family together. Made over a year, it follows the surrogacy process from tentative start to dramatic finish as they race to be with their baby mid-lockdown.
Tuesday 28 July, 10pm, Channel 4

A Suitable Boy

This post-partition-era drama, featuring an all-Indian cast, is the first adaptation of Vikram Seth’s 1993 novel of the same name. A vast undertaking, charting a university student’s coming of age during India’s first democratic election as an independent country, it stars Bollywood veteran Tabu and is directed by Monsoon Wedding’s Mira Nair.
Sunday 26 July, 9pm, BBC One

The Umbrella Academy

The dysfunctional family of adopted superhero siblings return. Led by Vanya (Ellen Page), who recently worked out her super powers extend to more than just being able to play the violin, the ragtag group must fight to prevent the end of the world.
Friday 31 July, Netflix

Podcast

Home Cooking

Chef Samin Nosrat and Song Exploder host Hrishikesh Hirway front this practical and deeply insightful podcast on the art of thrifty and efficient home cooking. Nosrat, who presented the Netflix hit Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, is typically engaging when it comes to talking about recipes, getting stomachs rumbling with frittata, summer pastas and banana ice-cream.
Monthly, widely available

Today in Focus

Fresh from winning the Gold prize in the Current Affairs category at the British podcast awards, the Guardian’s flagship daily news pod continues to investigate the pressing issues. Recent standout episodes include an illuminating conversation between Benjamin Zephaniah and George the Poet, as well as an interview with Reni Eddo-Lodge.
Daily, the Guardian

Dirty Diana

Scripted podcast producer Qcode pulls together a starry cast for this erotic tale with Demi Moore and Claes Bang. Moore voices Diana, a woman in a dying marriage who runs a secret website where women reveal their unfulfilled erotic desires. Soon, Diana finds herself pulled into this world of fantasy. One for the Fifty Shades fans.
Weekly, widely available

The Press Box

This series from The Ringer is an excellent resource for anyone interested in media intrigue. Although it is US-focused there is plenty to enjoy, as hosts Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss everything from Donald Trump’s increasingly fraught relationship with Fox News to what the pandemic is doing to newsrooms.
Twice-weekly, widely available

Spinning Plates

Once she finished staging weekly stress-relieving Friday night discos from her kitchen (a similarly themed tour is booked for next year), pop hitmaker Sophie Ellis-Bextor launched this new podcast, appropriately enough about busy working women. Guests so far include DJ-turned-author Fearne Cotton and Caitlin Moran.
Weekly, widely available

Film

How to Build a Girl (15)

(Coky Giedroyc) 104 mins
Caitlin Moran’s semi-autobiographical novel about a working-class Midlands kid who blags her way into a career as a music journalist has become a funny, good-hearted film starring Beanie Feldstein, the American star of Lady Bird and Booksmart. This has been nabbed by Amazon in the UK, so won’t screen in cinemas – a bit of a shame, it has to be said.
Amazon Prime Video

The Traitor (No cert)

(Marco Bellocchio) 153 mins
At 80 years old, Bellocchio is a veteran of Italian cinema, having made a first substantial impact with Fists in the Pocket in 1965. This is a big, important gangster movie, about the supergrass trial that decimated the Cosa Nostra in the mid-80s.
Digital and cinemas

Coincoin and the Extra Humans (No cert)

(Bruno Dumont) 208 mins
In 2014, the French director Dumont made P’tit Quinquin, a surreally comic murder mystery that – like this – is a four-part TV show in disguise. The sequel features the same character as a teenager and deals with mysterious tar-like gunk falling from the sky.
Digital platforms

Cronaca di un Amore (PG)

(Michelangelo Antonioni) 98 mins
Antonioni’s debut feature is a studied drama inspired by film noir. A detective investigates the wife of a jealous husband; she begins seeing a former boyfriend who may or may not have killed someone.
Digital platforms and Blu-ray, from Monday 27 July

Grease (PG)

(Randal Kleiser) 110 mins
Now that drive-in cinemas have become the go-to experience of the socially distanced summer, here’s a tempting proposition: an Americana-themed set-up in Acton, west London. And Grease, as we know, actually features a drive-in.
Sunset Drive-In, W3, Sunday 26 July

Ida (12A)

(Paweł Pawlikowski) 82 mins
In 1960s Poland, novice nun Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is sent to see her only known relative before taking her vows; Aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza) reveals that Anna is in fact Ida, and Jewish. Shot in monochrome, this is a beautiful journey into a family’s past and a nation’s dark history, by director Paweł Pawlikowski.
Tuesday 28 July, 10.45pm, Film4