TelevisionAhead of the season two premiere, the Australian screenwriter explains his fresh, bawdy and wilfully anachronistic take on Catherine the Great Bright, bawdy and occasionally blood-splattered, the first season of Hulu/Stan’s The Great crashed on to screens last year with a defiant “huzzah!” as viewers met the young future Catherine the Great (Elle Fanning) fresh off the carriage from Germany. The sweetly idealistic noblewoman can’t wait to meet her new husband, Russian Emperor Peter III (Nicolas Hoult, having the time of his career), but soon finds her Prince Charming is a hedonistic man-child, and his court a colourful free-for-all of smashed champagne glasses, open marriages and regicidal intrigue.

Hawaii has long evoked images of a Pacific paradise but Kamilo Beach, located on the Big Island, presents a starkly different reality by Liz Barney on Kamilo Beach and Michelle Broder Van Dyke in HonoluluAn array of plastic crunched underfoot as Mattie Mae Larson walked down Kamilo Beach. Toothbrushes, a plastic broom, a leaking bottle, the back of a TV. Larson used to come to this remote stretch of Hawaiian sand as a child to climb 10ft-high mountains of debris, searching for treasures.

ArtObituaryAdrian Berg obituaryLandscape artist inspired by Monet whose work recorded the passing seasonsSoon after setting out on his career as a painter, Adrian Berg moved into a flat in Gloucester Gate in his native north London, overlooking Regent's Park. It was the perfect location, a landscape created by man that could be reshaped by the eye of an artist. Gloucester Gate remained his eyrie until 1985. From here, Berg, who has died aged 82, recorded the passing seasons.

ChinaChinese chess champion stripped of title after defecating in hotel bathtubYan Chenglong crowned ‘Xiangqi King’ but overdid celebrations, as governing body also investigates whether he cheated using anal beads The world of Chinese chess is in uproar over rumours of cheating and a bad behaviour scandal that saw the national champion stripped of his title on Monday after a victory celebration ended with him defecating in a hotel bathtub. Xiangqi, or Chinese chess, has been hugely popular for hundreds of years across Asia – and 48-year-old Yan Chenglong beat dozens of contenders last week to win the title of “Xiangqi King” at a national tournament hosted by the Chinese Xiangqi Association.

Emma StoneCritics have been falling over themselves trying to describe Stone’s latest performance, which is heavily tipped to land her a fourth Oscar nomination It’s not going out on a limb to say you have never seen a performance quite like Emma Stone’s in Poor Things. In this adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel, from New Greek Weird director, Yorgos Lanthimos, she plays Bella Baxter, an adult woman with the mind of an infant who embarks on a journey of self-discovery through fantastical Victorian-era steampunk cityscapes.