Feeling close, from far away. Sorry, fans. Billie Eilish isn’t actually your buddy, even if she recently added her entire follower list, eight million or so, to her Close Friends on Insta. She’s just marketing her new album. Fans around the world have also spotted billboards featuring cryptic quotes they are now crediting to Eilish. Just tell us her next hair colour when you know, guys?

Diving for shark data.

We’ve found that sharks have been on Earth for some 450 million years. But Baby Shark has been played some 14 billion times. That means, we’ve played the song 31 times for every year that actual sharks swum our seas. And we have data to compare the two, draw silly conclusions and feel smug, doo doo doo-doo doo-doo. What a time to be alive!

Curtsying and yawning. The new drama, Scoop, is just another in a series of royal-family-driven releases that bores more than it entertains.The tale of the women who secured the 2019 TV interview with Prince Andrew (the one that focused on his connections to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein) is heavy on unnecessary nostalgia. This isn’t the moment people really want to relive. They’ve attempted dark humour, but after Fleabag (2016-2019), this seems stale. Let’s move on.

Drooling in black-and-white.

No one wanted a retelling of The Talented Mr Ripley after the sunlit, sea-kissed 1999 film featuring bronzed Jude Law, young Matt Damon and pre-Goop Gwyneth Paltrow. The new show is noirish, brooding, slow-moving and somehow fantastic. Hot Priest, aka Moriarty, aka Andrew Scott, is the conman in the title, giving the old plot a new meaning. We stand corrected, Netflix.

Making way for an old Khan.

Fardeen Khan is making his big comeback in the upcoming film Heeramandi. Promos show him playing Wali Mohammed, a man trying to “reconcile his heart’s desire with his royal responsibilities”. It’s been 14 years since his last movie. But hey, everyone deserves a comeback story.

Playing back, way back. Delhi fusion band Advaita, whose line-up has transformed over 20 years, still delivered all the old thrills when they played a rare concert recently. The audience got a taste of what actual jazz fusion sounds like, after years of so-called Sufi-pop acts and genre-bending shortcuts tried to make it big. Here’s to happy ears ahead.

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