From Nouvelle Vague to Mock the Week: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Nouvelle VagueOut now Never bet against Richard Linklater: the veteran director (Dazed and Confused, Boyhood) loves turning his hand to different genres, and his latest is a typically mellow dramatisation of the period in French film history that saw the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol shake off their lives as critics and become bona fide film legends.Is This Thing On?Out nowIt sounds like an improbable standup bit in itself, but no: here we have a Hollywood comedy inspired by the life of the UK’s own John Bishop.Will Arnett plays the man in a troubled marriage who decides to give open mic a go and is a surprise hit, while Laura Dern plays his wife.Directed by Bradley Cooper (yes, the Bradley Cooper).PrimateOut nowCome on now, people: chimpanzees are unsuitable enough as pets to start with.
Throw a case of rabies into the mix and poor Ben the chimp soon finds himself the antagonist in a quirky horror movie in which a family’s tropical holiday goes very wrong indeed.ShelterOut now Jason Statham is front and centre in this action/survival thriller, in which a former assassin must protect a young girl he rescues during a storm.Per the demands of the genre, his past is set to catch up with him in ways that will make his role as protector more challenging.Also starring Bill Nighy, Naomi Ackie and Daniel Mays.Catherine BrayAnna of the NorthIslington Assembly Hall, London, 5 February Tyler, the Creator’s favourite Scandi-pop star (they collaborated on his Flower Boy album) brings her emotionally frayed soft-pop to London.
With the second part of last year’s excellent Girl in a Bottle EP due at some point, keep an ear out for new songs.Michael CraggManchester Collective: Sky With the Four Suns3 to 12 February; tour starts Bristol Beacon Manchester Collective’s immersive performances have established it as one of the coolest outfits in classical music.This latest tour juxtaposes the luminous expanses of John Luther Adams’s Canticles of the Sky with works by Purcell, Britten and Arvo Pärt, plus a new commission by rising star Jasmine Morris.Flora WillsonDana Masters/Viva Cuba Late ShowRonnie’s Scott’s, London, 6 February Ronnie Scott’s club unveils the refurbishment of its Upstairs venue, designed to cherish both the establishment’s jazz-devoted history and its flair for discovering rising stars.Soul-jazz artist and former Van Morrison vocalist Dana Masters, and a Cuban-jazz Late Late Show, open this legendary club’s new era.
John FordhamXiu Xiu 31 January to 7 February, tour starts Falmer Released earlier this month, Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol 1 collects together the US experimental rock trio’s brilliantly odd selection of cover versions, originally released on Bandcamp.Fingers crossed they highlight their unsettling version of Robyn’s modern classic Dancing on My Own on this short tour.MCSamuraiBritish Museum, London, 3 February to 4 May The masks and armour of Japan’s old warrior elite, not to mention the high-quality steel and ritualised crafting of Samurai swords, have fascinated westerners from King James I, who took delivery of a complete Samurai suit in the 1600s, down to Kill Bill.Here’s the reality behind the myth.Jenny Holzer20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe, 31 January to 13 June What are words worth? Quite a lot if they are a Jenny Holzer artwork.
This radical American artist has been creating provocative, rhetorical text pieces since the 1970s and was a defining figure of 1980s “postmodernism”,Today her messages, from printed matter to massive neon signs, are once again resonant,People WatchingDorset Museum and Art Gallery, Dorchester, to 10 May Dod Procter, Elisabeth Frink, Barbara Hepworth and more star in a survey of British portraiture in modern times,The human image was questioned in the 20th century as never before,The very idea of a “likeness” was challenged by expressionists, cubists and others – yet artists still pictured people, often radically.
New ContemporariesSouth London Gallery, to 12 April It’s getting harder to capture the contemporary as it moves faster, from AI to Trump’s latest.The artists here are fresh out of college or still studying, and their takes on the shock of the now may surprise you.Participants include Kat Anderson, Hadas Auerbach, Deborah Lerner and many more.Jonathan JonesTom Rosenthal Exeter Phoenix, 1 February; touring to 25 SeptemberIn his high-concept new show, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am, relatably neurotic Friday Night Dinner star Rosenthal wrestles with his identity – his celebrity status, his Jewish heritage, his autism – while drawing parallels between his own career and that of indie greats the Arctic Monkeys.Rachel AroestiThe TempestShakespeare’s Globe: Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London, to 12 April Following on from last year’s star-studded revival of his play An Oak Tree, Tim Crouch directs The Tempest.
He stars alongside Naomi Wirthner in a show set to be full of storytelling, surprises and self-reflection.Miriam GillinsonMacbethHull Truck theatre, 5 to 28 February; touring to 18 April This co-production from Hull Truck, Octagon and Derby theatres is designed to align with the GCSE curriculum and is set in a modern war zone.Oliver Alvin-Wilson plays Macbeth alongside Jo Mousley’s Lady Macbeth.MGThe MonocleArc, Stockton, 31 January; Westlands, Yeovil, 3 February; Ocean theatre, Bournemouth, 6 February Choreographer Mathieu Geffré and his company Rendez-Vous Dance recreate the underground nightlife 30s Paris in this story of The Monocle, a renowned lesbian cabaret club.Six women find love, laugh, drink and dance the night away in a blur of freedom and sensuality backed by jazz singer Imogen Banks.
Lyndsey WinshipSecret GeniusChannel 4, 1 February, 9pm From gameshows to Mediterranean-themed property programmes, Celebrity Traitor extraordinaire Alan Carr is deservedly all over our screens at present,For his latest project the comic teams up with Countdown’sSusie Dent to hunt down the nation’s most extraordinary – and underappreciated – brainboxes,Mock the WeekTLC, 1 February, 9pm The Dara Ó Briain-helmed topical panel show has only been off our screeners for two-and-a-bit years but it has already been revived by the newly free-to-air channel TLC,Expect familiar faces (Hugh Dennis, Katherine Ryan, Russell Howard, Sara Pascoe) and an ambitious new 60-minute running time,Long Story ShortiPlayer & BBC Three, 1 February, 9pm This BBC initiative nurtures the showrunners of tomorrow by pairing new talent with local production companies and established actors (Corey Mylchreest, Iwan Rheon, Anjana Vasan).
The result is a series of imaginative mini-dramas about everything from alpha male influencers to paranormal festivals and supermarket pineapples.The PushoverChannel 4, 2 February, 12.15am A new slice of Nordic noir follows plucky Danish journalist Nora Sand as she investigates the death of a woman discovered floating in her own swimming pool.Could her boyfriend Tom – a notorious fraudster with another secret even darker than his scams – be the culprit? RAI Hate This PlacePS5, PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; out now If a graphic novel take on old-school Resident Evil sounds like fun to you, take a look at this 1980s-camp survival-horror game based on the comic of the same name.Spend days prepping and crafting, and nights surviving the demonic horrors that come your way.
CairnPS5, PC; out nowIn this beautiful-looking if somewhat pitiless mountain game,Aava wants to be the first person in the world to climb a particularly forbidding summit, and you must help her – carefully, by moving her individual limbs and puzzling out the least dangerous routes up the cliff face,Keza MacDonaldSébastien Tellier – Kiss the Beast Out now Six years after exploring his interior world on Domesticated, stylish French electro pioneer Tellier ventures out on this eighth album,Featuring guest spots from Nile Rodgers and Kid Cudi, plus production from Oscar Holter (the Weeknd, Robyn), songs such as Copycat and Refresh are slinky dancefloor fillers,AG Cook – The Moment (The Score)Out now Charli xcx taps up her regular collaborator AG Cook for the soundtrack to her Brat summer mockumentary, The Moment.
The tellingly titled Dread turns xcx’s 2012 breakthrough smash I Love It into a creeping horror score, undermining the repeated joy of the title.The Soft Pink Truth – Can Such Delightful Times Go on Forever?Out now Drew Daniel, who is also one half of bonkers electro duo Matmos, originally started this side project as a dare in 2003 after Matthew Herbert challenged him to make a house record.Six records in and its evolved to include the beautiful chamber pieces showcased here.Labrinth – Cosmic Opera Act IOut now Ahead of the return of Euphoria – Labrinth is the HBO show’s long-term composer – comes the London polymath’s fourth solo album, his first in three years.Moody and cinematic, songs such as IMPLOSION and S.
W.M.F., bolt expansive strings on to pounding hip-hop beats.MCThe Working SongwriterPodcast Folk songwriter Joe Pug hosts this longrunning series interviewing fellow songwriters on the practicalities of a creative life.
Highlights include the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart on his collaboration with Bob Dylan and a caat with stringed dobro master Jerry Douglas.WikiFlixOnline More than 4,000 public-domain films are available to stream for free on this comprehensive archive.Explore digitised versions of early cinema masterpieces such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and FW Murnau’s Nosferatu.Queen of Chess Netflix, Friday, 6 February Rory Kennedy’s engaging film on Hungarian chess prodigy Judit Polgár examines her rise to becoming the No 1 player in the world at age 12 and her lifelong ambition to encourage women into the sport.Ammar Kalia
‘Menopause gold rush’? Boom in hi-tech products as stigma starts to recede
For any bodily function you want to measure these days there is a gadget – a wristband for step-counting, a watch to track your heart rate or a ring for measuring sleep.Now the march of wearable tech is coming to the aid of what some say is a long underserved market: menopausal women.One startup has recently launched a high-end cooling bracelet that kicks into action during a menopausal hot flush. The device is one of a growing number of lifestyle products being launched in this area, which some experts say is growing as stigma around menopause recedes. Companies are developing everything from apps offering dietary advice to devices that track symptoms, hormones and body temperature
Paying kidney donors won’t solve the problem | Letters
It is hard not to feel a certain sadness reading arguments for legalising the sale of kidneys that rely more on provocation than on engagement with how healthcare systems actually work in the UK (The big idea: Should we sell our kidneys?, 25 January).Kidney failure is devastating, and the shortage of donor organs costs lives. About 7,000 people in the UK are currently waiting for a kidney transplant, and six people die every week while waiting. It is therefore concerning to read an argument that implicitly accepts continued late diagnosis of kidney disease and progression to kidney failure as an inevitability, rather than recognising the urgent need to raise awareness of kidney disease and prioritise its prevention before lives reach crisis point.Furthermore, the notion that altruism in the UK has reached its limits, justifying a legal market for human organs, is not supported by public attitudes, social evidence or ethics
Creature comforts in times of grief | Letters
I can empathise very closely with Amy-Jane Beer (Country diary, 27 January) and her moving encounter with a singing robin. Thirty years ago, on the night when my father died, we returned to the family house and were greeted by the unmistakable sound of a robin’s song.This threnody that greeted our return from the hospital was heard in bitterly cold February conditions – and this was after midnight. As a seasoned birdwatcher, it seemed very unusual to me to hear this song at that hour, but I couldn’t help attributing some deeper significance to it.Adrian HughesCastell Caereinion, Powys In the weeks and months after my husband died in October 2024, like Amy-Jane Beer, I’m sure I was “visited”
On Polymarket, ‘privileged’ users made millions betting on war strikes and diplomatic strategy. What did they know beforehand?
In the early hours of 13 June, more than 200 Israeli fighter jets began pummeling Iran with bombs, lighting up the Tehran skyline and initiating a 12-day war that would leave hundreds dead.But for one user of the prediction market Polymarket, it was their lucky day. In the 24 hours before the strike occurred, they had bet tens of thousands of dollars on “yes” on the market “Israel military action against Iran by Friday?” when the prospect still seemed unlikely and odds were hovering at about 10%. After the strike, Polymarket declared that military action had been taken, and paid the user $128,000 for their lucky wager.But was it just luck?Polymarket is an online platform where people can bet on just about anything, from what the most-streamed song on Spotify will be to how many times Donald Trump will say “terrible” that day
‘Chilling’ hacking network is targeting vulnerable children, charity warns
A leading UK online safety charity has issued a “public warning” about a hacking community that is targeting vulnerable children for sexual abuse, self-harm and suicide.The Molly Rose Foundation (MRF) said online networks linked to a global ecosystem labelled the Com were carrying out extreme exploitation, cyberbullying, violence and abuse – and called for a coordinated global response from governments, regulators, law enforcement and tech companies.The warning follows the publication of a report by the online risk consultancy Resolver in partnership with the MRF, which was founded by the family of Molly Russell, a British teenager who killed herself in 2017 after viewing harmful content online.“The growing threat posed by Com networks is the most chilling and urgent threat to children online today and it requires a swift and comprehensive response,” said Andy Burrows, MRF’s chief executive, who described the report as a “public warning”.“These groups prey on children’s vulnerabilities to coerce and groom girls on gaming and messaging platforms, inflicting appalling harm and cruelty including acts of self-harm, livestreamed abuse or even suicide
NHS medical negligence persisting in England ‘despite 24 years of warnings’
Medical negligence in the NHS keeps harming and killing patients because governments and health service bosses have not acted on 24 years’ worth of warnings, MPs have said.In a scathing report published on Friday, the public accounts committee (PAC) excoriates the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England for allowing the cost of mistakes to balloon to £3.6bn a year.Between them, the two bodies have failed to take “any meaningful action” to address the problem in England, despite four PAC reports from as early as 2002 advising them to do so, the committee says.“It feels impossible to accept that, despite two decades’ worth of warnings, we still appear to be worlds away from government or [the] NHS engaging with the underlying causes of this issue,” said Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the influential cross-party committee
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