My cultural awakening: Thelma & Louise made me realise I was stuck in an unhappy marriage

It was 1991, I was in my early 40s, living in the south of England and trapped in a marriage that had long since curdled into something quietly suffocating. My husband had become controlling, first with money, then with almost everything else: what I wore, who I saw, what I said. It crept up so slowly that I didn’t quite realise what was happening.We had met as students in the early 1970s, both from working-class, northern families and feeling slightly out of place at a university full of public school accents. We shared politics, music and a sense of being outsiders together

​The Guide #219: Don’t panic! Revisiting the millennium’s wildest cultural predictions

I love revisiting articles from around the turn of the millennium, a fascinatingly febrile period when everyone – but journalists especially – briefly lost the run of themselves. It seems strange now to think that the ticking over of a clock from 23:59 to 00:00 would prompt such big feelings, of excitement, terror, of end-of-days abandon, but it really did (I can remember feeling them myself as a teenager, especially the end-of-days-abandon bit.)Of course, some of that feeling came from the ticking over of the clock itself: the fears over the Y2K bug might seem quite silly today, but its potential ramifications – planes falling out of the sky, power grids failing, entire life savings being deleted in a stroke – would have sent anyone a bit loopy. There’s a very good podcast, Surviving Y2K, about some of the people who responded particularly drastically to the bug’s threat, including a bloke who planned to sit out the apocalypse by farming and eating hamsters.It does seem funny – and fitting – in the UK, column inches about this existential threat were equalled, perhaps even outmatched, by those about a big tarpaulin in Greenwich

From Christy to Neil Young: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

ChristyOut now Based on the life of the American boxer Christy Martin (nickname: the Coal Miner’s Daughter), this sports drama sees Sydney Sweeney Set aside her conventionally feminine America’s sweetheart aesthetic and don the mouth guard and gloves of a professional fighter.Blue MoonOut now Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise) reteams with one of his favourite actors, Ethan Hawke, for a film about Lorenz Hart, the songwriter who – in addition to My Funny Valentine and The Lady Is a Tramp – also penned the lyrics to the eponymous lunar classic. Also starring Andrew Scott and Margaret Qualley.PillionOut now Harry Melling plays the naive sub to Alexander Skarsgård’s biker dom in this kinky romance based on the 1970s-set novel Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones, here updated to a modern-day setting, and with some success: it bagged the screenplay prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes.Laura Mulvey’s Big Screen ClassicsThroughout DecemberRecent recipient of a BFI Fellowship, the film theorist Laura Mulvey coined the term “the male gaze” in a seminal 1975 essay, and thus transformed film criticism

Susan Loppert obituary

My partner Susan Loppert, who has died aged 81, was the moving force behind the development of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Arts in the 1990s. This pioneering programme, which Susan directed for 10 years (1993-2003), was a hugely innovative and imaginative project to bring the visual and performing arts into the heart of London’s newest teaching hospital.As Susan wrote in an article for the Guardian in 2006, this was not about “the odd Monet reproduction or carols at Christmas … but 2,000 original works of art hung in the vast spaces of the stunning atrial building” as well as in clinics, wards and treatment areas – many of them specially commissioned. And on top of this, full-length operas, an annual music festival, Indian dancers in residence, and workshops by artists from poets to puppeteers.Susan was born in Grahamstown, South Africa, to Phyllis (nee Orkin, and known as “Inkey” because of her dark hair), a lawyer and anti-apartheid activist, and her husband Eric Loppert, a manager

Oh yes he is! Kiefer Sutherland dives into the world of panto

Hollywood megastars hit Leeds this year to make Tinsel Town, a feelgood festive comedy about panto. The 24 star, Rebel Wilson and more talk about their addiction to Greggs sausage rolls – and epic brawls with Danny DyerTwenty-odd years ago, I binged a TV series on DVD for the first time. At my mate’s house in a village outside Harrogate, I was glued to Jack Bauer shooting his way through 24. We probably only made it to episode six before surrendering to sleep for school the next day.Fast forward to the start of this year, and photos are all over the local news of Kiefer Sutherland out and about in nearby market towns Knaresborough and Wetherby

O come out ye faithful: a joyful roundup of UK culture this Christmas

The 12 Beans of ChristmasTouring to 19 December Last year, character comedians Adam Riches and John Kearns joined forces for an archly silly tribute to crooners Michael Ball and Alfie Boe. Now Riches is back with another leftfield celebrity riff as he gives his Game of Thrones-era Sean Bean impression (as seen on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and his Edinburgh show Dungeons’n’Bastards) a yuletide twist. Rachel AroestiThe BFGRoyal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, to 7 February Are you ready for snozzcumbers and dream-catchers, for norphans and whizzpoppers? A stellar team have come together for this world premiere of Roald Dahl’s children’s classic, with a script courtesy of Tom Wells (Jumpers for Goalposts) and puppetry by the masterful Toby Olié (Spirited Away). John Leader heads up the cast for this beloved story of an orphan befriending a giant; Daniel Evans directs. Kate WyverCount Arthur Strong Is Charles Dickens in A Christmas CarolTouring to 14 December The reliably bewildered and chronically digressive one-time variety star takes his tangent-riddled festive show on tour again