Going Out: Cinema
All of Us Strangers
Out now
Writer-director Andrew Haigh brings his prodigious talent for giving actors career-highlight showcases (see also: Weekend, 45 Years) to a deeply personal story with a supernatural twist, as Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal play lovers from different generations finding an unlikely connection in modern London. Highly recommended drama.
The Color Purple
Out now
You might know the heavily Oscar‑nominated Steven Spielberg version of this story from 1985, which starred Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey, but this new take isn’t just a lazy line-for-line imitation. For one thing, it’s now a musical, based on the stage show of the same name. It’s already proved a crowd-pleasing smash hit in the US.
Baghead
Out now
Inheriting a pub may sound like a dream, but in this horror it’s more of a nightmare, as the place turns out to come equipped with a bit of a tricky customer in the basement: an entity that can impersonate the dead. Feels more like a case for a quick sale than a business opportunity, but of course not everyone sees it that way. Starring Freya Allan, with Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan and Saffron Burrows.
Samsara
Out now
Spanish director Lois Patiño’s acclaimed film, which premiered at last year’s Berlinale film festival, unfolds across two parts, cultures and continents. Exploring the cycle of life and reincarnation, it borrows experimental techniques from Patiño’s moving-image work. Catherine Bray
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Going Out: Gigs
Davido
The O2, London, 28 January
Having sold out the UK’s biggest arena in 2022, the Afrobeats superstar returns to see if he can do it again. This time he’s got a newish album to promote, in the shape of last year’s Top 10 hit, Timeless, which features newly promoted live favourites Unavailable and Feel.
Black Honey
31 January to 14 February; starts Brighton
Fancy a sweaty, invigorating moshpit to liven up 2024? You could do worse than seeing The Brighton-based cult rockers, who head out on the road ahead of the follow-up to last year’s A Fistful of Peaches. Expect that album’s chaotic opener, Charlie Bronson, to cause the requisite mayhem. Michael Cragg
Emma Rawicz Quartet
East Side Jazz Club, London, 30 January; Verdict, Brighton, 2 February
Rawicz has moved fast in the two years since her debut as a 19 year-old – from self-production to leading an A-list band on a major label. John Coltrane, Bowie sideman Donny McCaslin, plus classic jazz, funk and Latin, have all been models for this dynamic newcomer. John Fordham
Steve Reich festival
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 1 to 3 February
The Hallé orchestra celebrates the great minimalist. In the opener, Colin Currie conducts a rare UK performance of Reich’s biggest orchestral work, The Desert Music; later highlights include the recent Runner, and Reich/Richter, as well as Jonny Greenwood playing the solo-guitar Electric Counterpoint. Andrew Clements
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Going Out: Art
Present Tense
Hauser & Wirth, Bruton, Somerset, to 28 April
The kids won’t quit painting. And when they are not doing that, Britain’s young artists often seem to be making surreal sculpture, to judge from this attempt to take the nation’s artistic pulse. With Sang Woo Kim, Ania Hobson, Paloma Proudfoot, Shawanda Corbett and many more rising stars.
Legion
British Museum, London, 1 February to 23 June
The Roman army was one of history’s decisive forces, an unrivalled human machine that enabled an Italian city to conquer lands from Africa to Britannia. It is also wonderfully documented, not least by art, from elaborate bronze cavalry helmets to funeral tablets bearing touching portraits. This should be a triumph.
Barbara Kruger
Serpentine, London, 1 February to 17 March
What are words worth? Clearly quite a lot to a very effective and celebrated conceptual artist. Kruger created her hard-hitting style in the era of punk and new wave, and she’s the US answer to Britain’s collagists Linder and Jamie Reid with her incisive collisions of image and text.
Paolozzi at 100
Modern Two, Edinburgh, to 21 April
Scotland’s Eduardo Paolozzi was the first pop artist, anywhere. He was cutting up American magazines to make dreamy collages of their ads in the 1940s, when fridges and other US wonders looked unreal to rationed Britons. Today his fascination with robots and sci-fi makes him a prophet of AI. Jonathan Jones
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Going Out: Stage
Daniel Sloss
1 February to 3 March; starts Dublin
He may have been mentored by Frankie Boyle, but the Scottish standup isn’t part of the UK’s podcast-hopping comedy clique. Instead, he’s focused on making a name for himself internationally – this tour takes in both Helsinki and Istanbul – with the merciless, accessibly erudite style he’s been mastering since his mid-teens.
Plaza Suite
Savoy Theatre, London, to 31 March
Husband and wife Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker star in Neil Simon’s comic exploration of marriage. The tickets are eye-wateringly expensive so perhaps one for superfans and the super-wealthy. Rachel Aroesti
A Song for Ella Gray
Northern Stage, 1 to 15 February, then touring
Zoe Cooper’s plays have a special vulnerability and authenticity. She’s adapted David Almond’s novel for the stage – a modern take on the Orpheus myth, set on Northumberland’s beaches and seen through the eyes of a group of teenagers. Miriam Gillinson
Diversity: Supernova
Royal & Derngate, Northampton, 29 to 31 January, then touring
Remember 2009? Gordon Brown, swine flu and the last gig by Oasis. And street-dance troupe Diversity beating Susan Boyle to the Britain’s Got Talent trophy. Fifteen years on, Diversity are still going strong, taking choreographer Ashley Banjo’s super-slick routines on a major UK and Irish tour. Lyndsey Winship
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Staying In: Streaming
Here We Go
iPlayer/BBC One, 2 February, 8pm
Those bemoaning the (very real) lack of straightforward sitcoms on British television right now might want to tune into the second series of this unpretentious and reliably funny family comedy. A top-notch cast – Katherine Parkinson in full scatty mum mode, plus Jim Howick and Alison Steadman – adds pizazz to an expertly plotted and joke-packed script from the criminally underrated Tom Basden.
Mr & Mrs Smith
Prime Video, 2 February
After a rocky gestation (original co-lead Phoebe Waller-Bridge left the project due to creative differences), this reboot of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s 2005 contract killer comedy finally arrives with an appetite-whetting final cast: Atlanta’s Donald Glover and Pen15’s Maya Erskine star, with Michaela Coel, Paul Dano, Alexander Skarsgård and Sarah Paulson providing ample comic support.
Sort Of
Now/Sky Comedy, 1 February, 8pm
This comedy drama about a non-binary Pakistani-Canadian nanny trying to reconcile their myriad identities with the frustrating limitations of daily life might sound niche and a bit po-faced. It’s not. Returning for a third and final season, co-creator Bilal Baig leads a warm, spikily funny series that is bingeably entertaining without ever compromising on the complexity of its subject matter.
Domino Day
iPlayer/BBC Three, 31 January, 9pm
Less broomsticks and cauldrons, more a thrilling twist on the dating minefield in a gen Z take on the age-old witches’ tale. Starring Bafta-nominated Siena Kelly as a reluctant bloodsucker who hunts her prey online, it fuses supernatural sorcery with Promising Young Woman-style satire. RA
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Staying In: Games
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy
Out now, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox
The follow-up series to the Phoenix Wright games was launched on the Nintendo DS 15 years ago – now the trilogy has been updated. You play as rookie defence attorney Apollo, using clues and interrogations to free your clients. Part courtroom sim, part visual novel, all classic. No objections, your honour.
Howl
Out now PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox
A hearing-impaired warrior must fight to survive in a medieval landscape cursed by a “howling plague” that turns all who hear it into monsters. A tactical treat with beautiful painterly visuals, this innovative take on the turn-based fantasy genre was released on PC and Switch last year but now arrives on PS5 and Xbox.
Keith Stuart
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Staying In: Albums
Gruff Rhys – Sadness Sets Me Free
Out now
On his eighth solo album, and first since 2021’s Seeking New Gods crashed into the Top 10, Welsh experimentalist Rhys develops his penchant for fusing sweet melodies with drops of melancholia. That’s epitomised on string-drenched lead single Celestial Candyfloss and the summery shimmer of sonic apology, Bad Friend.
Torres – What an Enormous Room
Out now
The master of songs that teeter on the edge of explosive, Floridian alt-rock singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott serves up a platter of them on this sixth album. While single Wake to Flowers hums with barely contained restraint, Collect is often knocked off-kilter by raging guitars.
Future Islands – People Who Aren’t There Anymore
Out now
A decade after Seasons (Waiting on You) propelled Future Islands to Pitchfork-assisted festival favourites, the synth-rockers return with this seventh album. That song’s template of tense, metronomic rhythms and singer Samuel T Herring’s emotional delivery is replicated in highlights King of Sweden and Peach.
The Smile – Wall of Eyes
Out now
Radiohead members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood reunite with drummer Tom Skinner for this follow-up to 2022’s A Light for Attracting Attention. Less explosive than its predecessor, Wall of Eyes features the lush piano and string-laden Friend of a Friend, alongside eight-minute epic Bending Hectic. MC
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Staying In: Brain food
On the Origin of the Pieces
Podcast
Musician and producer Steve Pretty hosts this wide-ranging and insightful series delving into the ways in which we experience music. Guests such as Nitin Sawhney and astronaut Chris Hadfield cover everything from neuroscience to the limitations of theory.
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Online
Washington DC’s museum hosts a treasure trove of online exhibits providing a snapshot of key pieces from its collection. Scroll through Chinese documentary photographer Hung Liu’s work or Sonya Clark’s provocative mixed-medium pieces.
The Greatest Night in Pop
Netflix, 29 January
Packed with archive footage and starry interviews, this film tells the story of how Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie penned the 1985 charity single We Are the World and formed a studio supergroup to perform it. Ammar Kalia
