Going out: Cinema
Sing Sing
Out now
A group of inmates at Sing Sing maximum security prison stage their own original theatrical production, Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, in an acclaimed drama starring Colman Domingo and Paul Raci, alongside a cast of real-life formerly incarcerated men.
The Count of Monte Cristo
Out now
Alexandre Dumas may be slightly more famous for penning The Three Musketeers, but his revenge fable The Count of Monte Cristo is a barnstormer, too. This new adaptation is the most expensive French film of the year, with Pierre Niney as the unfairly imprisoned sailor who wreaks revenge on his enemies.
AfrAId
Out now
For those who find their Alexa just a little bit creepy, this sci-fi horror may be one to skip, as a family’s smart home AI begins to take control of their lives. It’s directed by Chris Weitz, a guy you can’t accuse of having a predictable career; he also helmed American Pie, About a Boy and Twilight: New Moon.
Touch
Out now
Sweeping Icelandic romantic drama, based on the non-linear novel by Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, and set across multiple decades in the UK, Japan and Iceland, which tells the story of separated lovers Kristófer and Miko. Directed by Baltasar Kormákur (101 Reykjavík). Catherine Bray
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Going out: Gigs
Texas
3 to 15 September; tour starts Hull
Say What You Want. Summer Son. Inner Smile. I Don’t Want a Lover. In Our Lifetime. Just some of the top-tier bops and bangers Sharleen Spiteri et al have in their arsenal as they tour in support of last summer’s The Very Best of 1989-2023.
Edinburgh Psych fest
Various venues, 1 September
Returning to Scotland’s capital after a successful inaugural year in 2023, this expanded sister festival to the Manchester Psych fest, features the likes of Gruff Rhys, Pigs x7, Temples and La Luz. Keep an ear out for Welsh indie surrealists the Bug Club, specifically their excellent single, A Bit Like James Bond. Michael Cragg
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Orchestra
Royal Albert Hall, London, 31 August & 1 September; 5 & 6 September
The Proms’ penultimate week brings two of Europe’s finest orchestras. Kirill Petrenko conducts the Berlin Philharmonic (Sat & Sun) in Smetana’s Má Vlast and Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony, and there’s more Bruckner, the Fourth, from Simon Rattle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony (Thur & Fri). Andrew Clements
Jazz Central festival
1000 Trades, Birmingham, 6 to 8 September
Friday’s opener at this innovative weekender features acclaimed saxophonist Alex Clarke (a BBC young jazz musician of the year nominee) and UK tenor sax star Alex Garnett – in a series of gigs joining established UK players and up-and-coming Midlands talents, to produce exciting live shows and lasting new works. John Fordham
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Going out: Art
Jason Wilsher-Mills
Wellcome Collection, London, to 12 January
A cartoon-style immersive installation recreates the artist’s experience of becoming disabled as a child. Comic-book figures and outsized sculptures, including a giant bed where a patient is confined, take you into his memories of being hospitalised. Everything is interactive in a show aimed at kids as well as adults.
Anish Kapoor
Liverpool Cathedral, to 15 September
If there is any artist now who makes you meditate on the infinite and cosmic it’s Kapoor. His ability to evoke apparently limitless spaces and ideas with intense colour makes him the perfect religious artist. Yet this is the first time he has shown his sublimities in a British cathedral.
Looking for Leonardo
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, to 26 January
There used to be lots more paintings by Leonardo da Vinci in the world than there are now, including a portrait of a young man that was excitedly bought in the 19th century by Dulwich Picture Gallery, believing it to be a work of his. This display invites you to sift the fakes.
Revealing Nature
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, to 3 November
Two centuries after Thomas Gainsborough painted the Suffolk landscape, Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines drew modern artists to its distinctive light. They founded the East Anglian School for Painting and Drawing where young Lucian Freud studied. They were also lovers, and this show explores their relationship as well as their art. Jonathan Jones
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Going out: Stage
Ben Elton
Sunday to 18 November; tour starts York
Despite being one of the architects of modern British comedy, Elton has spent the past few decades as a punchline himself thanks to a run of critically lambasted musicals and sitcoms. Yet the recent reboot of his 1980s variety show Saturday Live was a triumph. If his new show Authentic Stupidity matches up, a comeback could well be on the cards. Rachel Aroesti
Twine
The Yard theatre, London, to 21 September
Selina Thompson’s award-winning Salt was a revelatory, exhausting, dream-swept show retracing the transatlantic slave triangle in a cargo ship. Now she tackles the too-often-taboo topic of adoption. Twine is a show about parenting and, social work, the agony inflicted by bureaucracy, and the gaps that people can fall through.
Dido and Aeneas
Pitlochry festival theatre, 31 August to 15 September
See Purcell’s opera anew as Pitlochry festival theatre unites with the Scots Opera Project. A community choir will join a group of professional opera singers in this outdoor staging of the classic opera, performed within an amphitheatre in Scottish Gaelic and Scots language. Kate Wyver
Northern Ballet: Three Short Ballets
Stanley & Audrey Burton theatre, Leeds, Friday to 14 September
Two world premieres in this triple bill, one from Royal Ballet dancer-choreographer Kristen McNally and the other from Ballet Black’s Mthuthuzeli November, a choreographer really gathering steam at the moment, who is creating a piece inspired by South African novelist RL Peteni’s Hill of Fools and Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. Lyndsey Winship
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Staying in: Streaming
The Perfect Couple
Netflix, Thursday 5 September
Rich folk, death, deep-seated family secrets, a chillingly perfect matriarch: these are all trademark ingredients of Nicole Kidman’s moreish TV dramas. This starry show about a bride-to-be (Eve Hewson) caught in the web of her fiance’s affluent Nantucket family is no different. Dakota Fanning and Liev Schreiber also star.
Sambre: Anatomy of a Crime
iPlayer & BBC Four, Saturday 31 August, 9pm
A crowdpleaser when it aired in France last year, this drama from Oscar-winning film-maker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade dramatises the real case of an infamous rapist who, despite repeatedly striking along the same riverside road in the 1980s, was only caught 30 years later. Clémence Poesy and The Returned’s Alix Poisson lead the cast.
Colin from Accounts
iPlayer & BBC Two, Tuesday 3 September, 10pm
The laid-back yet lacerating Aussie romcom returns – but there’s somebody missing from Ashley and Gordon’s love nest. Having misguidedly given up the titular terrier for adoption, they are now desperate to win him back, a quest punctuated by squabbles, sniping and sensational chemistry courtesy of the real-life couple behind the show.
Funny Woman
Sky Max & Now, Friday 6 September, 9pm
There’s a real appetite for slightly anachronistic period comedies in which women triumph over patriarchy (see: The Great, Dickinson, My Lady Jane). Series two of this adaptation of Nick Hornby’s Funny Girl mines a similar feelgood seam, following comedian Sophie Straw (Gemma Arterton) in 1960s London. Rachel Aroesti
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Staying in: Games
Star Wars Outlaws
Out now, PC, Xbox Series S/X, PS5
A big new Star Wars game, this, set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, casting you as a plucky scoundrel with a blaster, a cute alien pet and free run of several whole planets in a galaxy far, far away.
Age of Mythology Retold
Out 4 September, PC, Xbox
Imagine if a historical battle game were freed from all the constraints of actual history and just let you play God instead. In this strategy epic you can order around little armies as a Greek, Atlantean or Egyptian deity, watching the mortals perish and intervening with lightning bolts when you fancy. Keza MacDonald
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Staying in: Albums
Coco & Clair Clair – Girl
Out now
Playful Atlanta duo Coco & Clair Clair liken working on their new albums to being pregnant. While their 2022 debut, Sexy, was a baby boy, this softer follow-up is its female sibling. More vulnerable and confessional lyrically, songs such as Aggy and Kate Spade ride percolating electronic flourishes and skin-soft beats.
Jon Hopkins – Ritual
Out now
Created as a single piece of music and split into eight chapters, electronic music pioneer Hopkins’ seventh album ups the BPM following the ambient leanings of 2021’s Music for Psychedelic Therapy. On the cavernous Ritual (Evocation), for example, a delicate pitter patter soon morphs into an aural explosion.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Wild God
Out now
After 2019’s desolately beautiful double album, Ghosteen, a record haunted by grief, Nick Cave and his merry men return with this “deeply and joyously infectious” follow-up. Musically more focused than their recent work, Wild God steadily blooms into a choir-assisted epic, while Long Dark Night is bruised piano balladry at its best.
John Legend – My Favorite Dream
Out now
Your ability to enjoy John Legend’s latest album will probably hinge on your tolerance of the saccharine. Produced by Prince of Twee Sufjan Stevens, My Favorite Dream is a suite of children’s songs, lead by the bouncy single L-O-V-E, which also features vocals from Legend’s kids and wife, Chrissy Teigen. MC
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Staying in: Brain food
Public.work
Online
This database of images from institutions such as the NYPL and The Met is more than a curiosity, since its related image function produces fascinating journeys through works of similar provenance. Click through everything from Japanese woodblocks to early Americana.
Rising Phoenix: What Does It Take?
Podcast
With the Paralympics in full swing, this series from the US Olympian Michael Johnson and Paralympian Matt Stutzman examines what it takes to make it in the games. We hear from blind footballer Gaël Rivière and others.
Global Dancefloor: Tbilisi
BBC World Service & BBC Sounds, Thursday
Frank McWeeny travels to Georgia’s capital for this report on how the city’s nightlife is helping to spearhead social change. McWeeny interviews the founders of controversial techno club Bassiani and hears from ravers. Ammar Kalia
