Going out: Cinema
Cassius X: Becoming Ali
Out now
This documentary details Ali’s early years as Cassius Clay, on a journey to becoming an activist, civil rights campaigner and intellectual, through his friendships with people such as Malcolm X and spiritual awakening after studying the teachings of Elijah Muhammad.
Sumotherhood
Out now
Who would have imagined 2023 would gift us a comedy featuring So Solid Crew’s Megaman, Jeremy Corbyn, Lethal Bizzle, Jennifer Saunders and Ed Sheeran? But thanks to Adam Deacon, lo, it has come to pass. A follow-up to 2011’s Anuvahood, Deacon is half of a duo hatching harebrained get-rich-quick schemes.
The Miracle Club
Out now
Set in the 1960s and starring Laura Linney, Kathy Bates, Maggie Smith and Stephen Rea, this drama from Thaddeus O’Sullivan sees a group of working-class women from the seaside town of Ballygar in Ireland head off on the trip of a lifetime: to Lourdes in France, the site of many a reported miracle.
Friday the 13th (rerelease)
Out now
Time to revisit the place it all began – namely Crystal Lake, the summer camp with a sad secret, which is about to make itself felt via the time-honoured method of slaughtering a bunch of horny teens. Worth watching, not least because it’ll help you get the first scary movie quiz in Scream right, unlike poor old Drew Barrymore. Catherine Bray
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Going out: Gigs
Maisie Peters
17 October to 3 November; tour starts Glasgow
Culminating in her biggest headline show to date, this tour celebrates Peters’ chart-topping album, The Good Witch. Expect widescreen pop-rock with Taylor Swift-esque lyrical precision, a lot of chest-clenching and exuberant pogoing.
Luke Combs
Touring to 20 October; tour starts Belfast
Country star Combs scored a huge US hit with his cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, making Chapman the first Black woman to score a country No 1 with a solo composition. Combs isn’t doing badly in the UK, either, as this arena tour in support of March’s Gettin’ Old attests. Michael Cragg
Christian McBride’s New Jawn
Ronnie Scott’s, London, 16 & 17 October
Philadelphia’s Christian McBride has been a star-accompanying jazz bass great for three decades, but as an engaging bandleader he also draws together swing, Latin music, soul-blues and more. His quartet, New Jawn, includes postbop saxist Marcus Strickland, and New York drums star Nasheet Waits. John Fordham
Transfigured Night
Milton Court, London, 18 October
Violinist Viktoria Mullova promises “an immersive journey into a nocturnal forest” as a prelude to her performance of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, with samples, choreography and projections of the poetry that inspired Schoenberg’s work. Andrew Clements
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Going out: Art
Beyond the Page
MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, to 28 January
Miniature painting flourished in the Mughal empire in the 16th and 17th centuries as court artists fused Islamic and European styles to decorate books with portraits and battles. Today this south-Asian tradition is echoed by many contemporary artists.
El Anatsui
Tate Modern, London, to 14 April
The great Ghanian artist of recycled beauty brings something special to the vast space of the Tate’s Turbine Hall. El Anatsui creates painterly shimmering spectacles of texture and colour using found materials from everyday life. What will he do given Tate’s biggest space to play with? The result should be stunning.
Sir Quentin Blake
Hastings Contemporary, to 12 November
New drawings by the much-loved illustrator whose spindly figures have put faces to Roald Dahl’s characters. He may be as much a part of your childhood as mine. At 90, the inexhaustible Blake is still imagining fantastic and funny worlds in the three suites unveiled here.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Hayward Gallery, London, to 7 January
One of the most artistically compelling photographers of our time, and perhaps of all time, Sugimoto has an uncanny sense of what photography is: a stilling, a freezing of light that, according to the French theorist Roland Barthes, can be deathly. Sugimoto sees death in everything from waxworks to seascapes. Jonathan Jones
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Going out: Stage
Tig Notaro
Brighton, 17 October; Manchester, 19 October; touring to 26 October
In 2012, four days after a breast cancer diagnosis, Notaro delivered a set that catapulted her to comedy ubiquity. These days, the 52-year-old’s material is (thankfully) more mundane; her new tour mines material from family, celebrity and dreamboat firefighters. Rachel Aroesti
Trueman and the Arsonists
Roundhouse, London, 18 October to 8 November
Simon Stephens and a stellar creative team rework Max Frisch’s exploration of how moral lethargy can invite evil in. With songs by the ever-thoughtful Chris Thorpe.
Transform festival
Various locations, Leeds, to 22 October
Featuring 13 companies from 12 countries, including a show based on phone conversations with young people living under the Iranian dictatorship (Songs for No One) and a piece created from hundreds of submissions from young people in Leeds and Reykjavík (Secrets). Miriam Gillinson
Take Me Somewhere
Various venues, Glasgow, to 28 October
Louise Ahl creates an experimental opera with bespoke scents, Eve Stainton does live welding, Carolina Bianchi drugs herself on stage, Sonya Lindfors imagines a dance of decolonisation, and Ashanti Harris invites the audience to take part in a ritual of joy and healing. Lyndsey Winship
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Staying in: Streaming
The Burning Girls
Paramount+, 19 October
The presence of Samantha Morton in this dramatisation of CJ Tudor’s 2021 novel should elevate it beyond the ordinary. She plays a vicar who arrives at a countryside parish haunted by Protestant martyrs – and more than a few modern demons, too.
Bodies
Netflix, 19 October
The genre mashup has reinvigorated music – can it do the same for TV? This ambitious adaptation of Si Spencer’s graphic novel fuses period drama, police procedural and sci-fi as four detectives from three centuries attempt to solve the same recurring murder.
Breeders
Now/Sky Comedy, 20 October, 9pm
Seeing stressed-out parents on screen is a special kind of catharsis, but Breeders goes one step beyond the usual blunders. In its fourth and final series, Ally and Paul (Daisy Haggard and Martin Freeman) decide whether to finally end their marriage.
Upload
Amazon Prime, 20 October
There’s high-concept comedy and then there’s Upload, the digital afterlife-set sitcom from Greg Daniels that gets more mind-boggling with each outing. Season three returns, with protagonist Nathan – or rather, thanks to a mistakenly activated back-up copy, Nathans – attempting to foil an election-swaying scam by his ex-girlfriend’s evil father. RA
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Staying in: Games
Silent Hope
PC, Switch; out now
It seems like isometric Japanese role-playing games are enjoying a comeback. Silent Hope from cult developer Marvelous, is a storybook action adventure following seven heroes who set out to save a princess from a prison made of tears. It’s a charming retro yarn with compelling combat.
Dotage
PC; out now
If you love town-building games such as The Settlers or Civilization you’re going to enjoy this, from lone coder Michele Pirovano. You’re the village elder looking to set up a new home for your ragtag community in the face of a coming apocalypse. It mixes elements of board games and strategy sims, and the teeny visuals are ridiculously cute. Keith Stuart
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Staying in: Albums
Holly Humberstone – Paint My Bedroom Black
Out now
After a string of EPs, and having scooped the Brit Rising Star award in 2022, British singer-songwriter Humberstone finally releases her debut album. Co-created with Rob Milton (the 1975, Easy Life), it’s a dark-hued amalgam of electronic pop (Antichrist), indie (Room Service) and soaring, 80s-tinged MOR.
The Drums – Jonny
Out now
Essentially a solo studio project for frontman Jonny Pierce, the Drums’ sixth album is packed full of melodic, vaguely lo-fi jangle pop. Highlights include the skittering Obvious, complete with one of the year’s best choruses, and dramatic lead single, I Want it All.
L’Rain – I Killed Your Dog
Out now
Brooklyn-based genre polymath L’Rain, AKA Taja Cheek, returns with her third album and follow-up to 2021’s critically lauded Fatigue. On the bluntly titled I Killed Your Dog, Cheek explores folk, “dad rock” and electronic textures, as showcased on the excellent, Strokes-esque Pet Rock.
Troye Sivan – Something to Give Each Other
Out now
It makes sense that Australian pop star Troye Sivan dropped Rush, the lead single from this third album, in the middle of summer. A sweat-soaked banger, it came with a flesh-baring video to match. That sense of freedom continues on an album focused on “Party after party, after party after after party”. MC
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Staying in: Brain food
Ballers: Ball Or Nothing
BBC iPlayer
This charming series follows the fortunes of Scotland’s only professional basketball team, Glasgow Rocks, as they contend with a dire funding situation and try to train up a batch of homesick rookies flown over from the US.
T&J
Podcast
Podcasts don’t get more esoteric than this detailed exploration of the sixth-century Byzantine romance between Empress Theodora and the Emperor Justinian. Host Christine Laskowski keeps things fast-paced and dramatic, painting an immersive picture of their succession.
BFI Archive
Online
As the BFI London film festival draws to a close for another year, the cinematic institution has a regularly updated online archive of documentaries, film and TV to delve into, encompassing everything from newsreels to nostalgic adverts. Ammar Kalia
