Arts
Australian Love Stories: Celebrating love in all its guises at the NPG
The National Portrait Gallery seems to be floundering. That may be unfair but the announcement of the next exhibition left…
Colourisations and scale models
Another week, another online concert; and since orchestral music seems likely to be confined to screens and stereos for a…
The unlikely lads
The Almeida is fighting back against lockdown with a sprawling family drama about two long-lost siblings. Adrian Lester plays Gilbert…
Terrific little romps
Everything is too long these days, isn’t it? Every series is at least two episodes too long, podcasts go on…
‘I like upsetting people’
Michael Hann talks to the cult rock star Steven Wilson about why it’s harder to write a pop song than prog
Nothing personal
Pelé is a two-hour documentary about the great Brazilian footballer — the greatest footballer ever, some would say — who…
Divine revelation
Rosie Millard gets her gloved hands on one of the world’s most lavish – and expensive – art books
Thoughtful thriller
To begin on a cheerful note, it’s certainly been a good week for fans of slow-burn British crime dramas with…
The Dig
It was gratifying to see such a quiet and impeccably made film as The Dig make it to independent cinemas…
Powerhouse Museum at Ultimo
Second thoughts are sometimes better thoughts. The NSW government had second thoughts about closing down the Powerhouse Museum at Ultimo…
From colander to bed of nails
I first became aware of the work of Marcelle Hanselaar in a mixed exhibition at the Millinery Works in Islington.…
Rock and awe
You very possibly know the music of the Glaswegian band Mogwai, even if you don’t think you do. You might…
From worst to best
It was something a friend said to me about The Revenant, Leonardo diCaprio’s bloody-minded and brutal Oscar vehicle: ‘The problem…
Deliciously dark
I Care a Lot is a deliciously dark comic thriller that You’ll Enjoy a Lot. It’s heartless. It’s vicious. It’s…
Aussie rules
The One Day In the Year is an Australian drama about the annual commemoration of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915.…
Looking for a new England
Dan Hitchens on our love affair with the Anglo-Saxons
Three plots for the price of one
ZeroZeroZero is the impossibly exciting new drugs series from Roberto Saviano — the author who gave us perhaps my all-time…
From screen to stage
It’s my new lockdown ritual. Switch on the telly, cue up the menu and scroll down to where the vintage…
Das Rheingold
You could hardly ask for a more exorbitant return to mainstage theatre than a production of the first part, the…
Robyn Nevin
The Adelaide Festival program describes her, accurately, as ‘our finest stage performer’. Robyn Nevin is appearing there (2 Feb-14 Mar)…
Perfect to fall asleep to
Good Grief is a new drama starring Sian Clifford who shot to fame as the older sister in Fleabag. The…
When music was more than a click away
In Teenage Superstars, a long and slightly exhausting documentary about the Scottish indie scene of the 1980s and ’90s, there…
From bad joke to 21st-century classic
Erich Korngold was what you might call an early adopter. As a child prodigy in Habsburg Vienna, he’d astonished the…
Joining the dots
‘History,’ wrote Edward Gibbon, ‘is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.’ In…
Trigger happy
In this line of business you receive many emails from PRs ‘reaching out’ about their particular film, which I really…
