Never mind the singing, Roderick Williams could have been a great TV presenter or even stand-up, on the evidence of his spoken introduction at the Wigmore Hall last night. It was the best pre-concert speech I’ve heard for a long time – relaxed, witty, authoritative and engaging – and this is not damning with faint praise, as the recital that followed was completely delightful. The fact it also featured Williams as composer was further evidence that nature does not hand out talent equitably. The programme, of Williams’s devising, saw him revisit and update an idea from about 10 years ago Read more ...

That was clever. The original Wet Leg – singer Rhian Teasdale and guitarist Hester Chambers – instantly snagged global attention with a droll novelty single, launched with a knowing faux-rustic video, about a sexy piece of furniture. After scoring a chart-topping multi-genre debut album, the duo recruited three noisy, hirsute male musician-writers, toughened up, and metamorphosed into one of the hottest indie combos on the planet.  That evolution is crystallised in their second album, another smash and – in its flawlessness –  a 21st-century equivalent of the Human League’s epochal Read more ...

What is a documentary maker supposed to do when someone as gifted and empathic as Francis Whately has already covered most of the Bowie bases with three detailed and hypnotic films about different defining periods of the man’s life and career? Five Years, Finding Fame and The Last Five Years are texturally complex films that bear repeated viewings. And there’s another Whately film due out next year that will no doubt definitively nail the Berlin years too.Maybe Jonathan Stiasny film should have been called "The Less Raked-Over Years", rather than the more grandiose The Final Act – given that Read more ...

For everyone who thinks that the country house drama ought to be spelled without the "o", there's Fackham Hall, an energetic satire of all things Downton Abbey, Bridgerton, and even Agatha Christie. It arrives the same year that its main target, Downton Abbey, launched its "Grand Finale" movie. Surely we haven't seen the last of the Golden Age-set costume dramas that paint such a beguiling picture of the Great Depression: the genre is the lifeblood of the BBC. And what else would we do on a Sunday night?Written by sketch comedy veterans the Dawson Bros. and real-life brothers Jimmy and Read more ...

Whoever thought of creating an exhibition comparing the brilliance of JMW Turner with that of John Constable deserves a medal – maybe Tate Britain’s senior curator, Amy Concannon? Even if you are familiar with the work, seeing their paintings hung side by side reveals surprising similarities as well as differences.The rivalry between them has not been cooked up as a marketing ploy; it was real. On show is a snippet from Mike Leigh’s 2014 film Mr Turner. It’s varnishing day for the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition of 1832. Turner saunters in with a brush load of crimson paint and dabs it onto Read more ...

Did you know that women watch porn? That they wank? Shock. Horror. Dismay. If you really are surprised by this non-revelation then maybe you need to get a ticket to see Sophia Chetin-Leuner’s Porn Play at the Royal Court’s studio space. But, wait a minute, it’s sold out already. Maybe because it stars Ambika Mod (remember her from Every Brilliant Thing @Sohoplace, or Netflix’s One Day?). Anyway, this show is West End bound so you’ll definitely get a chance to see it – its in-the-round staging would work well @Sohoplace. But while Mod is the draw, what’s the play about?  Mod plays Ani Read more ...

New writing for the theatre is good at taking us into the darkest of places – and there are few more painful environments than prisons and mental institutions. Places where agony radiates off the walls, and anguish is in the air we breathe. So it’s a real challenge for Sophia Griffin, in her debut play, After Sunday, at the Bush theatre, to takes us on just such a journey into an unforgiving world of distress, disappointment and despair. If the result is not completely successful, it does have an excellent cast who deliver some powerfully moving moments. Set in a secure unit, basically a Read more ...

Here comes Dad – and he’s muttering a mantra: “My name is Winston Smith and only good things happen to me.” With a name shared with the everyman protagonist of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and a compulsive intoning of this self-affirmation, the start of Nancy Farino’s Fatherland signals the fact that family stuff, and daddy issues, will dominate its emotional landscape. As a graduate of Hampstead Theatre’s Inspire writers programme, the actor-playwright enjoys not only an entertaining production of her 100-minute debut piece in this venue’s studio space, but also plays one of the two Read more ...

Given that the film industry is a fairly vain business, it follows that every movie is to some extent a vanity project. So it seems churlish to describe this new Daniel Day-Lewis picture, which he co-wrote with his son, Ronan, for Ronan to direct and himself to star in, as other than a welcome return for the superman actor. It’s eight years since Day-Lewis père was last seen on the screen (in Phantom Thread), or frankly seen anywhere else, and here the celebrated recluse plays an inland Robinson Crusoe coming to terms with the sins of the past. The film appears to be set about 20 years ago Read more ...

Back in 2003, when Mick Herron was a humble sub-editor, his debut novel was published, the first of what became a four-volume series, the Zoë Boehm thrillers. Inevitably, after the success of his later Slow Horses series, television has snaffled this character up too. Morwenna Banks works on both series as a writer-producer. And it shows.Part of the fun of Down Cemetery Road is that it’s almost a distaff version of Slow Horses, with an atmospheric theme song with pertinent lyrics over the credits, Michelle Gurevich’s “Woman’s Touch”, great dialogue and a top-flight cast who know how to Read more ...

If the distance from Festen to The Railway Children looks like a long stretch of track, remember that Mark-Anthony Turnage’s operas have often thundered through the drama of shattered families mired in mystery and secrecy – all the way back to the Oedipal conflicts of Greek in 1988.Now, in the the same year as a Covent Garden triumph with his version of the dysfunctional dynasty of Thomas Vinterberg’s Danish film, the composer returns with a project he first conceived during the 2020 lockdown with librettist/partner Rachael Hewer. The pair have updated Edith Nesbit’s adored 1906 Read more ...

The enduring image of the 1984-1985 Miners' Strike is that of men standing arm in arm against police and of mass protests devolving into mayhem – with protesters being beaten and knocked to the ground.But it wasn’t just men who were on the front lines, as Iron Ladies recalls. Directed by Daniel Draper, the documentary focuses on the essential and inspiring efforts of working-class women – some wives and daughters of miners, some neighbours – who organized as Women Against Pit Closures.Though some of the women had previous connections to local party politics, or to the CND and other protest Read more ...