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TV
If you only watch one, make it …
Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future
Channel 4
Summed up in a sentence The artist presents a hugely insightful – frequently terrifying – look at AI.
What our reviewer said “As ever, Perry is the man you want questioning these people.” Lucy Mangan
Further reading ‘World champion of appropriation’ Grayson Perry says he isn’t bothered by AI using his work
Pick of the rest
A Gorilla Story: Told By David Attenborough
Netflix
Summed up in a sentence The broadcaster revisits a family of apes with which he had an infamous encounter, 50 years ago.
What our reviewer said “For those of us who grew up with him – which is to say all of us – this feels like one of the last chances we’ll get to sit at the feet of an adored relative.” Stuart Heritage
Further reading From Attenborough’s gorilla mayhem to TV’s first gay kiss: the 100 biggest moments from a century of television
Zero Stars
Discovery+
Summed up in a sentence Comedians Sara Pascoe and Roisin Conaty upend the format of the celebrity travelogue by touring the world in search of awful destinations.
What our reviewer said “The hosts do a brilliant job with what they’re given – especially Conaty who, after spending two seasons watching footage on a screen in Last One Laughing, must be thrilled about having anything to do at all.” Stuart Heritage
Further reading The Guardian has only ever published 18 zero-star reviews. Here they all are
You may have missed …
Inside the Rage Machine
BBC iPlayer
Summed up in a sentence Whistleblowers who once worked at Meta and X reveal the horrifying truth about the social media giants.
What our reviewer said “To see these companies’ machinations laid bare in under an hour is quite something.” Lucy Mangan
Film
If you only watch one, make it …
Miroirs No 3
In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence Paula Beer stars as a depressed pianist in an elegantly unnerving mystery of grief and family dysfunction from Christian Petzold.
What our reviewer said “The faint suggestion that the film itself has gone into a kind of shock could have layered the proceedings with something infinitesimally dreamlike and unreal, an atmosphere often to be found in Petzold’s films. What makes this film interesting is that it isn’t heading for a macabre twist or chilling denouement but something positive and even redemptive.” Peter Bradshaw
Pick of the rest
Diamanti
In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence Director Ferzan Özpetek’s luscious-looking 1970s costume melodrama uncovers the loves and lives of a group of seamstresses working on a fictional 18th-century period drama.
What our reviewer said “There’s something about this that is irresistible, especially if you are in any way sympathetic to queer-accented celebrations of women played by powerhouse ensembles in the spirit of George Cukor’s The Women, François Ozon’s 8 Women, or Pedro Almodóvar films.” Lesle Felperin
Rebuilding
In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence Subdued, sweet drama with Josh O’Connor as a rancher called Dusty who relocates to a trailer park and pieces his life back together after a wildfire.
What our reviewer said “It is another highly sympathetic performance from O’Connor, who converts the British reticence of his earlier roles into Dusty’s strength and quiet vulnerability.” Peter Bradshaw
Further reading Josh O’Connor: the shape-shifting star who became cinema’s most wanted
Akira
In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence Landmark Japanese cyberpunk animation from 1988 offers startling message of global annihilation.
What our reviewer said “Akira’s strangeness is very startling and sometimes bewildering. But there is a thanatonic rapture to its vision of a whole world ending and being reborn as something else.” Peter Bradshaw
Now streaming
Endless Cookie
Mubi
Summed up in a sentence Trippy tales of First Nations life as a film-maker records the shaggy dog stories of his Indigenous brother in a loopy, hallucinatory animation.
What our reviewer said “Roughly describable as Cheech and Chong meet Tristram Shandy, Endless Cookie consistently interrupts itself and lampoons the methods of its own creation – especially the fact it took half-brothers Seth and Peter Scriver nine years to finish the thing.” Phil Hoad
Books
If you only read one, make it …
My Year in Paris With Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy
Reviewed by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Summed up in a sentence An exuberant celebration of the avant garde writer.
What our reviewer said “Levy is not competing with Stein’s many biographers. She is writing a meditation, not an explanation.”
Pick of the rest
Walking Shadow: Love, Loss and Shakespeare by Greg Doran
Reviewed by Michael Billington
Summed up in a sentence The former RSC director on losing his husband, Antony Sher, and embarking on an obsessive quest to see every copy of the First Folio.
What our reviewer said “His book is both a valuable addition to Shakespeare scholarship and a human story about how grief over loss of a loved one can be turned into a search for consoling hope.”
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Reviewed by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Summed up in a sentence A tradwife social media influencer finds herself living out pioneer reality in 1805.
What our reviewer said “For a book with such promise, Yesteryear is a real lesson in not allowing a fun premise to get in the way of a good story.”
Further reading ‘Serve, smile, procreate’: Yesteryear author Caro Claire Burke on the rise of the tradwife
The Fallen by Louise Brangan
Reviewed by John Banville
Summed up in a sentence A searing account of the Magdalene laundries that imprisoned thousands of Irish women.
What our reviewer said: “It is hard now to comprehend the moral climate of 20th-century Ireland, and the level of repression it imposed.”
You may have missed …
The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers
Reviewed by Dina Nayeri
Summed up in a sentence Buzzy black comedy about midlife adultery for an anxious generation.
What our reviewer said “I loved this razor-sharp, hilarious, finely observed novel, written with such withering exactitude.”
Further reading Polyamory, regrets and revenge: changing the story on infidelity
Albums
If you only listen to one, make it …
Lucy Liyou: Mr Cobra
Out now
Summed up in a sentence The Korean American musician explores the unease and alarm of power imbalance using skittish melodies and nursery rhymes.
What our reviewer said “Over the course of the record, Liyou’s textures swell and dissipate, swerving into disco cuts and a Taylor Swift skit, then collapsing into farmyard sounds and text-to-speech streams of consciousness.” Hugh Morris
Pick of the rest
Various artists: Asili ya Mama
Out now
Summed up in a sentence Tanzanian field recordings capture traditional music that’s equal parts rhythmic, melodic and harmonic, and rarely heard outside Indigenous communities.
What our reviewer said “The call-and-response singing recorded in courtyards, homes and open village spaces is infectious.” Jude Rogers
Samuel Hasselhorn: Schubert Hoffnung
Out now
Summed up in a sentence The German baritone’s all-Schubert disc with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz.
What our reviewer said “The combination of Hasselhorn’s communicative diction and Bushakevitz’s poetic phrasing brings a rapt intimacy”. Clive Paget
Jessie Ware: Superbloom
Out now
Summed up in a sentence The musician and podcaster is at her most retro on her third sequin-festooned album in a row.
What our reviewer said “If Superbloom feels less a development than a retrenchment, that shouldn’t stand as a judgment on its quality.” Alexis Petridis
Now touring …
Brodsky Quartet and William Barton
Touring the UK to 28 April
Summed up in a sentence An unlikely alliance cut a swathe through folk songs, Janáček and music from Australia and New Zealand in an eclectic and beautiful evening.
What our reviewer said “It mixes up the two hemispheres in unapologetically eclectic fashion.” Erica Jeal
