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TV
If you only watch one, make it …
Juice
BBC iPlayer; available now
Summed up in a sentence An enchantingly inventive comedy from Mawann Rizwan, which morphs into a romcom with heart in its second season.
What our reviewer said “The comedy may not be that distinctive, but Juice’s creativity comes at you like a tidal wave.” Rachel Aroesti
Further reading Mawaan Rizwan on clowning around, winning Baftas and the surreal new series of Juice: ‘If it’s not your show, cool, don’t watch it’
Pick of the rest
Gen V
Prime Video; available now
Summed up in a sentence Yet more astonishingly graphic, sweary antics in the teen spin-off of superhero satire, The Boys.
What our reviewer said “As this second series unfurls its cape, it’s a joy and a relief to discover that it is business as usual.” Sarah Dempster
Black Rabbit
Netflix; available now
Summed up in a sentence Jude Law and Jason Bateman star as brothers who are some-time restaurateurs, sometime fleers of gangsters in this cheerless drama.
What our reviewer said “You can see throughout what Black Rabbit is aiming for – a study of loyalty, of fraternity, of how love can warp under the pressure of family secrets, made palatable by the charisma of Law.” Lucy Mangan
High Potential
Disney+; available now
Summed up in a sentence The return of Kaitlin Olson’s crowd-pleaser of a detective drama – where she stars as an impossibly intelligent and glam crime solver.
What our reviewer said “This is slick, narcotic network TV. It’s crowd-pleasing and easy on the eye, the sort of thing you’d traditionally associate more with ITV than BBC Two.” Rachel Aroesti
You may have missed …
Mrs Robinson
Now; available now
Summed up in a sentence A profile of former Irish president Mary Robinson running from her brilliant convention-defying election victory to passionate human rights roles.
What our reviewer said “Perhaps someone listening to Robinson will take a more radical step forward: if they do, they’ll be the latest in a line of countless people inspired by a woman whose desire to do the right thing has never wavered.” Jack Seale
Film
If you only watch one, make it …
Steve
In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence Cillian Murphy is outstanding in a ferocious reform school drama directed by Tim Mielants and adapted by Max Porter from his novella Shy.
What our reviewer said “Murphy and Mielants last collaborated on a superlative adaptation of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, and their new project together could hardly be more different: a drama suffused with gonzo energy and the death-metal chaos of emotional pain, cut with slashes of bizarre black humour.” Peter Bradshaw
Pick of the rest
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell star in a giddy romantic fantasy that sends its two commitment-phobe leads on a magical road trip through their pasts.
What our reviewer said “We are plunged into a woozy daydream as multicoloured as a ball pit in a kids’ play centre, all about love, relationships and the overwhelming importance of being open and risking emotional hurt to find the One.” Peter Bradshaw
The Lost Bus
In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence Dynamic real-life blaze-escape movie in which Matthew McConaughey plays the unassuming hero who drove a schoolbus full of children out of California’s deadliest wildfire.
What our reviewer said “A dynamically shot and earnestly performed real-life disaster movie about California’s terrifying 2018 Camp fire, a darkness-at-noon horror that became the deadliest wildfire in California history.” Peter Bradshaw
Happyend
In cinemas now
Summed up in a sentence Brilliantly mysterious Japanese near-future high-school drama in which teen romance and paranoid surveillance collide to dysfunctional effect.
What our reviewer said “It manages to be part futurist satire, part coming-of-age dramedy, part high school dystopia. It combines the spirit of John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club with Lindsay Anderson’s If.… and there might even be a trace memory of Paul Schrader’s Mishima, only without the seppuku.” Peter Bradshaw
Now streaming …
Americana
Prime Video & iTunes; available now
Summed up in a sentence Sydney Sweeney heads the cast in an eminently watchable crime drama that tackles cultural appropriation and the legacy of the old west.
What our reviewer said “The ambitions of writer-director Tony Tost’s yarn are ambitious and interesting, and he has assembled a cracking cast to tell it.” Leslie Felperin
Books
If you only read one, make it …
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
Reviewed by Kevin Power
Summed up in a sentence A century from now, in a Britain transformed by nuclear disaster and climate change, a literature scholar goes in search of a lost poem.
What our reviewer said “What We Can Know gradually reveals itself as an anatomy of liberal partiality – of the insularity of a liberalism busily nostalgic for all the wrong things.”
Further reading From shocking short stories to a talking foetus: Ian McEwan’s 10 best books – ranked!
Pick of the rest
Clown Town by Mick Herron
Reviewed by Sam Leith
Summed up in a sentence The ninth novel in the bestselling Slow Horses series about washed-up spies brings more comedy, intrigue and cliffhangers.
What our reviewer said “Despite the success of the Apple TV+ series, the books are still the main event – because it’s Herron’s line-by-line writing that really makes them stand out. Has there been a more magnificently bossy narrative voice since Dickens? Or one more in love with the baroque flourish?”
Further reading Slow Horses author Mick Herron: ‘I love doing things that are against the rules’
We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad
Reviewed by Sandra Newman
Summed up in a sentence A follow-up to the cult horror/satire Bunny about ultra-feminine rich girls on a creative writing MFA.
What our reviewer said “Awad is here to show us that romantasy can be serious literature, and nothing can really be too camp.”
Fly, Wild Swans by Jung Chang
Reviewed by Isabel Hilton
Summed up in a sentence A sequel to the book that changed the world’s view of China.
What our reviewer said “Few can match Chang’s ability to bring Chinese history and politics to life through deeply felt personal narrative, and few have shaped western understanding of China as broadly.”
The Big Payback by Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder
Reviewed by Diane Abbott
Summed up in a sentence A considered case for reparations.
What our reviewer said “Primarily, this is about recognising the terrible wrong wrought by the transatlantic slave trade, and the importance of understanding its effects on how we live now.”
You may have missed …
The Secret Painter by Joe Tucker
Reviewed by Houman Barekat
Summed up in a sentence A beautifully written story of an outsider.
What our reviewer said “Joe Tucker’s uncle painted Lowry-esque vignettes of working-class life in his spare time. After his death at the age of 84, his family found a stash of more than 500 paintings in his terrace house in Warrington.”
Music
If you only listen to one, make it …
Joy Crookes: Juniper
Out now
Summed up in a sentence After four years away, the south Londoner returns with shimmering sounds and cleverly unsentimental lyrics, plus explosive cameos by Vince Staples and Kano.
What our reviewer said “You could argue that Juniper’s introspective tone comes at a cost – there’s no room for the kind of sharp, political songs about Brexit, gentrification and immigration that peppered Skin – but Crookes is an impressively snappy lyricist who comes across as smart, streetwise and gobby regardless of the personal trauma she’s describing.” Alexis Petridis
Pick of the rest
Kieran Hebden and William Tyler: 41 Longfield Street Late ’80s
Out now
Summed up in a sentence Lyle Lovett meets brain-scouring distortion on Four Tet’s surprisingly un-nostalgic collaboration with former Lambchop guitarist Tyler.
What our reviewer said “An attempt to resurrect the good old days and/or boys this is not, but Tyler and Hebden have managed to provide a fresh if slightly disjointed take on formative inspiration.” Rachel Aroesti
Cécile McLorin Salvant: Oh Snap
Out now
Summed up in a sentence From breezy swing to scampering synths, folksy harmonies to stark wails of the soul, Salvant’s crystalline vocals shine across her ingenious experiments.
What our reviewer said “The meditative, pandemic-induced Expanse, the playful Auto-Tuned electro-pop of A Little Bit More and the skipping, scampering synth-hooked title track all show how ingeniously and fearlessly this remarkable artist can reinvent herself.” John Fordham
Cardi B: Am I the Drama?
Out now
Summed up in a sentence An album’s worth of imperiously raw and powerful material.
What our reviewer said “An artist who spends six years making an album runs the risk of seeming like an artist mired in uncertainty about what direction to take, but the eclecticism of what’s on offer here feels purposeful rather than confused: there’s a lot of distance between the bright pop of What’s Going On and the Selena Gomez feature Pick It Up and Bodega Baddie’s astonishing warp-speed salsa or the unsettling piano-led minimalism of Check Please.” Alexis Petridis
Schoenberg: Violin Concerto, Verklärte Nacht, Die Jakobsleiter
Out now
Summed up in a sentence Five works by the modernist composer, all taken from concerts given by Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic, include a magnificent performance of the oratorio fragment Die Jakobsleiter.
What our reviewer said “The score contains some of Schoenberg’s most powerful and impressive music, composed at a time when he was moving away from free atonality towards his first 12-note scores, and often more dramatic and theatrical than anything in Moses und Aron. It helps that Petrenko has a first-rate octet of soloists, led by the baritone Wolfgang Koch as Gabriel, but the sense he believes in the quality of every bar is inescapable.” Andrew Clements
