Going out: Cinema
Bob Marley: One Love
Out now
Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch star as Bob and Rita Marley, in this musical biopic produced by, among many others, the Marleys’ son Ziggy. Telling the story of Marley’s music, life and revolutionary politics, it is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard).
The Taste of Things
Out now
Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel cook up a storm in this 1885-set romance between a gourmand and his cook. It’s rare to see quite this much screen time given over to the culinary arts, with most of the film devoted to loving depictions of the creation of lavish meals. Warning: will make your tummy rumble.
Interview With the Vampire (30th Anniversary)
Out now
Starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, this atmospheric adaptation of Anne Rice’s gothic vampire novel is back in cinemas for its 30th anniversary. Watch out for a star-making performance from an 11-year-old Kirsten Dunst as vampire child Claudia.
BFI Future film festival
Southbank, London, 17 to 18 February
The UK’s largest festival for young film-makers (ages 16-25) returns with guests including Maisie Williams, Lowri Roberts and Hannah Marie Williams. This year’s festival also includes satellite events around the UK, including Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow and Sheffield. Catherine Bray
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Going out: Gigs
L’Rain
17 to 25 February; tour starts Dublin
Brooklyn’s Taja Cheekbrings last year’s excellent third album, I Killed Your Dog – a self-described “anti-breakup” record full of “indie dad rock and experimental electronics” – to the UK. With squirming melodies and scratchy guitar, expect Pet Rock to go down particularly well. Michael Cragg
PinkPantheress
20 to 23 February; tour starts Dublin
Having bent pop to her will via a string of mixtapes, EPs and collabs full of Y2K touchstones, PinkPantheress released her debut album, Heaven Knows, at the end of 2023. She gets the chance to air some of its best bits, including the McFly-interpolating True Romance, at these shows. MC
Erskine & Kavuma
17 February to 15 March; tour starts London
The album-launch tour for this spirited quartet led by trumpeter Mark Kavuma and saxist Theo Erskine. They blend Thelonious Monk, the soulful 1960s hard-bop jazz style, and sounds from the eclectic contemporary London scene. It’s vividly inviting music that brings smiles to jazz traditionalists and newcomers alike. John Fordham
Dies Irae
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 21 February
Music by George Crumb and Giacinto Scelsi is mixed with Biber, Dowland and Gregorian chant in violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s latest evening-long programme. Galina Ustvolskaya’s ferocious Composition No 2: Dies Irae, provides the climax. Andrew Clements
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Going out: Stage
Jessica Fostekew
Touring to 21 June
Forty-year-old Fostekew exudes no-nonsense best mate vibes; self-effacing yet winningly forthright, her material journeys through the chaos of modern motherhood with a hardy jocularity. Now, she’s channelling that same energy into Mettle, which sees her celebrate the clarity she’s found in middle age. Rachel Aroesti
The Human Body
Donmar Warehouse, London, to 13 April
As capable of writing witty musicals (The Witches) as demanding plays (Chimerica), Lucy Kirkwood here pens a political romcom. Set in Shropshire in the wake of the 1946 National Health Service Act, this stars Keeley Hawes and Jack Davenport. Miriam Gillinson
Two Sisters
Royal Lyceum theatre, Edinburgh, to 2 March
David Greig’s first wholly original play in five years takes place over a weekend, as sisters Emma and Amy return to the caravan park of their childhood. A story about “looking back and looking forward”, directed by Greig’s frequent collaborator Wils Wilson. MG
Belonging: Loss. Legacy. Love.
Leeds Playhouse, 21 to 23 February; touring to 4 May
This triple bill from Phoenix Dance Theatre includes the first chance to see choreography from new artistic director Marcus Jarrell Willis (a former member of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater). Willis’s piece is performed alongside the premiere of Miguel Altunaga’s Cloudburst and extracts from Dane Hurst’s Requiem, set to Mozart. Lyndsey Winship
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Going out: Art
Saul Leiter
MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, today to 2 June
The colour photographs that Saul Leiter shot on the streets of 1950s New York have a striking similarity to Japanese woodblock prints of everyday life. He loved to photograph people in the city amid puffs of white falling snow, or through a misted window. A modern painter with a camera.
William Blake’s Universe
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 23 February to 19 May
In the age of the French Revolution, the poet and artist William Blake rejected science and Christian morality to create his own personal theory of life, the universe and everything. Freedom and enslavement, experience and innocence are among his dialectical obsessions. This exhibition promises to go beyond his art and into his mind.
Yoko Ono
Tate Modern, London, to 1 September
The conceptual artist John Lennon fell in love with paid a heavy price for it by being caricatured as a strange avant-garde poseur, but Ono was one of the great aesthetic revolutionaries of the 1960s. At last, her huge and radical contribution to modern art gets its due.
Sargent and Fashion
Tate Britain, London, 22 February to 7 July
This may sound like a tangential way to approach a great artist but it beautifully illuminates the brilliant strangeness of John Singer Sargent. Like his friend the novelist Henry James, this American-born painter was a sophisticated observer of late Victorian and Edwardian high society – and its luxuriously sensual garb. Jonathan Jones
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Staying in: Streaming
The Way
BBC One & iPlayer, 19 February, 9pm
Dream team alert! Sherwood writer James Graham, documentarian Adam Curtis and actor-director Michael Sheen team up for a genre-defying series that hops between farce, horror and bleak drama as it follows a family on the run after a civil uprising in their home town of Port Talbot.
Constellation
Apple TV+, 21 February
Even if you’ve had your fill of twisty sci-fi, this series from Peter Harness (McMafia) about Jo (Noomi Rapace), a woman who returns from a disastrous space mission to a subtly altered Earth – including an apparently different daughter – looks far more intriguing than your run-of-the-mill spaceship story.
Boarders
BBC Three & iPlayer, 20 February, 9pm
When an elite public school has a PR crisis, it tries to foster goodwill by giving scholarships to five underprivileged black students in this comedy-drama from Daniel Lawrence Taylor (Timewasters). It’s a whole new, deeply archaic, world for the new arrivals – and they must adapt fast.
Can I Tell You a Secret?
Netflix, 21 February
In 2022, the Guardian’s Sirin Kale wrote about Britain’s worst-ever cyberstalker, Matthew Hardy, who made innumerable women’s lives hell with his strange and prolific online harassment. Last year, she made the story into a podcast and now we have a docuseries, with Hardy’s victims telling their chilling stories in their own words. RA
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Staying in: Games
Skull and Bones
PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, out now
After many delays, Ubisoft’s pirate epic is finally getting launched on to the stormy seas of the open-world adventure genre. Explore a lush oceanic world, customising your ship and battling any salty sea dogs who chance your way. There’s a co-op mode, too – although Sea of Thieves will take some beating in this respect.
Last Epoch
PC, out 21 February
This hardcore action role-playing adventure has been available in early access form on Steam for almost five years, earning hugely positive reviews and drawing favourable comparisons with Diablo IV. Now it’s getting an official release, with all the dungeon-looting, crafting, fighting and levelling-up fun you can handle. Keith Stuart
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Staying in: Albums
Idles – Tangk
Out now
Co-produced by Nigel Godrich and Kenny Beats, with an appearance from LCD Soundsystem on the clattering Dancer, shouty Bristolians Idles) aren’t messing around on this fifth album. Named after a made-up onomatopoeic word meant to represent the album’s thrashing guitar, it’s a euphoric collection of ragers.
Jennifer Lopez – This Is Me … Now
Out now
The belated sequel to 2002’s This Is Me … Then was inspired by Lopez’s rekindled relationship with Ben Affleck. Lead single Can’t Get Enough, which Lopez premiered at their wedding in 2022, is the heart eyes emoji in musical form, while the album also promises the follow-up to soppy ballad Dear Ben.
Serpentwithfeet – Grip
Out now
Genre polymath Josiah Wise, whose collaborators range from Björk to Moby to Ellie Goulding, returns with his third album. Exploring love, lust and longing, it features the tactile slow jam Safe Word and the hot and heavy Damn Gloves, featuring Yanga YaYa and Ty Dolla $ign.
Paloma Faith – The Glorification of Sadness
Out now
Angrier and darker than her five previous albums – one song is called Eat Shit and Die – this release finds Faith unpicking a failed relationship. How You Leave a Man is a barnstorming ode to moving on, and Pressure is the sound of a woman just about keeping afloat. MC
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Staying in: Brain food
Peter Doherty: Stranger in My Own Skin
Sky Documentaries, 17 February, 9pm
Following a recent interview special with Louis Theroux, this archive-filled film on the Libertines co-frontman presents a more detailed account of his struggles with drug abuse and the tabloid circus that followed him throughout the early 2000s.
Odd Lots
Podcast
Bloomberg’s finance series might seem like a niche for economists only but hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway share fascinating insights into everything from the future of the US dollar to the impact of bad data.
60 Minutes
YouTube
The long-running US documentary series presents an array of engaging online highlights, including investigations into art forgery and the operations of Interpol, as well as archive features on playwright August Wilson and Steve Jobs. Ammar Kalia
