Going Out: Cinema
Where the Crawdads Sing
Out now
Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones heads to the swamplands of North Carolina to star in this adaptation of the hit mystery novel by Delia Owens about an abandoned girl who grows up in the wilderness and is later accused of murder. Features new music from Taylor Swift.
All Light, Everywhere
Out now
Winner of the US documentary special jury award at Sundance, All Light, Everywhere unpicks the unspoken biases inherent in any filmed point of view. Is a CCTV camera simply a neutral observer? How about a police body camera? Turns out, neutrality is very much in the eye of the beholder. Essential viewing.
Satyajit Ray season
To 31 August
The BFI has put together a veritable banquet of a season dedicated to the work of the genius that is Satyajit Ray, the most celebrated Indian film-maker of all time. Catch films from the season at London’s Southbank and on tour across the UK.
Notre-Dame on Fire
Out now
Director Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Name of the Rose) tackles the confounding true story of how one of the most famous and beloved historic buildings in the world was nearly burned to the ground in April 2019. Filming took place in the Notre-Dame lookalike cathedral at Bourges. Catherine Bray
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Going Out: Gigs
Y Not? festival
Pikehall, Derbyshire, 29 to 31 July
The headliners may be dominated by men with guitars – Stereophonics on Friday, Courteeners on Saturday, Blossoms on Sunday – but there are some gems on offer at this east Midlands festival. Baby Queen (above) brings bolshie pop to the main stage, while emo-pop practitioners Pale Waves and R&B maverick Kelis own the second stage.
Lady Gaga
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London, 29 & 30 July
Having returned to the dancefloor via 2020’s sixth album Chromatica, Gaga’s pop party was cruelly curtailed by the pandemic. Two years later and she finally gets to air the likes of Rain on Me and Stupid Love in gargantuan stadiums, adding them to a stellar back catalogue of uplifting anthems. Michael Cragg
Joey DeFrancesco Trio
Ronnie Scott’s Club, London, 27 & 28 July
Hammond organs still make soulfully thrilling jazz – especially as played by the Philadelphia-raised multi-instrumentalist and accompanist to David Sanborn and Van Morrison. His driving basslines and storming chordwork have been rousing crowds for three decades. John Fordham
The Site of an Investigation
Royal Albert Hall, London, 28 July
In a Proms season notably short on new works, the London premiere of Jennifer Walshe’s symphonic snapshot of the contemporary world stands out. With Walshe herself as the solo vocalist, this takes in everything from micropollution to artificial intelligence, the perils of Facebook to interplanetary colonisation. Andrew Clements
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Going Out: Art
Cardboard Gothic: Damsels, Demons and Heroes
Strawberry Hill House, London, to 14 September
The imagination of 18th-century author Horace Walpole is brought to life in miniature tableaux by Pollock’s Toy Museum. Walpole dreamed up the first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, in his neo-medieval home Strawberry Hill. This exhibition returns his fantasy to the house in a painted paper haunting.
Space Popular: The Portal Galleries
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, to 25 September
The design duo have created a collection of “portals” that open on to virtual journeys in time and space. It suits this museum built in the Regency era, with mirrors that make it bigger inside than outside. The Doctor Who Tardis and JK Rowling’s Platform 9¾ feature in this fantasy travel show.
Edinburgh Art festival
Various venues, 28 July to 28 August
The visual component of Edinburgh’s festival season offers a huge variety of art from Tracey Emin and Lynsey MacKenzie to the skeleton of murderer William Burke. There are site-specific installations all over the old and new towns, special commissions and a host of gallery shows. The 200-year-old Union Canal gets a special focus.
Lindsey Mendick: Off With Her Head
Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, to 28 August
This funny, fantastical artist makes exuberant, luscious and monstrous ceramic sculptures. She also creates polemical pictorial works that range boldy across history to salute maligned women such as Anne Boleyn, Diana, Princess of Wales and even the mythological Medusa. An imagination overflowing with snakes and lustreware makes Mendick an artist to watch. Jonathan Jones
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Going Out: Stage
Whistle Down the Wind
Watermill theatre, Newbury, to 10 September
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman’s rock musical is revived by Watermill’s brilliant band of actor-musicians. It’s a curious work about a grieving young teenager who becomes convinced the man hiding in the family barn is Jesus.
Chasing Hares
Young Vic, London, to 13 August
Sonali Bhattacharyya’s new play is set between the UK and West Bengal and is about a factory worker on the brink of rebellion. Directed by Milli Bhatia (Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner). Miriam Gilinson
Sharon Eyal and L-E-V: Dark in the House
Bold Tendencies, London, 28 July
Eyal’s brand of club-influenced choreography, with its androgynous bodies and dystopian mood, is a great fit for Bold Tendencies, the programme that takes place in the concrete surrounds of a Peckham multistorey car park. Eyal’s company performs a mix of works, including some UK premieres. Lindsey Winship
Patti Harrison
Soho theatre, London, 25 to 30 July; Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, 3 to 15 August
The inveterate scene-stealer (see: memorable roles in Shrill and Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave) brings her mesmerically bizarre but invariably brilliant comic timing and ridiculous pop-culture parodies to London and, next month, the Edinburgh fringe to London and, next month, the Edinburgh fringe. Rachel Aroesti
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Staying In: Streaming
The Great
27 July, 10pm, Channel 4
Elle Fanning returns as 18th-century Russian empress Catherine – who has recently usurped her husband, Peter III (Nicholas Hoult), as leader – for a second series of this boldly anachronistic, unashamedly inaccurate and wildly entertaining period drama. Just don’t treat it as a history lesson.
Under the Banner of Heaven
27 July, Disney+
Based on the horrific 1984 murders of Brenda Lafferty and her baby daughter, this latest addition to the true-crime drama avalanche is both a grisly police procedural and a damning portrayal of Mormon fundamentalism. Daisy Edgar-Jones is Lafferty; Andrew Garfield plays the conflicted detective in charge.
Surface
29 July, Apple TV+
The perfect life that isn’t quite as perfect as it seems might feel like an overdone concept in TV drama, but this thriller – starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a woman piecing together her apparent suicide attempt – takes the standard combination of glossy aspiration and terrifying manipulation to a particularly dark and twisty place.
Uncoupled
29 July, Netflix
Another New York romp from Sex and the City creator Darren Star. It follows Michael (Neil Patrick Harris), freshly dumped by his husband of 17 years and determined to get back out on the dating scene – still-crippling heartache invariably in tow. RA
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Staying In: Games
As Dusk Falls
Out now, Xbox, PC
A road-trip thriller in which your branching decisions affect who lives and dies, among other bits. The painted art style is eyecatching, too.
Live a Live
Out now, Switch
A remake of a rather obscure 1994 game by Square, released for the first time outside Japan, this role-playing classic is a kind of Cloud Atlas situation that follows seven stories across different time periods. Keza MacDonald
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Staying In: Albums
Sean Nicholas Savage – Shine
Out now
The prolific – this is his 15th album in 14 years – Canadian singer-songwriter and Solange collaborator teams up with Mac DeMarco on the typically lo-fi Shine. Meandering and strangely beautiful, songs such as recent single Streets of Rage showcase the 36-year-old occasional model’s rare talent.
Rico Nasty – Las Ruinas
Out now
Released in 2018, the off-the-cuff Smack a Bitch from the Maryland rapper perfectly encapsulated her sound, fusing jagged rock riffs, head-knocking beats and unbridled rage. That continues on this new mixtape, the follow-up to 2020’s major label debut Nightmare Vacation. Singles Black Punk and screamo anthem Intrusive are as unapologetic as ever.
Jack White – Entering Heaven Alive
Out now
Three months on from the release of his fourth solo album, Fear of the Dawn, Jack White is back with its follow-up. While that collection tapped into the musical polymath’s weirder, more prog-leaning tendencies, the strip-backed Entering Heaven Alive slows the pace right down, as on the pretty, piano-assisted Help Me Along.
She & Him – Melt Away: A Tribute to Brian Wilson
Out now
With a career peppered with cover versions, be it their two Christmas collections or 2014’s Classics, it’s perhaps no surprise that Zooey Deschanel and M Ward’s seventh album tackles one of music’s greatest songwriters. Their version of Wouldn’t It Be Nice is tweeness personified. MC
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Staying In: Brain food
Mad Tracey from Margate
26 July, 7pm, Sky Arts
Featuring self-shot camcorder footage from the late 90s, this intimate portrait of Tracey Emin provides an unguarded account of the artist known for her self-probing works. A fascinating insight into a talent on the brink of stardom.
My Mother Made Me
Podcast
Writer Jason Reynolds and his mother Isabell host this delicately beautiful four-part series exploring motherhood and how the parent-child relationship shifts through the years. From shopping in Costco to hitting the casino, their discussions are far-ranging and fruitful.
Hew Locke: Let’s Make Something Positive
Tate YouTube
Creator of the 2022 Tate Britain commission, The Procession, artist Hew Locke explores the inspirations behind his vibrant and sprawling installation in this mini-documentary. Based on the idea of nationhood, Locke unpacks his use of colonial symbolism. Ammar Kalia
