Going out: Cinema

The Drama
Out now
It is hard to imagine a more zeitgeist-flavoured proposition than Zendaya and Robert Pattinson starring in a dark romantic comedy from A24 – and frankly we are here for it. The pair play a couple whose relationship is tested by the revelation of brand new information during their engagement. Directed by Kristoffer Borgli (Dream Scenario).

Kim Novak’s Vertigo
Out now
The notional star of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterly ode to obsession is James Stewart, but it is the image of Kim Novak in her iconic dual role that endures. Documentarian Alexandre O Philippe sits down with the actor as she discusses her career in general and her iconic work on Vertigo in particular.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
Out now
Make way, multiplexes, for the big Easter holiday family animation: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black and Keegan-Michael Key are back, in voice form, in a Super Mario adventure set in outer space, with new elements including the introduction of Bowser Jr, voiced by Uncut Gems director Benny Safdie.
Fuze
Out now
The work of Scottish director David Mackenzie (Hell Or High Water) is hard to pigeonhole, but he certainly seems to have been on a run of thrillers in recent times: this is his latest, and it sees Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James and Gugu Mbatha-Raw caught up in chaos following the discovery of an unexploded second world war bomb in London. Catherine Bray

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Going out: Gigs

Jessie J
Tuesday to 14 April; tour starts Birmingham
After a turbulent few years, Jessie J returned to the UK charts last year with her slick sixth album Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time. Expect her to showcase those newer songs on this tour, alongside early hits Domino and anti-capitalist anthem Price Tag. Michael Cragg

Jamie Woon
6 to 9 April; tour starts Glasgow
After becoming a critical darling in the early 2010s, British singer-songwriter Woon disappeared after 2015’s second album, Making Time. More than a decade later, he’s back on the road in support of last October’s 3, 10, Why, When, which showcases his lithe, featherlight vocals and sonic experimentation. MC

The National Youth Orchestra
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 9 April, ; Royal Festival Hall, London, 11 April
From choreography to kazoos, performances by the UK’s top orchestra for 13- to 19-year-olds often feature a surprise or two – and always fizz with energy. Their latest tour sees pPrincipal conductor Alpesh Chauhan lead the charge through emotionally epic works by Wagner, Prokoviev and Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi. Flora Willson

The Wonder of Stevie
Concorde Club, Eastleigh, 10 April; touring to 11 November
The ageless music of soul-funk giant Stevie Wonder is lovingly celebrated by eloquent vocalist Noel McCalla and exciting Jools Holland saxophonist Derek Nash, fronting a powerful and popular sextet that made its album debut with the repertoire in 2021. Stevie’s five-decade career will feature, with classics including Superstition and My Cherie Amour. John Fordham

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Going out: Art

Cecily Brown
Serpentine Gallery, London, to 6 September
The Serpentine has gone mad for paintings. A gallery often associated with cutting-edge installations has opened starry shows by Doig, Hockney and now Cecily Brown. This British painter who has worked for years in New York has created brushy, expressionistic, green-dappled new works in direct response to Kensington Gardens.

Henry Moore: The Shelter Drawings
Henry Moore Studio and Gardens, Perry Green, nr Bishop’s Stortford, to 25 October
Huddled bodies in sepulchral shelters, humanity surviving in the depths of a bombed city: the drawings Moore made of Londoners taking refuge from Nazi air raids in underground stations are his greatest works. Echoes of Etruscan art add to the timeless intensity as he sees monumental dignity in platform sleepers.

Catwalk
V&A Dundee, to 17 January 2027
Who knew the catwalk had a history? But of course it does, and this exhibition tells the tale of high fashion’s most famous ritual since its beginnings in the late 1800s. Among the designers whose glamorous or shocking catwalk shows are revisited are Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and Mary Quant.

Halima Cassell
Tate St Ives, to 4 October
This British artist who was born in Kashmir creates geometric, swirling, enticing abstract art that’s very much in the tradition of St Ives and its modern artists. In this museum close to the home and studio of Barbara Hepworth, she proves Hepworth’s spirit is alive in the art of today. Jonathan Jones

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Going out: Stage

A Doll’s House
Almeida theatre, London, to 23 May
Romola Garai, who is always especially mesmerising on stage, stars in Anya Reiss’s contemporary version of Ibsen’s domestic tragedy. When scandal threatens to wreck Nora and Torvald’s marriage, will they find a way to restore peace – and prosperity – at home? Miriam Gillinson

Jake Roche
Soho theatre, London, 7 to 11 April
The son of Shane Richie and Coleen Nolan, Roche charts how his own dreams of stardom came true – thanks to a No 1 single with his boyband Rixton – then spectacularly fell apart in a comedy musical that digs into nepo baby-dom, failure and the surreality of celebrity life. Rachel Aroesti

Elixir festival
Sadler’s Wells, London, 7 to 27 April
The annual festival celebrating older dancers opens with Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal – there’ll also be a long parade of dancers performing Bausch’s Nelken Line through east London’s Olympic Park. Another highlight: the brilliant 67-year-old Louise Lecavalier, once dance’s most athletic performer, who also toured with David Bowie. Lyndsey Winship

Kiss of the Spider Woman
Curve theatre, Leicester, to 25 April
Paul Foster directs a rare revival of Kander and Ebb’s (Cabaret, Chicago) darkly charged Tony-winning musical. Set in a brutal Argentine prison, two cellmates form a fraught bond – as they fantasise about films and the dangerously seductive Spider Woman (Anna-Jane Casey). MG

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Staying in: Streaming

Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair
Disney+, 10 April
Post-Scrubs revival, another kooky 2000s comedy makes a comeback. Reuniting most of the original cast (including Bryan Cranston), this reboot opens with the eponymous Malcolm happily estranged from his ludicrously dysfunctional family – until they suddenly decide to force him back into the fold.

Twenty Twenty Six
iPlayer & BBC Two, 8 April, 10pm
Ian Fletcher lives! Following stints at the Olympics and the BBC, Hugh Bonneville’s managerial maven pops up again in Miami to take on the role of “director of integrity” at an unnamed international football tournament in John Morton’s ongoing satire of bureaucracy and corporate culture.

The Miniature Wife
Now & Sky Atlantic, 9 April, 9pm
A man invents a device that drastically reduces the size of objects and accidentally turns it on his family. That’s the plot of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids – and also the premise of this new comedy-drama, starring Matthew Macfadyen as the aforementioned scientist and Elizabeth Banks as his newly tiny spouse.

The Testaments
Disney+, 8 April
Ann Dowd returns as Aunt Lydia – now the head of a girls’ school in Gilead – in this adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 2019 novel, set 15 years after The Handmaid’s Tale. Her pupils include Agnes (One Battle After Another’s Chase Infiniti), who bonds with new Canadian student Lucy as insubordination brews. RA

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Staying in: Games

The House of Hikmah
PC, out 8 April
This gorgeous narrative adventure, set during the Islamic Golden Age, is in the style of the PlayStation classic Journey and shares its composer, Austin Wintory). Lead character Maya processes the grief of losing her father by exploring a puzzle-filled realm.

People of Note
PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, PC; out 7 April
Struggling solo artist Cadence travels across urreal musical landscape recruiting members for a new band while battling harmony-hating foes. An intriguing blend of rhythm action and role-playing adventure.

Keith Stuart

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Staying in: Albums

Dermot Kennedy – The Weight of the Woods
Out now
Irish singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy returns with his first album in four years. The follow-up to 2019’s Without Fear and 2022’s Sonder, both UK No 1s, it features the arena-ready sad singalong Funeral, and the slowburn Refuge, co-written with Mikky Ekko (Rihanna, Teddy Swims).

Thundercat – Distracted
Out now
Genre-hopping LA musician Stephen Bruner continues to dive headfirst into music’s ballpit on this guest-heavy fifth album. ThunderWave is a blissed-out futuristic R&B duet with Willow, while the funk-laden I Did This to Myself, which features Flying Lotus, shimmies on to the dancefloor.

Arlo Parks – Ambiguous Desire
Out now
Inspired by nights out at various queer clubs in New York, and the British sounds of acts such as the Streets, the Brit-winning Parks switches things up on this third album. Mixing skittering beats, airy atmospherics and emotional catharsis, Ambiguous Desire feels primed for late-night reflection.

Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE, Surf Gang – Pompeii // Utility
Out now
After collaborating on one another’s projects for years, rappers Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE, plus rap collective Surf Gang, come together for this 33-track double album. Songs like Minty and Earth mix impressionistic verses and shifting sonic textures that gradually appear from the haze. MC

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Staying in: Brain food

Close Readings
Podcast
This fascinating series (above) from the London Review of Books sees experts unpicking the tropes and texts that exemplify different genres, from Shakespeare’s narrative poetry to Dostoevsky and Flaubert’s realism, through fantasy fiction and beyond.

Learn Ancient Greek
YouTube
Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies has made this comprehensive 114-part course for learning Ancient Greek available for free on its YouTube channel. Academics Leonard Muellner and Belisi Gillespie cover accents, grammar and extensive vocabulary.

Storyville: André Is an Idiot
Tuesday, 10pm, BBC Four & iPlayer
Deeply moving and strangely hilarious, this film follows André Ricciardi’s mission to die on his own terms following a terminal bowel cancer diagnosis. Partly a PSA to encourage colonoscopies it also muses on end-of-life care. Ammar Kalia