Kelly Reilly (Yellowstone) stars as a school teacher with a past in this chilly Scandi-flavoured noir set in Morfa Halen, a fictional Welsh coastal village. Rafe Spall is the detective sent to investigate when a local child is found dead. My interest was piqued by writer/director Claire Oakley who made her feature debut in 2019 with the unsettling Make-Up, another chilling tale set in an out-of-season British seaside town. Here, her camera loves the huge, dark skies and alien landscapes of the north Wales coast. Perfect if you’re a crime fan choosing to lean into the gloomy season, because in Morfa, it almost never stops raining.

Julia Raeside, writer

I have been eagerly anticipating Amber Husain's Tell Me How You Eat: Food, Power and the Will to Live since I first heard whispers of its existence. Husain is a brilliant writer, critic, and thinker whose work on literature, technology, desire, labour, food, politics, and more I've admired for some time. Tell Me How You Eat is a profound book about what it means to be a person in the world, shaped by what and how we consume, and how we might examine with more risk and range the philosophical implications, options, and choices behind one of life's most basic requirements: food. Husain is a deft stylist and her book straddles memoir, non-fiction, cultural criticism, and perhaps most of all the essay form par excellence, bringing together a dazzling range of research and analysis mixed with narrative and an always compelling voice. This will change how you think, and what you want to tell people you eat, in vast and hopeful ways. 

Emily LaBarge, Nerve art critic

The resplendent romantasy costume designs of Susie Coulthard are honestly the main draw of this queer and feminist fairy tale, adapted by director Julia Jackman from Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel — itself a take on the Middle Eastern folklore of One Thousand and One Nights. But 100 Nights of Hero also features a cool cast, including Emma Corrin, Nicholas Galitzine, and Charli xcx (in one of three films she has out this month); while the meta-narratives are as layered as the chiffon in one of Coulthard’s magnificent gowns. 

Ellen E Jones, Nerve film critic

It must be tricky to have an alter-ego, or many. In the case of Canadian experimentalist Dan Snaith, you’re doomed to forever be asked the question: “how do you know what's a Caribou track or a Daphni one?” On Butterfly, his fourth as Daphni, the producer solves the problem and hosts a collaborative track between everyone. Confused yet? Never mind! This is a brilliantly inventive, fairly full-throttle dart through contemporary dance music, blurring inventive minimalist jungle, peak-time bassline, Gallic jazzy house (“Miles Smiles” has a hint of the St Germain about it) and the sampledelic ebullience of French Touch, pacy 2-step and more. It’s a bit like he’s smeared his thumb over the watercolour palette. Take us to the club immediately. Failing that, the kitchen disco. 

Kate Hutchinson, Nerve music critic

Joanna Kavenna’s seventh novel is much easier to enjoy than to describe. I could say that it’s a trans-European philosophical adventure about an ancient board game with no fixed rules, but it’s also about AI, academia, the shape of the universe, a Society of Lost Things and the Nazi occupation of Crete. And it’s very funny. Kavenna combines the intellectual playfulness of Borges or Eco with the kind of beguilingly chatty narrative voice you find in Ishiguro to achieve a rare balance of profundity and levity — a deliciously unpredictable comedy of ideas. Seven reads like a dream, in both senses of the word.

Dorian Lynskey, Nerve theatre critic

In Felicità, the late Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri (1943 - 1992) looks through his lens at a world seemingly invisible to others. This exhibition, curated by Alessio Bolzoni and Luca Guadagnino, features many works never before exhibited or published, environments where colours are softened and saturated by sunlight, pavements punctuated with discarded ephemera. A silent world where Ghirri's slow gaze and ceaseless curiosity turns pictures into poetry, his camera forever focused on the overlooked and the unseen; ongoing moments in time. 

Michael Morris, Nerve contributing editor

MUSIC

The Music is Black: A British Story

(V&A East, 18 April - 3 January)

From 2tone to grime, the V&A’s huge new storehouse in East London celebrates the impact that Black artistry has had on British music, culture and society over the past 125 years via sound and multimedia installations.

ART

Ai Weiwei: Button Up!

(Factory International, Manchester, 2 July - 6 September)

The renowned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei takes over Aviva Studios' vast Warehouse space as he explores 200 years of world history for his first ever exhibition in the north of England.

THEATRE

Sylvia

(UK tour, 24 September - 15 November)

The Olivier-nominated musical celebrating the life of suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst returns for a UK tour starring Beverley Knight as Emmeline Pankhurst and Sharon Rose as Sylvia Pankhurst. Tours to Leicester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Salford, Norwich, Canterbury and closes at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

ART

Lee Miller at Tate Britain

(Closes 15 February)

Officially now the most popular photography exhibition ever held at any Tate gallery, for its final weeks the Lee Miller show is staying open until 10pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays before it closes on 15 February (while there check out Turner & Constable, also open late on the same evenings, though not closing until April).