Star of the moment Will Sharpe plays insufferable genius Mozart and Paul Bettany his self-loathing rival Salieri in this TV remake of Miloš Forman’s flawless film, for which Peter Shaffer adapted his own magnificent play. Luckily, Giri/Haji’s Joe Barton is at the keys, suffusing this lavish series with his pithy, stylish prose and the cast is totally on-message, animating the ravishing court of 18^th century Vienna with their base hankerings.

Sharpe and Bettany joust brilliantly, but stand-out is Gabrielle Creevey as Mozart’s enterprising wife, Constanze, a true star. While it owes much of its flavour to the original, it’s madly absorbing fun from start to finish.

Julia Raeside, writer

“Do You understand? I hope You are listening? No, You cannot ask Questions,” declares Adelheid Brunner at the start of Alice Jolly’s hugely compelling The Matchbox Girl, set in occupied Vienna during the second World War. It isn’t long before you’re entirely under the spell of this enchanting, highly original young narrator. Non-verbal, autistic, with a pet rat in her pocket, her secret notebooks under her arm and a fixation with collecting matchbox covers - her aim is to reach 1000 - she has been deposited at the Vienna children’s hospital by her grandmother, who sees her as “an idiot”. Here Adelheid meets the enigmatic Dr A: Hans Asperger, whose research at the hospital in the 1930s paved the way for the understanding of autism. Jolly blends history and fiction, real people mingling with invented characters, as the arrival of the Nazis in Vienna transforms the clinic from a place of safety into something altogether more sinister. Was Asperger “A brilliant Pioneer of Autism Research or a Murderer?” asks Adelheid (with her characteristic splattering of capital letters). In this moving, funny novel that is also as tense as a thriller, Jolly suggests there is no easy answer.

Lisa O’Kelly, Nerve contributing writer

One man shows do not get better than this. Fresh from adapting Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty for the Almeida, Jack Holden is a mesmerising figure front of stage for a reworking of his true crime mystery Kenrex. It's a gripping tale set in the small farming town of Skidmore, Missouri where the population were tyrannised by the eponymous bully of the title. Holden, who's also co-writer, memorably conjures up the different characters in the community - from Ida the pub landlady to the slippery defence lawyer McFadin. A tour de force from Holden with a bluesy soundtrack composed and performed by John Patrick Elliott. Catch it if you can.

Jane Ferguson, Nerve co-founder

Eugene Jarecki’s film about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was five years in the making and the director does a laudable job of marshalling the detail - without interviewing Assange directly - of this story about a man who started as a champion of press freedom bravely exposing government secrets and ended up in crisis, spending seven years inside a ground floor Mayfair flat (the Ecuadorian embassy) to avoid extradition to the US, followed by five years in Belmarsh prison. While taking the position that Assange is a man more sinned against than sinning, the film doesn’t strain to heroise, depicting its subject as a complicated, strange character whose motivations are never entirely clear, and wikileaks to be a fairly chaotic organisation. It ties up its defence of the rape allegations against Assange too neatly, but this is an absorbing film asking serious questions about press freedom, asserting that what happened with Assange was a precursor to a wider crackdown on journalistic freedoms in the US and beyond. Particularly striking is how revelations that were so shocking 15 or so years ago -  for example, governments spying on other governments - seem tame besides what is now happening in plain sight. 

Sarah Donaldson, co-founder

Stephen Christopher and Graeme Smith's hit play focuses on three recovering addicts, one of whom harbours a secret love of dancing that turns him into an unwitting internet sensation. It is an infectiously funny, deeply moving, and ultimately joyous portrait of male friendship during dark times, and Brian Logan's fleet production - first seen in Glasgow earlier this year and now getting a deserved longer run in Edinburgh - is a welcome respite from the plethora of pantomimes on stage right now.

Fergus Morgan, writer

The show’s title refers to the brand new work in the downstairs rooms - bright portraits, interiors and still lifes, including a gorgeously perky depiction of Van Gogh and Gauguin's chairs - all painted in the last six months in Hockney's London studio. But it was the moon works upstairs that stopped me in my tracks: 17 works made on canvas and iPad capturing the night sky outside Hockney's Normandy studio in France through the seasons. Hung in a pair of rooms painted a deep blue, they show the moon glowing beautifully over the landscapes below, gently kissing leaves and blades of grass with light. Standing among these hushed, atmospheric works feels like a moment in nature - no mean feat just yards away from the pre-Christmas bustle of Oxford Circus.

Imogen Carter, co-founder

Don't (or try not to) be put off by the fact that when Quentin Tarantino directed this film, he allegedly made Uma Thurman undertake dangerous stunts that left her with a permanent injury (it's said they've made amends) or that it’s produced by the notoriously disgraced Harvey Weinstein, because Kill Bill parts 1 and 2 are amongst the best female revenge films ever made. Now you can see both parts joined together in the cinema, with several tweaks and an additional animated short about an additional lady vengeance. Thurman is brilliant as "The Bride," bent on ruining those who plotted her grisly assassination and left her for dead. She scrabbles her way back from the grave several times and speeds across the country in her bright yellow jumpsuit and her matching Onitsuka Tiger shoes leaving a trail of destruction in her wake. For me, this is the only film by Tarantino that doesn't seem over the top because, as they say, a woman scorned...And this film is delightfully chock full of them.

Emily LaBarge, Nerve art critic

MUSIC
Rosalia tour
Having graced countless albums of 2025 lists with Lux, next year Rosalia tours North and South America and Europe including two dates in London in May.

THEATRE
Pitlochry Festival Theatre 2026 season

The actor Alan Cumming’s first season as artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre includes the Scottish premiere of acclaimed musical Once, Maureen Beattie taking the title role in Lear, Simon Russell Beale and Fra Fee in the World Premiere of Martin Sherman’s new play I’ll Be Seeing You, and Cumming and Shirley Henderson reuniting in Scottish musical A History of Paper.

ART
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories

(Royal Academy, London W1, ends 18 January)
Don’t miss the largest exhibition of the American painter's work outside the US to date, huge canvases chronicling Black American life.