Alice Oseman brings her hit queer romance series, based on her books, to a close with a bittersweet feature-length finale. Her culture-shifting love story about schoolkids Nick and Charlie brought mainstream Netflix visibility to queer and trans teens with its tender handling of young love, gender confusion and acceptance. The warm heart and uplifting optimism are still in evidence as the gang prepare for the end of their schooldays. But can first love survive the upheaval of university and impending adulthood? Oseman never speaks down to her audience and somehow maintains the good-hearted golden glow of the original series while tackling some very grown-up issues in this final story.

As a parent of one member of the Heartstopper generation, I’ll be forever grateful to her for the cultural space she provided for the queer, alternative kids who wished to see themselves and their friends represented on screen.

Julia Raeside, culture writer

Ever Land is a beautiful and heart-wrenching novel about two women: one Jewish, one Palestinian, one alive, one dead – killed in the Six-Day War in 1967 but stuck in limbo until she discovers what happened to her sister. Their relationship tells a haunting story about seeking answers in a world defined by senseless violence. The book — a debut novel by Amy Abdelnoor, a British-Arab writer who spent time living and working in the West Bank in her 20s — is a powerful, emotional and exquisitely observed novel about grief, dispossession and occupation, told with such delicate grace that it will leave you reeling. Everybody should read it. 

Lucia Osborne-Crowley, Nerve writer

The Courtauld’s special exhibitions are reliably excellent. Whether exhibiting Wayne Thiebaud’s delicious still lifes or Roger Mayne’s photographs of 1960s teens, the two rooms housing its temporary exhibitions always offer an enriching, deep dive. And what’s not to like about taking in treasures by Manet, Degas and co from the permanent collection en route? Hepworth in Colour maintains the gallery’s high standards with a gorgeous show exploring the British sculptor Barbara Hepworth’s use of colour (for the first time in an exhibition, so we’re told) through 20 sculptures and 30 drawings. Inspired by natural landscapes and forms, particularly Cornwall’s coastline, Hepworth’s sculptures are often rendered in calm neutral tones, so it’s a joy to see artworks reflecting her passion for colour collected together; to learn – and see – that she was heavily influenced by a 1935 visit to Piet Mondrian’s studio. Bright geometric works hang alongside fabulous abstract sculptures such as Eidos (1947), carved from Portland stone with a glowing yellow sun painted at its heart, and Two Opposing Forms (Grey and Green) (1969), featuring a slice of mossy green marble so richly detailed that it seems to contain an entire landscape.

Imogen Carter, Nerve co-founder

Theatre collective In Bed With My Brother – Nora Alexander, Dora Lynn and Kat Cory – have spent a decade making intense, anarchic shows about Manchester’s rave scene, murdering Jeff Bezos, The KLF and more. Their latest, Philosophy Of The World, is about the Shaggs – an American band of three sisters, forced to form by their father in 1965, widely ridiculed for their eccentric music, then “rediscovered” by Kurt Cobain and others. Through a typically messy mix of manic clowning, audience interaction and mock violence – and with the help of game experimental theatre legend Nigel Barrett – the collective thrillingly draw out the deeper, darker themes in The Shaggs' strange, sad story. A huge hit at last year’s Edinburgh fringe, the show now arrives at the newly redeveloped Yard theatre, the opening salvo in a season that includes Ian McKellen doing a radical adaptation of King Lear this autumn.

Fergus Morgan, culture writer

Exploring how Gypsy and Traveller communities shape their homes through stories, art and poetry, this exhibition honours experiences outside of the mainstream while highlighting the laws and ideas that threaten them. Affection and defiance combine in many of the works, including Charmaine Abdul Karim’s photographs and objects related to Sound Common in Cheshire, where Romani families lived from the 16th century until a ban in the 1960s. As an outsider to these communities, I felt privileged to be invited inside their personal spaces and private worlds, not least through Mitch Miller’s A Showman’s Yard - a meticulously detailed pen-and-ink graphic of the places and people of Glasgow’s Showpeople community. Everyone shares a need to create their own idea of home, so while this exhibition is a celebration of different ways of living, the overriding impression is how much we all have in common.

Laura Davis, culture writer

You don't need to understand cryptocurrency to find this documentary deeply unsettling. Matt Shea's investigation drops viewers into the influential world of cryptobillionaires attempting to unravel democracy; the blockchain jargon is almost beside the point. More startling are the revelations that the crypto industry became the biggest corporate donor in the 2024 US election, pouring hundreds of millions into politics, while some of its richest advocates openly argue that blockchain could replace governments and banks altogether. Shea, whose previous documentary The Dangerous Rise of Andrew Tate, was Emmy-nominated, embeds himself among these figures, asking disarmingly simple questions that let extraordinary characters reveal themselves. He begins with Justin Sun, the $8.5bn founder of Tron, one of the world's biggest blockchain networks, which has been linked to organised crime, then visits the libertarian fantasy microstate of Liberland before meeting Silicon Valley's next generation of tech "superheroes", each encounter adding to a picture of a worldview where governments are ripe for replacement and corporations reign supreme.

Brenna Spain, Nerve intern

Rough Trade Books’ events are always brilliant: you find yourself falling in love with performers you’ve never heard of before and seeing artists you follow in a totally different light. Part of celebrations marking 50 years since the first Rough Trade record shop opened its doors, this evening at the Southbank Centre on Friday includes the fab Arab Strap musician Aidan Moffat collaborating with award-winning poet Ella Frears, while the author Max Porter is joined by This Is The Kit’s Kate Stables for “a richly sonic performance of his All of This Unreal Time”. I rest my case …

Susan Ferguson, Nerve events

ART
LS Lowry: The Theatre of Life
(MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, 24 October-28 February)

This blockbuster exhibition of more than 140 paintings and drawings by the cherished Mancunian artist who captured working class life in England’s postwar north-west includes major works, rarely shown urban sketches and the much-loved A Football Match (1932), on display at a public gallery for the first time in almost 85 years.

THEATRE
Tartuffe (Remixed)
(Marylebone theatre, London NW1, 4 September-24 October)

Mark Rylance stars in a new version of Molière’s classic comedy, written and directed by Darren Raymond, which relocates the tale from 17th-century Paris to an African-Caribbean household in modern England where the outspoken Afolabi-Williams family are preparing for a family wedding.

THEATRE
Darkling
(Bush theatre, London W12, 5 September-24 October; then touring to Birmingham, Oxford and Manchester)

Actors Touring Company will stage the world premiere of Titas Halder’s powerful new drama, which looks at the human consequences of the 1984 Bhopal disaster; it stars Linnea Berthelsen from Stranger Things.

THEATRE
Glengarry Glen Ross
(Old Vic, London SE1, closes Saturday)

Just a few days left to catch this all-female version of the David Mamet classic. “No weak performances here,” wrote the Nerve’s theatre critic, Dorian Lynskey.