It’s been 10 years since Tottenham’s finest won the Mercury music prize. Since then, the British-Nigerian rapper has pivoted to house music, launched and relaunched a fashion line and transitioned, at the age of 44, into an elder statesman of grime. His sixth album, seven years in the making and a return to form, ruminates on this journey – the milestones, the missteps and now the midlife responsibilities – and sets his typically zingy one-liners against a backdrop of his second-generation immigrant success story in post-Brexit Britain. The album also serves up the unlikeliest cameo of 2026 – Suggs – as Skepta nods to his father’s love of spinning ska by getting the Madness frontman on the Prodigy-channelling rave track Innocent Smile with Chase & Status.

Kate Hutchinson, Nerve music critic

How would you handle being targeted by an online hate mob? What if they’d become convinced that you were a national hate figure, living under a new identity? That’s the premise of this provocative psychological thriller. The series follows the unfortunate Fran (Alexandra Roach), who finds herself misidentified as the accomplice of a notorious imprisoned serial killer (Simon Pegg). Her life falling apart, Fran learns that four other women have been similarly accused. As they band together to prove their innocence, who is the real Alice Bell? And is she secretly among them? Co-written by David Baddiel and film critic Peter Bradshaw – they’re old schoolmates who once made a sitcom together – the twist-packed six-parter touches on themes of misogyny, rumour-mongering, conspiracy theories, social media witch-hunts and vigilante justice. Amanda Abbington and Ralf Little co-star. Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart and Cathy Newman appear as themselves. Pitchforks ready.

Michael Hogan, writer

It’s called an exhibition but Tim Walker’s Fairyland feels more like a party. On walls the colour of vivid jewels, punctuated by bright, billowing curtains, 250 queer people and their allies smile, sing, strut, smoke, dress up, dress down and generally celebrate every inch of their individuality, and the progress made in recent decades by their community. The party host, fashion photographer Walker, beckons visitors into the first lavender-tinted room with a huge hand popping out of the wall and a text declaring: “Now, in my fifties, I am finally placing myself in the queer realm with confidence” and a reminder to visitors that “your difference is your power”. There are portraits of activists, authors, pop stars and painters, from Harry Styles crouched naked in a field to actor Liz Carr posing as Queen Elizabeth I in an elaborate all-paper costume and set. But the pitch-black room at the show’s centre – dedicated to the Rebel Dykes, a collective of queer rockabilly activist women from the 1980s, shot by Walker with cartoonishly giant beehives and rouge-slicked lips – is a particular treat.

Imogen Carter, Nerve co-founder

For those like me nursing a Sharon Horgan-shaped hole after the final episodes of TV comedy Youth, her new audio drama may be the answer. At just 15 minutes an episode, it’s become my new tedious task companion for cooking dinner, folding the laundry, sitting on the tube without scrolling, you name it. Executive produced by Horgan, Sober Companion stars Bel Powley as Lucy Green, a noughties pop star attempting a comeback, but with addiction threatening to derail it before it has even begun. Rob Delaney plays Tim, the companion tasked with getting Lucy from London to rehab in Arizona. It's a familiar story of celebrity addiction, but writer Sarah Simmonds (Killing Eve, Youth) gives the well-worn territory a fresh and entertaining twist. Broadcaster Greg James makes a welcome cameo, grounding it all in the reassuring sounds of BBC Radio 1, while Delaney's thick Boston accent takes a little getting used to without his expressive face to accompany it. The real joy is the immersive sound design, which makes this feel less like listening to a podcast and more like watching iPlayer with your eyes closed. 

Brenna Spain, Nerve writer

Whether it’s a boozy night in Bethnal Green or a stroll through Kew Gardens, Gilbert and George have spent nearly 60 years using their own lives as the subject of their art, which they call “living sculpture”. In this edited-highlights trip through their early decades, the Turner prize-winning duo’s first show in the north-west in over 30 years, we encounter them in some of their most well-known works, from the emotionally jarring black, white and red grid work Red Morning Trouble (1977) to early video piece In the Bush (1972), in which they hang out by an unkempt tree to the sound of birdsong. There’s also a rarely shown treat in the form of the charcoal-on-paper “sculpture” The Nature of Our Looking (1970), which fills a whole gallery wall and gives the impression that you could step inside and join them on their wander through the countryside.

Laura Davis, writer

Karl Ove Knausgaard is back with an unexpectedly conventional but extremely moving new novel. While technically part of his Morning Star series, it also reads exquisitely as a standalone work. Less experimental than his usual offerings, it’s a fairly simple story of an engineer who becomes stranded when his car breaks down in the snow and needs to seek help, first from strangers and then, reluctantly, from his mother and old friends, the ghosts of an old life. While some have criticised its conventionality, for me it allows Knausgard's famous deftness in describing domesticity, family, grief, loneliness and regret to shine even brighter than usual. The prose is direct and unadorned but lands beautifully.

Lucia Osborne-Crowley, Nerve writer

The fact that the first series of this brilliantly unruly sketch show, starring Ellie White and Natasia Demetriou, aired in 2022, tells you how in demand both women have been in the intervening four years. Since then, their contemporaries have blazed a trail with SNL:UK and it feels like the thriving live sketch comedy scene is back on our screens in force. New characters in this second series include pretentious actors on the red carpet, women who browse trinket shops, the mum who makes content about having the perfect home and life. Their targets are indiscriminate and assailed with wonderful stupidity. Like weird twins with their own language, they fall into brilliant, bewildering riffs that seem to transcend the script. Ninety minutes of dizzying, breathless invention.

 Julia Raeside, writer

FILM
You Can See Everything
(Across the UK from 20 November)

Capturing Canadian comedian and film-maker Nathan Fielder’s attempts to get behind the facade of convicted Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes in the lead-up to her 11-year prison sentence, the buzziest documentary of the year finally opens in the UK on 20 November. Opening weekend showings are filling up so early booking is advised.

THEATRE
Royal Court 2027-28 season
(Royal Court theatre, London SW1)

Artistic director David Byrne continues his exciting tenure at the Royal Court with a very promising new season including the return of Complicité with the world premiere of The Apology written by V, formerly known as Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues); Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s domestic thriller The Briar Patch starring Juliet Stevenson; Nina Segal’s new play Afterbirth starring Jessie Buckley; and, transferring from Broadway, the Tony and Pulitzer winner Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

FESTIVAL
Glow Wild 2026
(Kew Wakehurst, West Sussex, from 26 November to 2 January 2027)

Cate Blanchett, Olivia Colman, Richard E Grant and Stanley Tucci are among the familiar voices guiding visitors around Wakehurst’s annual after-dark lantern trail, which returns this winter with a new journey through enchanted waters, frozen landscapes and illuminated forests. Thousands of handcrafted lanterns transform the woodland into a rather magical spectacle, with highlights including a spectacular projection on to Wakehurst Mansion.