Here’s a glossy thriller to get stuck into as sofa season picks up, with all eight episodes currently streaming on Sky Atlantic. Sarah Snook (aka Shiv from Succession) is excellent in the sort of role that would usually go to Nicole Kidman. She’s a moneyed, married mother whose sense of security is upended – along with everything else – when her five-year-old son goes missing.

Ellen E Jones, Nerve film critic

The EFG London Jazz Festival begins this week, opening with a Barbican performance from the festival’s artist in residence, Aja Monet. The Grammy-nominated American activist, author and poet is a powerful performer, whether ruminating on the intricacies of love, black resistance or the lost children of Palestine. For this show, she’s joined by special guests including spiritual shapeshifter Ganavya and players from the UK jazz scene. Speaking of shapeshifters, I’ve also been drawn in by Spanish flamenco-reggaeton singer Rosalía’s about-turn into pop-opera. Her theatrical new album, Lux, is a head-twister designed for repeated listens. 

Kate Hutchinson, Nerve music critic

I’m not sure whether director Matthew Dunster and writer Conor McPherson’s technically audacious new play counts as a fresh adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s dystopian YA novel or just a stage version of the 2012 movie, but it’s certainly fun watching the creators pull off the big set-pieces in a purpose-built venue. Dividing the audience into districts and framing us as spectators of the games themselves is a nice touch, while Mia Carragher as Katniss is as much an athlete as an actor. Put it this way: my Hunger Games-obsessed daughter was not disappointed.

Dorian Lynskey, Nerve theatre critic

Older artists covering modern songs is not a new game – Johnny Cash set the template in the late 20th century. But at 86, Mavis Staples, the civil rights hero and one of the greatest American soul singers, still fills newer compositions with her deep yet accessible feeling. On Sad And Beautiful World, her 14th solo album, her husky, raspy warmth is especially compelling on Human Mind, written for her by Hozier and Alison Russell, and a cover of Kevin Morby's acoustic protest song, Beautiful Strangers.

Jude Rogers, writer

Some look defiantly at the camera, others seem achingly lonely or lost, but most of the lovers, party people, ageing debutantes, nudists and more hanging in David Zwirner's London gallery have a certain vulnerability about them, captured as they are in their bedrooms and private places by the late US photographer Diane Arbus, who so brilliantly depicted life on the margins. This free show of 45 portraits made between 1961 and 1971, including rarely seen works, is full of intriguing encounters: from the young triplets in their immaculate white shirts, one trying not to smirk, to the “screw you” energy of Transvestite with her birthday cake, N.Y.C. 1969 and the oddly disturbing image of a woman cradling her baby monkey.

Imogen Carter, Nerve co-founder

Hanging from the walls like tapestries, shrouding haphazard structures, draped across bower-like arches made from twisted metal rods, Nour Jaouda's delicate yet hardy textiles fill the vast spaces of the former tea factory that is now one of the most exciting public galleries in the West Country. This is a spare but sumptuous new exhibition by the Libyan artist, who lives between Cairo and London. Jaouda's works recall precarious housing – the tent cities that are now a fixture of so many countries whose most vulnerable populations live rootless and barely sheltered. At the same time they are resilient, the fabric coloured in rich hues produced by natural dyes and decorated with subtle botanical motifs such as the national flower of Palestine, the purple-petalled Faqqua iris. As with the best exhibitions, we are looking at many things at once: narrative, histories, aesthetics, art and craft overlap. 

Emily LaBarge, Nerve art critic

FILM
Film Africa 2025
(14-23 November, venues across London and Norwich)

Opening with My Father’s Shadow from British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr and featuring 50 films over 10 days, the 12th edition of the festival includes a tribute at UEA in Norwich to the influential Malian director Souleymane Cissé, who died earlier this year, and a conversation at the LSE in London between the artist Sir John Akomfrah and US filmmaker Billy Woodberry on the power of cinema to resist colonial narratives.

DANCE
The Car Man
(Touring the UK from 15 June 2026 until November, including Hull, Milton Keynes and Newcastle)

Matthew Bourne’s thriller hoofs into Leicester’s Curve next June before touring the country. Contemporary dance at its sizzling, steamy best. 

THEATRE
Avenue Q
(20 March-29 August, Shaftesbury Theatre, London WC2)

A 20th-anniversary production of the multi-award-winning musical – now updated but still with the original Broadway puppets.

THEATRE
Punch
(Ends 29 November, Apollo Theatre, London W1)

Playwright James Graham’s five-star show about one night out and a fatal punch closes at the end of this month.