Gordon Parks, the first African American staff photographer at Life magazine, was self-taught and described his camera as his weapon against social injustice. Marking 20 years since his death and the founding of the Gordon Parks Foundation, this powerful and moving exhibition, curated by prominent lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson, documents the daily lives of Black Americans from the 1940s onwards. Capturing and giving voice to those living in a segregated society, Parks was expert in getting in among his subjects: standing behind families in the separate queues for water, behind the wire fences dividing the cities, and eventually in among the resulting protests in Washington. These works are as important now as they were then.

Lynsey Irvine, Nerve creative director

There may be a British experimental art film made in the last 20 years which does not, in some form, feature Tilda Swinton’s otherworldly aristo presence. If so, I am yet to see it. She features here as overseer of a mysterious institution known as “the Ministry of Not Forgetting”. That’s the aptly eccentric, art-school conceit for this Marianne Faithfull documentary directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, in which the late artist, singer, actor and Swinging Sixties icon is also interviewed, in what would turn out to be her final screen appearance. 

Ellen E Jones, Nerve film critic

What would the world look like if women were in charge? In Herlands, journalist Megha Mohan takes readers on a global and historical tour of women-only communities, from Rio's favelas to Kenya's Umoja sanctuary village to Mohan's great-grandmother’s own matrilineal community in south India. The book is a thoughtful and fascinating read that challenges male-centric narratives of history and explores what society could look like.

Michaela Makusha, Nerve editorial assistant

For The Other Bennet Sister, the BBC has sensibly harked back to the former glory of Andrew Davies’s superior mid-90s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. This time, Sarah Quintrell adapts the Janice Hadlow novel into a 10-part series, switching focus to Mary Bennet: bookish, plain and always in the background of her prettier, perkier sisters. 

Ella Bruccoleri is absolutely wonderful and truly heartbreaking as the bespectacled underdog, infusing her with endless pathos and a spark not much evident in the original Austen. The spirit of Davies’s P&P is here in bucketfuls and the original 90s Mary, Lucy Briers, is wonderfully droll as family retainer Mrs Hill. With admirable support from Ruth Jones and Richard E Grant as the Bennets senior, it’s the wittiest, most beautifully made escape and leaves the forthcoming Netflix do-over of Pride and Prejudice with a veritable Everest to climb.

Julia Raeside, writer

It’s fitting for the band who sang “destroy everything you touch” to return with their eighth album this month: after all, everything has indeed gone to shit and the sound this British four-piece helped pioneer – the Lucite-heeled dance genre known as electroclash – is back in the charts. Paradises has the dead-eyed robo-vocals electroclash is known for, but this is a more expansive album and the band’s danciest yet, with ethereal synths and strings adding a widescreen intensity to the four-to-the-floor beats. Is paradise lost? Hopefully not yet.

Kate Hutchinson, Nerve music critic

The more troubling deepfakes become in the real world, the more gripping The Capture, back for a third season after a four-year break, feels. It’s an unusually moreish primetime crime show because it goes all-in on twists and cliffhangers while dipping its genre toes into dystopian sci-fi and horror as well as conspiracy thrillers. Creator Ben Chanan uses screens within screens to leave the viewer almost as uncertain as the characters as to what is reality and what is video manipulation: as much a howdunnit as a whodunnit. Having exposed the police’s use of digital “correction” to secure convictions, Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger) is now acting counter-terrorism commander while Isaac Turner MP (Paapa Essiedu) is both home secretary and PM-in-waiting, except of course that would be too easy. Soon we’re in Gaslight territory. Terrific entertainment, believe me.

Dorian Lynskey, Nerve theatre critic

ART
Monumental Nature
(Kew Gardens, London TW9, 9 May-31 January)

This spring, the largest ever exhibition of Henry Moore’s sculptures opens in the stunning surrounds of Kew Gardens, with 30 works presented across its grounds and inside the Temperate House.

THEATRE
Back to the Future: The Musical UK Tour
(Nationwide, autumn 2026-late 2027)

The hit musical version of the 1980s film embarks on a UK tour starting in Bristol in October and travelling to Edinburgh, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Birmingham, Sunderland, Bradford, Southampton, Manchester, Plymouth and Cardiff. Additional venues are still to be announced.

THEATRE
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
(Liverpool Everyman, 2-23 May)

The world premiere of Alexandra Wood’s psychological thriller based on Hilary Mantel’s incendiary 2014 short story. The play’s director John Young met Mantel, who died in 2022, a decade ago to discuss a production which now has the support of her husband Gerald McEwen.