Film
Palm Springs
This enjoyable, convoluted and deliciously dense time-travelling rom-com is the spiritual heir to Groundhog Day. Set during a long sun-kissed wedding day in the Californian resort town of Palm Springs, it opens with jaded party guest Nyles (Andy Samberg) suspiciously well acquainted with the minutiae of the ceremony and subsequent reception. Within minutes he meets Sarah (Cristin Milioti), sister of the bride. They easily connect because he has been here before, and before, and before. Soon Sarah joins Nyles in what is an infinitely repeating loop of the Palm Springs wedding day. We see how they react to immortality and enjoy the comedy of their casual suicides (crashing cars, planes and trucks). The ending is twisty and sublime.
Amazon
Kevin Maher
Television
Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World
Greta Thunberg’s favourite story, she reveals at the start of this three-part look at a year of her environmental campaigning, is the one about the emperor’s new clothes: it’s because the person who corrected a “collective lie” was a child. Thunberg’s determination and quiet intelligence radiate from this fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the life of the teenager with Asperger’s whose school strike caught the world’s attention in 2018. But as the documentary shows, it’s almost as odd being her dad, Svante. An engaging man in his fifties, he is kept in the background during marches (at his daughter’s insistence) and he speaks movingly of his parental fears and concerns.
BBC1, Mon, 9pm
Ben Dowell
Them
With Watchmen and Lovecraft Country, the horrors of racist America are proving to be a rich source for US TV drama, and arrived on Amazon is the latest — a ten-part series about a black family who in 1953 move from North Carolina to an ultra-white Los Angeles suburb. There are supernatural goings-on but this is more Get Out than Lovecraft Country, the true horrors lying in the bigotry of the neighbours — the picket-fence dream at its most sinister. Do not expect a subtle message; do expect strong turns from Deborah Ayorinde and Ashley Thomas as the parents, and Alison Pill as the chilling neighbour-in-chief, Betty.
Amazon
James Jackson
Theatre
Old Vic: In Camera — The Lorax
There’s a distinctly green tinge to the latest live streamed offering in the Old Vic’s series. Marking the 50th anniversary of Dr Seuss’s ecologically minded tale, it’s a revival of the musical adaptation created by David Greig and Charlie Fink. Can our gallant hero prevent the avaricious Once-ler from laying waste to everything? As with previous productions in the In Camera series, The Lorax will be performed to an empty auditorium. This semi-staged version directed by Max Webster features a cast including the vivacious Audrey Brisson, star of that bijou musical version of the hit film Amélie.
oldvictheatre.com, Wed-Apr 17
Clive Davis
Dance
Symphonic Variations
Frederick Ashton’s 1946 one-act ballet — a pure dance work of lustrous beauty set to music by César Franck — celebrates its 75th anniversary this year and to mark the occasion the Royal Ballet is offering a stream of a recent Covent Garden performance. It’s led by the star couple Marianela Núñez and Vadim Muntagirov, although really it’s a piece that showcases the beautiful classical lines of all six dancers.
stream.roh.org.uk
Debra Craine
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Classical
Royal Northern Sinfonia: New Beginnings
New Beginnings is the apt title for the Royal Northern Sinfonia’s first live streamed performance of 2021, featuring its just-appointed Portuguese principal conductor, Dinis Sousa. A protégé of John Eliot Gardiner in London, and an exciting interpreter of a wide range of repertoire in his native land, Sousa will conduct an eclectic programme of Haydn, Lili Boulanger, Prokofiev and Berlioz’s song cycle Les nuits d’été featuring Sarah Connolly as the mezzo soloist.
sagegateshead.com, Fri
Richard Morrison
Pop
Richard Thompson in conversation with Joe Boyd
As the guitarist of Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was a pioneer in Britain’s late 1960s/early 1970s folk rock boom. Speaking with Joe Boyd, the Massachusetts-born impresario and producer at the heart of the scene, Thompson recalls hanging out with Jimi Hendrix, dealing with Sandy Denny, surviving a devastating car crash and making Fairport’s 1969 masterpiece Liege & Lief. All this is documented in Thompson’s entertaining memoir Beeswing, a physical copy of which is included in the ticket price.
dice.fm, Wed, 7pm
Will Hodgkinson
Exhibition
Sensing the Unseen
The National Gallery’s revelatory adventure into the amazing high-resolution domain of Jan Gossaert’s 500-year-old masterpiece The Adoration of the Kings can begin on your smartphone. Journey through the painting from the lowliest flowers in the foreground to the angelic hosts that hover in celestial heights. Listen to the music, poems and explanations, zoom in on minute details, zone out as you sense what an eye-dizzying marvel this work is.
nationalgallery.org.uk
Rachel Campbell-Johnston
