The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
SIMON HEFFER HINTERLAND
The best Battle of Britain film? It’s not what you’d expect
TV ART ART
Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin
The great art critic’s influence is explored through works by Turner, Millais and Burne-Jones, as well as a host of manuscripts and artworks from Yale’s Ruskin collection, many of them never before seen in this country. Watts Gallery, Compton, Surrey (wattsgallery.org.uk), until Nov 2
TV BOOKS
Hitler’s
Northern Utopia by Despina Stratigakos Stratigakos’s ingenious 2015 Hitler at Home looked at the Führer’s execrable taste in home furnishings. Now comes a study of Hitler’s little-known plans to turn Norway into an Aryan paradise, which started with a wartime building programme to create new cities and a scenic superhighway up the coast. Princeton
Semi-Detached
A sitcom in which each episode is told in real-time. Lee Mack stars as a wedding DJ who just wants a quiet life. Fat chance: he has a newborn baby with his much younger wife; his ex and their teenage daughter live just across the road; his brother is a convict and his father a drug addict.
BBC Two, exact date TBC
BOOKS BOOKS
Summerwater by Sarah Moss
Might Moss become a household name with this slyly humorous novel set on the longest day of the year? It finds 12 people cooped up in a Scottish cabin park, unaware of impending disaster.
Picador
Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing This charming series returns for a welcome third run.
Once again, Paul Whitehouse ropes in Bob Mortimer for a calming trip of fishing and chewing the fat. BBC Two, exact date TBC
Young Rembrandt
Explore the Dutch master’s first decade as an artist. This show features 34 of his paintings, including the newly discovered Let the Little Children Come to Me (1627–8).
Ashmolean, Oxford (ashmolean. org), dates TBC
Must I Go by Yiyun Li
Li’s Where Reasons End, which dealt obliquely with the suicide of her son, was one of the most memorable novels of 2019. She returns to the theme of the suicide of a child in this epistolary novel, in which an old woman writes to her dead former lover. Hamish Hamilton
TV
The Deceived
Derry Girls writer Lisa McGee’s thriller casts Emily Reid as a student who falls for her married lecturer with tragic results. Channel 5, exact date TBC
POP BOOKS BOOKS
Munkey Diaries by Jane Birkin These frank, vulnerable and perceptive diaries by the 1960s sex symbol tell of her schooldays, her failed teenage marriage to the composer John Barry, her whirlwind romance with Serge Gainsbourg and the pain of leaving him 10 years later.
W&N
Gary Numan
“Here in my car/ I feel safest of all/ I can lock all my doors/ It’s the only way to live/ In cars.” If ever an artist was made for the drive-in, it is Gary Numan. The electro pop star takes his squalling synths and android vocals on the road. Lincolnshire Showground, Lincoln (livenation.co.uk); touring to Sept 5
The Fleet Street Girls by Julie Welch
Welch, the first female football reporter, tells the story of other trailblazing female journalists, such as the Daily Telegraph war correspondent Wendy Holden and the interviewer Lynn Barber. Trapeze
POP FILM
Mulan
Cinemas are banking on Disney’s live-action remake of their 1998 animated epic to draw (socially distanced) crowds. It should do just fine.
12a cert, in cinemas
The Waterboys:
Good Luck, Seeker
With a third album in four years, band leader Mike Scott has raided his back catalogue of lost tapes and lyrics for a journey into the mystic, drawing together threads from a diverse career of epic, folk-tinged Celtic rock and soul.
BMG
FILM
Babyteeth
This Australian comic drama drew comparisons to Jane Campion when it premiered at Venice last year. Eliza Scanlen stars as a seriously ill teenager who falls in love with a drug dealer.
15 cert, in cinemas
POP
Supergrass
The Britpop band, reunited last year after a decade apart, bring their pop-rock to Newcastle’s new Covid-safe arena. Virgin Money Unity Arena, Newcastle (virginmoneyunity arena.com)
THEATRE
Sleepless
Potentially the first big indoor show of the season – a new musical based on the Tom Hanks/ Meg Ryan 1993 hit rom-com Sleepless in Seattle. Pending government permission. Troubadour Wembley Park, London HA9 (sleeplessthemusical.com), until Sept 27
BOOKS
Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh Mackintosh’s 2018 debut was The Water Cure, a novel about a mother and her three daughters trapped on an island, who believe they are being kept safe from the violently patriarchal world across the water. Her follow-up imagines a dystopia where a lottery assigns you motherhood – or freedom. Hamish Hamilton
TV
I Hate Suzie
The life of a fading star (Billie Piper, giving it everything) crumbles when intimate photos of her are leaked, in Lucy Prebble’s ingenious new series. Sky Atlantic
BOOKS
Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald
This nature writer’s long-awaited follow-up to her influential 2014 memoir H Is for Hawk is a treat: dive into essays about headaches and high-rises, catching swans and farming ostriches.
Jonathan Cape
BOOKS
Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh
Moshfegh returns to the violent timbre of her debut novel Eileen: her new thriller begins with a body in a wood, and a woman of fragile sanity left to piece together the puzzle.
Jonathan Cape
FILM
The New Mutants Covid derailed your film’s release? Pah! This youngadult-skewing X-Men spin-off has been postponed and reworked four times in two years. Will it be worth the wait?
Not yet rated, no running time available, in cinemas
THEATRE
Greenwich+Docklands international festival Installations celebrating the NHS, outdoor theatre, and dance with social distancing form part of this annual arts festival, as reconceived for the Covid age. Various venues ( festival.org /gdif ), until Sept 12
TV
When Bob Marley Came to Britain
In the 1970s, Britain became a second home to Jamaica’s most famous son. This film looks at Marley’s impact on the UK during a time of social and civil unrest. BBC Two
POP
The Libertines Expect big fist-waving tunes (at a safe distance) from Britain’s most unapologetically dissolute garage rock heroes. Virgin Money Unity Arena, Newcastle (virginmoney unityarena.com)
Contributors
Dominic Cavendish, Rupert Christiansen, Robbie Collin, Tristram Fane Saunders, Catherine Gee, Ivan Hewett, Neil McCormick, Iona McLaren, Cal Revely-Calder, Alastair Sooke