Saturday Review

2 Guns, Baltasar Kormakur's new film, stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as a DEA agent and a naval intelligence officer who find themselves on the run after a botched attempt to infiltrate a drug cartel. While fleeing, they learn the secret of their shaky alliance: neither knew that the other was an undercover agent.

Lucy Kirkwood's latest play Chimerica was sparked by the Tiananmen square protests in China 1989. As tanks roll through Beijing and soldiers hammer on his hotel door, Joe Moore, a young American photojournalist, captures a piece of history. When a cryptic message is left in a Beijing newspaper more than 20 years later, Joe is driven to discover the truth behind the unknown hero he captured on film.

In What Remains, a major BBC1 drama series, a young couple move into a flat and discover a leak in the loft, which leads them to the remains of Melissa Young hidden in the eaves. She has not been seen for over two years. No one has raised an alarm or even noticed that she was gone. D.I. Len Harper played by David Threlfall investigates.

The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer's latest novel, is set during the summer that President Nixon resigns. Six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but much has changed. Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge.

And all this month we focus on some of the treasures available in Britain all year round and free of charge. We asked our guests - this week it's Natalie Haynes, Giles Fraser and Cahal Dallat - to select a favourite object from The V&A's permanent collection of art and design.

Producer: Anne-Marie Cole.

Steve Coogan is back and stars in the film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa; which portrays the events of the greatest low-to-high ebb spectrum in Alan's life to date, namely how he tries to salvage his public career while negotiating a violent turn of events at North Norfolk Digital Radio.

Had an accident at work? Tripped on a paving slab? Cut yourself shaving? You could be entitled to compensation. In Nick Payne's new play The Same Deep Water As Me, Andrew and Barry at Scorpion Claims, Luton's finest personal injury lawyers, are the men for you. When Kevin, Andrew's high school nemesis, appears in his office the opportunity for a quick win arises. But just how fast does a lie have to spin before it gets out of control?

David Walliams, Frances de la Tour and Catherine Tate star in new BBC TV sitcom series Big School. Walliams is Mr. Church, a long-term teacher on the point of handing in his resignation when a new attractive French teacher arrives and re-ignites his interest in staffroom affairs.

Award winning novelist Nadifa Mohamed's latest book The Orchard of Lost Souls draws on her own family history, set in Northern Somalia in 1987 and a town that waits while rumours of revolution travel on the dry winds. Through the eyes of three women we see Somalia fall.

And all this month we focus on some of the treasures available in Britain all year round and free of cost. We asked our guests - this week it's Kevin Jackson, Kamila Shamsie and Dreda Say Mitchell - to select just one picture from the National Gallery's permanent collection for a kind of fine art equivalent of A Good Read.

Producer: Anne-Marie Cole.

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn's film Only God Forgives has already divided critics: five stars for some while others booed it at Cannes. Set in Bangkok, it's ultraviolent, awash with red, and has an extraordinary soundscape. It stars Ryan Gosling, Vithaya Pansringarm and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Roddy Doyle returns to the territory of the much-loved The Commitments - which will become a musical in the autumn - in his new novel The Guts. Jimmy Rabbitte is now 47 and has just been diagnosed with bowel cancer. He's not dying yet... but his brush with mortality leads him to embrace some of the passions of his youth.

Southcliffe is a new Channel 4 drama by Tony Grisoni, starring Rory Kinnear and Shirley Henderson, directed by American Sean Durkin. It's a powerful drama set in a small town in the south east of England where the run-up to a spate of shootings and the terrible grief and consequences of the deaths are played out.

Titanic was a musical that ran on Broadway just before James Cameron's film came out. It didn't delight the critics but it did delight the crowds and ran for two years, winning five Tony awards. Its huge set cost millions of dollars; now a chamber version at the Southwark Playhouse does wonders with a set of steps and a couple of pieces of rope. Can it win over crowds and critics alike?

Mass Observation: This is Your Photo is a new exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery in London. The Mass Observation movement began in 1937 as a social science experiment cataloguing the lives and tastes of thousands. The material that resulted from its early years is featured alongside reports for the project from more recent years.

Sarfraz Manzoor is joined by Deborah Bull, Kerry Shale and Denise Mina.

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Chichester Festival Theatre's main stage is currently undergoing building works so a large temporary tent-like structure has been built outside - surely the perfect setting for a production of Barnum. Cameron Mackintosh co-produces the story of the extraordinary American showman.

Frances Ha is a new film co-scripted by its star, Greta Gerwig, and directed by Noah Baumbach. It's a funny and touching coming-of-age story for Frances, a 27-year-old living in New York who can't quite bring herself to do anything or leave anywhere.

Alissa Nutting's debut novel Tampa has attracted attention for its explicit description of a relationship between a female teacher and her 14-year-old pupil. Based on a true story, does it offer an insightful take on what happens when a woman does such a thing?

The Mill is a new drama set in the Industrial Revolution by John Fay aiming to bring the history of Cheshire's Quarry Mill to life. It's on Channel 4 and takes true stories of some of the children who worked there and the writer hopes it will be "the English Roots - with laughs".

And The Queen's Coronation 1953 is a special exhibition to mark 60 years since the event, taking place as part of the Summer Opening of the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace. The Queen's Coronation Dress designed by Norman Hartnell and the invitation to Prince Charles to attend are among the objects on display.

Presenter Sarfraz Manzoor is joined by Dame Liz Forgan, Deborah Moggach and Antonia Quirke.

Produced by Sarah Johnson.

Simon Pegg and Rosamund Pike star in the film The World's End, the last of the so-called Cornetto Trilogy following Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, directed by Edgar Wright. Can Gary King make it through the pub crawl he failed to finish as a teenager in his home town of Newton Haven?

Joe Wright directs Chiwetel Ejiofor in A Season in the Congo at the Young Vic, a powerful political play by Aime Cesaire charting the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba in the early days of Congolese independence.

Rachel Joyce's novel Perfect tells the story of Byron, an 11-year-old boy who becomes deeply troubled by the prospect of two seconds needing to be added to time in the year 1972. Can it match the success of her debut novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry?

A major retrospective and consideration of the ethos of the architect Richard Rogers: Inside Out is at the Royal Academy in Burlington Gardens, London - the title reflects his architectural style, putting the inner workings of a building on the outside, as he did in his collaboration with Renzo Piano on the Centre Pompidou.

And Burton and Taylor come to BBC4 - in the shape of Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter, taking on the roles of the stage and screen superstars over a period in 1983 when they acted together on the New York stage in Coward's Private Lives, shortly before Burton's death.

Sarfraz Manzoor is joined by the author Joe Dunthorne, the journalist Maev Kennedy and the cultural commentator Ekow Eshun.

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Jane Campion's Top of the Lake comes to BBC2 starring Elisabeth Moss of Mad Men fame - here playing a detective investigating what's happening to a 12-year-old girl in a small New Zealand community. Also starring Holly Hunter and Peter Mullan and with influences from David Lynch to The Killing, will it hold UK audiences in its grip?

The Spanish silent black and white film Blancanieves has been winning great acclaim for its intensity and beauty. Pablo Berger's film is a surreal take on the Snow White story. After The Artist, will the appetite for silent films continue?

Untangling the Web is Aleks Krotoski's book taking a look at how the new technology has influenced our lives, from our sense of self to how we interact with others.

Circle Mirror Transformation is an award-winning play by Annie Baker first performed off Broadway. It's now given a production starring Imelda Staunton and Toby Jones at the Rose Lipman Building in Haggerston, London as part of the Royal Court Theatre's Local project.

And Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s is a new exhibition at the V&A in London examining the individualistic influence of those who went to clubs such as Taboo and The Camden Palace on the fashion of the time, away from the world of shoulder pads and Dynasty.

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by the novelists Linda Grant and Alex Preston and anthropologist Kit Davis.

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston star in a much-anticipated production of Macbeth at the Manchester International Festival. The venue has been kept from ticket holders until almost the last moment... will the production live up to the expectation?

Also from the Festival, intense music meets powerful documentary and extraordinary visuals in Massive Attack v Adam Curtis. And do it 2013: an art exhibition in which instructions - some to be done there in the gallery, some to be carried out later at home, some active, some philosophical - are given to participants.

Ben Wheatley's new film A Field in England, set in the English Civil War and starring Reece Shearsmith, blends history, horror and humour ultimately to defy categorisation. It has a groundbreaking simultaneous cinema and home viewing release.

And Harry Eyres' new book Horace and Me: Eyres' memoir of sorts that also reveals the Roman poet Horace's insight into life - still offering illumination in our own times.

Joining Tom Sutcliffe to review are the poet Paul Farley, writer Emma Jane Unsworth and classicist and presenter Tom Holland.

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Sam Mendes' production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has been years in the making and had to be juggled with his Skyfall directing duties. Now at last the musical has arrived at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with Douglas Hodge taking the role of Willy Wonka.

Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life at Tate Britain is something of a response to critics in recent years who have suggested that the gallery should show more of the Lowrys it owns. He's a painter who divides art lovers: some say he's an underrated genius who's dismissed because he depicts the Northern working classes; others that his paintings lack depth. What kind of case does this exhibition make for him?

Stories We Tell is a film made by the Canadian actress and director Sarah Polley about her mother Diane. Talking to different members of her family she uncovers an extraordinary story about her own birth. Using fake Super 8 footage as well as real, the film includes reconstructions of the past as well as interview in the present.

Another documentary, The Act of Killing, made by Joshua Oppenheimer, tells the chilling story of the killings that went on in Indonesia in 1965 in an anti-Communist purge. Oppenheimer allows the killers to make their own movies about what they did - what do the results tell us about the power and possibilities of film?

And A Thousand Pardons is the latest novel from Pulitzer Prize shortlisted author Jonathan Dee. It's an American story about saying sorry in a difficult world.

Joining Tom are the musician and presenter Cerys Matthews, writer Aminatta Forna and critic David Benedict.

Conor McPherson's new play The Night Alive opens at the Donmar Warehouse, months after his extraordinarily successful work The Weir - written when he was only 26 - was revived there. The play reunites McPherson with Jim Norton and Ciarán Hinds.

Before Midnight is the latest in Richard Linklater's sequence of films charting the relationship between Jesse and Celine - in the form of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Formerly it's been will they-won't they; now they have, but can their relationship survive for the long term? And do we stay with them on the emotional ride through their lives?

Memory Palace is an exhibition at the V&A of artists' work inspired by a novella by Hari Kunzru. It imagines a dystopian future in which one man tries desperately to piece together what he remembers before it is lost.

Phil Spector is a television film scripted and directed by David Mamet which describes itself as a work of fiction, but includes many characters and events from the real-life trial of the music producer. Al Pacino and Helen Mirren star.

Evie Wyld's first book won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; her second, All the Birds, Singing, is a tense and powerfully descriptive account of one woman's attempts to keep one step ahead of her past.

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Bidisha, Patrick Gale and Stephanie Merritt.

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

The Amen Corner starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste has been lifting the roof off the National Theatre according to early audiences, thanks partly to the participation of the London Community Gospel Choir. An early James Baldwin play, Rufus Norris' production looks at the lives of men and women trapped in poverty and lack of opportunity, and extracts powerful drama from it.

Joss Whedon had a week off at the end of shooting The Avengers - rather than have a break, he made another film with a group of friends. The result is Much Ado About Nothing - does its sparky charm capture the flavour of classic romantic comedies, as the director hopes?

Neil Gaiman has a huge international following and is well known to the Radio 4 audience thanks to the recent dramatisation of Neverwhere. Now he has a new adult novel out, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which he says is a story of childhood, memory, magic and the power of stories.

The Hayward Gallery in London is offering an Alternative Guide to the Universe - an art exhibition featuring work envisaging other worlds and extraordinary takes on this one - much of it created by untrained artists.

And the colourful history of the Plantagenets comes to television as Philippa Gregory's The White Queen begins on BBC1. Starring Rebecca Ferguson and Max Irons, will the screen version capture the drama of the real life events?

The writers Gillian Slovo, Dreda Say Mitchell and Kamila Shamsie join Tom Sutcliffe.

Producer Sarah Johnson.