Saturday Review

Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum arrives at the British Museum to huge advance ticket sales and great anticipation: a moving illumination of the lives that were stopped short in AD79.

Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw become Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, in Skyfall writer John Logan's new play Peter and Alice, exploring the themes of lost childhood and becoming public property.

Danny Boyle's film Trance is a rollercoaster heist movie starring James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson. It's got energy and twists and turns... will it be the crowd pleaser that his Olympic opening ceremony proved to be?

Ghana Must Go is a feted first novel from Taiye Selasi, set in America, Ghana and Nigeria. It revolves around the death of a father before his relationships with other family members have truly been resolved.

And The Village, BBC1's new series created by Peter Moffatt, takes the working class view of 20th century history. Does its ambition, restrained pace and realism work for an audience more accustomed to costume fare?

Saturday Review today is presented by Sarfraz Manzoor.

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

The Book of Mormon arrives on the London stage, much anticipated and as shocking as you might expect from the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It's reported to have delighted the Prime Minister already. How funny is it and does it work as a musical? Craig Zobel's film Compliance is based on real events and set in a fast food joint where the employees are convinced by someone pretending to be a police officer to strip search a colleague. Mohsin Hamid's much-acclaimed The Reluctant Fundamentalist is followed now by a novel that's superficially a self-help manual: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. The Designs of the Year 2013 are on display at London's Design Museum, from the Shard to a pair of glasses that mean you don't have to go to the optician. And Revolution is a new TV series from J J Abrams, the creator of Lost. Will its post-apocalyptic view of America prove as compelling? The comedian David Schneider, writer Ekow Eshun and historian Kathryn Hughes join Tom Sutcliffe to review. Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Lee Daniels' film The Paperboy has attracted praise and boos in equal measure - the latter when it was shown at Cannes. It's a steamy Southern thriller with powerful performances from Nicole Kidman and John Cusack.

Kevin Maher's debut novel The Fields has already - inevitably - led to comparisons with Roddy Doyle. It's a darkly funny account of growing up in 80s Dublin and attracting attention - some desirable, some not so.

George Bellows is best known for his paintings of boxers but he also has a reputation for capturing the lives of all sorts of ordinary New Yorkers about their business or leisure: diving into the polluted East River or standing at the shore edge waiting for work. The first retrospective of his work in this country has just opened at the Royal Academy in London.

A Thousand Miles of History is a new play on at the Bussey Building in Peckham, South London. It's a portrait of the lives of Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring and the circle of Andy Warhol - who's played in this production by comedian Adam Riches.

And In the Flesh is a new drama from BBC3 in which zombies rise... and then are rehabilitated into society. But is society ready for them? And will this satisfy those mourning Being Human? Luke Newberry and Ricky Tomlinson star.

The writer and broadcaster Bidisha, and novelists Deborah Moggach and Dreda Say Mitchell join Tom Sutcliffe to review.

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

The dramatically unexpected arrival of David Bowie's album The Next Day has made grown men and women weep with excitement, following 10 years of recording silence. Is it the classic his fans would all like it to be?

Helen Mirren plays the Queen again - this time on stage, following her Oscar-rewarded performance in Stephen Frears' film - in The Audience, directed by Stephen Daldry, which dramatises her weekly sessions with the Prime Minister of the day.

Steven Soderbergh's film Side Effects is said to be his last: a psychological thriller about the unexpected results of an antidepressant. Is all it seems in this twisting tale?

Kate Atkinson's latest novel, Life After Life, imagines the life of her heroine Ursula lived - and then re-lived in many different ways. Does Atkinson still make us care about her heroine's fate?

And there's a BBC1 remake of The Lady Vanishes starring Tuppence Middleton and Tom Hughes; can it stand comparison with Hitchcock's classic original? The reviewers this week are the novelist Alex Preston and the writers Jim White and Maev Kennedy.

Presented by Tom Sutcliffe.

Produced by Sarah Johnson.

Joe Wright is best known as a film director, his work including Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina. But Trelawny of the Wells at the Donmar Warehouse marks his debut as a theatre director.Richard Gere was Golden Globe-nominated for his role as businessman Robert Miller in Nicholas Jarecki's film Arbitrage, a tense morality tale set in the world of high finance.A boy arrives in a strange country and can find no room to sleep... JM Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus has obvious parallels with the story referenced in its title, but is a re-telling really the aim of the twice-Booker-winning author?Barocci: Brilliance and Grace is the title of a new exhibition at the National Gallery which aims to bring a previously under-recognised artist to more prominent attention. It includes some tender drawings and portraits as well as the dynamic, colourful altarpieces for which he is most admired.And BBC3's new sitcom Bluestone 42 touches on potentially sensitive territory: it's set amongst the troops in Afghanistan. How funny is it?The novelists Patrick Gale and Aminatta Forna and writer Natalie Haynes join presenter Tom Sutcliffe.Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Tom Sutcliffe and guests artist Grayson Perry, playwright Laura Wade and writer Susan Jeffreys review the cultural highlights of the week.The latest film of directors the Wachowski siblings is Cloud Atlas, based on the best-selling novel by David Mitchell. It explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future.The 1975 multi award winning musical A Chorus Line has a new West End production. It tells the story of seventeen Broadway dancers auditioning for eight spots on a chorus line for director Zach, who puts the dancers through their paces, mentally and physically,Give Me Everything You Have, the latest book by James Lasdun, tells a true story of obsessive love turning to obsessive hate. It chronicles the author's strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student who began trying, in her words, to ruin him. Hate-mail, online postings and public accusations of theft and sexual misconduct were her weapons which proved remarkably difficult to combat.The new ITV drama series Broadchurch looks at what happens to a small seaside community that becomes the focus of a major murder investigation, with the accompanying media scrutiny. The victim is a young boy, and two inspectors are assigned to the case - Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller played by Olivia Colman, a compassionate local, and newcomer Detective Inspector Alec Hardy played by David Tennant, a more by-the-book type.An exhibition of one of America's best-known 20th Century artists, Roy Lichtenstein, has opened at London's Tate Modern. It brings together 125 of his most recognized paintings and sculptures. Lichtenstein is renowned for his colourful large-scale Pop Art works based on comic strips and advertising imagery.Producer: Anne-Marie Cole.

A Life of Galileo is Mark Ravenhill's adaptation for the RSC of Brecht's play which has just opened at the Swan at Stratford, directed by Roxana Silbert. The news of the Pope's resignation has given the play an extraordinary timeliness.

Maggie O'Farrell won the Costa Novel Award for The Hand that First Held Mine. Her latest novel, Instructions for a Heatwave, is set in the intense temperatures of summer 1976. The Riordan family, of Irish origin, find themselves torn apart when their father Robert goes out one day to buy a paper and doesn't come back.

The Bride and the Bachelors is the title of an exhibition at the Barbican which combines visual arts, live and recorded performance. It's an exploration of the interaction between Marcel Duchamp and some of those he influenced in America: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

V, Tony Harrison's powerful and expletive-heavy poem published in 1985, was inspired by the graffiti he discovered on his parents' gravestones in Beeston, Leeds. It is about to be read by the author on Radio 4. When it was televised on Channel 4 it triggered an early day motion in the House of Commons. What will the reaction be nearly 30 years on?

And Keanu Reeves takes on the role of interviewer in a new documentary about the future of film as it moves from celluloid to digital: Side by Side. Will celluloid survive? And what are the possibilities opened up by the move to digital?

Presenter Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Kit Davis, Kevin Jackson and Bidisha to review. Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Wreck-It Ralph is the latest Disney offering, arriving in time for children at half-term. Its hero is a wouldbegood bad guy trapped in a destructive role in a video game, voiced by John C Reilly. It's got plenty of retro game nostalgia and jokes that children and adults will enjoy but does it have the longevity of the classic Disney movies?

Ice Age Art at the British Museum aims to show that in surviving figurative art from over 20,000 years ago we can see the arrival of the modern mind. Remarkable figures are on show such as the Swimming Reindeer and the Lion Man, alongside the work of artists closer to our own time such as Matisse and Henry Moore. Are we convinced that the artistic endeavour is the same now?

In the Beginning was the End is a new show from the site-responsive theatre company dreamthinkspeak. They're back at a site they've visited before, Somerset House in London, and venturing into some disused labs at King's College too, with a production apparently inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci, the Book of Revelation and the world of Mechatronics.

Harvest, Jim Crace's new historical novel set in the time of the Enclosures, is an account of seven days that will change a community for ever, narrated by one of the villagers, Walter Thirsk, and it's already won praise.

And Mysteries of Lisbon was one of the last projects of the great Chilean director Raul Ruiz who made his home in France. It was released here as a cut-down film but it's about to be shown as he first intended, as a television mini-series. With moments of surreal invention he is a favourite of critics; will a British television audience take to his work?

David Schneider, Gillian Slovo and Giles Fraser join presenter Tom Sutcliffe to review.

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Denzel Washington has been Oscar-nominated for his role as an extraordinarily talented but addicted pilot in Robert Zemeckis' Flight. It features a terrifying crash sequence in which he flies a passenger plane upside down. Stephen Poliakoff returns with a major new drama on BBC2, Dancing On The Edge, following the rise of a charismatic black jazz band in the early 1930s. They win royal approval but still face rising prejudice. Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Goodman and Jacqueline Bisset star. Port was an early play from the acclaimed playwright Simon Stephens, known for his recent stage adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Now it's been staged again at the National Theatre and is the story of one woman's attempts to find more to life than her home town of Stockport seems to offer. Lucy Ellmann's latest novel "Mimi" is a witty roller-coaster ride with a hero whose provocative girlfriend leads him to a revolution in his thinking about women. And Light Show at the Hayward Gallery in London is a striking spectacle of colour, perception and technology - it "monkeys with your eyeballs" said one critic. Joining Tom Sutcliffe to review are the novelist Naomi Alderman, writer and broadcaster Sarfraz Manzoor and the actor Kerry Shale. Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Zero Dark Thirty ran into controversy even before it was released with its depiction of the use of torture in the run-up to finding Osama Bin Laden. Director Kathryn Bigelow has maintained that depiction is not endorsement; it's written by Marc Boal and has a cast including Oscar-nominated Jessica Chastain. Michael (Lord) Grade, Deborah Bull and Dreda Say Mitchell will tell presenter Tom Sutcliffe what they make of it.

They'll also be considering another film about an extraordinary moment in American history, Lincoln. It has 12 Oscar nominations including one for Daniel Day Lewis. Do the performances, Steven Spielberg's direction and Tony Kushner's script make for a powerful film?

Manet: Portraying Life at the Royal Academy is described as "singularly important"; it's the first ever exhibition dedicated to his portraiture.

The Turn of the Screw opens in a new version by Rebecca Lenkiewicz at the Almeida Theatre in London; it's co-produced by Hammer. Will it have the horror of James' original?

And the American writer Dave Eggers, still best known for his extraordinary memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, has written A Hologram for the King, a touching portrayal of a recession-struck American businessman lost in a Saudi Arabian city.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe