Saturday Review

Tom Sutcliffe and guests Ekow Eshun, Andreas Whittam Smith and Linda Grant offer sharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events.

The much hyped Silver Lion winning film "The Master", directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams comes under scrutiny. Set in post World War 2 America, it explores a familiar narrative trope, the relationship between master and pupil, but in a very unfamiliar and deeply cinematic way, and through the prism of a cult which bears many parallels with the Church of Scientology - of whom Tom Cruise is a member, and co-incidentally starred in an earlier film by the director, Magnolia

"Dear Life" by Alice Munro - winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2009, a lifetime career award - is a new collection of short stories from the writer who has never written a novel, and whom other writers such as Jonathan Franzen and AS Byatt compare to Chekhov and Flaubert. Now 81, this collection may well be her last. It includes 14 short stories,as well as a postscript which contains four illuminating autobiographical pieces, from a writer who has always been reluctant to reveal much about her private life.

Lucy Kirkwood's new play NSFW premieres at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre downstairs. NSFW is an acronym for Not Safe For Work and refers internet sites not thought suitable for office viewing. Set in the cut throat world media world, its a timely new comedy which exposes power games and privacy in the age of Photoshop and how they impact on gender politics. Starring Janie Dee and Julian Barratt, star of The Mighty Boosh.

Seduced by Art, Photography Past and Present at the National Gallery is the first exhibition to explore the historical link between fine art - including the Old Masters - and photography, foregrounding the work of great photographers from Julia Margaret Cameron and Roger Fenton to Rineke Dijkstra and Sam Taylor Wood. What is the connection between the history of painting, the earliest decades of photography and work by some of the most innovative photographers active today?

And a new adaptation of Charles Dickens's "Nicholas Nickleby" on BBC Daytime Television, "Nick Nickleby" starring Adrian Dunbar and Linda Bassett. A five-part adaptation, stripped across weekday afternoons, it has been updated to reflect concerns and questions about modern Britain. Dickens' exploration of corruption within private boarding schools is transposed to care-homes for the elderly. Just as Dickens did, the drama invites the audience to reflect on how the vulnerable suffer when the pursuit of profit is valued more than human kindness.

Tom Sutcliffe and guests writers Maev Kennedy and David Aaronovitch and author Dreda Say Mitchell review the week's cultural highlights.

James Bond with Daniel Craig is back and in the new film Skyfall, directed by Sam Mendes, 007 becomes M's only ally as MI6 comes under attack, and a mysterious new villain emerges with a diabolical plan. Bond's latest mission has gone horribly awry, resulting in the exposure of several undercover agents. The villain must be stopped at any cost.

Secret State is a political conspiracy thriller tv series exploring the relationship between democratically elected government, big business and the banks. This is thrown into relief when a massive industrial accident leaves many people dead and raises awkward questions about the US petrochemical company involved.

The latest novel by Roddy Doyle, Two Pints, features a collection of humorous dialogues between two Irish men in a Dublin pub. Their conversation, which has been inspired by a year's worth of news, ranges from the missing Colonel Gaddafi and Greek debt to mourning the deaths of Whitney Houston and Maeve Binchy.

55 Days a new play by Howard Brenton is set in the period immediately after the capture of King Charles I by Oliver Cromwell's armies in December 1648. The drama follows the chain of events and reasoning that led to Charles's execution 55 days later and stars Mark Gatiss as the doomed king.

An exhibition of The Hospital Drawings by Barbara Hepworth reveals the remarkable series of drawings and paintings made by the artist during the late 1940s, illustrating surgeons at work in operating theatres within Post-War Britain.

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests playwright Laura Wade, broadcaster John Tusa and anthropologist Kit Davis review the week's cultural highlights

Benh Zeitklin's film Beasts of the Southern Wild stars Quvenzhane Wallis as Hushpuppy - a young girl living an almost feral existence in the swamplands of southern Louisiana.

Adrian Lester stars as 19th century actor Ira Aldridge in Lolita Chakrabarti's play Red Velvet at the Tricycle Theatre in London. Aldridge causes a sensation when he is brought in to replace an indisposed Edmund Kean in Othello - the idea of a black actor playing the role meets considerable resistance.

Ginger and Rosa is a film by Sally Potter set in the early sixties and stars Elle Fanning and Alice Englert as the two girls of the title - teenagers who are preoccupied by the threat of nuclear annihilation.

The comic strips that Posy Simmonds drew for the Guardian from 1977 - first under the title of Mrs Weber's Diary and then simply Posy - have been collected in Mrs Weber's Omnibus. The cartoons map the marriage and career problems and characteristic anxieties of three middle-class families.

Billed as a blockbuster exhibition, Hollywood Costume at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London brings together over 130 outfits from some of the most celebrated films in cinema history that defined their characters as much as the actors who wore them.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Tom Sutcliffe and guests - critic John Carey and writers Paul Morley and Susan Jeffreys - discuss the film Ruby Sparks; the National Theatre of Scotland's documentary drama Enquirer; yet another TV incarnation of Sherlock, this time set in Manhattan; a new novel, The Daughters of Mars, from Australian Living Treasure Thomas Kenneally; and the work of Richard Hamilton at the National Gallery.

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests Deborah Moggach, James Runcie and Deborah Bull review the week's cultural highlights.

Stephen Chbosky's film The Perks of Being a Wallflower is adapted from Chbosky's best-selling novel and stars Logan Lerman as Charlie - a shy, bookish boy re-entering school after suffering a nervous breakdown. His anxieties and loneliness are assuaged by a sympathetic English teacher (Paul Rudd) and outsiders Patrick (Ezra Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson).

Harry - the narrator of A.M. Homes' novel May We Be Forgiven - is a history professor whose life goes into meltdown after his brother George is involved in a car accident. Finding himself responsible for two children, a dog and a cat and facing unemployment, Harry's forays into internet sex only make his life more complicated.

Fiona Shaw stars as 16th century Venetian artist Galactia in Howard Barker's play Scenes From an Execution at the National Theatre. When Galactia is commissioned to create an epic painting commemorating the Battle of Lepanto she finds herself at loggerheads with the Doge (Tim McInnerny) when she produces a scene of butchery rather than a canvas that celebrates a military triumph.

The Turner Prize 2012 Exhibition at Tate Britain features work by this year's four shortlisted artists: Paul Noble, Elizabeth Price, Luke Fowler and Spartacus Chetwynd.

Arena: Magical Mystery Tour Revisited is a documentary that tells the story behind the Beatles film that was first seen on BBC1 on Boxing Day 1967. The audience's reaction at the time was very mixed with plenty of bemusement and fury from the older generation. The documentary is being shown on BBC2 along with the original film

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests stage designer Es Devlin, novelist Kamila Shamsie and academic and critic John Mullan review the week's cultural highlights

Alan Ayckbourn's play A Chorus of Disapproval is being revived by Trevor Nunn at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. It stars Rob Brydon as Dafydd ap Llewellyn, director of an amateur operatic company attempting to stage The Beggar's Opera. Ashley Jensen is his downtrodden wife Hannah who becomes rather interested in newcomer Guy (Nigel Harman).

In Leos Carax's film Holy Motors Denis Lavant plays Monsieur Oscar - a man who cruises Paris in the back of stretch limo, going from appointment to appointment where he plays roles such as a banker, a beggar woman and an irate father, but who the audience is remains unclear. The film also features Edith Scob as his driver, Eva Mendes and Kylie Minogue.

Two new books take on the challenge of explaining modern art, one for readers who may be too young to have seen much of it - What Is Contemporary Art: A Children's Guide by Jacky & Suzy Klein - and one for those who may be a bit older, but remain sceptical - Why Your Five Year Old Could Not Have Done That by Susie Hodge.

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London comprises seven pieces from the private collection of Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Cattelan has a reputation as a prankster, but the work here also reflects his political engagement and provides a critique of contemporary Italian society.

HBO series Girls stars Lena Dunham as Hannah - a privileged twenty-something living in Brooklyn with her hipster friends. Dunham also wrote and co-produced the series (with Judd Apatow) which is as edgy and uncompromising as her feature film Tiny Furniture.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests cultural historian Christopher Frayling, writer Sarfraz Manzoor and historian Kathryn Hughes review the week's cultural highlights

Brad Pitt stars as enforcer/hitman Jackie Cogan in Andrew Dominik's film Killing Them Softly - based on George V Higgins' 1974 novel Cogan's Trade. Cogan is called in to set things right after an illegal poker game is robbed. Set against the background of the runup to the 2008 presidential election, the film draws parallels between the need for economic stability in America's financial institutions and in its increasingly corporate criminal enterprises.

Caryl Churchill's new play Love and Information at the Royal Court in London is a collection of 57 short fragments featuring more than 100 characters. Directed by James Macdonald, the succession of short scenes is performed in a white gridded box by a cast which includes Linda Bassett and Sarah Woodward.

Building Stories by Chris Ware is not a conventional graphic novel. It comes in a box containing 14 separate books, pamphlets and posters. Together they tell the stories of the inhabitants of a down-at-heel tenement in Chicago. The order in which the separate elements are read is entirely up to the reader.

Happy Birthday Edward Lear: 200 Years of Nature and Nonsense at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is an exhibition which celebrates the bicentenary of the artist's birth. Although it contains some of his nonsense poetry and illustrations, it mainly concentrates on the foreign landscapes and natural history paintings that he worked on throughout his life.

Homefront written by Sue Teddern is a new drama series on ITV1 which follows the lives of a group of mothers and wives of soldiers serving in Afghanistan. Claire Skinner plays the fiancee of a commanding officer, trying to find her feet in a world which combines the normality of domestic life with constant pressure and anxiety.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests novelist Alex Preston and writers Miranda Sawyer and Kevin Jackson review the week's cultural highlights including Jonathan Pryce as King Lear.

Jonathan Pryce is cast in the title role in Michael Attenborough's production of King Lear at the Almeida Theatre in London. Phoebe Fox plays his youngest daughter, Cordelia, who doesn't give her father the response he was expecting when he starts carving up his kingdom.

Lawrence Norfolk's novel John Saturnall's Feast is set in Somerset before, during and after the Civil War. John Saturnall is an orphan who finds work in the kitchens of Buckland Manor where his prodigious skills with food win him friends and foes alike. But at the back of his mind is always his mother's account of an ancient pagan feast which has been handed down over generations.

Guy Maddin is a Canadian film director whose previous works include the autobiographical film My Winnipeg. His new offering Keyhole initially has the trappings of a film noir when the gangster Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) returns to his home under heavy police gunfire. He is trying to find his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini) but he has to make his way through every room of the house - encountering its ghosts - before he can reach her.

Hunted is a new spy drama on BBC One, written by Frank Spotnitz, creator of The X-Files. Melissa George stars as Sam Hunter - the most skilled operative of a private espionage company. Sam drops out of sight for a year after things go badly wrong on a job in north Africa. When she gets back in the saddle, she wants to find out who's trying to kill her and why.

Bronze is an exhibition at the Royal Academy which celebrates the use of this versatile alloy with a selection of more than 150 of some of the finest bronzes from Asia, Africa and Europe spanning a period of over 5000 years.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

A review of the week's cultural highlights with Tom Sutcliffe.

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests writers Susan Jeffreys, Giles Fraser and Jim White review the week's cultural highlights.

Tim Pigott-Smith plays Prospero in Adrian Noble's production of The Tempest which has just opened at the Theatre Royal in Bath. This staging of Shakespeare's final play is based on the production which Noble directed at the Old Globe in San Diego last year.

Jennifer Egan's 2010 novel A Visit from the Goon Squad won her the Pulitzer Prize. Her follow up - Black Box - had the distinction of making its first appearance as a series of tweets in May. Written in series of terse 'stanzas' it follows a young American on a dangerous espionage mission in the Mediterranean.

Peter Strickland's film Berberian Sound Studio is set in the 1970s and star's Toby Jones as Gilderoy - a mousy sound editor from Dorking who is hired to work on a film in Italy. The film is a 'giallo' horror film and - subjected to increasingly disturbing images and the claustrophobic and oppressive atmosphere of the studio - Gilderoy begins to unravel.

Having played Silvio Dante in The Sopranos, Steve Van Zandt appears as another mobster in Lilyhammer on BBC4. Frank Tagliano needs to disappear after testifying against a Mafia don, so he asks the FBI to arrange a new life for him in Norway. He thought Lillehammer looked pretty when he watched the 1994 Olympics, but it's not quite what he was expecting.

As a young artist Tony Cragg had a studio behind the Science Museum in London and drew inspiration from objects in all the museums along Exhibition Road. Now that the road has been partially pedestrianised, Cragg has been commissioned to site some of his idiosyncratic sculptures along the street and in the V&A, Science and Natural History museums.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.