Newcomer Ronny Chieng doesn't waste any time trying to get the audience on his side. He outlines his interesting ethnic background – born in Malaysia to Chinese parents, several years spent in the United States and Singapore, and he did a law degree in Australia - but that mix is distilled into his Chinese ethnicity and its innate superiority to anything Western.

He says he's tried reclaiming the word 'chink', in the style of black rappers and the n-word

Australian stand-up Matt Okine made his UK debut at the Edinburgh Fringe last month and earned himself a best newcomer nomination in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, to add to his best newcomer award at 2012's Melbourne Comedy Festival (jointly won with Ronny Chieng). He's certainly an assured performer, even if his observational humour relies too heavily on the everyday in Being Black & Chicken & S#%t.

It was mostly Russian night at the Proms, and mostly music you could dance to, as a hand jiving Arena Prommer rather distractingly proved in the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony. Even Prokofiev’s elephantine Second Piano Concerto was transformed into the ballet music Serge Diaghilev thought it might become in 1914. Much of this was thanks to the fleet feet and mobile shoulders of febrile BBC Philharmonic conductor Gianandrea Noseda. But even he could do very little with the odd man out in every way, Edward Cowie’s Earth Music I.

Back in the Eighties, Australian TV brought us Bodyline, retelling (with some extravagant exaggeration) how Douglas Jardine's 1932 England side caused an international rumpus by zapping Australia with "leg theory" bowling. Even more seismic for the somnolent world of international cricket was Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket of the 1970s, whose story is reconstructed in this two-part drama from Australia's Nine Network (itself a part of the Packer empire).

Every so often, an album comes along that reminds you why you love the medium: not because it’s a simple collection of individual songs, no matter how good they are, but because it’s a carefully curated statement of artistic intent. Taken individually Emily Barker’s clear voice and pretty melodies are pleasant enough, but what sets her fourth album apart is its immersive flow.

It's the uniqueness of the Royal Ballet ballerina Leanne Benjamin that tomorrow night at Covent Garden, aged nearly 49, she will be playing a sex-mad teenager, and no one will have the slightest difficulty believing it. Then she'll retire. Not for her a soft swoop into long dresses and matronly gestures, easing decorously into the sunset, but an all-out assault on physical and emotional extremes that is typical of the career of this tiny stick of dynamite from the Australian outback.

Knee Deep, the show by four-person Brisbane acrobatic troupe Casus, is only an hour long but packs more eye-popping antics into its first 10 minutes than many circuses muster in three hours. Their fluid, almost faultless displays of gymnastic skill have a theatrical dynamic that’s so gripping I feel I’ve missed something vital every time I look down for a few seconds to scribble a note on what's occurring. They really are something special.

Family dramas don't come much fruitier than The Eye of the Storm. Fred Schepisi's film adaptation of Nobel laureate Patrick White's 1973 novel will speak most potently to those for whom the (far superior) Amour was too po-faced by half. An Australian deathbed drama that is as loopy and overripe as Michael Haneke's French-language Oscar-winner was rigorous and austere, the movie is best thought of as the celluloid equivalent of those pulpy page-turners that go with us on holiday.

The new South Bank Show has glided into its second season with a seemingly effortless profile of multi-hyphenate Tim Minchin. In case we’ve forgotten what exactly we admire him for these days – so varied has been his decade-long career been, through satire, rock, musical comedy, stage performance, to co-creator of the RSC transfer-spectacular Matilda that's now storming Broadway – then this was a good reminder.

It’s clear that Sarah Blasko is in a defiant mood right from the timpani roll that opens her fourth solo album. A lush, gorgeous work, in which the frantic strings of the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra offset the Australian singer’s husky, intimate vocals, I Awake is an enthralling and unsettling listen.