Over here, They Might Be Giants are mainly known for the insanely catchy “Birdhouse in My Soul”. There's also a general assumption that it's their only hit, and a suspicion that they're, probably, Canadian. In fact, TMBG are a Brooklyn-based band centred around founders John Flansburgh and John Linnell. A long and often successful career in the States has included several children's albums and even the theme for the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. The latter won them a Grammy. Nanobots is their 16th album and, quite consciously, looks back over their 21 years in pop.

What becomes of children “born out of sadness and loneliness”, exiled from Wonderland or Neverland, longing for remembered golden afternoons, but forced to confront the chilly twilight of adulthood? This new play by John Logan brings Alice Liddell and Peter Llewelyn Davies – the real-life inspirations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice books and JM Barrie’s Peter Pan – face to face, not just which each other, but with their creators and their fictional selves.

Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo put him in the running for a Pulitzer in 2010. Deservedly so. Set during the Iraq war and featuring a talking tiger (played with verve on Broadway by Robin Williams), it was inventive, funny and profound. Gruesome Playground Injuries is none of these.

A film for those who see the festive period as a never-ending trudge from bar to bed via a shedload of booze, Terry Zwigoff’s delightfully deviant offering from 2003 gives us a trash-talking, beer-slugging Father Christmas, unimprovably played by Billy Bob Thornton. This chaotic Santa becomes the unlikely guardian of a troubled child. Wildly funny and oddly cheering, Bad Santa puts the crass in Christmas.

Once upon a time... for a child there is always an attic, with a rocking-horse, a wardrobe, an old clock and granny’s huge chair. And there's always a story to be found there about being monstrously bad and naughty, and being forgiven. This is the delight of the irresistible staging of The Wind in the Willows at the Royal Opera House’s subterranean Linbury Studio Theatre.

Some say director Thomas Vinterberg has never equalled his triumph with Festen (1998), but with The Hunt it's time for everyone to think again. An assured and claustrophobic drama which ruthlessly picks apart the seemingly civilised facade of a small Danish town, it's a film that reverberates in the imagination and proves yet again what a fine actor Mads Mikkelsen is.

I read and loved The Mouse and His Child as a child. Apparently. I was reminded of this by the inscription in the copy I gave to my god-daughter 15 years ago. And again, when I read it to my own daughter 10 years later. It’s such an extraordinarily original, moving, funny, story, I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten it.

This is a short play, but not a sweet one. Nevertheless, the ban on under-16s and the warning that it “contains themes that some audience members may find distressing” seems unnecessary for more than 50 of its 70 minutes.

A tale of life at the foot of the slopes, French-Swiss director Ursula Meier’s follow-up to her likeably askew debut Home finds her once again zeroing in on an unusual domestic set-up. This time the focus is on a dysfunctional family, perilously pared down to just a 12-year-old boy and his irresponsible adult sister, who are scraping by on the money generated by the youngster’s gift for theft.

Featuring a towering, Cannes-award-winning performance from Mads Mikkelsen, The Hunt (Jagten) is a humane and horrifying story of the power of accusation from Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (Festen).