Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story, Disney+ review - classic underdog tale of the little team that could

Inside story of Jenson Button's amazing championship year

When they read the roll-call of British Formula One champions, the likes of Jackie Stewart, Graham and Damon Hill and Nigel Mansell tend to grab the spotlight, but Jenson Button’s dramatic and totally unexpected win in 2009 is every bit as worthy of celebration. It get its due here, in Disney’s hugely entertaining account of how Button, team boss Ross Brawn and his unfancied and underfunded squad defied the odds and provoked apoplexy among the F1 aristocracy.

The SpongeBob Musical, QEH review - musical based on popular kids' animation sinks for lack of focus

THE SPONGEBOB MUSICAL, QEH Musical based on kids' animation sinks for lack of focus

Fine performances cannot save a pedestrian book that soaks up over two hours with 20 minutes of plot

There are many things that you are not told about being a parent, a vast landscape of details that batter you with unwelcome difference from that comfortable life of Friday night prosecco and pizza. One is a whole new palette of garish colours barging into your eyeline – fluorescent yellow, eye-bleeding orange, vomity green.

Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors, National Theatre review - verbatim theatre delivered to wrenching effect

★★★★ GRENFELL: IN THE WORDS OF SURVIVORS, NT Wrenching verbatim theatre

Gillian Slovo's incendiary play points a finger at the bureaucrats at the heart of the tragedy

The shadow of Grenfell Tower has already produced Nick Kent and Richard Norton-Taylor’s dispassionately forensic but devastating documentary plays based on transcripts from the Grenfell Inquiry. Now comes a companion piece, the National’s Grenfell, a verbatim play using excerpts from the same source, but larded by Gillian Slovo into a wider account of the fire by those who were in it, to equally wrenching effect.

Album: Mahalia - IRL

★★★★ MAHALIA - IRL Decades of R&B folded into Midlands singer's most confident record yet

Decades of R&B folded into the Midlands singer's most confident record yet

Ever since she broke through in her teens, Leicestershire singer Mahalia Burkmar’s music has often been referred to as retro or revivalist R&B. But that framing is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the genre operates for young 21st century music lovers. For fans and artists of Mahalia’s generation – she’s 25 – the Nineties and early Noughties classics of Mariah, TLC, Destinys Child and co aren’t really retro in the way that Seventies and Eighties music were back then.

Blu-ray: Inland Empire

David Lynch's surreal horror wotsit, newly restored and eternally brain-frazzling

Searching for a coherent narrative thread in David Lynch’s Inland Empire (2006) is probably futile, so it’s best to begin with the movie’s nervy central performance by Laura Dern in multiple, overlapping roles as “a woman in trouble” – the movie’s subtitle. Or maybe many different women in all manner of trouble. 

Album: McFly - Power to Play

★★★★ MCFLY - POWER TO PLAY Chart-topping British foursome turn the amps up to 11, returning to their rock'n'roll roots

Chart-topping British foursome turn the amps up to 11, returning to their rock'n'roll roots

When McFly returned to our loudspeakers in the summer of 2020 with Young Dumb Thrills, the record marked their first in a decade.

The Shape of Things, Park Theatre review - the shape of what, exactly?

★★ THE SHAPE OF THINGS, PARK THEATRE The shape of what, exactly? 

Revival of Neil La Bute's ruthless 2001 drama let down by clumsy writing

It’s been more than 20 years since the premiere of The Shape of Things, Neil LaBute’s prickly drama about couples and friends and the ways we change each other. And boy, does it show. Director Nicky Allpress and a talented young cast try their best with a script that, though updated for this version at the Park Theatre, still feels behind the times.

Music Reissues Weekly: Cherry Stars Collide, Waves of Distortion

CHERRY STARS COLLIDE, WAVES OF DISTORTION Shoegazing confirms its resonance

Shoegazing confirms its resonance

In July 2007, an article in The Guardian expressed surprise that shoegazing was influencing a series of current musicians, Blonde Redhead, Deerhunter, Maps and Ulrich Schnauss amongst them.

“You could hear the heady, woozy influence of a style of music that had been a byword for naffness and overindulgence for the past 15 years,” said the article’s opening paragraph. “A type of music that Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers had said he ‘hated more than Hitler’".

Ai Weiwei: Making Sense, Design Museum review - a deep sense of loss permeates this show

★★★★ AI WEIWEI: MAKING SENSE, DESIGN MUSEUM Anger and sadness camouflaged by beauty

Installations in which anger and sadness camouflaged by beauty

Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei has created an extremely beautiful installation at the Design Museum in which the disparate elements play their part in creating a powerful overall message. On one level the exhibition is about design, but it also invites you to consider far more serious issues than are normally addressed in this temple to consumerism.

Album: The Zombies - Different Game

Rock as comforting as an old pair of slippers, in the best possible way

There’s something charmingly unassuming and humble about The Zombies. Nowadays their 1968 second album Odyssey and Oracle regularly figures in all time greatest albums lists, but it was a flop at the time and its reputation grew through a gradually snowballing cult status, and the band split soon after its release.