The Old Guard review - serious silliness

★★★ THE OLD GUARD Serious silliness

Netflix immortality action flick is predictable but pleasurable, thanks to a winning cast

It’s hard to take The Old Guard seriously — it’s an action film about thousand-year-old immortal warriors. Pulpy flashbacks and fake blood abounds. But The Old Guard doesn’t need to be serious or even memorable: it’s a fun, feel-good film, a rare commodity these days.

The World's Greatest Paintings, Channel 5 review - enthusiastic presenter but no dazzling revelations

★★★ THE WORLD'S GREATEST PAINTINGS Andrew Marr on Leonardo's Mona Lisa

Andrew Marr subjects Leonardo's masterpiece to banality and cliché

Andrew Marr’s art show is a lot of fun, although engulfed in almost overwhelming banality and cliché. Our enthusiastic presenter is a self-confessed addict of art. As a pillar of television presentation, he is a natural for this series looking at individual paintings, 10 in all starting with Leonardo's Mona Lisa.

Hilary Mantel: The Mirror & the Light review - magnificence must have an end

★★★★★ HILARY MANTEL: THE MIRROR & THE LIGHT Masterly telling of Thomas Cromwell's final rise and sudden fall

Thomas Cromwell's final rise and sudden fall made vivid in a masterpiece

Praise be to quarantine days for the chance to savour this, the crowning glory of the Wolf Hall trilogy - if not with the supernatural vigilance and attentiveness of Thomas Cromwell himself, then at least with something of the leisurely diligence it deserves. Before the reading came the very public coronation of The Mirror & the Light, Mantel ubiquitous throughout, but always her unique, authentic and incorruptible self. Never, surely, has a greater novel deserved such a fanfaring blaze of publicity.

DVD/Blu-ray: Raining in the Mountain

Leaping warriors fly through monastery

King Hu is the original master of wuxia or martial arts films – visual feasts of balletic conflict and near-slapstick humour – and this 1979 film is one of his best, though perhaps less well-known than Dragon Inn (1967), A Touch of Zen (1971) and Legend of the Mountain (1979).

Royal History's Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley, BBC Four review - is this version more valid than anyone else's?

★★★ ROYAL HISTORY'S BIGGEST FIBS WITH LUCY WORSLEY, BBC FOUR Is this version more valid than anybody else's?

Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell are spun in the pop-history blender

Perhaps somebody at BBC Four has had a quiet word with Lucy Worsley, because in this first of a new three-part series she did hardly did any of her usual irritating dressing up. There had to be a bit, though.

Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch, BBCSO, Bychkov, Barbican review – fire and brimstone on a flat canvas

★★★ REQUIEM FOR HIERONYMUS BOSCH, BARBICAN Fire and brimstone on a flat canvas

Gigantomania claims another victim as Glanert’s magnum opus reaches the UK

“Hieronymus!” bellowed David Wilson Johnson from the Barbican Hall’s circle on Saturday evening. “Hieronymus Bosch!” Commissioned by Dutch radio for a big piece to mark 500 years since the passing of the Dutch painter in 1516, the German composer Detlev Glanert wrote a Requiem.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare's Globe review - a gallimaufry of acting styles

Theatre's best early sitcom gets plenty of laughs, despite some miscasting

Need Shakespeare 's Falstaff charm to be funny? Those warm, indulgent feelings won by Mrisho Mpoto in the amazing Globe to Globe's Swahili Merry Wives and by Christopher Benjamin in a period-pretty version are rarely encouraged by this season's Helen Schlesinger (in Henry IV Parts One and Two ) and now Pearce Quigley for Ellie While's 1930s romp.

Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing, The Queen's Gallery review - peerless drawings, rarely seen

Drawing was the language of thought for the greatest of Renaissance artists

It is a commonplace to describe Leonardo as an enigma whose genius, and perhaps even something of his character, is revealed through his works. But as his works survive only in incomplete and fragmented form, it is drawing, the practice common to all his various endeavours, that brings coherence and perhaps even a comprehensive view of a lifetime’s labours.

Man of La Mancha, London Coliseum review - historical work better left in the past

★★ MAN OF LA MANCHA, LONDON COLISEUM Historical work better left in the past

Kelsey Grammer leads a muddled musical take on Don Quixote

English National Opera continues its run of semi-staged musicals, in commercial collaboration with Grade Linnit, with a revival of this vintage oddity. Mind, commercial might be a stretch, as Dale Wasserman, Joe Darion and Mitch Leigh's 1965 work – it quickly transpires – is a tough sell, particularly in a quixotically cast revival that struggles to find a coherent tone.  

First Person: Robert Hollingworth on I Fagiolini's 'Leonardo - Shaping the Invisible'

FIRST PERSON: ROBERT HOLLINGWORTH How ensemble I Fagiolini got creative with Leonardo da Vinci

Images reflected in music 500 years after the ultimate Renaissance man's death

Leonardo da Vinci died 500 years ago on 2 May this year. We all know he was a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, pioneer of flight and anatomist – yet according to Vasari, Leonardo’s first job outside Florence was as a result of his musical talents.