Wilko Johnson, Koko

WILKO JOHNSON, KOKO The bard of Canvey Island bows out on sparkling form at farewell London gig

The bard of Canvey Island bows out on sparkling form at farewell London gig

What fire and grace on display last night at what he and we assume will be Wilko Johnson’s final London gig. It’s been a while since ticket touts were out in force outside one of his gigs (£200 for you, sir) although his career has been floating upward in the last couple of years, partly due to Julien Temple’s excellent documentary Oil City Confidential. We came to pay affectionate tribute to one of the great guitar stylists, who announced a couple of months ago that he had terminal cancer.

Ripper Street, Series Finale, BBC One

RIPPER STREET, SERIES FINALE, BBC ONE Powerful climax to 19th century detective series

Powerful climax to 19th-century detective series

Last week we left Homer Jackson, the raffish ex-Pinkerton detective with the exceedingly chequered past, languishing in jail, after being fitted up for a Ripper-style killing by the murderous Frank Goodnight (played by cultish US actor Edoardo Ballerini). For this week's finale, Matthew Macfadyen's DI Reid urgently needed to get Jackson out again in order to apply his advanced forensic skills to unravelling a white slaving racket.

Gabetta, Philharmonia Orchestra, Ashkenazy, Royal Festival Hall

Splendid Shostakovich meets masterly Britten in skilfully devised programme

Death comes in many guises but in this ingeniously devised Philharmonia concert he most definitely did not have the last laugh. That was for Shostakovich and a curiously ticking time bomb of percussion which first surfaced in his Fourth Symphony when Stalin branded him a renegade but which later became a kind of defiant titter trailing to eternity in his fifteenth and last symphony. 

CD: Palma Violets - 180

Derivative debut from great hopes of guitar pop proves enjoyable

Currently finishing off the NME Awards Tour with Django Django and Miles Kane, this lot seem about as New Musical Express as it gets. Which is to say that, from a cynics perspective, their NME championing is almost off-putting. Given the recent history of such promotions, they were liable to be yet another retrogressive indie unit whose guitar sound is indiscernible from their peers or, indeed, multiple bands of the last two decades.

Interview: Artist Richard Wentworth

The perpetually youthful sculptor talks about building a temporary village hall in King's Cross

Richard Wentworth is the eminence not-so-grise of British contemporary art. The perpetually youthful sculptor’s activities span an extraordinary range of eras and ideas: serving as a teenage assistant to Henry Moore in the Sixties; building sets for Roxy Music in the Seventies; kick-starting the New British Sculpture movement in the Eighties with Tony Cragg and Richard Deacon; masterminding the now legendary "Goldsmiths Course" which launched the YBA generation, alongside Jon Thompson and Michael Craig-Martin.

The Hour Axed by BBC

THE HOUR AXED BY BBC Saga of Fifties current affairs show slain by poor ratings

Saga of Fifties current affairs show slain by poor ratings

There is much anguish in some quarters at the news that the BBC has axed The Hour, the Abi Morgan-penned series for BBC Two about the workings of a 1950s current affairs TV programme based at the Corporation's old studios at Lime Grove. A BBC spokeswoman said: "We loved the show [yes, clearly] but have to make hard choices to bring new shows through." The news came as a blow to producers Kudos, who had anticipated making a third series, and the company's chief executive Jane Featherstone was "sad and disappointed".

Man Ray Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

TAD AT 5 - ON VISUAL ART: MAN RAY PORTRAITS, NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY Unforgettable images from the great days of modernist Paris

Unforgettable images from the great days of modernist Paris

Travelling through Canada by train – more decades ago than I care to divulge here – I bought a book of Man Ray photographs at Banff in the heart of the Rockies. I spent the rest of the journey with one eye on the majestic mountains, and the other glued to the luminous, edgy, ineffably stylish images of the American surrealist in Paris.

Dancing on the Edge, BBC Two

EDITOR'S PICK: DANCING ON THE EDGE, BBC TWO It's the final part of Stephen Poliakoff's epic drama tonight. Are you still watching?

Stephen Poliakoff's bloated epic ain't got that swing

There is a sequence – quite a long sequence – in the first episode of Dancing on the Edge in which the main characters are all guests on a train. The passengers are curious to know their destination, only it turns out there isn’t one. This is a pleasure trip with no particular place to go. An hour and a half into Stephen Poliakoff’s latest portrait of English manners and mores, boy do you know how they feel.

London Wall, Finborough Theatre

LONDON WALL, FINBOROUGH THEATRE Sparkling revival of John Van Druten's play about the lives and loves of City workers

Sparkling revival of John Van Druten's play about the lives and loves of City workers

The walls of the staircase to the Finborough Theatre off the Earls Court Road are lined with framed awards. Downstairs for the umpteenth time, the café/restaurant has gone bust. But no other London fringe theatre has achieved such stellar success as this tiny pub theatre under the helm of its restless, irrepressible artistic director Neil McPherson, who has made a cottage industry out of discovering forgotten gems.