John Berger isn’t a man who has suffered through appearing to take himself massively seriously. His way of phrasing his most modest utterance as though the fate of the world’s dispossessed hangs on his trenchancy is insufferable to some. But generally the world takes this mountain-dwelling Marxist sage pretty much at his own estimation: as a great alternative voice crying out amid the crassness of our market-driven culture.

Sometimes when we reconnect with the television of our childhood it seems very different from what we recall, usually lesser in some way. This is certainly not the case with the physical violence of The Sweeney. ITV's hour-long special, to coincide with the release of a new feature film, showcased a mass of beatings, snarling assaults, and men taking limb-breaking leaps into quarries rather than face the actors who went on to play Inspector Morse and Minder.

I am keenly looking forward to seeing the new production of JB Priestley’s play Cornelius at the Finborough Theatre. This will be the first time I have seen the work performed, though I have of course read it. But my father always said his plays were made for the stage rather than the page. They need the skill of a cast and director to bring the characters alive and the active engagement of the audience to enhance the experience. 

The red and black opening titles, in which a creepy house looms large, immediately tells the viewer we are in Hitchcock territory. However, Thirteen Steps Down, knowingly adapted for the small screen in two parts by Adrian Hodges, is based on Ruth Rendell’s 2005 novel of the same name. Like Hitchcock, Rendell knows there is laughter in slaughter.

“It was almost undescribable but I’ll give it a go.” Anyone from the group of athletes we have come to know as Team GB might have given voice to the thought, but the words happened to belong to Ed McKeever, one of the less charismatic of the freshly medalled guests to take his place on Gary Lineker’s sofa. Lineker, offering nightly sessions as some sort of entry-level shrink to the nation, spent the Olympic Games asking people to describe how they feel. It was a thankless gig, but someone had to keep popping the question. “Unbelievable, Gary,” they'd all say.

Julien Temple’s new documentary is a timely accompaniment to the London Olympics. While the Games casts a spotlight on the capital, the film offers a wondrously dense and evocative, warts-and-all portrait of the city.

When Complicite conceived their beautiful A Disappearing Number they gave maths energy, drama, and above all watchability, but they never quite brought the heart. In Simon Stephens’s new adaptation, A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has it in abundance (as well of course as a dead bee, a live rat, three beer cans and 20-odd metres of model train-track). When you can persuade an audience to stay behind after the curtain-call for a mini maths tutorial you’re doing something right; when you can reduce them to tears with it you’re doing something miraculous.

Welcome to another show, in which Joe guides us around some of the weirder, smokier corners of the broad church of hip hop, and discussion returns to how far genre can stretch and where originality can reside in a multi-channel, everything-available-at-once world. We also take a listen to more and less authentic sounds of South America courtesy of a Brit-in-Colombia, a Colombian Brit, and a legend of British underground sounds turning Colombian sounds into house music. There's some neo-psychedelia and neo-folk thrown into the mix for good measure.

We’ve all been there: the persistent sweet-unwrapper during a Beethoven slow movement, the mobile-phone screen glowing at the corner of your field of vision throughout King Lear, the fidgeter who seems to drop their programme every time the music subsides to pianissimo. But where do we draw the (battle) line between ambient noise and outright intrusion? And how, more importantly, should we address these concerns in the heat of the moment?

Formed especially for the London 2012 Festival, the Aldeburgh World Orchestra does what it says on the tin: bringing together talented young musicians from across the world in a single youth orchestra. Under the direction of Mark Elder, musicians from 35 countries, including Jordan, Ukraine, Malaysia and Uzbekistan amongst others, joined together to perform a mixed programme of music from Mahler, Britten and Stravinsky, as well as the world premiere of Charlotte Bray’s At The Speed of Stillness.