Flowers for Mrs Harris, Chichester Festival Theatre online review - a warmly open-hearted weepie

★★★★ FLOWERS FOR MRS HARRIS, CHICHESTER A warmly open-hearted weepie

Musical adaptation celebrates British pluck, coupled with luck

18 months or so after it opened in Chichester, Flowers for Mrs Harris launches a sequence of streamed productions from the West Sussex venue just in time to allow a new British musical to join the ever-swelling ranks of theatrical offerings online.

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.

Colors performance stream on YouTube review - vocalists on lockdown

★★★★ COLORS, YOUTUBE The normally slickly branded music channel adapts to circumstances

The normally slickly branded music channel adapts to circumstances with surprising effect

The Colors studio in Berlin has quietly created one of the biggest new brands in music from filming back-to-basics performances with laser-focused branding. From international megastars (Billie Eilish, Mac DeMarco) to up-and-comers, singers and occasionally rappers are filmed alone in a simple cube-shaped stage with distinctive colour-cycling lighting.

DVD: The Street

Hoxton worlds: insightful, poignant documentary registers social change in a London community

Zed Nelson brings enormous humanity to this portrait of the changing identity of Hackney’s Hoxton Street as gentrification impinges on its long-established community. Shops that have been there for decades vanish overnight, fancy new pavement cafes spring up, and Nelson listens, patiently, to all who will talk to him, with a striking sense of their being able to speak in their own time, unprompted, unhurried.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Island: Where Legends Were Born, BBC Four review - remembering rock's big bang

★★★★ ROCK 'N' ROLL ISLAND: WHERE LEGENDS WERE BORN, BBC FOUR A big bang remembered

Eel Pie Island was London's answer to the Cavern, but what emerged was less genteel

“Friday night is Amami night” – that was the ad that ran from the 1920s through to the 1950s for a brand of “setting lotion”, a delightfully old-fashioned term. Those were the days when young women stayed home and did their hair, in preparation for a Saturday night out. Perhaps some of the girls (they weren’t yet “chicks”, maybe “birds”) in the late 1950s used the product when they went to Eel Pie Island, one of the country’s legendary music scenes.

Belgravia, ITV review - when the toffs and the nouveaux riches collided

★★★★ BELGRAVIA, ITV When the toffs and the nouveaux riches collided

Sex, war, money and class: a social history lesson from Lord Fellowes

The prolific Lord Fellowes returns with this six-part adaptation of his own novel (for ITV), a niftily-wrought yarn (originally issued in online instalments) about the old aristocracy and the rise of new money in the early 19th Century. Some are inevitably calling it the “new Downton”, but it really isn’t.

Hilary Fannin: The Weight of Love review – unravelling knotty lives

★★★★★ HILARY FANNIN: THE WEIGHT OF LOVE Unravelling knotty lives

Debut is a flash of insight into the universal pain of living

The relationship between Joe, Robin and Ruth is far from your average love triangle. On the face of it, Robin loves Ruth, but after introducing her to his charismatic friend Joe – an artist and renegade – their affair reroutes all of their lives forever.

Elvis Costello and the Imposters, Eventim Apollo review - and the band played on

★★★★ ELVIS COSTELLO AND THE IMPOSTERS, EVENTIM APOLLO His aim is still true

His aim is still true

Elvis Costello is arguably – perhaps unarguably – the most enduring and genuine talent to emerge from the mid-Seventies pub and punk scenes, and his two-hour set on Friday night demonstrated that he’s still a compelling performer, full of energy and passion. The voice isn’t quite what it was, off-pitch at times, though it retains its distinctive timbre and vibrato.

Album: Maria McKee - La Vita Nuova

★★★★ MARIA MCKEE - LA VITA NUOVA Corruped punk radically reborn

The corrupted country-punk behind 'Show Me Heaven' is radically reborn

From Tom Cruise soundtrack hit singer to self-described “pansexual, polyamorous, gender-fluid dyke”, and from LA country-punks Lone Justice to a Blakean songwriter in thrall to London’s phantom spirits, Maria McKee’s 13-year musical absence has ended in personally spectacular fashion.