Max Porter: Shy review - an ode to boyhood and rage

★★★★★ MAX PORTER: SHY Joy and despair in a subversive treatment of teenage years

Porter navigates joy and despair in a subversive treatment of teenage years

Max Porter continues his fascination with the struggles of youth in his newest release, Shy: his most beautifully-wrought writing to date, an ode to boyhood and a sensitive deconstruction of rage, its confused beginnings, its volatile results, and all the messy thoughts in between.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry review - affecting tale of a late-life road trip

★★★★ THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY Affecting tale of a late-life road trip

Jim Broadbent creates a compelling portrait of loneliness and loss

Here's another small gem of a film graced with a fine central performance by Jim Broadbent, after his lovely turn in The Duke. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is, like the earlier film, the story of an eccentric older man who embarks on a risky enterprise, though it’s less comic and twice as affecting.

Album: The Orb - Prism

Rave on, party animals - music guaranteed to lift the heart

The Orb’s story is rooted in the widescreen psychedelic explorations of Pink Floyd as much as the MDMA-fuelled musical adventures of acid house. This is music to get high to, laced with all the effects, from distortion to reverb, that play with the mind and take it on a trip.

Private Lives, Donmar Warehouse review - Coward revival cuts to the quick

Comedy classic plays up the pain that comes with pleasure

It's not often with Private Lives that you feel Amanda and Elyot are one step away from a visit to A&E. But such is the startling force of Michael Longhurst's Donmar Warehouse revival of arguably Noël Coward's most durable play that you are aware throughout of violence and pain as the flipside of passion at its most intense.

Magpie Murders, BBC One review - zinging TV adaptation of Anthony Horowitz's bestseller

★★★★★ MAGPIE MURDERS, BBC ONE Zinging TV adaptation of Anthony Horowitz's bestseller

Not only a whodunnit, but also a two-dunnit

Finding a fresh twist on the traditional detective mystery is virtually impossible, but Anthony Horowitz has made a bold stab at it with Magpie Murders. This TV adaptation (which appeared on the BritBox streaming platform last year) has been masterminded by Horowitz from his 2016 bestseller, which ingeniously features two interlocking stories, one set in the present day and one in the 1950s.

Sea Creatures, Hampstead Theatre review - mysterious and allusive

★★★ SEA CREATURES, HAMPSTEAD THEATRE Mysterious and allusive poetic drama

New play about family trauma and loss is an experiment in poetic drama

Is it possible to successfully challenge naturalism in British theatre today? At a time when audiences crave feelgood dramas, uplifting musicals and classic well-made plays, there is very little room for experimental writing.

DVD/Blu-ray: Dance Craze

Sparkling restoration of a 1981 concert film featuring the era's 2-Tone bands

"We’re not just a dance band, we’ve got things to say.” Pauline Black, lead singer with The Selecter, succinctly pins down what made the era of 2-Tone Records so important to the British music scene at the end of the 1970s.

In the Middle review - the true grit of grassroots referees

Canny football doc addresses a spectrum of social issues

In the Middle profiles 10 football officials who referee and run the line of lower-league games in south-west London and north-east Surrey. Pondering what drives these apparently sane individuals to do such an onerous job, director-producer Greg Cruttwell's documentary is a vibrant study in diversity and concomitant prejudice that benefits from his light touch.

DVD/Blu-ray: Living

★★★★ DVD/BLU-RAY: LIVING Bill Nighy owns Oliver Hermanus' delicate Kurosawa remake

Bill Nighy owns Oliver Hermanus' delicate Kurosawa remake scripted by Kazuo Ishiguro

Mr Williams (a wonderfully restrained, Oscar-nominated Bill Nighy) is taking time off work from his job in the Public Works department at County Hall in London. It’s the early Fifties and office life is very proper, with bowler hats and a strict hierarchy that reflects the class structure of Britain.

Allelujah review - Alan Bennett put through the blender

★★★ ALLELUJAH Alan Bennett's 2018 Bridge Theatre play streamlined for the screen

2018 Bridge Theatre play is streamlined for the screen

I'm proffering just a tad less than three cheers for Allelujah, the film version of Alan Bennett's 2018 Bridge Theatre play that is also that rare screen adaptation of Bennett not to be shepherded to celluloid by his longtime friend and collaborator, Nicholas Hytner.