I’m in an exhibition of ancient artefacts from Afghanistan, all from the National Museum at Kabul, but I may well have stumbled into the wrong room at the British Museum. I could be in the BM’s Hellenic section of Greek art, or, taking a few steps to my left, the Egyptian rooms. But then again… here are some sensual sculptures of curvaceous semi-clad women from India (main picture), while a little further on there’s a Chinese hand mirror and some boot buckles, the latter with Chinese dragons whose wings are of turquoise.

The latest exhibition from Beirut-born, sometime Turner Prize-nominee Mona Hatoum – best known for sending a camera through her inner tubes and projecting the results – explores themes of displacement and geographical and political tension. I know this because since I signed up to review it a fortnight ago, invites and reminders concerning this exhibition "exploring themes of displacement and geographical and political tension" have been hitting my mailbox with hectoring insistence.

A film apparently in support of British servicemen on BBC One? The Daily Mail will never believe this. Whatever, this was a bleak, unsparing investigation of the way veterans of our nation's various pointless and endless wars are dumped back into civilian life with scant regard for their mental health or physical wellbeing.

At first sight, “Afghanistan cricket team” might be labled along with “The kosher guide to cooking pork” or “How to keep your promises, by N Clegg”. But in 2008, Taj Malik, an Afghan player passionate about the game, decided to try to take his national team into the world’s elite level and this film (part of the Storyville strand), by three young film-makers, Tim Albone, Leslie Knott and Lucy Martens, followed their efforts over two years.

"There's a similarity between being a soldier and a photographer. They are both looking intensely for the moment." Bran Symondson would know. He served with the British Army in Afghanistan before returning to document the world of the Afghan National Police. A less sensitive photographer might have alighted on the parallel between the action of a rifle barrel and a camera lens. But Symondson's pictures visit a perilous environment where, like that tiny butterfly in All Quiet on the Western Front, a fragile beauty survives and even prospers.

The most surreal scene in this searing, adrenaline rush of a documentary about a US platoon in Afghanistan is the sight of three soldiers dancing madly in their bunker to "Touch Me, I Want to Feel Your Body" on an iPod.

What is with the National and history plays? On the large stages of this theatre, the main fare is historical accounts of contemporary problems. Maybe the programmers here imagine that their audiences, like T S Eliot’s humankind, “can’t bear very much reality”. History always has a nostalgic glow. So instead of commissioning a new play about the current war in Afghanistan, the flagship venue is staging American playwright J T Rogers’s drama about the Soviet Union’s 1980s occupation and the covert war, waged by the CIA, to stop the reds by any means necessary.

Tony Blair’s style of leadership was often mocked for being “presidential”, but last night it was Andrew Marr, in sober suit/ shocking orange tie combo, who gave off something of that self-assured “presidential” air. Standing outside No 10, Marr addressed the people in his smoothly measured, gently emphatic way.

JasperRees Not long now till Tony Blair faces interrogation by A Marr. GraemeAThomson and I tweeting a live review

GraemeAThomson Nice to see they’ve scheduled it straight after Restoration Roadshow. Someone at the Beeb with a GSOH?

GraemeAThomson Marr's gone with the orange tie. Provocative

JasperRees Are you prepared to speculate about the timing of the Hague twin-bed allegations? Who wins? Who loses?

One can only speculate about why More4 would want to broadcast a documentary about bare-faced electoral fraud in the week before the climax of our own unimpeachably democratic process. However, this rather long film about 2009's Afghan presidential election gradually marshalled its arguments into a pointed critique of how the “democracy” which the West has unloaded over Afghanistan like a badly aimed air strike is anything but. Of course, this may not strike many people as front page news.