One masterpiece and two superb portraits both dominate and sum up in vivid fashion the complex personality, long life and astonishing trajectory of the first Duke of Wellington
"No heckling. No smoking. No making love," read the nifty video projections announcing the rise of the new Mahagonny at the Royal Opera House. Why so coy? Could they not give us a bang for our buck, or even a slow comfortable screw?
As worst-case scenarios go, the prospect of a UKIP government in a little under three months’ time is a frightening but unlikely one – isn’t it? That they have only two MPs, and leader Nigel Farage is yet to find a seat, has done nothing to stop UKIP setting the political agenda, bulldozing its way to centre stage to demand a place in the forthcoming televised election debates.
I went into watching Sergei Loznitsa’s documentary Maidan with the highest hopes, and came out, more than two hours later, cold. For a film about a successful national liberation movement, that’s something of a paradox.
A Bloodhound Mark 2 surface-to-air missile points to the sky from the terrace outside the Hayward Gallery. From 1963–1990, the missiles were stationed along the east coast, from Humberside to the Thames, to intercept Soviet planes coming to drop atom bombs on Britain.
It's a chilling reminder of the Cold War and the nagging undertow of fear it engendered; it is also a timely reminder that, in recent weeks, Russian fighter jets have been intruding on our air space to give us the jitters and ratchet up tensions.
The Mother of Parliaments is mostly for males. The statues sprout whiskers and the cloakroom coat-hangers have ribbons for hanging swords. The place is run at a stately plod by bewigged, be-whiskered, be-white-tied gents. Members are, for the most part, owners of same.
One of the dance world's better-kept secrets is the existence of a brilliantly inventive comic double-act consisting of two paunchy, balding 50-something men. Neither humour nor the over-50s are seen all that often in dance, but it isn't tokenism which makes dance insiders turn out in delighted force for choreographer Jonathan Burrows and composer Matteo Fargion: it's the knowledge that Burrows and Fargion's shows are one of the surest bets in dance for an evening that will be original, funny and clever in equal measure.
You read the book, you saw the play, and in January you can see the BBC's new six-part dramatisation of Wolf Hall. Cunningly adapted by screenwriter Peter Straughan and directed by Peter Kosminsky, the series promises to be both a faithful translation of Hilary Mantel's novel and an absorbingly fresh approach to the telly-isation of history.
If there's one commonly-known fact about Jackson Browne, it's that (with a bit of help from Glenn Frey) he wrote "Take It Easy" for the Eagles. The first track off their first album, and their first hit single, it remained a trademark for the band despite all the changes they subsequently went through. The following year, 1973, Browne released his own recording of "Take It Easy" on his second album, For Everyman. While the Eagles' version was harmony-packed and radio-friendly, Jackson's version was more introspective and philosophical, as much of his work tends to be.
Created by Gideon Raff, mastermind of Homeland and its Israeli forerunner Prisoners of War, and produced by Howard Gordon (who worked on Homeland and 24), Tyrant parades its roots on its sleeve. Its mix of action thriller and family drama, all souped up by a stiff dose of combustibly unstable Middle East politics, adds up to a slick entertainment formula, but do such deadly and complex issues deserve to be handled quite so glibly?