I hope Todd Haynes isn't consumed with bitterness about the way Carol was ignored at the Oscars – mind you, a world where the dreary Spotlight can get Best Film probably isn't one he misses much – but the discerning filmgoer can be in little doubt that this is a masterpiece.

There’s always a slight sinking feeling when the first words to appear onscreen are "Based on a True Story". The first worry is that it’s a story you already know, and the movie will lack any narrative surprises, the second that it will be a Good Cause. Sadly, Freeheld doesn’t dodge these pitfalls, despite a quality cast. This has to be blamed on the predictable script by Ron Nyswaner (of Philadelphia fame) and Peter Sollet’s by-the-numbers directing. 

I’m still pondering the title of Chris Urch’s new play. On the surface it’s clear enough: The Rolling Stone is a weekly newspaper in Uganda that has been notorious for pursuing that country’s anti-gay agenda. In particular, at the beginning of the decade, it started a campaign of publishing the photographs and addresses of those it believed to be homosexual.

Well, they're saying this was the final episode, but these days you never know how long TV's ratings-hungry marketeers might eke a successful show out for. London Spy 2 would be a major ask, considering how this series somehow spun a bare minimum of content (even though it was shrouded in oodles of atmosphere) out to five episodes. Still, the ending didn't really end, so watch this space. 

American director Sean Baker is an adept at exploring different Los Angeles worlds that we don’t often see portrayed in standard Hollywood fare. His much-acclaimed Starlet, from 2012, took us into the city’s porn industry (in an entirely non-judgmental way), ticking most of the boxes usually associated with “independent” cinema.

My play Rotterdam opens this week at Theatre503 (I’m getting the plug in early). It’s about two women who are in a relationship and how that relationship changes when one reveals that he has always identified as male. Their names are Alice and Adrian, and I first had the idea for them five years ago.

As a YouTube comic Mawaan Rizwan is clearly at ease on screen, and right at the beginning of How Gay Is Pakistan? he was telling us about coming out as gay to his family last year: it was “the worst news ever for Pakistani parents”. Director Masood Khan’s film, occasionally hanging somewhat uneasily between its location on BBC Three and its origin in Current Affairs, followed him back to the country of his birth to seek an answer to the question: What would his life be like if he’d stayed in Pakistan as a kid?

Theatre is in the very bones of this bold adaptation, with the Lyric gifted a cameo role: past productions are fleetingly pastiched in a flashback to the era of the venue’s foundation. Laura Wade and Lyndsey Turner translate the vividly immediate first-person narrative of Sarah Waters’ 1998 novel into a world coloured by the experience of their heroine, whose coming-of-age story is sparked by the stage: make-believe illuminating the truth of her sexual identity.

There can’t be many American public figures who are welcome on Russian television these days, but Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage is one of them.

The original idea for the subtitle of this show, first made in 2000 and last seen at Sadler's Wells in 2007, was apparently "An Auto-Erotic Thriller". Yes, groan. But "erotic thriller" is a much straighter description of The Car Man than its actual, rather coy, subtitle, "Bizet's Carmen Reimagined". This is a nail-biting ride, and certainly not suitable for kids.