Edgar Degas is famous for his depictions of ballet dancers. His drawings, paintings and sculptures of young girls clad in the uniform of the dance are signs of an artistic obsession that spanned a remarkable artistic career. One work in particular – a sculpture of a young ballet dancer in a rest position – cemented his reputation as a pioneering spirit, unafraid of provoking controversy in the pursuit of perfection.

The movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights was meant to hit cinemas this summer, but, in response to Covid-19, has been put back to 2021.

Alarm bells start ringing whenever you discover an author is adapting their own work for a screenplay. In the case of New Zealand novelist Eleanor Catton, the alarm proves to be false. 

For the average female millennial, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women is the perfect film to watch in lockdown. Brought up on Winona Ryder’s Jo March, then Gerwig’s Frances Ha in our teen years, we never expected this blessing but are most ardently grateful for it. Even the clothes are echoes of Batsheva and Shrimps dresses, the aesthetic social currency of affluent girls in their late twenties. This relevancy is both Little Women’s strength and the source of its only bum notes.

Swaggering pirates, X marks the spot, a chattering parrot, “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum”? All present and correct. But Bryony Lavery’s winning 2014 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson for the National, directed by Polly Findlay, also features key updates and wonderfully creative ideas, plus a good blend of horror and humour.

The National Theatre’s online broadcasts got off to a storming start with One Man, Two Guvnors – watched by over 2.5 million people, either on the night or in the week since its live streaming, and raising around £66,000 in donations.

David Lynch’s second feature, his only period movie, is as good as anything else he has ever done, building on the claustrophobia of his first, Eraserhead (1977)  The story of Joseph Merrick, born in Victorian times with the most terrible physical deformation, rescued from a humiliating life as a carnival attraction by kind Dr Treves provides an opportunity for Lynch to explore themes at the core of his work: the purity of innocence and the terror of evil.

Julian Fellowes admits he knows little about football and has always hated sport in general, but this hasn’t prevented him from writing a TV series (for Netflix) about football’s 19th century origins.

Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-born French filmmaker, has a reputation that precedes her. Her upbringing was the subject of the acclaimed films Persepolis (2007) and Chicken With Plums (2011). Persepolis won the Cannes Jury Prize, two César awards and was nominated for an Oscar. Satrapi adapted and co-directed both films. She also wrote and illustrated the comic books on which they were based.