Freedom of the City, Conway Hall, London

Evan Parker: intense and emotive explorations of pure sonics

Free jazz event is staggeringly intense and genuinely emotive

Eight hours of “improvised and experimental music” would not be on everyone’s list of Bank Holiday essentials, and the marathon programme that constitutes the first half of the two-day Freedom of The City festival could have proved daunting for even the free jazz faithful. That the experience turns out to be very far from gruelling is, then, in no small part thanks to the curators, among them such luminaries as Evan Parker and Eddie Prévost.

Outnumbered, BBC One

Series three of the child-friendly, award-winning sitcom

When it first aired in 2007, Outnumbered finally allowed viewers to see children on television really being children (hitting each other, lying, being naturally witty, shouting “Dad attacked that lady” in public), while ruthlessly exploiting the child’s unerring ability to say aloud what we’re really thinking, whether it's about terrorism (“What other religions have blown up planes, Mummy?”) or other cultural hot potatoes.

Trouble Tune: Bass Clef, Geiom, London Improvisers Orchestra

Kamal Joory aka dubstep outsider Geiom

Electronic-improv collaborations deftly avoid pitfalls

There are occasional days when the Royal Festival Hall really feels like the people's palace it was always meant to be – and yesterday, with its free concert of live improvisation mixed with dubstep and electronica in the RFH bar, was absolutely one of them. Rave kids, pensioners, parents with babes in arms and some particularly energetic school-age children all proved that given the right context music the border between “challenging” music and entertainment is more porous than some might like to believe.