Aaron Sorkin’s latest powerhouse drama couldn’t come at a more opportune moment. Rife with the director’s rapid-fire dialogue, this courtroom drama is set in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and bubbles (sometimes froths) with a raw energy, tackling the thorny subjects of justice, racial equality and war.

Keiichiro Hirano’s A Man has all the trappings of a gripping detective story: a bereaved wife, a dead man whose name belongs to someone else, mysterious coded letters, a lawyer intent on uncovering the truth.

Watching Dark Waters, the latest film from director Todd Haynes (Carol, Far from Heaven), I kept thinking — what’s the opposite of a love letter? The film is based on the work of Rob Bilott, a real-life lawyer who uncovered a corruption scandal so toxic that it was literally poisoning us. Dark Waters stars Mark Ruffalo as Bilott, and it functions as a dignified takedown of DuPont: the chemical giant responsible for the poison.

Just Mercy, the latest film from Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12), is based on a New York Times bestseller. It has a star-studded cast. It’s emotionally moving as well as intellectually accessible. But it’s no easy film to watch.

Scrounger is no comfortable evening in the theatre, for reasons both intentional and inadvertent. Athena Stevens’ new play recounts her 2016 battle with British Airways and London City Airport, who subjected her to the humiliation of being taken off a flight to Edinburgh because they couldn’t fit her custom-built electric wheelchair into the hold.

Nadia Murad caught the world’s attention when she spoke at the United Nations Security Council. She spoke of living under ISIS, daily assaults, escaping, and the current plight of the Yazidi people, in refugee camps and still under ISIS control. It was a heart-breaking plea for support to the world’s silent nations. But in a rapidly changing news landscape, it’s easy to stay silent and wait for the next story come to come along.

Very few could have predicted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg becoming a cultural icon, least of all herself. A quiet, studious, first-generation American girl who broke down boundaries, not with force, but with a reasoned reproach and a calm demeanour. From being one of the first women at Harvard Law School to sitting on the highest court in the land, her achievements always shouted louder than she did.

How well do you know the person you love? Are they someone completely different when you’re not around? This is the central question Eve Myles (main picture) has to answer in the BBC’s latest mystery drama. Faced with the sudden disappearance of her seemingly lovely husband, she must piece together where he’s gone and what she’s been missing.

When Sarah Langford goes to work, she puts on warpaint and wig and acts. But she is not an actor. She defends those who might or might not be guilty of the crimes with with they’ve been charged, or she acts on behalf of those bringing prosecutions who may or may not be telling the truth. 

Question: is Consent, transferred from the National to the West End, a sharp-tongued comedy or an acute reinvention of a revenge drama? There are more than enough smartly placed laughs throughout the tart, increasingly taut first act, to make you think you’re watching an amusingly balanced, if increasingly vicious, exposé of the divide between the private and professional lives of lawyers.