TV
Hunted
(Thursday, 9pm, Channel 4)
The dawn of harsh-reality TV: 14 contestants become fugitives, alone or in pairs, attempting to remain at large in Britain for 28 days without giving away their locations via electronic communication or CCTV. They’re being trailed by “hunters” whose day job is tracking criminals, and whose level of access to online information is frightening. The point is that staying off-grid, for even a short time, is both practically difficult and psychologically draining. In the surveillance age, is withdrawing from society even an option? Jack Seale
Read an interview with the participants of Hunted
MUSIC
Tame Impala
(Glasgow, Liverpool, Isle Of Wight)
Despite being a live band who work in a field that traditionally lends itself to collective improvisation, Tame Impala are a more contradictory proposition: they look as if they should sound like Cream, but are in their way as orderly as the Beach Boys. That certainly hasn’t prevented them making very good records, such as 2012’s Lonerism, which stacked phased harmonies on top of what you’d maybe call “chamber grunge”. Duly, Tame Impala’s new one, Currents, with its move towards Daft Punk-style grooves, feels more a logical development than outright shock. As with Unknown Mortal Orchestra, you start off liking a guitar band and end up just liking the band, without any qualification. John Robinson
The rest of this week’s live music
Read an interview with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker
THEATRE
Photograph 51
(Noël Coward Theatre, London, Saturday to 21 November)
The last time Nicole Kidman appeared on the London stage, her smouldering performance in The Blue Room – an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s sexual daisy chain La Ronde – caused one national critic to dub her “theatrical Viagra”. It’s doubtful that the Oscar-winner will be raising temperatures quite so high in Photograph 51, in which she plays the British woman who made a key contribution to the discovery of DNA. US writer Anna Ziegler’s play focuses on Rosalind Franklin, her work, and the injustice she underwent in a scientific world rampant with sexism. The production reunites Kidman with director Michael Grandage, after both recently worked on the forthcoming film Genius. Mark Cook
The rest of this week’s theatre
FILM
Closed Curtain
Coming after This Is Not A Film but before Taxi, this is the second of the three films that Jafar Panahi has made while under house arrest by the Iranian authorities (he was also banned from directing for 20 years – so much for that), and the most searching and sombre. In a villa overlooking the Caspian Sea, a writer hides out with his dog. But their peace is broken by the arrival of a woman on the run from the authorities. She presents a challenge to him: how can he really believe he is confronting reality while shuttered away from society? Ryan Gilbey
The rest of this week’s film releases
DANCE
Northern Ballet: 1984
(West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, Saturday to 12 September)
Former Royal Ballet choreographer Jonathan Watkins has begun making a reputation for himself as a choreographer of gritty, realistic texts. Last year, he worked on Kes for Sheffield Theatres, and this year he takes on one of the great dystopian novels of the last century, George Orwell’s 1984. The specific political detail of Orwell’s text may be difficult for ballet to convey, but Watkins will be focusing on its narrative heart, the story of Winston Smith, an ordinary man who dares to rebel against the system when he falls in love. Set to music by Alex Baranowski, with designs by Simon Daw, the cast features Tobias Batley as Winston and the excellent Martha Leebolt as Julia. Judith Mackrell
The rest of this week’s dance
CLUBS
Oscillate Wildly
(Corsica Studios, London, Friday)
Two titans of the underground converge in one of the lineups of the year – you won’t get a better, more brainspinning sense of where the vanguard of dance music is today than this. In the main room is Janus, the Berlin collective whose work – which taps into trap, techno and noise – sounds like Silicon Valley on fire, with drones crashlanding and desert hurricanes raging. Their emissaries are Lotic, M.E.S.H, Lexxi and headliner Arca. In room two, the PAN and Codes labels join forces, headed by their illustrious respective leaders Bill Kouligas and Visionist. The night’s standout name comes with the London debut of TCF, a Norwegian producer who makes cavernous yet intricate bursts of ravey data. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
EXHIBITONS
The Multiverse
(Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, Saturday)
The themes for Wysing Arts Centre’s sixth end-of-summer art and music festival would make any old prog rocker proud: the “multiverse”, altered states, and multiple identities. The lineup, though, is anything but retro. Transporting revellers far beyond the Cambridgeshire flatlands that this artists’ studio and gallery complex calls home is a slate of impressively experimental music, including young Swedish composer Klara Lewis’s acclaimed electronica and Julie Campbell AKA LoneLady’s avant pop. There are immersive installations from the likes of Laura Buckley, renowned for her perception-bending grottos of mirrors, film projections and surreal sounds, part of a programme curated by London-based art-productions organisation Electra. Also present are a raft of leftfield performers, such as dance maverick Lucy Suggate, interpreting a set by DJ-producer James Holden. Skye Sherwin
The rest of this week’s exhibitions
COMEDY
John Gordillo
(Glasgow, Liverpool)
One very common technique in stand-up comedy is to take your personal experience and use it to draw big, universal conclusions about the way the whole human race operates. John Gordillo does that in a more overt and cerebral manner than most, knitting together big theories using the tropes of pop science and philosophy, and adding on well-constructed and hugely appealing gags. For example, in the past he’s adapted the concept of freakonomics to form the basis of “fuckonomics”, where all human economic behaviour is predicated on our desire to get laid. This type of stuff might sound like the worst kind of supposedly witty TED talk, but Gordillo’s a proper comedy animal, with a great instinct for what entertains an audience. No surprise, then, that he’s been called in as a director and script doctor for big-name comics from Eddie Izzard to Josh Widdicombe. James Kettle
The rest of this week’s live comedy
FILM EVENT
The Colour Of Money
(Barbican Centre, London, Thursday to 20 September)
A fascinating and wide-ranging season addressing the subject of money begins this week with a gala screening of Inequality For All. A lively history of the US economy by public policy professor Robert Reich, it will be followed by a panel discussion featuring the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee. Among the rarely screened highlights elsewhere is The White Balloon, the lyrical 1995 debut by Jafar Panahi, which tells of a young Iranian girl’s quest to buy a goldfish. There’s also the highly charged screen version of David Mamet’s Pulitzer-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross, the blood-spattered consumerist satire of the 1978 Dawn Of The Dead, Erich von Stroheim’s 1924 silent classic Greed with piano accompaniment, and the little-seen Hyenas, by the visionary Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty. It’s a season that merits cracking open the piggy bank. RG
The rest of this week’s film events
TALKS
British science festival
(Various venues, Bradford, Monday to Thursday)
What originally started as a meet-up for science boffins in 1831 has evolved into this annual festival. These days, the event attracts a far larger crowd due to a varied programme incorporating just about anything within the scientific spectrum, such as making food with hotel appliances, something anarchic chef George Egg will demonstrate. There are more than 100 performances and talks in all, and they’re free, too, with topics including the latest research into anti-ageing methods, tackling shellshock with Tetris, and the science behind solving crime. Also worth sitting in on are the intriguing discussions about advancements in technology. Driverless cars, for instance, are well on their way, as is Wi-Fi in lightbulbs and silicon chips that imitate human organs. You no longer need to be a scientist to be in the know. Danielle Goldstein
The rest of this week’s best talks
