From Mother Mary to Foo Fighters: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

. UK edition

Anne Hathaway in Mother Mary.

An idiosyncratic thriller sees Anne Hathaway’s pop icon and Michaela Coel’s fashion designer embark on a psychosexual romance, while Dave Grohl and his boys are back with album number 12

Going out: Cinema

Mother Mary
Out now
Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel play a pop star and a fashion designer embroiled in a psychosexual affair in this A24 drama-slash-thriller from the reliably idiosyncratic director David Lowery. Also starring FKA twigs, Sian Clifford and Hunter Schafer.

Rose of Nevada
Out now
Starring George MacKay and possible future James Bond Callum Turner, this is a sci-fi drama from talented director Mark Jenkin about a boat lost at sea for three decades that mysteriously reappears. Some might suggest it’s advisable to stay away from this clearly uncanny boat, but that would make for a shorter movie.

Exit 8
Out now
Based on the hit video game set in a Japanese metro station passageway, this high-concept horror has its protagonist, The Lost Man (Kazunari Ninomiya) trapped in a seemingly inescapable spatial loop, looking for the anomalies that will help him progress through the eerie environment.

Michael
Out now
Seventeen years on from Michael Jackson’s death, his estate-approved biopic finally arrives. Charting his rise from the Jackson 5 to Bad-era superstardom, the film features Jackson’s nephew Jaafar in the lead, with Colman Domingo as domineering father Joe, and Antoine Fuqua on directing duties. Catherine Bray

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Going out: Gigs

Ego Ella May
Manchester, 29 April; touring to 9 May
A fusion of neo-soul and contemporary jazz, south Londoner Ego Ella May’s third album Good Intentions gets an airing on this short tour. Keep an ear out for slick tracks such as What You Waiting For. MC

Grand Pianola Music
Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, 1 May
Pianist Tamara Stefanovich joins the BBC Philharmonic and conductor John Storgårds in Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments and John Adams’s Grand Pianola Music, inspired by a dream about limousines turning into oversized Steinway pianos. Flora Willson

Cheltenham jazz festival
Various venues, 29 April to 4 May
The 30th anniversary of the ever diverse Cheltenham jazz festival draws a typical raft of established and rising stars. Genre-bending virtuoso violinist Nigel Kennedy (1 May) is an early highlight with Joshua Redman and Emma Rawicz to follow. John Fordham

Louis Tomlinson
25 April to 3 May; tour continues Birmingham
Just before tours by his former bandmates, Louis arrives in UK arenas in support of January’s How Did I Get Here?. With three albums of rock-adjacent pop to lean on now, chances of a One Direction throwback are slim but not impossible. Michael Cragg

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Going out: Art

Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today
Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, today to 6 September
Flowers are integral to the look and feel of Kettle’s Yard: its founders Jim and Helen Ede incorporated fresh cut flowers into the gallery to create visual counterpoints to the artwork and architecture. This exhibition features artists who cared about flowers as much as the Edes, from Henri Rousseau and Winnifred Nicholson to Lubaina Himid and Cedric Morris.

George Hallett
John Lennon School of Art and Design, Liverpool, to 2 July
In the 1970s, thousands of miles from his Cape Town home, South African photographer George Hallett set about documenting black resistance and survival in Thatcher’s Britain. This show features portraits of prominent black artists, musicians, writers and politicians such as Chinua Achebe and Nelson Mandela.

Lonnie Holley
Edel Assanti, London, 28 April
An “open house” to inaugurate this gallery’s new outpost in St James’s (the show opens properly on 5 June). Lonnie Holley’s new works are filled with silhouetted faces emerging from the gloom, kaleidoscopic visions of ancestral memory from an artist who has spent decades at the forefront of a loose movement of black artists from the US’s south.

Billy Childish
Carl Freedman, Margate, Sunday to 14 June
Punk rocking rebel Billy Childish continues his adventures in sombre, hazy expressionism with a show of new works inspired by a family road trip through the Californian desert. The paintings deal with themes of universality and spiritualism, all with his usual dizzying, dark, intense approach to figuration. Eddy Frankel

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Going out: Stage

Fatiha El-Ghorri
25 April to 7 June; tour starts Cardiff
As both a twice-divorced EastEnder and a hijab-wearing Muslim, Fatiha El-Ghorri is a comedian who complicates stereotypes. This also happens to be the theme of her first standup tour, which follows a string of TV appearances including a recurring role in Mr Bigstuff. Rachel Aroesti

Let’s Dance International Frontiers
Various venues, Leicester, 29 April to 9 May
This annual festival of dance from the African and African-Caribbean diaspora is a chance to see artists who wouldn’t otherwise perform in the UK. Highlights include the Martinique Compagnie Kamélionite performing in Leicester Cathedral; and a platform for new Black British dance. Lyndsey Winship

Avenue Q
Shaftesbury theatre, London, to 29 August
The very silly and saucy puppet show returns to the West End to mark its 20th anniversary. With lyrics and music from Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx – think Sesame Street, the Adult Years. Miriam Gillinson

Twelfth Night
Theatre Clwyd, to 16 May
Director Juliette Manon gives Shakespeare’s comedy a vibrant new twist, injecting a party atmosphere into this tale of two shipwrecked twins – drawn into a world of blurred genders, hidden identity and deep yearning. MG

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Staying in: Streaming

Man on Fire
Netflix, 30 April
AJ Quinnell’s 1980 thriller has already been made into a movie twice; now Wonder Man star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II follows in the footsteps of Scott Glenn and Denzel Washington to play former special forces mercenary John Creasy, a man in the grip of PTSD and dead set on revenge.

The Cage
BBC One & iPlayer, 26 April, 9pm
Casinos and heists may be ridiculously overrepresented on screen, but the quality personnel behind this Liverpool-set drama about the latter at the former hints it will transcend tired cliches. Tony Schumacher (The Responder) writes; Sheridan Smith and This Is England’s Michael Socha star as two colleagues on the rob.

Widow’s Bay
Apple TV, 29 April
Despite Hollywood’s struggles, horror has remained remarkably resilient at the box office; this year TV is getting in on the act. Following Netflix’s hair-raising Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen comes this camply alarming drama fronted by Matthew Rhys as the mayor of a cursed New England town.

Prisoner
Sky Atlantic & Now, 30 April, 9pm
A prison transport officer is chaperoning a contract killer across the UK when their vehicle is subject to a deadly attack: now the pair must join forces to survive in this new nail-biter from Bridge of Spies screenwriter Matt Charman. Big Boys favourite Izuka Hoyle and The Serpent’s Tahar Rahim lead the cast. RA

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Staying in: Games

Outbound
PC, Xbox, Switch/2, PS5; out now
A pleasing-looking game about driving out to picturesque locations and living off-grid in a tiny house that you build from foraged materials on your campervan’s roof. Eco-fantasy meets survival game.

Saros
PlayStation 5; out 30 April
On a threatening planet bathed in the half-light of an eerie eclipse, you are trying to find out what happened to a lost colony. Quasi-masochistic gamers will already have this on their radar: it’s the sequel to pitiless sci-fi shooter Returnal. Keza MacDonald

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Staying in: Albums

White Denim – 13
Out now
Celebrating 20 years, indie-rock rabble White Denim are keen to keep listeners on their toes on this follow-up to 2024’s 12. This 13th album (titles are clearly not their strong point) zips from recent single Ruby’s country-tinged glam stomp to (God Created) Lock and Key’s early Beck-isms.

Noah Kahan – The Great Divide
Out now
With his breakthrough third album, 2022’s Stick Season, still bouncing around the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, US singer-songwriter Noah Kahan re-emerged at the start of the year with the knotty, guilt-racked single The Great Divide. It forms the bleeding heart of this new, Aaron Dessner-produced album.

Foo Fighters – Your Favorite Toy
Out now
After a tricky few years marked by shifting lineups and personal dramas, Dave Grohl and his band of merry men return with this ferocious 12th album. Louder and more energetic than their recent output, songs such as Of All People and Asking for a Friend are reminiscent of their late-90s heyday.

Kehlani – Kehlani
Out now
Having released one of the best R&B singles in recent years with the Grammy-winning Folded, Kehlani follows it up with this fifth album. Folded is joined by the soul throwback of Out the Window, while Missy Elliott assists on the playful Back and Forth. MC

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Staying in: Brain food

Mubi Podcast
Podcast
The cinephile streaming service launches the 11th season of its podcast, which highlights the impact of movie music. Guests include director Gurinder Chadha on bhangra in Bend It Like Beckham and Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki.

Art UK
artuk.org
Boasting 1m digitised artworks from 3,500 institutions, the Art UK website is a fascinating repository of our national visual culture. A particular highlight is a detailed, interactive archive of street art and murals.

Last Dance Floor in Chernobyl
BBC World Service, 25 April, 12.06pm
Focusing on the 1986 wedding of Ukrainians Iryna and Serhiy, who had to evacuate their reception on the eve of the Chernobyl disaster, this absorbing documentary traces Soviet club culture pre- and post-nuclear fallout. Ammar Kalia