From Sense and Sensibility to Kill Jackie: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

- 1Going out: Cinema
- 2Going out: Gigs
- 3Going out: Art
- 4Going out: Stage
- 5Staying in: Streaming
- 6Staying in: Games
- 7Staying in: Albums
- 8Staying in: Brain food

Going out: Cinema
Sense and Sensibility
Out now
Daisy Edgar-Jones has a big bonnet to fill in the role Emma Thompson made her own in Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning version of Jane Austen’s romance. But let’s not compare: Blue Jean director Georgia Oakley’s take sees a fresh cast place new emphasis on the bond between sisters Marianne and Elinor.
Her Private Hell
Out now
Professional provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn returns with another slice of the outre, this time in a science fiction mode. It’s the tale of a young woman, Elle (Sophie Thatcher), who encounters a supernatural killer in diamond-encrusted gloves in a mist-shrouded city.
Remake
Out now
Taking on the devastating subject of the death of his own son, revered documentary-maker Ross McElwee makes the film that no parent would want to make. Using his own home video and family archive, he creates a bereavement memoir that traces a life from infancy to adolescence to an adulthood marred by addiction.
Heart of the Beast
Out now
Training Day screenwriter David Ayer directs this thriller about one man and his dog attempting to survive in the wilderness after a plane crash. But not just any man and dog: he’s an ex-special forces officer and the dog is a retired combat dog. Curiously, it stars Brad Pitt where you might expect Jason Statham. Catherine Bray
Going out: Gigs

Jill Scott
London, 28 September; Birmingham, 29 September; Manchester, 1 October; London, 13 & 14 October; touring to 14 October
The R&B and soul legend heads out on tour in support of To Whom This May Concern, her first album in 11 years. Expect classics, specifically from 2000’s Who Is Jill Scott?, alongside her dextrous, genre-hopping new material. Michael Cragg
Wagner’s Parsifal
Royal Opera House, London, 1 to 17 October
It grapples with good and evil, love and violence, life and death – so no wonder Parsifal lasts upwards of four hours. Acclaimed director Evgeny Titov makes his Royal Opera debut with this new production conducted by Jakub Hrůša. The high-wattage cast includes Stanislas de Barbeyrac, Christian Gerhaher and Ekaterina Gubanova. Flora Willson
Xhosa Cole
Scarborough Spa, 26 September
Contemporary and classic jazz sax maestro Xhosa Cole reworks the music of Thelonious Monk at the 23rd Scarborough jazz festival – Soft Machine, Alan Barnes and star vocalists Ian Shaw, Liane Carroll and Brigitte Beraha also enhance the event’s usual classy bill. Cole also plays London’s Vortex on 29 & 30 September. John Fordham
Homobloc
Depot Mayfield, Manchester, 26 September
Billed as a “Queer block party for all”, the late-night celebration returns to Manchester with a typically stellar lineup, including German pop star Kim Petras. Elsewhere, DJ-producer Honey Dijon goes back-to-back with underground house maverick Derrick Carter, while LSDXOXO, Erol Alkan and DJ Paulette will also be popping up. MC
Going out: Art

This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte
Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, London, to 12 December
It may not be a pipe but it is an exhibition, one dedicated to the great surrealist master René Magritte and his enduring influence on art. Some major loans will hang alongside works on paper, photography and sculpture.
Beverly Buchanan
Spike Island, Bristol, to 31 January
Five decades’ worth of sculpture, painting and earthworks are packed into the first European survey for this artist who died in 2015, leaving behind a vast body of work about the US’s troubled south.
Olivia Bax
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, nr Wakefield, to 14 March
Twenty new, heavily textured, multicoloured and very strange sculptural assemblages by this young London-based artist, filled with salvaged materials and gloopy neon references to BMX parks.
Evelyn Taocheng Wang
Goldsmith’s Centre for Contemporary Art, London, to 13 December
Expect an outsider’s portrait of Britain in this debut UK institutional exhibition for Evelyn Taocheng Wang, taking a heavily conceptual look at what makes us so uniquely us (humour, reserve, period dramas) through sculpture, painting and installation. Eddy Frankel
Going out: Stage

The Standard of Living
Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, to 12 December
James Graham has an uncanny way of combining character and country. His latest play stars Rory Kinnear and is about the radical economist John Maynard Keynes, set against the backdrop of a Britain reeling from the first world war. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. Miriam Gillinson
Rhys James
30 September to 15 May; tour starts Folkestone
Yet to achieve household-name status, 35-year-old James is widely considered one of UK standup’s master craftspeople. His new show Chop Logic combines a relentless stream of ingenious gags with the story of his circumcision. Rachel Aroesti
Murder Before Evensong
Watermill theatre, Newbury, to 14 November
Rev Richard Coles’s cosy crime novel is adapted for the stage. It’s 1988 in the peaceful village of Champton, where life centres on the church, but a shocking murder changes everything and the rector is pulled into the investigation. MG
Thick & Tight
Tuesday to 28 November; tour starts Newcastle upon Tyne
The Guardian’s best dance show of 2025 goes on tour. A hilarious, subversive, offbeat treat from uncategorisable duo Thick & Tight and guests, Natural Behaviour mixes dance, text, lip-sync and silliness in surreal sketches. Subjects include the writer James Baldwin, lesbian seagulls and the dust in Quentin Crisp’s flat. Lyndsey Winship
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Staying in: Streaming

Kill Jackie
Prime Video, 2 October
Catherine Zeta-Jones goes full madcap camp – and even gets to keep her native Welsh accent – in this big, bonkers crime caper about an ex-con art dealer whose past catches up with her. Daniel Ings, Raff Law and Sidse Babett Knudsen also star.
War
Sky Atlantic & Now, 2 October, 9pm
It’s Sienna Miller v Dominic West in this deluxe new thriller from George Kay (Lupin, The Long Shadow). A film star and tech titan face “the biggest divorce trial in British legal history”, meaning their respective teams of lawyers, including Nick Mohammed, will stop at nothing in order to come out on top.
East of Eden
Netflix, 1 October
Zoe Kazan follows in her grandfather Elia’s footsteps with this adaptation of Steinbeck’s 1952 opus. Florence Pugh gets her teeth stuck into one of fiction’s most notorious antiheroines in Cathy Ames, whose author described her as having a “malformed soul”. Christopher Abbott plays her abandoned husband.
Break Clause
Channel 4, 1 October, 10pm
A former couple – promising young architect Lil (comedian Lara Ricote) and directionless graduate Ben (Samuel Bottomley) – are forced to cohabit in a London flat due to a watertight rental contract in this sweet and goofy will-they-won’t-they (get back together) comedy from Jess Bray. RA
Staying in: Games

Nivalis Nights
PC; out 29 September
A cyberpunk life-simulation where, instead of running around with a futuristic pistol and getting caught up in gang wars, you are just trying to make a living. Starting out with a food stand, you can eventually own the night through a network of bars, restaurants and clubs – and learn everything about the city from your loose-lipped patrons.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered
All platforms; out 29 September
Outcast monster hunter Geralt of Rivia gets caught up in the dark machinations of phantom huntsmen and warring kings in this updated and complete version of an all-time great role-player. If you have somehow yet to play this eastern European dark fantasy masterpiece, you really have run out of excuses. Keza MacDonald
Staying in: Albums

Blondshell – Violins
Out now
After Sabrina Teitelbaum’s first pop-leaning incarnation as BAUM imploded in 2020, the New Yorker morphed into alt-rocker Blondshell. While the musical backdrop is heavier and more guitar-based, that pop nous still runs through this third album, especially on the galloping Fur Elise.
Julia Jacklin – The Gem
Out now
Named after her local pub, the fourth album – and her first for the much-loved label 4AD – by Melbourne-based songwriter Julia Jacklin is full of lovingly crumpled rock. Exploring reinvention, longing and excavation, songs such as The Hardest Thing and I Wish are full of unforgettable melodic nuggets.
Tinashe – Popstar
Out now
After getting lost in the major-label system, US bop-maker Tinashe has thrived as an independent artist. On her eighth album she dabbles in hyperpop elasticity via the undulating Melatonin, while the low-slung Crash Out adds trap and R&B to the mix.
M83 – I Wrote You a Letter
Out now
The French synth-pop outfit, led by Anthony Gonzalez, return with their 10th album, and first in three years. Worked up from demos recorded in 2024 as a way of capturing the spirit of the band’s earlier work, it opens with the blown-out alt-pop of the cinematic Blister Sunrise. MC
Staying in: Brain food

90 Minutes or Less Film Fest
Podcast
Host Sam Clements programmes his dream film festival lineup in this charming series celebrating the art of well-edited cinema. Picks include Godard’s Breathless, as chosen by director Richard Linklater, and Jackass, as selected by Steve-O.
Deconstructed
YouTube
Detailed 3D animations dissect some of history’s most complex machines and structures on this fascinating channel. Discover the inner workings of an ancient Greek water clock and the unusual design of the Eiffel Tower elevators.
Mapping India: The World’s Largest Count
BBC World Service, 26 September, 12.06am
India is undertaking one of the largest counting exercises in the world: a census of its 1.5 billion inhabitants. This astounding documentary follows the logistical challenges of the process, from Delhi streets to Himalayan mountains. Ammar Kalia
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