ON DEMAND
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
(Netflix, from Friday)
A welcome second series for the Guardian’s TV show of 2015. Ellie Kemper’s effervescent Kimmy is perhaps slightly less central now; in Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess), the show possesses a scene-stealer who could probably carry a spin-off sitcom of his own. As we begin, Titus’s former wife is back in his life, Jacqueline is ham-fistedly engaging with her Native American heritage and Kimmy is still struggling with her feelings for Dong. It still strikes the right balance between typical Tina Fey snark and a charming, slightly old-school brand of sincerity. Phil Harrison
MUSIC
Kero Kero Bonito
(The Courtyard Theatre, London, Thursday & Friday)
Kero Kero Bonito open up a whole new world of cuteness. A smiling trio from London, the group access a wide culture of toy keyboards, video games and Japanese-influenced pop music, with links to the PC Music label but also something quite its own. What this means for the listener is a rather sugary and hyperactive brand of pop, but one that is clearly as minutely crafted as something more ostensibly serious like, say, a Jamie xx record. Key to the whole thing not cloying is the delivery of vocalist-rapper Sarah Midori Perry, who alternates reciting lines in Japanese with ones in deadpan Home Counties English. If you can imagine what MIA would sound like if she was singing about shrimps or homework rather than the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, then you’re more or less there. Live, Perry keeps the party going, while producers Gus and Jamie bring a surprising heaviness with their percussion. John Robinson
All this week’s best live music
FILM
Midnight Special
Already one of the most interesting film-makers around (Mud, Take Shelter, Shotgun Stories), Jeff Nichols adds a Close Encounters-like sci-fi element to his trademarked slow-burn intensity here. It’s best not to know too much, but the focus is a boy with special powers who is abducted by his father. Spielberg without the cheese. Steve Rose
All this week’s best new film releases
TV
Scott & Bailey
(9pm, ITV, Wednesday)
This brand-new three-part story sees Rachel return to Syndicate 9 as acting DI following a secondment to That London, much to the chagrin of colleagues suspicious of such highfalutin southern city ways. Banter soon goes onto the back burner, though, as a local murder investigation gets complicated when the grisly act itself is uploaded to the dark web. With the malevolent webmaster promising more, it’s lucky that Rachel arrives armed with new tricks up her sleeve. Well, on a USB stick. A welcome return. Mark Gibbings-Jones
EXHIBITIONS
R Crumb
(David Zwirner, London, Friday to 2 June)
Serena Williams’s serving arm stretches so far behind her that she’s close to patting her own behind with her racket. The pose also means that the tennis player’s chest is thrust forward. If this image feels overtly sexualised, then that’s because it is: Crumb’s portraits of star sportswomen are lessons in objectification. Nor is anything less to be expected from the seasoned underground comix artist: he is way into his half-century preoccupation with sex, drugs and scatology. We should not let Crumb – or the viewer – off the hook by veiling this in irony, though. In another work, a female bodybuilder – all bulging thighs and rounded posterior – is described in a handwritten caption as “an inspiring vision to the artist”. Crumb is sincere in his ardour, knowing in his politics. Oliver Basciano
All this week’s best exhibitions
CLUBS
Tiga
(XOYO, London, Saturday)
XOYO’s next resident DJ is guylinered prince of Eurosleaze Tiga. He was the lynchpin of electroclash at the turn of the century and made a bid for crossover glory, but was perhaps too arch or too fashion for the masses. Back down he went, finessing his sound into the turtlenecked techno-pop of new album No Fantasy Required, while retaining his arresting blend of come-hither huskiness and am-I-bothered scorn. As a DJ, he’s drawn to uptempo acid stompers and playful minimal with the odd Latin house shimmy, and will likely go further still during this 12-week stay. His guests for the first night are 2manydjs, while upcoming highlights include forward-facing electroclash names such as Erol Alkan and DJ Hell. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
All this week’s best club nights
TALKS
Alan Ayckbourn Talks To Paul Allen
(Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, Sunday)
Prolific, popular: two attributes guaranteed to turn up certain noses in the literary establishment. Alan Ayckbourn may be Britain’s most-performed playwright after Shakespeare, responsible for nearly 80 formally ingenious comedies about the dysfunctional middle classes, but he’s never quite got his due. So it’s pleasing to see the 76-year-old awarded an honorary fellowship by Oxford literary festival this week, coinciding with a West End revival of his infidelity comedy How The Other Half Loves (starring Nicholas Le Prevost, who also led the 2007 Bath production). Ayckbourn will be chatting with his biographer, Paul Allen, whom he has said “knows more about me than I do”. True enough: Allen’s research for his 2002 book, Grinning At The Edge, even turned up a long-lost half-brother. But the relationship between his subject’s private life and remarkable productivity (his latest, The Karaoke Theatre Company, premieres in July) has proved elusive. The real Ayckbourn, like the Cheshire Cat, is often curiously indiscernible behind the grin. Bella Todd
THEATRE
Another World: Losing Our Children To Islamic State
(National Theatre: Temporary Theatre, London, Saturday to 7 May)
Last year, a National Youth Theatre play, Homegrown, inspired by three Muslim schoolgirls who ran away to Syria to join Islamic State, was cancelled amid concerns that it promoted an “extremist agenda”. Now, the same story provides the basis for Another World: Losing Our Children To Islamic State, a verbatim-theatre piece using interviews with parents of children who have joined IS, the lawyer representing the three girls’ families and civil servants. Behind the show are writer Gillian Slovo and Nicolas Kent, former director of the Tricycle Theatre, where the pair mounted many similar productions on issues of the day. Mark Cook
All this week’s best new theatre
COMEDY
The All-Star Stand Up Tour
(Shrewsbury, Birmingham, Cheltenham)
As Stewart Lee has frequently noted, live comedy can be a tough proposition for audiences: you’re asking someone to go to the expense and logistical hassle of organising an evening out (and possibly hiring a babysitter) in the hope they’ll have a laugh. The organisers of this tour have gone some way to offset that uncertainty, with a wildly eclectic bill that should include something for everyone. Pete Firman is a goth-tinged conjuror with a penchant for macabre physical humour; Jarred Christmas is an energetic Kiwi observationalist; and Gary Delaney is a punmaster par excellence in the tradition of Tim Vine or Milton Jones. Furthermore, Sean Hughes – the Channel 4 pinup of the early 90s, now making unexpectedly great material about the morbidities of middle age – could justify the ticket price on his own. As a quartet, they make an altogether more consistent offering than you’ll get from most comedy clubs, while ensuring a greatest-hits approach from the comics. James Kettle
All this week’s best live comedy
FILM EVENT
Belfast film festival
(Various venues, Thursday to 23 April)
Just about everything worth seeing in the coming months that’s not coming to a multiplex near you is on offer here. Representing world cinema there’s Turkish sisterhood drama Mustang, Oscar-winner Son Of Saul and Miguel Gomes’s epic Arabian Nights trilogy, while new Brit works include Stephen Frears’s Florence Foster Jenkins, starring Meryl Streep, and disorienting drama Remainder. Edgy US fare comes via Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead and punks v neo-Nazis thriller Green Room, and documentary highlights include Laurie Anderson’s Heart Of A Dog. There are also retro events, with club nights themed around 80s classics including Blade Runner and Cocktail, a 30th-anniversary screening of Labyrinth with added puppetry, live soundtracks to Donnie Darko and Murnau’s Sunrise, and a visit from – and retrospective of – Terence Davies. SR
All this week’s best film events
