An unimpeachably brilliant cast, plus astonishing guest stars (Efron! Theron! Scorsese!) create wonderful chaos in this tale of a movie studio executive’s calamitous attempts to climb the greasy pole

The war between art and commerce is an ancient and bloody one. The chair of Continental Studios, Griffin Mill (Bryan Cranston) is keen to deliver a decisive blow with the hammer of his newly acquired IP. Because “if Warner Bros can make a billion dollars off the plastic tits of a pussyless doll, we should be able to make TWO billion off the legacy brand of Kool-Aid.” He has just fired his long-serving studio head, Patty Leigh (Catherine O’Hara), for her preference for art and is on the verge of promoting studio executive Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) to the big job. What’s a guy – even if he is a devoted cinephile who dreams of adding his contribution to the illustrious roll call of meaningful movies, even if Patty has been his friend and mentor for years – to do? He kisses the ring, takes the job and grabs the Kool-Aid man by the hand. And with that we are off to the races for 10 fast, furious and farcical episodes of Rogen’s new Hollywood satire The Studio, created with his partner since their Superbad-minting days, Evan Goldberg.

Can Matt make a Kool-Aid movie that satisfies his inner cineaste and the gaping studio money maw? Why, it certainly seems so when Martin Scorsese (played, inimitably, by Martin Scorsese) turns out to have a script about just that subject! Well, indirectly about just that subject. Actually about the Jonestown massacre, whose 918 victims are supposed to have killed themselves by drinking … yes, you guessed it! And starring Steve Buscemi as Jim Jones. This is going to work out great.

Wallace Collection, London
Artworks ‘by’ Perry’s new alter ego – an abuse survivor from the East End called Shirley Smith – sit among works by real outsider artists. His stronger pieces are more straightforward

Grayson Perry is fascinated by outsiders – outcasts, nonconformists, the marginalised and the deviant. He has frequently assumed the outsider position, delivering commentary on class, gender and Britons’ petty snobberies. Across his career, he has pronounced on how his medium of choice (ceramics), his crossdressing, or his engagement with popular culture have excited the disapproval of cliques including the art world. Now, as a member of the Royal Academy, a knight of the realm and a ubiquitous presence on TV, that anti-establishment stance is under some strain. He shall hereafter be referred to as Sir Grayson, to keep him in his (elevated) place.

Delusions of Grandeur is a classic Graysonian bluff – a title that carries its own takedown (who does he think he is?). Though it is a bluff of a distinctly wanting-to-own-Gail’s-and-eat-the-chocolate-babkas-too variety. This exhibition coincides with his 65th birthday, and the Wallace Collection is hung with banner photographs of the artist, glamorous in sheeny tights and a vast bouffant. If nothing else, Sir Grayson is happy to play along with someone else’s belief that he is worth celebrating on a grand scale.

With Kylie Minogue playing herself, a prime minister named Roos and Steve Irwin jokes, this murder-mystery is also a comedically reductive depiction of Australian culture

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There is nothing more lazy and pointless and intellectually bankrupt than making sweeping generalisations about an entire country – but America is too stupid to understand this rule, as we all know, therefore we have Netflix’s The Residence on our screens.

Shondaland’s miniseries is a fun murder-mystery whodunnit set in the White House, where the crime in question takes place during a state dinner. Starring Uzo Aduba as the delightfully whimsical detective Cordelia Cupp, the show deliberately follows in the steps of the popular Knives Out series, with direct references to those films and even an episode titled Knives Out.

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The classical music venue in London has raised £10m to become financially self-sufficient and will voluntarily withdraw from Arts Council England’s portfolio

Celebrated classical music venue the Wigmore Hall has succeeded in its aim to raise £10m and will no longer require Arts Council funding, its director John Gilhooly said.

In April 2026, the London venue, which will be celebrating its 125th anniversary, will voluntarily take itself out of the Arts Council England (ACE) portfolio. It currently receives £344,206 a year.

National Gallery, London
The 19th-century artist worked at a time when the Americas were a wonderland of discovery – but his unromantic, objective view of ancient rocky formations is sadly quite boring

José María Velasco’s 1894 painting Rocks is the size and format of a grand portrait but, instead of a socialite in taffeta or tails, it portrays a huge reddish-brown rock formation. It isn’t even a very special outcrop, rather the kind of shapeless mass you might encounter on any mountain walk. That’s the point.

Velasco is a scientific artist who worked at a time when the Americas were a wonderland of discovery. He identified a new species of salamander that lives in a lake near Mexico City, only one of the many finds, living and fossilised, uncovered in his era across the New World. In 1902, the first Tyrannosaurus rex fossil was excavated in Montana; in 1909, very early life forms were found preserved in Canada’s Burgess Shale. Most important of all, back in the 1830s, Charles Darwin found the first evidence for evolution in the rainforests and rocks of Brazil and Peru.

The comedian returns as our forest-dwelling menopausal heroine Linda in a show that’s ambitious, surreal, moving … and above all hysterically funny

At the end of the first series of The Change we left our menopausal heroine (and never had those two words been seen together before Bridget Christie came along) in the Forest of Dean, dressed as the Eel Queen, finding joy in all her transitions. That is until her hapless husband showed up to drag her home. Noooooo! Don’t do it, Linda!!! Series two, fear not, picks up right where we left off. Linda (Christie) has still only used up 4,320 minutes of her time accrued from 3.5m minutes of domestic drudgery. She is still refusing to go home. Steve (Omid Djalili), her husband, still has jam on his face. And The Change is still the best (and probably the only) TV comedy series ever written about menopause.

Of course, like “the change”, this is about so much more than menopause. Christie’s glorious feminist sitcom is a meditation on witchcraft and witch-hunts, paganism, veganism, activism, community, the climate emergency, mushrooms, misogyny, the importance of wringing out a cloth before using it to wipe surfaces, and our national identity. If the first series tracked Linda’s journey to find herself, the second is about what roots that newly uncovered self might put down, and how they might grow an entire movement. By the final episode, stationers “from Gloucester to Bristol” have run out of “Linda’s ledgers” as an army of incensed women start logging chores, wearing “Je suis Linda” T-shirts, and playing pool in the pub before midday. The men, eventually, let them get on with it and sign up to the mandatory housework programme “For Men Who Wipe” with Pig Man. And the mother oak tree felled at the end of the first series grows a fresh green shoot. Hallelujah!

Sherman theatre, Cardiff
Rebecca Jade Hammond’s assured drama about two girls groomed for drug trafficking switches between humour and terror

What a punchy play. Rebecca Jade Hammond has written a disturbing county lines drama that questions our stereotypes of groomers, itemises insidious techniques of manipulation and considers the neglect that leaves children vulnerable. But Hammond has also written a boisterous comedy about teenage girls who take feet pics for OnlyFans and share TikTok dance crazes and Las Vegas pipe dreams in a Swansea chicken shop. As director Hannah Noone’s well-calibrated, 75-minute production switches from humour to terror, the rush from a soundtrack featuring Charli xcx is replaced by gnawing silence.

Hot Chicks is the name of the WhatsApp group that 15-year-old besties Ruby and Kyla start with the smooth Sadie who walks into their fast food spot one day and becomes … what, exactly? She’s too old for their friend group, could just about be their mother, but assumes both roles before also becoming their boss. In front of the pair, who can’t afford a box of chicken and chips between them, Sadie casually flaunts her designer labels and brings in a bag of last season’s clothes as hand-me-downs. Ruby’s eyes widen as she picks up a sparkly jacket – soon she and Kyla are trying on Sadie’s lifestyle, too, with the rewards of drug running.

Severance has just wrapped up its second season. I sat down with fellow Ars staffers Aaron Zimmerman and Lee Hutchinson to talk through what we had just seen, covering everything from those goats to the show's pacing. Warning: Huge spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 follow!

Nate: Severance season 1 was a smaller-scale, almost claustrophobic show about a crazy office, its "waffle parties," and the personal life of Mark Scout, mourning his dead wife and "severing" his consciousness to avoid that pain. It followed a compact group of characters, centered around the four "refiners" who worked on Lumon's severed floor. But season 2 blew up that cozy/creepy world and started following more characters—including far more "outies"—to far more places. Did the show manage to maintain its unique vibe while making significant changes to pacing, character count, and location?

Lee: I think so, but as you say, things were different this time around. One element that I’m glad carried through was the show’s consistent use of a very specific visual language. (I am an absolute sucker for visual storytelling. My favorite Kubrick film is Barry Lyndon . I’ll forgive a lot of plot holes if they’re beautifully shot.) Season 2, especially in the back half, treats us to an absolute smorgasbord of incredible visuals—bifurcated shots symbolizing severance and duality, stark whites and long hallways, and my personal favorite: Chris Walken in a black turtleneck seated in front of a fireplace, like Satan holding court in Hell. The storytelling might be a bit less focused, but it looks great.

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Destruction of statue by RAF engineers described as ‘the antithesis of everything Paddington stands for’

Great-aunt Lucy asked Britons to “please look after” Paddington Bear when he arrived on UK shores. Perhaps she was thinking of the risks of him running into two RAF engineers out on a bender in Hampshire.

Fortunately, Paddington’s aunt didn’t have to watch the CCTV footage shown to Reading magistrates court on Tuesday of Daniel Heath and William Lawrence tearing apart a newly installed statue of her nephew – before absconding with the severed half.