After years of creating dark, disturbing, thought-provoking TV, Charlie Brooker is changing it up. The creator and star-studded cast of Black Mirror talk about why this season is the most moving and vulnerable yet

Charlie Brooker has been contemplating the passing of time, and he’s not happy about it. We’re on set at Shepperton for USS Callister: Into Infinity, the sequel to the 2017 space opera from his terrifying tech anthology Black Mirror. “The cast don’t seem to have aged at all,” he grumbles, “whereas I am a wizened old gentleman.”

There is a more reflective, almost nostalgic tone to this seventh season. The episode Plaything flashes back to Brooker’s early years as a gaming journalist in a Bandersnatch-adjacent slice of computer-induced madness; Eulogy immerses Paul Giamatti in his memories as he literally enters decades-old photos; gaslighting parable Bête Noire forces Siena Kelly’s chocolatier to reckon with youthful misdemeanours; Hotel Reverie stars Emma Corrin as a 1940s matinee idol falling for Issa Rae ’s modern film star, who plays her white, male love interest in an AI remake of a vintage romance.

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In this week’s newsletter: Donald Trump’s week of chaos has made me reappraise the unloved Star Wars prequel – was it quite prescient after all?

There are many scary things to come out of Trump’s tariffs. The world economy being thrown into chaos; spiralling prices; furious economic experts showing charts with big down arrows, using phrases like “gilt markets” and “share index undergrowth”, which I definitely understand. But the most terrifying thing – the thing that has made me truly believe that we are living in the End Times – is a panic-inducing realisation: The Phantom Menace just might have been right all along .

For those who haven’t seen the first Star Wars prequel, GOD I envy you. The dialogue is wooden and the structure inexplicable (sure, let’s just have a pod-race instead of an Act II) – and that’s even before we get onto the Jar Jar Binks of it all (the answer to the question “what if we shaved Paddington and spliced his DNA with the most unlikeable newt in the world?”). But the biggest complaint is the subject matter.

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Wilton’s Music Hall, London
Every character is distinct in this bewitching solo performance by Mark Lockyer, a masterclass in pacing and emotional clarity

Shakespearean performance has been a curse for Mark Lockyer. When he played Mercutio for the RSC in 1995, it began to feel like a “daily execution” , he wrote. That led to a long hiatus from acting – also brought on by alcoholism, bipolar disorder, imprisonment and homelessness. But in taking on this one-man vehicle about the melancholy Dane, he proves – perhaps to himself and certainly to the audience – that Shakespearean performance is his gift too.

It could have turned into a circus trick or feat of memory ( as it did in the hands of Eddie Izzard ) but, instead, the emotional clarity of Lockyer’s performance draws you in. Every character is made distinct, without recourse to broad characterisation. Whenever he is Claudius, Horatio, Hamlet’s father’s ghost or even the guards who see that apparition, he fully embodies each of them.

At Wilton’s Music Hall, London , until 12 April.

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‘Vertical dramas’ consisting of minute-long episodes boom, with market predicted to be worth $14bn by 2027

Found a Homeless Billionaire Husband for Christmas. The Quarterback Next Door. Revenge of the XXL Wife. My Secret Agent Husband.

These may sound like cringy fantasies, but they’re actually titles of “vertical dramas”, a new form of episodic television that’s gripping millions around the world.

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Royal Festival Hall, London
Timely take on pieces by Prokofiev, Mussorgsky and Lyatoshynsky masterfully encapsulated the continuing struggle between war and peace

It felt as though war and peace were locked in a battle for the very soul of this concert of Russian and Ukrainian music, a savage reminder three years on of the brutal invasion of one country by the other.

Things got off to an inauspicious start. Even conductor emeritus Vladimir Jurowski’s powers of persuasion couldn’t disguise the fact that Semyon Kotko is second-rate Sergei Prokofiev. Set in rural Ukraine, his 1940 opera ran into difficulties from the start: after Stalin and Hitler signed their notorious non-aggression treaty, a drama filled with marauding hordes of German invaders was distinctly on the nose. An orchestral suite was the composer’s way of getting some of it heard, but for all his evident warmth for the Ukrainian countryside (Prokofiev grew up in Donetsk), the inspiration struggles to rise above the commonplace. The most original movement here featured a garish execution sequence with more than a whiff of the firing squad about it.

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It may not reinvent the wheel but the forthcoming racer looks awesome, plays flawlessly, offers more exhilarating carnage than ever before – and even allows some open-world exploration

• I got to play Nintendo Switch 2: a first look at 2025’s gaming must-have

How do you follow a game as complete and extensive as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe ? Nintendo is banking on the answer being: go bigger. Double the number of racers to 24. Increase the number of characters (60 in total). More weapons. And, most eye-catchingly, more exploration.

That’s not a term you’d associate with the closed circuit, three-lap formula that the series has perfected over the last three decades, but in Mario Kart World, the flagship launch title for the forthcoming Switch 2, Nintendo is tearing down the tyre barriers and offering players a Forza Horizon style open world. It’s not exactly a total reinvention of the wheel, but it’s as big a change to the format as any since the series began. Given physical copies of Mario Kart World will retail at £75 though, is it enough?

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New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme
Ambitious adaptation of Powell and Pressburger’s romantic fantasy is intelligently rendered, with well-chosen music added to the period mix

The propaganda brief for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger on A Matter of Life and Death was to come up with a film to help smooth postwar relations between Britain and the US. We could certainly do with a bit of that now, although to fix our current impasse would probably take more than a love affair between a fated British fighter pilot and a steely American radio operator.

It is a metaphysical story in which the life of Peter Carter (Thomas Dennis in the David Niven role) hangs on a heavenly court case and the love of June (Kaylah Copeland), whom he meets only after falling from the skies without a parachute. If this stage adaptation does not explain why we should revisit a story so deeply rooted in an era of loss, grief and reconciliation, it is no less intelligent and ambitious for it.

At the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme , until 19 April

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Brosnan, who co-stars with Mirren in new series MobLand, said ‘there’s always going to be conflict’ when it comes to the 007 spy series

Pierce Brosnan, who played James Bond in four films between 1995 and 2002, has said he has qualified sympathy for Helen Mirren’s feelings about what she called the “profound sexism” of the spy series.

Speaking last week, Mirren said she had “never liked James Bond” because the concept is “drenched and born out of profound sexism.”

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Singer-songwriter made more than 30 albums away from the mainstream, inspiring numerous artists in American alternative music

Michael Hurley, the American singer-songwriter whose unique path through the US folk scene made him an inspiration to generations of alternative musicians, has died aged 83.

A statement from the family announced his “recent sudden passing”, though no cause of death has been given. It added: “The ‘godfather of freak folk’ was for a prolific half-century the purveyor of an eccentric genius and compassionate wit … There is no other. Friends, family and the music community deeply mourn his loss.”

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