It looked destined to take over the world. But after misfiring albums, a legal drama involving bright hopes NewJeans and with domestic fans getting bored, the South Korean music industry is nervous

Earlier this decade, it seemed as if the long-vaunted South Korean takeover of American pop was finally happening. In summer 2020, BTS’s Dynamite became the first K-pop track to top the US chart, and in 2023, girl group Blackpink became the first K-pop act to headline Coachella . But just two years later, the story looks very different.

Ruby and Alter Ego , recent solo albums by Blackpink members Jennie and Lisa, each debuted at No 7 on the US album chart before dropping out of the Top 10 after one week, and neither album produced a single that peaked higher than No 68. Relative newcomers such as Tomorrow X Together, Ateez and Twice have achieved solid first-week chart positions, thanks to strong physical album sales, before facing precipitous drop-offs. NewJeans – a young, critically acclaimed new K-pop group who looked to be the genre’s strongest hope in the US after Blackpink and BTS – have been bogged down by controversies and legal dramas in South Korea, stopping them from capitalising on the success of their 2023 single Super Shy.

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Takács Quartet/Marc-André Hamelin
(Hyperion)
Dvořák’s Quintet No 2 in A major is full of charm, while Florence Price’s Piano Quintet in A minor is fleet of foot; this dream-team of chamber music makes them an excellent match

F lorence Price ’s Piano Quintet in A minor, composed in the mid-1930s, is yet another gem from the treasure trove of forgotten Price manuscripts discovered in 2009. The premiere recording was released by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective only four years ago, but this new one, by the chamber-music dream team of the Takács Quartet and pianist Marc-André Hamelin , offers a different slant, placing the work more firmly in the classical tradition of the Dvořák with which it is paired. A good example of this is the third of the four movements, which Price, as in her symphonies, casts as a juba – a dance from the plantations. In the Kaleidoscope performance, it sounds like a ragtime stomp; as played by Hamelin and the Takács it is fleeter of foot, jazzy and sparkling. The two approaches are complementary, equally worthwhile, yet if anything the Quintet as a whole sounds less self-conscious as the Takács and Hamelin have it.

Dvořák’s Quintet No 2 in A major – written in 1887, the year of Price’s birth – dates from before his move to New York and therefore predates his own wholehearted embrace of black American music. It is nicely paired with the Price here in a characterful performance in which the music’s passion is perfectly balanced with its charm.

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From the Barry-Billericay finale to Wolf Hall, Pachinko and Nobody Wants This, there are far too many cruelly overlooked shows this year. But the even bigger problem? Bafta’s Adolescence issue

• Stalking saga Baby Reindeer leads 2025 TV Bafta nominations

The latest Bafta TV awards again show the range of talent across UK television. Though drama characteristically dominates, the shows with most nominations – Rivals, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, Slow Horses and Baby Reindeer – represent a range of genres and source material (from real events via a 36-year-old Jilly Cooper bonkbuster to a solo theatre show) suggesting that the 2025 voters have largely avoided historical snobbery, long a problem in these prizes.

The awards also continue a belated honouring of overlooked talent. After improbably having to wait until last year for his first main Bafta nomination, David Tennant gets a rapid second, for his thrilling turn as a Richard III of the TV industry in the raunchy Cooper adaptation Rivals. It also seems rudely overdue that performers as great as Jonathan Pryce and Sharon D Clarke have had to wait until now: honoured for Slow Horses and Mr Loverman respectively. Danny Dyer also makes his debut in the lists, though oddly not for his career-transforming wigged romantic in Rivals but for Sky Max’s Mr Bigstuff.

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The Oscar winner answers your questions about playing everyone from Peter Sellers to the Marquis de Sade, his home town of Toowoomba and new care-home horror The Rule of Jenny Pen

The Rule of Jenny Pen looks terrifying! Does the prospect of sudden ageing frighten you? BenderRodriguez
It’s not sudden. I was in [King] Lear when I was 64 and said: “I need a wig that’s grey because he’s supposed to be 80.” Now I’m 73 and I still think inside I’m a brunette. This is the 54th year of my career. The last decade has just galloped past. I waited for something like this – a project that I latched on to. There’s been a lot of stuff that I turned down. I’m now being very pernickety about what I commit three or four months of my life to.

No doubt there was also a lot of work behind it, but w as playing Hector Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean films as much fun as it looked? Have you ever reinhabited the character for a brief moment, to amuse yourself or others? Liam01
Yeah, it was fun. [Director] Gore Verbinski had a kind of pop cultural sense of anarchy. Anyone who liked the Pirates films should also check out Rango, which has his cinematic fingerprints all over it. I’ve reinhabited the character for brief moments, for the Disney ride in Anaheim, and I think Shanghai, and maybe in Florida. I remember having to go and voice some lines after a day on another film, and rolling my eyes going: “Oh my God, will this never go away?” It’s the vanity of being a moment of cinema folklore. It’s fun.

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Royal Court, Liverpool
A cast of more than 50 delivers an inspiring adaptation of David Peace’s epic novel about a manager who prized socialism

In 2016, an adaptation of David Peace’s The Damned United was staged in Leeds and Derby where its pugnacious subject, Brian Clough, is still viewed as villain and hero respectively. Peace’s next football novel was Red or Dead , a 700-page opus about Liverpool FC’s eternally beloved manager Bill Shankly. It is similarly adapted on home turf: the Royal Court has laid out the red carpet, serving Shanks pies and Shanks pints, honouring the man who transformed the club.

The Damned United had a cast of 11 and was bulked out with human-size Subbuteo-style mannequins. Red or Dead assembles a whopping 52-strong ensemble who almost continuously fill the stage, adapter and director Phillip Breen evidently taking his cue from the anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone. In the lead role is film and TV star Peter Mullan, finally returning to the stage in a casting coup that gains resonance from a career as entwined with socialism as Shankly’s.

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The first fiction the author has written since he was attacked in 2022 comprises three novellas and two shorter works set across India, England and the US

Salman Rushdie will publish a new collection of stories later this year, the first work of fiction he has written since he was attacked in 2022.

The Eleventh Hour comprises three novellas and two shorter works set across India, England and the US, all places Rushdie has lived.

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Other winners include Francesca Amewudah-Rivers for Romeo & Juliet, Danny Sapani as King Lear and Giant playwright Mark Rosenblatt

A modern-day version of Oedipus , which turned Sophocles’ tragic leader into a politician awaiting election results, has won three prizes at the Critics’ Circle theatre awards. Robert Icke won best director for the production (which he adapted), with Mark Strong named best actor and Lesley Manville best actress. All three are up for Olivier awards next month.

Receiving ecstatic reviews, Oedipus became a hot ticket at Wyndham’s theatre after previous runs using actors from Internationaal Theater Amsterdam at the Edinburgh festival and in the Netherlands .

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From Wolf Hall to Say Nothing, Alma’s Not Normal to Mr Bates vs the Post Office, here is every single nominee up for the year’s biggest British TV awards

• Stalking saga Baby Reindeer leads 2025 TV Bafta nominations

Blue Lights (BBC One)
Sherwood (BBC One)
Supacell (Netflix)
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (BBC One)

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The developers of Thank Goodness You’re Here!, Frog Detective and Consume Me discuss burnout, ‘second-album syndrome’, erotic fan art, and the other highs and lows of having a breakout success

It is now more or less impossible to put a precise figure on the number of video games released each year. According to data published by the digital store Steam, almost 19,000 titles were released in 2024 – and that’s just on one platform. Hundreds more arrived on consoles and smartphones. In some ways this is the positive sign of a vibrant industry, but how on earth does a new project get noticed? When Triple A titles with multimillion dollar marketing budgets are finding it hard to gain attention (disappointing sales have been reported for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the Final Fantasy VII remakes and EA Sports FC), what chance is there for a small team to break out?

And yet it does happen. Last year’s surprise hit Balatro has shifted more than 5m copies. Complex medieval strategy title Manor Lords sold 1m copies during its launch weekend. But what awaits a small developer after they achieve success? And what does success even mean in a continuously evolving industry?

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