The TV reporter’s struggles with depression and the suicide of his father, whose own father killed himself, prompt this incisive, highly personal investigation

J ames Longman is an English broadcast journalist who was the BBC’s man in Beirut before joining US network ABC, where he is now chief international correspondent. He has reported from wars in Syria and Ukraine and covered Covid lockdowns, the queen’s funeral and the 2018 cave rescue in Thailand.

On screen, Longman is the type of British journalist that Americans love: eloquent, charismatic and unflappable. Behind the composure, however, runs a tragic legacy of mental illness. In 1996, when he was nine, Longman’s father John, an artist who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in his 20s, died after setting fire to his Notting Hill flat. Longman’s paternal grandfather also killed himself, and his mother, too, has endured mental health struggles. Longman’s own experiences with depression from his mid-20s onwards have prompted him to wonder: “Does sadness run in families? Have I inherited mental illness?”

The Inherited Mind by James Longman is published by Hyperion Avenue (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

She caused a sensation in 1966 when she joined the New York Phil and its 103 male musicians. Now the double bassist is the star of The Only Girl in the Orchestra, a documentary nominated for an Academy Award

One of the most fascinating, inspirational and talented creatives nominated for an Oscar this year will not be at the ceremony on 2 March. “Oh, I’m not going. No, no, no. I’ll be 90 in June, my dear,” says Orin O’Brien, double bassist and the star of nominated short documentary The Only Girl in the Orchestra. “That’s no excuse,” I tell her. Over Zoom, she looks and sounds more than capable of flying the plane there herself. “No. You couldn’t get me on a plane these days. People are so badly behaved. I’m staying here in my nice apartment in New York. I will cook dinner for my friends in the orchestra. Some students will come over.”

O’Brien has never sought the bright lights. Her chosen instrument, the double bass, means she sits at the back of the orchestra, providing harmonies and structure. One scene shows her telling her students: “You don’t want to stick out. You’re a support for what else is going on. You’re the floor under everybody that would collapse if it wasn’t secure.”

Theatre Royal Stratford East
You believe in the animals completely in this bold adaptation, which, with its seemingly guileless Napoleon, resonates darkly in the here and now

Popular among the revolutionary animal-comrades who rise up against tyranny in George Orwell’s 1945 classic is the chant: “Four legs good, two legs bad.” It refers to the banning of all bipeds – humans in particular – on their farm after the overthrow of the violent farmer, Mr Jones, and his tyranny.

So how does that work in stage enactments when the animals are represented by humans, who very much walk on two legs?

The comedian gets a nostalgic rush from the Smiths and would have the Beatles soundtracking his funeral, but which Welsh indie classic can he no longer bear?

The first song I fell in love with
The Boy in the Bubble when I was six or seven. My parents were really into Paul Simon and would always listen to Graceland. This is track one, so that’s the one I remember. It’s still a classic album.

The first single I bought
Do the Bartman by the Simpsons, from Our Price in Newton Abbot, where I did most of my early record shopping. It’s the same place I bought World in Motion by New Order and a lot of the Now That’s What I Call Music … albums.

This courageous, melancholy memoir, about the author’s struggle to reconcile his faith with his sexuality, argues that homophobia is a cultural phenomenon, not a religious edict

A few years ago I wanted to write about gay life in Algiers, where homosexuality is illegal and, if you’re not careful, can get you killed. There is, however, a busy, if well-hidden, gay underground in the city, as there is in most Arab countries. I found it relatively easy to make a few contacts, who all insisted that we meet in a “neutral” restaurant in the embassy district of Hydra, which is well guarded by government and foreign soldiers and a difficult place for hardline Islamists to penetrate. The watchwords for being gay in Algiers, I learned, were secrecy and discretion. There were no clubs or bars to go to, but rather invite-only private “parties”, along with the riskier, potentially lethal business of cruising the port area and main boulevards. Significantly, everyone I spoke to was upper-middle class, which ensured a certain immunity from suspicion and accusation, and they were diffident about their Islamic faith. To be working class and gay in Algiers, as well as a devout Muslim, is quite another matter.

Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed grew up in a working-class family in Algiers; from the earliest age he knew he was gay and had no idea what to do about it. It did not help that his father was a sometimes violent man – the very incarnation of “rajul”, the Algerian dialect word for a man and his machismo – who hated his son’s effeminacy. Zahed was also a pious Muslim, experiencing real spiritual feeling, which persists in him to this day. The first part of this book is a gripping description of living two realities at once: the life of a religious young man who is ever aware that his sexuality, as it develops, is anathema to his religion, his family, his friends and society at large. Zahed’s fears are deepened against the background of the civil war that took place in Algeria in the 1990s, when hundreds of thousand of people were killed and Islamist guerrillas massacred as many “miscreants” as they could, including homosexuals.

The broadcaster delivers a highly entertaining show about coping with teens, plus a delightful look back at Charles Schulz’s classic comic strip

Sara Cox and her childhood best friend Clare Hamilton host a lively, honest series about parenting teenagers. Or, in their words: “We’re fully gonna take the piss out of our kids.” Less an advice show than a “panic room”, it’s packed with entertaining tales of dealing with kids once they lose the squeaky voices and develop an attitude. AKA: “If you’ve got a nine-year-old or 10-year-old, enjoy it. You’re in a sweet spot that’s gonna end!”
Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly

A 10-year-old TikToker and an 11-year-old who dreams of being a paramedic show us the horrors of living in a warzone. Plus: unbearable holidaygoers check in at the White Lotus. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two
A teenager narrates this absolutely vital film about what life has been like for young people in Gaza since 7 October 2023. Abdullah, 13, is incisive, quick on his feet and at times alarmingly indifferent as he shows the horrors around him. We also meet cooking TikToker Renad, 10, who stops whisking when a bomb hits nearby: “We’re not afraid, we’re used to it.” And Zakaria, 11, who dreams of being a paramedic, is determined to “find a way to fit in” by helping casualties; it is a relief to see him enjoy a moment in the sea. Most haunting still, following news of Donald Trump’s intentions for Gaza, are Renad’s words after the ceasefire is announced: “If Gaza goes back to how it was before, I’ll stay for sure.” Hollie Richardson

Stone Nest, London
Vivaldi and Handel shadow-boxed with Caroline Shaw and Joanna Ward in this ambitious, punchy concert by the string ensemble Figure

‘Phil, do we have clearance?” A thumb shot out from the gallery above the stage. The musicians of period-performance outfit Figure giggled, then plunged into Vivaldi’s Concerto for Strings in D minor (“Madrigalesco”), its opening gestures drawn out in fierce, even bowstrokes. Not a hint of vibrato to warm the tone. They tightened the screws on the concerto’s already weird harmonies with some artfully dissonant pitching. In the fast movements, the ensemble clicked together like a mechanical device, Vivaldi’s passagework suddenly animated by fizzing energy and punchy attack.

Then a scramble to swap bows – out with baroque curves, in with the modern – while Figure’s co-artistic director, Frederick Waxman, introduced Caroline Shaw ’s Punctum, the first of the concert’s four contemporary works. Punctum shadow-boxes with a passage from Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Resonances pass in slow-motion ricochet across the string orchestra, gradually accelerating into something that approaches a Bach chorale heard at multiple times the usual speed. The performance was spikily stylish, segueing with ease from moments of razor-sharp crunchiness to quotations from Bach’s own score.

As the show’s beloved star Harold Bishop, Smith has seen actors from Margot Robbie to Guy Pearce come and go. Offscreen, he has battled grief, finding out he was adopted in his 50s and now a terminal diagnosis. Here, he reflects on a remarkable life

For a man who was supposed to be dead next month, Ian Smith looks good. Astoundingly good: huge smile, glowing skin, that famous wobbly chin. There is only one visible clue that he has terminal cancer: a freshly shaved head, over which he frequently rubs his hand. Chemotherapy left him with “an awful half shaggy, half bald look”, so he buzzed it all off. “First time I’ve been bald since I was a baby,” he says, happily. “Apart from no hair, you can’t tell I’m sick at all.”

Smith is among Australia’s most recognisable actors, although you may not know him by his name. Charlie Brooker once described him as “probably the friendliest face on television – a cross between 10 Toytown mayors and a baby”. Perhaps you know him as Harold Bishop from Neighbours. Smith joined the cast in 1987, two years after the show launched, and became one of its longest-serving members, appearing in more than 2,100 episodes over five decades.