An utterly beguiling Taiwanese drama about a single mother, plus Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri star in a dark thriller about accusations of sexual assault on a college campus

Shih-Ching Tsou is a regular collaborator of Sean Baker, the Oscar-winning director of Anora. He returns the compliment here by co-writing and editing her vibrant debut solo feature, where his interest in the least privileged members of society mingles fruitfully with her intimate focus on her Taiwanese homeland. Janel Tsai plays Shu-Fen, single mother to left-handed five-year-old I-Jing (a delightful Nina Ye) and stroppy young adult I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma). They arrive in Taipei to open a noodle stall but financial and relationship stresses threaten to unravel the family. An unforced, perceptive and utterly beguiling drama.
Friday 28 November, Netflix

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(Mass Appeal)
The first release since the death of their founding member dwells on the afterlife, yet doesn’t forsake their perpetually sunny sound

Cabin in the Sky, the tenth album by De La Soul – and first since the 2023 death of founding member Trugoy the Dove , AKA Dave Jolicoeur – is, loosely, a concept album about death and the afterlife. A spoken-word intro by actor Giancarlo Esposito primes you for something heavy, but you are instantly reminded, of course, that this is a De La Soul album: it seems practically impossible that their brand of lackadaisical, perpetually sunny plunderphonics could ever feel like a drag. The lush strings of Yuhdontstop introduce an album that’s always projected in full-saturation Technicolor: from the effervescent Natalie Cole sample on Will Be to Maseo’s jovial, avuncular ad-libs that open Cruel Summers Bring Fire Life!!, Cabin in the Sky feels warm and rich in vitamin D, a tonic for chillier months.

For the most part, the afterlife theme seems to have been tacked on, likely after Trugoy’s death; the album still features his vocals, and most of the songs on the album fit squarely in De La Soul’s already established surrealist world. (Patty Cake, a minimalist highlight, reinterprets classic schoolyard chants, a conceit that somehow hasn’t already been done on a De La Soul record.) Even so, lasting more than 70 minutes, Cabin in the Sky can feel like a slog, with the end lacking the sprightliness of the album’s first half. An exception is the title track, on which Maseo and Pos pay tribute to Trugoy and others they’ve lost. It’s pensive and world-weary, but never loses its sense of magic.

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Irish indie acts used to be ignored, even on Irish radio. But songs confronting the Troubles, poverty and oppression are now going global – and changing how Ireland sees itself

On a hot Saturday afternoon at Glastonbury, while many are nursing halfway-point hangovers, the Dublin garage punk quartet Sprints whip up a jubilant mosh pit with their charged tune Descartes, Irish tricolour flags bobbing above them. As summer speeds on, at Japan’s Fuji rock festival, new songs from Galway indie act NewDad enrapture the crowd. Travy, a Nigerian-born and Tallaght-raised rapper, crafts a mixtape inflected with his Dublin lilt, the follow-up to the first Irish rap album to top the Irish charts. Efé transcends Dublin bedroom pop to get signed by US label Fader, and on Later … With Jools Holland, George Houston performs the haunting Lilith – a tribute to political protest singers everywhere – in a distinctive Donegal accent.

From Melbourne to Mexico City, concertgoers continue to scream to that opening loop on strings of Fontaines DC’s Starburster, and CMAT’s viral “woke macarena” dance to her hit single Take a Sexy Picture of Me plays out in festival pits and on TikTok. You might have heard about Kneecap, too.

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Head back to Hawkins for one last hair-raising, horrifying showdown with Vecna. Plus: Peter Jackson works yet more miracles with stunning footage of the Fab Four

As one of the streamer’s defining creations, this supernatural coming-of-age drama ends on its own terms. The final season begins by rewinding back to young Will in the Upside Down for a hair-raising encounter with a demogorgon. It’s a reminder of Stranger Things’s greatest strength. All the elements are convincingly realised: the friendships are carefully drawn; the period nostalgia is fond and knowing; and, crucially, the horror is genuinely scary. At the end of the fourth season, that horror meant carnage in Hawkins. Now, the narrative loops forward and back, explaining Vecna’s origins and his ultimate objective. But only if the kids (now looking like adults) can’t stop him first …
Netflix, from Thursday 27 November

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A collection of columns by the German Booker winner reveals a keen eye for details that mark the passing of time

Jenny Erpenbeck wrote the pieces collected in this compact yet kaleidoscopic book for a column in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; published in German in 2009, they now appear in an English translation by Kurt Beals, following the immense success of Erpenbeck’s novel Kairos , which won the 2024 International Booker prize.

It’s interesting and instructive to reflect on what German newspaper readers made of the column in the early years of the new millennium, nearly two decades on from the fall of the Berlin Wall. For while Erpenbeck adopted some of the features of the form – apparently throwaway observations on daily life, such as minor irritation at the difficulty of sourcing proper splitterbrötchen , an unpretentious pastry now pimped for a more elaborate and wealthy clientele – she consistently enlarged and complicated it. Into that recognisable tone of ennui and mild querulousness with which journalists hope to woo a time-pressed but disenchanted or nostalgic readership, Erpenbeck smuggled metaphysics, politics and history.

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Gemma becomes a mum in the second series of Daddy Issues. Plus, the final episode of Empire With David Olusoga. Here’s what to watch this evening

9.35pm, BBC One
Aimee Lou Wood and David Morrissey’s sweet father-and-daughter comedy returns – and they’re now joined by baby Sadie. Gemma (Wood) is grappling with motherhood and daydreaming about dating again, while dealing with her formerly estranged mother Davina (Jill Halfpenny) moving in. Eager to be a grandfather, Malcolm (Morrissey) goes to extremes to help her get rid of his ex. Hollie Richardson

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Dorfman theatre, London
David Eldridge’s two-hander depicts the difficult conversations that follow one partner’s cancer diagnosis

David Eldridge’s trilogy has travelled across the early and mid stages of coupledom to come to this finish. The play marks the end of an era in more ways than one. Programmed in Rufus Norris’s final season as the National Theatre’s director, it is also a farewell for the couple at its centre. This is grown up, bittersweet fare that brings with it a full-bodied reflection on the end that awaits us all: death.

A natural order was branded into Eldridge’s previous two plays – Beginning was about the heady spark of a first romance, Middle the sag of an established relationship. This one grapples with a more unforeseen end. Alfie (Clive Owen) is a DJ in his 50s who made his name on the acid house scene. Julie (Saskia Reeves) is a successful novelist. His terminal cancer diagnosis is announced in the opening lines and the play becomes a reflection on what happens when a lifetime of togetherness meets mortality.

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The pristine copy of Superman No 1, the character’s first solo title from 1939, was discovered in an attic in California last year

A copy of Superman No 1 that was discovered in an attic in California last year has become the world’s most expensive comic book after selling for US$9.12m (£6.96m, A$14.14m).

Superman No 1 was published in 1939 and was the Man of Steel’s first solo title. It marked the first time a character that debuted in a comic book had their own title devoted entirely to them.

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I guessed it would be worth a couple of hundred pounds at most, but it was a preparatory print for his famous 1639 etching The Goldweigher

My father died 20 years ago, when I was 26, and my mother died 10 years later. I’ve always felt grateful that one of the things they passed on to me was a love of art. My dad, Alan Barlow , was a stage designer, a Benedictine monk and then, after marrying my mother, Grace – who was a GP – he became a full-time artist.

In his studio in Norfolk, there were two big Victorian plan chests, where he stored paper and sketches he had created. He was also an art collector and some of the drawers contained artworks he had bought but didn’t have wall space for. For a long time, I didn’t feel ready to go through everything in his studio. I always felt connected to him when I went in there.

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