30/10/2010

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests writers Kevin Jackson and David Aaronovitch and novelist Dreda Say Mitchell review the cultural highlights of the week including The Kids Are Alright. In Lisa Cholodenko's film The Kids Are Alright, Julianne Moore and Annette Bening play a couple whose children track down the anonymous sperm donor who is their biological father. When he enters the picture the family implodes. Men Should Weep is a 1947 play by Ena Lamont Stewart which portrays the tough life of a family in a Glasgow tenement during the Depression. Josie Rourke's revival at the National Theatre in London stars Sharon Small and Robert Cavanah as the parents trying to make ends meet. Brian Turner served in the US Army for seven years and his experiences during a year-long tour of duty in Iraq provide the subject matter for many of the poems in his collection Phantom Noise. The British Art Show is staged every five years and aims to provide a snapshot of what is happening in British contemporary art. Its seventh incarnation - subtitled In the Days of the Comet - has opened in Nottingham. It will also travel, in 2011, to London, Glasgow and Plymouth. Michael Winterbottom's six part BBC2 series The Trip stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon essentially playing themselves. Coogan has been asked to review some restaurants in the north of England and takes Brydon along for company. Beautiful landscapes, exquisite food and duelling impressionists. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.