From Edvard Munch to Central Cee: Observer critics choose their cultural highlights for 2025

Film

American auteurs return

A new film from one of the heavy hitters of US cinema is always cause for celebration, and with projects from Kathryn Bigelow, Noah Baumbach and Paul Thomas Anderson on the horizon, there’s plenty to whet cineaste appetites in the coming year. Details on all three are scant at the moment.

Kathryn Bigelow

’s film, her first since

Detroit

in 2017, is a political thriller set in the White House, following staffers as they scramble to respond to an imminent missile strike on America. The cast includes Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson and Jared Harris.

Even less is known about

Noah Baumbach

’s new film, which, like Bigelow’s, is a Netflix production. Baumbach’s recent work includes the adaptation of Don DeLillo’s

White Noise

, and a co-writer credit on

Barbie

. This one, which Baumbach co-wrote with Emily Mortimer, has a starry cast: George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Jim Broadbent, Isla Fisher and Laura Dern are among the names listed on the credits of a picture described as being a “funny and emotional coming-of-age film about adults”.

Perhaps the most hotly anticipated of all is

Paul Thomas Anderson

’s latest, which is currently untitled but had the working title of

The Battle of Baktan Cross

. Unsubstantiated rumours suggest that it might be an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel

Vineland

(Anderson previously adapted another Pynchon novel,

Inherent Vice

, in 2014). What we know for certain is that the film is scheduled for release in August and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, Benicio Del Toro, Teyana Taylor and Anderson’s

Licorice Pizza

star Alana Haim.

Wendy Ide

Music

The Gallaghers get it together

The guns fell silent. The stars aligned. Not seen on a stage together since 2009 – the year Barack Obama became the first black president of the US,

Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift

and Bitcoin was launched – the warring Gallagher brothers are set to finally reunite this summer for a tour marking the 30th anniversary of their 1995 album,

(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?.

It would not be an Oasis endeavour without controversy. Already marred by outrage and inquiries over “dynamic pricing” and Liam Gallagher’s initial

surly, on-brand reaction

to fans’ complaints – plus accusations of gatekeeping by grouchy old-timers bemoaning the pressure on tickets from younger fans – the Oasis reunion looks set to remain a talking point from here to July and beyond. Did Noel Gallagher’s

costly divorce

change his mind? Do we have Liam Gallagher to thank for keeping the spirit of Oasis alive through his more recent solo success? Will it be the set list people want – first two albums, back to-back, cheers, as you were – or will fans have to endure late-career filler? Answers may be forthcoming at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on 4 July.

Kitty Empire

Art

Blockbusters and big statements

The suspended drama and mystery of Sienese painting finally has its due in the National Gallery’s long-awaited

Siena: The Rise of Painting

1300-1350

(8 March-22 June). This is art’s golden moment, when bodies step into motion and faces become expressive; when stories begin to stream across exquisitely coloured panels. Jointly organised with the Met in New York, and including masterpieces by Duccio, Martini and Lorenzetti, this is the revelatory blockbuster of the year.

Tate Modern

turns 25, celebrating with the return of

Louise Bourgeois

’s monumental spider

Maman

, which towered over the Turbine Hall when the building first opened a quarter of a century ago. The

British Museum

is mounting the first Hiroshige show in its entire history, with enthralling woodblock prints of Edo Japan, including snowfall over Fuji, the famous Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake, and bustling shops, boats in full sail and eagles in flight. Advance booking is definitely required for

Hiroshige: Artist of the Open

Road

(1 May-7 September).

It feels as if I have been waiting my whole life for a Millet retrospective, and I may have to wait a bit longer. But the National Gallery’s

Millet: Life on the Land

(7 August-19 October) is a strong start, centring on the intensely moving

L’Angélus

, borrowed from Paris. Toil and harvest, labour, dusk and loss: the great poet-painter of French peasants. And anyone who thinks of

Munch

as a hardcore miserabilist will be astonished by his

Portraits

at the National Portrait Gallery (13 March-15 June). Depicting lovers, artists, writers, patrons, even proud plutocrats, shy children and big-bellied industrialists, these works are sociable, sunny and dramatically original.

Laura Cumming

Theatre

Much ado about Shakespeare

It promises to be springtime for Shakespeare, with a great glut of productions. Most explosively,

Hamlet Hail to the Thief

is billed as a collision between the Bard and Radiohead, in which a “frenetic distillation” of Shakespeare’s tragedy is infused with a score by Thom Yorke. The production is co-created by Yorke with Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones, who together choreographed and designed

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

and

Let the Right One In

. Co-produced by Factory International and the Royal Shakespeare Company, the show will be at Aviva Studios in Manchester (27 April-18 May).

The elusive, ever-intriguing Luke Thallon will become

Hamlet

for the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon (8 February-29 March); Rupert Goold, who worked with Thallon on

Patriots

, directs. From 10 February-10 May, Jonathan Bailey – of

Bridgerton

and

Wicked

– will star, directed by Nicholas Hytner, in

Richard II

at the Bridge in London. Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell will spar as Benedick and Beatrice in

Much Ado About Nothing

, Jamie Lloyd’s latest Shakespearean re-creation, at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane (10 February-5 April). At the Theatre Royal Bath, Harriet Walter will redefine the Seven Ages of Man speech when she becomes the sardonic Jaques in Ralph Fiennes’s production of

As You Like It

(15 August-6 September).

Susannah Clapp

Classical

Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen is transformed for the stage

Based on the

Danish film

by Thomas Vinterberg, also a Broadway and West End play, this world premiere of

Festen

(11-27 February; Royal Ballet and Opera, London) is a commission by composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, with librettist Lee Hall of

Billy Elliot

fame. The creative lineup includes Edward Gardner, conductor; Richard Jones, director; and a star cast led by Allan Clayton, Stéphane Degout, Gerald Finley, Natalya Romaniw and Rosie Aldridge.

Festen

– meaning Celebration – centres on a rich family and the patriarch-businessman’s 60th birthday party, at which a secret is revealed. This dark comedy explores issues of violence and abuse, and is sure to be a tense, challenging and gripping evening.

Fiona Maddocks

Dance

Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney’s Figures in Extinction

For the past four years, visionary choreographer Crystal Pite has been collaborating with Complicité’s co-founder and artistic director Simon McBurney to create a dance trilogy called

Figures in Extinction

(Aviva Studios, Manchester; 19-22 February), a meditation on the natural world and our position in it. The dancers of Nederlands Dans Theater have already brought to the UK

Figures in Extinction [1.0]

, a haunting catalogue of all the species being lost to climate change. The second part, about humanity’s need for connection in a separated world, has only been seen in the Netherlands. Now the entire trilogy, with a newly created final section, comes to Factory International, using video, dance and the spoken word to offer provocation, thoughtfulness and perhaps a little hope.

Sarah Crompton

TV

Real-life TV tales

We had not one but two dramatisations of Prince Andrew’s calamitous

Newsnight

interview

last year. Now for a variation on the theme.

Brian and Margaret

(Channel 4, February) portrays journalist Brian Walden’s infamous 1989 grilling of Margaret Thatcher – a pummelling for which the PM never forgave him. It set in motion events that led to her resignation the following year. The two-part drama has high-class credentials, with Steve Coogan and Harriet Walter as the combatants, James Graham writing and Stephen Frears directing.

An equally complex woman is explored in

Miss Austen

(BBC One, spring). Marking 250 years since Jane Austen’s birth, this fascinating four-parter, adapted from Gill Hornby’s bestselling

literary mystery novel

, stars Keeley Hawes as Cassandra Austen, elder sister of Jane. It begins in 1830 and explores why Cassandra burned all of Jane’s personal letters after her death – a decision that has bewildered academics and readers for centuries. Strong support comes from Jessica Hynes and Rose Leslie, while Olivier award-winner

Patsy Ferran

plays the novelist herself.

Michael Hogan

Film

Chalamet channels early Dylan in A Complete Unknown

The buzz surrounding this

Bob Dylan biopic

by James Mangold – and in particular, the central performance by Timothée Chalamet – suggests that the latter is likely to be the one to beat in the Oscar best actor race. And deservedly so: it’s an uncannily accurate impersonation that captures both that distinctive voice and performance style, and the prickly persona behind the shades and black denim. Mangold is an old hand when it comes to getting into the skin of notoriously abrasive music legends, having previously profiled Johnny Cash in

Walk the Line

. Here, Mangold has slightly less booze-sodden chaos and drama to work with, but he vividly evokes the time and the spirit of New York’s early 1960s folk explosion.

WI

Music

Here come the girls, again

If 2024 was “the year of the woman” –

Grammy wins

for Boygenius, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Victoria Monét and SZA; cultural ubiquity for Chappell Roan, Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter – 2025 looks set to showcase new work from several female solo talents, both mainstream and outlier. First is

Ethel Cain

, whose celebrated debut,

Preacher’s Daughter

(2022), put the southern gothic songwriter on the map. Her second album,

Perverts

(8 January), is billed a standalone project, full of ambient textures and slow builds.

South African superstar-in-waiting

Moonchild Sanelly

, meanwhile, melds pop, kwaito and hip-hop on her exuberant third album,

Full Moon

(10 January), which features tunes about the perils of tequila and flexes like her single

Scrambled Eggs

. Last year, Sanelly collaborated with Self Esteem on a one-off two-hander,

Big Man

. Four years on from her acclaimed

Prioritise Pleasure

album and a successful swerve into

acting roles

,

Self Esteem

– AKA Rebecca Lucy Taylor – is finally putting the finishing touches to its “

horribly honest

” sequel. “It’s not what you think,” she told one interviewer, intriguingly.

An “

abundance of emotional honesty

” also features on

Eusexua

(24 January), the forthcoming third album by multi-hyphenate

FKA twigs

, whose sound is partly inspired by eastern European techno. Songs released so far, including

Perfect Stranger

, hint at a mainstream breakthrough.

Lana Del Rey

’s long-awaited country-tinged album, previously known as

Lasso

, is now called

The Right Person Will Stay

.

It arrives in May, shortly before Del Rey hits the UK for a stadium tour in late June.

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Festival

All eyes on Bradford

“Overlooked” and “underestimated” were words that cropped up many times three years ago when Bradford won the bid to become the UK’s

city of culture 2025

; now, the West Yorkshire town has a chance to prove its merits. The programme certainly looks promising. It kicks off on 10 January with an open-air extravaganza in City Park called

RISE

, weaving together music and wizardry from local magician Steven Frayne (formerly known as Dynamo). Also this month, striking photographs by Ethiopian artist

Aïda Muluneh

go on show at Impressions gallery, while the National Science and Media Museum is reopening following a £6m development and will present

David Hockney: Pieced Together

, exploring the Bradford-born artist’s use of film and photography. Hockney also supports

DRAW!

, a nationwide project encouraging drawing for all ages. The Akram Khan Company comes to Bradford to perform

Jungle Book reimagined

at the Alhambra theatre, repositioning Mowgli as a refugee during the climate crisis, and Asian Dub Foundation will unleash their soundtrack to French thriller

La Haine

live at St George’s Hall on 15 January.

Killian Fox

Art

In celebration of the outlandishly inventive Leigh Bowery

Leigh Bowery was the most influential performance artist of the late 20th century, a colossal figure of huge inventiveness. Born in Australia in 1961, Bowery was already storming London by his early 20s with outlandish drag, bizarre scenarios and grotesque makeup. Standing 1.91 metres (6ft 3in) without his soaring platforms, he was described by his friend Boy George as “modern art on legs”. Tate Modern’s

Leigh Bowery!

(27 February-31 August) presents him through photographs, films and interviews, and, of course, Lucian Freud’s famous nude portraits. Expect a nightclub inside a museum, with special emphasis on Bowery’s costumes, performances and collaborations with RuPaul, Andrew Logan, Trojan, Lady Bunny and Michael Clark. This embrace of a brief but fearlessly wild life promises to be a spectacular exhibition.

LC

Theatre

The Greeks are in town

Greek tragedy is shaking up the London theatre, helping to change the idea of a West End play. From 24 January-12 April, Brie Larson (

Captain Marvel

) stars as

Elektra

at the Duke of York’s. Daniel Fish – director of a revelatory production of

Oklahoma!

– will stage the play via a translation by the poet and classicist Anne Carson. Robert Icke’s

adaptation

of

Oedipus

was one of last year’s theatrical highlights. Now Ella Hickson, author of

The Writer

, has written a new version of Sophocles’s drama, which can be seen at the

Old Vic

from 21 January-29 March. Co-directed by Matthew Warchus and Hofesh Shechter, it will star Rami Malek (

Bohemian Rhapsody

) and Indira Varma (

Present Laughter

).

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TV

Returning dramas

We can look forward to a whole host of much-loved dramas coming back for more in 2025. It’s been a nine-year wait for

The Night Manager

(BBC One, summer) but Tom Hiddleston finally returns as John le Carré’s hotel worker turned spook. Just as excitingly, Olivia Colman joins him again as Foreign Office spymaster Angela Burr. Highly contrasting but also hotel-based is

The White Lotus

(Sky Atlantic, 17 February). The

third series

of the spa resort satire is set in Thailand, with Jason Isaacs, Walton Goggins and Carrie Coon among the western guests in search of eastern spirituality.

Two of Netflix’s biggest hits are back to give a timely boost to the streamer. Tim Burton’s gothic teen fantasy

Wednesday

dances back for season two (Netflix, spring), complete with Lady Gaga cameo. The fifth and final season of

Stranger Things

(Netflix, summer) promises to be epic, following the final battle for Hawkins in 1987. Cue Kate Bush.

Waffle parties all round, because acclaimed sci-fi head-scratcher

Severance

(Apple TV+, 17 January) clocks on for another office shift at the sinister Lumon Industries. HBO’s hit video game adaptation,

The Last of Us

(Sky Atlantic, spring)

jumps forward five years

to revisit zombie apocalypse survivors Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Finally, any orders for a fourth course of

The Bear

(Disney+, June)? Yes, chef. Even if the

third serving

disappointed some diners.

MH

Art

Burmese activist Htein Lin’s creativity in captivity

Burmese painter, performance artist and activist Htein Lin’s work is rarely shown in this country. Many of his narrative paintings and prints draw on his six years as a political prisoner in a Myanmar jail, following his activism in the 1988 student uprising. The

Ikon Gallery

, Birmingham, will be showing many of these works, made on prison uniforms and scraps of coarse canvas, along with films of his courageous performances, some of them made in prison for fellow inmates. Lin is also working with inmates in HMP Grendon, Buckinghamshire during the course of this show.

LC

Film

Bridget Jones is back for a fourth feature in Mad About the Boy

Everyone’s favourite klutzy serial dieter returns for a fourth instalment of pratfalls and romantic travails. Bridget (Renée Zellweger reprises the role) has endured more than her fair share of upheaval and tragedy over the near quarter of a century since the

first film

. We rejoin her as a widowed fiftysomething single mother who is dipping her toe back into the shark-infested waters of the dating pool. Suitors include a man 20 years her junior (

One Day

star Leo Woodall plays the improbably named Roxster McDuff) and a teacher at her son’s school (Chiwetel Ejiofor). The good news for those who mourned his absence in the previous film is that Hugh Grant returns as slippery cad Daniel Cleaver.

WI

Music

The long-awaited debut album from one of UK hip-hop’s biggest names

Albums may not be the definitive statements they once were, but

Central Cee

is probably the most important UK hip-hop artist without an official debut release. In 2023, his Dave-assisted track

Sprinter

broke records for a UK rap release due to its tenure at No 1. He has won best male artist at the Mobos twice, and in 2024, the west London driller collaborated with

Ice Spice

,

Lil Baby

and

J Cole

, taking his unapologetically British rhymes – about his past as a dealer and his love life – international. Previous mixtapes (

Wild West

and

23

) have charted high, but Cee’s very long-awaited album,

Can’t Rush Greatness,

finally drops on 24 January.

KE

Classical

The ENO and WNO strike back

Launching soon are two key shows from the English National Opera and Welsh National Opera, companies facing uncertainty and upheaval. ENO is honouring the admired Scottish-American composer Thea Musgrave (b.1928) with her 1977 opera

Mary, Queen of Scots

(15-18 February). Action focuses on the widowed Mary’s return to Scotland from France, until she flees to England hoping for protection from Elizabeth I. Directed and designed by Stewart Laing, conducted by Joana Carneiro, it stars soprano Heidi Stober as Mary, with tenor Nicky Spence as the Earl of Bothwell. Expect period Highlands atmosphere, a vivid and melodic score, passion and treachery.

Spence then takes the title role for WNO in Benjamin Britten’s

Peter Grimes

(5 April-7 June; Cardiff and on tour), the tragic tale of a lonely fisherman outsider and one of the 20th-century’s operatic masterpieces. Tomáš Hanus conducts, Melly Still directs. An outstanding ensemble cast includes Sarah Connolly, Sally Matthews, Fflur Wyn, Catherine Wyn-Rogers and David Kempster. Following WNO’s recent triumph with Britten’s final opera,

Death in Venice

, this promises to be unmissable.

FM

Theatre

David Hare’s new play launches Bath’s Ralph Fiennes season

The Ralph Fiennes season at Theatre Royal Bath opens with a new play by David Hare starring Fiennes and Miranda Raison.

Grace Pervades

brings to the stage a dynasty that changed the theatre, tracing the switchback private lives and public careers of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, glittering rulers of the Victorian stage, as well as the extraordinary biographies of Terry’s dramatic children: the elusive Edward Gordon Craig – visionary designer, explosive lothario – and Edith Craig, socialist, suffragette and founder of the feminist Pioneer Players. Jeremy Herrin directs; Bob Crowley designs. From 27 June-19 July.

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Games

Grand Theft Auto rocks up in Vice City

Launched in 2013,

Grand Theft Auto V

is a cultural juggernaut whose loving approximation of Los Angeles continues to provide an online playpen for every kind of proclivity, from staging elaborate heists to Lycra’d yoga sessions. This year’s sequel is set in Vice City, a love/hate letter to Miami and the swelter of surrounding Florida. We’ll play as Lucia, the series’ first female protagonist. While there are few details about the story, the prison garb she wears in the

trailer

suggests it’s likely to follow a familiar arc, as we escape from poverty into riches via a combination of cunning, nous and that other cornerstone of the American dream: assault weapons. While the US no longer holds the same cultural sway over young generations (the lives of

GTA

’s architects

, now men in their fifties, were shaped by Hollywood and hip-hop) this is game-making at its most lavishly extravagant. And if the game, expected in the autumn, is delayed? Hideo Kojima’s

sequel

to 2019’s strange but alluring

Death Stranding

, a sci-fi adventure in which Norman Reedus’s character delivers packages across highland landscapes, will surely do its best to fill the gap.

Simon Parkin

Dance

Sadler’s Wells opens its new site in Stratford

Sadler’s Wells East

, a new base for dance in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, opens on 6 February, with Vicki Igbokwe-Ozoagu’s

Our Mighty Groove

, in which dancers from the local community will join Uchenna Dance in a celebratory piece. Igbokwe-Ozoagu has form with this sort of thing, having worked as mass movement choreographer at the 2012 Olympics, and uses a variety of club styles – house, waacking and vogue – alongside African and contemporary work. It should be a thrilling way to open a theatre where the subsequent programme includes Botis Seva’s

Until We Sleep

(24-28 June) and Ivan Michael Blackstock’s brilliant

Traplord

(28-31 May) as well as the UK premiere of Trajal Harrell’s

The Köln Concert

(4-5 April), and ballet, kathak, krumping and bharatanatyam in a rich opening season. On 18 January there’s also an open day for prospective applicants for the hip-hop theatre school

Academy Breakin’ Convention

, which will take its first students in the autumn. It’s all part of a carefully calibrated balance between community engagement and dance excellence.

SCr

Film

Danny Boyle to deliver the shocks again in

28 Years Later

Danny Boyle returns as director for the third film in the zombie series (he handed the reins of the second to Juan Carlos Fresnadillo). Plot details are under wraps, but we know that Boyle co-wrote the screenplay with Alex Garland and that the cast includes Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes and the star of the original, Cillian Murphy. The first film’s cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, also returns, and reportedly the whole thing was shot on an iPhone 15 Pro Max. And if it’s anywhere near as chilling as the utterly terrifying

trailer

, which is cut to a

1915 recording

of Rudyard Kipling’s anti-war poem, Boots, to blisteringly powerful effect, then audiences can expect something pretty special when the picture is unleashed on the world in June.

WI

Art

See Harold Offeh’s provocative pieces in a major solo exhibition

The Ghanaian-born artist Harold Offeh’s witty, dynamic and provocative performances have sent up everything from pop culture to identity politics to smartphone narcissism. At

Kettle’s Yard

in Cambridge he will be showing films and involving all sorts of collaborators, from fellow artists to local communities, in the city where he lives. If you’ve seen his tragicomic videos in group shows or his deadpan short films, in which Offeh is both star and director, you will know how piercing and zany he can be. This show will fill Kettle’s Yard with energy and ideas in gloomy November.

LC

TV

Stephen Graham doubles down as one of the UK’s finest

Stephen Graham isn’t just one of the best British actors around. He’s also among the hardest working, hence starring in two hotly tipped series in early 2025. After chef film

Boiling Point

, Graham has form for ambitious one-shot dramas. He embraces the format again in gripping psychological thriller

Adolescence

(Netflix, early 2025), which follows a family after their 13-year-old son is accused of murder. Each episode is filmed in one long continuous take, immersing viewers in the case.

Peaky Blinders

-esque period piece

A Thousand Blows

(Disney+, 21 February) is set on the bare-knuckle boxing scene in 1880s east London. Graham got into the shape of his life to play local champion Henry “Sugar” Goodson. Malachi Kirby is Jamaican challenger Hezekiah Moscow. Erin Doherty steals scenes as leader of the Forty Elephants – a notorious all-female gang of thieves.

MH

Music

Indie rockers the Tubs hit their stride

Indie rock endlessly recycles itself. While this can often make for some watered-down sounds, sometimes a lodestar band comes along and distils all of the genre’s key elements into pure listener gold. Mostly Welsh Londoners the Tubs (their drummer is Scottish) combine a

DIY punk ethos

with fist-in-the-air, lyrical guitar work, rousing multigender harmonies and an uncompromising emotional intelligence, both savage and tender. All these are at play on their second album,

Cotton Crown

- named, yes, after a

Sonic Youth

song, but full of the joys of Hüsker Dü, jangle pop and Johnny Marr guitars to boot. Singer Owen Williams often sounds like folk-rock royal Richard Thompson, and now we have an inkling why. That’s Williams as a baby on the album’s cover, being breastfed in a cemetery by his mother – the late folk singer

Charlotte Greig

– whose death haunts this excellent record, out 7 March.

KE

Theatre

The Herds

: a pilgrimage of puppet beasts marks the environmental crisis

In the spring,

a herd of lifesize puppet animals

will set off from the Congo basin on a 20,000km journey. As if forced to move by the climate crisis, lions, kudus and gazelles – all made from corrugated cardboard, with eyes like coals – will head to the Arctic Circle. The troupe will swell as it travels, taking in species belonging to different regions, and training new puppeteers and makers at each stopping-place. Artistic director Amir Nizar Zuabi and producer David Lan, part of the team behind the marvellous refugee puppet

Little Amal

, will create one of the most vital theatrical events of 2025.

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