From Cunk on Cinema to Prima Facie: the Week in Rave Reviews

Cynthia Erivo delivers the week's most acclaimed performance in Prima Facie, the cinema adaptation of Suzie Miller's international stage hit, now in cinemas. Peter Bradshaw praised "a blazingly fierce, effortlessly commanding central performance from Erivo, like something from classical drama," in the story of a lawyer whose career defending rape suspects is undermined by experience. Erivo has also spoken publicly about the film, telling the Guardian: "If a person isn't conscious, they're not saying yes."

What should you watch on television?

ITVX leads with David Walliams: Power and Silence, a documentary laying out a three-year investigation by ITV and the Guardian into claims by multiple women of David Walliams's predatory behaviour. Lucy Mangan called it "a meticulous hour detailing a meticulous investigation. It is only left to hope that it brings about equally meticulous change."

• Rivals (Disney+, weekly) — the bonkbuster grows more poignant after Monica's shock death. Mangan: "It is still, taken in the round, a joy – filled with warmth, wit, intelligence and brilliant actors."
• Mums v Big Pharma (BBC iPlayer) — Janet Williams and Emma Murphy, two mothers of children with disabilities, expose a horrifying scandal. Murphy recalls: "We were referred to as 'bored, hysterical housewives.'"
• Cunk on Cinema (BBC iPlayer) — Diane Morgan's daft documentarian returns with an unofficial guide to Hollywood. Rachel Aroesti called it "a true work of art" for anyone who considers "writing stupid jokes to be another of humanity's greatest achievements."
• Tall Tales & Murder (BBC iPlayer) — Aidan Gillen plays a gangster who wakes from a coma. Hannah J Davies: "boredom will surely be low on the list."

Which films earned the critics' praise?

Three further cinema releases drew strong notices. Vincent Munier's Whispers in the Woods takes his father and son into France's Vosges forest; Leslie Felperin found it "a subtle, tender work" that avoids feeling "too preachy or sanctimonious." David Wilkinson's 1 in 2, about his own bowel cancer treatment and why younger people are receiving the same diagnosis, earned Bradshaw's praise for a "humorous, generous" and "very watchable" confessional style. Nicolas Roeg's 1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth returns to cinemas, with Bradshaw noting David Bowie's "extraordinary sui generis" performance now looks "bizarrely authentic in a way that it didn't in 1976." Mubi streams Tilda Swinton's 1996 first US film, Female Perversions, a Madame Bovary rework, from 13 November.

What is worth reading?

Dustin Hoffman's memoir Look at Me leads the books coverage. Bradshaw finds "a garrulous, grandfatherly, un-self-aware figure" and "a brilliant, intuitive, era-defining screen actor" — Hoffman writes that filming The Graduate was "a terrible experience" due to Mike Nichols' "sadism." The list continues:

• Ten Lives by Mona Chalabi — an exercise in financial transparency. Rachel Clarke: without such openness "we will never be able to tackle the economic problems causing insecurity and anxiety for us all."
• Lessons in Harmony by Jonathan Coe — a portrait of the friendship between Maurice Ravel and Ralph Vaughan Williams, with "all of the exhilarating immediacy of improvisation."
• Public Access Afterworld by Jane Schoenbrun — the debut novel from the Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma writer-director, fitting "a contemporary school of cool, self-aware horror."
• I Deliver Parcels in Beijing by Hu Anyan — the viral journal of a gig-worker in China's new economy, where "Hu is just a blurred head on their video intercom."

What leads the week in music?

U2 return with Carnival de Luz, their first album of new songs in nearly a decade. Dave Simpson wrote that the music "might not change the world, it can certainly uplift anyone listening to it." The band has also discussed 50 years together and why Bono can't work with Trump.

• Blackhaine: Saints in the Wethouse — the Preston rapper's debut "wring[s] the listener out," per Alexis Petridis.
• Sheherazaad: Khudgarzi — Urdu folk acoustics meet grunge haze; Ammar Kalia hears "the sombre solipsism of night."
• Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto — Francesco Corti conducts Il Pomo d'Oro, with Jakub Józef Orliński in the title role and Sabine Devieilhe's "breathtaking queen" stealing the show.

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra tours Britten's War Requiem across Europe from 14 to 19 November, marking Armistice Day and 50 years since the composer's death, with streaming on BBC Sounds until 10 December. Flora Willson reported that the score's "most explosive passages continue to detonate as if physically threatening" — a live benchmark for the anniversary season.