U2 Returns After Nine Years, GTA VI Lands: The Week's Culture Guide

U2 release their first album of new material in nine years this week. Rockstar Games ships Grand Theft Auto VI on 19 November after a thirteen-year wait. Between those two bookends, the coming days pack four new films, two arena tours, three museum openings and a Mozart opera relocated to 1970s Bradford.

What's new at the cinema?

Cristian Mungiu's Fjord is out now. The Romanian auteur directs Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve in a Norway-set drama based on real events: a Romanian couple whose five children are taken by the state, with immigrant status, religious belief and prejudice all in play.

Prima Facie also arrives now. Suzie Miller adapts her own stage play; Cynthia Erivo takes the role Jodie Comer originated, a barrister defending sex-crime accused whose perspective shifts after her own assault. Susanna White directs.

Two more releases:

• How to Rob a Bank — Nicholas Hoult leads an action comedy about robbers documenting heists on social media, with Zoë Kravitz, Pete Davidson and John C Reilly.
• Being Heumann — Ruth Madeley plays disability rights activist Judith Heumann, the "Mother of the Disability Rights Movement," in a civil-rights biopic.

Which gigs and opera matter?

Beabadoobee plays an arena tour from 14 to 18 November, starting in Glasgow. Four albums of alt-rock have earned Bea Kristi two UK chart-toppers and a US Top 10. Recent album Pylon supplies the choruses for the upgrade in venue size.

The London jazz festival runs to 22 November across various venues. Week two brings Lizz Wright and Melody Gardot (15–16 November), GoGo Penguin (16–17 November), Artemis (17 November), Andy Sheppard (18 November) and Jasper Høiby (19 November).

Bradford Arts Centre stages The Marriage of Figaro on 17–18 November, touring to 25 November. Ian McMillan's new English-language adaptation moves Mozart's class comedy to 1970s Bradford, with Bollywood nods and an ensemble of western and Indian classical musicians. Hayden Thorpe, formerly of Wild Beasts, tours from Kendal, 14–19 November, likely road-testing material after 2024's Ness.

Where is the new art?

Louise Giovanelli opens at White Cube Mason's Yard, London, on 20 November, running to 16 January. Her new paintings return to curtains, hair, female screen idols and the cinematic kiss.

Three more openings, all on 14 November:

• David Nash — The Burton at Bideford, to 17 January, focusing on drawing's central role in his work with the natural world.
• Ryan Gander — Towner Gallery, Eastbourne, to 11 April; his first UK institutional show in almost 20 years features animatronic mice, repurposed toys and balloon paintings.
• Angela Harding — Yorkshire Sculpture Park, to 28 February; linocuts, oils and decorated wooden birds, ten years after her last show there.

What's on stage?

Rosie Holt tours her MP alter ego — originally Tory, now Labour — from Maidenhead on 14 November to 5 March, mixing political satire with a meditation on sexism against women in public life. Matthew Bourne's Cinderella runs at Plymouth Theatre Royal, 16–21 November, touring to 8 May, reframing the fairytale as a London blitz romance danced to Prokofiev.

In London, Amit Sharma revives Natasha Gordon's Nine Night at the Kiln theatre to 2 January, and Tamsin Grieg stars in Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford at the Orange Tree to 16 January, directed by Josh Roche.

What to stream and play?

The Altruists (Netflix, 19 November) stars Anthony Boyle as Sam Bankman-Fried, with Julia Garner as Caroline Ellison. Honey (BBC One, 14 November, 9pm) is a cold war spy thriller set in 1980s East Berlin, starring Ann Skelly and Rory Kinnear. Rob Brydon plays a lonely landlord in Bill's Included (BBC One, 20 November, 9.30pm), and Dawn Porter's When a Witness Recants (HBO Max, 18 November), made with Ta-Nehisi Coates, hears from three Baltimore men who served 36 years for a murder they did not commit.

Gamers get Spirit Crossing (PC, Switch, Switch 2; out now), a cooperative town-building game above the clouds. GTA VI, starring criminal couple Jason and Lucia, arrives 19 November on PS5 and Xbox.

What to hear and read?

U2's Carnaval de Luz is out now; single Silencio "rattles along like a much younger band." Snoh Aalegra's 13-track Legendary Love, Royal Blood's Moulder-mixed Dead Company and Say Now's PinkPantheress-produced EP Say What You See all land this week. For audio, Symphony Co's podcast with Seth Pinnock and Billy Porter, Antony Cooke's recipe Substack, and BBC World Service's Kazakhstan's Chess Gambit (19 November, 9.32am) complete the slate — a week dense enough that even the choosiest culture consumer will find one date worth booking.