28/01/2012

Synopsis

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests writer Ekow Eshun, creative director of the Royal Opera House Deborah Bull and literary critic John Carey review the week's cultural highlights including Alexander Payne's film The Descendants.

The Descendants - directed and written by Alexander Payne - stars George Clooney as a Honolulu lawyer and land-owner forced to take a more hands-on role parental role when a power-boat accident leaves his wife in a coma.

Gillian Slovo's novel An Honourable Man is set in Khartoum in 1884 where General Gordon is trying to organise the defence of the besieged city. An idealistic young doctor has volunteered to accompany the expedition sent to rescue Gordon and, in his absence, his wife grapples with her growing addiction to laudanum.

In Lucy Bailey's production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, Lisa Dillon plays the strong-headed Kate, while David Caves is Petruchio - the young man who believes he has what it takes to woo her and subdue her.

The annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca is the subject of the British Museum's exhibition Hajj: A Journey to the Heart of Islam. The exhibition is concerned both with the treasures of the Hajj - illuminated manuscripts, hangings and ceremonial palanquins - and the experience of ordinary pilgrims.

Inside Men is a new BBC crime drama written by Tony Basgallop. Stephen Mackintosh plays John - the manager at a cash-counting depot. When he discovers that two of his employees - Marcus (Warren Brown) and Chris (Ashley Walters) - have been dipping their hands in the till, rather than turning them over to the police, he encourages them to think bigger.