25/08/2012

Bidisha and her guests actor Kerry Shale and writers Natalie Haynes and Paul Morley review the week's cultural highlights including Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan.

Serena Frome is the narrator of Ian McEwan's new novel. A Cambridge graduate recruited by MI5 in the early 70s, her first assignment beyond lowly paper-pushing involves the covert funding of anti-Communist writers. Her target is Tom Haley - an English graduate and aspiring writer working at Sussex University - but her interest in him becomes more than just professional.

Soul Sister is a musical that features the songs of Ike and Tina Turner and tells the story of the couple's tempestuous relationship on and off stage. Emi Wokoma plays the role of Tina and Chris Tummings is Ike in the production which has just opened at the Savoy Theatre in London.

The Nigerian film industry - also known as Nollywood - is still comparatively young and typified by small budgets and fairly basic production values, but director Mahmood Ali Balogun has tried to raise its standards with his family drama Tango With Me. Genevieve Nnaji and Joseph Benjamin play Lola and Uzo who seem like the perfect couple until a shocking act of violence on their wedding night darkens their lives and threatens their marriage.

Walking is an installation on the Norfolk coast by the avant garde American director and playwright Robert Wilson, or - more precisely - three installations along a three mile stretch of coast near Holkham between which visitors walk at a snail's pace dictated by 'angels' in yellow ponchos.

Danish director Birger Larsen has worked on Nordic noir hits Wallander, The Killing and Those Who Kill. Now he has come to Nottingham to shoot Robert Jones's crime drama Murder for BBC2. Karla Crome stars as Coleen - a young woman who shares a flat with her sister Erin. One night Stefan (Joe Dempsie) comes to the flat and by the end of the evening Erin has been murdered. But Coleen and Stefan's accounts of what happened are very much at odds with each other.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.