Some of the most blistering television ever made went home empty-handed – and a French show about a flamboyant businessman/singer beat them allA while ago, it might have felt like the Baftas didn’t really need to put on a big awards ceremony this year. That isn’t because shows like this are becoming less and less relevant with every passing year, but...

Cliffs Pavilion, Southend Now free of cancer, Gilbert looks back on his illness with a characteristic mixture of emotional candour and uproarious humourA standup show about cancer? It’s a far cry from the brand of comedy – wild overreactions to trivial irritants – that made Rhod Gilbert’s name. But what else can we expect the Welshman to talk about,...

The Fawlty Towers actor has often played the monarch in the past and has now recorded audio for a new production at the festivalAt the age of 91, Prunella Scales has reprised one of her favourite roles. The actor, who was diagnosed with vascular dementia 10 years ago, has recorded the part of Queen Victoria for a production at the Edinburgh fringe this...

Tron theatre, Glasgow Thatcher stalks the stage like an untamed monster, but the rest of Barr’s account of growing up gay in the 80s is sentimentalised and soppyOn the page, Damian Barr’s 2013 memoir is subtle and seductive. His coming-of-age tale is like a Scottish version of The End of Eddy by the French novelist Édouard Louis; two first-person accounts...

The British novelist’s first memoir is a sublime account of famed Welsh music studio Rockfield, where her indomitable mother ruled the kitchen in the 70s and rock’n’rollers were great fun – and infuriatingSometimes the most compelling family memoirs are not those that recount particularly extraordinary lives but which, rather, are told in the most beguiling...

A tender film about the music of Mayan descendants is hampered by the alofty adherence to a documentary aesthetic where nothing is explainedThis film about a flute player and farmer named José Pérez López from Zinacantán in Chiapas, Mexico, teems with beautifully shot images of folks playing music, embroidering, participating in days-long community...