Reviews & Culture

Five things to see this month

The Fall
Series 2 begins 14 November, BBC 2
Gillian Anderson returns as dour Met detective Stella Gibson, transplanted to Belfast to investigate a series of stranglings. We pick up where series one left off, with serial killer Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) having slipped out of her grasp. The Fall is part of the current trend of police procedurals. Creator Allan Cubitt is clearly particularly interested in exploring misogyny and oppression. The victims are all successful single women while the killer is a family man; Gibson refuses to conform to notions that women should be always smiling and emotionally needy. The lead performances make this a mesmerising, if grim, watch.
Sally Campbell

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Too Bright
Perfume Genius, out now on CD or download
This third album represents a decisive and pleasing break with what has gone before. The fragility, simplicity and beauty of Mike Hadreas’s haunting vocals and piano still underpins Too Bright. But this is a less sparse album, it’s a bigger sound, there is more musical experimentation. And it works. The transformation on Too Bright is that he seems to have decided that he won’t simply reflect the anxieties and pains of homophobic bullying in his youth or the anguish of identity — he will confront it. So some of the sadness of the previous recordings has given way to anger. This is a positive development!
Alan Kenny

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The Sensory War
Manchester Art Gallery, until 22 February
Exhibition exploring how artists have communicated the impact of military conflict on the body, mind, environment and human senses between 1914 and 2014. Bringing together work from artists including Paul Nash, Otto Dix, Nancy Spero, Omer Fast and featuring works created in the 1970s by survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

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We are the Giant
Directed by Greg Baker, released 14 November
This Sundance Film Festival hit is a gripping account of the Arab Spring as told by six people from across the Middle East. Powerful, tragic and ultimately inspirational.

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Dead
Young Giants, out now on CD or download
The Glasgow hip hop trio’s album from earlier this year will get a well deserved new lease of life after winning Mercury prize last month.