Autumn culture preview 2024: The biggest films, TV shows, books, music, theatre and exhibitions to catch

There has rarely been so thrillingly packed a late-autumn schedule. November, in particular, is groaning with Oscar-hungry titles. Suffice to say we didn’t find space below for Barry Keoghan in Andrea Arnold’s Bird (November 8th), the Cannes runner-up All We Imagine as Light (November 29th), Pedro Almodóvar’s Venice Golden Lion winner The Room Next Door (October 25th) or the adaptation of the hit musical Wicked (November 22nd).
Todd Phillips’s sequel to his own 2019 smash, greeted with mixed reviews at Venice, invites Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker and Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn to warble along to the Great American Songbook.
Sebastian Stan stars as Donald Trump in an already controversial film that examines the future president’s early days as a real-estate magnate. He comes across as alternately pathetic and sinister. Jeremy Strong is first rate as Trump’s ruthless lawyer Roy Cohn.
Yes, Jacques Audiard gives us a musical about a Mexican drug lord who undergoes sex reassignment. And it’s a blast. Three of the cast members, among them the charismatic trans performer Karla Sofía Gascón, shared the best-actress prize at Cannes.
One of the most purely entertaining Palme d’Or winners of the century, Sean Baker’s romp could be described as a harder, sharper variation on Pretty Woman. But much better than that sounds. Mikey Madison is transcendent as a sex worker adrift in hectic after-hours New York city.
Cillian Murphy uncovers secrets about the mother-and-baby homes in this beautiful, unsettling adaptation of a Claire Keegan novella. Emily Watson, playing a corrupt mother superior, won best supporting performer at Berlin.
[ Cillian Murphy: ‘Moving home from London was the best thing we did’Opens in new window ]
Saoirse Ronan stars in Steve McQueen’s indecently promising study of London during the Luftwaffe bombing. Paul Weller plays her dad. Ronan also appears in the addiction drama The Outrun from October 27th. Both have Oscar potential.
Paul Mescal takes over the leather skirt from Russell Crowe as the titular gladiator cutting up enemies in second-century Rome. The trailer promises a Colosseum flooded with shark-infested water. And lots of Denzel Washington.
Ralph Fiennes stars as a plotting cardinal in Edward Berger’s adaptation of the Robert Harris novel about wheeling and dealing in the selection of a pope. “Sinfully entertaining,” New York Magazine raved from Toronto International Film Festival.
Chris Martin and company follow up four nights at Croke Park with their 10th studio album, having brought Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna and Tini together to perform the single We Pray together for the first time on stage in Dublin.
[ Coldplay in Croke Park review: Croker loses its collective mind to choruses purpose-built for this kind of night outOpens in new window ]
The New Jersey singer Ashley Nicolette Frangipane chronicles her struggle with an immune-system disorder and the birth of her son on an album featuring the big-name pop producers Greg Kurstin, Stuart Price and Max Martin.
After seriously considering quitting music, the English folk singer releases her first album in four years.
The TikTok folkie takes her confessional Older tour to Dublin.
Robert Smith previewed material from The Cure’s 14th album when everyone’s favourite goth-botherers played 3Arena in Dublin in December 2022. The speculation is that they are finally set to release the LP – much of it inspired by the death of the frontman’s brother – with November 1st the rumoured release date.
[ The Cure at 3Arena: Wizened goths, stylish millennials and a giddy sugar rush of hitsOpens in new window ]
Nick Cave, twice bereaved in the past decade, has transcended the artifice and pantomime preening that used to cling to his music with a run of albums of uncommon depth and fervour, culminating in this summer’s Wild God, which he brings to Dublin for two nights.
[ Nick Cave: ‘Acceptance is tricky. Trying to get back to what you used to be, I consider a waste of time. You are fundamentally changed’Opens in new window ]
The nu-metal comeback reaches its apotheosis as scene leaders Linkin Park reunite for an eighth studio LP. It will surely be an emotive listen, with Emily Armstrong replacing vocalist Chester Bennington, who died in 2017.
A short six years ago the Dublin/Mayo quintet opened for Shame at the Tivoli in Dublin. Now, on the heels of their excellent fourth album, Romance, they are bound for 3Arena for a one-two of sell-out concerts.
[ Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC: ‘We were speeding off the edge of a cliff’Opens in new window ]
Cate Blanchett is a journalist with an iffy past in a new thriller from the Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón.
Randy toffs get up to all sorts in an adaptation of the Jilly Cooper bestseller. The Irish stars Victoria Smurfit and Aidan Turner join David Tennant and Danny Dyer in a bonkbuster for the streaming age.
Eddie Redmayne takes over the Edward Fox role of the titular assassin for hire in a new adaptation of the Frederick Forsyth espionage classic. He appears alongside the James Bond star Lashana Lynch in a script by the Belfast novelist turned Top Boy creator Ronan Bennett.
One of the best Irish shows of recent years, Sharon Horgan’s Bad Sisters is back for another round of murder and conspiracy amid the posh interiors of coastal Dublin.
He can’t elf himself. Patrick Kielty fires the starter pistol on Christmas in Ireland with his second Toy Show.
This Booker-longlisted novel gathers an intriguing cast on history-scarred Makatea, in French Polynesia, marked for humanity’s next great adventure: a plan to send floating cities out into the open sea.
The Booker winner’s new book is a wickedly funny portrait of modern England, a story of race, class, theatre, sex, love and violence.
A heartbreaking, life-affirming novel about small towns and second chances from the Four Letters of Love author.
In the new book by the master of modern gothic, darkness gathers in a remote north-of-England valley as ancient land is carved up in the name of progress.
Two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house in this modern take on Kafkaesque dystopian fiction.
A political satire wrapped up in a murder mystery: a sinister think tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, schemes to push the British government in a more extreme direction.
Anthology celebrates the life and work of the renowned literary editor, published to mark the centenary of his birth.
Ireland’s most successful rugby player on his childhood, his early struggles, his relationships with key team-mates and coaches and his ideas about the game.
Aims to be the definitive account of how capitalism and elites corrupted soccer.
The former minister for housing‘s unusually self-lacerating memoir, offering an unflinching insight into his political career.
The Israeli journalist brings together his on-the-ground perspectives of the events leading up to Hamas’s October 7th massacre and the ensuing devastation of Gaza.
The RTÉ presenter takes a heart-warming journey into an Irish childhood, set in a city-centre household bursting with humanity.
The Buddha of Suburbia author’s diary of a life in pieces, recording with rare honesty, clarity and courage his fight to recover from a fall that left him paralysed.
Deborah Levy shares her most intimate thoughts and experiences as she measures her life against the backdrop of the cultural muses that have shaped her.
This promises to be a very significant Irish literary biography, studying the work of one of our greatest poets and how it related to his private life and the events that shaped his country.
One of the best plays of the year. Mark O’Rowe’s magnificent family mystery gathers its characters at an island home to make subtle power plays against each other, eliciting stealthy performances from a superb ensemble. It lingers long in the mind.
[ Reunion review: Zinger of a play doesn’t flag for a secondOpens in new window ]
Part of Dublin Theatre Festival, this touching self-portrait by Benji Reid (persuaded back to theatre after a decade in photography) positions personal struggles with addiction and depression side by side with a photographer’s ceaseless eye for beauty. An artist’s perspective can bring the dark times into the light.
The latest project by Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney, tinged with sad news of Patrick’s diagnoses of motor neuron disease, reimagines Shakespeare’s tragedy so that the actor can play the “bunch-back’d” upstart, who, now with a terminal illness, is racing against time. Part of Belfast International Arts Festival.
After their smart, zany play Boyfriends this summer, LemonSoap Productions return with HK Ní Shioradáin’s musical comedy about queer lovers in medieval times, whose love affairs risk exposure when a divine miracle occurs. Its standout cast includes Fun Home’s Orla Scally.
[ Boyfriends review: A tender and witty look at the lives of young gay menOpens in new window ]
After a swiftly sold-out run in 2018, Junk Ensemble’s thrilling reimagining of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita returns. This promenade production, following a man’s obsessed cross-country escape with his stepdaughter, confronts his predatory nature head on. Mikel Murfi and Derbhle Crotty are among the cast.
Contemporary-theatre company Brokentalkers and experimental documentary-maker Shaun Dunne combine their approaches for this urgent new work about the duress of family carers in Irish society, pairing the actor Lauren Larkin and dancer Charlie Hogan.
From the outset, this adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel about matchmaking in Regency-era England could easily seem another reassuring costume drama at Christmas, but there is intrigue in the involvement of the director Claire O’Reilly, who, for the theatre company Malaprop, gave plays such as Where Sat the Lovers and Everything Not Saved zingy and shape-shifting productions.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s high-camp performance in last year’s court case brought by Terry Sanderson, an optometrist and fellow winter-sports fan, is obvious inspiration for the likes of the London-based artists Linus Karp and Joseph Martin, who combine drag, music and recorded cameos by celebrities from queer culture into a burlesque of their own. Paltrow’s short, calm complaint – “I lost half a day of skiing” – becomes an expression of diva-like rage. Celebrities, amirite?
Lose yourself in a shifting video world of beauty, a thin veneer over injustice, as the leading US artist explores wealth inequality and the fragility of our natural resources through the prism of development and the cultural histories of the United Arab Emirates. The context may be distant, but the stories are universal.
Working in neon, film, photography and words, Caoimhín Gaffney explores the restorative power of nature against the reality of climate change. What does it mean when a native bird dies out and we lose a sound from our world? Dive into a meticulously framed balance of anxiety and healing.
[ Caoimhín Gaffney: All at Once Collapsing Together review – A visual rhapsody from an outstanding Irish artistOpens in new window ]
Brian Maguire, one of Ireland’s most compelling painters, has never shirked or shrunk from the unthinkable in terms of violence, exploitation and war. Unfortunately, these days the unthinkable tends to be commonplace and frequently ignored, which is why his powerful new exhibition should be unmissable.
The annual extravaganza for architecture aficionados and domestic sneak-peekers opens the doors to homes, offices, campuses, concert halls and castles, with more than 200 free events, tours and talks.
It’s always exciting to see the first big exhibition of an emerging artist, and Ciara Roche’s gem-like paintings add a nice layer of fantasy, with a hint of the uncanny, to the otherwise everyday.
Spotlighting the 11 members of the Contemporary Art Gallery Association, which collectively represent more than 300 artists, this is the weekend to explore, adore and otherwise salivate over works by Irish and international artists, including Eithne Jordan, Nevan Lahart, Justin Fitzpatrick and the Egypt-born Turkish feminist art pioneer Nil Yalter. Add launches, talks, receptions and a specially curated selection from all 11 galleries at Iput’s Wilton Park Gallery Hub.