大象传媒

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests novelist Liz Jensen, historian Dominic Sandbrook and academic John Mullan review the week's cultural highlights.

Boardwalk Empire was created by former Sopranos co-writer Terence Winter and is being shown on Sky Atlantic. Set in Prohibition era Atlantic City, it stars Steve Buscemi as Nucky Thompson - a man who seems to have a finger in just about every pie in town. The first episode was directed by Martin Scorsese - it's rumoured to be the most expensive TV pilot ever shot.

The 'O' in the title of O: A Presidential Novel by Anonymous is Barack Obama. The author is apparently "an anonymous insider who has spent years observing US politics and its players" and someone who "has been in the room with Obama". The novel tracks Obama through the next two years of his presidency, culminating in the October 2012 election.

Nominated for an Oscar in the Foreign Language Film and Best Actor categories, Biutiful is a film by Mexican director Alejandro Gonz谩lez I帽谩rritu, set in Barcelona, which stars Javier Bardem as Uxbal - a terminally ill man who is trying to make amends for the mistakes that he's made and put his life in order during his final months.

Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales at the Lyric Hammersmith in London features six of Dahl's short stories adapted for the stage by Jeremy Dyson who first came to prominence through The League of Gentlemen. The title alludes to the twist in the tail which was typical of the stories Dahl wrote for an adult readership.

John Stezaker has taught some of Britain's leading artists at St Martin's, Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art, but he is also an artist in his own right, adjusting, inverting and slicing classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations to create unique, subversive images. The show at London's Whitechapel Gallery is the first major exhibition of his work.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.