大象传媒

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests novelists Terence Blacker and Deborah Moggach and theatre writer David Benedict review the week's cultural highlights including Anna Nicole.

Anna Nicole is a new opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Richard Thomas, starring Eva-Maria Westbroek as Anna Nicole Smith - the Texan waitress and Playboy pin-up who acheived fame and notoriety when she married an 89 year old oil billionaire.

Tim Pears' novel Disputed Land is narrated by Theo, looking back on a childhood Christmas when his entire family was summoned to his grandparents' house in Shropshire for reasons which were not immediately obvious.

The jumping off point for Enda Walsh's play Penelope is the fate of the suitors who were vying for the hand of Odysseus's wife in Homer's epic poem. Here there are four of them remaining, with expanding waistlines and receding hairlines, occupying an empty swimming pool ouside Penelope's house and wooing her via CCTV.

Robert Popper's new comedy on Channel 4 - Friday Night Dinner - stars Tamsin Greig and Paul Ritter as parents who are joined every Friday evening by their twentysomething sons played by Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal for an uneasy and fractious meal.

Watercolour at Tate Britain is an exhibition which spans 800 years and brings together over 200 works including pieces by historic artists such as William Blake, Thomas Girtin and JMW Turner, through to modern and contemporary artists including Patrick Heron, Peter Doig and Tracey Emin.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.