Spirit-lifting, feel-good culture to enjoy while in lockdown

From movie nostalgia to virtual gigs and the best new TV show, the BBC Culture team picks a selection of the latest movies, music, art, design and more to experience at home.

New film – Misbehaviour

Britain’s cinemas closed just a few days after Misbehaviour was released in March, but its swift online release should bring Philippa Lowthorpe’s feelgood comedy drama the audience it deserves. Keira Knightley and Jessie Buckley star as an earnest academic and a punky rebel who team up to protest when Bob Hope (Greg Kinnear) hosts the Miss World competition in London in 1970. The film itself is nowhere near as revolutionary as its true-life heroines, but it’s an entertaining, optimistic history lesson which leaves you in no doubt as to the competition’s profound seediness: the contestants are subjected to ‘a statutory padding check’ when their measurements are taken. Available on Amazon Prime, Sky Store and iTunes. (NB)

Classic feel-good film – Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

When life seems bleak, it’s comforting to know that, by the year 2688, the world will be a peaceful utopia – and it’s all thanks to the Van Halen-influenced music of two Californian airheads named Bill S Preston Esq (Alex Winter) and Theodore Logan (Keanu Reeves). Their time-travelling comedy is a spirit-lifting dose of sunny 1980s nostalgia, in which the adolescent gags are sweetened by Bill and Ted’s friendship, innocence, and slacker wisdom: ‘Be excellent to each other’. For yet more bodaciousness, look out for the sequel, which came out in 1991, and get ready for a third instalment, which is due in August. Party on, dudes! Available on Google Play, YouTube and iTunes. (NB)

Design – Dezeen Virtual Design Festival

Architecture, fashion and design fans should check out Dezeen’s Virtual Design Festival (VDF). Launched this week and running until 30 June, the VDF schedule features talks, lectures, films and product launches, with an aim to “support fairs and festivals around the world that have had to be postponed or cancelled,” as well as providing “a platform for design businesses”. Highlights announced so far include a collaboration with Vienna’s Forward Festival, a celebration of Earth Day on 22 April, and exclusive interviews with Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen and architects Peter Cook and Dennis Crompton. (RL)

Art – Gerhard Richter at the Met and the National Portrait Gallery

Gerhard Richter: Painting After All is a major survey of the German artist’s distinctive work at the Met Breuer, and although it is currently closed, art lovers can take a virtual tour of the exhibition on the museum's website. Also worth a look is the 360 Project, an award-winning series of six immersive videos that allows viewers to experience the Met. Using spherical technology, the project allows visitors to explore its iconic spaces, remarkable art collection – and also to float high above the Met Cloisters for a bird’s eye view. The videos can be viewed on a variety of devices, including phone and VR headset.

London’s National Portrait Gallery, meanwhile, has opened up its stunning collection online. You can view artworks by theme, from 20th-Century and contemporary portraits, to a monarch family tree. In addition you can look up a range of time periods or themes, including  eminent women, poets, LGBT+ and fashion. (LB)

Books – The Glass Hotel and Redhead by the Side of the Road

If lockdown is making you feel philosophical about life, the new novel by Canadian author Emily St John Mandel could be for you. A story about crisis, survival and the search for meaning in our lives, The Glass Hotel, published by Knopf, explores two intersecting but seemingly separate events – the collapse of a huge Ponzi scheme, and the strange disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea. Mandel’s award-winning dystopian novel Station Eleven was widely acclaimed, and her latest offering has been similarly well received. “The Glass Hotel may be the perfect novel for your survival bunker,” says the Washington Post. “Mandel is a consummate, almost profligate world builder.” The Atlantic describes the novel as “deeply imagined, philosophically profound”.

Or for something comforting in challenging times, how about some heart-warming Anne Tyler, whose new novel Redhead by the Side of the Road is published this month by Penguin Random House. Full of sharp wit and keen observations of everyday life, Tyler explores the heart and mind of a man who is struggling to negotiate unexpected events in his life. With her usual compassion, empathy and joyfulness, the novel is classic Tyler, and has been highly praised. “If ever there was a perfect time for a new Anne Tyler novel, it’s now,” says the Wall Street Journal. “Very funny – one of Tyler’s best yet.” (LB)

Music – Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties and One World: Together at Home concert

 At a set time every night, the British musician Tim Burgess and lead singer of The Charlatans has been sitting down with some friends and playing an album in full, while tweeting their responses. Except these aren’t just any friends. His virtual companions include members of the bands Oasis, Flaming Lips and Blur – and his listening parties have ended up trending on Twitter (with listeners from across the world, including Japan, New Zealand and Antarctica). “Everyone who’s taken part so far has said it’s like doing a gig,” Burgess told The Guardian. “There’s the trepidation beforehand, then an hour of craziness, and finally a period where you’re kind of decompressing. The only difference with this is that nobody’s nicking your beers.” To take part, you just need to stream/play the chosen album, and follow Burgess and the featured act on Twitter – you can ask questions and share memories via the hashtag #timstwitterlisteningparty.

And for a blockbuster pop communal experience, the One World: Together at Home concert on Saturday 18 April features more than 100 acts including Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney. The virtual concert aims to celebrate health workers on the front line of the coronavirus crisis, and has been organised by Lady Gaga (pictured) with the Global Citizen movement and the World Health Organisation. (FM)

Classical music – Ludwig van Beethoven

Celebrations are taking place worldwide this year to mark the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth – and London’s Southbank Centre is chipping in this weekend. Instead of a mass participation project that was due to take place at the Royal Festival Hall, there’ll be a one-day digital event featuring a ‘socially-distanced orchestra’ led by the National Youth Orchestra (NYO), readings, blogs, lectures, videos and playlists from leading cultural figures. Focusing on the German composer’s iconic Ninth Symphony, it’s part of Marin Alsop’s global project launched in collaboration with Carnegie Hall, All Together: A Global Ode to Joy. The chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra is conducting Ode to Joy from her home in Baltimore at 5pm BST today – anyone wanting to perform it at the same time can find the music on the NYO website (you can share your performances on social media using the hashtag #NYOdetoJoy). While the live concerts had to be cancelled, the relevance of the music for today’s world is still worth reiterating: “Beethoven celebrated the essence of what it is to be human and what it is to be connected,” argues Alsop. “[His] message of unity, tolerance and joy is as relevant today as it was in 1824.” (FM)

New TV – Mrs America

The best actors can really get under the skin of downright mean, difficult characters that walk amongst us – complex personalities like notorious conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, who in the 1970s successfully railed against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution. Cate Blanchett takes up that challenge, leading a dazzling cast as Schlafly, alongside Rose Byrne, Margo Martindale, Uzo Aduba, Elizabeth Banks and Tracey Ullman, who portray some of the leading political women of the era. It’s important to understand how a culture war over women’s rights helped shift the US political landscape forever, and why the notion of equality terrified so many – and if it’s got a two-time Oscar-winner showing us how, that’s even better. Available to stream now on Hulu. (EM)

Classic TV – Community

With all six of its seasons newly added to Netflix, this cult show centred on a study group of mature students in a community college is a sitcom in excelsis, matching a joyfully motley gang of lead characters to a hyperactive script packed with sharp one-liners and pop-culture references and at its very best when serving up glorious, episode-length genre pastiches. This really is about as purely joyful as your lockdown viewing options yet. (HM)

Theatre – The Lockdown Plays

 The latest example of theatreland responding with resourcefulness and dynamism to these difficult times is this excellent weekly podcast, featuring new short audio plays written by top playwrights like Caryl Churchill, Inua Ellams and Simon Stephens. Raising money for homeless charity St Mungo’s, it has begun this week with Cordelia Lynn’s Fragments, starring the luminous British stage actress Patsy Ferran (who was due to be seen on Broadway this spring in a now-aborted production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) Visit shows.acast.com/thelockdownplays to listen. (HM)

As chosen by Lindsay Baker, Nicholas Barber, Rebecca Laurence, Fiona Macdonald, Hugh Montgomery and Eddie Mullan

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