What to do this weekend, from Timothée Chalamet in conversation to the First Lady worth seeing

5 minutes

Oh look, it’s raining again. If that is about the extent of your worldly observations as we near the end of an endless January, BBC Radio 4’s AntiSocial helps provide, ironically, some socially lubricating conversation starters. The mini-guide episodes – quickfire interviews by host Adam Fleming – distil longer programmes into five or six-minute discussions on a newsy subject, from unconscious bias in The Traitors (via the legacy of the 2018 Starbucks racial discrimination incident) to the science of heterosexual attraction (research suggests men furiously building muscle in the gym are really pleasing the ideals of other men, not women, who look for big eyes and high cheekbones in a partner – on which more later). Short, sharp – compressed but not reductive.

90 minutes 

Donald Trump is cheerleading a woman, which must mean this weekend marks the release of the $75m Melania movie. Turns out you can’t buy an audience, unless it’s at the White House: if you are not the single proud ticketholder to a showing at Islington Vue and are – for reasons political or artistic – boycotting this horrorshow, at least until it arrives on streaming, I recommend you spend time instead with the new First Lady of the West End, Mary Todd Lincoln, who is the subject of the ultra-camp, hilarious and purely joyful Oh, Mary!

It may be the story of a president’s wife trapped in a loveless marriage with an irredeemable charlatan, but it will provoke much laughter – and not the nervous kind.

Showings at 3.30pm & 7.30pm on Saturdays. Tickets on sale here.

An hour (plus coffee time)

Founded in 1949 as a platform for the brightest emerging artists, the annual New Contemporaries exhibition opens on Friday at the lovely South London Gallery. A group of 26, selected via open call, will showcase their work, diverse in medium, theme and perspective. From River Yuhao Cao, a performance artist inspired by Chinese folk tradition, to Ali Cook (b. 2001) whose surreal paintings foreground such delights as butchered piggy banks and a sausage McMuffin, these rising stars join an illustrious alumni, including Paula Rego, Frank Bowling, Chris Ofili and Tacita Dean.

New Contemporaries is at South London Gallery until 12 April. The show will also travel to MIMA Middlesbrough from May. Exhibition free; adjoining cafe, irresistible and sadly not.

An afternoon 

Those big eyes and high cheekbones? You can see them in the flesh at the Prince Charles Cinema on Sunday, when Timothée Chalamet makes a visit for an afternoon Q&A session. The event is members-only – and what better reason to join those trendy ranks? – but you could also catch other posturing Frenchmen in the screening of La Haine that follows. Mathieu Kassovitz’s film is the same age as Chalamet, and as relevant.

An evening 

Sunday marks the end of dry January – and another year in which I sanctimoniously declared myself above it. If you too are an “any excuse” kind of person, you can drink to the Campaign for Real Ale’s National Pub of the Year, announced last week as the Tamworth Tap in Staffordshire. Finalists included snug pubs in Great Yarmouth, Gloucester and Musselburgh, but for non-locals Camra also have a longlist sorted by British region. Take a book, do a quiz, or watch the football. Call it culture.

Illustration by Charlotte Durance