Rupert Friend, Claire Danes, F Murray Abraham and Mandy Patinkin in Homeland. Photograph: Twentieth Century Fox

Homeland and Hedda Gabler: top things to do in the UK this week

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From the return of the terrorist thriller to Ruth Wilson’s turn in Ibsen’s finest play: your at-a-glance guide to the best in culture

TV

Homeland
After decamping to Pakistan and Berlin in recent years, Carrie Matheson is back on US soil for season six of the terrorist thriller. Can we expect parallels to real-life goings-on? Given that the show is set before the inauguration of a maverick president who distrusts the CIA, it seems likely.
Sunday 22 Jan, 9pm, Channel 4

Beware The Slenderman
In 2014, a curious and chilling investigation attracted global headlines. It concerned two 12-year-old girls who had stabbed a schoolfriend 19 times with a kitchen knife (miraculously, the victim survived). What was so grimly fascinating was that the assailants claimed they’d carried out the attack to appease the Slenderman, a horror character invented on online forums. This doc chronicles the case in absorbing detail, and considers the impact of the internet on vulnerable minds.
Thursday 26 Jan, 10pm, Sky Atlantic

Exhibitions

Martin Creed
Purveyor of provocative and almost wilfully simple neon signage, Creed was back in the news again at Christmas with his hilarious anti-festive carol It’s You. Now comes a chance to see his celebrated light works alongside some lesser-known installations such as Work No 960, whose 13 cacti is not unlike every shop window in east London.
At Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston, from Friday 27 Jan to Saturday 3 Jun

Hull City Of Culture celebrations
The city-wide multi-arts festival is in full swing with an impressive if befuddlingly comprehensive stack of events. This week, an exhibition devoted to cat cartoons by Hull’s Edwardian postcard artist Violet Roberts opens, as well as a chance to see five of Francis Bacon’s Screaming Popes.
hull2017.co.uk

Winter Lights

Mads Christensen’s Cathedral of Mirrors in Canary Wharf.

You’ve got to hand it to the capital for really indulging our love of a light. Last week, it was the start of Chiswick’s Magical Lantern festival; this week it’s the last chance to enjoy the neon-lit spectacular that’s been twinkling across Canary Wharf all season. Thirty light-technology luminaries have attempted to turn the area into the set of Tron via installations such as the Cathedral of Mirrors and a cosmic egg-shaped dome, the Ovo, of sound and warming glow.
Throughout Canary Wharf, E14, to Friday 27 Jan

Film

T2: Trainspotting
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose going to the cinema. It’s the second coming of Irvine Welsh’s Leith lads after 20 years, starring the original cast – Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, and Robert Carlyle as everyone’s fave psychopath Begbie – and back with Danny Boyle as director. How do this special group of reprobates handle their mid-life crises? See for yourself from Friday 27 January.

Theatre

Hedda Gabler
Anyone missing Ruth Wilson as murdering mastermind Alice Morgan in Luther will be thrilled by her haunting turn as the titular toxic, tortured woman in Ibsen’s finest play. Ivo van Hove directs a chilling new version of the play by Patrick Marber.
At the National Theatre, SE1, to Tuesday 21 Mar

Dazzling debut ... The Snow Maiden at Opera North.

Radio

Why Bother?
In 1993, Peter Cook and Chris Morris teamed up for a series of bizarre and brilliant improvised radio skits. Now Radio 4 Extra is repeating the lot. Catch Why Bother? on Mondays or on the iPlayer soon after.
On BBC iPlayer

Music

The Snow Maiden
Leeds’ Opera North begins its spring season by angling its shows around that most magical of themes: fairytales. It opens on Saturday 21 January with the company’s first ever staging of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Slavic folk-opera The Snow Maiden, played by debut soprano Aoife Miskelly. Its run will be followed in February by productions of Hansel And Gretel and an update of Rossini’s Cinderella.
At Opera North Grand Theatre, Leeds, to Friday 24 Mar

Dance

Woolf Works
Opening at the Royal Opera House on Saturday is the first revival of a ballet triptych by choreographer Wayne McGregor, attempting to recreate the “synaesthetic collision of form and substance” in Virginia Woolf’s work. It’s an ambitious show with an unconventional approach to narrative and bold backdrops, set to an electronic score by Max Richter.
At Royal Opera House, WC2, from Saturday 21 Jan to Tuesday 14 Feb

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