25 Best New TV Shows, Movies, Music, Books (Sep 24–Oct 8)

Theater
1. See Oratorio for Living Things
Across the universe.
Signature Theatre, opening September 30.
Physics, cosmology, jazz, and gospel blend with the classical oratorio form in the nonpareil composer Heather Christian’s work of music theater, one of the most sublime pieces to come out of the pandemic and a total knockout when it premiered at Greenwich House in 2022. —Sara Holdren

Movies
2. Go to Chantal Akerman: The Long View
Inner lives on film.
Museum of Modern Art, through October 16.
Akerman’s 1975 Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is the greatest movie of all time, per the last Sight and Sound critics poll, and features more potato peeling than any other cinematic masterpiece. Now, the Belgian filmmaker is getting a retrospective of more than 40 films. —Alison Willmore

Music
3. See billy woods
Re-up on bad dreams.
Knockdown Center, September 25.
The rapper goes to Maspeth on tour for his rich and unsettling album Golliwog, which came out in May. His openers — rappers Bruiser Wolf and Elucid, producer DJ Haram, duo Gabe ’Nandez and Preservation, and songwriter Cleo Reed — all have great records out or on the way. —Craig Jenkins

Art
4. See The Gatherers
Odes to detritus.
MoMA PS1, through October 6.
Without Robert Rauschenberg, Allan Kaprow, and Judy Pfaff, this group show might not exist. As it is, we get pileups and arrangements of furniture, signage, mannequins, and the like. Tbilisi- and Berlin-based Tolia Astakhishvili fashions a wormhole diorama of buildings and transportation networks inside an air-conditioning duct; it is rightfully the centerpiece of the exhibition. —Jerry Saltz

TV
5. Watch House of Guinness
From the creator of Peaky Blinders.
Netflix, September 25.
Steven Knight is back playing in the field he likes best: portraits of U.K. history that allow for violence, scheming, and general ne’er-do-well-ness. This show follows the Succession-style family infighting that occurs after Sir Benjamin Guinness’s death. Which of his four adult children will pick up his yeasty mantle? —Roxana Hadadi

Video Games
6. Play Final Fantasy Tactics — The Ivalice Chronicles
One of the greatest strategy games ever made.
Square Enix, September 30
.A more than three-decade-old swords-and-shields epic, this Final Fantasy spinoff is a modernized remake complete with full voice-acting. It’s a
feat of preservation that required the -development team to rebuild the original game from scratch. —Nicholas Quah

Music
7. See Alex G
Big-city lo-fi with Nilüfer Yanya opening.
Radio City Music Hall, October 8.
Going from playing acoustic guitar in your high school stairwell to performing at Radio City Music Hall is like going from class president to actual president. See this singer-songwriter and celebrate the near impossible. —Matthew Schnipper

Books
8. Read Perverts
From the Poetry Project’s editorial director.
Nightboat, September 30.
Using the dreams of strangers and friends — “delegates / of the dream assembly,” as she puts it — Kay Gabriel’s epic poem is far from phantasmic. It’s full of specifics about protest, desire, and being trans in our political moment. The book’s second part, “trannies, by Larry Kramer,” satirizes that author’s 1978 novel, Faggots. —Emma Alpern

Movies
9. See The Lost Bus
An instant disaster-movie classic.
In theaters September 19 and on Apple TV+ October 3.
Paul Greengrass’s intense wildfire thriller presents the shocking, mostly true tale of a school-bus driver (Matthew McConaughey) who winds up having to drive a group of elementary-schoolers through the hellish flames of the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest in California history. —Bilge Ebiri

Theater
10. See And Then We Were No More
Especially heinous.
La MaMa, through November 2.
In a near-future dystopia, a lawyer (Elizabeth Marvel) has to fight for the life of a man deemed “beyond rehabilitation” by the justice system and condemned to be executed in a supposedly painless new machine. This new play by Tim Blake Nelson sounds even more menacing than real life. —S.H.

Music
11. Listen to Through the Wall
It’s so danceable.
Empire, September
26.Rochelle Jordan is an R&B troubadour who has been exploring the synergy between soul and electronic music ever since we were finding love in hopeless places in the early 2010s. Experience on the beat makes her new album slam even though the composite parts feel impossibly light. —C.J.

TV
12. Watch Abbott Elementary
The network comedy that could keeps on going.
ABC, October 1.
School’s back in session — a little later than in reality, but still. In its fifth season, the series is creeping ever closer toward elder-statesman territory. What’s next is certainly more episodic high jinks plus, hopefully, an update on the formerly fired Ava and the forever fine O’Shon. —R.H.

Art
13. See Ohad Meromi
This artist bends norms at will.
56 Henry Street, through October 26.
One of the best underknown artists anywhere is sculptor Ohad Meromi. At the larger of the two galleries here rests a quasi-space-age high-modernist figurative female, part Archipenko and part Henry Moore by way of Martha Graham’s twisting forms — and part sheer genius. A second gallery is filled with watercolors. —J.S.

Music
14. See JJJJJerome Ellis
Sonic depth from a different way of talking.
Roulette, October 3.
The five J’s in this multidisciplinary artist’s name represent a central fact of his life and work: He has a stutter. That shapes his music; as he speaks, he may be mirrored by skittering drums. Sometimes he forgoes voice altogether to make enigmatic, peaceful instrumental pieces. —M.S.

Movies
15. See Ju Dou
Cruelty and passion.
Film Forum, October 3 through 9.
Gong Li is ferociously great in this 1990 historical drama by Zhang Yimou about a young woman who gets married off to a heartless merchant. Its claustrophobic intrigues and sumptuous footage of fabric-dyeing nabbed it China’s first-ever Oscar nomination for foreign-language film. —A.W.

Music
16. Listen to Neon Grey Midnight Green
Reflections on the musician’s life (and work).
Anti-, September 26.
As a solo artist, sometime alt-country bandleader, and indie-pop dynamo in the New Pornographers, Neko Case imbues her songs with novelistic insight. Her first full-length since 2018’s fire-tinged chronicle Hell-On muses heartily on the struggles and triumphs of the musician class of the 2020s. —C.J.

Theater
17. See Last Call
A play with cocktails.
Site specific, previews start September 19.
En Garde Arts, which co-produced The Wind and the Rain last year on a Red Hook barge, brings a new endeavor to a collection of real apartments. Obie winners Dustin Wills and Hansol Jung (both members of the performance collective the Pack) explore an immersive new story that takes place behind a bar and in the crowd as audiences mingle, drink, and get caught up in the drama. —S.H.

TV
18. Watch Nightmares of Nature
Narrated by Maya Hawke.
Netflix, September 30
Whoever came up with the idea to merge a Planet Earth–style doc with the screeching score, squelching sounds, and jump scares of the horror genre, congratulations. This docuseries is split into two halves (part two is out October 28), with forest creatures first and jungle creatures next, and both focus on how “nightmares are realities.” —R.H.

Movies
19. See Andrei Rublev
One of Soviet cinema’s greatest achievements.
Roxy Cinema, September 26.
The big screen is the only way to experience Andrei Tarkovsky’s expansive and meditative 1966 classic about a medieval Russian icon painter and his harrowing journey through a landscape filled with absurdity, visions, mud, and violence. —B.E.

Opera
20. See Sibyl
The visual-aural William Kentridge experience.
Powerhouse Arts, October 8 through 11.
The West got to know South Africa’s a cappella vocal ensembles through Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Now, composers Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Kyle Shepherd nudge those traditions of close harmonies, chants, and percussive rhythms into the realm of chamber opera. —J.D.

TV
21. Watch Wayward
Bad medicine.
Netflix, September 25.
Mae Martin created and stars in this miniseries set at a school for troubled teens. Toni Collette plays the enigmatic woman who runs the joint, complete with oversize glasses, flowing hippie hair, and a bell that channels Weapons’s Aunt Gladys. It’s sort of in the vein of Nine Perfect Strangers but with the creeping tension of a paranoid thriller. —N.Q.

Music
22. See Lambrini Girls
Abrasive, but sweet.
Racket, September 24.
The U.K. punk outfit, whose whip-smart and ferocious debut, Who Let the Dogs Out, is one of our Best Albums of 2025 (So Far), brings Chicago’s hooky, sax-wielding Edging to this Bowery Presents venue for a double shot of candy-sweet melody meeting distortion and thoughtful crassness. —C.J.

TV
23. Watch Monster: The Ed Gein Story
He’s no Jeffrey Dahmer.
Netflix, October 3.
Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Monster series has been shockingly popular. But could a season about the infamously disgusting Ed Gein be a bridge too far? Charlie Hunnam is practically unrecognizable after shedding pounds and adopting a breathy, high-pitched accent to play the part. This is a gross story that could veer into transphobia, though, and it might turn away casual viewers. Whether Murphy’s branding is strong enough to keep people enthralled is the big question. —R.H.

Movies
24. See Sunday at Il Posto Accanto
Breaking bread in grim times.
Maysles Documentary Center, September 29 and 30.
Directed by Seth Zvi Rosenfeld, this film, with locals playing themselves, looks at the East Village restaurant, which was an important community space during the pandemic. Also coming to AppleTV+ October 1. —Wendy Goodman

Books
25. Go to Shadow Ticket Midnight Release Party
The author presumably will not attend.
Greenlight Bookstore, October 6.
Who will show up for a Harry Potter–style midnight release party for the new Thomas Pynchon novel about a private eye from Milwaukee in the 1930s? We simply must find out. —E.A.