Your ultimate guide for staying in the know and getting inspired. An essential wrap-up of arts news and the best interviews, brought to you by the Arts team at ABC Radio National.
Weekender: Best of the year - movies, music, theatre and more
Ce and Sky share their favourite picks of 2025.
Movies mentioned includes Freaky Tales, KPop Demon Hunters, Twinless, Sirat, The Secret Agent, Sinners, One Battle After Another, and One of Them Days.
Music mentioned includes Kathryn Joseph - We Were Made Prey, Ethel Cain - Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You; Perfume Genius - live & Glory; Billy Woods - Golliwog; Backxwash - Only Dust Remains; Abel Selaocoe - Hymns of Bantu; Ganavya; Jaime Martin & the SSO - Bolero.
Theatre mentioned includes the Siegfried and Roy opera, Hadestown, Beetlejuice, and Scout Boxall's God's Favourite.
And in poetry: Evelyn Araluen's The Rot and The Nightmare Sequence by Omar Sakr & Safdar Ahmed.
5 Dec 2025
Weekender: Best TV shows of the year, the fifth Indigenous Art Triennial, and arthouse Summer films
Rudi Bremer from Awaye joins the team to take us to the NGA where After The Rain, the fifth National Indigenous Art Triennial is bringing together a remarkable collection of work under the supervision of Artistic Director Tony Albert.
And with Summer holidays ahead, we recommend our TV shows of the year for your binge-watching pleasure. Ce chooses Wayward, Sky picks The Lowdown, and Rudi argues for The Residence.
Hidden Rivalry might not make the end of years list, but it has Ce and Rudi watching and fondly reminiscing about Yuri! On Ice!!
Sky looks ahead at some of the most interesting art-house releases of the Summer season, including The History of Sound, Sentimental Value and No Other Choice.
Ce is very unimpressed with Maggie Nelson's new book, which tries to compare and contrast the work and lives of Taylor Swift and Sylvia Plath.
And the biggest hip-hop artist in the world, Kendrick Lamar, is currently on tour around the country.
2 Dec 2025
Sarah Hanson-Young on local content quotas and ABC funding plus proposed changes at the State Library of Victoria
Last week, the federal government passed legislation that will require video streaming services with more than 1 million Australian subscribers to invest 10 percent of their Australian expenditure or 7.5 percent of their gross Australian revenue into new Australian productions each year.
The bill passed with the support of the Greens, and as part of the negotiations, the ABC will also receive $50 million in additional funding over 3 years to spend on locally made children’s and drama content. Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, arts spokeswoman for The Greens, joins us to talk about the bills and about Federal arts priorities in 2026.
And reports suggest that the State Library of Victoria will cut its reference librarians from 25 to 10, reduce its publicly available computers and remove their children’s and family engagement officers in a new round of reforms. The Library has pushed back against the reporting.
Gideon Haigh, award-winning writer and passionate advocate for the library, shares his perspectives on the changes, the messages he's heard from current and former staff, and mounts the case for the importance of the state institution.
Our track of the week is Evensong, part 1 by JJJJJerome Ellis
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