Things to do in London this weekend

Another weekend in the capital and there’s plenty to do and see. It’s a good one for fans of the screen, with the third and final series of Squid Game arriving on Netflix. Elsewhere, Lorde returns with another brilliant album, and there’s a new French bistro well worth your time.

Here’s everything you could do in London this weekend.

In his treasured tones, David Attenborough returns to talk through four billion years of evolution in 50 minutes, via a state-of-the-art, 360-degree immersive experience. Attenborough is exploring the entwining of our history with the planet’s, from the advent of homo sapiens through to the cost borne by our oceans as a result of modern humanity. The show is underpinned by award-winning composer Nick Powell’s score.

Following its past resounding success, Flowers is back in bloom at the Saatchi Gallery, featuring more than 500 unique artworks. Exploring the symbolism of flowers, the exhibition is split into nine sections including Roots, Flowers and Fashion, and New Shoots. Floral themes in vinyl will also have an entire wall. Rebecca Louise Law has created a piece especially, using 100,000 dried flowers.

The resurgence of French cooking is still brimming with joie de vivre. French Society, from the team behind popular Kentish Town bistro Patron, looks among the most promising of recent openings. Both in terms of looks and in the scope of its menu, things have been kept simple. Expect white linen, distressed walls, café chairs; expect confit duck in a red wine reduction, moules à la crème and two types of steak. Unchallenging food, but the kind to come back and back for.

Perhaps concerned with complacency surrounding the unstoppable march of AI, Gerard Johnstone returns to direct Megan 2.0, the sequel to creepy horror Megan. The threat is that of Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android, or AMELIA, an AI that becomes self-aware, turning on her creators in the process. The result? Robot doll Megan is upgraded to take her down.

Following the cliffhanger of season two, Squid Game returns for the third — and (allegedly) final — time. Season three promises hitherto unprecedented events in theSquid Game universe, with the birth of life and a brand-new game altogether, after much considered deliberation by director Hwang Dong-hyuk.

Against Identity is a bracing corrective to the modern delusion you can identify as anything you like — a tortoise, say — which reduces our real selves to a construct of our own making. Alexander Douglas’s solution, based on three philosophers — René Giraud, Benedict de Spinoza and the ancient Chinese sage, Zhuangzi — is to drop identity altogether. It’s a wildly contentious argument that we should abandon the self — but it’s a useful challenge to some silly contemporary shibboleths.

After a four-year hiatus following the somewhat frosty reception to her 2021 album Solar Power, Virgin is Lorde’s next studio album with a new-found momentum in her writing process. The album, punctuated with a remix of Charli xcx’s Girl, So Confusing, has been preceded by singles What Was That and Man of the Year. It appears to be a mode of catharsis for Lorde, in light of a turbulent personal life. Virgin will be supported with the upcoming Ultrasound world tour, which kicks off in September.

Following Ana De Costa’s Fat Tea residency in Deptford’s Jazu, Gorka is next to shake the pans, splicing a myriad cultural influences through a Basque lens. Gorka is the vision of George Husband and George Brown, whose career between them includes stints in kitchens such as Brat, Cafe Cecilia and The Camberwell Arms. Expect delights such as lamb ribs with truffled nam jim and lamb fat daikon.

A new event series taking place in the public galleria of the skyscraper, which revolves around culture, community and technology. The events are all free, and feature the likes of presenter and entrepreneur Jamie Laing, AI expert Daniel Hulme, journalist and housing rights advocate Vicky Spratt and comedian Athena Kugblenu. The latter will be talking about balancing creativity and productivity, which perfectly encapsulates this melding of business and fun, which is of course where all the best innovations come from.