From a new Mr Mark Ronson album to a <i>Breaking Bad</i> spin-off, here are MR PORTER’s most-anticipated happenings for early this year.

Of course, you could be depressed at this time of year. You could choose to see nothing but the grey, dreary weeks of winter stretching ahead, full of soup and early nights – a time when the very thought of venturing out of the house will seem as daunting as ascending the south face of Annapurna (unless of course you’re below the equator, in which case we’re too jealous to even look at you). But in order to suffer the January blues you’d have to try hard, and we mean really, really hard, to forget about all the exciting cultural offerings that are happening this year. Around the world in 2015, titans of the arts will be at work and play, from Mr Frank Gehry, whose new building in Sydney looks, quite literally, like a load of rubbish, to Mr Mark Ronson, who’s back with a new album of fresh, funk-tinged pop, to Mr Tom Hardy, who has been larking about in the Namibian desert with the aim of single-handedly rescuing a much-loved film franchise. Below we’ve selected just a small number of the happenings that we’re looking forward to in the coming year – let’s call them “perk me ups” – and hopefully you will find reason to share our enthusiasm. If not, there’s always soup.

The fact that Mr René Redzepi is a chef whose cooking is so intrinsically linked to his home country – his Copenhagen restaurant Noma essentially invented modern Nordic cuisine, with people flying to Denmark just to eat there – makes it all the more interesting that he has chosen to uproot it. For a few weeks at the start of the year, the staff at Noma, from sous-chefs to pot-washers, will set up camp at the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo to see what Japanese ingredients have to offer. If you don’t already have a reservation you’ll need to pull some serious strings as the waiting list is rumoured to be 50,000 strong, but it will be worth it – opportunities to experience transcendence at the dinner table don’t come around often.

From 9 January to 14 February, Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo noma.dk/japan

Anglo-American super-producer Mr Mark Ronson’s love of the musical past is both unabashed and unquenched if his new album is anything to go by, in which he goes to Herculean lengths to introduce feelgood funk to a new audience. Of course, he hasn’t forgotten his love for hip-hop and brass (see “Feel Right” featuring New Orleans rapper Mystikal), and as usual Mr Ronson has recruited a high-calibre cabal of collaborators including Mr Bruno Mars, who sings on lead single “Uptown Funk”, Tame Impala’s Mr Kevin Parker, who dreams of made-up drugs on “Daffodils” and, saving the best till first, Mr Stevie Wonder, whose harmonica drifts elegantly over opening track “Crack in the Pearl”.

Out on 26 January (Columbia Records)

Sometimes a TV spin-off show is as good if not better than the original. Who could forget that Cheers begat Frasier, or that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart begat The Colbert Report? But sometimes, of course, it isn’t. Who could forget that Friends begat Joey, or that The X-Files begat The Lone Gunmen? (That’s right, most of us.) Nevertheless we remain optimistic about Better Call Saul, the new show that follows the exploits of lawyer Saul Goodman (Mr Bob Odenkirk) from Breaking Bad. The good news is creator Mr Vince Gilligan is still at the helm; the bad news is Mr Gilligan was also responsible for The Lone Gunmen. But who’s keeping track.

Begins on AMC from 8 February in the US; it will be shown later in the UK on Netflix bettercallsaul.com

While it was famously said of Ms Sylvia Miles that she would attend the opening of an envelope, we at MR PORTER are excited about attending the opening of a paper bag. Not just any paper bag, but Mr Frank Gehry’s Dr Chau Chak Wing Building of the University of Technology, Sydney – nicknamed The Paper Bag for its resemblance to your weekly grocery shopping – which was completed in November but opens officially in February. Though there is an overwhelming air of crinkly brown paper to them, the wobbly walls of the building actually reference the city’s “urban brick heritage”, according to the designer, and also have the more tangible benefit of increasing the amount of daylight that gets through to the interior. The other side of the building is dotted with shard-like windows. We assume “The Paper Bag With Bits of Broken Glass in it” didn’t have quite the same ring.

_The Dr Chau Chak Wing Building opens in February _uts.edu.au

The Icelandic singer Ms Björk Guðmundsdóttir has lived more lives than most; indeed, to describe her simply as a “singer” does a disservice to her enormous contributions to music, film and art in general (not forgetting her collaboration with naturalist Sir David Attenborough in a 2013 documentary film). The Museum of Modern Art in New York has decided that it is high time her achievements be recognised and is launching a major retrospective of her work in March. Don’t imagine that this will be a pictures-on-walls job however, as Björk is heavily involved with the installation which is promised to be “immersive”.  

From 7 March to 7 June, MoMA, 11 W53rd St, New York moma.org

It would be hard to describe Marylebone as an undiscovered area of London, given that it’s excellently located just north of Park Lane, but it’s certainly having a moment. Next year its smattering of lauded restaurants and hotels, including The Lockhart, Trishna and of course, Chiltern Firehouse, will be joined by a second Townhouse from Clerkenwell-based restaurant supremos The Zetter Group. The 24-bedroom Georgian building on Seymour Street is home to a fictional “Uncle Seymour”, who will inspire the interiors by Mr Russell Sage, menus by Mr Bruno Loubet with a lean towards small sharing plates and drinks by Mr Tony Conigliaro.

Opens in March, 28-30 Seymour Street, London thezettergroup.com

Not only did the fourth installment of Mr George Miller’s legendary Australian Mad Max films spend a quarter of a century in development limbo, it subsequently went through the gamut of production problems, from unsafe locations to unsuitable weather to the erratic behaviour of its original star, Mr Mel Gibson. The news, therefore, that British actor Mr Tom Hardy would take over the lead role could not have been more welcome, and may well be just what the movie needs to restore Max’s reputation. From the look of the materials shown at last year’s Comic-Con – which we’re subtitling “300 goes to Burning Man” – things are haring along nicely.

Out in cinemas on 15 May

We were as surprised as the next person to hear that American author Mr Jonathan Franzen has a novel, called Purity, coming out in 2015, a mere five years since his last, Freedom (and not counting two books of essays in between). Mr Franzen famously has taken around a decade to produce his most celebrated fiction works, particularly the aforementioned Freedom and The Corrections of 2001; could it be that the speed of the internet age has finally caught up with the legendary technophobe? Certainly it has affected his subject matter: the novel is centred around a young woman, Purity “Pip” Tyler, and her relationship with a charismatic hacker. Publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s president Mr Jonathan Galassi says, “There’s a kind of fabulist quality to it. It’s not strict realism. There’s a kind of mythic undertone to the story.”

Out in September