Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
Charlotte Mullins and Katja Hoyer are with Tom Sutcliffe to review The Royal Academy of Arts' Kiefer/Van Gogh exhibition, Nell Stevens novel The Original, and German language film From Hilde, with Love. And Sarfraz Manzoor is on to discuss a new Bruce Springsteen compilation – Tracks II: The Lost Albums Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Claire Bartleet
UK Culture Secretary LIsa Nandy talks us through the Government's new Creative Industries Sector Plan which aims to unlock growth and opportunity in culture, media and sport. Last week 27-year-old Scottish author Margaret McDonald become the youngest ever winner of the Carnegie medal for children's writing, for her debut novel Glasgow Boys, a book which explores mental health, trauma, inequality and identity through the friendship between two boys who have grown up in foster care. Margaret joins...
Billy Porter, famous for his Broadway roles in such shows as Kinky Boots and Grease, and onscreen in Pose and Cinderella is making his directorial debut in theatre with This Bitter Earth. Jesse is an introspective Black playwright and when Neil, Jesse’s boyfriend, who is a white Black Lives Matter activist, accuses him of political apathy, their passions and priorities collide. Playwright Harrison David Rivers and Billy Porter talk to Samira Ahmed about their production. Glastonbury festival kic...
Samira talks to legendary Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer, whose latest film F1 stars Brad Pitt as a racing car driver. Alistair McGowan and Dr Caroline Potter celebrate the extraordinary music and life of the French composer Erik Satie, whose centenary is marked on Radio 3 on Saturday. Alistair's play about Satie, called Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear, is broadcast on Radio 4 on July 1st. Nick Ahad visits Beamish, the Living Museum of the North, shortlisted for this year's Museum of t...
Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi talk to tom Sutcliffe about directing Pixar's latest film Elio, about a lonely boy who wants to make contact with aliens. The film is then reviewed by film producer and critic Jason Solomons and art critic and writer Hettie Judah. Tom and guests also discuss a major retrospective of the work of painter Jenny Saville at London's National Portrait Gallery, and The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey. Jenny Saville is also the guest on this week's edition of This Cultura...
On the opening night of the Glasgow Jazz Festival, Mercury Prize-shortlisted pianist Fergus McCreadie performs from his forthcoming album The Shieling live in the Front Row studio. Writer and Edinburgh Makar Michael Pedersen talks about his debut novel Muckle Flugga – a story of love and family set on a remote Scottish island – and reads from the poem he has written for Independent Bookshop Week. In the latest of our features on the institutions shortlisted for Museum of the Year, we speak to tw...
RuPaul's Drag Race producers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato join Nick Ahad to talk about their career making making television and movies, ahead of being guests of honour at this year's Sheffield DocFest. Radio 3 presenter Tom Service discusses the life and legacy of Alfred Brendel who was a celebrated author, poet and pianist. Caroline Norbury, the CEO of Creative UK, Stephanie Sirr, the Chief Executive of Nottingham Playhouse, and Sienna Rodgers, the Deputy Editor of parliamentary magazine Th...
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland tell Tom Sutcliffe about their new film, 28 Years Later; a whole new take on the story which stars Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. It's the follow up to their post-apocalyptic fast-paced, gory zombie movies 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. The Rage virus escaped a medical research laboratory and - nearly three decades later - one group of survivors has learned how to exist among the infected. Tom speaks with James Frey, once described as “Americ...
Professor John Mullan and writer Lucy O’Brien join Tom to review More, Pulp's first album in nearly 24 years. They also discuss exhibitions by the 20th century British artists Edward Burra and Ithell Colquhoun which are running in parallel at Tate Britain. Plus they give their verdict on Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, inspired by actual experiences of Laura Piani, who is making her directorial debut with this film. Tom also talks to Visual Art Curator Sim Panaser and artist Abi Palmer, about Chapt...
Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys remembered Turner Prize winning artist Rachel Whiteread talks about her retrospective exhibition at the brand new Goodwood Art Foundation in Sussex. We celebrate the centenary of the National Library of Scotland and hear about its plans to send important items from its collection to museums around the country - from National Librarian Amina Shah and bestselling writer and Centenary Champion Val McDermid. And writer and curator Lally Macbeth talks about her book The...
Sarah Moss, the celebrated author of Ghost Wall, discusses her new novel Ripeness, which oscillates between tension-filled contemporary Ireland and a heady summer in 1960s Italy. Dylan Jones discusses his new book 1975: The Year The World Forgot and debates whether this was the best year for music with chief music critic of the Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick. After reports of an emerging deal between the UK and Greece around the status of the Elgin Marbles, we talk to Geoffrey Robertson KC, cam...
Ian Rankin pays tribute to the best-selling thriller author Frederick Forsyth, whose death was announced today. Samira talks to Twin Peaks' co-creator Mark Frost and podcaster Mike Munser about the show's enduring legacy 35 years on, as Twin Peaks is re-released and celebrated at the BFI Film on Film Festival. Playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti talks about her new play Marriage Material, which spans decades in the lives of a Sikh family running a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Presenter: Samira Ahme...
Tom and guests review What it Feels Like for Girl, the BBC's coming-of-age drama based on the memoir of Paris Lees; Taylor Jenkins Reid's new novel, Atmosphere, set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program and new film, Lollipop, about a young woman released from prison battling to regain custody of her children, written and directed by Daisy-May Hudson. We also talk to former Vice President of Washington's Kennedy Center, Marc Bamuthi Joseph about being fired by President Trump a...
Daisy Goodwin discusses her debut play, By Royal Appointment, which stars Anne Reid as Queen Elizabeth and Caroline Quentin as her dresser, and which opens this week at Theatre Royal, Bath. The life and legacy of Irish novelist playwright and poet Edna O'Brien is discussed by writer Jan Carson and the director of the documentary Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story, Sinead O’Shea. And we hear from the curator of Design & Disability, an exhibition at the V&A in London which showcases the con...
Comedian Nick Mohammed on his stand-up show Mr Swallow, and Deep Cover, his action thriller about a group of comedy improvisers. Kate Wasserberg, Artistic Director of Theatr Clywd on the theatre's £50 million redevelopment, and opening the new auditorium with a production of the musical Tick Tick... Boom! Ulrich Birkmaier, senior conservator of paintings at the J Paul Getty Museum in LA on restoring a work by Artemisia Gentileschi damaged during the catastrophic Beirut explosion in 2020. Theatre...
Samira discusses the Olivier award-winning production of Fiddler on the Roof with its star Adam Dannheisser and director Jordan Fein. Sarah Dunant talks about the women in the Renaissance who became art patrons, as she publishes her novel The Marchesa, about Isabella d'Este of Mantua. Screenwriter Frederic Raphael, whose films include Far From the Madding Crowd, Darling and Eyes Wide Shut, on the art of writing film scripts. Producer: Harry Graham Presenter: Samira Ahmed...
Samira Ahmed and writers Dreda Mitchell and Mark Ravenhill review Imelda Staunton and her daughter, Bessie Carter, in Mrs Warren's Profession. They consider, too, theatre director Marianne Elliott's first foray into film, The Salt Path, based on a Raynor Winn's bestselling memoir of how she and her husband, after they have lost their house and farm and he has been diagnosed with a rare terminal disease, walk the 600 miles of the South West Coast Path. It features Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaac...
Paul Hartnoll of electronic music duo Orbital talks about the reissue of the band's Brown album which was originally released in 1993, with the addition of 23 extra tracks of rarities and previously unreleased material and about the intersection between dance music and politics. Frances Wilson, who has previously published acclaimed biographies of D H Lawrence and Thomas De Quincy tells us about her latest book Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, about the great Scottish writer, poet and...
Live from the Hay Festival, Alison Steadman talks to Samira about her career, from Abigail's Party to Gavin and Stacey. Laura Bates and Gwyneth Lewis discuss Arthurian Legends and The Mabinogion. Hisham Matar champions the Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz. And transatlantic husband and wife country duo Outpost Drive perform on stage. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Oliver Jones
Stereophonic is a play about the creative process, power dynamics and fraught personal relationships of a 1970s rock band. It won a Tony and many other awards on Broadway. Now Stereophonic has come to the West End. Playwright David Adjmi and Will Butler, sometime of Arcade Fire, who has written the music, discuss their own artistic process as they created it. Plus Skin from Skunk Anansie on their first LP in almost a decade, news of a new exhibition shedding light on painter Joseph Wright of Der...
Benicio Del Toro talks about playing a business tycoon in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme. This aesthetically stylised film, by the director who also made The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel, is reviewed by Tom and critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Rachel Cooke. They also give their verdict on Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, the 8th and final film in the franchise, and discuss fictional portrayals of food as Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle is published. Presenter: Tom Sut...
Frontwoman of Garbage, Shirley Manson talks about the band's latest album Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, which is inspired by contemporary events including the killing of George Floyd in Los Angeles, but which presents an optimistic perspective on a dystopian world. We hear from the winner of the International Booker Prize, which was announced at a ceremony last night. And Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller talks about how he has curated joyful and exuberant events in towns and cit...
Musician Rhiannon Giddens on returning to her North Carolina roots after working with Beyoncé. As a huge retrospective of the work of the artist Helen Chadwick opens at The Hepworth Wakefield, art critic Louisa Buck and the exhibition's curator, Laura Smith, discuss why Chadwick should be viewed as the godmother for a golden generation of British contemporary artists, and another chance to hear Daniel Swift, author of The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespe...
25 years after Joanne Harris introduced readers to the soothing delights of Chocolat, she's released her new book Vianne. It’s the prequel that explains how her heroine found her way into the world of high end French confectionery. A new exhibition at the British Museum sheds light on the provenance of popular images of the Hindu god Ganesha, the Buddha and Jain enlightened teachers. We talk to curator Sushma Jansari about Ancient India: living traditions, alongside expert in Indian ritual art, ...
David Benedict and Viv Groskop review Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, Here We Are, a surreal story of brunch and existential dread; French film about about grassroots music, The Marching Band and Daniel Kehlmann’s new novel, The Director, about a real life German filmmaker navigating the Third Reich. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Simon Richardson
Colin Bulfield, Executive Producer of the new film Ocean With Attenborough, talks about working with the celebrated broadcaster and filmmaker Sir David Attenborough on his latest project, an exploration of the vital importance of healthy oceans to our planet which is in cinemas around the country now. Current exhibitions at V&A Dundee and the British Library in London shed light on the history and future of garden design. Curator James Wylie and academic and author Becca Voelcker discuss how...
Novelist Elif Shafak, artist and writer Edmund de Waal and Professor Rachel Bowlby join Samira to discuss the centenary of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. As the Semi Finals of Eurovision start tonight in Basel, Switzerland, Paddy O'Connell talks about this year's contest. Four hundred leading British Artists such as Paul McCartney and Kate Bush have been giving their support to a campaign to try and stop tech films being able to use their work for AI training. Film director and peer Baroness Bee...
Suzanne Vega has just released her first album of all-new material for nearly a decade. "Flying With Angels" continues her folk-influenced sound and introduces influences of soul as well as a song in tribute to Bob Dylan's "I Want You". She performs in the studio with guitarist Gerry Leonard. Sean Combs aka P Diddy is on trial in New York, charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. We look at the first day's proceedings And there's a uniqu...
Authors Matt Cain and Eimear McBride join Tom Sutcliffe to review a new remake of Ang Lee's 1993 classic The Wedding Banquet. They also discuss Isabel Allende's new novel My Name is Emilia del Valle and the play The Brightening Air, on at the Old Vic theatre in London. And the National Gallery is having a re-hang, we speak to Head of the Curatorial Department, Christine Riding.
Acclaimed German journalist and film producer Sandra Maischberger talks about her new documentary about Leni Riefenstahl, which re-examines the life and career of the filmmaker and Nazi propagandist who was one of the most controversial women of the 20th century. Art historian and curator Sandy Nairne, a member of the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee, and journalist and broadcaster Nancy Durrant discuss digital designs by teams shortlisted to create the permanent memorial to Queen Elizabeth in...
