With Mark Lawson Breathless is a new prime-time period drama from ITV set in a London hospital during the early sixties. The programme follows the lives of a group of doctors and nurses and, like Mad Men and The Hour, combines period glamour with historical social commentary. Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reviews. Le Week-End stars Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as a middle aged couple who embark on a trip to Paris to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary, with less than romantic results. The co...
Oct 07, 2013•29 min
With John Wilson. Sitar player Anoushka Shankar discusses her latest album, Traces Of You, which features vocals from her half-sister, the singer Norah Jones. The album was influenced by the death of her father, the legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar, and explores the cycle of life. Anoushka Shankar explains how the worldwide outcry following the death of a young woman who was gang raped in India, led her to reveal that she too was sexually abused as a young girl. Truckers is the new TV drama b...
Oct 04, 2013•28 min
With Mark Lawson. Saoirse Ronan was only 13 when she was Oscar and BAFTA nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her role in Atonement. Since then, she has starred in The Lovely Bones, Byzantium and The Host. Now, at 19, she heads the cast of Kevin MacDonald's film How I Live Now, based on Meg Rosoff's book about children caught up in a third world war. She reflects on the transition from child to adult actor, dealing with death on set and the possibility of running for US President. Handbagged...
Oct 02, 2013•28 min
With Mark Lawson. David Tennant and RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran discuss their forthcoming production of Richard II. Tennant talks about switching accents and the difference between working on the stage and screen. Gregory Doran reveals his techniques for making Shakespeare understandable, why he won't change words and how he copes with his dual role of managing the RSC whilst directing his own plays. The analysis and control of human sexuality are the focus of a new film and a TV drama s...
Oct 01, 2013•28 min
With Mark Lawson. The film Sunshine on Leith follows two young soldiers struggling to re-adjust to life in Edinburgh after returning from Afghanistan. Based on a stage musical drawing on songs by The Proclaimers, it stars Jane Horrocks and Peter Mullan. Larushka Ivan-Zedah reviews. Actor Adil Ray discusses his TV sit-com Citizen Khan, as it returns for a second series. Ray, who plays self-appointed Muslim community leader Mr Khan, talks about getting into character and addresses criticisms of th...
Sep 30, 2013•28 min
With Kirsty Lang. The romantic comedy Austenland, based on a novel of the same name, centres on a single 30-something American woman who travels to Britain to visit a resort where the Jane Austen era is recreated, hoping to find her very own Colin Firth version of Mr Darcy. Critic Viv Groskop - who was born a stone's throw away from Chawton, where Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice - reviews. Stephen Poliakoff, writer of Caught On A Train and Shooting The Past, reflects on his controversial debut ...
Sep 27, 2013•29 min
With Kirsty Lang. Atlantis is the new family drama from the BBC, aiming to fill the Saturday night slot vacated by Merlin and Doctor Who. The action takes place in the mythical city of Atlantis and features Mark Addy as Hercules and Juliet Stevenson as the Oracle. Natalie Haynes reviews. Michael Morpurgo is one of our best known and most prolific children's writers. On the eve of his 70th birthday and with a writing career spanning nearly 40 years, he has witnessed a huge shift in the profile of...
Sep 26, 2013•28 min
With Mark Lawson Comedian and actor Johnny Vegas - real name Michael Pennington - talks to Mark about dropping out of seminary school before embarking on a career in stand-up comedy and how his drunken persona threatened to take over entirely. His autobiography Becoming Johnny Vegas takes a candid look back at the person behind the persona. This week sees the publication of Solo in which a 45-year-old James Bond, haunted by his memories of his service at the D-Day landings, is sent from 1960s Lo...
Sep 25, 2013•28 min
With Mark Lawson. The artworks competing to occupy Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth in 2015 and 2016 were unveiled today. Shortlisted artists Marcus Coates and Liliane Lijn discuss their designs, along with Ekow Eshun, chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, who make the final decision about which two artworks will be successful. Stephen King publishes a sequel to his 1977 novel The Shining today. The boy Danny Torrance has grown up, but has he managed to escape the legacy of his alcohol...
Sep 24, 2013•29 min
With Mark Lawson Hugh Jackman returns to our cinema screens this week, starring alongside Jake Gyllenhaal in the thriller Prisoners, about a man who takes the law into his own hands when his young daughter goes missing. Jackman discusses his latest role, a far cry from playing Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. The Wrong Mans is a new TV comedy drama written by and starring James Corden and Horrible Histories' Mathew Baynton, about two office workers who accidentally get entangled in a criminal con...
Sep 23, 2013•29 min
With John Wilson, Front Row announces the shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Awards 2013. Chair of the judges Mariella Frostrup talks about the five authors nominated for the prize, the process of judging the competition and how the exceptional stories stood out. John Wilson also speaks to the first of the nominated authors about their magical and uncanny short story. Front Row will be hearing from the rest of the shortlisted authors and the five stories are broadcast next week on Radio ...
Sep 20, 2013•29 min
With Mark Lawson, who interviews writer and director Woody Allen. Allen's new film Blue Jasmine stars Cate Blanchett as Jasmine, a wealthy Manhattan socialite, and Sally Hawkins as Ginger, her poor sister in San Francisco. They end up together when Jasmine's husband is declared bankrupt. Blue Jasmine is already one of Woody Allen's most financially successful films, proving a hit at the US box office. In this Front Row special, Mark talks to Woody Allen about Blue Jasmine, his unique methods of ...
Sep 19, 2013•28 min
With Mark Lawson. David Walliams and Sheridan Smith talk about working together in a new staging of A Midsummer's Night's Dream, with Walliams in the role of Bottom and Smith as Titania/Hippolyta. They discuss the difficulties of taking on Shakespeare, the dark sensuality of the play and theatrical rituals and pranks. The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is currently open to writers from the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth - but in changes confirmed today, any novel originally written in English an...
Sep 18, 2013•28 min
With John Wilson. Sting discusses The Last Ship, his latest album and the first original material he has released for nearly a decade. Based on Sting's experiences growing up in a shipbuilding community on Tyneside, The Last Ship is a narrative about the demise of the industry seen through the eyes of a range of characters. Sting talks about the autobiographical element of the songs, and how he is writing a Broadway musical about the same subject, which is due to open next year. Australia, at th...
Sep 17, 2013•28 min
With Mark Lawson. Sir Derek Jacobi's acting career spans half a century. As he publishes an autobiography, he reflects on his early desire to act, stage fright, and still wanting to surprise in his 70s. Orphan Black is a new 10 part TV drama serial which focuses on human cloning. Sarah Manning is the anti-heroine, and orphan, who stumbles into an intriguing set of circumstances that force her to realise she's not alone. Novelist Nicholas Royle reviews. Naomi Watts discusses playing Diana, Prince...
Sep 16, 2013•28 min
With Kirsty Lang. Mark Rylance is currently taking a break from acting, and is concentrating on directing a new production of Much Ado About Nothing, which stars Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones. He discusses his approach to the play, and reflects on the success of his role in Jez Butterworth's play Jerusalem, for which he won numerous awards as hard-living Johnny 'Rooster' Byron. Prisons and the lives of prisoners have provided an enduring fascination for film and TV producers and viewers ...
Sep 13, 2013•28 min
With John Wilson. As a new exhibition bringing together works by Henry Moore and Francis Bacon opens at the Ashmolean in Oxford, art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston reviews the show and discusses artistic pairings. Manic Street Preachers' 11th studio album is out next week. Bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire reveals how Rewind the Film is a new departure for the band, as they acknowledge the passing of the years and reflect on the longevity of their musical career. Viv Groskup reviews In a World, a...
Sep 12, 2013•29 min
With Mark Lawson, including news of the shortlist for the Barclaycard Mercury Prize for album of the year, announced today. Travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died in 2011, walked from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in the early 1930s. This resulted in two best-selling books, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. Colin Thubron and biographer Artemis Cooper discuss how they pieced together Leigh Fermor's unfinished manuscript and diaries to produce the final part of the...
Sep 11, 2013•28 min
With John Wilson. Comedian Lee Evans returns to stage in Barking in Essex, the last play written by screenwriter Clive Exton (Entertaining Mr Sloane, 10 Rillington Place, Jeeves and Wooster) before his death in 2007. The play centres on a dysfunctional criminal family from Essex and co-stars Sheila Hancock and Keeley Hawes. Lee Evans discusses swearing, Samuel Beckett, and the plumber providing inspiration for his forthcoming tour. Roland Emmerich, director of disaster movies Independence Day an...
Sep 10, 2013•28 min
With Mark Lawson. The 1970s Formula 1 rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt is the focus of a new film Rush, directed by Ron Howard with a script by Peter Morgan. Alyson Rudd reviews the film that includes Lauda's 1976 crash that nearly claimed the driver's life. The Wipers Times is a 90-minute TV drama about the men behind a satirical newspaper created for soldiers on the Western Front in the First World War. Co-writers Ian Hislop and Nick Newman discuss their project which is based on a tr...
Sep 09, 2013•29 min
With Kirsty Lang. Actor Cillian Murphy, who reached a global audience in films such as Batman Begins and Inception, now stars as a gang leader in the BBC Two drama Peaky Blinders, set in Birmingham in 1919. He reflects on the historical background to the drama, and the blurring of the divide between film and TV. Director Mira Nair discusses her film The Reluctant Fundamentalist, based on the novel by Mohsin Hamid, in which Riz Ahmed plays a Pakistani financier whose life in America is dramatical...
Sep 06, 2013•28 min
With Kirsty Lang. Skinny jeans, phone calls and cameramen recording intimate footage all appear in a mediaeval setting, in a new National Theatre production of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. Making his debut at the National Theatre, director Joe Hill-Gibbins adds a modern twist to this erotic and brutal play, which stars John Heffernan in the title role. Jerry Brotton reviews. Alan Cumming stars in the film Any Day Now, set in the late 70s and based on a true story about a gay couple who becom...
Sep 05, 2013•28 min
With Mark Lawson. Tamsin Greig, familiar to Radio 4 listeners as Debbie Aldridge in The Archers, is also well known from TV comedies such as Black Books and Green Wing, along with numerous acclaimed stage roles. This week she stars in the TV drama series The Guilty, as a mother who is also leading a police investigation into the death of a young boy. She reflects on the relationship between comedy and tragedy, corpsing on stage and the importance of pauses. Jonathan Coe, best known for What a Ca...
Sep 04, 2013•29 min
With Mark Lawson The Italian film The Great Beauty was acclaimed at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and now arrives in British cinemas. Set in contemporary Rome, it's the story of an ageing writer looking back with bitterness on his passionate youth. Sarah Crompton reviews. Stephen Fry is curating the Deloitte Ignite Festival at the Royal Opera House, London. Events focus on Verdi and Wagner, to mark the bicentenaries of their births. Stephen Fry discusses his ideas for the Festival, which inc...
Sep 03, 2013•29 min
With Mark Lawson. About Time, a new film written and directed by Richard Curtis, is the story a 21 year old, played by Domhnall Gleeson, who is told by his father (Bill Nighy) that he has the ability to travel back in time and change events. He uses this ability to woo future girlfriend Mary, played by Rachel McAdams. Camilla Long reviews. British reggae group UB40 are back with Getting Over the Storm, their 20th studio album, which includes new versions of country and western songs, including c...
Sep 02, 2013•28 min
Mark Lawson reflects on the life and work of the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, whose death was announced today. Writers including Edna O'Brien, Colm Toibin, Michael Longley and Hermione Lee consider Seamus Heaney's long writing career, and there's another chance to hear part of a special Front Row interview, recorded before an audience on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Producer Stephen Hughes.
Aug 30, 2013•28 min
With Kirsty Lang Historian Simon Schama discusses the challenge of bringing his latest project The Story of the Jews to television, the importance of story-telling to the Jewish experience, and how his former professor inspired him to focus on bringing history to popular audiences. The vast and ever-growing amount of information now stored on computer servers around the world has become a ready source of inspiration for artists. With an estimated 90 per cent of the world's data having been creat...
Aug 29, 2013•29 min
With Mark Lawson. American conductor Marin Alsop discusses becoming the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms. She also reflects on toying with the idea of conducting with one hand after injuring her wrist, and falling in love with Leonard Bernstein at the age of nine. As Philip French puts away his pen after being The Observer's film critic for 50 years, coinciding with his 80th birthday today, he discusses the 2,500 films he has watched and the changes he has seen in cinema in tha...
Aug 28, 2013•29 min
With Mark Lawson. Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock's latest film is a 3D documentary about the boy band One Direction. The film promises a behind-the-scenes look at the famous five-piece who were brought together on The X Factor in 2010. Rosie Swash gives her verdict. Scottish playwright and artist John Byrne has added his distinctive visual style to the King's Theatre in Edinburgh, where he has created a new mural for the auditorium's dome. He explains how the commission emerged from a vi...
Aug 27, 2013•29 min
With Mark Lawson, who reports from this year's Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. Ruth Rendell and Jeanette Winterson discuss their friendship, which began when Winterson was a house-sitter for Rendell in 1986. The writers also discuss crime plots, exercise regimes and mammoth book signing sessions. Kate Atkinson turned to crime-writing with Case Histories, which has become a TV series with Jason Isaacs playing private investigator Jackson Brodie. Atkinson reveals her reluctance to call herself a...
Aug 26, 2013•28 min
