It's taken 25 years and several false starts but Terry Gilliam has at last succeeded in bringing his version of Don Quixote to the big screen. The director discusses his jinxed project, now that he has completed The Man who Killed Don Quixote, which stars Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce. Samantha Strauss, creator of the hit Australian teen drama series Dance Academy, talks to John Wilson about her new drama series The End starring Harriet Walter and Francis O’Connor which uses dark humour to tell...
Jan 21, 2020•28 min
Dev Patel talks about playing David Copperfield in Armando Iannucci’s retelling of Charles Dickens' classic ode to grit and perseverance, The Personal History of David Copperfield. This is a film for our cosmopolitan age with a diverse ensemble cast of actors from a range of ethnicities. Patel, star of Slumdog Millionaire, describes telling director Iannucci that the production would have to ‘weather a storm’ because of this colour-blind approach. The film also stars Nikki Amuka-Bird, Peter Capa...
Jan 20, 2020•29 min
Playwright Lucy Kirkwood discusses her return to the National Theatre following the critically-acclaimed Mosquitoes in 2017 with her new play The Welkin, which stars Maxine Peake and Ria Zmitrowicz. It’s the story of a woman sentenced to hang for murder in 1759 but whose claims of pregnancy could save her life. A Jury of Matrons is assembled - 12 women who will decide the condemned woman’s fate. Terrence Malick's latest film A Hidden Life is a historical drama based on a true story which depicts...
Jan 17, 2020•28 min
Charlize Theron discusses her new film Bombshell, for which she's been Oscar nominated, in which she stars alongside Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie. It tells the true story of female Fox News presenters and personnel in New York who set out to expose the CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harassment in 2016. The street gangs of Lagos are the setting for a new adaption of Oliver Twist for Radio 4. Writer Ayeesha Menon discusses how she transposed the story to Nigeria and what parallels she saw between t...
Jan 16, 2020•28 min
As bushfires continue to ravage huge areas of land in Australia, how have artists and writers responded to the complex historical relationship the country has with this natural phenomenon? Writers Kathryn Heyman in Sydney and Danielle Clode in Adelaide join indigenous Australian artist Judy Watson from Brisbane to consider the place of fire in Australian arts, culture and the nation’s identity. Writer Ben Richards discusses his new Sky One television drama series, COBRA, which stars Robert Carly...
Jan 15, 2020•28 min
Michael B Jordan and Jamie Foxx on their new film Just Mercy, the story of one of America’s great miscarriages of justice. Michael plays lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who takes up the case of Walter McMillian, a man placed on death row for the 1986 murder of a woman in Alabama, even though there was no credible evidence linking him to the crime. As a register for actors’ profiles, Spotlight describes itself as the 'home of stage and screen casting', but is it a home that is equally welcoming to all po...
Jan 15, 2020•28 min
John talks to Oscar nominees including Charlize Theron (Best Actress), Jonathan Pryce (Best Actor) and Florence Pugh (Best Supporting Actress). Critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Ellen E Jones discuss the films in contention. Joker has most nominations, followed by 1917, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Irishman. Yet again the Best Director category is all male, though Greta Gerwig's Little Women is nominated for Best Picture. John is also joined by producer Joanna Natasegara, whose film The E...
Jan 13, 2020•28 min
Jonathan Coe talks about Middle England which has won the Costa Novel Award 2019. Set in the outskirts of Birmingham where car factories have been replaced by pound shops and in a London beset by riots and Olympic fever, it’s a state of the nation novel that tries to make sense of our times, with characters from both sides of the EU referendum divide. Pop megastar Selena Gomez releases her 3rd studio album Rare. She’s been through an emotional rollercoaster in recent years, including an emergenc...
Jan 10, 2020•29 min
A teenage sex therapist on a high school campus is the premise of the hit Netflix series Sex Education. Starring Asa Butterfield and Gillian Anderson, its first season attracted 40m viewers in the first weeks of streaming and it’s back for a second series. Writer and creator Laurie Nunn discusses balancing serious sexual content with humour, why it’s hard to pin down the location and era of the series, and the debt it owes to the American high school movies of the '80s and '90s. All this week Fr...
Jan 09, 2020•28 min
Freddie Fox on playing Jeremy Bamber in ITV's new six part factual drama White House Farm, about one fateful night in August 1985 when five members of the same family were murdered at an Essex farmhouse. The drama, which is based on extensive research, interviews and published accounts, tells the story of how Essex Police initially believed that Bamber’s sister Sheila Caffell had murdered her own family before turning the gun on herself but doubts soon began to emerge. While some London shows se...
Jan 08, 2020•28 min
We discuss the controversy over this years BAFTA nominations. The most prominent categories - Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress – remain predominantly white. There’s not a woman on the Best Director shortlist and all the Best Film nominees are stories about men. John Wilson asks the critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh why this is and what it means for such awards. Do they have any meaning anymore? Adam Sandler on his new film Uncut Gems in which he plays a charismatic New York jeweller who makes a high...
Jan 07, 2020•28 min
Suzannah Lipscomb (Chair of Costa Biography Award) announces the category winners of the five 2019 Costa Book Awards exclusively on Front Row and Stig talks live to the winner of the Best Biography. Twenty years after the success of his debut film American Beauty, Sam Mendes has once again taken the top prize at the Golden Globes with his First World War epic 1917. He explains how his grandfather’s experience as a messenger on the Western Front inspired the film, which is filmed as if it’s one c...
Jan 06, 2020•28 min
Hugh Grant and Matthew McConaughey discuss working with Guy Ritchie on his new gangster film The Gentlemen, but never actually sharing a scene. Television writer Daisy Coulam, whose credits include Grantchester, Humans and Lost in Paradise, talks to Nikki Bedi about Deadwater Fell, her new crime drama for Channel 4 starring David Tennant, which explores the impact the murder of a mother and her three children has on the small Scottish town where they lived. The American writer Bill Bryson discus...
Jan 03, 2020•28 min
Taika Waititi’s new film Jojo Rabbit is a satire about a 10-year-old budding Nazi who falls under the spell of his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler, played by the New Zealand writer and director. Jason Solomons reviews the film which also stars Scarlett Johansson, Stephen Merchant and first-time child actor Roman Griffin Davis who has been nominated for a Golden Globe. Alex Michaelides is the author of The Silent Patient, a twisty thriller that has become the biggest selling fiction debut of 2019 i...
Jan 02, 2020•28 min
A celebration of Ludwig van Beethoven, marking the composer's 250th anniversary year. To discuss what sets Beethoven apart from other composers, John Wilson is joined by pianist Stephen Hough, poet Ruth Padel, Oxford Professor of Music Laura Tunbridge and conductor Sir Simon Rattle, who says of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: "It is too much of everything!... this is a composer inventing the music of the next one hundred years" Throughout 2020 Simon Rattle will be conducting Beethoven with the Londo...
Jan 01, 2020•28 min
Writer Juno Dawson, critic Sarah Crompton, comedian Ayesha Hazarika and folk musician Matthew Crampton battle it out to see who'll be crowned champion in our cultural quiz of the year. Plus, as it's wassailing season, Matthew discusses the history of drinking songs and plays some examples. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Simon Richardson
Dec 31, 2019•29 min
How has TV changed in the last decade, from what we watch to how we watch it. Critics Boyd Hilton and Eleanor Stanford discuss, alongside contributions from screen writers Mark Gatiss, Amanda Coe and Mike Bartlett. Male ballet dancers Ty Singleton and Tom Rogers on how they hope their podcast, Ty and Tom Talk, will change perceptions of ballet. Chinese film Long Day's Journey into Night is reviewed by actor and filmmaker Daniel York Loh. Rock critic David Hepworth pays tribute to former Bonzo Do...
Dec 30, 2019•28 min
The most recent statistics released by the Church of England reveal record cathedral attendance, despite falling numbers in many Anglican parish churches. Cathedrals are increasingly programming cultural events and art installations as a way of engaging with wider communities. We discuss the evolving role of contemporary art in churches as well as different approaches to conserve the art that already exists within them. With author and former chairman of the National Trust Simon Jenkins; Becky C...
Dec 27, 2019•28 min
A sparkling and razor-sharp conversation marks the end of a remarkable year for two authors. Queenie has been one of the breakthrough novels of the year, winning over readers with its compassionate and funny depiction of a young black woman whose life seems to be spinning out of control. Front Row asked its author, Candice Carty-Williams, to choose a cultural figure she’d like to talk to. She selected fellow novelist Bernardine Evaristo who this year became the first black woman to win the Booke...
Dec 26, 2019•28 min
Three names on the Motown label, Holland-Dozier-Holland, were behind a string of hits including 13 number 1s in a row. The songs they wrote included Reach Out (I'll Be There), Stop! in the Name of Love, Where Did Our Love Go? and Baby Love and the artists they composed for ranged from Martha and the Vandellas and Diana Ross and the Supremes to Marvin Gaye and The Four Tops. Now in the 60th anniversary year of Motown and as they publish their autobiography, Come and Get These Memories, the Hollan...
Dec 25, 2019•28 min
Amanda Coe, novelist and screenwriter of Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, Room at the Top and Apple Tree Yard talks about her latest television drama series, The Trial of Christine Keeler. It's the story of the Profumo Affair and John Wilson asks her what the 1963 scandal tells us about power and sex in today's society. Novelist Diana Evans discusses Singular, her new short story specially commissioned for Radio 4 which explores the idea of whether happiness is necessarily dependent on companio...
Dec 24, 2019•28 min
The Mischief Theatre team – Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields have had an amazing year with their Play That Goes Wrong theatre franchise – three productions on at the West End, one touring the UK, and now a new six-part television series on BBC One called The Goes Wrong Show. They join Front Row to discuss how things have gone right since they started going wrong. Slow Art Days, where viewers are encouraged to spend more time looking at artworks, have been gaining popularity in muse...
Dec 23, 2019•28 min
JJ Abrams on overcoming his initial qualms about directing The Rise of Skywalker, the epic conclusion of the 42 year Star Wars saga. A huge juggling act, the film must satisfy fans, financiers and critics while tying up the many themes and plotlines of its eight predecessors. How did he do it? The long awaited film of Cats starring national treasures Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen has been slammed by the critics, even getting zero stars in The Telegraph. Cats is a musical that has strayed ...
Dec 20, 2019•28 min
Robert De Niro discusses reuniting with Martin Scorsese after nearly 25 years for The Irishman, the big-budget epic Netflix saga about organised crime over five decades, also starring those classic mob actors Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel. After inspiring a popular video game, The Witcher Saga, the dark and fantastical novels of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski have now been adapted for TV. Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, the showrunner for the new Netflix series, talks about the art of genre f...
Dec 19, 2019•28 min
Saoirse Ronan stars as Jo March in Greta Gerwig’s new film adaptation of Little Women. The Irish actress, who’s tipped for an Oscar for the role, discusses how the film draws out the connection between Jo and her creator Louisa May Alcott, if Jo and Laurie would work as couple today and her frustration at Greta’s lack of Golden Globe nominations for the film. The Book People, the online and pop-up bookseller, went into administration yesterday just a week before Christmas, putting almost 400 job...
Dec 18, 2019•28 min
Taron Egerton, whose performance as Elton John in the film Rocketman has already earned him Golden Globe and SAG nominations for Best Actor, talks about channelling the flamboyant performer on screen and capturing his distinctive voice in hits such as Your Song and Tiny Dancer. Rocketman is available on DVD. There have been scores of actors who have played Scrooge from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, from Alastair Sim and Basil Rathbone to Albert Finney and Michael Caine. This season it is ...
Dec 17, 2019•30 min
Stories from Mark Gatiss will dominate the small screen once again this festive season. Gatiss joins Kirsty to talk about his new adaptation of Dracula, in 3 hour and a half episodes, starring John Heffernan as Jonathan Harker and Danish actor Claes Bang as the tall, dark, handsome vampire. They also discuss Gatiss’s new version of the M R James Christmas story, Martin’s Close, with Peter Capaldi as a lawyer facing the infamous ‘hanging judge’, George Jeffreys. Martin’s Close is on BBC 4 on Chri...
Dec 16, 2019•28 min
The Two Popes is a based on true events, the resignation of Pope Benedict and the election of his successor, Francis. It's also a double act by two great Welsh actors, Jonathan Pryce, Francis, and Anthony Hopkins, Benedict. Jonathan Pryce discusses his role, the story of their unlikely friendship and what the film is really exploring - the nature of forgiveness. 300 years after the publication of Robinson Crusoe, which some claim is the first novel ever written, novelists Katherine Rundell and K...
Dec 13, 2019•29 min
Ballet star Francesca Hayward on the Royal Ballet's Romeo and Juliet: Beyond Words, filmed on location, and her lead role as Victoria The White Cat in the new film musical Cats. The Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir discusses her scores for the film Joker, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe this week, and the hit TV series Chernobyl, for which she won an Emmy. This Saturday will be exactly 40 years since The Clash released their classic LP London Calling, featuring songs such as ...
Dec 12, 2019•28 min
The work of the playwright and screenwriter Mike Bartlett has become a staple of the theatre and television landscape with his plays, such as Bull, winning prizes, his television dramas, such as Dr Foster, tantalising viewers, and productions such as King Charles III having a life on both stage and small screen. Now he’s written a new ITV drama serial - Sticks & Stones - about workplace bullying. He joins Kirsty to discuss the dark side of office banter. Looking at art is very popular. Last ...
Dec 11, 2019•28 min
