Florian Zeller’s play The Father was hailed as a masterpiece. Zeller made his debut as a director with his film of it, and Sir Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for his performance as the patriarch sliding into dementia. Zeller tells Kirsty Lang how he was determined to make a film, rather a film version of a play, and how he makes the audience experience the disorientation of a man as his mind crumbles. The author and teacher Jeffrey Boakye has made a playlist with a difference – it’s A Musical Hist...
Jun 07, 2021•28 min
Actress and writer Joanna Scanlan - best known for her comedic roles in tv series such as The Thick of It, Getting On and No Offence - talks to Tom about her role as Mary Hussain an Islam convert in Aleem Khan’s moving debut feature After Love. Journalist Lee Trewhela discusses the close of Cornish theatre company, Kneehigh after more than 40 years. Novelist Chibundu Onuzo discusses her new novel Sankofa, about a woman who grew up in England with her white mother and knowing very little about he...
Jun 04, 2021•42 min
Sierra Leone’s best-known journalist, Sorious Samura, discusses his documentary, Sing, Freetown. After growing tired of hearing only negative stories from Africa, the film follows Sorious and playwright Charlie Haffner’s journey to create a play that shows the true Sierra Leone. The entire Liverpool Biennial, the UK’s largest festival of contemporary art, has now opened, almost a year after it was due to because of the pandemic. Art critic Louisa Buck gives her response to the 11th Biennial and ...
Jun 03, 2021•29 min
Es Devlin, who designed sets for Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch and Stormzy at the Britz, has created something more quietly contemplative as artistic director of the London Design Biennale, filling the courtyard of Somerset House in London with trees. She tells Elle Osili-Wood about how forests in literature are places of transformation and how she created her Forest for Change, with a clearing at its heart where we are invited to consider the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development. The ...
Jun 02, 2021•29 min
Briony Hanson joins Tom to review two extremely different films starring animals as their central characters. First Cow - directed by Kelly Reichardt - is set in Oregon in the 1820s, in which two protagonists use stolen milk to survive in a harsh environment. Gunda – executive-produced by Joaquin Phoenix - is a 90 minute black and white, which follows a sow with her litter, some cows and a one-legged cockerel in a fascinating but unsentimental look at animals and farming. Amy Trigg is currently ...
Jun 01, 2021•28 min
Paulette Randall MBE celebrates her 60th birthday this year. Her career highlights include her role as Associate Director of the unforgettable London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony and being playwright August Wilson's director of choice in this country. She has a rich and varied career on stage, screen and stadium taking in Shakespeare, sketch comedy and Silent Witness. She is in lively conversation with Tom Sutcliffe about her beginnings, going to drama college because of a £5 bet, winning a pri...
May 31, 2021•28 min
The pianist Mitsuko Uchida returns to the Wigmore Hall in London next week where she’ll be marking five decades since she first performed there. She discusses her love for the Schubert Impromptus that she’ll be playing, and how she’s enjoyed exploring new compositions during lockdown. Earlier this week Bolton found itself at the epicentre of the pandemic in England. Bolton is among the areas hardest hit by the Indian variant of the virus - although today the numbers appear to be levelling out an...
May 28, 2021•41 min
Breeders is a highly successful TV comedy series that looks honestly and unflinchingly at the difficulties (and rewards) of parenting. It’s just about to return for a second series and we speak with director and co-creator Chris Addison whose own work includes stand-up, acting and directing shows such as The Thick of It, In The Loop, Veep and many many more. Novelist Nadifa Mohamed tells us about the 17 year journey to publishing her novel The Fortune Men, the true story of the wrongful convicti...
May 27, 2021•29 min
Disney’s much-anticipated 101 Dalmatians prequel Cruella is the visually stunning origin story of the woman who becomes the puppy-stealing force of evil from Dodie Smith’s original 1956 story. Starring Emma Stone and Emma Thompson and directed by I, Tonya’s Craig Gillespie, it is set in late '70s London and channels much of punk’s dark energy and aesthetic. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh joins Front Row to assess whether it makes for compelling viewing – and for what age group. 2 Tone: Lives & Legacies...
May 26, 2021•28 min
As the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam opens a landmark exhibition, Slavery, exploring the Netherlands’ 250 years involvement in the trade of human beings, the Director, Taco Dibbits, joins Front Row to explain why this history must be embraced. British hip hop, grime and, more recently, drill are all musical subgenres that have emerged and thrived in London. But Mancunian artist Bugzy Malone is leading a wave of rappers with northern accents. Born Aaron Davis, Bugzy Malone grew up amid poverty and crim...
May 25, 2021•28 min
David Weil is the showrunner for Hunters, a TV series which imagined the work of Nazi hunters in 1970s New York . The large cast included Al Pacino in his first ever TV lead role. When Covid closed down largescale productions, David Weil turned his hand to a much more intimate sort of show. Solos is a new 7-part fantasy series which is essentially monologues from the likes of Helen Mirren, Anne Hathaway and Morgan Freeman. Brit Bennett is the first shortlisted nominee for The Women’s Prize for F...
May 24, 2021•28 min
Front Row joins Radio 4's celebration of Bob Dylan, who will be 80 on Monday. John Wilson joined by Bob Geldof, to consider the art and influence of Bob, on Bob. Ann Powers, music critic for National Public Radio joins from somewhere on the Nashville Skyline. On Bob Dylan's first trip to Britain, in the winter of 1962, he and the great English folk singer Martin Carthy, met, became friends and performed together in small clubs such as the Troubadour (still going!). Bob Dylan acknowledges the inf...
May 21, 2021•47 min
Eleanor Clayton is the curator of the largest publlc exhbition of the work of the sculptor Barbara Hepworth since her death in 1975. She's also written a new biography about the sculptor called Barbara Hepworth Art and Life. She talks to Nick about Hepworth's passion for making sculpture and how her insistence on the best way her work should be presented to the public has influenced the new show at The Hepworth Wakefield. The secretary of state for culture, The Rt Hon Oliver Dowden wants museum ...
May 20, 2021•29 min
The new album of compositions by Roxanna Panufnik performed by the Saconni Quartet features a surprising range of subject material; letters written home during the First World War, Ashkenazi Jewish cantorial chant, Aung San Suu Kyi’s musings on Burma, a celebration of Poland’s EU presidency, a 14th century love story and the heartbeat of a Bulgarian dancing bear. We talk to her about the stories behind Heartfelt. Following their residency at Cern, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in ...
May 19, 2021•29 min
The actress Julie Hesmondhalgh, best known for Coronation Street and Broadchurch on TV, returns to the theatre for the opening night of her new play at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. Modestly titled The Greatest Play in the History of the World… it is not only the first night of the tour but the first night the theatre has been open since last year. Julie takes a break from rehearsals to talk to Samira about how she is looking forward to being onstage again and the importance of thea...
May 18, 2021•28 min
Barry Jenkins, the director of the 2017 Oscar-winning film Moonlight, discusses his new ten-part TV adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad. The drama series follows two young slaves as they escape their cotton plantation in Georgia and go in search of the fabled railway which they hope will transport them north in their quest for freedom. The director discusses shooting the drama - which contains harrowing scenes of violence - on the site of former...
May 17, 2021•28 min
Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, which recently won best film at both the Oscars and Baftas, is leading the pack as cinemas reopen next week. Film critic Tim Robey and Chinese arts journalist Yuan Ren discuss Nomadland and what else we have to look forward to. St Vincent’s latest album Daddy’s Home is inspired in part by her father’s release from 10 years in prison. The artist discusses getting personal for her sixth record, returning to the sound of the '70s and the female artists that paved the way for...
May 14, 2021•41 min
Author of the Year was announced today at the British Books Awards. Tom speaks to the winner, Richard Osman, game show host and author of the hugely successful crime novel The Thursday Murder Club. In the middle of the forest sits an abandoned toy shop. It appears to be a fairy tale house, but as you inch closer you see that it is defaced and decaying. Inside there are rows of upside down dolls. Upside Down Mimi is artist Rachel Maclean’s first permanent outdoor commission, an installation combi...
May 13, 2021•28 min
From next Monday theatres in England will legally be allowed to reopen with social distancing and strict capacity restrictions. We find out what it will be like for audiences and staff as they return to venues. We also hear from one theatre director in Scotland who's not reopening and ask why. The Cultural Recovery Fund has provided a lifeline for some arts organisations who would have gone under as well as some individuals but how are the millions of pounds of public money being spent? We speak...
May 12, 2021•29 min
It was after the death of George Floyd that television writer and producer Travon Free, and filmmaker Martin Desmond Roe came together to create a response to this traumatic event. The result was Two Distant Strangers which won Best Live Action Short Film at this year’s Oscars. Travon and Martin join Elle to talk about making art out of tragedy. NBC has dropped the 2022 Golden Globes Award ceremony and Tom Cruise has returned his three Golden Globes in protest at the lack of diversity at the Hol...
May 11, 2021•28 min
David Hockney has captured the unfolding of Spring during the pandemic, creating 116 new works on his ipad which have been blown up for a new exhibition at London’s Royal Academy. Art critic Ben Luke reviews the prolific 83 year old’s new work. He also discusses the shortlist for this year’s Turner Prize; for the first time, no one on the list is an individual artist: they are all artist collectives. A new BBC TV drama, Three Families, is set in Northern Ireland looks at the controversial and di...
May 11, 2021•28 min
The actress and writer Emily Mortimer discusses her directorial debut The Pursuit of Love, her 3-part adaptation of Nancy Mitford's novel starring Lily James, Emily Beecham and Andrew Scott, which centres on two women born into privilege, trying to seize life and love with both hands but constrained by societal expectations. Today sees the release of Rag ‘n’ Bone Man’s second album Life by Misadventure, the follow-up to 2017's Human, which was the decade's fastest-selling album by a male artist....
May 07, 2021•41 min
Don Warrington stars as the head of a family, united and divided by grief in Sian Davila’s debut play for Radio 4, Running with Lions. We speak to both Sian and Don about the play and its particular significance now. Last Sunday, the doyenne of radio criticism, Gillian Reynolds CBE, wrote her final column for the Sunday Times. She joins Front Row to discuss a career that dates back to the late 1960s and shares her thoughts on the future of radio. Durham-born novelist Benjamin Myers has made it h...
May 06, 2021•29 min
A mother and father struggling to come to terms with their trans child are at the centre of Anna Kerrigan’s new film, Cowboys. She talks to Samira about creating a family drama set in the woodlands of Montana. After Liverpool took part in a Covid recovery pilot scheme testing live events over the weekend - including an open-air film screening, a comedy gig and a club night - we talk to the city's Director of Culture, Claire McColgan, about how the events went and what happens next. Sunjeev Sahot...
May 05, 2021•28 min
This year sees a number of writers we know primarily as poets or novelists releasing collections of essays - from Jeanette Winterson to Lucy Ellman and Karl Ove Knausgaard. Tom talks to two of them: Kei Miller, whose latest collection is called Things I have Withheld, and Rachel Kushner, whose new collection is called The Hard Crowd. Dreda Say Mitchell reviews new Sky TV series, Bloods. Samson Kayo and Jane Horrocks star in this six-part comedy series as paramedic partners in the South London am...
May 04, 2021•28 min
The National Covid Memorial Wall on the bank of the Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament is an unofficial site of remembrance and reflection for the 150,000 or so individuals who've died from Covid. Artists and writers consider the role and design of memorials in the 21st century, from the poppies at The Tower of London in 2014 which toured the UK, to the recent controversy of the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol, and the proposed memorial to enslaved Africans and their desce...
May 03, 2021•28 min
Adapted from Paul Theroux’s bestselling book, The Mosquito Coast follows a family on the run from the US government and seeking escape in Mexico, where they hope to build a simpler life away from American consumerist culture. Critics Tanya Motie and Kohinoor Sahota join Tom to discuss the new TV series and to share their cultural picks of the week. Royal Blood is a 2 piece rock band from Brighton whose new album - Typhoons - looks set to top the UK charts like their previous two. They’ve toured ...
Apr 30, 2021•41 min
Raoul Peck is a Haitian filmmaker whose documentary I Am Not Your Negro, based on the words of James Baldwin, was Oscar-nominated and won a Bafta in 2018. Now he has made a new documentary series in 4 parts, Exterminate All the Brutes, looking at the impact of colonialism and the development of racist ideas using a mixture of voice-over, dramatisation, animation and Hollywood movies. He talks about the making of it and why he wanted to tell both a personal and a global history. While rug-making ...
Apr 29, 2021•29 min
Today the shortlist for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction is revealed. Chair of judges Bernardine Evaristo joins Front Row to talk through the chosen books and explain why they’re worth their place on the list and literary critic Alex Clark gives her reactions. Citizen Kane has been knocked off the top spot on Rotten Tomatoes as a unfavourable review from 1941 has been found ruining its 100% critics rating. Taking its place is Paddington 2. Critic Jason Solomons digests the news. Jamie MacDonal...
Apr 28, 2021•28 min
We review new Netflix fantasy series Shadow and Bone. It's being touted as the new Game of Thrones but is it worth the hype? Children's and YA author Katherine Webber Tsang gives her verdict. This weekend the Brighton Festival opens and will be the first UK city festival since lockdown. Last year the guest director Lemn Sissay was ready to launch the festival when Lockdown restrictions meant the whole thing had to be cancelled. This year, he’s back as guest director again with a festival themed ...
Apr 27, 2021•29 min
