Bill Murray and Jan Vogler; Oslo reviewed; Poet Yrsa Daley-Ward; Helen Oyeyemi, BBC National Short Story Award nominee
The Hollywood actor and cellist Jan Vogler discuss their new classical album.
Sep 19, 2017•32 min
Front Row
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
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Episodes
Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn on action movie Kingsman, Jasper Johns, BBC National Short Story Award
As spy spoof Kingsman: The Golden Circle is released in cinemas, we speak to its co-writers Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, which Vaughn also directed and produced. A sequel to the original hit Kingsman: The Secret Service, Goldman and Vaughn discuss bringing back a character from the dead, convincing Elton John to be in the cast and the impact of Brexit on the British film industry. Cynan Jones has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with The Edge of the Shoal. The writer d...
Sep 18, 2017•33 min
Jack Dee, Joanna Trollope reveals the BBC National Short Story Award Shortlist
Jack Dee talks to John Wilson about his new ITV1 sitcom Bad Move, inspired by the idea of downsizing to a supposedly idyllic life in the country. Joanna Trollope announces the shortlist for this year's BBC National Short Story Award: Will Eaves, Jenni Fagan, Cynan Jones, Helen Oyeyemi and Benjamin Markovits, who joins John in the studio. Sci-fi writer Lisa Tuttle reviews Electric Dreams, Channel 4's new drama series based on short stories by Philip K. Dick, starring Bryan Cranston....
Sep 15, 2017•30 min
Ute Lemper, Steelworks play We're Still Here, Vasily Petrenko
The German cabaret singer Ute Lemper joins Kirsty in the studio to perform from her Last Tango in Berlin series of songs, which features the music of Brecht, Weill, Piaf and Marlene Dietrich. Kirsty visits Port Talbot where the National Theatre of Wales is staging a new play, We're Still Here, inspired by the threatened closure of the town's steelworks in 2015 and the hundreds of people who lost their jobs. Kirsty talks to the creators Rhiannon White and Evie Manning, and Sam Coombes, the steelw...
Sep 14, 2017•36 min
Sara Pascoe, Man Booker Prize shortlist, Robert Lindsay
The comedian and writer Sara Pascoe explains to Kirsty Lang why Pride and Prejudice, great as the book is, was in need of a comic stage adaptation. Her play based on Jane Austen's novel is about to open at the Nottingham Playhouse. It includes scenes with modern commentary, original music from Emmy the Great, and jokes. The Man Booker Prize shortlist, announced today, includes some surprises - omissions as well as inclusions. Critics Alex Clark and Toby Lichtig deliver their verdicts and nominat...
Sep 13, 2017•33 min
Sir Peter Hall remembered
The death of Sir Peter Hall was announced today, at the age of 86. Friends and colleagues look back on his life. We'll be hearing from those who lived and worked with him including the Opera singer Maria Ewing, who was married to Sir Peter Hall for eight years and who was directed by him many times. We'll also speak to former heads of the National Theatre Sir Nicholas Hytner and Sir Richard Eyre, the director Sir Trevor Nunn, playwright David Edgar and theatre critic Michael Billington. Peter Ha...
Sep 12, 2017•29 min
Stephen Frears and Ali Fazal, Pears' Cyclopaedia final edition, Jeff Pope on Cilla
This week sees Judi Dench reprise the role of Queen Victoria, in Victoria and Abdul a film about the friendship between the queen and a young Indian clerk. John talks to director Stephen Frears and the actor Ali Fazal, who plays Abdul, about making the film which comically takes on a the unlikely and forgotten friendship. Pears' Cyclopaedia has announced that the recently published 126th edition will be its last. With the Encyclopaedia Britannica heading online in recent years, as well as the ex...
Sep 11, 2017•29 min
Joanne Froggatt, Darren Aronofsky, 25 years of Classic FM
Joanne Froggatt was taken to the nation's hearts when she played Anna Bates, the lady's maid in Downton Abbey. One of the storylines which had a huge impact, and won her a Golden Globe, showed the aftermath of her being raped. Now she takes on similar territory but a very different character in Liar, a new ITV thriller in which she plays Laura, a woman who says she's been raped. She talks to Samira about her choice of roles and not shying away from difficult subjects. Black Swan and The Wrestler...
Sep 08, 2017•29 min
Marian Keyes, Tim Roth, Joe Lycett
Marian Keyes discusses her new novel The Break, in which Amy's husband announces he is leaving her for six months to travel the world. A portrait of a family in contemporary Ireland, the novel explores blended families, caring for parents with Alzheimer's, and unwanted pregnancies. A favourite of Quentin Tarantino, Tim Roth has played Mr Orange in Reservoir Dogs and stole the opening scene of Pulp Fiction. His three-decade-long career has included blockbusters, indie films and TV drama, often pl...
Sep 07, 2017•30 min
Roddy Doyle, Heroes in TV dramas, Stephen King's IT
Roddy Doyle talks to John Wilson about his new novel, Smile. 30 years since he wrote The Commitments, Smile is his 11th novel, in which a middle-aged man looks back over his unfulfilled life, as dark and disturbing memories of being taught by the Christian Brothers begin to surface. Head of BBC Drama Piers Wenger has said he would like to see fewer dark dramas on TV and more inspiring stories, specifically programmes that examine heroism. We ask TV critics Chris Dunkley and Caroline Frost whethe...
Sep 06, 2017•35 min
Woman's Hour Craft Exhibition, Lloyd Dorfman, Karen McCarthy Woolf, John Ashbery
The Woman's Hour Craft Prize saw 1500 applicants whittled down to just 12 finalists whose work goes on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London this week. Samira takes a look round the exhibition, which features a handmade bicycle and a dissolving fountain made from raw clay, and discusses the £10,000 prize with Woman's Hour presenter Jane Garvey, along with Alun Graves of the V&A and Annie Warburton of the Crafts Council, who were involved in the judging process. Businessman and ...
Sep 05, 2017•29 min
Suranne Jones returns as Doctor Foster, Lancashire's Fabrications Festival, Josephine Barstow on Sondheim's Follies
As Doctor Foster returns to BBC One this week, Suranne Jones discusses reprising her BAFTA Award-winning title role. We remember Walter Becker, guitarist, bassist and co-founder of Steely Dan, who has died at the age of 67. Stephen Sondheim's rarely-staged musical Follies opens this week at the National Theatre in London. John Wilson speaks to director Dominic Cooke, actress Janie Dee and veteran soprano Dame Josephine Barstow about the demands of the show - a tale of lost youth, romance and nos...
Sep 04, 2017•29 min
Patti Cake$, Lord of the Flies, Nicole Krauss, James Ngcobo
As news breaks of a new all-female film version of William Golding's classic Lord of the Flies, the novelist Joanne Harris and film critic Karen Krizanovich join Andrea Catherwood to discuss whether it's a good idea. Patti Cake$ stars Danielle Macdonald as an unlikely rapper with talent but little opportunity. It's the first film for writer-director Geremy Jasper and won a warm reception at the Sundance Film Festival. Critic Mark Eccleston reviews. The American writer Nicole Krauss' books includ...
Sep 01, 2017•28 min
Brian Cox on playing real people, Author Omar Robert Hamilton, Game of Thrones legacy, Venice Film Festival opening
Following speculation as to who might play Nigel Farage in a forthcoming film about Brexit, actor Brian Cox, who recently played Winston Churchill, and casting director Leo Davis, who cast Michael Sheen as Tony Blair, discuss the challenges for actors in playing non-fictional characters; what sort of preparation is required, how important are physical characteristics and what advice would they offer to actors on portraying "a real life" character? The fantasy series Game of Thrones has been of t...
Aug 31, 2017•29 min
Composer Alma Deutscher, Bake Off's return, Controversial statues, Last Days of June
Twelve year-old composer, pianist and violinist Alma Deutscher tells Kirsty Lang about her new piano concerto and her opera Cinderella, which was performed in Vienna to rave reviews. Critics Stephen Armstrong and Lucy Mangan discuss the return of The Great British Bake off, now on Channel 4. Games critic Jordan Erica Webber reviews Last Day of June, a new videogame in which players time travel to try and avoid the tragic death of the protagonist's wife. Following on from the controversy surround...
Aug 30, 2017•29 min
Stan Laurel novel; Tanika Gupta; film Una; Ed Skrein Walks Away
Best known for his series of crime novels starring private detective Charlie Parker, John Connolly's new novel, He, is a fictional reimagining of the life of one of the greatest screen comedians the world has ever known, Stan Laurel, and his enduring partnership with Oliver Hardy, the man he knew as Babe. Actor Ed Skrein has stepped own from the role of Major Ben Daimo in the film Hellboy because he is British and the character Japanese American. Samira Ahmed probes the significance of this, the...
Aug 29, 2017•29 min
Bill Nighy, The ever-changing appeal of Hamlet, Photographer Steve McCurry
More often associated with comic films, actor Bill Nighy turns his hand to gothic horror in his latest movie The Limehouse Golem. Based on the Peter Ackroyd novel, Nighy plays Inspector Kildare, a compassionate detective, drafted in to investigate a series of grisly murders in Victorian London. He talks to Samira about the safety of comedy and how he hates a challenge. As Londoners were treated to three different productions of Hamlet this summer, we explore why audiences can never seem to get e...
Aug 28, 2017•29 min
Ronnie Wood, Shakespeare plays on screen, Taylor Swift's new song, Peter Hoeg
Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood discusses his passion for painting, drawing and sculpture. In the year that marks his seventieth birthday, he tells Stig Abell how his relationship with art began. Veteran director James Ivory claimed this week he was struggling to get investors for his film Richard II, because financiers feared that no money could be made from films based on Shakespeare's plays. We ask film-maker Anne Beresford and Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance literature, if there...
Aug 25, 2017•31 min
Illness in comedy series, Ned Beauman, Thomas Meehan
Making TV comedy about of illness, with Peep Show writer Sam Bain, whose new series Ill Behaviour features a cancer sufferer refusing conventional treatment, and Alison Vernon Smith, producer of Bad Salsa, Radio 4's comedy drama about women who take up salsa dancing after their cancer treatment. Thomas Meehan was behind successful musicals including Annie, The Producers, and Hairspray but he's not the name you're likely to know because he wrote the book: the narrative glue that holds a musical t...
Aug 24, 2017•29 min
Authors' better, but not-so-famous, books; Kathryn Bigelow; Eric Ravilious; a Shakespeare Sonnet in Pidgin
Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow's new film is set during the five days of unrest that took place in Detroit in 1967. The drama is based on first hand recollections, police records and eye-witness accounts of the race-riots. Bigelow talks to Front Row about why these 50-year-old events feel as contemporary and urgent as ever. 75 years ago the English painter, war artist, designer, book illustrator and wood engraver Eric William Ravilious was killed aged 39 when the aircraft he was in was l...
Aug 22, 2017•29 min
Peter Kosminsky on The State, Ben Whishaw, The secrets of Vermeer's studio
Peter Kosminsky talks to Stig about his new drama The State, which follows four British men and women who travel to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State. Kosminsky made his reputation with difficult drama documentaries and the storylines in The State are all based on documented events. As writer and director, he discusses the challenges of humanising these characters, and the decision to focus on portraying life inside IS. Did Vermeer really use a camera obscura to help him paint? Artist Ja...
Aug 21, 2017•29 min
Lucy Porter, Martin Creed, and Soweto Gospel Choir on stage at the Edinburgh Festival
In front of a live audience in the BBC's Big Blue Tent at the Edinburgh Festival, comedian Lucy Porter and comedy tutor Jojo Sutherland give John Wilson a lesson in stand-up - but can you really teach people to be funny? A one-woman show with 10 characters - Nilija Sun discusses her play Pike St, about the residents in the Lower East Side of Manhattan as they prepare for an imminent hurricane. Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed explains what his show Words and Music is really about - plus ...
Aug 18, 2017•30 min
Edinburgh International Books Festival: Val McDermid talks to Paul Auster and Denise Mina
Val McDermid presents a special edition from the Edinburgh International Books Festival. American author Paul Auster talks about his Man Booker longlisted novel 4 3 2 1, which offers four different versions of the central character's life. Denise Mina on her first true crime novel, The Long Drop, about one of Scotland's most notorious criminals, Peter Manuel. Glasgow Student Slam Poetry Champion Catherine Wilson performs a poem written specially for Front Row. Mike Heron from The Incredible Stri...
Aug 17, 2017•32 min
John Eliot Gardiner, Apphia Campbell, The Nature of Forgetting, Reviewing at the Edinburgh Festivals
Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who has devoted much of his long and distinguished career to the revival of early music, discusses his latest project Monteverdi 450, an international tour of Claudio Monteverdi's three surviving operas in celebration of his 450th anniversary. Apphia Campbell's one-woman show, Woke, interweaves the story of two women, 42 years apart, who become involved in the struggle for civil rights. One, notorious Black Panther Assata Shakur, the other Ambrosia, a present day univers...
Aug 16, 2017•29 min
Shappi Khorsandi and Gillian Clarke on stage in the BBC's Big Blue Tent at the Edinburgh Festival
Shappi Khorsandi is the first guest in a week of programmes from the Edinburgh Festival. On stage in front of a live audience in the BBC's Big Blue Tent, she discusses her new show Mistress and Misfit, about Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson's mistress, Lady Emma Hamilton. In Nassim, Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour sets out to teach the audience his native language Farsi in a show which features a different performer from the Festival each day. So how does he prepare when the deal is that perfo...
Aug 14, 2017•29 min
Joe Orton
A special edition exploring the life and legacy of the playwright Joe Orton Leonie Orton, Joe Orton's youngest sister, has written a memoir of her life, I Had It In Me, in which she describes the childhood in Leicester she shared with Joe Orton and how his death led her to question and change her life. She meets Samira at the Pork Pie Library which she and Joe used to regularly visit. Dr Emma Parker has co-curated two exhibitions inspired by Joe Orton: What the Artist Saw: Art Inspired by the Li...
Aug 11, 2017•28 min
Henry Goodman as Lucien Freud, Isaac Julien, Lawrence Osborne, Nikesh Shukla, Sarah Shaffi
Actor Henry Goodman talks about his latest stage role as the celebrated portrait painter Lucian Freud in Looking at Lucian, a new play by Alan Franks. The number of published British black and minority ethnic authors writing for young adults is lamentably low. A new collection of short stories and poetry, A Change is Gonna Come, is setting out to change that - the collection includes work by established YA writers like Tanya Byrne and Patrice Lawrence but also introduces four new unpublished BAM...
Aug 10, 2017•31 min
Daniel Libeskind
An international figure in architecture Daniel Libeskind is renowned for his ability to evoke cultural memory in buildings. Born in Poland in 1946, Libeskind emigrated to the United States as a teenager and performed as a musical virtuoso, before eventually leaving music to study architecture. He began his career as an architectural theorist and professor, holding positions at various institutions around the world. In 1989, he won the international competition to build the Jewish Museum in Berli...
Aug 09, 2017•29 min
Philippa Gregory, Regina Spektor, TV's Eden and Rebecca Root's Queer Icon
Philippa Gregory talks about her new novel The Last Tudor - the 15th book in her Tudor/Plantagenet series in as many years. In the Last Tudor, Gregory tells the stories of the Grey sisters, starting with Lady Jane Grey who was queen of England for just nine days. The classically-trained singer-songwriter Regina Spektor defies categorisation but wins admiration and a loyal following for her distinctive pop drawing on influences from Boris Pasternak to the Beatles. She joins Kirsty in the studio t...
Aug 08, 2017•29 min
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