As she makes her debut at the Royal Opera House in Lucia di Lammermoor, Lisette Oropesa talks about combining a career as one of the world's top sopranos with a passion for running marathons. Richard Flanagan won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. He talks to Shahidha Bari about his follow-up novel, First Person, based on his own experience of ghost-writing a notorious criminal's memoir when he was a penniless and unknown author. Kate MccGwire makes elaborate sculpt...
Oct 31, 2017•29 min
Bill Bailey talks to Shahidha Bari ahead of his UK tour, and tries out the new Front Row keyboard. Philip Pullman discusses his new novel La Belle Sauvage, a prequel to the best-selling trilogy His Dark Materials, and his collection of essays on storytelling, Daemon Voices. Sarah Churchwell reviews the TV mini-series Alias Grace, an adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel about a 19th century servant convicted for a double murder. 18 years after retiring from acting, Joe Pesci returns to the small...
Oct 30, 2017•31 min
Annie Leibovitz looks back at her career of nearly 50 years, in which she's photographed many of the world's leaders, celebrities and the Royal Family. With the publication of her book Annie Leibovitz Portraits 2005-2016 she reflects on the turbulent decade and how that has informed her more recent work. Andy Serkis discusses his directorial debut, Breathe, the true story of Robin Cavendish. At 28, Cavendish was paralysed from the neck down after contracting polio. With his wife Diana, he went o...
Oct 27, 2017•37 min
Nicholas Hytner, who used to run the National Theatre, has a new project - The Bridge Theatre. Richard Bean (who wrote One Man Two Guvnors) and Clive Coleman discuss their play Young Marx, the theatre's opening production, which reveals how the man who brilliantly analysed the workings of the capitalist economy was hopeless with money. Stranger Things, the retro Netflix teen sci-fi series, was a surprise breakout TV hit last year. Can its sequel, Stranger Things 2, live up to the expectation? Bo...
Oct 26, 2017•33 min
Revelations about Harvey Weinstein's casting couch have led some of the biggest voices in Hollywood to talk about this being a watershed moment. So tonight we'll be asking where we are when it comes to sexism and the treatment of women in the arts. And how are leaders in the creative industries responding? Joining us live will be Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of London's Royal Court Theatre, actor and director Maureen Lipman and Helen Lewis, deputy Editor of the New Statesman to discuss....
Oct 25, 2017•34 min
Kiwi director Taika Waititi, known for Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Flight of the Conchords, on bringing his comedic style of indie film-making to the Hollywood superhero blockbuster in Marvel's Thor: Ragnarok. Eisenstein's film about the Russian Revolution, October, is about to be screened in its newly restored original version, with the London Symphony Orchestra performing the original score live at the Barbican. Ian Christie explores the film's significance. Samira Ahmed discusses how art ha...
Oct 24, 2017•29 min
Tales of The City writer Armistead Maupin discusses his new memoir Logical Family, which details his early life in an ultra-conservative family in the deep South, serving in Vietnam, and his move to San Francisco, the city with which he is most associated. On the 25th anniversary of the death of choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Viviana Durante, former principal ballerina of the Royal Ballet, and dance critic Debra Craine discuss the legacy of the man whose work is currently being celebrated ...
Oct 23, 2017•29 min
Comedian Harry Hill is best known for writing and presenting the BAFTA-winning television show, Harry Hill's TV Burp - which ran for 11 years - and for narrating You've Been Framed, the series which features funny home video clips. Tonight, the doctor-turned-comic introduces Matt Millz, eponymous hero of Matt Millz - The Youngest Stand-Up Comedian in the World, his latest children's novel, which is also a practical guide for aspiring comedians. Actor and presenter Liza Tarbuck joins Harry to rev...
Oct 20, 2017•30 min
Daniel Radcliffe stars in new film Jungle, about the real experience of Yossi Ghinsberg who spent three weeks lost in the Bolivian jungle. Daniel explains what it was like to portray this epic fight for survival on screen. I Am Not a Witch was one of the highlights of this year's Cannes film festival. The satirical drama, set in Zambia, about a young girl accused of being a witch, is now due to open in the UK. African film curator Nadia Denton reviews. The Taj Mahal has been at the centre of a s...
Oct 19, 2017•31 min
Beth Ditto talks about her debut solo album Fake Sugar, her first since the break up of her punk-pop band Gossip, in which she returns to her Southern roots. Jackie Kay performs new work live. When Jackie became Scotland's Makar, or National Poet, she said she hoped to open 'the blethers, the arguments and celebrations that Scotland has with itself'. In Bantam, her first collection as Makar, she does exactly that, with poems celebrating the people, history and landscape of Scotland. The phrase D...
Oct 18, 2017•32 min
The American singer St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, discusses her new album Masseduction. Andrew Michael Hurley's debut novel The Loney was a runaway success, winning the 2015 Costa Book Award in the First Novel category. The author discusses his follow-up, Devil's Day, which like The Loney is a gothic horror story set in Lancashire. The Tin Drum by Nobel Laureate Günter Grass centres on Oskar, who refuses to grow from the age of 3 and has a voice that can shatter glass. The Cornwall-based theatre...
Oct 17, 2017•29 min
Armando Iannucci, writer of The Thick of It, discusses his new film satire The Death of Stalin and his love of classical music as explored in his book, Hear Me Out. Kwame Kwei-Armah has been running the Center Stage Theater in Baltimore and in February will take over the Young Vic in London. Meanwhile he's directing The Lady From the Sea, in a new version by Elinor Cook that transports Ibsen's Scandi drama of a woman's tussle for her independence to the Caribbean. John Wilson finds out why, and ...
Oct 16, 2017•31 min
Kit Harington on playing his own ancestor in Gunpowder, the new BBC1 drama series about the 17th Century plot to blow up Parliament. Kele Okereke, lead singer of Bloc Party, talks to Stig about his new solo album Fatherland, which includes a love duet with Olly Alexander, and he performs live in the studio. As 80's supersoap Dynasty returns with a remake on Netflix, Karen Krizanovich gives her verdict. As artists such as Liam Gallagher, Beck and St Vincent release albums on coloured vinyl discs,...
Oct 13, 2017•40 min
Kate Mossman reviews George Michael: Freedom, the film George Michael was working when he died, in which he and a host of A-List names talk about his songs, his career, his relationships and his battles with the music industry. The Irish writer John Banville is the highly acclaimed winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize, The Sea. His novels include The Book of Evidence, Ghosts and now, Mrs Osmond. It's a sequel to Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady. That novel famously ends inconclusively: having ...
Oct 12, 2017•31 min
In his latest film, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), Dustin Hoffman plays an old, bitter, self obsessed sculptor, whose children from several marriages nonetheless crave his approval. He and the director, Noah Baumbach, discuss grumpiness, fatherhood and the nature of success with Kirsty Lang. In St Ives the Tate is about to reopen with refurbished rooms rehung with wonderful work, by international artists - Rothko, Gabo, deKooning - and those working there who achieved such status - H...
Oct 11, 2017•36 min
In Sally Potter's latest film, The Party, a group of friends meet to celebrate a promotion but their lives begin to unravel as shocking secrets are exposed. The writer-director speaks to John about the film which stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall and Emily Mortimer. Writer and critic Hadley Freeman and the playwright and TV writer and actor Eva O'Connor discuss the challenges of depicting anorexia on screen. Eva's drama Overshadowed on BBC 3 has been widely praised for its portrayal of t...
Oct 10, 2017•29 min
Audre Lorde described herself as "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet". A writer of the 70s and 80s, this month her poetry and prose is published in the UK for the first time in a new anthology: Your Silence Will Not Protect You. Akwugo Emejulu, Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick discusses the resurgent interest in Lorde's work and her importance to contemporary activists Dan Brown came to the fame in 2003 with his novel The Da Vinci Code which became a worldwide bestseller an...
Oct 09, 2017•32 min
As Blade runner 2049 hits cinemas around the country, John Wilson speaks to Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling about what the film offers to fans of the original. On the day that Liam Gallagher releases his debut studio solo album As You Were, the former Oasis frontman discusses his music and looks back over the years since the breakup of the band and his feud with his brother Noel. James Franco becomes the latest actor to play two roles at the same time on screen in David Simon's HBO drama The Deuc...
Oct 06, 2017•31 min
Kazuo Ishiguro wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. The literary critic, Alex Clark, assesses his contribution to the literary canon. Latonia Moore has just made her debut at the English National Opera in a visually spectacular new production of Aida. The soprano, from Houston, Texas, hit the headlines in 2012 when she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, stepping into the title role of Aida at 36 hours' notice, a performance broadcast around the world. Loving Vincent is th...
Oct 05, 2017•29 min
Kate Winslet's latest film, The Mountain Between Us, is an epic romance shot at 10,000 feet above sea level and at -38 degrees Celsius. The actress talks to Samira about working with co-star Idris Elba, the legacy of Titanic, and looks forward to making her next film, when she will be working with Woody Allen. Californian brothers Ron and Russell Mael formed the band Sparks in the early '70s, and their first hit This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us made them household names in the UK. 2...
Oct 04, 2017•32 min
Join John Wilson for a celebration of the power and possibilities of the short story as Chair of Judges Joanna Trollope announces the winner of the 2017 BBC National Short Story Award live from the Radio Theatre. The judging panel Eimear McBride, Jon McGregor and Sunjeev Sahota discuss the merits of the entries from the shortlisted authors. In contention for the £15,000 prize are Helen Oyeyemi, Benjamin Markovits, Cynan Jones, Jenni Fagan and Will Eaves. Radio 1 presenter Alice Levine will also ...
Oct 03, 2017•29 min
Matt Lucas talks to Stig Abell about his autobiography 'Little Me: My life from A-Z', in which he writes about the challenges of his childhood, his start on the comedy circuit 25 years ago, and the phenomenal success of TV show Little Britain. Tamsin Greig and Martin Freeman discuss James Graham's new play Labour of Love, about the three decade battle between old and new Labour in a North Nottinghamshire constituency, in which they play a labour party agent and an MP. Jacky Klein on the surprisi...
Oct 02, 2017•33 min
A Front Row special from Hull which is hosting the BBC's new poetry and spoken word festival - Contains Strong Language. John Wilson talks to James Phillips, the playwright behind Flood, the epic year-long, four part multi-media theatrical event that has been one of the big commissions in Hull's year as City of Culture. Poet Louise Wallwein on Glue - the story of her search for her birth mother, and the impact of meeting her, which she has turned into a one-woman show, a debut collection of poet...
Sep 29, 2017•33 min
Benny Andersson, the musical mastermind behind all those Abba hits and the musical Chess, talks to Kirsty about his new album on which he presents solo piano versions of many of his best loved tunes. Sophie Wu is known as an actor for her roles in series such as 'Fresh Meat' and the film 'Kick Ass'. Now she has written a play. Ramona Tells Jim is about two teenage outsiders who fall for one another, before Ramona tells Jim something that changes everything. Sophie talks to Kirsty Lang about expl...
Sep 28, 2017•35 min
Since he retired last year, the international ballet Star Carlos Acosta has set up a dance company in his native Cuba, Acosta Danza. The company will debut in the UK at Sadler's Wells in London late this September. Carlos spoke to John Wilson in between rehearsals. John reviews the V&A's exhibition about 400 years of opera with top soprano Mary Bevan and critic Peggy Reynolds. John Wilson speaks to Michael Winterbottom about his new film On the Road, and the decision to include actors in wha...
Sep 27, 2017•34 min
On Saturday at the Barbican 18 musicians from several countries will play in a concert of Christian music from the East - Greece, Syria and India. Three of them, the singer Susheela Raman, guitarist Sam Mills and percussionist Pirashanna Thevarajah, talk to Samira Ahmed about the music and where they found it, and perform live in the Front Row studio. Elizabeth Dawn played Vera Duckworth in Coronation Street; Tony Booth, was Alf Garnett's Scouse son-in-law, Mike Rawlins, in Till Death Us Do Part...
Sep 26, 2017•38 min
Nancy Meyers has made her career making hugely popular romantic comedies such as The Holiday, It's Complicated and What Women Want. As her latest venture, Home Again, comes to cinemas we speak to Nancy Meyers about the rom-com and her career in Hollywood. Last week, UK book publishers Bloomsbury launched their first 'Modern Classics' series, joining the likes of Picador, Faber & Faber and of course Penguin, who established their iconic series way back in 1961. But why are certain books deeme...
Sep 25, 2017•33 min
The political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe discusses Stage and Screen, a new exhibition at House of Illustration of his designs for theatre, rock, opera, ballet and film over the last 30 years, from Orpheus in the Underworld for English National Opera to Pink Floyd's 1982 film The Wall. Maja Lunde, author of the best-selling novel The History of Bees, tells Kirsty why she was inspired to write about these insects whose future is under threat, and how this led her to explore what the world might look...
Sep 22, 2017•30 min
Last time they worked together director Natalie Abrahami buried Juliet Stevenson up to her neck in Samuel Beckett's play Happy Days. In their new collaboration, Stevenson spends almost the entire evening flying about above the stage, for her role as a stuntwoman who suffers a stroke. Juliet Stevenson and Natalie Abrahami talk to Samira Ahmed about staging Arthur Kopit's Wings. The New York street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died at the age of 27 in 1988, is the subject of a comprehensive ne...
Sep 21, 2017•29 min
Benedict Cumberbatch on bringing Ian McEwan's novel The Child in Time to BBC1, playing a children's writer whose marriage breaks down following the disappearance of his daughter. Giles Coren talks about the new Front Row television programme which begins this Saturday, and discusses his recent remarks about theatre which caused controversy in the press. Sports journalist Eleanor Oldroyd reviews Borg vs McEnroe, a feature film about the intense 1980's rivalry between the two tennis superstars. BB...
Sep 20, 2017•32 min
