Matt Damon's new film Downsizing imagines a solution to over-population is to shrink humans to five inches tall. Director of Film for the British Council Briony Hanson reviews the film which is part midlife strife part speculative science-fiction. A choreographer for sex scenes on stage or on screen is just as important as that for a fight scene - so says movement director Ita O'Brien, who is calling on the industry to do more to protect performers in scenes involving sex or nudity. Ita O'Brien ...
Jan 22, 2018•37 min
Director Richard Linklater discusses his new film Last Flag Flying, starring Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne and Steve Carell, about three former US servicemen who re-unite in 2003 for a road trip to bury the son of one of the men, killed in the Iraq War. A recent Arts Council England report into literary fiction shows that sales, advances and prices have slumped over the last 15 years with the average writer earning around £11,000 a year - less than the minimum wage. The Arts Council have re...
Jan 19, 2018•32 min
Bridget Riley is known for her abstract geometric images featuring grids, lines, circles and squares. As the artist prepares to open a new exhibition of her recent work, art critic Charlotte Mullins assesses the importance and impact of the canvases and murals created in the last four years. As the Bayeux Tapestry is set to come to the UK from France we consider the extraordinary qualities of this artwork, the soft power of such cultural moves and the messages that might lie within Macron's gest...
Jan 18, 2018•33 min
Carleen Anderson, former singer with Young Disciples and the Brand New Heavies, discusses her album and 'tribal opera' Cage Street Memorial, and performs a song from it in the studio. Turkish writer Elif Shafak discusses her bestselling novel The Bastard of Istanbul about a family of women, for which she was accused of 'insulting Turkishness' in 2006 and put on trial. The novel has been made into a two-part drama as part of Radio 4's Reading Europe season. Kirsty will be exploring the state of T...
Jan 17, 2018•32 min
As Will & Grace is revived twenty years after its premiere, TV critic Louis Wise discusses how the ground-breaking sitcom about two gay men and their best girl pal comes across in 2018. Disney and Pixar's new film Coco is about a Mexican boy who travels through the Land of the Dead to unlock a family mystery. We consider the evolution of Disney films, how they depict and reflect international cultures, and also ask where they sit in the wider animation landscape. The London Sinfonietta, worl...
Jan 16, 2018•36 min
Liam Neeson stars in action thriller The Commuter in which an insurance salesman is caught up in danger and conspiracy on his way home from work. He talks about the appeal of the ordinary man as hero. Jamie Hewlett is best known for his artwork for the comic strip Tank Girls, the group Gorillaz, and Damon Albarn's Chinese opera Monkey: Journey to the West. With the publication of a new monograph which features more than 400 of his artworks, Hewlett discusses his approach to graphic art and how t...
Jan 15, 2018•32 min
Tom Hanks discusses his new film The Post, co-starring Meryl Streep and directed by Steven Spielberg, which tells the story of the part The Washington Post played in publishing the top secret Pentagon Papers that changed American public opinion about the Vietnam War. Sir Simon Rattle is conducting the European concert premiere of The Genesis Suite, a work with narration based on stories from the first book of the Bible, such as Adam and Eve, the Flood and the Tower of Babel. The conductor discus...
Jan 12, 2018•29 min
In December the Royal Court withdrew and then reinstated its invitation to stage a new touring production of Andrea Dunbar's semi-autobiographical 1982 play Rita Sue and Bob Too as a result of sexual harassment allegations made against its co-director Max Stafford Clark - himself a former Artistic Director of the Royal Court and one of the most influential theatre directors of his generation. The Royal Court's current Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone and theatre critic Lyn Gardner discuss th...
Jan 11, 2018•31 min
As The Southbank Show marks its 40th anniversary we discuss the legacy of this historic arts programme with host Melvyn Bragg. As ITV makes a return to arts programing with Great Art, and the BBC prepares to revive its landmark series Civilisations, we discuss the state of arts on TV today. With Phil Grabsky, the award-winning executive producer of Great Art and the founder of Seventh Art Production, and the TV writer Julia Raeside. 50 years ago this week saw the release the song Sittin' on the ...
Jan 10, 2018•32 min
The 1996 radical feminist theatre piece, The Vagina Monologues, made a huge impact in America and around the world as well as inspiring V-Day, an organisation working to stop violence against girls and women. As the writer Eve Ensler updates it with some contemporary voices, we ask about the original production and why now is the right time to revisit it. We also look at feminist theatre in Britain today. In an age where so many people describe themselves as feminist, what defines a play as such...
Jan 09, 2018•29 min
A special episode featuring all five winners of the Costa Book Awards 2017. The winner of the novel category Jon McGregor talks about how he wrote his stunning portrait of an English country village, Reservoir 13. Katherine Rundell, winner of the children’s book category, reveals how she ate tinned tarantula for her adventure story The Explorer. The biography winner Rebecca Stott discusses In the Days of Rain which tells the story of her family’s life in a cult and how they escaped. The novelist...
Jan 09, 2018•50 min
Kiri, Channel 4's new drama series, is about the disappearance of a young girl, written by Jack Thorne. It stars Sarah Lancashire as the girl's social worker and Lucian Msamati as her grandfather. Dreda Say Mitchell reviews. The winner of the Costa First Novel prize is Gail Honeyman for Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. It tells the story of a 29-year-old woman who lives alone, surviving, but not really living. Gail discusses how she was inspired to write the book after reading an article abo...
Jan 08, 2018•29 min
Christopher Plummer discusses replacing Kevin Spacey as John Paul Getty in the Ridley Scott-directed All the Money in the World after Spacey was dropped from the film due to allegations of sexual misconduct. Film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh considers whether this bold move by the director pays off. As Saudi Arabia announces that it will reopen its cinema doors, we look at the arts scene in the country and ask if this reflects a more liberal attitude towards culture. BBC Arabic Correspondent Hanan...
Jan 05, 2018•31 min
Michelle Terry takes over as Artistic Director at Shakespeare's Globe in London in April, and today she announced details of her first season. She discusses her plans, as well as the drama off-stage that led to her predecessor Emma Rice's controversial early departure. Rebecca Stott, winner of the Biography category in this year's Costa Book Awards announced on Front Row this week, discusses In the Days of Rain, her part-memoir, part-biography, about her family's historical involvement with - an...
Jan 04, 2018•33 min
Neil Cross, the creator of Luther talks about his new BBC One series Hard Sun. The pre-apocalyptic crime drama follows two detectives who stumble upon proof that the world faces certain destruction, a fact the British Government is trying to suppress Katherine Rundell is the winner of the Costa Children's Book Award 2017 for The Explorer, a classic adventure story of four children whose plane crashes in the Amazon. Scholar, tightrope walker and amateur pilot Katherine Rundell explains the import...
Jan 03, 2018•29 min
Novelist Wendy Holden announces the category winners of the Costa Book Awards 2017 exclusively on Front Row and Stig talks to the winner of the Novel Category. Artist Elizabeth Friedlander is the subject of a new exhibition at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft. The work of Friedlander is instantly recognisable as mid-20th century design at its best including her Penguin book covers and Bauer Type Foundry typeface named for her - Elizabeth. Curator Katharine Meynell talks about her life and work. T...
Jan 02, 2018•29 min
The opening of V&A Dundee will be one of the big arts stories in 2018 and it's in Dundee that Samira Ahmed begins today's programme which looks at how arts organisations nationwide are seeking to make themselves open and relevant to their local communities. In Dundee, Samira visits the new V&A Dundee community garden in the company of volunteers Denis Harkins and Derek Cassie and Communities Producer Peter Nurick; she talks to Sarah Saunders, Director of Learning and Engagement at V&...
Jan 01, 2018•28 min
Kay Mellor discusses her new ITV drama, Girlfriends, about three women in their late 50s, early 60s, and reveals how closely she's drawn on her own life and friends to write it. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published on New Year's Day 1818. Christopher Frayling, author of Frankenstein The First Two Hundred Years, joins Janet Todd, the biographer of Mary Shelley's mother Mary Wollstonecraft, to discuss how we read Frankenstein in our era of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence and h...
Dec 29, 2017•32 min
Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer are back on TV with Vic and Bob's Big Night Out. Three decades after starting out they discuss their surreal and anarchic style of comedy. The legendary Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu returns with a new album Eternamente - her first studio album in six years. She discusses her affinity with the role of Tosca, and why she feels like the "black sheep" of the opera world. Bristol Old Vic is the longest continuously running theatre in the UK, and celebrated its 250th a...
Dec 28, 2017•31 min
The surprise success of this year's Wonder Woman film emphasized the current dominance of superhero movies at the box office. Stig Abell investigates the comic book origins of these characters and explores why they have become such a presence in our culture. Dave Gibbons, the comic book writer and artist most famous for his collaboration with Alan Moore on The Watchman, shows Stig around his studio. Gibbons, who has also worked on Superman, Green Lantern, and Frank Miller's Give Me Liberty, talk...
Dec 27, 2017•29 min
Gary Oldman on his 30 year career in film, from playing punk rebel Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy to a barnstorming performance as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. He tells Kirsty why he was reluctant at first to take on the role. How he transformed himself into Britain's wartime Prime Minister and the challenge of recreating Churchill's distinctive voice. How when he was young his drama teachers told him that he wouldn't amount to anything. And as he approaches his 60th birthday, why he would l...
Dec 26, 2017•28 min
Join John Wilson for a Christmas party including games and performances from all our guests. Impressionist Jon Culshaw delivers ten Christmas messages, but can you guess all the voices? Poet Patience Agbabi performs her Christmas poem, I Go To the Supervillains Christmas Ball As The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, written especially for Front Row. Cariad Lloyd and Charlotte Gittins from comedy improv group Austentatious perform an excerpt from a previously unknown Jane Austen work suggested by o...
Dec 25, 2017•32 min
Emily Watson discusses her role as Marmee March, the mother of four daughters, in the new BBC TV adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women, set in 1860s Massachusetts against the background of the American Civil War. As the landmark film The Graduate turns 50 today, actress Tracy Ann Oberman and film critic MaryAnn Johanson discuss how the character of the seductress Mrs Robinson shaped the role of the older woman on screen. Ahead of this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special which feat...
Dec 22, 2017•34 min
Jodie Foster was a child star who fulfilled that early promise with performances as an adult that won her two Oscars. She went on to direct - four feature films so far. Now she is turning to television, taking charge of an episode of Charlie Brooker's sci-fi series Black Mirror. She talks to John Wilson about this and, after a quarter of a century, the continuing power of The Silence of the Lambs. Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut Molly's Game, starring Jessica Chastain, is based on the true stor...
Dec 21, 2017•33 min
The actor and one-time theology student James Norton discusses his role as Alex Godman in new TV thriller McMafia. His character begins the series as a public advocate of clean capitalism with his own hedge fund investing only in ethical business, but Alex can't escape his Russian family connections and slowly gets drawn into the dangerous world of international organised crime and corruption. Penny Martin, editor of The Gentlewoman, and Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff, deputy editor of gal-dem magazine...
Dec 20, 2017•37 min
Mavis Staples, formerly of the gospel group The Staple Singers, discusses her new album If All I Was Was Black, ten songs which address the continuing racial issues in America today. The singer, who first performed in 1948, also reflects on her association with Martin Luther King and her close friendship with Prince. Her Body and Other Parties is the acclaimed debut short story collection from American writer Carmen Maria Machado. The book sits between magic realism, science-fiction and horror a...
Dec 19, 2017•33 min
As The League of Gentlemen returns to BBC Two for three new episodes we speak to Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson about revisiting the bizarre characters of Royston Vasey. Gina Yashere and Jenny Eclair discuss how the climate for comedy has changed and whether comedians still have a duty to shock. How Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World changed television, with producer John Fairley and Professor Roger Luckhurst from Birkbeck, University of London. Image: Mickey (MARK GATISS), Pauline (STEVE PEMBERT...
Dec 18, 2017•33 min
Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate The Odyssey, explains why the issues running through the epic - gender, geo-politics, migration - make Homer, writing 3,000 years ago, an author for our times. Emily Wilson is joined by Daniel Hahn who, as well as writing books, translates them from Portuguese, Spanish and French. Comparing their approaches they discuss the art of translating, how it reflects the age in which it is undertaken, its challenges and its importance to our culture today. Mich...
Dec 15, 2017•33 min
Theatre director Emma Rice talks about her final production as Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe, The Little Matchgirl and Other Happier Tales. She discusses the inspiration for the show as well as her reasons for leaving her post after only two seasons in the job. Children's writer Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie novels have been much loved since they were first published in America during the Great Depression. Caroline Fraser, the author of a new biography Prairie Fir...
Dec 14, 2017•39 min
Kazuo Ishiguro is the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. To mark the occasion, he talks to John Wilson from Stockholm about his reaction to the award. He highlights issues such as artificial intelligence and genetic research that are firing his imagination. Front Row also hears from his first editor Robert McCrum, Booker-nominated fellow author Mohsin Hamid, and singer Stacey Kent about the powerful, moving, strange and sometimes funny work of the author, whose work ranges from A Pale...
Dec 14, 2017•31 min
