Recorded in front of an audience at the Barbican Theatre in Plymouth, Sarah Gosling introduces and showcases the artists and performers making a name for themselves in Devon, in collaboration with BBC Music Introducing. Grace Lightman is an electropop singer whose debut album Silver Eater is about an alien stranded on earth. BBC Music Introducing artist Grace performs her lead track Repair Repair with her band. 17 year old writer Jonny Hibbs has created a comic audio drama about young farmers an...
Oct 29, 2019•29 min
David Baddiel has had a varied career. He's been a (Wembley Arena-filling) stand-up comedian, a chart-topping performer (3 times with the same song Three Lions), a TV chat show presenter, a prize-winning children's author, creator of highly-acclaimed shows about his family, prolific twitter presence and now he's a playwright with his first production God's Dice opening at London's Soho Theatre. Apple TV+ which launches this week is the latest arrival on the UK’s streaming landscape. What will th...
Oct 28, 2019•28 min
Harry Hill's Clubnite is a new cabaret TV show from the comedian featuring his choice of comic entertainers. Harry talks to Stig about what he looks for in comedians, what makes him laugh and the nature of surrealism. The greatly renowned theatre director Peter Brook is 94 and has just written a book, Playing by Ear, reflecting on sound and music. He talks to Front Row about the flow of a Shakespeare play, the power of an empty space and the significance of silence. Podcaster Caroline Crampton g...
Oct 25, 2019•28 min
Multi BAFTA-winning writer Jack Thorne returns to our TV screens tonight with the latest in his trilogy exploring life in modern Britain. "The Accident" on Channel 4, starring Sarah Lancashire, is set in a small Welsh town in the aftermath of a industrial disaster. We talk to the writer about anger, blame and justice as the community faces up to some difficult truths. 2020 looks to be a vintage year for child performances at The Oscars. Leslie Felperin joins us to discuss whether The Academy oug...
Oct 24, 2019•29 min
Bruce Springsteen is about to release a film of his latest album, Western Stars. In the hayloft of his 100-year-old barn in New Jersey, he performs the album alongside a full orchestra, featuring brass, banjo, accordion and steel guitar. Kate Mossman, features editor of The New Statesman, reviews the film which coincides with the singer's 70th birthday. The death was announced last week of the American literary critic Harold Bloom. The author of more than 40 books, which reframed the work of the...
Oct 23, 2019•28 min
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival, By the Grace of God is Francois Ozon's new feature film about sexual abuse hidden by the Catholic Church in France. Briony Hanson reviews. The young artist Joy Labinjo discusses her new exhibition Our Histories Cling to Us at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead. Her large oil paintings draw on Labinjo's personal experience of growing up in the UK with British-Nigerian heritage, using photos to explore memory and idea...
Oct 22, 2019•28 min
David Attenborough's new documentary series Seven Worlds, One Planet has been four years in the making, we speak to Bertie Gregory, a wildlife cameraman who was at the heart of the show. The new retrospective of the work of the pioneering artist Bridget Riley at the Hayward Gallery in London features over 200 works spanning her 70-year career. Louisa Buck reviews the exhibition that features Riley’s famous black-and-white works of the 1960s to her more recent works as she continues to play with ...
Oct 21, 2019•28 min
There is much concern about the loss of biodiversity. But what of the linguistic and cultural ecosystem? It is thought that half of the world's 7,000 languages might not survive into the next century. Stig Abell talks to Chris McCabe, editor of Poems from the Edge of Extinction, an anthology of poems from around the world in languages under threat , and to Laura Tohe, poet laureate of the Navajo Nation. What might be lost? What can be done? Scooby Doo turned 50 this autumn. To mark the half cent...
Oct 18, 2019•28 min
Gavin Hood, director of Tsotsi and Eye in the Sky, discusses his new film Official Secrets, which stars Keira Knightley as the GCHQ whistleblower who was taken to court by the British government for leaking a top secret email to the press in the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003. Next week The Louvre Museum in Paris opens a major exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his death. Nearly 120 works will be displayed, with many on loan from collections around the world...
Oct 17, 2019•28 min
Having won several album of the year awards for his recording of works by J.S Bach, Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson performs and talks about reinventing Bach for a new generation. This year the highest accolade in British architecture, the Stirling Prize, has been awarded for the first time to a social housing development. Social housing as places of crime and deprivation have been commonplace in popular culture for decades, often at odds with the experience of people living there. Cultural ...
Oct 16, 2019•28 min
Aisling Bea, writer and star of the recent hit Channel 4 comedy This Way Up, on her new Netflix drama Living with Yourself, in which she plays the wife of a man who undergoes a mysterious treatment only to discover that he has been cloned and replaced by a better version of himself. With the surprise announcement last night that the Booker Prize was being awarded to two authors – Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo – chair of the judges Peter Florence and the prize’s literary director Gaby W...
Oct 15, 2019•28 min
Ahead of the announcement of the 2019 Booker Prize winner tonight, it's the final Front Row Booker Prize Book Group with shortlisted author Margaret Atwood, in which she meets a group of readers to discuss The Testaments, her long awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. Last year, Los Angeles artist Mark Bradford sold a single work for $12m, the highest-ever auction price achieved by a living African-American artist. He represented the United States at the Venice Biennale two years ago, and now h...
Oct 14, 2019•28 min
Sienna Miller discusses her latest role as a mother whose daughter goes missing, in her new film American Woman, directed by Jake Scott. Our latest Front Row Booker Prize Book Group puts its questions to shortlisted author Elif Shafak about her novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World which tells the story of Leila, a woman whose body has died, but whose mind has a precious ten minutes to reflect on the joy, pain and injustice of her life as a prostitute in Istanbul. Giri/Haji, which tr...
Oct 11, 2019•28 min
Mary Beard meets the acclaimed Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood. As her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale – The Testaments – is published, in a wide-ranging encounter Mary talks to her about how Gilead has changed almost 35 years on from the original book; how the cloak which features in the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale has become a symbol of protest around the world; about her responses to the current political climate; about the accusation that she is a ‘bad feminist’; and about the hype ...
Oct 11, 2019•9 min
The Swedish Academy today announced the winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Winners, not winner, because, embroiled in a scandal over allegations of sexual assault by the husband of one of its members, the Academy delayed last year’s prize until today. The 2019 winner is Austrian writer Peter Handke, a controversial figure, one of whose early plays was called Offending the Audience, and 2018's winner Olga Tokarczuk is a leading Polish novelist who won the Man Booker International Prize las...
Oct 10, 2019•28 min
The latest Front Row Booker Prize Book Group features Salman Rushdie answering listeners’ questions about his shortlisted novel Quichotte, a satire on current politics, the opioid crisis and the influence of popular culture that’s also been praised for its touching study of family relationships. Playwright Katori Hall, whose previous plays include Tina: The Tina Turner Musical and The Mountaintop, on a new production of her 2010 play Our Lady of Kibeho at Theatre Royal Stratford East. In 1981 at...
Oct 09, 2019•28 min
The dancer and choreographer Dada Masilo grew up dancing to Michael Jackson songs on the streets of Soweto. She later trained as a ballerina and contemporary dancer. Now she creates very modern takes on classical ballets. Her reworking of Swan Lake tackled homophobia and AIDS in South Africa. Her Giselle, traditionally the tragic story of a girl who dies after being betrayed by a man, has been seen as a feminist tale of revenge for the #MeToo generation. As she begins a UK tour, Dada Masilo tell...
Oct 08, 2019•28 min
Following a Best Director win at Sundance, Joe Talbot discusses his film The Last Black Man in San Francisco, along with its star Jimmie Fails. Based on Jimmie Fail's own life, it's about his attempt to reclaim the house his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco. At the busiest time in the publishing calendar with Frankfurt Book Fair just around the corner, agent Clare Alexander and Unbound publisher John Mitchinson discuss the economics of the publishing industry, from huge advances t...
Oct 07, 2019•28 min
Our latest Front Row Booker Prize Book Group puts its questions to shortlisted author Chigozie Obioma about his book An Orchestra of Minorities, the story of chicken farmer Chinonso whose aspirations lead him to leave Nigeria for Cyprus – a decision that brings momentous consequences. Drag star Ginger Johnson reviews RuPaul's Drag Race UK on BBC Three. With contestants such as Baga Chipz and Sum Ting Wong, how does the drag reality competition compare to the multi-Emmy-award-winning US version? ...
Oct 04, 2019•28 min
Debbie Harry is one of the defining musical artists of her age, known of course for her work with Blondie crafting and performing hits such as Heart of Glass, Dreaming and One Way or Another. As her memoir Face It is published, she talks to Front Row about the highs and lows of her professional and personal life, from writing her most successful lyrics to the double-edged sword of her looks, and her experience of drugs and sexual violence. The first-ever exhibition devoted to the portraits of Pa...
Oct 03, 2019•28 min
Director Rupert Goold discusses his new film Judy. Starring Renée Zellweger as legendary singer Judy Garland, the movie examines the final year of the star's life when, despite struggling with ill health, she was forced to take a demanding five week gig at a London nightclub in order to pay her debts. Kara Walker’s 13 metre high statue is unveiled in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall today. Critic Asana Greenstreet reviews Fons Americanus which comments on British responsibility for slavery. Bernardine...
Oct 02, 2019•28 min
Five authors have been shortlisted for the 2019 BBC National Short Story Award and the Young Writers' Award, the winners of which will be announced in front of a live audience in the BBC Radio Theatre. Lucy Caldwell, Lynda Clark, Jacqueline Crooks, Tamsin Grey and Jo Lloyd are competing for the NSSA whose former winners include Lionel Shriver, Sarah Hall and Kate Clanchy. John Wilson is joined by judges of both awards, as well as the Chair of the NSSA Judges, Nikki Bedi. Presenter John Wilson Pr...
Oct 01, 2019•28 min
Helen Mirren discusses taking on the role of notorious Russian empress Catherine the Great, Russia’s longest-ruling female leader for a new TV miniseries. She talks about the preparation for the role, her habit of binge-watching TV and why she admires Madonna. Joker, the new film exploring the origins of DC comic book villain The Joker, Batman’s nemesis, is proving controversial before it’s even opened. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips, the movie has already been deemed ‘pr...
Sep 30, 2019•28 min
Stig Abell talks to John Godber, one of the most-performed playwrights in the English language and somebody who has been interpreting the city of Hull in his plays for over thirty years, from Bouncers to Up and Under. His latest work This Isn’t Right tells the story of Holly Parker who is rediscovering Hull after three years at University in London. When a young woman disappears her already over-protective Dad goes into over-drive. Earlier this year the poet and performer Zena Edwards wore a gra...
Sep 30, 2019•29 min
Front Row begins a series of unique book groups with each of the authors shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019. Today novelist Lucy Ellmann, whose epic 1000 page novel Ducks, Newburyport is told in a stream of consciousness. Ellmann is joined by a group of Front Row listeners who get to quiz her on her book. Waldemar Januszczak discusses the work of painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, whose oil portraits depicting black figures are on show at the Corvi-Mora gallery in London and who will be the subje...
Sep 26, 2019•28 min
Brittany Howard is the frontwoman for the phenomenally successful American blues rock band Alabama Shakes. She joins us to discuss her first solo album, Jaime, which is dedicated to her sister who died at a young age. Brittany talks about the inspirations behind the album: from her sister’s memory to an appalling racist attack that happened to her family when she was only a few weeks old. Malory Towers, Enid Blyton's series of novels about the boarding school her own daughter attended, was publi...
Sep 25, 2019•28 min
Antony Gormley’s new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London features a series of new artworks which are monumental in size, scale and weight, from a 5000kg suspended piece of iron to a gallery flooded with 33,000 litres of seawater, weighing 56 tons. Idoya Beitia, the Royal Academy’s Head of Exhibitions Management, discusses the greatest logistical challenge the gallery’s ever faced. From Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee, Nip/Tuck and Pose, now comes The Politician. Karen Krizanovich reviews ...
Sep 24, 2019•28 min
Writer Peter Bowker discusses his epic new drama World On Fire, which follows the first year of World War II told through the intertwining fates of ordinary people drawn from Britain, Poland, France, Germany and the United States as they grapple with the effect of the war on their everyday lives. The BBC One Sunday night series stars Sean Bean, Helen Hunt and Lesley Manville. It was another great night for the British television industry at last night's Emmy Awards. The streaming giants Netflix ...
Sep 23, 2019•28 min
The Farewell, a film about an American family who return to China to visit their dying grandmother, has been a surprise box office hit in the US and is winning critical acclaim. John talks to the writer and director Lulu Wang, who based it on her own family story. Jessie Burton, author of the best-selling novel The Miniaturist, discusses her latest book The Confession – an exploration of childhood abandonment and the search for a missing mother. And Kevin Le Gendre discusses the music of Dave, t...
Sep 20, 2019•28 min
We look at rotters in fiction: do women have equal status with men when it comes to being bad in books? Rotters have populated the novel since Robert Lovelace first appeared in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa nearly two centuries ago. But what exactly is a rotter, how do rotters differ from cads and, when women are rotters, are they given equal treatment by both their writers and their readers? John Mullan, Professor of Literature at UCL and critic Alex Clark discuss the rotter's progress. “Season ...
Sep 19, 2019•28 min
