The Great, a new ahistorical comedy from The Favourite writer Tony McNamara arrives on Channel 4 this month. Describing itself as “an occasionally true story”, it is a satirical drama about the rise of Catherine the Great, staring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult. McNamara talks period dramas, historical inaccuracies and contemporary characters. The great Irish poet Eavan Boland has just posthumously won the Costa Poetry Prize. Boland's collection The Historians continues her reflections on the p...
Jan 05, 2021•28 min
Suzannah Lipscomb, Chair of Judges for the Costa Book Awards 2020, joins us to reveal exclusively the winners in each of category: Novel, Children’s, Poetry, Biography and Debut Novel. This is followed by an interview with the winner of the Best Novel category. Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy 7 centuries ago but - like all great literature – it still speaks to us in today’s world. Katya Adler, the BBC's Europe Editor and lover of all things Italian is a fan of the epic poem and has made ...
Jan 04, 2021•28 min
Front Row celebrates some of the art that brightened a dark year. British violinist Tasmin Little has hung up her violin and retired from the concert stage in 2020. It’s the last night of the last year of her performing career - she looks back, and says goodbye to the year in style. Satirist Craig Brown won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction this year for his Beatles book, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time. Rochenda Sandall has been praised for powerful performances in the lockdown ...
Dec 31, 2020•28 min
The family you choose, rather than the family you’re born into, is fertile territory for writers. From Henry V, to The Lord of the Rings, to Josie and the Pussycats, family dynamics between those who start as strangers keep storytelling going. Playwright Temi Wilkey and screenwriter Sarah Dollard join Samira to talk about the enduring and endearing nature of the chosen family story. Inspired by real events, BBC One’s New Years Day drama The Serpent tells the story of how the conman and murderer ...
Dec 30, 2020•28 min
The pianist Lang Lang this year released his first recording of Bach's 1741 keyboard masterpiece, Goldberg Variations, feeling he was finally ready to do so 20 years into his own musical career. At the piano from a studio near his home in Beijing, Lang Lang discusses the work originally written for harpsichord, what a challenge it presents for a performer, and why he chose to release two versions of the 31 works, - one recorded in one take in St Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany - Bach’s workpla...
Dec 29, 2020•28 min
The pandemic is having a profound impact on the arts. But you don't need to go anywhere, involve other people or need many materials, to write or read poetry, and during the lockdown people have turned to verse. In an extended edition of Front Row devoted to poetry Samira Ahmed hears from the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, about his recent writing life - composing lyrics for Huddersfield Choral Society. Vanessa Kisuule, City Poet of Bristol, talks about her collaboration with the Old Vic and loc...
Dec 28, 2020•41 min
Tim Minchin, the Australian stage performer with unkempt long hair and black mascara eyes, looks back over his career since his early days trying to scrape a living in Perth and Melbourne. As he releases his first ever solo album Apart Together at the age of 45, he reflects on his early struggle to make a living through music, the success of his stage performances with a full orchestra, the RSC's Matilda the Musical for which he composed the score and wrote the lyrics, getting burned in Hollywoo...
Dec 25, 2020•41 min
Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones discuss their new Netflix mocumentary Death to 2020, a documentary-style film that tells the story of the year we’ll be glad to put behind us, featuring fictitious figures played by the likes of Hugh Grant, Samuel L Jackson and Tracey Ullman. Opera diva, drag artist and cabaret turn Le Gateau Chocolat concludes our increasingly wistful festive series on the best parties on screen with an ode to the don of the movie party, Baz Luhrmann. John...
Dec 24, 2020•28 min
Mackenzie Crook talks about Saucy Nancy, the latest episode in his festive revivals of the children’s TV series Worzel Gummidge, which originally aired in the late 1970s. Saucy Nancy sees the children visit a scrapyard, where they meet Worzel's old friend Saucy Nancy. She's a carved ship’s figurehead, and wants their help to get back to the sea. As tensions run high in houses all over the country where people are cooped up over the Christmas period, writer and board gamer Natasha Hodgson reveals...
Dec 23, 2020•28 min
Creator Chris van Dusen on Bridgerton, Netflix’s new drama series set in Regency England, about the daughter of a powerful family as she makes her debut onto London’s competitive marriage market. Award-winning novelist Rachel Joyce has created “Christmas by the Lake”, a new drama for BBC Radio 4. It’s a story with a twist on the Christmas theme and it's classic Rachel Joyce territory: relationships, loss and ordinary people doing extraordinary things. She joins Nick to talk about those chance en...
Dec 22, 2020•28 min
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
Dec 21, 2020•28 min
Director George C. Wolfe on his new film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, in which Viola Davis stars as the legendary “Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainey, alongside the late Chadwick Boseman, in his final role. It’s adapted from August Wilson’s play which is part of his ten play cycle chronicling African American experience in the 20th Century. Pianist Winifred Atwell was the first Black British artist to reach number 1 in the UK charts. She had a string of hits throughout the 50s and is still the only wom...
Dec 18, 2020•41 min
Visionary director David Fincher on Mank, his new film about 1930s Hollywood, as seen through the eyes of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) as he races to finish Citizen Kane with Orson Welles. Mank's screenplay is by Fincher's father Jack Fincher, who started writing it in the early 1990s and died in 2003. David Fincher's other films, which have earned thirty Oscar nominations, include Fight Club, Se7en, The Zodiac, The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , Gone Gi...
Dec 17, 2020•28 min
2020 marks Ludwig Van Beethoven’s 250th birthday, and pianist Boris Giltburg has taken on the mammoth task of learning, performing and recording all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. What does it take to learn and record eleven hours of music and what can you learn about one of the world’s most famous composers.? Boris discusses the project and shares an exclusive recording. As Christmas approaches, we all love to curl up with a cocoa in front of a festive film. Netflix and Hallmark are churning ...
Dec 16, 2020•28 min
Wonder Woman was the film that turned the reputation of DC Comics’ foray into big budget movies around in 2017. Director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Gadot return for the sequel which sees Wonder Woman and her love interest, played by Chris Pine, transplanted from the trenches of World War I to the technicolour world of the 80s. Can they repeat the success of the first instalment? Critic Leila Latif reviews. On the hundredth anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, violinist Jenn...
Dec 15, 2020•28 min
Novelist William Boyd and Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at Oxford, reflect on the work of John le Carré exploring why he was more than a spy novelist, and how history shaped his novels and how they then shaped history. Comedy duo The Pin join Samira to talk about their West End debut “The Comeback”, which wittily dissects the dynamics of double acts. Ben Ashenden and Alex Owen’s show has been described by Sonia Friedman as “the cure for theatre” in these Covid times. Aliza Ni...
Dec 14, 2020•28 min
The death of actress Barbara Windsor was announced today. A household name from EastEnders and the Carry On films, she was also acclaimed for her early performances at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Royal Stratford East. Cultural commentator Matthew Sweet discusses her career. The DCMS announced today the latest release of money from the Cultural Recovery Fund. Previously they issued grants and this time they’re issuing loans. What will this mean for the UK’s arts sector? Front Row asks minister Caro...
Dec 11, 2020•42 min
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
Dec 10, 2020•28 min
The Midnight Sky is George Clooney’s post-apocalyptic new film, which he directs and stars in alongside Felicity Jones and David Oyelowo. Is this Clooney’s Magnum Opus? Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews Eight years since its announcement and after several delays, futuristic roleplaying game Cyberpunk 2077 is released across consoles and PC this week. Its Warsaw-based studio CD Projekt is famous for The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 promises to be the most detailed and expansive open-world game out...
Dec 09, 2020•28 min
Writer and director Julia Hart joins Samira to talk about I'm Your Woman, a gritty crime drama set in the 1970s. Rachel Brosnahan (Marvellous Mrs Maisel) stars as a woman forced to go on the run after her husband betrays his partners, sending her and her baby on a dangerous journey. Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera Owen Wingrave was written for television and first appeared on BBC Two in 1971. Grange Park Opera have produced a new filmed version as part of their ‘Interim Season’, and director St...
Dec 08, 2020•28 min
Ryan Murphy’s new film, The Prom, bursts into song and dance as four down-on-their-luck Broadway stars descend on a small Indiana town in support of a girl who just wants to go to the high school Prom with her girlfriend. The cast includes Meryl Streep, James Corden and Nicole Kidman and the critical reception in the US has been polarised; what does our reviewer Karen Krizanovich make of it? When theatre director Rebecca Frecknall and playwright Chris Bush began rehearsals for the show that woul...
Dec 07, 2020•29 min
Viggo Mortensen joins us live to talk about his new film, Falling, his debut as a director, which he also wrote. It's the story of a conservative father moving from his rural farm to live with his gay son's family in Los Angeles. We’ve been hearing from figures from the creative industries about their Lockdown Discovery, something that has given them great pleasure or solace during the two lockdowns. Today, the novelist Alex Wheatle, aka the Brixton Bard, who has been working with Steve McQueen ...
Dec 04, 2020•42 min
The fourth in the Netflix series of The Crown, written by Peter Morgan and starring Olivia Coleman as the Queen, has raised questions about its historical accuracy, including from Britain’s Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden. Award winning novelist Naomi Alderman and journalist Simon Jenkins discuss the controversy in the context of the number of recent dramas set in the very recent past about real people. The Royal Academy in London has reopened its doors and is preparing to show Tracey Emin/Edvar...
Dec 03, 2020•29 min
Seventeen years after achieving global success with her debut album, Katie Melua talks about her latest record Album No.8, and how she took a course in short fiction writing before embarking on the lyrics. Plus she performs a special acoustic performance for Front Row. British-Ghanaian artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paints 'figments': portraits of fictitious people constructed from memory and fantasy. As Tate Britain re-opens, her Covid-postponed show Fly in League With the Night surveys her body ...
Dec 02, 2020•28 min
Yazz Ahmed, trumpeter and composer, and winner of the Innovation Award at tonight’s Ivors Awards, joins us in the studio. Yazz’s music blends jazz, arabic scales and rhythms, electronics, and the music of Bahrain, where she spent her childhood. Francis Ford Coppola's first two Godfather films are considered cinematic masterpieces, but The Godfather Part III never received such acclaim. Thirty years after its release, Coppola has recut the film and renamed it The Godfather Coda: The Death of Mich...
Dec 01, 2020•28 min
As museums and galleries in tiers one and two prepare to reopen on Wednesday, we consider what the future might look like for these much loved institutions. Has the pandemic changed their fundamental purpose or merely accelerated shifts that had already begun? What might museums and galleries look like as physical and social entities in ten years’ time? To explore these questions, Kirsty is joined by Jenny Waldman, Director of Art Fund, an organisation currently working to assist organisations i...
Nov 30, 2020•28 min
Avi Avital., the world's leading mandolin player, on his new album The Art of the Mandolin, in which he performs music specially written for the instrument by Vivaldi, Beethoven and Scarlatti through to contemporary composers David Bruce and Giovanni Sollima. Yesterday the Government announced which areas of England will be in Tiers 1, 2 or 3. For theatres and live performance venues in Tier 3 it's disappointing news as they will have to remain closed. What will be possible in Tier 2? Matt Hemle...
Nov 27, 2020•42 min
The actress Amy Adams is one of Hollywood’s brightest stars with multiple Oscar nominations and a roster of unforgettable roles to her name from the adorable pregnant teenager in Junebug, to the lovable Disney Princess in Enchanted, to full on 1970s disco in American Hustle. Now she’s taken on the distinctly un-glamorous role of a drug addicted mother in the movie version of the best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, a book that aimed to explain Trump’s appeal to white working class America. Nick ...
Nov 26, 2020•28 min
Roy Williams joins Samira Ahmed to talk about Death of England: Delroy. Just before Lockdown 2, this play’s opening night became its closing night. The understudy Michael Balogun had just stepped into the role. Luckily the press and audience loved it, and the film of that performance will be available on the National Theatre’s youtube channel this Friday. Directed by Clint Dyer, and written by Roy Williams and Clint Dyer, this powerful monologue explores the experiences of a working class Black ...
Nov 25, 2020•28 min
We exclusively reveal and analyse the 2020 Costa Book Prize shortlists. Critics Alex Clark and Jade Cuttle discuss the books chosen in the five categories: Novel, First Novel, Poetry, Biography and Children's fiction. Category winners will appear on the programme in January and Front Row will announce the overall prize-winner on 26 January 2021. Guy Garvey from Elbow reports on what he said to MPs earlier today during the DCMS inquiry into the rise of music streaming services and the effect on m...
Nov 24, 2020•28 min
