Michael Morpurgo’s book Private Peaceful has been made into a film, a solo stage show and a radio drama. As a new ensemble version opens at Nottingham Playhouse, before touring the country, the author and adapter Simon Reade talks to Nick Ahad about the power of this story of two brothers, caught up in the trauma of the First World War. We talk to the newly announced winner of the Barbellion Prize, dedicated to the furtherance of ill and disabled voices in writing: Lynn Buckle’s on her novel, Wh...
Feb 14, 2022•42 min
Japanese film Drive My Car has been nominated for four Oscars, including Best Director for Ryusuke Hamaguchi. With his next film Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy released in the UK on Friday, critic Briony Hanson joins Samira Ahmed to review both films. It’s a truism that Shakespeare is as relevant today as ever. But some of his plays are regarded as problematic and recently the celebrated actress Juliet Stevenson requested that a couple of them “should be buried”. Is she right? And which plays spea...
Feb 09, 2022•42 min
Monochrome is having a moment at this year’s awards season in films such as Belfast, The Tragedy of Macbeth and C’mon C’mon. To discuss the comeback of black and white and its enduring appeal, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Edu Grau, Director of Photography for Passing and Ellen Kuras, who won the Cinematography Award at Sundance for her debut feature film, Swoon, shot in black and white in 1992. She’s since become the first woman to receive the American Society of Cinematographers’ Lifetime Achieve...
Feb 08, 2022•42 min
Fresh from a special concert in their home city of Leeds to mark Independent Venue Week, James Smith, lead singer of Yard Act talks to Samira about the group’s success with the release of their debut album. Their character-driven debut album, The Overload - designed to provoke "an open discussion about capitalism" - went straight into the charts at number two. Novelist Esi Edugyan, author of Washington Black and Half Blood Blues, talks to Samira about her latest collection of essays, Out of the ...
Feb 07, 2022•42 min
The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a new film starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield as televangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker charting their controversial rise and fall in the 1970s and 80s. They by Kay Dick is a rediscovered dystopian novel first published in 1977. Critics Suzi Feay and Michael Carlson give their verdicts on both. It's 25 years since the TV news satire Brass Eye first came to our screens with episodes such as one featuring fake drug Cake becoming the stuff of TV legend. Direct...
Feb 03, 2022•42 min
Erin Doherty shot to fame playing Princess Anne in The Crown and joins Tom to discuss her latest role as social media obsessed stalker Becky in BBC drama Chloe. The writer Andrei Kurkov talks about literature, TV, music and cultural festivals across Ukraine. Documentary and true crime podcasts are more popular than ever, but does audio offer new ways of telling stories? Narrative expert and former head of BBC Drama Commissioning John Yorke, and Alexi Mostrous, host of Tortoise Media’s hit podcas...
Feb 02, 2022•42 min
Ahead of the release of their fourth studio album, Give Me the Future, Dan Smith and Charlie Barnes of the alt-pop four piece Bastille perform live in the studio and discuss the creation of this sci-fi-influenced concept album, their most collaborative yet. A new initiative sponsored by The Booksellers Association and bookselling website Bookshop.org aims to encourage individuals from under represented backgrounds into the bookselling business, with seed funding available for successful applican...
Feb 01, 2022•42 min
Van Gogh’s self portraits have defined our sense of his inner life. As a new exhibition gathers many of them together for the first time, The Courtauld’s Curator of Paintings, Karen Serres and the art historian, Martin Bailey join Tom Sutcliffe to consider what they reveal about an artist we feel we know so well. Director Joanna Hogg tells Tom about the making of the sequel to her semi-autobiographical 2019 film The Souvenir, starring real life mother and daughter, Tilda Swinton and Honor Swinto...
Jan 31, 2022•42 min
The actress Romola Garai talks about her directorial debut, the horror film Amulet. Critics Maria Delgado and Louisa Buck review Pedro Almodóvar's film Parallel Mothers starring Penélope Cruz - an account of two new mothers and his most overtly political film yet. And they give their views on a new exhibition at the Royal Academy, Francis Bacon: Man and Beast. And comedian Arthur Smith pays tribute to comedy genius Barry Cryer, so much loved by the Radio 4 audience. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Prod...
Jan 27, 2022•42 min
Isabel Allende was born in Peru in 1942 and raised in Chile. Most famous for her novel The House of the Spirits, her works have been both bestsellers and critically acclaimed, translated into more than forty-two languages and selling more than seventy-five million copies worldwide. Her latest book, Violeta, is a fictional account of one woman’s life through an extraordinary century of history. Isabel talks about her life, her special relationship with her mother and her pursuit of equality. Frey...
Jan 26, 2022•42 min
The Responder, a five-part BBC drama broadcast on consecutive nights this week, was written by ex-police response officer Tony Schumacher. He joins Samira along with Martin Freeman, who stars as the disillusioned police responder Chris Carson. A cross party group of MPs from the north of England have just made the case for cultural levelling up in a new report, ahead of the Government's much anticipated white paper on its broader levelling up agenda. We hear from the author of the report, Profes...
Jan 25, 2022•42 min
The singer and actor Olly Alexander discusses his new album, Night Call, and playing the central role in the Russell T Davies drama acclaimed television drama, It's A Sin; Theatre director Femi Elufowoju jr on making his opera debut with a new transformed production of Verdi's opera, Rigoletto; and the American poet Honorée Fannone Jeffers on expanding into fiction with her debut novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B DuBois. Presenter: Nick Ahad Production Co-ordinator: Lizzie Harris Studio Engineers: ...
Jan 24, 2022•42 min
Belfast-born actor Ciarán Hinds tells Tom Sutcliffe about playing Kenneth Branagh’s grandfather in the director’s semi-autobiographical film Belfast, set in the early years of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Historian Hallie Rubenhold and critic Hannah McGill discuss Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley and Julian Fellowes’s US answer to Downton Abbey, The Gilded Age. The latest exhibition at Serpentine North in London stretches beyond the gallery’s confines. There are three ways to view it: a...
Jan 20, 2022•42 min
Munich: The Edge of War is new film set in 1938 at the time of the Munich Agreement when the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was making a last ditch attempt to avoid war with Hitler’s Germany. Starring Jeremy Irons as Chamberlain it concerns the efforts of a young civil servant, played by George MacKay, who is sent to Munich to secure a document which would change the course of history. The German director Christian Schwochow talks about making a fictional thriller set against a backg...
Jan 19, 2022•42 min
Tilda Swinton talks to Samira about her new film Memoria, in which she plays a Scottish woman who, after hearing a loud 'bang' at daybreak, begins experiencing a mysterious sensory syndrome while traversing the jungles of Colombia. We investigate the widespread use of NDAs in acting auditions, hearing from actors who are often being asked to sign these non disclosure agreements without even being told what the film is about or what part they are auditioning for. We also hear from agents who say ...
Jan 18, 2022•42 min
Actor Adrian Lester joins Samira to discuss his varied career on stage, in film and now back on UK television in the gripping new ITV police drama, Trigger Point. Scottish musicians Rachel Newton and Lauren MacColl AKA Heal and Harrow perform live ahead of Glasgow's Celtic Connections festival. Their music is a response to the 16th and 17th century Scottish Witch Trials and the women falsely accused. What do two Northern literary prizes reveal about writing from the North of England? Samira is j...
Jan 17, 2022•42 min
Writers Okechukwu Nzelu and Stephanie Merritt join Tom Sutcliffe to review Hanya Yanagihara’s novel To Paradise, eagerly awaited by fans of her Booker-shortlisted A Little Life. Over three distinct time settings it tells a vast story about the United States, Hawaii, love and responsibility, taking in climate change and pandemics along the way. And we’ll be looking ahead to a few of the book titles our critics are looking forward to this year. Tracey MacLeod, one-time restaurant reviewer and crit...
Jan 13, 2022•43 min
Kirsty Lang speaks to John Preston who has won the Costa biography award for Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell. As a new vinyl pressing plant opens in Middlesbrough, we hear about the long delays facing bands because of the LP renaissance. And filmmaker Jessica Kingdon discusses her award-winning observational documentary Ascension. Filmed in 51 locations across China, Ascension explores the pursuit of the Chinese Dream through the lives of the people living it, accompanied by a brilliant soun...
Jan 12, 2022•42 min
We talk to Joelle Taylor fresh from her win last night of the 2021 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry for her collection of poems which explores her life as a lesbian. 2022 has three big cultural events in store: Unboxed, the Birmingham Arts Festival marking the Commonwealth Games and the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations. Samira is joined by the man behind two of them, Chief Creative Officer Martin Green. We also hear from BBC News Culture Editor Katie Razzall, to unpack Unboxed, once dubbed the Fes...
Jan 11, 2022•42 min
As Sheffield's Crucible Theatre celebrates its 50th anniversary, Nick Ahad talks to Artistic Director Robert Hastie. Sheffield pop star Self Esteem on her award-winning album Prioritise Pleasure. Plus public debates about philosophy at Sheffield's Graves Gallery. Photo: Presenter Nick Ahad on location at The Crucible Theatre in Sheffield Photo credit: Nick Ahad
Jan 10, 2022•42 min
In his latest film Cyrano, director Joe Wright has tackled the 1897 French verse drama, Cyrano de Bergerac. He joins Tom Sutcliffe to discuss turning a classic into a musical and dispensing with Cyrano’s prominent nose. The winner of the Costa Poetry Award Hannah Lowe talks about her collection The Kids, an autobiographical series of sonnets which paint a picture of the decade she spent teaching in an inner city London school. She tells us why an age-old form mastered by Shakespeare is perfectly...
Jan 06, 2022•42 min
Filmmaker Andrea Arnold on her first documentary film, Cow, about the life of two cows, which one critic described as 'a meaty slice of bovine socio-realism.' We talk to Dr Ahmad Sarmast, founder and director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, about the organisation's recent departure from the country. And Claire Fuller has won the Costa Novel Award 2021 for her book Unsettled Ground, about twins in their 50s living in rural England, struggling to make ends meet and negotiating fami...
Jan 05, 2022•42 min
The Costa Book Awards are in their 50th year. Tonight on Front Row, Chair of Judges Reeta Chakrabarti will join Samira Ahmed to announce each of this year’s category winners for First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s. We’ll also be hearing from the winner of the First Novel Award. French director Julia Ducournau discusses her film Titane, which won the Palme d'Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival- the first film directed by a woman to win the prize in 28 years. At a time when access...
Jan 04, 2022•42 min
Writer and essayist Olivia Laing reflects on the work of the American journalist and essayist Joan Didion, who has died at the age of 87. With the Christmas Special of Call the Midwife taking its usual slot on BBC One on Christmas Day – for the tenth consecutive time - the show’s creator and writer Heidi Thomas discusses how she tries to keep the stories fresh, year on year. She’s also joined by ‘super-fan’, the historian Tom Holland, to consider its lasting appeal. The British Council's Directo...
Dec 23, 2021•42 min
Paul Thomas Anderson discusses directing and writing his new romantic comedy, Licorice Pizza, starring Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper and Tom Waits. The film is a coming-of-age story, complicated by the fact that the protagonist is 15 and his love interest, 25. In our Christmas card from Doncaster, the host of the BBC’s Yorkshire-cast and local boy, James Vincent, meets Deborah Rees, Director of CAST Theatre and Connor Bryson, an actor appearing in the BSL integrated pantomime, Aladdin. Street art du...
Dec 22, 2021•42 min
Broadway star Sutton Foster and director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall talk to Samira Ahmed about staging the musical Anything Goes, one of the hottest tickets of the year at The Barbican, ahead of a Boxing Day screening on BBC 2. In light of the increasing uncertainty facing the performance sector because of the Omicron variant, we talk to Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Lucy Powell. We also hear the experiences of Dominique Fraser, the director and founde...
Dec 21, 2021•42 min
Maggie Gyllenhaal discusses her new film The Lost Daughter, an adaptation of the novel by Elena Ferrante. Gyllenhaal has written the film and it is her directorial debut, which stars Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley and Ed Harris. Samira talks to American artist Kehinde Wiley, best known for his portraits that render people of colour in the traditional settings of Old Master paintings, about his new exhibition at the National Gallery in London. The show, titled The Prelude, sees Wiley shifting his ...
Dec 20, 2021•42 min
Jonathan Freedland, Sarah Churchwell and Leila Latif review Adam McKay's satire Don't Look Up, with a stellar cast including Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio, and Around the World in 80 Days starring David Tennant, one of the BBC's Christmas TV offerings. Cutting it Fine is a new exhibition in Salisbury, showcasing the art of British wood engraving - those small, black-and-white prints we see in books as well as in picture frames. Great artists including Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash and Gert...
Dec 16, 2021•42 min
A major retrospective of Derek Jarman’s work, Protest!, opens at the Manchester Art Gallery this week. One of the most influential figures in 20th century British culture the exhibition focuses on the diverse strands of Jarman’s practise as a painter, film maker, writer, set designer and political activist. Novelist Okechukwu Nzelu reviews. Benjamin Cleary talks about his new science fiction film Swan Song starring Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Awkwafina and Glen Close And Nick Ahad visits Scar...
Dec 15, 2021•42 min
Colm Tóibín on winning the David Cohen prize, the sudden rise in Covid-19 related theatre closures and a seasonal dance round-up with Sarah Crompton.
Dec 14, 2021•42 min
