With Samira Ahmed. To mark the centenary of the first BBC radio broadcast, Samira Ahmed discusses the art of radio and radio’s influence on art with the novelist and radio enthusiast Tom McCarthy and with Benbrick, sound designer and co-producer of the Peabody award-winning Have You Heard George’s Podcast? From early on the BBC made programmes especially for children. Samira Ahmed speaks to Joy Whitby, a pioneer of children’s programmes – she started Play School and Jackanory – and hears how her...
Nov 14, 2022•42 min
The Crown: as series five is with us, we review the next ten part instalment of Netflix's royal drama as it slips into more recent territory - the turmoil of the nineties. Plus jailed Iranian film director Jafar Panahi’s new metafiction No Bears, in which he plays himself, forced to direct online from a village near Iran’s Turkish border. With Kate Maltby and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh. Jez Butterworth: the playwright and screenwriter on his new show Mammals starring James Corden, airing on Amazon Prim...
Nov 10, 2022•42 min
Filmmaker Ryan Coogler discusses returning to Black Panther after the death of Chadwick Boseman and how that experience has inspired the making of the sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In the wake of this year’s annual Museums Association conference which asked its members to “to reimagine our future if we are going to survive”, Front Row brings together Rowan Brown, CEO of Museums Northumberland and Cllr Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Chair of the Local Government Association’s Culture, Tourism a...
Nov 09, 2022•42 min
Jennifer Lawrence and director Lila Neugebauer discuss their new film Causeway. Grammy award-winning mandolin player Chris Thile plays live in the studio from his latest album Laysongs, on the eve of his UK tour. A new book, Chokepoint Capitalism, looks at how big tech companies and large corporations control large parts of creative markets. The authors, Rebecca Giblin, a professor at Melbourne Law School and Cory Doctorow, writer and activist, join Front Row to discuss what that means for both ...
Nov 08, 2022•42 min
Arts Council England have announced the most dramatic shift in funding for decades, diverting investment from London towards other parts of the country. The Chair of Arts Council England, Sir Nicholas Serota, Stuart Murphy of English National Opera, which is set to relocate out of London, and arts journalist Sarah Crompton discuss the details. Director Tas Brooker discusses her new film When We Speak, a documentary about female whistleblowers, including Rose McGowan and Katherine Gun, whose evid...
Nov 07, 2022•42 min
Joan Bakewell and Hanna Flint give their verdicts on Hugo Blick's new TV Western on BBC2 starring Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer, 'The English'. They've also watched new film 'Living' starring Bill Nighy and Aimee Lou Wood with a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, based on an Akira Kurosawa film, 'Ikiru', about a man at the end of his life. Royal Opera House Opera Director Oliver Mears discusses his new production of Benjamin Britten’s 'The Rape of Lucretia' and the challenges he’s faced staging a wo...
Nov 03, 2022•42 min
Playwright, poet and Children’s Laureate for Wales Connor Allen talks about his grime-theatre mash-up The Making of a Monster, a semi-autobiographical production about a young man struggling to find his place in the world. Harpist Catrin Finch and Irish violinist Aoife Ni Bhriain perform live in the Front Row studio and discuss their appearance at the Other Voices Festival in Cardigan, which will celebrate connections between Ireland and Wales. Poet Zoë Skoulding talks about her latest collectio...
Nov 02, 2022•42 min
Author Nick Hornby on the similarities of Dickens and Prince, as he publishes his new book on the “genius” of the Victorian novelist and the sex-funk pop musician. On the eve of World Ballet Day, we talk to Pacific Northwest Ballet Principal Dancer, Cecilia Iliesiu, about the new project she has co-founded – Global Ballet Teachers - to make the teaching of ballet more accessible to ballet teachers worldwide. We also hear from Vivian Boateng, a ballet teacher based in Accra, Ghana, who has been t...
Nov 01, 2022•42 min
Artist Alison Lapper and co-curator Emma Rutherford discuss a new exhibition Without Hands: The Art of Sarah Biffin, which takes a fresh look at the work of the pioneering Victorian painter. Actor and writer Ric Renton talks about his new play One Off at Theatre Live in Newcastle. Inspired by the time he spent in prison as a young man, it addresses a crisis in the prison system. As a new exhibition about Plastic opens at the V&A Dundee, critic Anna Burnside takes a look at the 20th Century’s...
Oct 31, 2022•42 min
Reviewers Karen Krizanovich and David Benedict give their verdicts on Tammy Faye, A New Musical at the Almeida Theatre in London, starring Katie Brayben, and from the combined creative forces of Elton John, Jake Shears, James Graham, and Rupert Goold. Plus they review Paul Newman, The Extraordinary Life Of An Ordinary Man - a memoir of the film star created from recently rediscovered transcripts of conversations Newman had in the 1980s. The Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, reads his poem to mark 1...
Oct 27, 2022•43 min
Art critic Laura Robertson reviews this year's Turner Prize show at Tate Liverpool. Presenter Nick Ahad pays a visit to the immersive exhibition, Turn It Up: The Power of Music at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester. Laura Robertson brings us up to date on the latest arts news, from the delayed funding announcement by Arts Council England, to Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof gallery's response to rising energy costs. Plus Nick Ahad speaks to the pioneering dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson about...
Oct 26, 2022•42 min
Eliza Carthy is celebrating 30 years as a professional musician with a new album, Queen of the Whirl. She talks about this, the legacy of her musical family – as the daughter of Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy – the way traditional music develops, and her own song-writing, and performs live in the Front Row studio. Double Palme d'Or winning Swedish director Ruben Östlund tells Samira about his first English language film, Triangle of Sadness - a satire on the fashion industry, influencer cultur...
Oct 25, 2022•42 min
Taylor Swift and the Arctic Monkeys both released their debut albums in 2006. Their latest studio albums, Swift’s tenth, Midnights, and Arctic Monkeys seventh, The Car, have just been released. Laura Barton reviews them and compares their unexpected similarities. As new exhibition The Horror Show! opens at Somerset House, horror in art and film is discussed by the exhibition's co-curator Jane Pollard and BFI film programmer Michael Blyth. May Sumbwanyambe on his new play Enough of Him which expl...
Oct 24, 2022•43 min
For the poet Ezra Pound it was ‘year zero for Modernism’ but what were people in Britain really reading, watching, listening to and looking at in 1922? To mark the BBC’s centenary, Front Row reviews the popular culture of 1922: from the West End musical comedy The Cabaret Girl by Jerome Kern and PG Wodehouse to May Sinclair’s novel The Life and Death of Harriett Frean, via the silent film epic Robin Hood with Douglas Fairbanks and a fond farewell to Gainsborough’s portrait of The Blue Boy at The...
Oct 20, 2022•42 min
Director Martin McDonagh talks about his new film The Banshees of Inisherin. The former Young People's Laureate for London, Selina Nwulu, discusses her latest collection of poems. John McDiarmid reports from The Royal National Mòd, Scotland’s festival of Gaelic culture.
Oct 19, 2022•42 min
Theatre producer Nica Burns talks about her brand new theatre building @sohoplace which is about to open in London’s West End. Film director Edward Berger discusses his German anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front. Jenny Beavan has designed costumes for some of Hollywood’s most celebrated and loved films, including Mad Max: Fury Road, Gosford Park, and A Room with a View. The film that led to her winning her third Oscar, Cruella, has also led her to question the position of costume and wa...
Oct 18, 2022•42 min
The live ceremony for the 2022 Booker Prize for Fiction, hosted by Samira Ahmed. The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced by the chair of judges Neil MacGregor in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen Consort, who will award the trophy. The author Elif Shafak reflects on the recent violent attack on Sir Salman Rushdie, whose novel Midnight's Children was chosen as the Booker of Bookers. And the singer songwriter Dua Lipa gives her thoughts on the power of books. Photographer credit: Joh...
Oct 17, 2022•42 min
Emily is a new film starring Emma Mackey (of Sex Education fame) as the author of Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë. Emily is as wild as the windswept moorland she lives in; her relationships with her sisters, Anne and Charlotte, her dissolute brother, Branwell, and her lover, the curate Weightman, are as raw as the relentless rain, and as tender as the flashes of sunshine. But writer and Director Frances O’Connor’s debut film is very much an imagined life. So, what will reviewers Samantha Ellis, ...
Oct 13, 2022•42 min
Front Row comes from Belfast where Steven Rainey hears about some of the highlights of this year’s Belfast International Festival. Pianist Ruth McGinley talks about her new album AURA, a collection of traditional Irish airs re-imagined for classical piano. Ruth found success at a young age after winning the piano final of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition but felt burnt out by the pressure and demands of life as a concert pianist. She discusses her return to playing and the freedom ...
Oct 13, 2022•42 min
Jazz saxophonist Camilla George plays live in the studio and talks about her new album Ibio-Ibio - a tribute to her Ibibio roots in Nigerian. Iranian artist Soheila Sokhanvari joins Samira to discuss Rebel Rebel, her first major work in the UK. The exhibition at the Barbican’s Curve features 27 miniature portraits of pioneering female performers who blazed a trail in cinema, music and dance before the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Elizabeth Strout is the latest of the authors shortlisted for this ...
Oct 11, 2022•42 min
Alan Garner’s 10th novel, Treacle Walker, may be one of the shortest books to make the Booker Prize shortlist but once read the slim volume which explores the nature of time weighs on the reader’s mind. Alan talks to Nick Ahad about the creation of Treacle Walker and what’s it like to be the oldest author ever to be nominated for the UK’s most celebrated literary prize. Monteverdi’s opera, Orfeo, is regarded as the first great opera and while there have been numerous productions since its premie...
Oct 10, 2022•42 min
Author Percival Everett talks to Tom Sutcliffe about his Booker Prize nominated novel, The Trees, which uses dark humour to explore gruesome events in Mississippi. Science Fiction writer Una McCormack and historian Prof Anthony Bale review Stephen Frears's new film The Lost King, about the real life search for the remains of Richard III and a new exhibition at the Science Museum devoted to Science Fiction. And writer Hari Kunzru on the life and work of Annie Ernaux, who has been awarded the Nobe...
Oct 06, 2022•42 min
Mercurial musician Björk has just released her tenth album Fossora. She discusses the experience of making the album and her interest in mushrooms. Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for the second time, this time for her second novel Glory. It recounts the political turmoil of Zimbabwe’s recent past through a cast of animal characters. NoViolet tells Samira what made her want to approach the subject in this way. To celebrate the 60th anniversary of Jam...
Oct 05, 2022•42 min
The announcement of the winners of the BBC National Short Story Award and Young Writers’ Award with Cambridge University live from the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House in London. Joining Tom Sutcliffe to celebrate the imaginative potential of the short story are chair of judges Elizabeth Day, previous winner Ingrid Persaud, and the poet Will Harris. All the stories are available on BBC Sounds. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Sarah Johnson
Oct 04, 2022•42 min
American actress Viola Davis, who has won an Oscar, Emmy and a Tony for her outstanding performances, plays a female warrior in the historical epic The Woman King. Viola Davis and director Gina Prince-Bythewood discuss bringing the story of a 19th Century female general to life. Rona Munro’s trilogy The James Plays were one of the theatrical highlights of the year when they premiered in 2014. She has now returned to Scottish history with two further monarchal plays – James IV: Queen of the Fight...
Oct 03, 2022•43 min
Artist Samson Kambalu talks to Shahidha Bari about his sculpture Antelope, a thought provoking commentary on colonialism which has just been unveiled on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth. Period gangster drama Peaky Blinders has been turned into a ballet by dance company Rambert. As it opens in Birmingham, Rambert Dance's Helen Shute explains how they've interpreted the TV show for the stage. Screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce and critic Helen Nugent review the first Shakespeare production at the ...
Sep 29, 2022•43 min
The Blackwater Lightship is a novel by Colm Tóibín, published in 1999 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later made into a film and has now been dramatized for the Dublin Theatre Festival. Set in the early nineties, it tells of a young gay man suffering from AIDS who visits his grandmother in rural Wexford and the repercussions his arrival has on her, his mother, and sister. Elle talks to the writer and director David Horan about adapting the novel for the stage, and the issues it rais...
Sep 29, 2022•42 min
Luke Jones meets the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, whose show Only An Octave Apart is about to begin a month long run at Wilton’s Music Hall in London. He discusses how he discovered his range, why he fuses opera with pop and his return to the ENO next year in Philip Glass’s Akhnaten. Luke takes a tour round See Monster in Weston-super-Mare, a retired North Sea rig that's been turned into one of the UK's largest art installations as part of the Unboxed festival. And a discussion on the imp...
Sep 27, 2022•42 min
Michael Winterbottom discusses writing and directing a SKY TV drama, This England, starring Kenneth Branagh as Boris Johnson during his tumultuous first months as Prime Minister and the first wave of the COVID pandemic. GALWAD, an ambitious, multiplatform arts project set in Wales, imagines what it would be like if we could receive messages from people living in 2052. Audiences can follow the story as it unfolds across the week, both online and on social media, and watch a broadcast of the whole...
Sep 26, 2022•42 min
Critics Boyd Hilton and Sarah Crompton review Blonde, Andrew Dominik’s film adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ novel about Marilyn Monroe. They also discuss Inside Man, a new drama from Sherlock creator Steven Moffat, starring David Tennant and Stanley Tucci. Anna Bailey is the last of the authors shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. They’ll be talking about their story Long Way to Come for a Sip of Water, about a man’s road journey across the vast expanses of Texas, which will be b...
Sep 22, 2022•42 min
