Dolly Parton, one of the few global stars to have truly earned the title icon, talks to Samira Ahmed about departing from her Country sound to record an album of Rock songs. Rockstar sees her collaborate with some of the biggest names in music including Paul McCartney, Sting, Elton John and new generation of musicians such as Miley Cyrus and Lizzo. She discusses her long career and mentoring women in music as well as her philanthropy, funding for the COVID vaccine, and the influence of her films...
Jul 03, 2023•42 min
Our critics Hanna Flint and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh watch Harrison Ford’s last outing as the title character in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, also starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Is it a crowd-pleasing exit? Presenter Tom Sutcliffe talks to Brandon Taylor about his new novel, The Late Americans. Taylor's debut, Real Life, was Booker Prize nominated and his collection of short fiction, Filthy Animals, won the Story Prize. He discusses interweaving tales of sex and aspiration, played out among...
Jun 29, 2023•42 min
In 2019 Kimber Lee won the first International Award from the Bruntwood Prize, the UK’s biggest national competition for playwriting, with her work - Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play. As the play’s world premiere production prepares to open this year’s Manchester International Festival, Kimber joins Front Row to discuss how Groundhog Day helped her to take on a century of East Asian stereotypes. Finding queer musical stories: tenor and composer Elgan Llyr Thomas has been exploring LGBTQ+ represent...
Jun 28, 2023•42 min
Playwright and composer Michael R Jackson talks about his musical A Strange Loop, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The musical is based on his own experiences and follows a black man working as an usher at the musical The Lion King, who is himself writing a musical about a black male usher writing a musical. Michael R Jackson talks about why his reflective drama was such a hit in the United States. Singer songwriter Ray BLK discusses making her acting debut in new BBC and Netflix drama Ch...
Jun 27, 2023•42 min
Wes Anderson, known for his quirky storylines and individual aesthetic, talks about his latest film Asteroid City. Set in 1955, at a science competition in the middle of the desert, it follows a cast of characters who are thrown into close contact when an alien appears. Wes Anderson discusses his fascination with America in the 1950s and working with his high profile cast, including Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hanks. The Bee Gees were megastars across four decades, but to musician and music journ...
Jun 26, 2023•42 min
Oscar-nominated Elliot Page, best known as star of comedy drama Juno, on coming out as gay and as a trans man, all in the glare of the Hollywood spotlight - and sharing this now in his new memoir, Pageboy. Marking Jewish history. With proposals for a Holocaust Memorial in London, and the closure of the Jewish Museum building, historian Sir Simon Schama, and Aviva Dautch, poet and Executive Director at Jewish Renaissance, discuss what recent developments mean for Jewish culture. The Wicker Man. A...
Jun 26, 2023•42 min
Tom is joined by reviewers Boyd Hilton and Susannah Clapp who look at Dear England, a new play by James Graham at the National Theatre which examines the changes in England’s football since Gareth Southgate became manager. And the National Portrait Gallery reopens today having had the most extensive refurbishment since 1896, including a redisplay, a new entrance and public spaces. Violinist Rachel Podger performs from the Baroque repertoire live in the Front Row studio. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe ...
Jun 22, 2023•42 min
Front Row hears from the winner of this year’s Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing, which is awarded for a book for children or young people. Manon Steffan Ros has won for her novel The Blue Book of Nebo, the first time the prize has been awarded to a book in translation. Originally written in Welsh, it explores Welsh identity and culture. There are plans for eight new arenas across the UK, including ones in Cardiff, Bristol, Gateshead and Dundee. But does the UK really need more arenas when smaller...
Jun 21, 2023•43 min
The Beatles at Stowe School: Front Row made the news with the discovery of the earliest recording of a concert by The Beatles in this country, at Stowe School in April 1963. Today Samira brings news of a new home for that recording, one where anyone interested will be able to hear it. And, remarkably, another Beatles recording, made that day, has surfaced too. Plus Maggi Hambling discusses her new exhibition, Origins, which has just opened at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury in Suffolk. Like Gain...
Jun 19, 2023•42 min
Front Row plays tribute to Oscar winning actor Glenda Jackson, who has died aged 87. Theatre critic Sarah Crompton remembers the power of her stage performances, and Aisling Walsh discusses directing her in her TV drama Elizabeth is Missing. Choreographer Wayne McGregor talks about his new ballet, Untitled 2023, which was inspired by the works of Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera. And Tom Sutcliffe is joined by critics Erica Wagner and Isabel Stevens to review some of the week’s cultural high...
Jun 15, 2023•42 min
Allan Little visits the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, which re-opened last year after a £68 million transformation and is now a finalist for Art Fund Museum of the Year 2023. He talks to Director Duncan Dornan and Caroline Currie, Learning and Access curator. Ahead of their performance at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney which gets underway on Friday we have a live performance from members of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Accordion Ensemble whose theatrical performances breathe new life...
Jun 14, 2023•42 min
Author and former data scientist, Cecilia Rabess joins Samira Ahmed to discuss her debut novel, Everything’s Fine, which explores the unlikely and complicated relationship between a liberal black woman working in the world of investment banking and her conservative white male colleague, during the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Following yesterday’s announcement that the Epstein Theatre in Liverpool is to close by the end of the month, Front Row takes a close look at the cost fo...
Jun 13, 2023•42 min
Surprising musicals: new musicals are packing in audiences - and some with quite unlikely subjects. Whilst the classic Broadway musical, like 42nd Street, Guys and Dolls, and Oklahoma!, remain as popular as ever, there’s now a musical based on Bake Off, and the plot of Operation Mincemeat is itself a plot - to hoodwink the Nazis with a corpse in disguise. Critic David Benedict, Natasha Hodgson, co-writer of Operation Mincemeat, and Matthew Iliffe, Assistant Director of Assassins, discuss what’s ...
Jun 12, 2023•42 min
Gaming isn’t just something you play, it is also a spectator sport! Comedian and streamer Ellie Gibson and journalist and gamer Marie Le Conte join us to discuss the cultural phenomenon of game streaming. Linton Stephens, bassoonist and presenter of Radio 3’s Classical Fix, and filmmaker and journalist Catherine Bray join Front Row to review Chevalier, the new film about the life of the French-Caribbean musician Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr. They’ll al...
Jun 08, 2023•42 min
The Liverpool Biennial, the UK’s largest contemporary visual arts festival, begins this weekend. Arts journalist Laura Robertson reviews, and the curator of the biennial, Khanyisile Mbongwa, discuss coming up with this year’s theme – uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost things – which reflects on Liverpool’s history as a slave port but also provides a sense of hope and joy. Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright Dario Fo was famous for plays that careered between farce and current affairs. He wrote ...
Jun 07, 2023•43 min
Rufus Wainwright talks to Samira Ahmed about his new album Folkocracy, a collection of reimagined Folk songs. The album includes collaborations with artists including John Legend, Chaka Khan and his sister Martha Wainwright. Thomas Hardiman talks about his new film Medusa Deluxe, a gritty murder mystery set at a hairdressing competition. He explains where his unusual idea came from and why he uses his films to explore obsession, whether with hairdressing or carpet sales. Before Covid, many theat...
Jun 06, 2023•43 min
Charles Byrne was an 18th-century “Irish giant” whose skeleton was stolen and put on display against his wishes. 240 years after his death, he is being remembered in a new electro acoustic opera rather than as a museum-piece curiosity. Dawn Kemp of the Hunterian Museum discusses removing the famous skeleton from their collection, and composer, musician, and robotic artist Sarah Angliss tells us about her new opera, Giant, which celebrates Byrne on stage, and is opening the Aldeburgh Festival. Th...
Jun 05, 2023•43 min
Critics Katie Puckrik and Michael Carlson join Front Row to review the exhibition Punk: Rage and Revolution at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery and Soft Touch Arts. The American writer and director Tina Satter talks about her new film Reality, starring Sydney Sweeney. The script is based on the transcript of the FBI interrogation of the whistleblower Reality Winner, who leaked secret documents about Russian interference in the 2016 US election. And Katie Puckrik and Michael Carlson also review a...
Jun 01, 2023•42 min
Writer/director Shane Meadows and actor Michael Socha on the new BBC TV adaptation of Benjamin Myers' novel, The Gallows Pole. The Mercury Music Prize-nominated minimal jazz trio GoGo Penguin play tracks from their new album, Everything Is Going To Be OK, live in the studio – and discuss how they alter their instruments to extend their range of sound. As the interests and concerns of the First Nations people rise up the cultural agenda in Australia exemplified by the plan for the National Aborig...
May 31, 2023•43 min
Broadway legend Chita Rivera, who made her name playing Anita in the original stage production of West Side Story, talks to Samira Ahmed about the highlights of her seven decade career, ahead of the publication of her memoir. Arts consultant Amanda Parker, formerly editor of Arts Professional magazine and now of the Forward Institute, and theatre director Tom Morris, who until recently ran Bristol Old Vic, discuss new approaches to funding the arts. Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist: Priscilla...
May 30, 2023•42 min
The Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948 from Jamaica. Front Row marks the artistic and cultural contribution of a generation of people from the Caribbean, now characterised as the Windrush Generation, who arrived then, soon before or in the years following. Samira talks to the Jamaican-born actor and director Anton Phillips about his career, including starring in the cult classic Space 1999 and directing James Baldwin's The Amen Corner in a landmark production on the London ...
May 29, 2023•42 min
The Jhalak Prize is an annual literary prize for British or British-Resident writers of colour, established in 2016. Previous winners include Reni Eddo-Lodge and Johny Pitts. Tom speaks to the winners of this year’s Jhalak Prize and Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize, announced at the British Library this evening. This week Tate Britain revealed a complete rehang of its free collection displays - the first in ten years. There are over 800 works by over 350 artists, featuring much-loved favo...
May 25, 2023•42 min
Patriots, Peter Morgan’s play set in Russia in 1991, traces the rise and fall of Boris Berezovsky, who helped Vladimir Putin take power. As Patriots transfers to the West End, Allan Little – who as the BBC’s Moscow correspondent met Berezovsky – talks to the director Rupert Goold and Will Keen, winner of an Olivier Award for his performance as Vladimir Putin. The V&A Photography Centre opens this week, the largest suite of galleries in the UK dedicated to a permanent photography collection. ...
May 24, 2023•42 min
Sparks, the American pop duo formed in 1960s Los Angeles, are back with their 26th album, The Girl is Crying in her Latte. Samira Ahmed meets brothers Ron and Russell Mael to discuss how Cate Blanchett came to be dancing in the music video for the title track and their extraordinary longevity. E. M. Forster’s 1908 novel A Room with a View is being dramatised for Radio 4, as is the novel The Ballad of Syd and Morgan, which imagines a meeting between Forster and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. Samira i...
May 23, 2023•42 min
Singer songwriter Arlo Parks talks about following her highly acclaimed first album with a new release, My Soft Machine, which includes a collaboration with American musician Phoebe Bridgers. Film director James Bluemel discusses his new documentary, Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, which reflects on the troubles using human stories. He’s joined by Craig Murray, curator of the Imperial War Museum’s new exhibition Living With The Troubles, which takes the same approach. The writer Martin Ami...
May 22, 2023•43 min
Caleb Azumah Nelson’s debut novel, Open Water, won the Costa First Novel award and critical acclaim. He joins Front Row to talk about his second, Small Worlds, the story of a young musician looking for his own space in the streets of Peckham, finding his way with love, family and his Ghanaian heritage. The exhibition China’s Hidden Century at the British Museum is billed as a world first, bringing together 300 artefacts from the Qing Dynasty’s ‘long 19th Century’- the final chapter of dynastic r...
May 18, 2023•43 min
Chuck D on his watercolour art. He is regarded as one of hip-hop's greatest MCs with his powerful lyrical dexterity a key component in Public Enemy's international success, but what is less well known is that visual art was his first passion. It's a love that he has returned to in recent years and he joins Front Row to discuss the first collection of his watercolour and pen paintings. Plus author Jacqueline Crooks on her first novel, Fire Rush, which has been nominated for the Women’s Prize For ...
May 17, 2023•42 min
Samira Ahmed talks to Priya Khanchandani, the curator of The Offbeat Sari, an exhibition of contemporary saris at the Design Museum in London. The art critic Louisa Buck and the journalist James Marriott consider the vexed politics of museum labels. Mat Osman, bass player with the band Suede, joins Samira to discuss his new novel, The Ghost Theatre, which dramatises the lives of boy actors in 1601. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinner
May 16, 2023•42 min
Brokeback Mountain on stage: musician and librettist Dan Gillespie Sells discusses writing the songs for a new stage production of Brokeback Mountain, adapted from Annie Proulx’s short story about the romance between two men working as sheep herders in 1960s Wyoming. Venice Architecture Biennale: the exhibition at the British Pavilion this year draws on traditions practised by different diaspora communities in the UK - such as Jamaicans playing dominoes and Cypriots cooking outside - and explore...
May 15, 2023•42 min
In 2021, June Givanni was presented with the British Independent Film Awards Special Jury Prize for what was described as “an extraordinary, selfless and lifelong contribution to documenting a pivotal period of film history” with her extensive archive focussed on African and African diaspora cinema. The archive is now the subject of a new exhibition - PerAnkh: The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive. June joins Front Row to discuss turning her personal passion into a public resource. Gwen Joh...
May 11, 2023•42 min
