Reviews of: The ITV comedy drama Douglas is Cancelled - a four part series written by Steven Moffat, starring Hugh Bonneville as middle-aged television broadcaster, Douglas Bellowes, who finds himself on the wrong side of 21st century social mores; A new exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield, Ronald Moody Sculpting Life, puts the spotlight on the Jamaican-born artist who engaged with key moments in 20th-century art; A new production at the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester of Oscar Wilde's The...
Jun 27, 2024•43 min
Next to Normal stormed Broadway in 2009 with its portrayal of a woman struggling with her mental health. It went on to win three Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize. Now staged in London, its creator Tom Kitt and star Caissie Levy talk about this deeply emotional musical and Caissie performs live. Early 20th century Ukrainian art is the focus of the Royal Academy’s In the Eye of the Storm exhibition. Curator Katia Denysova talks about how Ukrainian art was able to flourish in a brief window, between the ...
Jun 26, 2024•42 min
Violinist Rachel Podger has assembled an intriguing selection of English Baroque chamber pieces on her new CD The Muses Restor'd. She tells Kate about some of the lesser known composers who were active in 17th and 18th century England and performs live in the studio. A new play at the Park Theatre in London explores the conspiracies surrounding Marilyn Monroe's death. Creators Guy Masterson and Vicki McKellar discuss the truth behind the fiction. Emma Glass's new book Mrs Jekyll realises Deborah...
Jun 25, 2024•42 min
The UN climate conference in Kyoto in 1997 is the setting for a new play at the RSC. Its writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson talk about the dramatic potential they saw in that moment and in the decade leading up to it. Nathaniel Rateliff is a singer songwriter based in Denver, Colorado whose style of Americana and collaboration with the Nightsweats has garnered a steady following of fans due to his talent in storytelling and performance. He joins us to play live. We celebrate Midsummer’s Day wi...
Jun 24, 2024•42 min
Philippa Gregory and Briony Hanson join Tom Sutcliffe to discuss the National Portrait Gallery’s Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens, award winning film Green Border and Federer: Twelve Final Days co-directed by Asif Kapadia and Joe Sabia. Tom is also joined by the Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho who’s just been announced winner of the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing for his book The Boy Lost in the Maze. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Claire Bartleet
Jun 20, 2024•42 min
Musician Graham Gouldman performs live from his new album, as well as talking about his Lancashire upbringing and and playing in the band 10cc 50 years ago Steven Spielberg was filming his adaptation of Peter Benchley's shark thriller Jaws - a problematic shoot that nonetheless resulted in a classic movie. Critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and writer Robert Lautner assess the film's legacy and look at the many shark attack movies that have followed in its wake, including new releases Something in the W...
Jun 19, 2024•42 min
Stephen Fry stars in Treasure, where he plays a jovial Holocaust survivor who returns to his native Poland from his home New York with his stubborn American-born daughter, played by Lena Dunham. She is keen to build a stronger relationship with him by helping him relive his traumatised past, while he tries to sabotage her plans at every turn. How do you make space for new stand-up comedians new stand-ups? Darrell Martin, founder of comedy club Just The Tonic which turns 30 this year, and comedia...
Jun 18, 2024•42 min
Broadway star Stephanie J Block performs So In Love from the new production of Kiss Me Kate, at London’s Barbican. Tom talks to her and the Tony Award-winning director Bartlett Sher about creating the musical show within a show, which is based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. The BBC’s Culture Editor Katie Razzall on what the political parties have included in – and left out of - their manifestos on the Arts and Culture. We also hear from The Lowry’s CEO Julia Fawcett and The Times’ Chi...
Jun 17, 2024•42 min
Sasquatch Sunset has been dubbed the year's strangest film, about a family of mythological bigfoot monsters. Ama Gloria is a French film about the bond between a 6 year old French girl and her Portuguese nanny. Avalon is the latest show from Gifford's Circus, currently touring the UK. Peter Bradshaw and Nancy Durrant join Samira to review. We’ll also find out who’s won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and Non Fiction, and the winner of the Walter Scott prize for historical fiction. And and as Dame ...
Jun 13, 2024•42 min
Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro has turned his attention to the incredible story behind the Federal Theatre in 1930s America in his new study “The Playbook: A Story of Theatre, Democracy and the Making of A Culture War”. He discusses the groundbreaking performances staged by its 12,000 employees, including Orson Welles’ all-Black production of Macbeth, and the extraordinary woman who ran it, Hallie Flanagan. BEKA is a singer-songwriter who’s gone from singing backing vocals with Honne to featu...
Jun 12, 2024•42 min
As Liverpool enters the Swiftularity with the arrival of the arrival of the record-breaking phenomenon that is Taylor Swift and her Eras world tour, Nick visits the Taylor Town Trail - the new art trail dedicated to the singer's albums/eras - in the city centre and talks to one of the trail's co-producer Rhiannon Newman from Culture Liverpool, Kirsten Little - artistic director of the trail, and three of the artists involved in the project - Simon Armstrong, Rachel Smith-Evans, and Catherine Rog...
Jun 11, 2024•43 min
Jon Bon Jovi talks about his band’s new album Forever and their new documentary Thank You, Goodnight on Disney+ which celebrates the band’s 40th anniversary in rock and roll this year. Clare Pollard’s new book The Modern Fairies is set in 17th century France, where stories of trapped princesses and enchanted beasts are performed at the home of Madame Marie D'Aulnoy, who invented the term “conte de fée” or fairytale. Samira talks to Clare and and cultural historian Marina Warner about the importa...
Jun 10, 2024•42 min
Kevin Barry’s new novel is The Heart in Winter, a love story set in the American wild west in the 1890s. The film Rosalie is a period piece inspired by the true story of a French bearded lady who, together with her husband, ran a café in rural France in the late 19th century. And Disney’s Paris set drama series Becoming Karl Lagerfeld explores the late Chanel fashion designer’s life. Max Liu and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh join Tom Sutcliffe to review. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Torquil MacLeod...
Jun 06, 2024•42 min
Christos Tsiolkas, the Australian writer best known for The Slap, talks about The In-Between, his visceral yet tender new novel about two men finding love in their fifties. Victoria Canal performs her Ivor Novello award winning song Black Swan and talks about her life in music. And with several literary festivals severing their ties with Baillie Gifford, Martha Gill and Grace Blakeley discuss the growing story behind the sponsorship row along with Adrian Turpin, Director of the Wigtown Book Fest...
Jun 05, 2024•42 min
Presenter Samira Ahmed talks to Candice Carty-Williams who has adapted her award-winning novel Queenie for an eight-part series on Channel 4, starring Dionne Brown. It traces a year in the life of a young woman navigating a difficult course through her relationships with friends, family and casual partners, with the shadow of unresolved trauma always looming in the background. As two dramas, Strategic Love Play and Love In Gravitational Waves, explore the nature of that modern romantic encounter...
Jun 04, 2024•42 min
American director Richard Linklater, who made his name with Boyhood and the Before Sunset films, talks about his new comedy thriller Hit Man, which stars Glen Powell as quiet teacher who leads a secret double life helping this police catch people trying to hire a hit man. The movie opens on Netflix on Friday. Asian Network is celebrating 90s Bollywood, revealing the Ultimate 90s Bollywood Song as voted for by listeners from a shortlist of 50. It was counted down on air on Friday and is available...
Jun 03, 2024•42 min
Samira Ahmed is joined by author Anita Sethi and critic Tim Robey to review time-skipping sci-fi epic The Beast, where human emotions are perceived as a threat; the second series of Nida Manzoor’s We Are Lady Parts, where the all-female Muslin punk band are recording their first album; they also give their verdict on the Beyond Fashion photography exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, which tracks how fashion photography has become an art form in its own right. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Pau...
May 30, 2024•42 min
Adrian Dunbar is co-curator of the Beckett Unbound Festival that takes place in various venues across Liverpool this weekend and sees him directing Beckett's radio play All That Fall in a disused reservoir in total darkness. He explains why he thinks Samuel Beckett is an incomparable writer whose appeal never fades. As two new exhibitions about Edgar Degas open at different ends of the UK, Nick looks at the importance and impact of this French Impressionist artist with Pippa Stephenson-Sit, the ...
May 29, 2024•42 min
Hollywood star Benedict Cumberbatch talks about his new series Eric, where he plays a troubled puppeteer in 80s New York whose life and marriage unravel when his young son disappears and the only help he has to find him is from a giant imaginary monster who follows him everywhere. Created by British screenwriter Abi Morgan, the show opens on Netflix on Thursday. Bernard Butler's first solo album in 25 years - Good Grief - is released on 31st May. He plays his latest single and reflects on a care...
May 28, 2024•42 min
In a special edition of Front Row recorded at this year's Hay Festival, school children and young people put questions to four giants of Young Adult Fiction. Anthony Horowitz has written books for both adults and younger readers, but here discusses his iconic creation Alex Rider. Manon Steffan Ros won last year's Carnegie Medal, the first translated book to read the prize having originally been written in Welsh. Alex Wheatle is the author of the hugely popular Crongton Knights series, having wri...
May 27, 2024•42 min
Samira Ahmed is joined by the Guardian’s music editor Ben Beaumont-Thomas plus cultural sociologist and music researcher Dr. Monique Charles to review espionage thriller and cross-culture satire The Sympathizer, a 7-part series based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel. They also discuss the winners of the Ivor Novello Awards, and Samira talks to Michelle Terry about playing Richard III at the Globe theatre. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Claire Bartleet
May 23, 2024•42 min
Line of Duty star Vicky McClure on her new TV thriller Insomnia, in which she plays a lawyer losing her grip on the daily juggle of family life and work as old traumas start to make their presence felt. The German writer Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofman on winning the International Booker Prize with the novel Kairos which marries a love story with the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a new exhibition - Lowry and the Sea – opens this weekend at the Maltings’ Granary Gallery in Berwick-Upo...
May 22, 2024•43 min
Colm Tóibín's not a fan of follow-ups so why has he written a sequel to his bestseller Brooklyn, which was made into a film starring Saoirse Ronan? He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about not overwriting sex - and how Domhnall Gleeson's screen performance as a "quiet Irishman" in Brooklyn inspired him. Miranda Rutter and Rob Harbron's new folk album, Bird Tunes, is inspired by birdsong they hear in woods in the Cotswolds. They perform a track on fiddle and concertina and talk about how manipulating the ...
May 21, 2024•43 min
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the latest film from the writer director George Miller, 45 years after the first Mad Max film with Mel Gibson aired. He joins us to talk about where the vision for the film came from and how it's evolved, and about working with stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth. The visual artist, filmmaker, and novelist, Miranda July, discusses her second novel “All Fours” where a middle-aged woman’s detour from a planned road trip across America becomes a wry and provocative ...
May 20, 2024•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by journalist Kevin Le Gendre and critic Hanna Flint to review The Big Cigar, which tells the story of Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton; Elton John’s Fragile Beauty exhibition at the V&A and IF, a family film about imaginary friends. Tom also announces the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Claire Bartleet
May 16, 2024•42 min
Fawlty Towers arrives on the West End stage nearly 50 years after it first appeared on TV. John Cleese talks about why the sitcom wasn’t initially regarded as a great success, his love and appreciation of comedy as an art form, and how a future project will see Basil running a hotel with his daughter. 100 years ago this month, the musician Beatrice Harrison was responsible for a landmark event in BBC history when she persuaded the corporation to broadcast live from her garden as she played her c...
May 15, 2024•42 min
Bruce Robinson has written a stage adaptation of his cult 1987 film Withnail And I - a tragicomedy that evokes the end of an era as the 60s give way to 70s and dreams collide with reality in the lives of the two main characters. The play has just opened at the Birmingham Rep, directed by Sean Foley. Both of them talk about the challenges of adapting and staging a much loved classic and the degree to which it needed to remain true to the original. Now You See Us - an exhibition spanning 400 years...
May 14, 2024•42 min
A memoir about growing up gay in Scotland under the shadow of Thatcherism, Maggie & Me was published to wide acclaim in 2013. Damian Barr joins to discuss how he as adapted it with James Ley for a new National Theatre of Scotland touring production. As Roberto Rossellini's classic 1945 film Rome, Open City (Roma città aperta) is re-released by the BFI, writer Thea Lenarduzzi and film historian Ian Christie reassess its role in launching Italian neorealism and compare it with There's Still To...
May 13, 2024•42 min
La Chimera is a new film directed by Alice Rohrwacher and starring Josh O’Connor as a British archaeologist who gets caught up in a network of stolen Etruscan artefacts in 1980s Italy. Bodkin is a new comedy thriller series from Netflix starring Will Forte about a trio of true crime podcasters who head to rural Ireland to solve a mystery. and Great Expectations, the hotly anticipated debut novel from the New Yorker theatre critic Vinson Cunningham about a young man in America who gets swept up i...
May 09, 2024•42 min
From winning the piano section of the first BBC young musician of the year as a teen to recording over 60 albums and publishing 40 original works, Stephen Hough was knighted for services to music in 2022. He joins Tom Sutcliffe to talk about the upcoming European premiere of his first piano concerto with the Halle Orchestra in Manchester. American writer Elle Griffin wrote an article titled No one buys books, after studying the publishing industry in the United States. She feels the best way to ...
May 08, 2024•43 min
