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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, music critic Norman Lebrecht and conductor JoAnn Falletta discuss what makes it revolutionary and why it's so challenging to perform. Michael McManus spent most of his career as a political advisor but has subsequently become a playwright. His new play Party Games is a political comedy that questions the power of AI and the influence of unelected advisors. A new exhibition at the Bodleian Library in Oxford - Write, Cut, Rewrite - ...
May 07, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nick visits Scarborough and talks to Sir Alan Ayckbourn as he rehearses an old play - Things We Do For Love - and looks forward to the staging of his 90th play - Show and Tell. Turner prize winning Artist Jeremy Deller, whose public artworks include We're Here Because We're Here to commemorate the Battle of the Somme, reveals his plans for a new creation for Scarborough's Marine Drive. The Scarborough Spa Orchestra is the UK's only remaining professional seaside orchestra, and Nick meets its two...
May 06, 2024•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Harvey Keitel stars in The Tattooist of Auschwitz - a six-part Sky Atlantic series based on the best-selling novel by Heather Morris, inspired by the real-life story of Holocaust prisoners Lali and Gita Sokolov. Marc Quinn’s exhibition Light into Life is at Kew Gardens from Saturday (4th May) until Sunday 29 September 2024. The Fall Guy, directed by David Leitch, stars Ryan Gosling as a stuntman and Emily Blunt as his film director ex who entices him out of retirement. All three are reviewed by ...
May 02, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Award winning director behind Les Miserables John Caird and co-writing partner Maoko Imai talk about adapting the iconic Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away for stage, as it arrives at the London Coliseum from Japan. Two new documentaries are exploring how dignity, beauty and even joy can be found following a terminal diagnosis. Simon Chambers and Kit Vincent, the filmmakers behind Much Ado About Dying and Red Herring respectively, discuss. And the BBC's Eurovision reporter Daniel Rosney lifts a li...
May 01, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Historian Andrew Graham-Dixon and art curator Kate Bryan discuss Michelangelo: the last decades, a major new exhibition at the British Museum which focuses on the last thirty years of Michelangelo’s life. Reece Shearsmith discusses the ninth and final series of the BAFTA award winning Inside No. 9. Written with Steve Pemberton, the six episodes will feature new stand-alone stories, starting with ‘Boo To A Goose’ . Guest stars include Charlie Cooper and Katherine Kelly. Jembaa Groove perform live...
Apr 30, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hanif Kureishi has joined forces with Emma Rice to adapt his 1990 novel The Buddha of Suburbia into an RSC production that’s just opened at the Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon. Kureishi discusses what it feels like to see himself and his fictionalised family onstage, why his first novel remains painfully relevant and how he has been able to continue writing despite the December 2022 accident that left him tetraplegic. Recently on Front Row we heard from some leaders of classical music organisa...
Apr 29, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Pet Shop Boys are the most successful duo in UK music history. Forty years after their first hit West End Girls they are about to release their new album Nonetheless. Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant join Samira Ahmed to talk about making sense of life through culture, their music being used in hit films like Saltburn and All of Us Strangers and their gay icon status. Also joining Samira in the studio are art critic Catherine McCormack and writer Jenny McCartney to review the new tennis film Chal...
Apr 25, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Legend of Ned Ludd - writer Joe Ward Munrow and director Jude Christian discuss their new play at the Liverpool Everyman theatre which explores the changing nature of work over the centuries and around the world in the the face of automation. The shortlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction was announced today - journalist Jamie Klingler assesses the selection. As the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool prepares to show off its latest acquisitions, curator Kate O'Donoghue explains what the their ...
Apr 24, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
