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Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
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Critics Hanna Flint and Boyd Hilton join Tom Sutcliffe to discuss Clueless, a new musical based on the 1995 film staring Alicia Silverstone. They also discuss Flow, Oscar-winning, dialogue-free, animated film based around the story of a cat who must find safety after its home is devastated by a flood. Plus Robert de Niro playing two gangsters in the Mafia drama The Alto Knights. Plus, ahead of World Poetry Day, we talk to Seán Hewitt whose second collection Rapture's Road has today been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Paula McGrath
French auteur Francois Ozon, whose previous films include 8 Women, Swimming Pool and Potiche, talks about his latest, When Autumn Falls, a bittersweet story of age, youth and breaking the rules, set in a picturesque Burgundy village. As the centenary of his birth approaches, leading pianist Tamara Stefanovich and musicologist Jonathan Cross discuss the legacy and reputation of the iconoclastic composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. The outgoing director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society Shona McCarthy talks about what she has achieved in her role, about the state of the Festivals sector in Edinburgh, and about the challenges facing her successor. Presenter: Kate Molleson
Producer: Mark Crossan
Sculptor Antony Gormley and Professor of French literature, Catriona Seth discuss Victor Hugo's visual art with Tom Sutcliffe. Victor Hugo was a 19th century cultural colossus, known for monumental works such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables as well as his poems, plays and political writings. It's not so well known that throughout his career Hugo drew with pen and ink - the same tools he wrote with - creating some 4,000 pictures. The Royal Academy has gathered together about 70 of these in its exhibition 'Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo'.Julian Barnes, one of our greatest living novelists, talks about his latest nonfiction book Changing My Mind. A series of essays published today by Notting Hill Editions, it ponders moments in his life when he's reconsidered long-held views, from memories and politics to words and the writing of EM Forster.Bestselling author Emma Donoghue is known for her novel Room. She talks about mixing in real life characters to her latest work of fiction The Paris Express, which was inspired by seeing a surreal photograph of a nineteenth century French railway disaster.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Claire Bartleet
Front Row's artist in residence, acclaimed Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson, reflects on five years since lockdown and we have another listen to his Front Row lockdown performance of the Adagio from Bach's Organ Sonata Number 4.How were the arts affected when the country locked down five years ago? Matthew Hemley of The Stage and Louisa Buck of the Art Newspaper discuss how the Covid crisis impacted theatres, galleries and artists. And the Tom Gates series children's writer Liz Pichon joins us to talk about her latest work for younger readers. Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Corinna Jones
Samira Ahmed and guest critics - the novelist and anthropologist Tahmima Anam and Ben Luke from the Art Newspaper - give their verdict on the week’s cultural releases. They’ve been to see Cate Blanchett in Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull at the Barbican Centre. The classic drama still features characters from Russian nobility – but it’s given a modern-day treatment including VR headsets and quad bikes. They have also watched Sister Midnight, a film about a young bride called Uma who joins her husband in Mumbai but struggles to adapt to her new life and connect with the man she knew as a childhood friend. She wanders the streets, drawn to the moon and becomes an accidental outlaw.Also under consideration are portraits in an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery by Edvard Munch – an artist best known for his painting The Scream. Plus we pay tribute to Five Star’s Stedman Pearson who's died at the age of 60.Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Claire Bartleet
Songwriter and musician Edwyn Collins performs live from his latest album, Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation, a series of 11 optimistic and defiant tracks released two decades on from two devastating cerebral haemorrhages. American novelist Torrey Peters, whose book Detransition, Baby became a bestseller and was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction, talks about her new book Stag Dance, a collection of four novellas which examines trans life past, present and future. And as exhibitions around the world celebrate the centenary of Scottish poet, writer, visual artist and gardener Ian Hamilton Finlay, poet Alan Spence and the founder of Jupiter Artland sculpture park outside Edinburgh discuss his life and legacy. Presenter: Kirsty Wark
Producer: Mark Crossan
As Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel The Leopard is dramatised for television, director Tom Shankland and film critic Peter Bradshaw discuss the power of this classic Italian novel.Natasha Brown's first novel, Assembly, saw her favourably compared to Virginia Woolf and won a Betty Trask award. Her eagerly-awaited second novel Universality has just been published and she discusses leaving her career in finance to write fiction.Low Kee Hong, the new Creative Director of Manchester International Festival, shares his vision for the festival and talks about the 2025 programme which has been revealed today. Ceramicist Elizabeth Fritsch is the subject of a major retrospective at the Hepworth Wakefield. Curator, writer, and editor Natalie Baerselman le Gros, who specialises in contemporary ceramics, reflects on the work of an artist who describes herself as a painter who makes pots.Presenter: Nick Ahad
Producer: Ekene Akalawu
Adolescence – the new Netflix series starring Stephen Graham – explores every parent’s worst nightmare: a teenage son accused of a knife-crime. Co-writers and directors Jack Thorne and Philip Barantini join us to explain how the “single-shot” filming technique sheds light on the way toxic masculinity spreads online among young people. Fantasy fiction generated almost £25 million more in 2024 than the previous year - and, a big part of that is the surge in Romantasy, the literary genre fuelled by booktok and YA fans. So, what is Romantasy and what’s the appeal? We meet author Alwyn Hamilton whose fourth book is out this month and editor Natasha Qureshi. Ludovico Einaudi is the most streamed classical artist of all time, with nine billion streams a year and a track which recieved 16 billion TikTok views alone. He discusses his compositions for the screen and plays from his latest album The Summer Portraits. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Ruth Watts
1In Front Row's Thursday review, Ellah Wakatama and Rhianna Dhillon give their take on Bong Joon Ho's new film Mickey 17 starring Robert Pattison, David Szalay's new novel Flesh, and Get Millie Black, Channel 4's Jamaica-set crime drama from Marlon James.Plus we hear from Sophie Elmhirst, whose Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck Survival and Love has just been awarded the Nero Gold Prize for Book Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Actor Jessica Lange discusses her latest film, an adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize winning play Long Day's Journey Into Night, in which she plays Mary Tyrone, a woman with a morphine addiction at the centre of a dysfunctional family, and a role for which she previously won a Tony Award on Broadway. Welsh National Opera's new joint CEOs Adele Thomas and Sarah Crabtree talk about their plans for the organisation. And acclaimed artist Alison Watt talks about her latest exhibition, From Light, inspired by 19th century architect Sir John Soane and showing in his former home, Pitzhanger Manor in London. Presenter: Kirsty Wark
Producer: Mark Crossan
A new exhibition at London's National Gallery hopes to shed light on artists in 14th Century Siena, who have often been overshadowed by their Tuscan neighbours in Florence. Samira is joined in the studio by one of the curators, Imogen Tedbury, and by Maya Corry, a Renaissance expert from Oxford Brookes University to discuss the astonishing colours and use of gold by artists like Duccio, the Lorenzetti brothers and Simone Martini. The death has been announced of Bill Dare, the creator of Radio 4's The Now Show and Dead Ringers. He nurtured new writers and performers including David Baddiel, Rob Newman, Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt, of The Mary Whitehouse Experience as well as the comedian Jon Holmes, who explains how they first met. Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck, best-known for his Oscar and BAFTA nominated documentary about James Baldwin 'I Am Not Your Negro', discusses his latest film 'Ernest Cole: Lost and Found', about the brief life of a young South African photographer who had to flee his homeland in 1968 to publish his book of photos which exposed the horrors of apartheid to the world.The Booker and Oscar-nominated writer Colum McCann discusses his thrilling new novel Twist, a dive in to the dark depths of the modern human condition set on board a ship repairing the fragile cables which connect us on the ocean floor.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Claire Bartleet
Sean Baker made Oscar history, becoming the first person to win four Academy Awards for directing, editing, writing and producing a single film, Anora. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh joins Samira to look at this year's Oscar winners and what they say about cinema today. The RSC's co-artistic director Daniel Evans discusses playing Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. Filmmaker Laura Carreira talks about her award-winning debut feature On Falling, about the social isolation and the injustices faced by a Portuguese woman working in the gig economy in Scotland. And, we look back at the work of late artist Jack Vettriano with Rachel Campbell Johnson. Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Ruth Watts
Tom Sutcliffe and his guests the film critic Ryan Gilbey and art critic and author Charlotte Mullins review the week's latest cultural releases including Tate Modern’s exhibition on the unconventional artist and performer Leigh Bowery, the Greek film featuring gay romance, The Summer With Carmen and Michael Amherst’s first novel, The Boyhood of Cain.
Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Corinna Jones
Kirsty Wark talks to Anjelica Huston about playing a magnificent matriarch in the adaptation of Agatha Christie's Towards Zero, which begins on BBC One this weekend. The director of the British Museum, Nicholas Cullinan, talks about the appointment of an architectural firm who will be redeveloping the Museum's galleries, about the pressures of running a national cultural institution and about recent controversies. And actors Tim Roth and Koki discuss their roles in the opening film at the Glasgow Film Festival, director John MacLean's reinvention of the samurai movie tradition, Tornado. Presenter: Kirsty Wark
Producer: Mark Crossan
As the Oscars hove into view this weekend, the news is the women are coming - Stacey L Smith from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative on their research showing more women leading Hollywood box office hits.Berlin ER is the new medical drama from Apple set in a run down A&E department in the German capital. Creator and former doctor Samuel Jefferson on swapping his medical scrubs for television scripts.Berlin-based arts and culture journalist Catherine Hickley on the impact of the German federal elections on the country's creative sector.Writer Santanu Bhattacharya discusses Deviants, his new novel set in India which explores three gay love stories against the backdrop of anti-homosexuality legislation introduced by the British.Presenter: Nick Ahad
Producer: Ekene Akalawu
We look back at the quarter century in performing arts, exploring the changes in live stage performance and asking how the theatrical landscape has changed over those years. Samira Ahmed hears about some of the big trends that have changed the experience - such as immersive theatre and discusses the challenges the sector has faced. She is joined by playwrights Mark Ravenhill and Lolita Chakrabarti, who is also an actor, by the producer and CEO of Nimax Theatres, Nica Burns and by the critic Sarah Crompton. Plus we hear from Felix Barrett, founder of Punchdrunk Theatre and Nikolai Foster the artistic director of the Leicester Curve.Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Ruth Watts
John Mullan and Caroline Frost join Tom to review Steven Knight's new historical drama A Thousand Blows, Nicolas Hytner's production of Richard II staring Jonathan Bailey and novel Perspectives by Laurent BinetPresenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Kirsty Wark and guests discuss how visual art and architecture have evolved over the last 25 years. In the latest of our special series reflecting the changing cultural landscape since the start of the millennium, Kirsty Wark discusses the significant shifts in visual art and architecture in the 21st century with Director of Exhibitions and Programmes at Tate Modern Catherine Wood; Sunday Times art critic Waldemar Januszczak; Katrina Brown of The Common Guild in Glasgow; and founder of architectural practice Studio Gil, Pedro Gil. What did the boom in museum and gallery building in the early 2000s say about the public appetite for art? How has programming of exhibitions changed to reflect greater diversity? Is the auction market for contemporary art out of control? And is AI making an impact on contemporary art? Featuring an interview with Turner Prize winning artist Jeremy Deller. Presenter: Kirsty Wark
Producer: Mark Crossan
Playwright Ishy Din on his new play, Champion inspired by the 1977 visit of celebrated boxer, Muhammed Ali, to South Shields. Art historian Frances Spalding and curator Eleanor Bradley on artist Sheila Fell - the subject of a major exhibition at Tullie Museum and Art Gallery. As a new biography of concert pianist Dame Myra Hess is published, its author Jessica Duchen, and Adam Gatehouse, artistic director of the Leeds International Piano Competition, discuss Dame Myra's distinctive playing style and how it compares to playing styles of today.Presenter: Nick Ahad
Producer: Ekene Akalawu
Samira Ahmed talks to Brazilian director Walter Salles about his film I'm Still Here - which has already won multiple awards including the Golden Globe for Best Actress for its star Fernanda Torres. it's based on a true story about a family Salles knew when he was growing up in Rio de Janeiro - whose father was detained and disappeared during the military dictatorship which lasted for more than 20 years. The Face magazine was launched in 1980, offering a stylish approach to music, fashion and culture. A new exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery showcases some of the most iconic images created by photographers like Jurgen Teller and Ellen von Unwerth. The curator Sabina Jaskot-Gill and journalist and broacaster Miranda Sawyer discuss what made The Face such an important part of British culture. 80s hearthrob Matt Goss - one half of hit band Bros with his brother Luke - features in one of the images in The Face exhibition. He performs his new single and talks about his 11 year residency in Las Vegas - and why he's come back to the UK to tour.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Paula McGrath
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