Shows / Front Row
Episodes
- Front Row
The Rolling Stones; Foe; television food consultant; Doctors axed
Film critic Ryan Gilbey and music and club culture writer Kate Hutchinson deliver their verdict on Hackney Diamonds - the first new Rolling Stones album for 18…
- Front Row
Bonnie Langford performs Sondheim, film director Maysoon Pachachi, the portrayal of nuns in culture
Musical theatre legend Bonnie Langford performs Stephen Sondheim's I'm Still Here from the musical Follies, in tribute to the late composer and lyricist. The…
- Front Row
Front Row from Belfast with writer Paul Lynch and singer Cara Dillon
Two adaptations of Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco open this month, one in Belfast and a Welsh language adaptation in Cardiff. The adaptors Patrick J O’Reilly and…
- Front Row
Martin Scorsese film, John le Carré’s legacy, Madonna on Tour
Madonna is still in the spotlight 45 years after bursting onto the pop scene in the 1980s, inspiring fashion, dance and youth culture, as well as being the…
- Front Row
Front Row reviews the Frasier reboot and performance from folk musician Martin Hayes
Samira Ahmed is joined by critics Anne Joseph and Nancy Durrant to review some of this week’s cultural highlights. They discuss the new series of the classic…
- Front Row
Lubaina Himid, Richard Armitage, David Pountney’s new opera
Actor Richard Armitage – who starred in North and South and the Hobbit - joins Nick to discuss writing his debut novel, the bio-tech thriller Geneva, which is…
- Front Row
Nigel Kennedy, art gallery labels, how do museums recover stolen art?
Nigel Kennedy remains the best selling violinist of all time with a repertoire that spans jazz, classical, rock, klezmer and more. Ahead of his four night…
- Front Row
Piper Kathryn Tickell performs, film director Terence Davies remembered, author Jhumpa Lahiri, £200 million for Heritage Places
Kathryn Tickell and The Darkening’s new album, Cloud Horizons, fuses synthesizers with a bone flute, a sistrum – very old Egyptian instrument - and lyrics…
- Front Row
Front Row reviews Philip Guston at the Tate Modern and new film Golda
The winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature is Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who is best known for his innovative plays. Playwright Simon Stephens, who has…
- Front Row
The Streets, the British Textile Biennial, Kate Prince on her mentor
Mike Skinner helped define an era with The Streets' album Original Pirate Material in 2002. Now he's back with not only new music but an accompanying film, The…
- Front Row
Patsy Ferran, Rubens & Women, the portrayal of black men in British film
The actor Patsy Ferran talks to Samira about her transformation from flower girl (with some autonomy) to duchess (with none at all) in Pygmalion at the Old…
- Front Row
Claudette Johnson, ghosts in literature, the Dutch Golden Age
The portraits in the National Gallery’s new retrospective of the artist Frans Hals capture his informal and fresh style which contrasted with other masters…
- Front Row
Víkingur Ólafsson on Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Ken Loach’s The Old Oak
Front Row reviews two of this week’s cultural highlights. Tom Sutcliffe is joined by writer Hettie Judah and film critic Peter Bradshaw to discuss Happy Gas, a…
- Front Row
James Graham on Boys from the Blackstuff, and are maestros behaving badly?
Alan Bleasdale’s Boys From The Blackstuff is widely regarded as television drama at its best with a cultural footprint that led to the phrase “Gi’s a job”…
- Front Row
Front Row hosts the BBC National Short Story Award Ceremony
The announcement of the winners of the BBC National Short Story Award and the BBC Young Writers’ Award with Cambridge University, live from the Radio Theatre…
- Front Row
Philip Barantini on Boiling Point, The Archers cast on Lark Rise to Ambridge
As the cast of the Archers star in a new adaptation of Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford, Samira is joined by actors Louiza Patikas, who plays Helen in…
- Front Row
Live from the Contains Strong Language festival
Front Row opens this year’s Contain’s Strong Language festival live in Leeds. Nick Ahad talks to Detectorists star Toby Jones about his stage adaptation of…
- Front Row
Marina Abramovic and The Long Shadow reviewed, Dmitry Glukhovsky's The White Factory
Writer Joan Smith and art historian Katy Hessel review a retrospective exhibition of the performance artist Marina Abramovic at the Royal Academy and a new ITV…
- Front Row
Carlos Acosta on the Black Sabbath ballet; Birmingham arts funding; the business of British fashion
Birmingham Royal Ballet is celebrating the city’s pioneering heavy metal band in a new production, Black Sabbath – the Ballet. Tom Sutcliffe talks to the…
- Front Row
Jane Austen fashion, poet Daljit Nagra, musician Alice Phoebe Lou performs live
From the enduring legacy of Colin Firth’s wet shirt to the colourful extravagance of Bridgerton, costumes have always been central in period dramas. But how…
- Front Row
Paul Simon and Charlie Mackesy, the V&A’s Chanel exhibition and author Kamila Shamsie.
When the artist Charlie Mackesy, best-known for his book The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, heard Paul Simon’s most recent album, the acclaimed Seven…
- Front Row
Katherine Rundell on Impossible Creatures, the rise of crafts on social media
Katherine Rundell on her new children’s fantasy book, Impossible Creatures. It's a story of two worlds, ours and one where the animals of myth and legend still…
- Front Row
The impact of the Hollywood strikes, author K Patrick, the iconic chant from the Halo video game
Front Row looks at the impact of the Hollywood strikes. Film critic Leila Latif, Equity UK’s Secretary General Paul Fleming, and Lisa Holdsworth, screenwriter…
- Front Row
The British Museum’s missing gems, a drinking game drama, National Short Story Award
Front Row gets an exclusive look at some of the treasures confirmed as missing by the British Museum, as art dealer, academic and whistleblower Dr Ittai…
- Front Row
Lise Davidsen, film Past Lives and Black Atlantic: power, people, resistance exhibition
Presenter Samira Ahmed is joined by the broadcaster and Chair of Judges Reeta Chakrabarti to announce the shortlist of the 2023 BBC National Short Story Awards…
- Front Row
Sir Ken Dodd exhibition; RIBA Stirling Prize for architecture shortlist; A Life on the Farm documentary
Curator Karen O’Rourke, and the actor and writer Arthur Bostrom discuss Sir Ken Dodd - the man behind the the tickling stick, the Diddymen, and the new…
- Front Row
Stephen Lawrence anniversary drama; small publishers; Pablo Larrain on his film El Conde; RAAC in theatres
The Architect - a play marking the 30th anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence - will take place on a double-decker bus travelling the route on…
- Front Row
Anna Wintour on Vogue World; Bloomsbury Group fashion; BBC Singers conductor Sofi Jeannin
Dame Anna Wintour, Global Editorial Director of Vogue, tells Samira Ahmed about Vogue World, the magazine’s fashion and performance spectacular which makes its…
- Front Row
Front Row reviews new British film Scrapper, French writer director Louis Garrel
Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Mickey-Jo Boucher discuss A Mirror, a new play by Sam Holcroft about staging a drama in a country where state censorship controls the…
- Front Row
Authors Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché, Stewart Lee on Macbeth, musician Connie Converse rediscovered
Authors Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché are live in the studio to discuss their new queer sci-fi thriller Prophet.Theatre director Wils Wilson has invited the…
- Front Row
Louise Doughty, sign language at music festivals, The Missing Madonna podcast
Author Louise Doughty talks to Samira Ahmed about her new novel, A Bird in Winter. A fast-paced thriller set in the world of espionage, it follows a woman on…
- Front Row
Corinne Bailey Rae, playwright Peter Arnott, new short story collections
Musician Corinne Bailey Rae performs live in the studio and discusses the inspiration for her new album, Black Rainbows. Writer Peter Arnott on his new play…
- Front Row
Edinburgh Festival review: The Grand Old Opera House Hotel; Funeral; Kieran Hodgson: Big In Scotland; Vanessa 5000; AI Art; Food
A review of two of the big shows at this year’s Edinburgh Festival: Olivier award-winning writer Isobel McArthur has had great success with her genre-busting…
- Front Row
TV's I Claudius; Jules Buckley's Stevie Wonder Prom; the difficulty buying concert tickets
As the acclaimed 1976 Roman Empire drama series I Claudius returns to television screens, classicist Natalie Haynes and cultural critic Charlotte Higgins…
- Front Row
Live from the Edinburgh Festival: Nicola Benedetti, Colson Whitehead, Karine Polwart, Susie McCabe, Andrew O’Hagan
Front Row is live from Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh for festival season, presented by Kate Molleson. Scotland’s own Grammy award-winning violinist Nicola…
- Front Row
Christy Lefteri's The Book of Fire, Artistic Directors in theatre, Palestinian Embroidery
As the death toll from wildfires in Hawaii rises, The Beekeeper of Aleppo author Christy Lefteri explains how similar tragedies in Greece inspired her new…
- Front Row
Composer György Ligeti, L'immensità starring Penelope Cruz, La Cage Aux Folles
György Ligeti: on the 100th anniversary of his birth, we celebrate the Hungarian-Austrian composer and the 2023 Proms performances of his work - music which…
- Front Row
Anohni, artists' intellectual property, Bruntwood Prize-winning play Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz
Mercury Prize winning and Oscar-nominated artist Anohni returns with a soulful new album, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, released under the moniker…
- Front Row
Bruce Lee, mental health in reality TV, poet Sean Street on birdsong
On the 50th anniversary of the release of the martial arts film Enter The Dragon, actor and filmmaker Daniel York Loh and Bruce Lee’s biographer Matthew Polly…
- Front Row
Lucy Prebble on The Effect, Welsh band Adwaith perform and Is the Critic Dead?
When you fall in love how do you know it’s for real, and not just the result of chemicals in your brain? Lucy Prebble’s play The Effect is back at the National…
- Front Row
Soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha; Joy Ride film and Ann Patchett’s novel Tom Lake reviewed; composer Carl Davis
The South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha talks to Front Row ahead of returning to the Proms this Saturday to sing Strauss’s Four Last Songs with…
- Front Row
Welsh Fleabag, Social media and comedy in Edinburgh; Moon Palace in Leeds
A new Welsh version of the comedy hit Fleabag is about to premiere at the National Eisteddfod in Boduan. Branwen Davies’ adaptation of the one-woman show for…
- Front Row
The Booker Prize longlist, Freddie Mercury's costume archive, Scottish theatre
As the Booker Prize longlist is announced, literary critic Alex Clark takes us through the contenders for the £50,000 literary award for fiction, to be…
- Front Row
West End producer unmasked, Reassessing the poetry of Virgil, Adjani Salmon on Dreaming Whilst Black
Adjani Salmon is the writer of the award-winning web-series Dreaming Whilst Black, now on BBC Three. He tells Tom Sutcliffe about the reality and his fictional…
- Front Row
Cellist Ana Carla Maza performs, the Mercury Music Prize shortlist
Cuban composer, cellist and singer Ana Carla Maza performs live in the Front Row studio, ahead of her appearance at WOMAD, and discusses the unusual…
- Front Row
Sinéad O'Connor tribute, Edinburgh Fringe previews, Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Efua Traoré on children’s books
Kathryn Ferguson, director of the documentary feature Nothing Compares, pays tribute to Sinéad O'Connor whose death was announced today. The film explores the…
- Front Row
Pianist Christian Blackshaw, tech-inspired funding for artists, playwright Rabiah Hussain
Christian Blackshaw is a renowned classical pianist but has made only a handful of records preferring the concert platform. Ahead of his appearance at the…
- Front Row
Elizabeth Fremantle on Artemisia Gentileschi, French horn player Felix Klieser, logo design
Elizabeth Fremantle talks about her novel ‘Disobedient’, which explores the story of the extraordinary C17th woman artist, Artemisia Gentileschi, and how the…
- Front Row
Sarah Phelps on BBC drama The Sixth Commandment, Blur's new album reviewed
Sarah Phelps on BBC drama The Sixth Commandment, Blur's new album reviewed.
- Front Row
Christopher Nolan on Oppenheimer, what is Cynghanedd?, club culture under threat
Presenter Nick Ahad meets Christopher Nolan, director of the much anticipated Oppenheimer film. It tells the story of the American physicist J. Robert…
- Front Row
20 years of Podcasting, Black Venus, AI Songwriting Challenge
Aindrea Emelife and black women in art. Nigerian-British curator on her Somerset House exhibition Black Venus, addressing colonial history and the…
- Front Row
Greta Gerwig, Tudor tapestry, Tanika Gupta, Jane Birkin farewell
This Friday sees the release of the much anticipated ‘Barbie’ starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Samira meets director, Greta Gerwig to discuss the…
- Front Row
Mission Impossible, Herzog & de Meuron, Walter Murch
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One - the long awaited seventh film in the series - and the Royal Academy's new exhibition about architecture practice…
- Front Row
Remembering Milan Kundera, author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Northern Soul Prom, the winner of the Art Fund Museum of the Year
Front Row remembers the renowned Czech-born novelist, poet and essayist Milan Kundera who has died aged 94. Novelist Howard Jacobson and French journalist…
- Front Row
Film-maker Sally Potter on her first music album, the British Library turns 50, romance in later life on stage
Sally Potter is best known as a filmmaker- from Orlando starring Tilda Swinton to The Roads Not Taken with Javier Bardem. But she's also a musician…
- Front Row
PJ Harvey, the Scapa Flow museum, pianist Benjamin Grosvenor performs
PJ Harvey talks to Samira Ahmed about her new album, I Inside the Old Year Dying. She explains how her poetry and lyrics were influenced by the Dorset dialect…
- Front Row
Kwame Kwei-Armah, Disney Pixar film Elemental reviewed
Kwame Kwei-Armah discusses his play Beneatha's Place, which imagines a future for Beneatha Younger, a character from Lorraine Hansberry’s ground-breaking 1959…
- Front Row
Manchester International Festival Special
Yayoi Kusama: You, Me & The Balloons is the inaugural show in Aviva Studios, the new headquarters for the Manchester International Festival. In a variety of…
- Front Row
Ben Okri, film director Shamira Raphaela, Leighton House Museum
The Booker Prize-winning author Sir Ben Okri joins Antonia Quirke to reflect on his new collection Tiger Work, intended as a wake up call for a warming world…
- Front Row
The legendary Dolly Parton and celebrating children's books
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…