Shows / Front Row
Episodes
- Front Row
An Elephant Sitting Still, Chinese film industry, David Szalay, Unesco and Reggae
Twelve flights. Twelve travellers. Twelve stories. David Szalay talks about his new book, Turbulence, which features lives in turmoil, each in some way…
- Front Row
Robert Redford's Career, Fiction within Fiction, Poet Fred D'Aguiar
For his final role as an actor, Robert Redford plays a charming bank robber in The Old Man and the Gun, harking back to his early roles in Butch Cassidy and…
- Front Row
Strictly's Shirley Ballas, Young Composer Sarah Jenkins, National Theatres of Scotland and Wales
Strictly Come Dancing Head Judge Shirley Ballas describes her approach as fun, firm, feisty but fair. As one of the couples comes ever closer to raising this…
- Front Row
Mowgli, American poet Dana Gioia, Art on prescription
Hot on the heels of Disney's successful remake of The Jungle Book, Netflix release a live action/motion capture retelling of Kipling stories, Mowgli: Legend of…
- Front Row
Disobedience, Rachel Maclean, Julián Fuks, Diversity Backstage
Naomi Alderman’s debut novel, Disobedience, has been adapted into a film starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. The women are reunited as Ronit, now living…
- Front Row
Sports Book of the Year, Jim Carrey in Kidding, Astral Weeks at 50
The 2018 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award today celebrated its 30th anniversary, and at the awards ceremony the prize was shared between two books…
- Front Row
Jamie Dornan, Bernardo Bertolucci remembered, Joseph Hillier
Fifty Shades of Grey and The Fall actor, Jamie Dornan, stars in new BBC Two drama Death and Nightingales. Based on Eugene McCabe's modern Irish classic novel…
- Front Row
Mrs Wilson, Vegan Art, Akwaeke Emezi
Golden Globe Award winner Ruth Wilson stars in the new BBC drama Mrs Wilson in a uniquely challenging role: she is playing her own grandmother, Alison Wilson…
- Front Row
2018 Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters, Costa Book Awards shortlist announced, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum
We reveal this year's Costa Book Awards shortlists. Critics Alex Clark and Toby Lichtig discuss the books chosen in the five categories: novel, first novel…
- Front Row
Kurt Russell on playing Santa, Poet Ruth Fainlight, Damien Hirst's Qatar sculptures
Kurt Russell, whose credits include The Thing, Escape from New York and The Hateful Eight, discusses his new role as Santa Claus in the new Netflix family film…
- Front Row
Marianne Faithfull, I'm a Celebrity without Ant, Kirsty Latoya
Marianne Faithfull released her first record in 1965 and now aged 71 she's releasing her 21st. Titled Negative Capability, the album is inspired by loss…
- Front Row
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda, the two-time Academy Award-winning actress, film producer, political activist and fitness guru, looks back at her 60 year career with Kirsty Lang…
- Front Row
Golden Age of Irish Prose - North and South of the Border, Hepworth Sculpture Prize Winner
In Sebastian Barry’s inaugural speech as Laureate for Irish Fiction earlier this year, he stated that Ireland was in a 'golden age of prose'. As Northern Irish…
- Front Row
Arts Education in schools - a Front Row debate from Leicester
Arts education has become the focus of a great deal of passion and concern recently, since the core, knowledge-based subjects took precedence over the creative…
- Front Row
Fantastic Beasts 2, Viruses turned into art, Fernand Léger, Heart of Darkness
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the second in the Fantastic Beasts film franchise from JK Rowling which explores the Wizarding World before…
- Front Row
The Coen Brothers, stage fright, The Interrogation of Tony Martin
Getting butterflies is something many performers admit to, and although some thrive off it, others are often more badly affected. Professor of Performance…
- Front Row
Helena Bonham Carter, Ben Schott, 11-11: Memories Retold video game
Helena Bonham Carter discusses how she drew on her own experience of depression for her new film 55 Steps which is based on the life of Eleanor Riese. Riese…
- Front Row
Marin Alsop, Russell Howard, Political cartoonists
To mark Armistice Day, Marin Alsop will be conducting Brahms's A German Requiem this weekend, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and in a break…
- Front Row
Danny Boyle's Armistice Day tribute, White Teeth the musical, singer-songwriter and poet Emily Maguire
On Folkestone beach, film-maker Danny Boyle discusses Pages of the Sea, his Armistice Day tribute to the servicemen and women who left these shores in the…
- Front Row
Steve McQueen, Erica Whyman on Romeo and Juliet, Gender-swapped theatre
Steve McQueen discusses his return to the big screen with Widows, an adaptation of the Lynda La Plante thriller. Set this time in Chicago, the widows must…
- Front Row
Boy George, Colourisation of film, John Cooper Clarke
As Boy George releases his first new album with Culture Club in almost 20 years – simply called Life - he talks about being a changed man and contrasts making…
- Front Row
Cecelia Ahern, The world's tallest statue, Pansori opera, Homecoming TV adaptation
Best-selling Irish novelist Cecelia Ahern discusses her new short story collection, Roar, which features 30 stories about 30 different women.India has unveiled…
- Front Row
Wilfred Owen Commemoration, Markus Zusak, Sarah DeLappe
Published in 2005, The Book Thief was an international bestseller that went on to become a successful Hollywood film. Now more than a decade later its author…
- Front Row
Dark Heart, La Traviata, Parks and concerts
Actor, comedian and opera fan Chris Addison discusses his role in La Traviata: Behind the Curtain, a new series of talks exploring the historical and social…
- Front Row
Florence Pugh and Alexander Skarsgård in The Little Drummer Girl, Darkness and writing, Tom Odell
A six part adaptation of John le Carré’s 1983 spy thriller The Little Drummer Girl has begun BBC One. Florence Pugh and Alexander Skarsgård discuss their roles…
- Front Row
Thom Yorke, Audiobooks and reading, Beetlejuice at 30
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke explains how he composed his first feature film soundtrack for Suspiria, Luca Guadagnino’s remake of the 1977 Dario Argento…
- Front Row
Freddie Mercury biopic, Composer Howard Blake, Hepworth Prize for Sculpture
Bohemian Rhapsody, the new biopic of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, is finally in cinemas after eight years in the making. During production, two leading…
- Front Row
Mike Leigh on Peterloo, CJ Sansom, The rise of adult gaming
Mike Leigh discusses his latest film Peterloo, an historical epic that depicts the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St…
- Front Row
Author Luke Jennings on his Killing Eve trilogy, Disgusting artworks, Maggie Gyllenhaal on The Deuce
Author Luke Jennings on his Killing Eve novels, which inspired the recent television series. Jennings reveals what motivated him to create the ruthless…
- Front Row
Eric Idle, Halloween, Cicely Berry remembered, The House of Commons library
Eric Idle is of course a member of the comedy phenomenon Monty Python. His autobiography, or as he fashions it sortabiography, is called Always Look on the…
- Front Row
Gerard Butler, Male body in movies, Novelist Olga Tokarczuk
Gerard Butler talks to John Wilson about starring alongside Gary Oldman in his latest action film, Hunter Killer. Set deep under the Arctic Ocean, Butler plays…
- Front Row
Playing Linda Loman, Informer, Geology-inspired art, Ciarán Hodgers
Willy Loman is very much the heart and soul of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer-prizewinning play, Death of a Salesman. However as a new production opens at the Royal…
- Front Row
#MeToo one year on - what's changed in the arts?
#MeToo one year on – what impact has the hashtag popularised by Hollywood actresses had on the arts and on women around the world? We speak to Jude Kelly…
- Front Row
Paul Greengrass on 22 July, Lisa Hammond and Rachael Spence, How can arts organisations thrive?
The 2011 Norwegian terrorist attack at Utøya island summer camp has been made into a film by Paul Greengrass. The director, whose previous work includes the…
- Front Row
Desiree Akhavan, Bad Times at the El Royale, 2018 RIBA Stirling Prize, Mother Courage
Desiree Akhavan has not only co-written Channel 4's new comedy drama The Bisexual, but directs and stars in it as well. The series centres on Leila, who after…
- Front Row
Reading and Mental Health
When Stig Abell was in his mid-twenties he went through a period where he would wake up in the middle of the night uncontrollably anxious and found reading…
- Front Row
The swimming pool in art, Kwame Kwei-Armah's Twelfth Night, Poet Jean Sprackland
An entire disused swimming pool has been built on the ground floor of the Whitechapel Gallery in London for the new exhibition from the Scandinavian duo…
- Front Row
Bernard Cribbins, Claire Foy and Ryan Gosling on First Man, Butterfly
The actor and entertainer Bernard Cribbins, who will be 90 in December, discusses his new memoir Bernard Who?: 75 Years of Doing Just About Everything, in…
- Front Row
Jodie Whittaker on Doctor Who, Quentin Blake, Haruki Murakami's Killing Commendatore
“It’s about time” is the tagline for the new Doctor Who series, referencing the programme’s time-travelling exploits, but also the arrival of the first female…
- Front Row
Alice Walker, Yayoi Kusama and a poem for National Poetry Day from Sean Street
Alice Walker is famous for prose books such as The Color Purple and In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. But her first book was a collection of poems and she has…
- Front Row
The art of physical comedy, Damien Hirst, Andre Aciman, The impact of the arts on mental health
In the week Rowan Atkinson returns to the big screen as the hapless spy in Johnny English Strikes Again, which sees him batter innocent bystanders and himself…
- Front Row
BBC National Short Story Award Winner
We announce the winner of the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award and the Young Writers' Award live from West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge and celebrate the…
- Front Row
Sarah Perry, The Cry, Cultural First Aid
Sarah Perry discusses Melmoth, her eagerly awaited novel after her award-winning The Essex Serpent. Her new novel is about an English translator who, hiding…
- Front Row
Contains Strong Language festival, Sean Scully, A Northern Soul
After being appointed director of last year’s opening event for Hull’s year as City of Culture, award-winning and Hull-born filmmaker Sean McAllister decided…
- Front Row
Lord of the Flies, Silence in art, Javier Marias
In Theatr Clywd’s new production of William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies, the group of schoolboys stranded on a remote island have all been…
- Front Row
The Goodies, Holst's The Planets at 100, Debris Stevenson
Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie - The Goodies - join Samira to look back at their 1970s cult comedy series. As a complete box set of every…
- Front Row
Oceania exhibition, Suede, How the police help crime writers
Oceania at the Royal Academy is the first ever major exhibition in the UK of art from the Pacific. It is very ambitious, showing 200 works from across that…
- Front Row
Cary Fukanaga, Royal Opera House CEO, Nureyev Documentary
Cary Fukanaga, recently announced director of the next James Bond film, discusses his new Netflix series Maniac. The show explores the minds of two strangers…
- Front Row
MIA, Man Booker Shortlist, Short Story Award nominee Nell Stevens, Playwright Stephen Jeffreys remembered.
New documentary Matangi/Maya/MIA about the political rapper MIA, uses self-filmed archive footage of the outspoken and ‘controversial’ Sri Lankan immigrant…
- Front Row
Eileen Atkins, the financial crash and the arts, Denis Norden remembered, Ingrid Persaud
Eileen Atkins talks about her latest stage role in Florian Zeller’s The Height of the Storm, a play about a couple who have been in love for 50 years. The…
- Front Row
The Little Stranger, creating art in the dark, and Kiare Ladner, BBC NSSA nominee
Director Lenny Abrahamson on his film adaption of Sarah Waters’ novel The Little Stranger, a ghost story set in a dilapidated English manor in the 1940s…
- Front Row
Christine and the Queens, Sarah Hall, Tartuffe set in a Birmingham Muslim community
The French musician Christine and the Queens discusses bringing ideas about gender fluidity to the mainstream with a confident new persona, eighties…
- Front Row
Killing Eve, BBC National Short Story Award Shortlist, Ghetts
Killing Eve is the next thing to come from the pen of Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It is a thriller, steeped in her stylistic black humour, about a…
- Front Row
Crazy Rich Asians, Touching the Void, Novels about the super rich, Leeds Piano Competition
Touching The Void. Memoir, documentary, now theatre performance - at the Bristol Old Vic. Written by David Greig , it's an adaptation of Joe Simpson's…
- Front Row
Michael Caine, Wagner's music in Israel, V&A Dundee
Hollywood legend Sir Michael Caine returns to the big screen in King of Thieves, the second cinematic adaptation of the infamous Hatton Garden burglary in…
- Front Row
Sally Rooney, Trust, Catwalk music, Serena Williams cartoon
The Irish writer Sally Rooney's second novel Normal People, the story of a relationship between two young people from very different backgrounds, has been…
- Front Row
Nick Payne on Wanderlust, YolanDa Brown, Battersea Arts Centre after the fire
Nick Payne, the writer of new BBC One series Wanderlust starring Toni Collette and Steven Mackintosh, discusses adapting his play on modern sexual…
- Front Row
Inspire Artist Commissions: Alison Brackenbury, Vaseem Khan, Testament
BONUS EDITION: As part of the Inspire season, Front Row commissioned three artists to create works especially for the programme. Poet Alison Brackenbury was…
- Front Row
Alison Brackenbury, Vaseem Khan and Testament reveal their finished artworks for the Inspire season
As Front Row's Inspire season draws to a close, three artists unveil the artworks they were commissioned to create, and discuss the inspiration behind…
- Front Row
New BBC drama Press, Kate Tempest, John Wilson learns the art of watercolouring
Award winning Doctor Foster writer, Mike Bartlett, discusses his new show Press alongside one of its stars, the Peaky Blinders actor Charlotte Riley. The…