Front Row

Anne-Marie Duff talks about her role in the crime thriller Suspect and her career from Shameless to Bad Sisters, Al Murray and Matthew Moss on the ongoing fascination with World War II in festivals, podcasts and films, an interview with Melvyn Hayes, well known for It Ain't Half Hot Mum, and curator Bakul Patki and artist Dawn Woolley discuss A Real Woman, a billboard art exhibition exploring repr...

Boyd Hilton and Dreda Say Mitchell join Samira to review the 12 time Tony nominated Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris which has just opened in London, having premiered, not without controversy, in New York in 2018. The film Fly me to the Moon starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum is a rom com set during the 1960s Space Race between the USA and Russia. Sunny is a future set thriller TV series...

For the first time ever, breaking (known commercially as break dancing) is going to be featured as a sport at the main Olympic Games when they are hosted in Paris this summer. But what exactly is breaking and where did it come from? Tom Sutcliffe speaks to DJ Renegade, one of the world’s top breaking judges who came up with the original judging system the Olympics competition is based on and Crazy...

Playwright Mike Bartlett and theatre director Robert Hastie on their new stage production of Chariots of Fire As preparations are made for a major redevelopment of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, Catherine Croft, Director of the 20th Century Society and Olivia Salazar-Winspear Culture Reporter for France 24 discuss the iconic building. BBC Russian senior reporter Sergei Goryashko on the sentencing o...

Laurie Anderson, the Grammy award-winning artist and musician whose career has spanned five decades, discusses her latest work. a song cycle based on the final flight of the aviation pioneer Amelia Earheart. And we hear her reflections on the unexpected chart success of of O Superman back in in 1981. While most of the incoming cabinet are already familiar with their briefs ministers, Lisa Nandy ha...

Author Abir Mukherjee and critic Sarah Crompton join Tom Sutcliffe for the review show. After opening 40 years ago, Starlight Express has been updated and opens in London in a specially designed auditorium. Rosarita by Anita Desai tells the story of Bonita, a young Indian woman who travels to Mexico to study and stumbles upon unknown evidence that her late mother had once been there. Monia Chokri'...

The Irish giant of verse Paul Muldoon is this year’s Writer in Residence at Ledbury Poetry Festival. He discusses the importance of workshopping and his new collection Joy in Service on Rue Tagore. Filmmakers Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd discuss their new film, Unicorns, a love story in which drag queen Aysha and mechanic and single father Luke embark on a romance against the backdrop...

The hit series The Bear is back for a third series. Samira talks to Ebon Moss Bachrach, who plays Richie. His cousin Carmen has been trying to transform their family-run restaurant from a cheap and cheerful operation into The Bear - a serious dining experience. Series 2 ended with a successful but highly stressful first night with Richie as the maitre d' - and tensions are set to rise again in ser...

Lynda la Plante discusses her final Jane Tennison novel, Whole Life Sentence and discusses the enduring legacy of Prime Suspect. Lea Ypi remembers the late Albanian writer and poet Ishmail Kadare, author of The General of the Dead Army and The Palace of Dreams. How is AI impacting music copyright? Hayleigh Bosher of Brunel University London, Reader in Intellectual Property Law and the music busine...

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...

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. Curat...

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 Vi...

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 h...

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 B...

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 th...

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 st...

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 ma...

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 Fictio...

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, Hal...

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 t...

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...

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 L...

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...

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, Strat...

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...