Front Row

Mark Ravenhill and Leila Latif join Tom Sutcliffe to review: Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's new film Bitter Christmas, a tragi comedy told across different time frames, and questioning the relationship between reality and fiction in the film industry. Author of best selling The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin's new speculative fiction novel is Under Story, which asks if you could turn back the cl...

Ahead of her sixth performance at the BBC Proms the mezzo soprano star Joyce DiDonato talks to Kirsty about the explosive potential of her voice.  VP Head of YouTube EMEA - Pedro Pina - delivers the flagship address of this year's Edinburgh TV Festival. He gives his perspective on the continuing evolution of tv as we know it.  Comedy is at the heart of the Edinburgh Festivals, and today the shortl...

Samira Ahmed spoke to Dolly Parton in 2023. As her death is announced Front Row pays tribute to the star of country music who sold more than 100 million records and wrote over 3,000 songs in a career that spanned six decades. A chance to hear Meg Mason, the bestselling author of Sorrow and Bliss, about her new novel, Sophie Standing There, which deals with celebrity obsession and the publishing in...

Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and William Lee Adams join Tom Sutcliffe to review: The Life of M - the new novel from Rachel Cusk. The book centres on a writer’s attempt to chronicle the life of a globally famous film star, and explores the strangeness of celebrity. Stop! That! Train! - a comedy disaster movie featuring many of the stars from RuPaul's Drag Race. Coyote vs Acme - after a lengthy and tumultuou...

Ann Droid and Motherland star Paul Ready on his debut one man show Little Animals, a powerful piece of writing on climate, consumerism and the anxieties of being a Dad in today's world. The founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales on his book The Seven Rules of Trust, an optimistic view of how technology can impact on our lives. Comedian and actor Rosie Holt on her two shows at this year's Edinburgh Festi...

As contemporary art venue, The Light, prepares to open in Durham, its artistic director Tony Guillan, and the art critic Louisa Buck, discuss the new building and its opening exhibition, Victory Over the Sun: Encounters with Light. Comedian Iain Stirling is known to many for narrating Love Island. He's stepped out from behind the scenes to front new reality tv show Race Against The Tide where part...

The comedian Joe Lycett has long dabbled in art, but it's a serious business now as his first ever solo exhibition ‘Everything Must Go’ has just opened at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. He talks about how this show came together and why its most eye-catching piece is a giant pink and blue woolly mammoth called Martin. Charlotte Higgins talks to Samira Ahmed about her book Ukrainian Lessons...

Academic and critic Maria Delgado and writer and producer Jake Cunningham join Tom Sutcliffe to discuss the film Tony, a film about the early career of food writer Anthony Bourdain, who is played by Dominic Sessa. The film also stars Antonio Banderas, who becomes an unexpected mentor for the young chef. They also talk about Death Note: The Musical. Based on the best-selling Manga series of the sam...

Australian writer and performer Hannah Reilly talks to us about her much-anticipated one woman show about sex, power and authenticity, Roleplay, which is produced by the team behind Fleabag and Baby Reindeer and which has sold out in Edinburgh but is heading to London for a run in the autumn. Critic Fergus Morgan talks us through the other shows which are making a splash at this year's Edinburgh F...

Steph McGovern, presenter of new BBC show The Big Deal, is joined by Marie Le Conte to discuss how to buy art. Fleabag actor Sian Clifford on her lead role in "Lady", a new mockumentary film about a fading aristocrat. Why has a new show at Edinburgh about Amanda Knox been so controversial? Tristram Fane Saunders gives his assessment live from the Fringe Festival. And Colin Thubron, both a travel w...

What's the Royal Shakespeare Company's much anticipated stage adaptation of Game of Thrones like? Critics Boyd Hilton and Kate Maltby give their verdict. Conductor Marin Alsop on what makes American classical music sound American, ahead of her American Classics Prom on 24 August. TS Eliot Prize-winning poet Anthony Joseph discusses his new collection, Haunting the Black Air, which journeys from th...

Suzi Feay and John-Paul Stonard join Samira to review: Can Nothing Save Us?, the new novel from Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh, a state-of-the-nation thriller set in the US. The Summer Book, a new film starring Glenn Close and based on the beloved novel by Moomins creator Tove Jansson. And Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam at the Royal Academy, featuring paintings by the 19th century painter who spec...

In the first of our special programmes from the Edinburgh Festivals, actress Stockard Channing - star of Grease, Six Degrees of Separation and Practical Magic - joins us alongside her friend, actor David Westhead, to discuss their production of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, in which a cynical and disillusioned older man reflects on his early life as an ambitious and idealistic writer. Jeff W...

Samira is joined by two magicians live in the studio, from the stage show "Now You See Me Live". And then she takes part in a trick and is bamboozled! Jacqueline Crooks' latest novel Sky City follows a young woman and her friends in 1990's London, as they struggle to carve out lives for themselves in the shadow of their pasts. Jacqueline explains why literature is the perfect place to discuss diff...

John Hannah plays a washed-up former detective who has moved to Spain to run a pub in the new Channel 5 comedy drama Benidorm is Murder. He discusses the appeal of television crime series, and why working-class settings are underrepresented on the small screen. Hull Maritime Museum reopens after a £20 million refurbishment. Director Gillian Osgerby on why this museum is such an important feature o...

Rhianna Dhillon and Sarfraz Manzoor join Tom Sutcliffe to review: Childhood in War, an exhibition at the Imperial War Musuem exploring how children have experienced conflict from 1914 to the present day. Ish, the debut feature film from multimedia artist Imran Perretta which follows two boys in Luton as they navigate childhood against a backdrop of political tension and personal loss. And Children...

Composer Missy Mazzoli discusses her opera The Galloping Cure, which fuses a live orchestra with electronic beats and features a charismatic antihero and talking dogs. An allegory for a crisis which has become a worldwide epidemic, the production by Opera Ventures Productions and Scottish Opera receives its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival and is a reimagining of a story by F...

Professor Dame Mary Beard reveals the 2026 Booker longlist and how she has found the process of being Chair of the judges. British contemporary pop artist Philip Colbert’s latest installation has just been unveiled amidst the historic ruins of Pompeii. Philip talks to Samira Ahmed about being inspired by an ancient mosaic featuring a lobster, a symbol he frequently includes in his work, and how he...

Graeme Garden remembers his friend and Goodies colleague, Bill Oddie. Frank Miller reimagined Batman as a tougher, grittier sort of comic book hero: The Dark Knight. He has written a memoir and a guide for fans. The new Children's Laureate, writer Patrice Lawrence tells us about taking on such a prestigious role. And 850 years of the Eisteddfod - Archdruid Mererid Hopwood and Marc Rees discuss the...

Hanna Flint and Chris Power join Tom Sutcliffe to review: The new stage musical adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting, featuring famous songs from the 1996 Danny Boyle film as well as new compositions to bring Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud to life. On the Sea, a film by novelist and director Helen Walsh about a mussel fisherman in northern Wales and the romance that he kindles with...

In 1985, Wham were the first Western pop group to perform in communist China, and the tour changed people's lives. As a new documentary about this landmark moment in pop lands in cinemas - and screens on BBC Two next month - Andrew Ridgeley tells the story. From Merchant Ivory period dramas to Peaky Blinders, the art of costume making is celebrated in a new exhibition - Costume Couture - at Edinbu...

Actor Ruth Madeley on starring in new TV drama The Rapture - a psychological thriller where the competing interests of an oil company, a religious cult, a protest group and a disturbed young woman convicted of murdering her mother, are set against a backdrop of climate change. Singer Nadine Shah on her homecoming BBC Prom in Gateshead. After a three year standoff, Northern Ballet reaches an agreem...

Trent Park, the House of Secrets is a new museum in north London which explores the story of the secret listeners who eavesdropped on the conversations of German senior military prisoners of war. Samira is joined by Helen Lederer, whose grandfather who served as a WW2 secret listener, and the Chairman of Trent Park, Jason Charalambous. As Andy Burnham becomes the first Prime Minister to study Engl...

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by film critic Tim Robey and classicist Edith Hall to discuss: Christopher Nolan's much anticipated film version of Homer's epic The Odyssey, shot with IMAX cameras and with a stellar cast which includes Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya and Samantha Morton. A new production of The Oresteia directed by acclaimed Australian director Simon Stone at the Bridge Th...

The coming-of-age series Heartstopper has been a phenomenon with young readers and viewers in recent years. Its creator Alice Oseman joins us as the film Heartstopper Forever lands on Netflix, and as the final graphic novel in her series is published. JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is one of the all-time greats of American literature and has inspired many writers including George Saunders, D...