Front Row

Benedict Cumberbatch speaks to Kate Molleson about the new film adaptation of Max Porter's Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, an exploration of loss and berievement. On Tuesday night, the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2025 was announced. They join Kate to dicuss their work, and the significance of taking home the prize. 100 years ago, one of the best viola players of her gener...

Riz Ahmed is one of his generation’s great British actors. He starred alongside Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler, before landing roles in big budget films from Jason Bourne to Rogue One. For his latest role, Ahmed has teamed up with director David McKenzie to play a man who works as a broker between whistleblowers and the companies who want their secrets returned. As Shiv in Succession, the schemin...

Zadie Smith talks about the art of the essay, as she publishes a non-fiction collection, Dead and Alive. Brenda Blethyn discusses her new film Dragonfly, for which she's just been nominated for Best Joint Performance at the British Independent Film Awards along with her co-star Andrea Riseborough. In the last of Front Row's interviews with the authors shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Samira talks...

Tahmima Anam and Tristram Fane Saunders join Tom Sutcliffe to review The Eleventh Hour, a collection of five short stories from Salman Rushdie in his first return to fiction since he was attacked in 2022. Director of Poor Things and The Favourite Yorgos Lanthimos brings more strangeness to cinema screens with Bugonia, a thriller with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. And Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Pri...

Live from Derry. As the climax of the current series approaches, actors Dearbháile McKinney and Martin McCann, two of the cast of hit police series Blue Lights, talk about their roles. Writer John Morton talks to us about his play Denouement, a darkly comic tale set in the run-up to apocalyptic events in 2048 and which is receiving its world premiere at the Belfast International Arts Festival. And...

In tribute to Prunella Scales, whose death was announced today, Front Row rebroadcasts an interview with the Fawlty Towers star from 2012, recorded on the eve of her 80th birthday. Samira talks to two documentary makers who gained extraordinary access to world leaders for their films. Tommy Gulliksen followed Nato Chief Jens Stoltenberg for his film Facing War, and Petra Costa followed several Bra...

Actor Reese Witherspoon on why she's teamed up with thriller writer Harlan Coben to write a novel called Gone Before Goodbye, about a struck-off army surgeon who uncovers a global conspiracy. Colin Farrell discusses his new film Ballad of a Small Player, about a gambler on the verge of losing everything, which is directed by Oscar winner Edward Berger. What is the best amount of time to look at a...

Tom Sutcliffe and guests review the Bruce Springsteen film, Deliver Me From Nowhere, which tells the story of his recording of the album Nebraska Also there's a new book from the late Harper Lee: The Land of Sweet Forever, comprising newly discovered short stories and previously-published essays and magazine pieces. Is it a posthumous intellectual property trawl or does it offer an insight that ca...

Bestselling thriller writer John Grisham on his latest book, The Widow, in which a smalltown lawyer from Virginia finds himself accused of a serious crime after he develops a professional relationship with a wealthy woman who may not be all that she seems. We hear from writer-director Kelly Reichardt and from actor Josh O'Connor who plays an art thief in her latest film The Mastermind. Dutch art h...

Comedy giant Steve Martin on making new bluegrass music with pioneering banjo player Alison Brown with their new album, Safe, Sensible, and Sane. Filmmaker Nia DaCosta on her cinematic retelling of Ibsen's classic play, Hedda Gabbler. Sharon Heal, Director of the Museums Association on British industrial heritage emerging from the cultural shadows. Senior curator at the Horniman Museum, Heba Abd e...

Cathy Tyson stars in the Leicester Curve Theatre production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee. She talks about the demanding, drunken role of Martha. Jewellery expert Joanna Hardy discusses the robbery of France's Crown Jewels from the Louvre Museum in Paris. As AI becomes an increasingly powerful tool, we speak to two artists who are experimenting with technology in music product...

Guillermo Del Toro talks about his new Frankenstein film and our critics deliver their verdict. Julia Roberts plays a college professor whose career becomes entangled in campus sexual politics, in Luca Guadanino's After The Hunt. Hollie McNish's poetry collection "Virgin" unpicks the meaning of the word and the man-made concept beneath it. Presenter Samira Ahmed Reviewers: Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and...

Singer songwriter Richard Ashcroft - former frontman of The Verve - talks about the material on his new album Lovin You, and about supporting Oasis on their reunion tour this summer. A play without a script which questions the impact of AI on our lives and celebrates the ingenuity of human actors: Writer Nathan Ellis and actor Roisin Gallagher join us live to talk about Instructions, which is bein...

Sam Ryder talks to Samira about his career, gaining Eurovision success with Space Man and he performs the song Armour live, a track from his forthcoming album Heartland. With chart topping songs and a global smash hit animated film, directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans talk about creating the phenomenon that is KPop Demon Hunters. The Pulitzer prize winning African American writer Hilton Als...

Pianist Lang Lang's 2019 album Piano Book was one of the best selling classical albums that year, with over a billion streams and counting. He’s now followed it up with Piano Book 2, an eclectic selection of 32 short works from both classical and contemporary composers. He came into the studio to talk to us about the album and to play for us. Diane Keaton passed away on Saturday, at the age of 79....

Alexander Larman and Susannah Clapp join Tom to discuss I Swear, a film which tells the life story of John Davidson MBE who was diagnosed with Tourette's age 15. They also talk about Thomas Pynchon's new novel Shadow Ticket. Booker shortlisted novelist Tibor Fischer assesses the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai who has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. As the complete works of Seamus Heaney...

Actor Tamsin Greig discusses her role in Sally Wainwright's latest drama series, Riot Women, in which a group of middle-aged women in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, form a band of anarchist rock musicians. Booker Prize-shortlisted author Susan Choi tells us about her sprawling historical epic, Flashlight, set against the backdrop of the shared history of America, Japan and Korea. Conservation spec...

Artist Marina Abramović on the world premiere of her largest-scale performance artwork - Balkan Erotic Epic - at Aviva Studios in Manchester. BBC Culture reporter Noor Nanji on the Riyadh Comedy Festival which has divided the comedy world. Poets Max Wallis and Dr Anna Percy on poetry and mental health as their new poetry magazine, The Aftershock Review, makes an impressive debut. Clare Wood, Artis...

Film director Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar for The Hurt Locker. She discusses her new film A House of Dynamite, which also looks at war, with Samira Booker-winner Kiran Desai has been nominated for her new novel - 2 decades in the writing; The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Islam Issa and Ben Luke join Samira to discuss 'what are the humanities for and wher...

The Smashing Machine director Benny Safdie talks to Tom Sutcliffe about making his biographical drama about the life of mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr. Tom is also joined by critics Boyd Hilton and Natalie Jamieson to review Safdie’s film – which stars wrestler turned actor Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Emily Blunt. They also discuss a major retrospective of photographer Lee Miller at Tate B...

Steve Coogan on his new spoof documentary series. in which his alter ego Alan Partridge returns from some time in Saudia Arabia to tackle one of the most pressing issues of our time: mental health. In the first of our interviews with writers shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize, American novelist Katie Kitamura discusses her book Audition, a story told through the first person voice of an unna...

Tom Sutcliffe hosts the ceremony for the 2025 BBC National Short Story Award and Young Writers Award live from BBC Broadcasting House. Judges William Boyd, Lucy Caldwell, Ross Raisin and Joseph Coehlo discuss what makes a great short story. This is the 20th anniversary of the BBC National Short Story Award and you can hear all the shortlisted stories on BBC Sounds. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Produce...

Actor Matthew McConaughey talks with Samira about The Lost Bus; a nerve shredding film based on a true story about a school bus driver who rescued 22 children and their teacher from raging wildfires in California Rising British actor Harris Dickinson talks about his debut film as a director; Urchin. It explores homelessness on London’s streets, being in the running to play James Bond and his up-co...

Leonardo DiCaprio and director Paul Thomas Anderson tell Tom about their new film One Battle After Another. Our reviewers tonight are film critic Tim Robey and theatre critic Sarah Crompton. They also review The Land of the Living, David Lan's new play for the National Theatre, directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Juliet Stevenson . And Patricia Lockwood's latest novel Will There Ever Be Anothe...

Will & Grace star Eric McCormack tells us about his latest screen role – in the new BBC One thriller series Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue. McCormack plays one of nine people who survive a plane crash in the Mexican jungle, and aren't aware that a murderer might be lurking in their midst. We hear the true story of a bear who was adopted from a Highland wildlife park in the 70s and became a st...