Front Row

Sheridan Smith is a comic actor (The Royle Family, Gavin and Stacey), a serious dramatic actor (Flare Path, The Moorside, Dustin Hoffman's film Quartet) and a star of musical theatre, from Bugsy Malone when she was 16 to Funny Girl. Now she has released her first solo album. She talks about the songs she has chosen and her career so far. The acclaimed actor Maxine Peake has written a play for Hull...

Hollywood star Christian Slater and director Sam Yates discuss David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross, in which Slater is currently starring. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is a film based on the true story of William Moulton Marston, his wife and his mistress who created Wonder Woman. It explores the creation of the female super hero as well as their poly-amorous re...

Hugh Grant explains how his early career in repertory theatre has helped him play faded actor Phoenix Buchanan, the villain in Paddington 2. Stephen Fry talks about his new book Mythos, a retelling of the Greek myths, and why he finds the tales of the gods, monsters and mortals of Ancient Greece so appealing. The two lead characters in the new cinematic release Call Me By Your Name are gay, yet th...

Toby Jones, Mackenzie Crook, the Louvre in Abu Dhabi plus film director Yorgos Lanthimos

Kenneth Lonergan, who recently won an Oscar for the screenplay to his film Manchester By the Sea, talks to Kirsty Lang about adapting E.M. Forster's Howards End for television. Hannah McGill discusses the acclaimed film The Florida Project, in which a young mother struggles to provide for her daughter while staying at a motel near Disney World. As two exhibitions curated by artists open in Belfast...

Novelists Joanne Harris and Jonathan Coe discuss their latest books which are both fairytales. Coe's The Broken Mirror is a modern fable with a political message while Harris' A Pocketful of Crows is based on traditional folklore. Director Luca Guadagnino talks about his acclaimed film Call Me By Your Name, a gay love story set in the Italian sun in the 1980s, starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie...

The actor and comedian Josie Lawrence is currently tackling Bertolt Brecht in a production of Mother Courage and her Children at Southwark Playhouse in London. She discusses the morality of Mother Courage with Samira and explains why the part was at the top of her theatrical bucket list. In the wake of Prue Leith revealing the Bake Off winner, TV Times journalist Emma Bullimore looks at the length...

To coincide with the publication of a book which collects all her artwork from the past decade, Tracey Emin comes into the Front Row studio to look back at that prolific period which saw her represent Britain at the Venice Biennial. Twenty-five years after publishing The Ice House, the first of her many highly successful crime novels, Minette Walters discusses her historical fiction debut, The Las...

As she makes her debut at the Royal Opera House in Lucia di Lammermoor, Lisette Oropesa talks about combining a career as one of the world's top sopranos with a passion for running marathons. Richard Flanagan won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. He talks to Shahidha Bari about his follow-up novel, First Person, based on his own experience of ghost-writing a notoriou...

Bill Bailey talks to Shahidha Bari ahead of his UK tour, and tries out the new Front Row keyboard. Philip Pullman discusses his new novel La Belle Sauvage, a prequel to the best-selling trilogy His Dark Materials, and his collection of essays on storytelling, Daemon Voices. Sarah Churchwell reviews the TV mini-series Alias Grace, an adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel about a 19th century servan...

Annie Leibovitz looks back at her career of nearly 50 years, in which she's photographed many of the world's leaders, celebrities and the Royal Family. With the publication of her book Annie Leibovitz Portraits 2005-2016 she reflects on the turbulent decade and how that has informed her more recent work. Andy Serkis discusses his directorial debut, Breathe, the true story of Robin Cavendish. At 28...

Nicholas Hytner, who used to run the National Theatre, has a new project - The Bridge Theatre. Richard Bean (who wrote One Man Two Guvnors) and Clive Coleman discuss their play Young Marx, the theatre's opening production, which reveals how the man who brilliantly analysed the workings of the capitalist economy was hopeless with money. Stranger Things, the retro Netflix teen sci-fi series, was a s...

Revelations about Harvey Weinstein's casting couch have led some of the biggest voices in Hollywood to talk about this being a watershed moment. So tonight we'll be asking where we are when it comes to sexism and the treatment of women in the arts. And how are leaders in the creative industries responding? Joining us live will be Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of London's Royal Court Theatr...

Kiwi director Taika Waititi, known for Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Flight of the Conchords, on bringing his comedic style of indie film-making to the Hollywood superhero blockbuster in Marvel's Thor: Ragnarok. Eisenstein's film about the Russian Revolution, October, is about to be screened in its newly restored original version, with the London Symphony Orchestra performing the original score li...

Tales of The City writer Armistead Maupin discusses his new memoir Logical Family, which details his early life in an ultra-conservative family in the deep South, serving in Vietnam, and his move to San Francisco, the city with which he is most associated. On the 25th anniversary of the death of choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Viviana Durante, former principal ballerina of the Royal Ballet, a...

Comedian Harry Hill is best known for writing and presenting the BAFTA-winning television show, Harry Hill's TV Burp - which ran for 11 years - and for narrating You've Been Framed, the series which features funny home video clips. Tonight, the doctor-turned-comic introduces Matt Millz, eponymous hero of Matt Millz - The Youngest Stand-Up Comedian in the World, his latest children's novel, which i...

Daniel Radcliffe stars in new film Jungle, about the real experience of Yossi Ghinsberg who spent three weeks lost in the Bolivian jungle. Daniel explains what it was like to portray this epic fight for survival on screen. I Am Not a Witch was one of the highlights of this year's Cannes film festival. The satirical drama, set in Zambia, about a young girl accused of being a witch, is now due to op...

Beth Ditto talks about her debut solo album Fake Sugar, her first since the break up of her punk-pop band Gossip, in which she returns to her Southern roots. Jackie Kay performs new work live. When Jackie became Scotland's Makar, or National Poet, she said she hoped to open 'the blethers, the arguments and celebrations that Scotland has with itself'. In Bantam, her first collection as Makar, she d...

The American singer St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, discusses her new album Masseduction. Andrew Michael Hurley's debut novel The Loney was a runaway success, winning the 2015 Costa Book Award in the First Novel category. The author discusses his follow-up, Devil's Day, which like The Loney is a gothic horror story set in Lancashire. The Tin Drum by Nobel Laureate Günter Grass centres on Oskar, who...

Armando Iannucci, writer of The Thick of It, discusses his new film satire The Death of Stalin and his love of classical music as explored in his book, Hear Me Out. Kwame Kwei-Armah has been running the Center Stage Theater in Baltimore and in February will take over the Young Vic in London. Meanwhile he's directing The Lady From the Sea, in a new version by Elinor Cook that transports Ibsen's Sca...

Kit Harington on playing his own ancestor in Gunpowder, the new BBC1 drama series about the 17th Century plot to blow up Parliament. Kele Okereke, lead singer of Bloc Party, talks to Stig about his new solo album Fatherland, which includes a love duet with Olly Alexander, and he performs live in the studio. As 80's supersoap Dynasty returns with a remake on Netflix, Karen Krizanovich gives her ver...

Kate Mossman reviews George Michael: Freedom, the film George Michael was working when he died, in which he and a host of A-List names talk about his songs, his career, his relationships and his battles with the music industry. The Irish writer John Banville is the highly acclaimed winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize, The Sea. His novels include The Book of Evidence, Ghosts and now, Mrs Osmond. It...

In his latest film, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), Dustin Hoffman plays an old, bitter, self obsessed sculptor, whose children from several marriages nonetheless crave his approval. He and the director, Noah Baumbach, discuss grumpiness, fatherhood and the nature of success with Kirsty Lang. In St Ives the Tate is about to reopen with refurbished rooms rehung with wonderful work, by in...

In Sally Potter's latest film, The Party, a group of friends meet to celebrate a promotion but their lives begin to unravel as shocking secrets are exposed. The writer-director speaks to John about the film which stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall and Emily Mortimer. Writer and critic Hadley Freeman and the playwright and TV writer and actor Eva O'Connor discuss the challenges of depicting...

Audre Lorde described herself as "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet". A writer of the 70s and 80s, this month her poetry and prose is published in the UK for the first time in a new anthology: Your Silence Will Not Protect You. Akwugo Emejulu, Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick discusses the resurgent interest in Lorde's work and her importance to contemporary activists Dan Br...