Front Row

The BBC's Contains Strong Language festival has left British shores for the first time - and Australian arts and culture presenter Michael Cathcart hosts a special Front Row recorded on Gadigal land in Sydney in partnership with ABC and Red Room Poetry. Known as the Aussie Bob Dylan, singer Paul Kelly performs Going To The River With Dad from his forthcoming album Fever Longing Still. First nation...

Richard O'Brien and Jason Donovan on 50 years of the Rocky Horror Show, Bella Mackie on her new novel which follows the success her hit book How to Kill Your Family, a look at Chromatica, a new privately funded orchestra and the life and work of lyricist Will Jennings, who died last weekend. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Corinna Jones

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by academic and critic John Mullan and Elodie Harper, the bestselling author of The Wolf Den Trilogy for the Front Row review show. They discuss Jeff Goldblum as a modern-day Zeus in the series Kaos, Rachel Kushner’s thriller Creation Lake, which has been longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, and the historical drama Firebrand, staring Jude Law as Henry VIII and Alicia V...

Members of Scotland's cultural community discuss the controversy around a cut to vital funding. Ahead of his third year performing at the Lammermuir Festival of classical music, leading American pianist Jeremy Denk talks about his passion for musical maverick Charles Ives, whose 150th birthday he is celebrating with a special concert and a new album of his sonatas. And debut playwright Harry Mould...

Following the international success of SIX the Musical, writers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss are in the studio to discuss their new work Why Am I So Single? They discuss maintaining their creative momentum after writing a global phenomenon. We hear from the creators of the award winning Australian comedy Colin From Accounts. Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall discuss writing and starring in the hit sh...

Michael Keaton on his new film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, coming over 35 years after the original film and which reunites him with director Tim Burton. Tim Minchin, the comedian, actor, musician, and songwriter behind the musicals Matilda and Groundhog Day, talks about how his experiences have shaped his first non-fiction book You Don’t Have To Have A Dream. On the eve of a British and American tour...

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Leila Latif and Dorian Lynskey to review Kneecap, a debut film from Rich Peppiatt about a trio of Irish language rappers from West Belfast, Ootlin, a memoir from author and poet Jenni Fagan recounting her traumatic childhood in care and Bad Monkey, a television comedy cop drama set in Florida starring Vince Vaughn. George Orwell’s biographer D J Taylor considers the impo...

Sherwood writer James Graham argues that TV has a problem with working class representation, both in front of and behind the screen, as he delivers this year's MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival. Sherwood Series 2 starts on BBC1 on Sunday. Alexander McCall Smith, best-selling author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, on his new stand alone novel set in Edinburgh, The Winds from Fur...

Fran Healy, lead singer of indie-rock band Travis, on why their tenth album LA Times is the most personal since their breakthrough album, The Man Who, and why Los Angeles is a good place to be an artist. As Equity calls for better guidelines for how the video games industry treats actors and performers, Rebecca Yeo, a member of the union's Video Game Working Party discusses what's needed. Brian Wa...

Samira Ahmed talks to Pat Barker about the final part of her Troy trilogy, The Voyage Home. Alain Delon has died at the age of 88 - President Macron called him a French monument. Film critic Ginette Vincendeau assesses his impact on French film. At the Proms two orchestras are set to play works by Beethoven and Mozart from memory - conductor Nicholas Collon from the Aurora Orchestra explains how m...

Kirsty Wark reviews highlights from the Edinburgh Festival, joined by critics Ian Rankin, Chitra Ramaswamy and Dominic Maxwell. They discuss two adaptations of Amy Liptrot's bestselling memoir about addiction, The Outrun. The film version opens the Edinburgh Film Festival tonight and stars Saoirse Ronan in the lead. The stage play The Outrun is a Royal Lyceum Theatre production for the Edinburgh I...

David Morrissey stars as a hapless father in the new BBC comedy Daddy Issues - alongside Sex Education's Aimee Lou Wood as his pregnant daughter. Samira Ahmed asks him about playing for laughs - as well as reprising his role in James Graham's Sherwood, which is about to return to BBC1, featuring local gangs in Nottinghamshire and a proposed new coal mine, an unwelcome reminder of past rivalries. A...

This programme has been edited since broadcast. Kirsty Wark launches Front Row's regular Scottish editions with a live show from the Edinburgh Festival. Kirsty's guests are the comedians Rose Matafeo and Nish Kumar, Miriam Margolyes performs Dickens, and the Scottish band Teenage Fanclub play a song from their latest album. Plus Charlene Boyd performs a number from her hit show about the American...

This year’s WorldCon - the World Science Fiction Convention - took place in Glasgow and pop culture critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw reports on the international gathering where the winners of the Hugo Awards 2024 were announced last night. Emily Tesh on winning the Best Novel prize at this year’s Hugo Awards with her debut novel, Some Desperate Glory. Young playwright Kelly Jones discusses her Edinbur...

Critics Susannah Clapp and Tim Robey join Tom to review a new RSC production at Stratford of one Shakespeare’s less performed plays Pericles, the pregnancy comedy film Babes directed by Pamela Adlon and Michael Longley’s retrospective collection of poems, The Ash Keys. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producers: Harry Parker and Natasha Mardikar

Ex-Wife, a 1929 novel by Ursula Parrott, about the failure of a young couple’s marriage and the subsequent promiscuous partying of the wife in New York, was a huge bestseller when it came out. For many years it was out of print but has now been re-issued. Novelist and screenwriter Monica Heisey and American literature professor Sarah Churchwell judge whether it is one of the hidden gems of the jaz...

Joan Baez on her poetry collection inspired by her diagnosis of multiple personality disorder, called When You See My Mother Ask Her to Dance. Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London has a new bilingual production of Antony and Cleopatra in English and British Sign Language. Tom talks to Blanche McIntyre, the director and Charlotte Arrowsmith, actor and associate director. Charlotte Mendelson on her...

Directors Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry on Kinsuke's Kingdom, their hand-drawn animated film which features a shipwrecked boy who learns about the natural world from a Japanese soldier who's been living secretly on an island since the end of World War II. How closely do we watch trailers when deciding which film to watch next? Film critic Larushka Ivan Zadeh and Sam Cryer from Intermission Trailer Ho...

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Rhianna Dhillon and Viv Groskop to review novel Echoes by Evie Wyld, which focuses on Max, a ghost who, stuck in the flat they had shared, watches his girlfriend grieving and discovers secrets about her. Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor talks about his upcoming performance of the longest concerto ever written, the Piano Concerto by Ferruccio Busoni, whose centenary is celebrat...

Labour MPs are having a moment on the stage with Jennie Lee, the UK's first Arts Minister, the subject of Lindsay Rodden's eponymous new play for Mikron Theatre, and Education Minister Ellen Wilkinson the focus of Paul Unwin's new play, The Promise, about the 1945 Labour Government. Lindsay and Paul join Front Row to discuss dramatizing parliamentary politics. Acclaimed music journalist writer Jon...

A new production of The Grapes of Wrath opens at the National Theatre with Cherry Jones taking on the role of matriarch Ma Joad. She joins Samira to talk about Steinbeck's tale of poverty and the hostility the poor face in America - plus her thoughts on art, violence and America today. Deadpool & Wolverine is the new Marvel film, its director Shawn Levy discusses the latest in the superhero fi...

A new production of The Grapes of Wrath opens at the National Theatre with Cherry Jones taking on the role of matriarch Ma Joad. She joins Samira to talk about Steinbeck's tale of poverty and the hostility the poor face in America - plus her thoughts on art, violence and America today. Deadpool & Wolverine is the new Marvel film, its director Shawn Levy discusses the latest in the superhero fi...

Colm Toibin, Bonnie Greer and Mendez join Samira Ahmed to celebrate the life and work of the American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin, author of the landmark gay novel Giovanni's Room, as part of a series of programmes on BBC Radio 4 and 3 marking the 100th anniversary of his birth. Colm Toibin is author of the book On James Baldwin Bonnie Greer is writing a memoir of her own person...

Novelist Stephanie Merritt and literary editor of the Spectator Sam Leith are Tom Sutcliffe's guest reviewers. They give their verdict on the new production of Hello Dolly at London's Palladium starring Imelda Staunton, Netflix's The Decameron - which depicts the haves and the have-nots in plague-ridden 14th century Florence - and the 3 hour long Turkish film, About Dry Grasses, which features the...

Hollywood star Keanu Reeves and award-winning author China Miéville have joined forces for The Book of Elsewhere, which is based on Keanu's hit comic book series BRZRKR and tells the story of an immortal warrior and his journey through time. As Paris prepares to welcome the world for the Olympic and Paralympic Games this week, the writer and broadcaster Agnés Poirier reports on the City of Light's...