Front Row

Andrew Haigh’s new film All of Us Strangers, is both a love story and a ghost story. Starring Andrew Scott, it explores the impact of a chance encounter in a deserted tower block, and how nostalgia draws him back to the suburban family home where his parents appear to be living, just as they were on the day they died, 30 years ago. Tom Hibbert was a popular music journalist who wrote for Smash Hit...

Actor Paul Giamatti and director Alexander Payne on The Holdovers, their award-winning film about the unlikely friendship between a curmudgeonly teacher, a grieving mum and a troubled teen that forms when they’re stuck together over Christmas at a New England prep school. Critics Stephanie Merritt and Max Liu review a new novel, The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez. Nunez has won many prizes for her f...

Daniel Kaluuya on making his debut as a director and screenwriter with his new film, Kitchen - a dystopian thriller set in London twenty years from now. Dafydd Rhys, Chief Executive of the Arts Council of Wales, on the surprising and controversial decision to stop funding National Theatre Wales. Plus, as his organisation faces a 10% budget cut, he talks about the impact on the creative sector in W...

Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos talk about their award-winning film Poor Things, based on Alasdair Gray’s novel Jodie Comer is a new mother struggling to survive after an environmental catastrophe in another new film The End We Start From – Samira Ahmed talks to its director Mahalia Belo. The new joint artistic directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans have announce...

British director Jonathan Glazer tells Tom Sutcliffe about The Zone of Interest, his award-winning new film about Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss and family’s involvement in the Holocaust which is on wide release from February 2nd but there's previews in select cities on January 20th. Today is exactly 100 years since the BBC broadcast what is widely believed to be the first play for radio, A Come...

Mean Girls is 20 years old and has its cult following - but will fans love the new film of the hit Broadway musical of the same name? Critics Sarah Ditum and Ashley Hickson-Lovence give their verdict on the new version. They also discuss with Tom Sutcliffe the new novel by Hisham Matar - My Friends, which explores themes of friendship and exile, as well as including real-life events like the shoot...

Jack Rooke drew on his own life for his hit Channel 4 sitcom Big Boys which focussed on an unlikely friendship between two first year university students – both working class with one struggling to explore his gay sexuality and the other an apparent Jack-the-lad who is really anything but. As Big Boys returns for a second series, he talks to Samira about making comedy out of loss, mental health, a...

Ins Choi, the creator of the Netflix hit comedy series, Kim’s Convenience, talks about getting past stereotypes, keeping audiences on edge and bringing his original Korean-Canadian stage version of the show to the Park Theatre in north London. Tom Sutcliffe asks author and journalist Rachel Cooke and children's author and representative of the Society of Authors Abie Longstaff about the impact of...

Yorgis Lanthimos’ black comedy Poor Things won Best Film and Best Actress for its star Emma Stone at last night’s Golden Globe awards, so this evening we’re joined by critics Leila Latif and James Marriott for a review of the much hyped film ahead of its release in the UK on Friday. Warhammer 40,000 is one of the most popular games in the world. Recently the makers finalised a deal with Amazon whi...

Priscilla is Sofia Coppola’s film about Priscilla Beaulieu who first met Elvis Presley when she was 14 years old and later became his wife. Critics Hannah Strong and Ryan Gilbey review it. They also look at Kagami, a mixed-reality posthumous concert featuring the music of Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. The power of music often relies on the spaces between the notes. Sarah Anderson’s book The...

In the work for which he is best known, the multi-award winning television sitcom, Schitt’s Creek, as well as being the show’s creator, Dan Levy played the capricious David Rose whose wedding with his business partner, Patrick Brewer, was the focus of the final episode. He discusses new Netflix movie, Good Grief, which marks his debut as a film director and in which he plays a man blindsided by th...

The Boys in the Boat tells the story of the surprise success of the US rowing team at 1936 Munich Olympics. Samira talks to the director George Clooney and its star Callum Turner. Writer Gwyneth Hughes talks about her new ITV production, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which dramatises what has been called the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, the prosecution of hundreds of sub...

One of the TV hits of 2023, Ghosts returns for a one-off special on Christmas Day. Festive viewing for many families will also probably include other work by one of its creators, Simon Farnaby, who co-wrote Wonka as well as the Paddington films. Critics Kate Maltby and Boyd Hilton review Donmar Warehouse’s Macbeth starring David Tennant and Cush Jumbo – which includes headphones for the audience....

Acclaimed English folk group The Unthanks are currently touring the UK with what they describe as a winter fantasia - a mix of traditional and newly written songs inspired by winter and Christmas. They join Front Row, as the winter solstice draws near, to discuss and perform some of the songs they've been playing. Screenwriter Lucinda Coxon talks to Nick Ahad about her new film One Life which star...

Adam Driver stars in Michael Mann’s film Ferrari, set in the summer of 1957 as the ex-racer turned entrepreneur Enzo Ferrari pushes his drivers to the limit on a thousand mile race across Italy while his business and marriage are failing. A poet would never publish a first draft. Well, not until Rosanna McGlone interviewed 15 of our finest poets – Don Paterson, Gillian Clarke and Pascale Petit amo...

Helena Bonham Carter and Russell T Davies talk to Samira about their ITV drama series Nolly, in which Bonham Carter plays Crossroads star Noele Gordon. As a new stage adaptation of the hit TV drama Stranger Things opens in London, writer Kate Trefry discusses how she made the much loved TV series work as theatre. And musician Laura Misch explains how technology can bring us closer to nature and pe...

Front Row reviews some of the week’s cultural highlights. Tom Sutcliffe is joined by film critic Hanna Flint and Will Hodgkinson, chief pop and rock critic for The Times, to discuss Cold War, a new musical with music from Elvis Costello, and animated film Chicken Run: Return of the Nugget. Luke Jones reports on the super-fans of the musical Operation Mincemeat, who have been investigating the stor...

Bradley Cooper directs and stars in the new film Maestro about the hugely influential American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein alongside Carey Mulligan as his wife, the actor Felicia Montealegre. Nick Ahad speaks to both of them about portraying a ‘marriage through music’ and how Cooper spent six years preparing to conduct Mahler’s Resurrection with the London Symphony Orchestra. Fifty ye...

Margaret Cavendish was born exactly 400 years ago, and her many achievements include writing The Blazing World, arguably the first ever sci-fi novel. Novelist Siri Hustvedt and biographer Francesca Peacock discuss the enduring legacy of this pioneering woman, with extracts read by Rhiannon Neads Margreth Olin tells Samira about her film Songs of Earth, for which she returned to the valley in Weste...

Tom Sutcliffe talks to Andy Serkis and Louisa Harland about Ulster American, a new play in which they star at Riverside Studios with Woody Harrelson. It's panto season (oh no it isn't), a form that has always played with ideas of gender. Megan Lawton explores how this year's crop continue that tradition. Plus Rachel Cooke and Ian Dunt choose their graphic novels of 2023, and we announce the winner...

Fred D'Aguiar discusses the life and poetry of Benjamin Zephaniah, whose death was announced today. Tom Sutcliffe reviews Wim Wenders' film about the artist Anselm Kiefer and the BBC's adaptation of Enid Blyton's The Famous Five, with film critic Leila Latif and children's author Candy Gourlay. Which is the standout Christmas TV advert this year? Tom discusses the art of selling Christmas with Mat...

Paddington director Paul King returns with Wonka starring Timothée Chalamet in the title role. He talks with Samira about exploring the backstory of Willy Wonka and Roald Dahl’s surprising vision for fiction’s greatest confectioner. Front Row rounds up the best non-fiction books of 2023 with Caroline Sanderson - non-fiction books editor for The Bookseller and chair of judges for the Baillie Giffor...

Shane Meadows talks about his unconventional journey into the British film industry and his vision for more diversity in film, as he prepares to give the David Lean lecture at BAFTA. The founders of independent publishers Oneworld, Juliet Mabey and Novin Doostdar, discuss their Booker Prize hat trick as Paul Lynch becomes the third of their authors to win the prestigious literary prize. Which book...

Julia Roberts, and the director of her latest project, Sam Esmail, discuss their new film, Leave The World Behind - a psychological thriller which explores what happens when all the things that make modern life possible stop working. With their last film, the much-garlanded ‘Loving Vincent’, an exploration of the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh, the co-directors and co-writers Dorota and Hugh We...

Front Row reviews the week’s cultural highlights. Samira Ahmed is joined by critics Sarah Crompton and Isabel Stevens to discuss William Oldroyd’s new film Eileen and a production of The House of Bernarda Alba at the National Theatre. The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan, who is often described as one of the 20th Century’s greatest song-writers, has died age 65. Irish broadcaster John Kelly remember...