Front Row

Samira Ahmed and guests Maria Delgado and Isabel Stevens review two of the week’s top cultural picks. They discuss a new exhibition of Spanish art, Spain and the Hispanic World, at the Royal Academy in London and Holy Spider, a film by Iranian director Ali Abbasi based on the true story of a serial killer in the holy city of Mashhad in 2001. Blind artist Clarke Reynolds talks about his exhibition...

A new exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield celebrates the relationship that two of the UK’s greatest sculptors, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, had with the Yorkshire landscape they grew up in. Eleanor Clayton, the curator of the exhibition, Magic in this Country, joins the landscape photographer Kate Kirkwood - who has just published a new book, Cowspines, that blends the landscape of the Lake...

Over the last three weeks Front Row has broadcast a poem by each of the 10 writers shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry. The winner was announced last night: Anthony Joseph, for his collection Sonnets for Albert. Anthony talks to Samira Ahmed about his sequence of sonnets exploring his relationship with his often absent father, winning the prize and the attraction of the sonnet form. Rese...

Nine-time Grammy winning record producer and Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin has produced hits for artists including Run DMC, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Johnny Cash. He discusses drawing on his experience for his new book The Creative Act: A Way of Being. Theatre director Rebecca Frecknall discusses her new production of A Streetcar Named Desire and the nuances that Tennessee Williams’s writing has f...

The film critic Clarisse Loughrey and literary editor Sam Leith join Tom Sutcliffe live in the studio to review the new HBO series The Last of Us, based on the critically acclaimed video game, and the film Enys Men, a Cornish folk horror by Mark Jenkin, the BAFTA winning director of BAIT. In the most recent in an occasional series of interviews about the artistic influence of mentors, the musician...

Tár is a psychological drama about an imaginary conductor, Lydia Tár, which has already made waves both for its central performance by Cate Blanchett and for its striking, sometimes dreamlike story about the abuses of power. It is tipped for awards and Cate Blanchett has already won the Golden Globe for her performance. The writer and director, Todd Field, joins Front Row. The news that the celebr...

Designer Steven Zapata and artist Anna Ridler discuss whether AI art poses a threat to artists and designers. Imagine reading more than 200 new books of poetry. That was the task faced by the judges of the T S Eliot Prize. Jean Sprackland and fellow judge Roger Robinson talk to Tom Sutcliffe about their experience and what they learned about the art of poetry today. It’s the time of year when love...

The Light in the Hall, a crime drama starring Joanna Scanlan, has launched on Channel 4 following its previous incarnation in Welsh on S4C, as Y Golau. Director Andy Newbery joins Shahidha to discuss directing a bilingual ‘back to back’ TV production with a single cast and crew. Photographer Mark Power discusses his seminal book The Shipping Forecast, which has been re-released with over 100 previ...

John Preston, the Costa Award-winning biographer of media tycoon Robert Maxwell, makes his screenwriting debut with a drama about another infamous figure of the 1970s, the MP John Stonehouse. He joins Tom Sutcliffe to discuss the line between fact and fiction in dramatising the story of the MP who faked his own death. Reviewers Amon Warmann and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh give their verdicts on two major...

The English composer William Byrd died 400 years ago. To mark this the acclaimed vocal ensemble Stile Antico is about to release an album of his music. Five of the twelve members of the ensemble come to the Front Row studio to sing and talk about Byrd's extraordinary and moving music. The author and founder of the Women's Prize for Fiction Kate Mosse and actor Julie T Wallace, who played Ruth in t...

Tom Hanks talks about playing a curmudgeonly older man whose life changes when a young family moves in next door in his latest film, A Man Called Otto. Author Deepti Kapoor on her new novel, Age of Vice, which explores crime and corruption in the world of New Delhi’s elites. The London Ticket Bank – promising tens of thousands of theatre and music tickets across the capital to those most impacted...

Front Row visits Leeds as the city prepares to celebrate culture throughout 2023. Following Brexit, Leeds’ bid for European Capital of Culture was ruled ineligible. Sharon Watson, Principal of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, reflects on the initial disappointment and the decision to press ahead anyway, and creating a new dance work for The Awakening - the opening event of Leeds 2023 Yea...

Critics Tim Robey and Rhianna Dhillon join Front Row to watch the murder-mystery gothic horror film The Pale Blue Eye, starring Christian Bale, Gillian Anderson and Harry Melling, as Edgar Allan Poe, and the return of Happy Valley starring Sarah Lancashire and written by Sally Wainwright for what will be its final series. After the Windsor Castle fire in 1992, the artist Alexander Creswell was com...

Film director Marie Kreutzer on her new period drama film, Corsage, about the rebellious Elisabeth, 19th-century empress of Austria and queen of Hungary. Matthew Sweet joins Front Row to mark the work of Mike Hodges, the celebrated director of the classic films Get Carter and Flash Gordon, whose death has just been announced. When does an 'art-speak' buzzword, such as 'immersive' or 'liminal,' add...

Terry Hall of The Specials remembered after his sad passing. We hear him talking to John Wilson in 2019, and Pete Paphides looks back on his life and music. Plus, the state of UK theatre and its future outlook. Samira is joined by Nica Burns, co-owner of Nimax, who runs seven West End theatres and recently opened Soho Place - the first new theatre to open in the West End in 50 years; plus Matthew...

Lucy Prebble, acclaimed playwright and Succession screenwriter, talks to Tom about the return of I Hate Suzie Too, her TV collaboration with Billie Piper about a B-list celebrity making a reality TV comeback, following an intimate phone hacking scandal. Immersive and interactive exhibitions, performances and ‘experiences’ are everywhere, from the Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Reel Store in Coventr...

For our Thursday review, film critic Leila Latif and art critic Ben Luke join Samira to discuss the much anticipated release of the Avatar sequel, The Way of Water and the exhibition of the late Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle Of Thread And Rope at Tate Modern in London. The much-loved and much-celebrated illustrator and author Sir Quentin Blake will be 90 on December 16th. He is...

Neil Gaiman reflects on The Ocean at the End of the Lane as the stage adaption of his award-winning novel begins a nationwide tour. A new report investigating China's art censorship in Europe has just been published. Jemimah Steinfeld, Editor-in-Chief of Index-on-Censorship, and art journalist Vivienne Chow, discuss its findings. Professor Dave O'Brien from the University of Sheffield and poet and...

Director Kasi Lemmons discusses her new film, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, a biopic of the performer Whitney Houston, whose unmatched vocal power saw her become one of the best-selling musical artists of all time. She talks about exploring the darker sides of Whitney’s life and working with British actor Naomi Ackie who stars in the title role. Hannah Khalil, writer-in-residence at Shakespeare's G...

Zadie Smith talks about her play The Wife of Willesden, a modern re-telling of Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath starring Clare Perkins in the title role at Kiln Theatre, London. David Tennant discusses playing Russian Alexander Litvinenko in a new ITV drama based on the real life events of his shocking death. Keyboard player Rick Wakeman discusses how he's having to adapt his UK tour after a load of his...

Orlando starring Emma Corrin at the Garrick Theatre in London and Guillermo del Toro’s animated film Pinocchio are reviewed by Shon Faye, author of The Transgender Issue, and Observer theatre critic Susannah Clapp. The story of double agent and defector Kim Philby has been told many times. A Spy Among Friends, a new six-episode series on ITVX, focuses on Nicholas Elliott, Philby’s lifelong friend....

The winner of this year's Turner Prize will be announced at St George’s Hall in Liverpool. Art critic Louisa Buck reflects on this year’s Turner Prize and responds to the news of the winner of this prestigious award for contemporary art. Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell tells Samira about the band reforming, their new album - Razorwhat? The Best Of Razorlight, and a new documentary, Fall To Pieces, whi...

Film director Antoine Fuqua discusses his new film, Emancipation, which stars Will Smith. He discusses basing his film on the true story of an enslaved man in 1860s Louisiana. Earlier this year, Front Row revealed how non-disclosure agreements were being misused in film and TV casting, with actors being kept in the dark about the roles they were auditioning for. The actor’s union Equity has come u...

Jazz pianist Fergus McCreadie performs live from his latest album Forest Floor, which recently won the Scottish Album of the Year award and a Mercury Prize nomination. Performance poet Leyla Josephine discusses her debut poetry collection In Public / In Private. Patricia Allerston, chief curator of the Scottish National Gallery, on the transformation of the museum and creation of a new exhibition...

Veronica Ryan OBE is shortlisted for the Turner Prize. She talks to Front Row about her Windrush Commission sculptures in Hackney that have won the hearts of both the community and critics, how she uses materials from old fruit trays to volcanic ash, and how her work contains multitudes of meaning. Nii Ayikwei Parkes, writer, commentator and performance poet and Lisa Verrico, music critic for the...