Front Row

Tears For Fears, the duo who sound-tracked the 1980s with songs such as Shout, Mad World and Everybody Wants to Rule the World, have just released a new album, their first for 17 years. Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal tell Samira Ahmed about The Tipping Point and how they reached it. Kate Mavor, CEO of English Heritage discusses the challenges facing English Heritage in 2022. Unboxed, the festival b...

On tonight’s Front Row, we take a look at the cultural responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the BBC’s Culture Editor, Katie Razzall. Clio Barnard’s latest film, Ali &Ava, is a love story between two care-worn middle-aged people, set in Bradford. Syima Aslam, co-founder and Director of the Bradford Literature Festival, and Lisa Holdsworth, Chair of the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain,...

Director Adam McKay talks to Tom about his film Don’t Look Up. He discusses why it divided audiences and how he thinks cinema can influence politics. Photographer Mark Neville on the portraits of Ukrainian life collected in his new book Ukraine: Stop Tanks with Books. Charlotte Mullins discusses Whistler's famous portrait of Joanna Hiffernan, known as the Woman in White, the subject of an exhibiti...

Musician, film maker and artist David Byrne discusses his new book A History of the World (in Dingbats) - a collection of more than 100 line drawings he created during the Covid-19 pandemic. The striking figurative drawings explore daily life and our shared experiences in recent years, and capture the changes and challenges of life today. As the Government announces fresh plans to ‘level up the ar...

Samuel Bailey’s debut play, Shook, about three young men in a young offender's institution, won the Papatango New Writing Prize in 2019, glowing reviews, and a sell-out run. His new play, Sorry, You’re Not a Winner, explores the social price of higher education. Samuel Bailey talks to Tom Sutcliffe about the cost of great opportunities . Amid the current debate about the merits of sensitivity read...

Game of Thrones star Kit Harington and director Max Webster discuss their new production of Henry V, and why they chose to make Henry a more complex character than the usual patriotic hero. Jan Pieńkowski, who has died aged 85, was a brilliant illustrator of children’s books, including the Meg and Mog series. He was born in Poland and his family fled the Nazis, an experience, along with the fairy...

Artist Daniel Lismore describes himself as a ‘living sculpture.’ His elaborate creations have been worn by Naomi Campbell, Boy George and the cast of the English National Opera’s The Mask of Orpheus. Now his body of work is on display in the UK for the first time, in the exhibition Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in his hometown of Coventry. Author...

Comedy writer Sara Gibbs and actor and writer JJ Green discuss the portrayal of autistic characters on TV and film and call for change. Half a century ago director Mike Bradwell rented a run-down house in Coltman Street, Hull, gathered a few actor-musicians and started work. Hull Truck Theatre was born. It went on to become one of the most successful and influential companies in the country and is...

Cassa Pancho and Billy Trevitt on the future of British dance, the "father of Impressionism" Pissarro and Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton on new play The Forest. Presnter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Laura Northedge Main image: The Ballet Black company Photographer's Credit - Ballet Black and Nick Gutteridge

Michael Morpurgo’s book Private Peaceful has been made into a film, a solo stage show and a radio drama. As a new ensemble version opens at Nottingham Playhouse, before touring the country, the author and adapter Simon Reade talks to Nick Ahad about the power of this story of two brothers, caught up in the trauma of the First World War. We talk to the newly announced winner of the Barbellion Prize...

Japanese film Drive My Car has been nominated for four Oscars, including Best Director for Ryusuke Hamaguchi. With his next film Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy released in the UK on Friday, critic Briony Hanson joins Samira Ahmed to review both films. It’s a truism that Shakespeare is as relevant today as ever. But some of his plays are regarded as problematic and recently the celebrated actress Jul...

Monochrome is having a moment at this year’s awards season in films such as Belfast, The Tragedy of Macbeth and C’mon C’mon. To discuss the comeback of black and white and its enduring appeal, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Edu Grau, Director of Photography for Passing and Ellen Kuras, who won the Cinematography Award at Sundance for her debut feature film, Swoon, shot in black and white in 1992. She’...

Fresh from a special concert in their home city of Leeds to mark Independent Venue Week, James Smith, lead singer of Yard Act talks to Samira about the group’s success with the release of their debut album. Their character-driven debut album, The Overload - designed to provoke "an open discussion about capitalism" - went straight into the charts at number two. Novelist Esi Edugyan, author of Washi...

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a new film starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield as televangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker charting their controversial rise and fall in the 1970s and 80s. They by Kay Dick is a rediscovered dystopian novel first published in 1977. Critics Suzi Feay and Michael Carlson give their verdicts on both. It's 25 years since the TV news satire Brass Eye first came to ou...

Erin Doherty shot to fame playing Princess Anne in The Crown and joins Tom to discuss her latest role as social media obsessed stalker Becky in BBC drama Chloe. The writer Andrei Kurkov talks about literature, TV, music and cultural festivals across Ukraine. Documentary and true crime podcasts are more popular than ever, but does audio offer new ways of telling stories? Narrative expert and former...

Ahead of the release of their fourth studio album, Give Me the Future, Dan Smith and Charlie Barnes of the alt-pop four piece Bastille perform live in the studio and discuss the creation of this sci-fi-influenced concept album, their most collaborative yet. A new initiative sponsored by The Booksellers Association and bookselling website Bookshop.org aims to encourage individuals from under repres...

Van Gogh’s self portraits have defined our sense of his inner life. As a new exhibition gathers many of them together for the first time, The Courtauld’s Curator of Paintings, Karen Serres and the art historian, Martin Bailey join Tom Sutcliffe to consider what they reveal about an artist we feel we know so well. Director Joanna Hogg tells Tom about the making of the sequel to her semi-autobiograp...

The actress Romola Garai talks about her directorial debut, the horror film Amulet. Critics Maria Delgado and Louisa Buck review Pedro Almodóvar's film Parallel Mothers starring Penélope Cruz - an account of two new mothers and his most overtly political film yet. And they give their views on a new exhibition at the Royal Academy, Francis Bacon: Man and Beast. And comedian Arthur Smith pays tribut...

Isabel Allende was born in Peru in 1942 and raised in Chile. Most famous for her novel The House of the Spirits, her works have been both bestsellers and critically acclaimed, translated into more than forty-two languages and selling more than seventy-five million copies worldwide. Her latest book, Violeta, is a fictional account of one woman’s life through an extraordinary century of history. Isa...

The Responder, a five-part BBC drama broadcast on consecutive nights this week, was written by ex-police response officer Tony Schumacher. He joins Samira along with Martin Freeman, who stars as the disillusioned police responder Chris Carson. A cross party group of MPs from the north of England have just made the case for cultural levelling up in a new report, ahead of the Government's much antic...

The singer and actor Olly Alexander discusses his new album, Night Call, and playing the central role in the Russell T Davies drama acclaimed television drama, It's A Sin; Theatre director Femi Elufowoju jr on making his opera debut with a new transformed production of Verdi's opera, Rigoletto; and the American poet Honorée Fannone Jeffers on expanding into fiction with her debut novel, The Love S...

Belfast-born actor Ciarán Hinds tells Tom Sutcliffe about playing Kenneth Branagh’s grandfather in the director’s semi-autobiographical film Belfast, set in the early years of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Historian Hallie Rubenhold and critic Hannah McGill discuss Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley and Julian Fellowes’s US answer to Downton Abbey, The Gilded Age. The latest exhibition at Se...

Munich: The Edge of War is new film set in 1938 at the time of the Munich Agreement when the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was making a last ditch attempt to avoid war with Hitler’s Germany. Starring Jeremy Irons as Chamberlain it concerns the efforts of a young civil servant, played by George MacKay, who is sent to Munich to secure a document which would change the course of history....

Tilda Swinton talks to Samira about her new film Memoria, in which she plays a Scottish woman who, after hearing a loud 'bang' at daybreak, begins experiencing a mysterious sensory syndrome while traversing the jungles of Colombia. We investigate the widespread use of NDAs in acting auditions, hearing from actors who are often being asked to sign these non disclosure agreements without even being...

Actor Adrian Lester joins Samira to discuss his varied career on stage, in film and now back on UK television in the gripping new ITV police drama, Trigger Point. Scottish musicians Rachel Newton and Lauren MacColl AKA Heal and Harrow perform live ahead of Glasgow's Celtic Connections festival. Their music is a response to the 16th and 17th century Scottish Witch Trials and the women falsely accus...