Front Row

Stardust is the new film about David Bowie’s promotional tour of the United States in 1971 during which he began to develop the concept of Ziggy Stardust. Bowie is played by musician and actor Johnny Flynn and the film has already attracted attention as they were unable to secure the rights to Bowie’s songs. Writer and Bowie fan Mark Billingham reviews. A vivid 45,500 year old painting of a warty...

As RuPaul’s Drag Race UK returns for a second season and the US series welcomes its first trans man as a competitor, are the ironically gendered boundaries of drag breaking down and what about the other side of drag - the kings? Drag kings Don One and Jodie Mitchell, better known as John Travulva, join Samira to talk about the world of Kings. Courttia Newland’s new novel A River Called Time has be...

Oscar winning actress Regina King tells Kirsty about her debut film as a director, One Night in Miami, inspired by the real-life meeting between Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown on the night that Ali (then still called Cassius Clay) defeated Sonny Liston to win the heavyweight World Champion title. Europe's first classical music station especially for children was launched yesterda...

Ben Okri published his poem 'Grenfell Tower, June 2017' in the Financial Times a few days after the inferno. On Channel 4's Facebook page it was played more than 6 million times. This is but one of his poems written in response to current events, politics and people, gathered in his new book, A Fire in my Head: Poems for the Dawn. Okri considers the poet's role to be the town crier, and there are...

Five years ago, on 10th Jan 2016, David Bowie died, just two days after his 69th birthday. To mark the anniversary, we revisit John Wilson's 2002 interview with him, recorded in New York. Two composers – Hannah Peel and Neil Brand – will also be discussing Bowie’s music and considering its legacy and influence. Ingrid Persaud has won the First Novel category in the Costa Book Awards 2020 for Love...

Pa Salieu, the Gambian-British artist from Coventry, has been named as the winner of the BBC Sound of 2021. His single Frontline was the most played track on BBC Radio 1Xtra in 2020. In 2019 he was shot in the head, but recovered to release his debut mixtape Send Them To Coventry at the end of 2020 and now picks up one of the biggest accolades in new music. On the fifth anniversary of Walter Prese...

On 28th September 1985 Lee Lawrence’s mother Cherry Groce was shot by police during an armed raid on her Brixton home. Lee Lawrence talks to Samira Ahmed about his Costa Biography award winning memoir The Louder I will Sing in which he recounts the devastating impact the shooting had on the family’s life and his courageous fight for justice. As British musicians warn that costly post-Brexit bureau...

The Great, a new ahistorical comedy from The Favourite writer Tony McNamara arrives on Channel 4 this month. Describing itself as “an occasionally true story”, it is a satirical drama about the rise of Catherine the Great, staring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult. McNamara talks period dramas, historical inaccuracies and contemporary characters. The great Irish poet Eavan Boland has just posthumous...

Suzannah Lipscomb, Chair of Judges for the Costa Book Awards 2020, joins us to reveal exclusively the winners in each of category: Novel, Children’s, Poetry, Biography and Debut Novel. This is followed by an interview with the winner of the Best Novel category. Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy 7 centuries ago but - like all great literature – it still speaks to us in today’s world. Katya Ad...

Front Row celebrates some of the art that brightened a dark year. British violinist Tasmin Little has hung up her violin and retired from the concert stage in 2020. It’s the last night of the last year of her performing career - she looks back, and says goodbye to the year in style. Satirist Craig Brown won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction this year for his Beatles book, One Two Three Fou...

The family you choose, rather than the family you’re born into, is fertile territory for writers. From Henry V, to The Lord of the Rings, to Josie and the Pussycats, family dynamics between those who start as strangers keep storytelling going. Playwright Temi Wilkey and screenwriter Sarah Dollard join Samira to talk about the enduring and endearing nature of the chosen family story. Inspired by re...

The pianist Lang Lang this year released his first recording of Bach's 1741 keyboard masterpiece, Goldberg Variations, feeling he was finally ready to do so 20 years into his own musical career. At the piano from a studio near his home in Beijing, Lang Lang discusses the work originally written for harpsichord, what a challenge it presents for a performer, and why he chose to release two versions...

The pandemic is having a profound impact on the arts. But you don't need to go anywhere, involve other people or need many materials, to write or read poetry, and during the lockdown people have turned to verse. In an extended edition of Front Row devoted to poetry Samira Ahmed hears from the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, about his recent writing life - composing lyrics for Huddersfield Choral So...

Tim Minchin, the Australian stage performer with unkempt long hair and black mascara eyes, looks back over his career since his early days trying to scrape a living in Perth and Melbourne. As he releases his first ever solo album Apart Together at the age of 45, he reflects on his early struggle to make a living through music, the success of his stage performances with a full orchestra, the RSC's...

Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones discuss their new Netflix mocumentary Death to 2020, a documentary-style film that tells the story of the year we’ll be glad to put behind us, featuring fictitious figures played by the likes of Hugh Grant, Samuel L Jackson and Tracey Ullman. Opera diva, drag artist and cabaret turn Le Gateau Chocolat concludes our increasingly wistful festiv...

Mackenzie Crook talks about Saucy Nancy, the latest episode in his festive revivals of the children’s TV series Worzel Gummidge, which originally aired in the late 1970s. Saucy Nancy sees the children visit a scrapyard, where they meet Worzel's old friend Saucy Nancy. She's a carved ship’s figurehead, and wants their help to get back to the sea. As tensions run high in houses all over the country...

Creator Chris van Dusen on Bridgerton, Netflix’s new drama series set in Regency England, about the daughter of a powerful family as she makes her debut onto London’s competitive marriage market. Award-winning novelist Rachel Joyce has created “Christmas by the Lake”, a new drama for BBC Radio 4. It’s a story with a twist on the Christmas theme and it's classic Rachel Joyce territory: relationship...

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music

Director George C. Wolfe on his new film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, in which Viola Davis stars as the legendary “Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainey, alongside the late Chadwick Boseman, in his final role. It’s adapted from August Wilson’s play which is part of his ten play cycle chronicling African American experience in the 20th Century. Pianist Winifred Atwell was the first Black British artist to re...

Visionary director David Fincher on Mank, his new film about 1930s Hollywood, as seen through the eyes of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) as he races to finish Citizen Kane with Orson Welles. Mank's screenplay is by Fincher's father Jack Fincher, who started writing it in the early 1990s and died in 2003. David Fincher's other films, which have earned thirty Oscar nominations, incl...

2020 marks Ludwig Van Beethoven’s 250th birthday, and pianist Boris Giltburg has taken on the mammoth task of learning, performing and recording all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. What does it take to learn and record eleven hours of music and what can you learn about one of the world’s most famous composers.? Boris discusses the project and shares an exclusive recording. As Christmas approaches...

Wonder Woman was the film that turned the reputation of DC Comics’ foray into big budget movies around in 2017. Director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Gadot return for the sequel which sees Wonder Woman and her love interest, played by Chris Pine, transplanted from the trenches of World War I to the technicolour world of the 80s. Can they repeat the success of the first instalment? Critic Leila Latif...

Novelist William Boyd and Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at Oxford, reflect on the work of John le Carré exploring why he was more than a spy novelist, and how history shaped his novels and how they then shaped history. Comedy duo The Pin join Samira to talk about their West End debut “The Comeback”, which wittily dissects the dynamics of double acts. Ben Ashenden and Alex Owen’...

The death of actress Barbara Windsor was announced today. A household name from EastEnders and the Carry On films, she was also acclaimed for her early performances at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Royal Stratford East. Cultural commentator Matthew Sweet discusses her career. The DCMS announced today the latest release of money from the Cultural Recovery Fund. Previously they issued grants and this ti...

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music