Front Row

Dev Patel talks about playing David Copperfield in Armando Iannucci’s retelling of Charles Dickens' classic ode to grit and perseverance, The Personal History of David Copperfield. This is a film for our cosmopolitan age with a diverse ensemble cast of actors from a range of ethnicities. Patel, star of Slumdog Millionaire, describes telling director Iannucci that the production would have to ‘weat...

Playwright Lucy Kirkwood discusses her return to the National Theatre following the critically-acclaimed Mosquitoes in 2017 with her new play The Welkin, which stars Maxine Peake and Ria Zmitrowicz. It’s the story of a woman sentenced to hang for murder in 1759 but whose claims of pregnancy could save her life. A Jury of Matrons is assembled - 12 women who will decide the condemned woman’s fate. T...

Charlize Theron discusses her new film Bombshell, for which she's been Oscar nominated, in which she stars alongside Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie. It tells the true story of female Fox News presenters and personnel in New York who set out to expose the CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harassment in 2016. The street gangs of Lagos are the setting for a new adaption of Oliver Twist for Radio 4. Writer...

As bushfires continue to ravage huge areas of land in Australia, how have artists and writers responded to the complex historical relationship the country has with this natural phenomenon? Writers Kathryn Heyman in Sydney and Danielle Clode in Adelaide join indigenous Australian artist Judy Watson from Brisbane to consider the place of fire in Australian arts, culture and the nation’s identity. Wr...

Michael B Jordan and Jamie Foxx on their new film Just Mercy, the story of one of America’s great miscarriages of justice. Michael plays lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who takes up the case of Walter McMillian, a man placed on death row for the 1986 murder of a woman in Alabama, even though there was no credible evidence linking him to the crime. As a register for actors’ profiles, Spotlight describes it...

John talks to Oscar nominees including Charlize Theron (Best Actress), Jonathan Pryce (Best Actor) and Florence Pugh (Best Supporting Actress). Critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Ellen E Jones discuss the films in contention. Joker has most nominations, followed by 1917, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Irishman. Yet again the Best Director category is all male, though Greta Gerwig's Little Wome...

Jonathan Coe talks about Middle England which has won the Costa Novel Award 2019. Set in the outskirts of Birmingham where car factories have been replaced by pound shops and in a London beset by riots and Olympic fever, it’s a state of the nation novel that tries to make sense of our times, with characters from both sides of the EU referendum divide. Pop megastar Selena Gomez releases her 3rd stu...

A teenage sex therapist on a high school campus is the premise of the hit Netflix series Sex Education. Starring Asa Butterfield and Gillian Anderson, its first season attracted 40m viewers in the first weeks of streaming and it’s back for a second series. Writer and creator Laurie Nunn discusses balancing serious sexual content with humour, why it’s hard to pin down the location and era of the se...

Freddie Fox on playing Jeremy Bamber in ITV's new six part factual drama White House Farm, about one fateful night in August 1985 when five members of the same family were murdered at an Essex farmhouse. The drama, which is based on extensive research, interviews and published accounts, tells the story of how Essex Police initially believed that Bamber’s sister Sheila Caffell had murdered her own...

We discuss the controversy over this years BAFTA nominations. The most prominent categories - Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress – remain predominantly white. There’s not a woman on the Best Director shortlist and all the Best Film nominees are stories about men. John Wilson asks the critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh why this is and what it means for such awards. Do they have any meaning anymore? Adam S...

Suzannah Lipscomb (Chair of Costa Biography Award) announces the category winners of the five 2019 Costa Book Awards exclusively on Front Row and Stig talks live to the winner of the Best Biography. Twenty years after the success of his debut film American Beauty, Sam Mendes has once again taken the top prize at the Golden Globes with his First World War epic 1917. He explains how his grandfather’...

Hugh Grant and Matthew McConaughey discuss working with Guy Ritchie on his new gangster film The Gentlemen, but never actually sharing a scene. Television writer Daisy Coulam, whose credits include Grantchester, Humans and Lost in Paradise, talks to Nikki Bedi about Deadwater Fell, her new crime drama for Channel 4 starring David Tennant, which explores the impact the murder of a mother and her th...

Taika Waititi’s new film Jojo Rabbit is a satire about a 10-year-old budding Nazi who falls under the spell of his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler, played by the New Zealand writer and director. Jason Solomons reviews the film which also stars Scarlett Johansson, Stephen Merchant and first-time child actor Roman Griffin Davis who has been nominated for a Golden Globe. Alex Michaelides is the author...

A celebration of Ludwig van Beethoven, marking the composer's 250th anniversary year. To discuss what sets Beethoven apart from other composers, John Wilson is joined by pianist Stephen Hough, poet Ruth Padel, Oxford Professor of Music Laura Tunbridge and conductor Sir Simon Rattle, who says of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: "It is too much of everything!... this is a composer inventing the music of...

Writer Juno Dawson, critic Sarah Crompton, comedian Ayesha Hazarika and folk musician Matthew Crampton battle it out to see who'll be crowned champion in our cultural quiz of the year. Plus, as it's wassailing season, Matthew discusses the history of drinking songs and plays some examples. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Simon Richardson

How has TV changed in the last decade, from what we watch to how we watch it. Critics Boyd Hilton and Eleanor Stanford discuss, alongside contributions from screen writers Mark Gatiss, Amanda Coe and Mike Bartlett. Male ballet dancers Ty Singleton and Tom Rogers on how they hope their podcast, Ty and Tom Talk, will change perceptions of ballet. Chinese film Long Day's Journey into Night is reviewe...

The most recent statistics released by the Church of England reveal record cathedral attendance, despite falling numbers in many Anglican parish churches. Cathedrals are increasingly programming cultural events and art installations as a way of engaging with wider communities. We discuss the evolving role of contemporary art in churches as well as different approaches to conserve the art that alre...

A sparkling and razor-sharp conversation marks the end of a remarkable year for two authors. Queenie has been one of the breakthrough novels of the year, winning over readers with its compassionate and funny depiction of a young black woman whose life seems to be spinning out of control. Front Row asked its author, Candice Carty-Williams, to choose a cultural figure she’d like to talk to. She sele...

Three names on the Motown label, Holland-Dozier-Holland, were behind a string of hits including 13 number 1s in a row. The songs they wrote included Reach Out (I'll Be There), Stop! in the Name of Love, Where Did Our Love Go? and Baby Love and the artists they composed for ranged from Martha and the Vandellas and Diana Ross and the Supremes to Marvin Gaye and The Four Tops. Now in the 60th anniver...

Amanda Coe, novelist and screenwriter of Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, Room at the Top and Apple Tree Yard talks about her latest television drama series, The Trial of Christine Keeler. It's the story of the Profumo Affair and John Wilson asks her what the 1963 scandal tells us about power and sex in today's society. Novelist Diana Evans discusses Singular, her new short story specially commis...

The Mischief Theatre team – Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields have had an amazing year with their Play That Goes Wrong theatre franchise – three productions on at the West End, one touring the UK, and now a new six-part television series on BBC One called The Goes Wrong Show. They join Front Row to discuss how things have gone right since they started going wrong. Slow Art Days, where...

JJ Abrams on overcoming his initial qualms about directing The Rise of Skywalker, the epic conclusion of the 42 year Star Wars saga. A huge juggling act, the film must satisfy fans, financiers and critics while tying up the many themes and plotlines of its eight predecessors. How did he do it? The long awaited film of Cats starring national treasures Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen has been s...

Robert De Niro discusses reuniting with Martin Scorsese after nearly 25 years for The Irishman, the big-budget epic Netflix saga about organised crime over five decades, also starring those classic mob actors Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel. After inspiring a popular video game, The Witcher Saga, the dark and fantastical novels of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski have now been adapted for TV...

Saoirse Ronan stars as Jo March in Greta Gerwig’s new film adaptation of Little Women. The Irish actress, who’s tipped for an Oscar for the role, discusses how the film draws out the connection between Jo and her creator Louisa May Alcott, if Jo and Laurie would work as couple today and her frustration at Greta’s lack of Golden Globe nominations for the film. The Book People, the online and pop-up...

Taron Egerton, whose performance as Elton John in the film Rocketman has already earned him Golden Globe and SAG nominations for Best Actor, talks about channelling the flamboyant performer on screen and capturing his distinctive voice in hits such as Your Song and Tiny Dancer. Rocketman is available on DVD. There have been scores of actors who have played Scrooge from Charles Dickens’s A Christma...