Front Row

In ITV’s new psychological thriller Cheat, a university lecturer accuses a student of cheating in her essay, sparking a series of retaliations which threaten to spiral out of control. Film and TV lecturer James Walters reviews the show which stars Katherine Kelly and Molly Windsor. Photographer Richard Billingham, dubbed the 'pioneer of squalid realism', won a Turner Prize nomination for his image...

The career of Hollywood superstar Samuel L Jackson was recently revealed to have made him the highest-grossing actor of all time. He joins Samira to discuss the new Marvel superhero film, Captain Marvel; in which he reprises the role of Nick Fury... This time around he's playing a Nick Fury who is twenty years younger than before, as the film is set in the 90s. He reveals how he de-aged himself fo...

When The Specials released their new album Encore recently, their first new music with Terry Hall since the classic Ghost Town in 1981, it went straight to Number One. Nearly four decades on from their split, the Coventry band’s lead singer Terry Hall discusses the new album and how he found himself back in the recording studio with his long-term collaborators Lynval Golding and Horace Panter afte...

Stephen Merchant has written and directed the feature film Fighting with my Family, which tells the unlikely true story of a young British woman from Norwich who found fame on the women’s wrestling circuit in America. Merchant discusses going in at the deep end and working alongside former champion wrestler and Hollywood star Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. Arifa Akbar reviews new books by Leila Aboule...

In his new series After Life, Ricky Gervais plays a local journalist who tries to find humour as he struggles in the wake of his wife’s death, with a dog as his closest companion. Gervais discusses how he copes with people’s reactions and offence at his work and the controversy surrounding historical social media posts and celebrity redemption. Tom Walker, winner of this year’s British Breakthroug...

Charlotte Rampling discusses her new film Hannah, for which she won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival playing a woman shunned by her family and society. She also talks about her five decade career, from Georgy Girl to her recent Oscar-nominated performance in 45 Years. Hector Berlioz died 150 years ago next week. Best-known for his Symphony Fantastique - described by Leonard Bernstein as th...

How much should we separate art from the artist’s behaviour? With new sexual abuse allegations concerning Michael Jackson in the forthcoming documentary Leaving Neverland and R Kelly being charged with 10 counts of sexual abuse – writers Anna Leszkiewicz, Ekow Eshun and Dreda Say Mitchell consider the extent to which we should boycott or continue to appreciate an individual’s work in the light of...

The return of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s black comedy Fleabag: we preview the new series of BBC3's biggest success. The main character continues to battle with her family and her own self-destructive behaviour, but can Fleabag be as fresh and surprising as before? And because it'll be broadcast weekly, one episode at a time (after the news on BBC1) rather than being released as a box set for bingeing)...

Award-winning journalist Jonathan Freedland talks about his alter ego, thriller writer Sam Bourne, and his new book To Kill The Truth. With the strap line “read it before it becomes fiction," this fast paced action thriller sees America taken to the brink of a new Civil War as academic and holocaust survivors are found dead, libraries destroyed and Black Live Matter protestors clash openly with sl...

The Cuban American conductor Odaline de la Martinez talks about this year's London Festival of American Music in which she showcases the music of women and African American composers who are unjustly overlooked. She also tells Samira about the premiere of the third part of her own opera trilogy Imoinda: A story of Love and Hate Anna Paquin stars as a disaster PR tasked with clearing up the scandal...

Felicity Jones discusses her new film On the Basis of Sex, in which she plays Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the American Supreme Court Judge who rose to prominence as a lawyer in landmark cases against gender discrimination. Vue, one of the UK’s biggest cinema chains, has threatened to boycott the Baftas after the film Roma, which they describe as a ‘made for TV’ film, won four awards including Best Film....

The directorial debut of Oscar -winning actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor,is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Airing on Netflix, adapted from a bestselling novel of the same name Ejiofor also stars as the father. This true story follows the young boy William as he races to save his village from a devastating famine, with a wind turbine he was inspired to build after reading a library book. Come From Away is...

9 to 5 is Dolly Parton’s stage musical based on the 1980 film, in which she starred, about three female office workers getting revenge on their misogynist boss. The songs were written by Dolly Parton and she narrates the story via television screens across the stage. Sarah Crompton reviews. Performance artist, comedian, musician and activist Bryony Kimmings talks about her new autobiographical sho...

Roma, the black and white Mexican film about a young domestic worker in Mexico City in the 1970s, won Best Film at the Baftas on Sunday and is up for the same at the Oscars. The film’s producer, Gabriela Rodriguez, talks about the background to director Alfonso Cuarón’s personal project which draws on his own childhood, and discusses their working relationship. The death has been announced of the...

Irish comedian Ardal O’Hanlon is best-known for roles in Father Ted, My Hero and currently Death in Paradise, but he started out as a stand-up comic in 80s Dublin. As he embarks on a nationwide solo tour, Samira talks to Ardal about the role of politics in his life and work and breaking free from being typecast. Novelist Tessa Hadley is praised for her psychological insight, her nuance, and her pr...

French-Moroccan novelist Leila Slimani caused a sensation in France with her novel Lullaby about a nanny who murders the two children in her care, which won the Prix Goncourt and became a bestseller in the UK. As her first novel, Adèle, is published in the UK for the first time, she discusses the book's contentious storyline about a married woman with an addiction to having sex with strangers. Dia...

It was in Manchester in 2013 that Anna Jordan won the Bruntwood Prize, the UK’s biggest national competition for new plays. She’s now back in the city with her new adaptation of a stage classic – Mother Courage. Bertolt Brecht set his play in 17th century Europe during the Thirty Years’ War but Jordan has moved the story into the future. It’s 2080, and Europe no longer exists, the countries have b...

Comedian Sara Pascoe talks about her latest stand-up show Lads, Lads, Lads and its evolution from being about her relationship break-up to being happy a single woman. Also what's it like sharing such personal experiences in front of thousands of people? And how has the situation changed for women in comedy since she started out? There are Baftas and Oscars for Best Hair & Make Up and an Olivie...

This weekend sees the announcement of the winners of this year's Baftas - the British Academy Film Awards - and Stig talks to two of the stars in London for the event. Director Spike Lee attracted a great deal of attention with his first feature She's Gotta Have It in 1986, yet despite his later films including Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X and Summer of Sam, he was never nominat...

Broadway star Chita Rivera, who created the iconic roles of Anita in West Side Story and Velma in Chicago, talks to Samira about her seven decades on stage, as she prepares to perform again in London. The Woman in the Window is the bestselling psychological thriller that sparked a bidding war between publishers resulting in a two million dollar book deal and its publication in January 2018. Now it...

Front Row considers the artistic significance of walls and borders. John Lanchester, whose latest novel The Wall is about a massive fictional defensive structure, discusses the way walls feature in literature and art with poet and art critic Sue Hubbard, from cave paintings to artworks like Andy Goldsworthy’s 750 feet long drystone wall. Artist Luke Jerram takes us on a tour around his home city o...

The Cutty Sark was launched 150 years ago this year. The acme of sailing technology, now she floats not in the sea but in the air in Greenwich. People walk around on, in and under her. So the ship has become a monumental public art-work. The sculptor Michael Speller, who has made public works for Greenwich, tours the Cutty Sark with Kirsty Lang and the ship's curator, Hannah Stockton. They start b...

American comedian Tiffany Haddish joins the voice cast of the Lego Movie sequel as the shape-shifting Queen Whatever Wa'Nabi. She tells Front Row how comedy saved her from a troubled childhood and the foster care system, and how she went on to host Saturday Night Live and feature on the cover of Time 100. Alice Clark-Platts’ latest thriller The Flower Girls was the subject of fierce bidding war. T...

Painter, sculptor, architect and engineer- Leonardo da Vinci is regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. To mark the 500th anniversary of his death, 144 of his drawings from the Royal Collection are to be exhibited in 12 galleries and museums nationwide. Senior curator Natasha Howes, and Mark Roughley, medical illustrator and Art in Science lecturer at Liverpool School of Art and Desig...

Moon and Me is the new CBeebies programme by Andrew Davenport, creator of the award-winning shows Teletubbies and In the Night Garden. He discusses how his story of a doll, Pepi Nana, and the baby in the moon who travels to her doll house to tell stories and have adventures, was inspired by tales of toys that come to life when nobody is looking. Why are some musicians and writers labelled 'the voi...