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Front Row

Latest episodes

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Jun 3, 2025 • 42min

Nick Mohammed on comedy and improvisation

Comedian Nick Mohammed on his stand-up show Mr Swallow, and Deep Cover, his action thriller about a group of comedy improvisers.Kate Wasserberg, Artistic Director of Theatr Clywd on the theatre's £50 million redevelopment, and opening the new auditorium with a production of the musical Tick Tick... Boom!Ulrich Birkmaier, senior conservator of paintings at the J Paul Getty Museum in LA on restoring a work by Artemisia Gentileschi damaged during the catastrophic Beirut explosion in 2020.Theatre critic Michael Coveney pays tribute to pioneering stage designer William Dudley.Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu
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Jun 2, 2025 • 42min

Fiddler on the Roof returns to the stage

Samira discusses the Olivier award-winning production of Fiddler on the Roof with its star Adam Dannheisser and director Jordan Fein.Sarah Dunant talks about the women in the Renaissance who became art patrons, as she publishes her novel The Marchesa, about Isabella d'Este of Mantua. Screenwriter Frederic Raphael, whose films include Far From the Madding Crowd, Darling and Eyes Wide Shut, on the art of writing film scripts. Producer: Harry Graham Presenter: Samira Ahmed
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May 29, 2025 • 42min

Imelda Staunton in Mrs Warren's Profession

Samira Ahmed and writers Dreda Mitchell and Mark Ravenhill review Imelda Staunton and her daughter, Bessie Carter, in Mrs Warren's Profession.They consider, too, theatre director Marianne Elliott's first foray into film, The Salt Path, based on a Raynor Winn's bestselling memoir of how she and her husband, after they have lost their house and farm and he has been diagnosed with a rare terminal disease, walk the 600 miles of the South West Coast Path. It features Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs - with and the land and seascape of the end of England in a starring role. The Victoria and Albert Museum has a collection of 4.5 million artefacts. Inevitably, many are stored away. But now the museum is inviting everyone backstage, to the V&A East Storehouse, where half a million objects are looked after. It is a wonderful gallimaufry, ancient ceramics next to plastic chairs from the sixties, a huge Picasso, a Frank Lloyd Wright office and a child's pedal car. Samira, Freda and Mark wander the gantries.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May
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May 28, 2025 • 42min

Paul Hartnoll of Orbital on the band's Brown album, and a new biography of Muriel Spark.

Paul Hartnoll of electronic music duo Orbital talks about the reissue of the band's Brown album which was originally released in 1993, with the addition of 23 extra tracks of rarities and previously unreleased material and about the intersection between dance music and politics. Frances Wilson, who has previously published acclaimed biographies of D H Lawrence and Thomas De Quincy tells us about her latest book Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, about the great Scottish writer, poet and essayist. And the creator of Netflix's new detective series Dept. Q, Scott Frank, who previously wrote and directed The Queen's Gambit and has written the scripts for Hollywood movies from Minority Report to Marley & Me, talks to us about adapting bestselling Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen's books for the screen and why he's transposed the setting for the series from Copenhagen to Edinburgh. Presenter: Kate Molleson Producer: Mark Crossan
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May 28, 2025 • 42min

Alison Steadman live from Hay Festival

Live from the Hay Festival, Alison Steadman talks to Samira about her career, from Abigail's Party to Gavin and Stacey. Laura Bates and Gwyneth Lewis discuss Arthurian Legends and The Mabinogion. Hisham Matar champions the Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz. And transatlantic husband and wife country duo Outpost Drive perform on stage. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Oliver Jones
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May 27, 2025 • 42min

Will Butler formerly of Arcade Fire on his play set in a recording studio

Stereophonic is a play about the creative process, power dynamics and fraught personal relationships of a 1970s rock band. It won a Tony and many other awards on Broadway. Now Stereophonic has come to the West End. Playwright David Adjmi and Will Butler, sometime of Arcade Fire, who has written the music, discuss their own artistic process as they created it. Plus Skin from Skunk Anansie on their first LP in almost a decade, news of a new exhibition shedding light on painter Joseph Wright of Derby's artistic process and Alexander Larman joins Antony Gormley to pay tribute to Alan Yentob.Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Simon Richardson
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May 22, 2025 • 43min

Mission Impossible & Benicio Del Toro

Benicio Del Toro talks about playing a business tycoon in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme. This aesthetically stylised film, by the director who also made The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel, is reviewed by Tom and critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Rachel Cooke. They also give their verdict on Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, the 8th and final film in the franchise, and discuss fictional portrayals of food as Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle is published.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Harry Graham
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May 21, 2025 • 42min

Shirley Manson of Garbage

Frontwoman of Garbage, Shirley Manson talks about the band's latest album Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, which is inspired by contemporary events including the killing of George Floyd in Los Angeles, but which presents an optimistic perspective on a dystopian world. We hear from the winner of the International Booker Prize, which was announced at a ceremony last night. And Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller talks about how he has curated joyful and exuberant events in towns and cities around the UK - Derry-Londonderry, Dundee, Llandudno and Plymouth - to celebrate the bicentenary of the National Gallery.
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May 20, 2025 • 42min

Musician Rhiannon Giddens on returning to her North Carolina roots after working with Beyoncé

Musician Rhiannon Giddens on returning to her North Carolina roots after working with Beyoncé. As a huge retrospective of the work of the artist Helen Chadwick opens at The Hepworth Wakefield, art critic Louisa Buck and the exhibition's curator, Laura Smith, discuss why Chadwick should be viewed as the godmother for a golden generation of British contemporary artists, and another chance to hear Daniel Swift, author of The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare, investigate an important piece of theatre history.Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu
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May 19, 2025 • 42min

Joanne Harris on the return of Chocolat

25 years after Joanne Harris introduced readers to the soothing delights of Chocolat, she's released her new book Vianne. It’s the prequel that explains how her heroine found her way into the world of high end French confectionery. A new exhibition at the British Museum sheds light on the provenance of popular images of the Hindu god Ganesha, the Buddha and Jain enlightened teachers. We talk to curator Sushma Jansari about Ancient India: living traditions, alongside expert in Indian ritual art, Professor Partha Mitter.The 2025 Cannes Film Festival is well underway. We get the latest from Daily Telegraph Critic, Robbie Collin.Rumours abound about the planned axing of the Government Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. Alison Cole, head of the Cultural Policy Unit think tank, tells us what this could mean for the arts.Presenter Samira Ahmed. Producer Harry Graham

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