

Front Row
BBC Radio 4
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
Episodes
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Nov 24, 2022 • 42min
Joan Armatrading, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye exhibition and film She Said reviewed
The much-celebrated singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading on her 50-year career, her book of lyrics, The Weakness in Me, and new album Live at Asylum Chapel.Arts journalist Nancy Durrant, and art historian and writer Chloe Austin review Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s new show at the Tate Britain, and the film She Said, starring Carey Mulligan, which details the New York Times investigation into Harvey Weinstein.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Ellie Bury

Nov 23, 2022 • 42min
Lady Chatterley's Lover reviewed, Jake Heggie on It's A Wonderful Life, casting Ukrainian actors, Wilko Johnson
Lara Feigel and Tom Shakespeare review Netflix’s new adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, starring Emma Corrin.The English National Opera stages an operatic reimagining of It’s a Wonderful Life, the classic 1946 Christmas film, by the composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer. Jake joins Samira.The casting of Ukrainian actors who have arrived here escaping the conflict, with actors Kateryna Hryhorenko and Yurii Radionov, and casting directors Olga Lyubarova and Rachel Sheridan.And the death has been announced of Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson. We hear an extract from his memorable interview on Front Row following what he thought was a terminal diagnosis. Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Sarah Johnson

Nov 22, 2022 • 42min
Matthew Warchus on Matilda, Kapil Seshasayee performs, climate protests in galleries
Director Matthew Warchus discusses his new film Matilda the Musical. Based on the Tony and Olivier award winning stage play, it brings Roald Dahl’s much loved children’s story to the screen. Scottish-Indian protest musician Kapil Seshasayee performs live and talks to Samira about his new album Laal.And art critics Louisa Buck and Bendor Grovenor discuss the impact of the recent climate protests in museums and galleries. Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Kirsty McQuire

Nov 22, 2022 • 42min
Director Luca Guadagnino on Bones and All, Gainsborough’s House, writer Ronald Blythe at 100
Luca Guadagnino won the Silver Lion for Best Director at this year's Venice Film Festival for his latest film, Bones and All, starring Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell. He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about confronting the taboo of cannibalism on screen and reuniting with Chalamet after Call Me By Your Name.Mark Bills, the Director of Gainsborough’s House, joins Tom to discuss the reopening of the painter's home in Suffolk.Ronald Blythe, the man who’s been described as the greatest living writer on the English countryside, celebrates his 100th birthday this month. His friend and fellow writer Richard Mabey and the academic and author Alexandra Harris discuss his work and a new collection of his columns on Suffolk life, Next to Nature.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Julian MayIMAGE: Taylor Russell (left) as Maren and Timothée Chalamet (right) as Lee in Bones and All, directed by Luca Guadagnino, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film.
CREDIT: Yannis Drakoulidis / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

Nov 17, 2022 • 42min
The Wonder, Making Modernism, Frantic Assembly, Opera and elitism
With Samira Ahmed.Guests Katy Hessel and Lillian Crawford review Florence Pugh's drama The Wonder, based on an Emma Donoghue novel, and the Royal Academy's Making Modernism exhibition, which explores the lives of a group of female artists active in Germany in the early twentieth century.The theatre company Frantic Assembly is running a nationwide programme to find the actors of the future, hopefully from unexpected places. Luke Jones talks to Frantic Assembly’s artistic director Scott Graham about their plan to get a wider range of young people into theatre and to some of the aspiring actors taking part in this year’s programme. As the fallout of the Arts Council announcements continues, Lillian Crawford and composer Gavin Higgins consider why opera is still being branded elitist and what can be done about it.Producer: Ellie BuryPhoto credit: Florence Pugh as Lib Wright in The Wonder. Cr. Aidan Monaghan

Nov 16, 2022 • 42min
Football Inspired Art, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Bruntwood Playwriting Prize winner, Chornobyldorf opera
Julie Hesmondhalgh, who played Hayley Cropper on Coronation Street, on writing a survival guide for new actors- An Actor’s Alphabet.What happens when football is taken from the pitch and put on the canvas? Nick Ahad is joined by the curators of three football-inspired exhibitions: Art of the Terraces at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, plus The Art of the Football Scarf and It's The Hope That Keeps Us Here at OOF Gallery in Tottenham Hotspur's stadium.Chornoblydorf, a new opera that looks at a post-apocalyptic world, opens this year's Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Co-composer Illia Razumeiko joins Front Row to talk about the optimism behind this dark production.The Bruntwood Playwriting Prize winner, Nathan Queeley-Dennis, on getting the top prize with his debut play, Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz, about a young Black man on a journey of self-discovery with the help of his barber and Beyoncé's lyrics.Presenter: Nick Ahad
Producer: Ekene AkalawuImage: Square Gogh by Ross Muir, on display in the exhibition Art of the Terraces at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool

Nov 14, 2022 • 42min
BBC Centenary, The Art of Radio, Joy Whitby, Climate Fiction
With Samira Ahmed.To mark the centenary of the first BBC radio broadcast, Samira Ahmed discusses the art of radio and radio’s influence on art with the novelist and radio enthusiast Tom McCarthy and with Benbrick, sound designer and co-producer of the Peabody award-winning Have You Heard George’s Podcast? From early on the BBC made programmes especially for children. Samira Ahmed speaks to Joy Whitby, a pioneer of children’s programmes – she started Play School and Jackanory – and hears how her approach to these owed much to her early days creating sound effects as a radio studio manager. How should writers respond to the climate crisis? As the COP 27 climate conference continues in Egypt, Samira is joined live from Cairo by the novelist Ahdaf Soueif and in the studio by the playwright Greg Mosse, whose debut novel The Coming Darkness has been described as climate fiction. Producer: Ian Youngs

Nov 10, 2022 • 42min
The Crown, Jafar Panahi's No Bears, Jez Butterworth, Goldsmiths Prize
The Crown: as series five is with us, we review the next ten part instalment of Netflix's royal drama as it slips into more recent territory - the turmoil of the nineties. Plus jailed Iranian film director Jafar Panahi’s new metafiction No Bears, in which he plays himself, forced to direct online from a village near Iran’s Turkish border. With Kate Maltby and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh.Jez Butterworth: the playwright and screenwriter on his new show Mammals starring James Corden, airing on Amazon Prime.The Goldsmiths Prize: live from the ceremony, we hear from the winner of this year’s £10,000 reward for fiction that, “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.”Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Sarah Johnson

Nov 9, 2022 • 42min
Black Panther Director Ryan Coogler, Photographer Craig Easton
Filmmaker Ryan Coogler discusses returning to Black Panther after the death of Chadwick Boseman and how that experience has inspired the making of the sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.In the wake of this year’s annual Museums Association conference which asked its members to “to reimagine our future if we are going to survive”, Front Row brings together Rowan Brown, CEO of Museums Northumberland and Cllr Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Chair of the Local Government Association’s Culture, Tourism and Sport Board to discuss how museums are responding to the challenge of the cost of living crisis and rising energy prices.In 1992 Craig Easton photographed Mandy and Mick Williams and their children for the first time for a series he called Thatcher's Children. In 2016, he was able to reconnect with the family and has continued to photograph them since then. As he prepares to publish the photographs in a new book, Craig talks about taking pictures for posterity.Presenter: Nick Ahad
Producer: Ekene AkalawuMain image: Nick Ahad and Ryan Coogler

Nov 8, 2022 • 42min
Jennifer Lawrence, mandolin player Chris Thile, Chokepoint Capitalism
Jennifer Lawrence and director Lila Neugebauer discuss their new film Causeway.Grammy award-winning mandolin player Chris Thile plays live in the studio from his latest album Laysongs, on the eve of his UK tour.A new book, Chokepoint Capitalism, looks at how big tech companies and large corporations control large parts of creative markets. The authors, Rebecca Giblin, a professor at Melbourne Law School and Cory Doctorow, writer and activist, join Front Row to discuss what that means for both consumers and creators. Presenter: Luke Jones
Producer: Olivia SkinnerImage: Jennifer Lawrence in Causeway