Front Row

What will happen with music festivals this year? For Front Row, DJ Emily Dust talks to some of those involved.Keeley Hawes is one of the most in-demand British actors for TV and film, with exceptional performances in a wide variety of roles. Coming soon for UK viewers there’ll be ITV’s dark comedy Finding Alice; To Olivia – a film about Roald Dahl’s complicated relationship with his wife Patricia Neal; and Russell T Davies’ series for Channel 4, It’s A Sin. She tells Front Row about filming in lockdown, how she chooses her work and about playing an unsympathetic character WandaVision, the first in a massive slate of high-budget new streaming series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe takes two of the Avengers - Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) - and plants them in a retro sitcom universe, complete with laugh track. Leila Latif scrutinises this first offering in a new era for mainstream entertainment. In a universe far, far away from that, Gen-Zers on TikTok have di

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 pig, discovered on a cave wall in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is the oldest representational art in the world. What does the striking work tell us about the value of art to the civilisation that created it. With archeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes. Novelist Jenni Fagan talks about her latest book, Luckenbooth. It opens as the devil's daughter rows to Edinburgh in a coffin to work as maid for the Minister of Culture, a man who lives a dual life. But the real reason she's there is to bear him and his barren wife a child, the consequences of which curse the tenement building that is their home for a hundred years

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 been 18 years in the making and imagines a city a little like London in a world in which colonialism and slavery never happened. The writer discusses imagination, speculative fiction and class – and his co-scripting with Steve McQueen for two of the Small Axe films - Lovers Rock and Red, White and Blue.You’re back in lockdown, it’s bitterly cold outside and the nights are long and dark. You could order a sad lamp online and hope for the best, or you can lean into it with writer Eleanor Penny’s round up of podcasts for this bleak midwinter. Creepy, desolate, bleak - but gripping and thrilling too. Recommendations includ

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 yesterday. Fun Kids Classical will play music by composers including Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saens and Grieg; with performances from young artists such as cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, saxophonist Jess Gillam and violinist Jennifer Pike. The pianist Lang Lang, whose International Music Foundation encourages children to engage with music, is the new station's Ambassador. Matt Deegan, Fun Kids Classical's station, manager talks to Kirsty Lang about the need for such a radio station, and his ambitions for it.This year sees the 100th anniversary of the creation of Northern Ireland. Although the region is synonymous wi

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 poems about that other fire, at Notre Dame, Barack Obama and the Covid pandemic. But, as he tells Samira Ahmed, his collection also includes the personal, love poems and a tender evocation of a new-born's encounter with life, and the wonder of the world. A new miniseries, The Pembrokeshire Murders, starts soon on ITV. It tells the real story of the investigation by Dyfed Powys Police into 2 decades-old previously-unsolved fatal shootings, using advances in forensic science to find microscopic clues that were previously invisible to them. We speak to the writer for the series – Nick Stephens – about writing a g

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 After Love. The author discusses her tale of a mother, her son and their lodger in Trinidad, each living with the burden of a secret they don’t want revealed.For our Friday Review, writer and journalist Kohinoor Sahota and Isabel Stevens of Sight and Sound give their view of Pieces of a Woman (Netflix). It’s a film that has already won praise for its powerful and realistic first half hour in which Vanessa Kirby plays a woman going through labour and giving birth. They’ll also consider some of the cultural stories of the week and tell us what they’ve been reading and watching.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Jerome

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 Presents, the global streaming service dedicated to showcasing award winning foreign language drama, the platform is launching its first ever dramas from Finland, All The Sins and Bullets. Whilst BBC 4 is launching its first ever Finnish drama, the 6 part drama series Man in Room 301. Walter Iuzzolino, curator of Walter Presents, and best selling Finnish crime writer Antti Tuomainen talk to Kirsty Lang about what makes Finnish drama distinctive and why we should be watching.Natasha Farrant, The Costa Award Children' s category winner, talks about her book Voyage of the Sparrowhawk which, with 12 year old Ben and Lotti bec

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 bureaucracy could decimate European touring, we discuss the potential impact of the recent Brexit Trade Deal on the music industry. With Deborah Annetts from the Incorporated Society of Musicians, Mark Pemberton from the Association of British Orchestras and conductor Paul McCreesh, founder of the Grammy award-winning baroque ensemble, the Gabrieli Consort. Actor Robert Baddeley, a member of David Garrick’s company at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, created a tradition when he died in 1794. In his will, he left £100 to be invested and each year, the money from that sum be spent on “the purchase of a twelfth Cake or Cakes and Wi

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 posthumously won the Costa Poetry Prize. Boland's collection The Historians continues her reflections on the power of history and memory, of secrets and hidden histories, and of centring women’s stories. Tom is joined by Jody Allen Randolph, a friend and leading scholar of Eavan’s work, and actress Niamh Cusack reads from the collection.The genre that helped define American music and describe the Black American experience is the subject of a new series of album releases which trace the genesis of blues, ragtime, hokum and gospel from the mid-1920s. Matchbox Bluesmaster Series claims to be the most comprehensive survey of the or

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 Adler, the BBC's Europe Editor and lover of all things Italian is a fan of the epic poem and has made a 3 part series for Radio 4. She discusses what she's set out ot explore and who she's done that with.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hilary Dunn SM: Donald MacDonald

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 Four: The Beatles in Time. Rochenda Sandall has been praised for powerful performances in the lockdown Talking Heads which then went briefly on stage at the Bridge in London, and as activist Barbara Beese in Small Axe - Mangrove.And cultural commentator Elle Osili-Wood joins John in the Front Row studio to look back at some of the year's highlights.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson Studio Manager: Giles Aspen

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 real events, BBC One’s New Years Day drama The Serpent tells the story of how the conman and murderer Charles Sobhraj (Tahar Rahim) was brought to justice. Posing as a gem dealer, Sobhraj and his girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc (Jenna Coleman) travelled across Thailand, Nepal and India in 1975 and 1976, carrying out a spree of crimes on the Asian ‘Hippie Trail’ until Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle), a junior diplomat at the Dutch Embassy in Bangkok, unwittingly walks into his intricate web of crime. Samira Ahmed talks to the director of The Serpent Tom Shankland.Percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie is the first full t

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 of the 31 works, - one recorded in one take in St Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany - Bach’s workplace for almost 30 years and where the composer is buried - and the second a studio version recorded shortly afterwards.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald

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 Society. Vanessa Kisuule, City Poet of Bristol, talks about her collaboration with the Old Vic and local groups, creating modern work inspired by medieval mystery plays. Em Power, three times Foyle Poet of the Year winner, reveals how poetry is a communal art. And they all read their work.Even before the lockdown there was a surge in sales of poetry books, driven by the internet. Anthony Anaxagorou and Vanessa Kisuule chart their journeys as poets via YouTube to the printed page.They discuss poetry addressing politics - Kisuule's poem on the toppling of the Colston statue went viral - and poets' engagement with the env

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 Matilda the Musical for which he composed the score and wrote the lyrics, getting burned in Hollywood, writing, directing and starring in his TV drama series Upright, and his unsettling return to his homeland after four years in Los Angeles.Presenter Tom Sutcliffe Producer Jerome Weatherald

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 festive series on the best parties on screen with an ode to the don of the movie party, Baz Luhrmann. John talks to Neil Gaiman about his latest Radio 4 drama adaptation, The Sleeper and the Spindle, a Christmas-time fairy tale brought to life by award-winning dramatist Katie Hims. Starring Penelope Wilton, Gwendoline Christie and Ralph Ineson as well as Neil Gaiman himself, it's a new tale drawing on traditional folk stories, interweaving Snow White and Sleeping Beauty in an enchanting drama that puts the women firmly centre stage.In September Radio 3 challenged listeners to compose a tune for the poem ‘Christmas Carol’ by

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 where people are cooped up over the Christmas period, writer and board gamer Natasha Hodgson reveals the world of cooperative board games: games where the players work together towards a goal, rather than trying to crush or bankrupt your dear mum. With many titles and styles to choose from, are the days of shouting over the Monopoly board over?In May, comedian Janey Godley was one of the Scottish actors and writers who took part in the National Theatre of Scotland’s project Scenes for Survival. Janey’s video short featured her as a character called Betty whose difficult relationship with her husband came to a head un

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: relationships, loss and ordinary people doing extraordinary things. She joins Nick to talk about those chance encounters, and why Christmas is a perfect time for stories.While many of our concert halls, theatres, galleries and museums have been empty for much of 2020, dedicated teams take centre stage to make sure venues are ready for the public’s return through various stages of lockdown. Kieron Lillis Head of Facilities at the National Theatre in London and Jessica Yung Visitor Assistant at the World Museum in Liverpool give Nick a behind the scenes look at their empty buildings and talk about the vital role of those who take c

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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 reach number 1 in the UK charts. She had a string of hits throughout the 50s and is still the only woman to have an instrumental International Number 1. On the day a new plaque is revealed at the site of the hair salon she founded in Brixton, we talk to music journalist and academic Jacqueline Springer about her legacy and influence.Secret Country is the new digital theatre show from Re-Live, a company who specialise in Life Story theatre work and who are based in Cardiff. Their new show is created and performed by a nine-strong company aged from 72 to 93, and is a candid, raucous and hopeful look at what life in lock