Front Row

Academic and critic Maria Delgado and writer and producer Jake Cunningham join Tom Sutcliffe to discuss the film Tony, a film about the early career of food writer Anthony Bourdain, who is played by Dominic Sessa. The film also stars Antonio Banderas, who becomes an unexpected mentor for the young chef.

They also talk about Death Note: The Musical. Based on the best-selling Manga series of the same name, the Barbican show tells the story of a student who discovers a notebook which gives him the power to kill.

The final item for review is...

Australian writer and performer Hannah Reilly talks to us about her much-anticipated one woman show about sex, power and authenticity, Roleplay, which is produced by the team behind Fleabag and Baby Reindeer and which has sold out in Edinburgh but is heading to London for a run in the autumn.

Critic Fergus Morgan talks us through the other shows which are making a splash at this year's Edinburgh Festivals - from a radical sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, which stars Golden Globe-winning actor Wagner Moura, and in which 12 members of the audience ar...

Steph McGovern, presenter of new BBC show The Big Deal, is joined by Marie Le Conte to discuss how to buy art.

Fleabag actor Sian Clifford on her lead role in "Lady", a new mockumentary film about a fading aristocrat.

Why has a new show at Edinburgh about Amanda Knox been so controversial? Tristram Fane Saunders gives his assessment live from the Fringe Festival.

And Colin Thubron, both a travel writer and novelist, has a new book which journeys into Egypt and the human mind - literally. He talks about how witnessing brain...

What's the Royal Shakespeare Company's much anticipated stage adaptation of Game of Thrones like? Critics Boyd Hilton and Kate Maltby give their verdict.

Conductor Marin Alsop on what makes American classical music sound American, ahead of her American Classics Prom on 24 August.

TS Eliot Prize-winning poet Anthony Joseph discusses his new collection, Haunting the Black Air, which journeys from the Trinidad of his childhood to the dancefloors of New York.

And following the news of the death of the music producer William Orbit, Kate Hutchinson discusses his career, including his work on Madonna's...

Suzi Feay and John-Paul Stonard join Samira to review:

Can Nothing Save Us?, the new novel from Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh, a state-of-the-nation thriller set in the US.

The Summer Book, a new film starring Glenn Close and based on the beloved novel by Moomins creator Tove Jansson.

And Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam at the Royal Academy, featuring paintings by the 19th century painter who specialised in pictures of fairies, killed his own father and spent the rest of his life in Bethlem and then Broadmoor psychiatric institutions.

Plus the Guardian's...

In the first of our special programmes from the Edinburgh Festivals, actress Stockard Channing - star of Grease, Six Degrees of Separation and Practical Magic - joins us alongside her friend, actor David Westhead, to discuss their production of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, in which a cynical and disillusioned older man reflects on his early life as an ambitious and idealistic writer.

Jeff Whitty, Tony Award winning creator of the hit musical Avenue Q, which is currently running until 2027 in London's West End, tells us about Midsummer!, his new production inspired by Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's dream...

John Hannah plays a washed-up former detective who has moved to Spain to run a pub in the new Channel 5 comedy drama Benidorm is Murder. He discusses the appeal of television crime series, and why working-class settings are underrepresented on the small screen.

Hull Maritime Museum reopens after a £20 million refurbishment. Director Gillian Osgerby on why this museum is such an important feature of Hull's cultural landscape.

Critic Benji Wilson, author of Rate This Book: How Star Ratings Took Over The World, and journalist, Helen Nugent, editor of online magazine Northern Soul, on the power o...

Samira is joined by two magicians live in the studio, from the stage show "Now You See Me Live". And then she takes part in a trick and is bamboozled!

Jacqueline Crooks' latest novel Sky City follows a young woman and her friends in 1990s London, as they struggle to carve out lives for themselves in the shadow of their pasts. Jacqueline explains why literature is the perfect place to discuss difficult themes.

We look at the French government's multi-million euro national security plan to beef up museum security, following a spate of audacious robberies...

Rhianna Dhillon and Sarfraz Manzoor join Tom Sutcliffe to review:

Childhood in War, an exhibition at the Imperial War Musuem exploring how children have experienced conflict from 1914 to the present day.

Ish, the debut feature film from multimedia artist Imran Perretta which follows two boys in Luton as they navigate childhood against a backdrop of political tension and personal loss.

And Children of Wolves, the new novel from Lawrence Osborne (Ballad of a Small Player), about a private investigator sent to Turkey to find a 27-year-old woman who has disappeared.

Plus...

Composer Missy Mazzoli discusses her opera The Galloping Cure, which fuses a live orchestra with electronic beats and features a charismatic antihero and talking dogs. An allegory for a crisis which has become a worldwide epidemic, the production by Opera Ventures Productions and Scottish Opera receives its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival and is a reimagining of a story by Franz Kafka.

Artist Joyce W Cairns is one of Scotland's most renowned painters, and in 2018 she was elected the first President of the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture. She talks to us about...

Professor Dame Mary Beard reveals the 2026 Booker longlist and how she has found the process of being Chair of the judges.

British contemporary pop artist Philip Colbert’s latest installation has just been unveiled amidst the historic ruins of Pompeii. Philip talks to Samira Ahmed about being inspired by an ancient mosaic featuring a lobster, a symbol he frequently includes in his work, and how he adapted his process for the UNESCO heritage site.

Hollywood actor Bill Pullman, known as the fictional US President Whitmore in Independence Day, Meg Ryan’s spurned beau in Sleepless in S...

Graeme Garden remembers his friend and Goodies colleague, Bill Oddie. Frank Miller reimagined Batman as a tougher, grittier sort of comic book hero: The Dark Knight. He has written a memoir and a guide for fans The new Children's Laureate, writer Patrice Lawrence tells us about taking on such a prestigious role. And 850 years of the Eistoddfod: Archdruid Mererid Hopwood and Marc Rees discuss the importance of this centuries-old Welsh celebration of music, poetry, art literature and much more

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Hanna Flint and Chris Power join Tom Sutcliffe to review:

The new stage musical adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting, featuring famous songs from the 1996 Danny Boyle film as well as new compositions to bring Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud to life.

On the Sea, a film by novelist and director Helen Walsh about a mussel fisherman in northern Wales and the romance that he kindles with a new itinerant worker called Daniel.

Cool Machine, the final part of Colson Whitehead's Harlem trilogy, which began with Harlem Shuffle and was followed by...

In 1985, Wham were the first Western pop group to perform in communist China, and the tour changed people's lives. As a new documentary about this landmark moment in pop lands in cinemas - and screens on BBC Two next month - Andrew Ridgeley tells the story.

From Merchant Ivory period dramas to Peaky Blinders, the art of costume making is celebrated in a new exhibition - Costume Couture - at Edinburgh's Dovecot Studios. We're joined by John Bright, the founder of Cosprop, the pre-eminent costume making company in the UK and by historian Jade Halbert, whose new...

Actor Ruth Madeley on starring in new TV drama The Rapture - a psychological thriller where the competing interests of an oil company, a religious cult, a protest group and a disturbed young woman convicted of murdering her mother, are set against a backdrop of climate change.

Singer Nadine Shah on her homecoming BBC Prom in Gateshead.

After a three year standoff, Northern Ballet reaches an agreement with the Musicians' Union. Naomi Pohl, General Secretary of the Musicians' Union on the significance of the new deal.

Abandoned in 1929, the film Queen Kelly became...

Trent Park, the House of Secrets is a new museum in north London which explores the story of the secret listeners who eavesdropped on the conversations of German senior military prisoners of war. Samira is joined by Helen Lederer, whose grandfather who served as a WW2 secret listener, and the Chairman of Trent Park, Jason Charalambous.

As Andy Burnham becomes the first Prime Minister to study English Literature at University, Samira talks to his former English Professor at Cambridge, John Mullan.

Broadway star Ben Platt discusses his new musical at the Menier Chocolate Factory in...

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by film critic Tim Robey and classicist Edith Hall to discuss:

Christopher Nolan's much anticipated film version of Homer's epic The Odyssey, shot with IMAX cameras and with a stellar cast which includes Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya and Samantha Morton.

A new production of The Oresteia directed by acclaimed Australian director Simon Stone at the Bridge Theatre, London. Updated to the contemporary world, the play stars David Morrissey and Mary-Louise Parker.

Booker-shortlisted for her novel Burnt Sugar, author Avni Doshi's new book The First House focuses...

The coming-of-age series Heartstopper has been a phenomenon with young readers and viewers in recent years. Its creator Alice Oseman joins us as the film Heartstopper Forever is released.

JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is one of the all-time greats of American literature and has inspired many writers including George Saunders, Dave Eggers and Sally Rooney. On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the book's publication, the author's son Matt Salinger talks to us about the universal appeal of the novel, the protagonist Holden Caulfield and his father's reputation as a recluse.

...

British director Christopher Nolan discusses his biggest cinematic blockbuster yet: The Odyssey, which stars Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland and more, in his retelling of Homer’s epic poem about the warrior Odysseus’s battles with ancient Greek monsters like the Cyclops, Circe and the Sirens on his quest to return to his family after the Trojan War.

We talk with Tom Kiehl, CEO of the industry body UK Music, about the government’s recent announcement of plans ‘to turn up the music business,’ with new powers and investment. Is it something new or a rehash of old ide...

Diane Morgan on her BBC TV comedy series Ann Droid, in which she stars as the eponymous robot helper to Sue Johnston.

We pay tribute to actor Sam Neill, who has died at the age of 78. His screen work stretched from blockbusters like Jurassic Park to small independent New Zealand releases.

Anna Reynolds, Surveyor of the King's Pictures, on the rehang of Buckingham Palace Picture Gallery. Reopened recently, it has doubled the number of stunning works on display to the public; from Vermeer to Stubbs to Canaletto.

Saxophonist Emma Rawicz won UK Jazz...

Critic and columnist Dr Kate Maltby and author Michael Donkor join Tom Sutcliffe to review Robota, the inaugural large-scale production at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities in Oxford. The production explores what happens to humanity when the line between human and machine blurs.

They also discuss Country People by Pulitzer Prize nominated author Daniel Mason. The novel explores a year in the life of a family as they strike out into the unknown.

And talk about Foreign Tongues the 25th studio album by the Rolling Stones.

Plus, as the 2016 global hit Moana...

Lynval Golding of two-tone and ska legends The Specials , on the band’s final album, Live from the Cathedral, which was recorded in Coventry Cathedral. and which pays tribute to the band's late frontman Terry Hall.

Photographers Tish Murtha and Sandra George, whose work represented disadvantaged and marginalised communities in Newcastle and Edinburgh respectively, were not given the recognition they deserved in their lifetimes. Now with major exhibitions at Baltic Gateshead and City Art Centre in Edinburgh, we discuss the significance of their work.

David Thomson is renowned as the doyen of film criticism, but hi...

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has just created his largest site-specific exhibition - Ai Weiwei: Button Up! - which has now opened at Aviva Studios in Manchester. Xiaowen Zhu, Director of esea contemporary art gallery, has been to see the monumental works on show and shares her thoughts on whether in this case bigger is truly better. Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour on his ground-breaking play, White Rabbit Red Rabbit. He's joined by the actor Lucian Msamati who has taken on one of the performances in the latest run of the play in which neither the actor or the audience...

Confessions II is Madonna's first album in 7 years. Novelist Matt Cain and journalist and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer discuss going back to the dancefloor.

Sky TV has offered £1.6 bn pounds for ITV's free to air channel and its streaming platform ITVX. Jake Kanter, journalist for the screen industry website Deadline, considers what it will mean for British television.

With a new play about Daphne du Maurier - Daphne, The Secret Lives of Daphne Du Maurier - at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, the playwright Rosie Race joins Samira Ahmed, along with Helen Taylor, author of a d...

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by critics Bidisha and David Benedict to review:

The Invite, a new film directed by Olivia Wilde about two couples who join each other for dinner, starring Seth Rogan and Olivia Wilde as hosts and Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz as their guests.

Pride the Musical, created by the same team as the hit 2014 film, which tells the true story of a group of LGBT activists who support a Welsh mining community during the 1980's miners' strikes.

And the novel Trouble Was by Charlotte Edwardes which is told f...

The acclaimed novelist Kazuo Ishiguro talks about how he went about curating a season of films featuring trains for the BFI - from classics such as Shanghai Express by Josef von Sternberg and Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express to lesser known gems - and about how trains have inspired his own work - including songs, and his forthcoming novel, Miss Lambert Steps Aboard Danger.

Actresses Maureen Beattie and Tracy-Ann Oberman discuss why they've changed the gender of popular roles for stage productions which are opening soon - Lear at Pitlochry Festival Theatre which sees one...

Author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and The Circle, Dave Eggers is back with a new novel about a young aspiring artist. Contrapposto follows Cricket, an insular smalltown boy, enchanted by drawing, as well as an older girl, and in part draws on Eggers’ on experiences of the art world. Visiting the UK for the first time in over a decade, he speaks to Samira Ahmed in a rare interview.

As an officially licensed AI Michael Caine narrated audiobook The Odyssey has recently been released, Media and AI lawyer Kelsey Farish and Guardian Film Editor Ca...

We mark the passing of actress Dame Penelope Keith, speaking with John Lloyd and Mel Giedroyc about her long career.

Actor Russell Tovey plays a troubled police officer dealing with a late night emergency in The Guilty at The Donmar Warehouse in London.

Katherine Rundell on updating Cinderella for a contemporary audience, as part of Radio 4's Once Upon a Time series.

We discover the photographic genius of Jacques Henri Lartigue, whose work spanned almost the entire 20th century. An exhibition of his colour photographs has just opened in Milton Keynes

...

Writer Charlotte Mullins and author Viv Groskop join Tom to discuss the Frida Kahlo exhibition at Tate Modern in London. It's the highest pre-selling exhibition in Tate's history, and contains 30 significant works, has her clothes on display, and looks at the artist's life and impact on contemporaries and later generations.

They also offer their verdict on the Danish black comedy The Last Viking, which is the 6th film by director/actor trio Anders Thomas Jensen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Mads Mikkelsen.

Finally, they talk about Lisa Owens' novel Natural Disaster which dissects the last 24 hours...

25 years since she published her first Charlie and Lola book, former Children's Laureate Lauren Child returns with a new friendship-focused series featuring best-friends Lotta and Lola. She joins us to talk about her approach to writing for children and about the importance of reading together as a family.

Refik Anadol, one of the creative team behind Dataland, a vast new museum dedicated to AI art which opened this weekend in Los Angeles, tells us about the multi-sensory experiences visitors walk through on their journey through the building and how the Museum embraces and celebrates digital art while...

Bill Nighy joins to talk about his new family drama 500 Miles, where he plays a reclusive painter on the west coast of Ireland who gets an unexpected visit from his two Sheffield-based grandsons. He also discusses his early days in acting, his famous role in Love Actually, and why he's become an agony uncle in a new podcast. Today, the Carnegie Medal for Writing was awarded to Beth O’Brien for her debut YA novel Wolf Siren, and Kate Rolfe won the Carnegie Medal for Illustration for her book Wiggling Words. Both join Front Row to discuss their books Ho...

Linda Perry came to fame as lead singer of the all-female band Four Non-Blondes. She went on to be a hugely successful songwriter and producer, writing hits for the likes of Pink and Christina Aguilera, and collaborating with Dolly Parton. She's now released her first solo album for 27 years - Let It Die Here - and a documentary film of the same name. Linda came to perform for Front Row and explain why she’d stepped back into the limelight.

Mel Brooks is the filmmaker who gave us such comedies as Blazing Saddles and The Producers. He tu...

Writer Stephanie Merritt and Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin join Tom to review Anish Kapoor’s immersive exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, which includes huge red sculptures, black holes and boundless mirrors that challenge perspectives.

They also discuss The End Of Everything by M. John Harrison, a post-apocalyptic novel where the nature of the crisis remains unclear.

And they review Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day – a film adaptation of her novel with a cast including Haley Bennett, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders and Lily Allen.

Plus, Toy Story 5 director Andrew Stanton talks...

Priya Parmar's novel The Original tells the story of how actor Katharine Hepburn set out to become one of the true movie icons of the 20th century and succeeded. She's joined to talk about Hepburn's life and career by film historian Pamela Hutchinson.

As the Obama Presidential Center opens later this week in Chicago, we hear how its architecture is being viewed in the city, how it compares with other presidential libraries and what it might do for the people of Chicago.

As the National Library of Scotland's new exhibition showcases how artists, filmmakers and...

The Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, is widely regarded as the man who helped the band break through. He's inspired plays, films, and even an artistic installation by the Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller. He's now the subject of a new biography, Mr Moonlight, by Philip Norman.

A Unesco-listed cathedral in Kyiv went up in flames on Sunday night after an intense Russian bombing attack. The Ukrainian government sees the attack on the historic Pechersk Lavra monastery complex as part of a sustained campaign to destroy the nation’s cultural landmarks and identity. And in Kharkiv, workers at th...

Tom Sutcliffe presents a special edition of Front Row on the art of David Hockney.

The artists Maggie Hambling and Tacita Dean and Andrew Marr speak to Tom about Hockney's career and innovations.

Tom also speaks to art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnson and the art critic and author James Cahill, author of The Beverley Hills Housewife: Hockney’s Californian Muse and the World Beyond the Pool, published later this year.

The programme also features excerpts from interviews with Hockney.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Film producer Jason Solomons and Guardian columnist Zoe Williams join Tom Sutcliffe to discuss Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day – a film which looks at whether aliens are really out there.

John D. MacDonald’s psychological thriller The Executioners has inspired two Cape Fear films and now there’s a 10-part TV series starring Amy Adams and Javier Bardem. Jason and Zoe give their verdicts.

They also talk about M. C. Escher’s major exhibition at Somerset House. Famous for drawing optical illusions, impossible buildings, and endless patterns, the Dutch artist’s work has inspired film scenes in La...

Scotland's Makar Peter Mackay on his poems honouring Scotland's football team as they head to the FIFA World Cup - one, his own work, the other curated from lines submitted by members of the public. Can they help propel the team to victory in their first tournament in many years?

Crime writer Denise Mina tells us about the extraordinary true crime case that inspired her book The Last Drop, now adapted into a theatre production at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre.

Outdoor theatre takes place across the summer, around the UK. But what are the challenges it...

Barry Manilow on maintaining his musical curiosity as he releases his 33rd studio album, What A Time, and what it's like to have one of his biggest hits, Copacabana, sung by Sabrina Carpenter.

With the start of the World Cup this week, sports photographer Tom Jenkins, and Tim Marlow, Director of The Design Museum and one of the judges for this year's Football Art Prize at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield, discuss the art of making art out football.

As the Rambert dance company turns 100, Amanda Britton, one of its former leading dancers and now...

Samira Ahmed talks to Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter about their new album Mirage

Ekow Eshun, writer and broadcaster, and Polly Savage, Lecturer in the Art History of Africa at SOAS, University of London, discuss an exhibition of Pan African art at the Barbican, Project a Black Planet

Front Row introduces its AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker for 2026, Genevieve Robyn Arkle, who is a Lecturer in Music History at King's College London

And

Opera director David Pountney on John Taverner's last opera Krishna, performed as a world premiere at Grange Park Opera<...