Journalist Siân Pattenden & critic Stephanie Merritt join Tom to discuss Self Esteem's third album A Complicated Woman, which features collaborations with Nadine Shah and Moonchild Sanelly. Ahead of the release, Self Esteem AKA Rebecca Lucy Taylor showcased the album by staging a five-night theatrical presentation at London's Duke of York theatre. …

As the journals of the American writer Joan Didion (based on conversations with her psychiatrist) are published, writer and journalist Rachel Cooke and Alan Taylor, editor of actor Alan Rickman's diaries, discuss the challenges, responsibilities and ethics of posthumously publishing the diaries of great writers, artists and actors. Acclaimed German…

Jamaica's former poet laureate, Lorna Goodison, on setting Dante's Inferno on the island of her birth; Journalist Joanna Moorhead on Pope Francis' relationship with the arts; Poet and librettist Michael Symmons Roberts on writing a form-breaking book to re-examine French composer Olivier Messiaen's form-breaking masterwork - Quartet for the End of …

Mr. Turner director Mike Leigh, art historian Charlotte Mullins and senior curator at Tate Amy Concannon join Tom Sutcliffe to celebrate the life and work of JMW Turner, as we approach the 250th anniversary of his birth. Also in this edition, David Hockney on Turner's skill as an artist, Alvaro Barrington talks about his continuing influence on art…

Alex Garland's latest film Warfare, which is co-directed by US military veteran Ray Mendoza turns back the clock back nearly twenty years to reconstruct a real-life surveillance mission in Iraq. Film critic Tim Robey and journalist Zing Tsjeng give their verdict on the analysis of the theatre of war, which unfolds in real time. They've also been to…

American documentary photographer and President of the Magnum Foundation Susan Meiselas speaks about her fifty-year career, as she receives the Outstanding Contribution to Photography award at the Sony World Photography Awards 2025, and as her work goes on display at Somerset House in London. We hear how President Trump's economic tariffs are affec…

US director Ryan Coogler on his supernatural horror film, Sinners. Anne Sebba discusses her new book, The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, about the orchestra formed in 1943 among the female prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. And as a new report looking at so-called book banning in the United States is published, we talked to au…

We have portraits of people in our galleries. But what if you’re a natural science museum? How do you portray a dinosaur? We talk with Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, about the ways our portrayals of dinosaurs have evolved, from sluggish and lizard-like to warm-blooded, colorful and spry. Then Ma…

Director and Screenwriter PJ Hogan, creator of the 1994 comedy Muriel's wedding, speaks to Samira Ahmed about the new musical adaptation of his film. With lead actors leaving, and ratings down, there are questions about the future of Doctor Who. Author John Higgs, and entertainment writer Caroline Frost, talk about the past, present and future of t…

Classics professor Edith Hall and writer Lawrence Norfolk join Tom to review The Return, a retelling of the end of Homer’s Odyssey, where the hero Odysseus returns to his kingdom decades after the battle of Troy to find his wife Queen Penelope fending off suitors out to take his throne. The film stars Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche talk to Tom …

Singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman talks about the re-release of her eponymous debut album after 35 years, about how those songs of oppression and aspiration, written so long ago, speak to us today, and about going from almost unknown to world famous in one performance. We ask two directors of productions of The Crucible (by Scottish Ballet, and at Sh…

Kym Marsh on stepping into the iconic role of Beverly in theatre classic Abigail's Party as the play opens at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. Film critic Hannah Strong and George Pundek, co-host of the Pulp Kitchen film podcast, on why so many of the big film franchises are facing difficulties. Severance creator Dan Erickson on making a t…

Theatre director Robert Icke's production of Oedipus won best revival and a best actress award for Lesley Manville at last night's Olivier Awards - but his new play Manhunt is now demanding his attention at the Royal Court Theatre in London. The drama focuses on the story of Raoul Moat who attacked his ex-girlfriend and killed her new boyfriend bef…

Nancy Durrant and Jason Solomons join Tom to review:The new offering from Guy Ritchie, Mobland, with familiar themes of drug gangs and violence and starring Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, Tom Hardy, amongst others.Giuseppe Penone's Thoughts in the Roots exhibition which is in and outside the Serpentine gallery, expanding on the significance of trees…

Tilda Swinton talks about her role in Joshua Oppenheimer's post-apocalyptic musical film The End, and about her intention to take a break from acting, Actor and artistic director of the new Welsh National Theatre Michael Sheen, and screenwriter Russell T Davies reveal plans for the company's first season. Plus we discuss the influence of schoolmast…

Charlie Brooker talks about the return of his wildly popular tech and sci-fi dystopian drama Black Mirror. This new six-part series includes Paul Giamatti as a man using AI to reconnect to a lost love who has died, Emma Corrin as a digitally recreated 40s screen star and, for the first time, follow-up episodes of two of the show's most popular epis…

This mini 'Blink' episode celebrates the cherry blossoms that are blooming all over Washington D.C. at the moment by taking a closer look at portraits that feature flowers. Kim visits three paintings in the National Portrait Gallery that use specific blooms to convey coded information about the sitter, including the experiences that shaped them and…

Front Row looks at freedom of expression in the arts. From rows about cancel culture to allegations of censorship and the charge that the arts has become 'woke', we explore what is happening. Samira is joined by art curator, Ekow Eshun, novelist Philip Hensher, poet and author of Hounded, Jenny Lindsay and theatre critic Kate Maltby, who sits on th…

For our review programme Tom Sutcliffe is joined by critics Dorian Lynskey and Briony Hanson. They are looking at: New comedy series The Studio, set in Hollywood and starring Seth Rogan and Catherine O’Hara. Delusions of Grandeur, Grayson Perry’s new exhibition where he selects items from the Wallace Collection, adds 40 new works and a new alter eg…

Peter Capaldi talks about his latest album – Sweet Illusions – a nod to the thriving 80s music scene in Glasgow where Peter made his musical debut fronting The Dreamboys. Through the Shortbread Tin is a new National Theatre of Scotland production about the supposed third century Scottish bard Ossian. Its writer – poet Martin O’Connor – and director…

The actor and director Peter Mullan talks about taking on the role of Bill Shankly in the new theatre production in Liverpool, Red or Dead, about the much-loved Liverpool football club manager. In April 1925 the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, a seven-month exhibition of contemporary design, opened in Paris. A…

Bryan Ferry discusses his latest album, Loose Talk and reflects on his long career in music. Disney's new live action version of Snow White has just opened and has attracted criticism from those who felt it departed too far from the original film. Film critics Larushka Ivan Zadeh and Al Horner explore why Disney's reinterpretation of its own canon …

Critics Hanna Flint and Boyd Hilton join Tom Sutcliffe to discuss Clueless, a new musical based on the 1995 film staring Alicia Silverstone. They also discuss Flow, Oscar-winning, dialogue-free, animated film based around the story of a cat who must find safety after its home is devastated by a flood. Plus Robert de Niro playing two gangsters in th…

French auteur Francois Ozon, whose previous films include 8 Women, Swimming Pool and Potiche, talks about his latest, When Autumn Falls, a bittersweet story of age, youth and breaking the rules, set in a picturesque Burgundy village. As the centenary of his birth approaches, leading pianist Tamara Stefanovich and musicologist Jonathan Cross discuss…

Sculptor Antony Gormley and Professor of French literature, Catriona Seth discuss Victor Hugo's visual art with Tom Sutcliffe. Victor Hugo was a 19th century cultural colossus, known for monumental works such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables as well as his poems, plays and political writings. It's not so well known that throughout …

Front Row's artist in residence, acclaimed Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson, reflects on five years since lockdown and we have another listen to his Front Row lockdown performance of the Adagio from Bach's Organ Sonata Number 4. How were the arts affected when the country locked down five years ago? Matthew Hemley of The Stage and Louisa Buck of…

Samira Ahmed and guest critics - the novelist and anthropologist Tahmima Anam and Ben Luke from the Art Newspaper - give their verdict on the week’s cultural releases. They’ve been to see Cate Blanchett in Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull at the Barbican Centre. The classic drama still features characters from Russian nobility – but it’s given a mo…

Songwriter and musician Edwyn Collins performs live from his latest album, Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation, a series of 11 optimistic and defiant tracks released two decades on from two devastating cerebral haemorrhages. American novelist Torrey Peters, whose book Detransition, Baby became a bestseller and was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fic…

As Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel The Leopard is dramatised for television, director Tom Shankland and film critic Peter Bradshaw discuss the power of this classic Italian novel. Natasha Brown's first novel, Assembly, saw her favourably compared to Virginia Woolf and won a Betty Trask award. Her eagerly-awaited second novel Universality has j…

Adolescence – the new Netflix series starring Stephen Graham – explores every parent’s worst nightmare: a teenage son accused of a knife-crime. Co-writers and directors Jack Thorne and Philip Barantini join us to explain how the “single-shot” filming technique sheds light on the way toxic masculinity spreads online among young people. Fantasy ficti…

In Front Row's Thursday review, Ellah Wakatama and Rhianna Dhillon give their take on Bong Joon Ho's new film Mickey 17 starring Robert Pattison, David Szalay's new novel Flesh, and Get Millie Black, Channel 4's Jamaica-set crime drama from Marlon James. Plus we hear from Sophie Elmhirst, whose Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Sh…

Actor Jessica Lange discusses her latest film, an adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize winning play Long Day's Journey Into Night, in which she plays Mary Tyrone, a woman with a morphine addiction at the centre of a dysfunctional family, and a role for which she previously won a Tony Award on Broadway. Welsh National Opera's new joint CEOs…

A new exhibition at London's National Gallery hopes to shed light on artists in 14th Century Siena, who have often been overshadowed by their Tuscan neighbours in Florence. Samira is joined in the studio by one of the curators, Imogen Tedbury, and by Maya Corry, a Renaissance expert from Oxford Brookes University to discuss the astonishing colours …

When William Temple Hornaday's exhibition of stuffed bison went on display at the Smithsonian Institution in 1888, it caused a sensation. Most visitors had never seen this majestic, hulking animal up close. And most probably thought it would be their only chance, since the bison had all but vanished from the wild. Some 140 years later, Kirk Johnson…

Sean Baker made Oscar history, becoming the first person to win four Academy Awards for directing, editing, writing and producing a single film, Anora. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh joins Samira to look at this year's Oscar winners and what they say about cinema today. The RSC's co-artistic director Daniel Evans discusses playing Christopher Marlowe's Edward…

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests the film critic Ryan Gilbey and art critic and author Charlotte Mullins review the week's latest cultural releases including Tate Modern’s exhibition on the unconventional artist and performer Leigh Bowery, the Greek film featuring gay romance, The Summer With Carmen and Michael Amherst’s first novel, The Boyhood of Cai…

Kirsty Wark talks to Anjelica Huston about playing a magnificent matriarch in the adaptation of Agatha Christie's Towards Zero, which begins on BBC One this weekend. The director of the British Museum, Nicholas Cullinan, talks about the appointment of an architectural firm who will be redeveloping the Museum's galleries, about the pressures of runn…

As the Oscars hove into view this weekend, the news is the women are coming - Stacey L Smith from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative on their research showing more women leading Hollywood box office hits. Berlin ER is the new medical drama from Apple set in a run down A&E department in the German capital. Creator and former doctor Samuel Jefferson …

We look back at the quarter century in performing arts, exploring the changes in live stage performance and asking how the theatrical landscape has changed over those years. Samira Ahmed hears about some of the big trends that have changed the experience - such as immersive theatre and discusses the challenges the sector has faced. She is joined by…

John Mullan and Caroline Frost join Tom to review Steven Knight's new historical drama A Thousand Blows, Nicolas Hytner's production of Richard II staring Jonathan Bailey and novel Perspectives by Laurent Binet Presenter: Tom SutcliffeProducer: Ciaran BerminghamBy BBC Radio 4

Kirsty Wark and guests discuss how visual art and architecture have evolved over the last 25 years. In the latest of our special series reflecting the changing cultural landscape since the start of the millennium, Kirsty Wark discusses the significant shifts in visual art and architecture in the 21st century with Director of Exhibitions and Program…

Playwright Ishy Din on his new play, Champion inspired by the 1977 visit of celebrated boxer, Muhammed Ali, to South Shields. Art historian Frances Spalding and curator Eleanor Bradley on artist Sheila Fell - the subject of a major exhibition at Tullie Museum and Art Gallery. As a new biography of concert pianist Dame Myra Hess is published, its au…

Samira Ahmed talks to Brazilian director Walter Salles about his film I'm Still Here - which has already won multiple awards including the Golden Globe for Best Actress for its star Fernanda Torres. it's based on a true story about a family Salles knew when he was growing up in Rio de Janeiro - whose father was detained and disappeared during the m…

Robbie Collin and Louisa Buck join Tom Sutcliffe to review the fourth Bridget Jones film Mad About the Boy staring Renée Zellweger, the Oscar nominated animation Memoir of a Snail and pioneering artist Linder's Danger Came Smiling retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in London. Presenter: Tom SutcliffeProducer: Claire Bartleet…

As scheduling changes are made to ITV soaps Coronation Street and Emmerdale, and as the 40th anniversary of EastEnders is celebrated with a live special on BBC One, how is the future looking for continuing drama on TV? Former Executive Producer of EastEnders John Yorke and Entertainment Journalist Emma Bullimore discuss the impact of the audience's…

Front Row continues to look at how culture has changed in the first 25 years of this century with an edition focusing on books. Tom Sutcliffe is in the Front Row studio with two writers who've helped to shape the literary landscape over those years – the novelists Zadie Smith and Andrew O'Hagan. They are joined by the presenter of Radio 4's A Good …

Hollywood legend Robert De Niro explains why he's starring in his first ever TV series Zero Day, where he plays a former US President out to find the culprits behind a deadly cyber-attack on America. He's joined by the show's screenwriter Eric Newman. With the British Council facing financial pressures it is considering the sale of its art collecti…

Tom is joined by the writer and broadcaster Octavia Bright and the Observer's theatre critic Susannah Clapp to review another version of the Greek classic Oedipus, this time at the Old Vic in London and starring Rami Malek. Also reviewed: The Last Showgirl, which has Pamela Anderson starring as Shelley with Jamie Lee Curtis as her good friend. Shel…

Writer Holly Walsh and actor Lucy Punch on the Motherland spin-off series, Amandaland which also stars Joanna LumleyDirector, screenwriter and producer of September 5, Tim Fehlbaum about his new film that explores what happened at the 1972 Munich Olympics from the perspective of the sports journalists who found themselves broadcasting the story As …

Front Row continues to look at how culture has changed in the first 25 years of the century with an edition focusing on film and TV. Samira is joined by Radio 4's Screenshot presenters Mark Kermode and Ellen E. Jones, Jane Tranter, who relaunched Doctor Who in 2005 and co-founded Bad Wolf productions and Boyd Hilton, the Entertainment Director of H…