Front Row

Julia Roberts, and the director of her latest project, Sam Esmail, discuss their new film, Leave The World Behind - a psychological thriller which explores what happens when all the things that make modern life possible stop working.

With their last film, the much-garlanded ‘Loving Vincent’, an exploration of the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh, the co-directors and co-writers Dorota and Hugh Welchman created what has been described as the world’s first oil-painted feature film. Hugh joins Front Row to discuss how they’ve used their ground-breaking technique for their new film, The Peasants, a tale of 19th century life in rural Poland.

Guitarist MILOŠ has been in the forefront of the classical guitar revival. He talks to Nick about feeling like a time traveller with his new album, Baroque, where he explores music of the baroque period.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Front Row reviews the week’s cultural highlights. Samira Ahmed is joined by critics Sarah Crompton and Isabel Stevens to discuss William Oldroyd’s new film Eileen and a production of The House of Bernarda Alba at the National Theatre.

The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan, who is often described as one of the 20th Century’s greatest song-writers, has died age 65. Irish broadcaster John Kelly remembers him.

Ian Youngs reports from Bristol’s new music venue Bristol Beacon, formerly Colston Hall, which is re-opening after a five year refurbishment and a name change. It’s now a state of the art concert venue, but the work has proved controversial due to escalating costs.

And Barbara Walker, who is shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize, talks about how her portraits capture people affected by the Windrush scandal.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Since 1994 Sir Richard Mantle has been General Director of Opera North. He's led the company through the creation of a new home in Leeds; the establishment of the Howard Assembly Room - a performance space for all kinds of music; and many award-winning opera productions. As he leaves the company, at a time when cuts to opera funding have been making headlines, he joins Front Row to discuss why he thinks opera has much to contribute to culture in the UK.

Singer-songwriter Billie Marten, from Ripon in Yorkshire, performs tracks from her fourth album, Drop Cherries, ahead of her UK tour, which starts this Saturday in Liverpool.

As his new public sculpture, Hibiscus Rising, is unveiled in Leeds, artist Yinka Shonibare talks to Nick about creating a work that marks a dark episode in the city's history and provides a place to come together for all the communities in the city today.

Presenter Nick Ahad

Michael Connelly is one of several authors suing the tech company OpenAI for "theft" of his work. Nicola Solomon, outgoing Society of Authors CEO, and Sean Michaels, one of the first novelists to use AI, discuss the challenges and opportunities facing writers on the cusp of a new technological era.

What makes a great piece of terrible album artwork? The Williamson Gallery & Museum in Birkenhead is currently displaying nearly 500 albums which have been collected over a seven year period by Steve Goldman from record fairs and online market places as part of their ‘Worst Record Covers’ exhibition. Samira is joined by the exhibition curator Niall Hodson and the writer, journalist and author of “The Sound of Being Human” Jude Rogers.

The most famous event in Los Angeles in 1852 was a horse race. Fortunes were won and lost on Pio Pico's horse Sarco and Jose Sepulveda's Black Swan. Widespread press reports included the horses’ names and the names of their owners - but not the name of the black jockey who won. Apart from his colour, we know nothing about him. Fred D’Aguiar talks to Samira Ahmed about his latest collection of poems, 'For the Unnamed', in which he recovers and re-imagines the story, giving the black jockey the presence today he was denied in his lifetime.

For what would have been the 100th birthday of soprano Maria Callas, Front Row brought together singer Dame Sarah Connolly and music critic Fiona Maddocks to reassess her achievements and influence in the world of opera.

After successfully teaming up during the pandemic to create the album, Lost in the Cedar Wood, musician and actor Johnny Flynn and nature writer and poet Robert Macfarlane talk to Tom about their second collaboration – The Moon Also Rises, and Johnny performs live in the Front Row studio.

Rory Pilgrim is one of the artists shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize. He discusses his work which combines song writing, composition, films, texts, drawings, paintings and live performances.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

A special edition of Front Row, live from the Booker Prize for Fiction.

Samira Ahmed is joined on stage by Booker Prize judges actor Adjoa Andoh and Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro to discuss this year’s shortlist, before the chair of judges, novelist Esi Edugyan, announces the winner live on air.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who spent six years in detention in Iran, gives the keynote speech about the power of literature to take us to another world.

Front Row will also hear from all this year’s shortlisted authors, whose novels cover climate change, a democracy sliding into extremism, prejudice, grief and the complexities of race in America.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose has attracted a lot of media attention for Maestro, his portrayal of the composer Leonard Bernstein. Tom Sutcliffe asks music critic Nicholas Kenyon and writer and cultural commentator Zoe Williams what they thought of Cooper’s directorial debut – which he spent years preparing for, studying his speech patterns and copying how he conducted Mahler symphonies. They also review Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge – a new reality TV spin-off of the hit Korean drama.

Love it or hate it, Brutalism is an architectural form which could get its own museum – in a school assembly hall in north London. Architectural designer Ben Pentreath who works in traditional and classical styles and Catherine Croft, Director of the Twentieth Century Society assess its impact.

In her acclaimed films Joanna Hogg blurs the lines between her art and her life. As she releases her first ghost story film, The Eternal Daughter - an exploration of a mother and daughter relationship with Tilda Swinton playing both roles, she talks to Antonia Quirke about the craft involved in making art inspired by her life.

Satellite imagery might make maps today more accurate, but we haven’t stopped wanting to see creative, imaginative maps that are also about story telling, from illustrations in books to mapping out fantasy worlds. Antonia meets two contemporary map makers: Jamie Whyte who creates illustrative maps and Luke Casper Pearson who maps the virtual worlds in computer games.

Artist Ghislaine Leung who’s been shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize uses a “score” – similar to musical scores – to create a relationship with those who help to construct her work in galleries. Re-using discarded objects and highlighting her conflicting demands as both artist and mother are central to her work. Her work can be seen at the Towner Eastbourne, and the winner of the prize will be announced in December.

Tom Sutcliffe talks to director Ridley Scott about his new film Napoleon - a subject that takes him back to an actor who’s played an emperor for him before – Joaquin Phoenix was Commodus in Gladiator – and back to the period in which his very first film. The Duellists was set.

A fifth of the seats at the Royal Albert Hall are owned by just over 300 people - who can choose to enjoy performances or sell the tickets on at a profit. We hear from Richard Lyttelton, a former President of the Royal Albert Hall who believes that making money out of the seats doesn't really align with the original vision of the venue.

A Gloucester Old Spot pig has been named The Satsuma Complex - in honour of comedian Bob Mortimer's first book, which has won this year's Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for the best comic novel. He's joined by fellow comedian and member of the judging panel Pippa Evans to explore what makes fiction funny.

Thomas Guthrie and “The Alehouse Boys” bring the music of Schubert to pubs with their new album Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin. Their arrangements of Schubert’s song cycle intend to break free from the formality of established lieder recitals, returning to its original improvisational form.

In the last of our Booker shortlist series this week, Samira interviews Canadian 2023 Giller Prize-winning novelist Sarah Bernstein. Her second novel, Study for Obedience, explores the inner thoughts of its unnamed protagonist who moves to a new area to stay with her brother and quickly becomes a feared stranger.

And the critic Boyd Tonkin discusses the remarkable literary output of the author, critic and poet AS Byatt who has died aged 87.