Front Row

Award-winning journalist Barbara Demick’s book 'Nothing to Envy' has been short-listed for this year’s Baille Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Winner of Winners Award; North Korean defectors spoke about love, family life and the terrible cost of the 1990’s famine.

Front Row examines the controversy surrounding Dungeons and Dragons, the world's most popular table-top role playing game and now a Hollywood film, as fans protest against a clampdown on fan-made content. Professional Dungeons and Dragons player Kim Richards and Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law, Dr. Hayleigh Bosher, join Tom Sutcliffe to discuss what this means for fans and copyright owners.

Hack-Poets Guild is a collaboration between the renowned folk musicians Marry Waterson, Lisa Knapp and Nathaniel Mann. Their new album Blackletter Garland is inspired by the collection of broadside ballads in the Bodleian Library, news sheets that circulated between the 16th and 20th Centuries.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Writer and director Steven Knight, whose work includes Peaky Blinders and SAS Rogue Heroes, discusses his new BBC adaptation of Great Expectations which stars Olivia Coleman as Miss Havisham.

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by critics Ben Luke and Isabel Stevens to review some of the week’s cultural highlights including Spanish film The Beasts, the After Impressionism exhibition at the National Gallery and the return of TV drama Succession.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

A Tall Order! Rochdale Art Gallery in the 1980s is the name of the show currently on at Touchstones Rochdale, which reflects on the gallery’s radical history supporting those who were, at the time, overlooked by the mainstream of the art world, some of whom have gone on to prestigious careers. Co-curators Derek Horton and Alice Correia join Front Row to discuss the show.

We begin our interviews with the writers shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize’s Winner of Winners Award. The award picks an overall favourite from across the prize’s 25 year history. James Shapiro will be discussing 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, his portrait of the most impactful year of Shakespeare’s life during which he wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and, most remarkably, Hamlet.

And we talk to arts minister Lord Parkinson on the new £60 million Cultural Investment Fund.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Main Image: Touchstones Rochdale - Gallery 2

Are theatre audiences behaving badly? After recent complaints, we discuss expectations of audience etiquette. Tom is joined by: Dr Kirsty Sedgman, Lecturer in Theatre at University of Bristol, researcher of audiences, and author of The Reasonable Audience: Theatre Etiquette, Behaviour Policing, And The Live Performance Experience; Lyn Gardner, theatre critic and Associate Editor of The Stage; and by front of house worker Bethany North.

British composer Anna Clyne and Finnish violinist and conductor Pekka Kuusisto discuss their new collaborations, including this week’s premiere of Anna’s clarinet concerto, Weathered, at the Royal Festival Hall in London, which Pekka will conduct. Plus they talk about their forthcoming partnership at the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in which Anna and Pekka will serve as Composer-in-Residence and Artistic Co-Director respectively.

Plus, actor turned playwright Danny Lee Wynter on his new play Black Superhero at the Royal Court Theatre in London – revealing a world where fantasy and reality meet with devastating consequences.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

(Main image credit: Ajamu X)

Irish singer songwriter Lisa O’Neill talks to Samira Ahmed about her latest album, All Of This Is Chance, and performs live in the Front Row studio.

The National Theatre of Norway have brought their production of Strindberg’s Dance of Death to the UK. Director Marit Moum Aune explains what led her to delve into the work of Strindberg, and acclaimed Norwegian actor Pia Tjelta reveals how she connected to her character.

Africa’s biggest film festival, FESPACO, has just taken place in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou. The biannual festival is a showcase for African talent and a marketplace for the industry. Film curator Carmen Thompson talks Samira through the upcoming African films to look out for.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Richard Eyre on directing the screen version of Alan Bennett’s play Allelujah, starring Jennifer Saunders, set on the geriatric ward of a fictional Yorkshire hospital, the Bethlehem, and on raising questions about how society cares for its older population.

We review the star-studded Apple TV+ climate change series Extrapolations, and a new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers - Black Artists from the American South. Our reviewers are writer and comic artist Woodrow Phoenix - and YA author, script editor and founder of the international Climate Fiction Writers League, Lauren James.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Filmmaker Hassan Nazar talks to Kate Molleson about his new film Winners, a love letter to the art of cinema. Set in Iran, it follows two children who find an Oscars statuette.

Playwright Calum L MacLeòid on his new Western, Stornaway, Quebec, which is set in 1880s Canada and performed in Gaelic, Québécois, and English.

And to mark Neurodiversity Celebration Week, Front Row discusses neurodiversity and creativity with impressionist Rory Bremner, stand-up comedian Ria Lina, and psychologist Professor Nancy Doyle.

Presenter: Kate Molleson

The conclusion of the Oscars marks the end of the film awards season, so Front Row took the opportunity to look at the progress made on representation in film and at awards. Tom is joined by the film critic Amon Warmann, Katherine Pieper of LA's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which looks at equalities at the Oscars, and Marcus Ryder of the Lenny Henry Centre For Media Diversity.

Plus, with a host of new productions exploring the cost of living crisis, we look at how playwrights are tackling this. Writer Emily White talks about her new play, Joseph K and the Cost of Living, being staged as part of a three-part project at the Swansea Grand Theatre, and the writer and critic Sarah Crompton discusses theatre's response to social and political issues on stage.

Bex Lindsay, presenter on Fun Kids Radio and children’s books expert, joins us for a round-up of some of the most interesting and engaging new releases for young independent readers.

Books discussed:

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Main Image: Michelle Yeoh

Author Percival Everett on his novel Dr No; Director Pravesh Kumar on his film Little English; the new Yeats Smartphones poetry trail in Bedford

Award-winning US novelist Percival Everett on his surreal new book, Dr No – in which unlikely heroes and uber-wealthy super villains chase after a box containing absolutely nothing.

Pravesh Kumar has been running a theatre company for over two decades and last year received an MBE in the New Year Honours List for services to theatre. As he makes his debut as a filmmaker with romantic comedy Little English - centred on a British South Asian family living in Slough - he discusses the importance of nuanced portrayals and overturning stereotypes.

It’s a century this year since W. B. Yeats won the Nobel Prize in literature for his poetry, ‘which…gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.’ This is marked by a new guided, smartphone app trail around places where he lived and that influenced him early in life. It is narrated and with poems read by Oscar nominated actor Ciarán Hinds. But it is not, as you might assume, in Ireland. Front Row reports from the launch.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

(Picture of Percival Everett. Photographer credit: Nacho Goberna)

New Irish film, My Sailor, My Love, by Finnish director, Klaus Härö, and a new collection of short stories, Old Babes in the Wood, by Margaret Atwood. To review, Tom is joined by author Ashley Hickson-Lovence and academic Sarah Churchwell.

Plus the Baillie Gifford prize – the six books shortlisted for the ‘winner of winners’ award.

And Irish author Nicole Flattery on her debut novel Nothing Special.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe