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From the Old Testament to Captain Underpants, via Jane Austen and pulp fiction, the relationship between the page and the screen is unbreakable. But the journey from book to screenplay can be a long and winding road that is sometimes paved with gold, and often filled with detours and potholes.

To get under the skin of literary adaptations, Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones decamped to the Hay literary festival where the book world’s biggest names gather to enjoy discussion and sharing ideas.

Cressida Cowell, author of the popular How To Train Your Dragon series, talks about the joyful process of seeing her characters come alive in a huge franchise comprising animated movies, TV series and a video game.

When her first novel Brick Lane was turned into a film in 2007, Monica Ali was not involved in the adaptation. Now, 15 years later, Monica is writing the screenplay of her latest novel Love Marriage and she talks to Mark and Ellen about the new skills she has learned along the way.

After many close calls with producers, Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Candy House) knows about the mercurial nature of having work ‘optioned’. She discusses her favourite literary adaptations and shares a cinematic piece of writing by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Also, broadcaster and writer Jeffrey Boakye takes a spin with an 80s classic movie to reveal the deeper issues at play in Dirty Dancing.

Producer: Freya Hellier

Fifty years ago a break-in at the Watergate complex in Washington DC caused a cover-up that ultimately cost Richard Nixon the presidency. From the moment the hearings into the scandal were televised, there has been a massive audience for all things Watergate. There have been feature films, plays, podcasts, online comedy series, documentaries and TV dramas. Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode investigate the lasting legacy of Watergate on screen.

Actor and comedian Harry Shearer has been playing Tricky Dicky since the very start of his career. He tells Mark about turning the president's tape recordings into verbatim comedy-drama Nixon's The One.

Over a series of TV interviews the late Sir David Frost got President Nixon to admit that he had acted illegally and let the American people down. Mark talks to Michael Sheen who played the British broadcaster on both stage and screen in Frost/Nixon.

Meanwhile, Ellen explores politically focused TV and film with the creator of The Thick of It and Veep, Armando Iannucci and screenwriter Liz Hannah, whose films The Post and Long Shot focus on journalism and politics.

And journalist and broadcaster Martha Kearney gives her Viewing Notes.

Producer: Marilyn Rust

A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4

Ahead of Jamaican Independence Day, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode immerse themselves in one of the island’s greatest exports, The Harder They Come, marking the film’s 50th anniversary.

The Harder They Come was a sensation, but it took a while for its vibrations to be heard around the world. In 1972, the premiere in Kingston brought the area to a complete standstill. Outside of Jamaica, the film helped introduce reggae music to millions, thanks to its Jimmy Cliff-driven soundtrack.

Exploring the film’s continuing legacy, Ellen hears from one of its stars, Carl Bradshaw, and the film’s publicist Barbara Blake-Hannah, for whom the movie was so life-changing that she left the UK and moved to Jamaica where she later became a Member of Parliament. Mark speaks to DJ, broadcaster, musician and filmmaker Don Letts, whose film Dancehall Queen is a homage to The Harder They Come. Mark also talks to music supervisor Ed Bailie who worked closely with Steve McQueen on his Small Axe films, including Lovers Rock which also owes a great debt to this cult classic.

Ellen and Mark also look at what The Harder They Come did, or did not do, for the Jamaican film industry, and the films that followed it - including Rockers, Countryman, and Babylon.

Producer: Tom Whalley

Ellen and Mark discuss the enduring screen presence of Elvis Presley, from Love Me Tender to Wild at Heart.

One of the most hotly anticipated films this summer is Elvis - director Baz Luhrmann’s biopic chronicling the singer’s career and complicated relationship with manager Colonel Tom Parker.

Committed Presley fan Mark discusses Elvis’ prolific acting career with a couple of fellow obsessives - the actor Sanjeev Bhaskar, and journalist and screenwriter Ray Connolly.

And Ellen explores how The King has lived on via film and TV in the 45 years since his death. She’s joined by comedian and pop culture devotee Greg Proops and filmmaker Jeanie Finlay, whose 2015 documentary Orion: The Man Who Would Be King told the bizarre story of a masked Elvis soundalike.

Also, movement director Polly Bennett talks about what she watched to help prepare actor Austin Butler for his starring role as Elvis in Luhrmann's film.

Producer: Jane Long

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore big budget flops, from Ishtar to Cats.

Ishtar – writer and director Elaine May's huge budget comedy starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman – was released in May 1987. The film, about a pair of incompetent singer-songwriters who become entangled in a CIA plot in north Africa, tanked at the box office and ultimately put paid to May's directing career. In the process the word Ishtar became a joke - that title alone symbolising Hollywood hubris at its worst. But, as May put it, "If all the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman."

Thirty five years on, Mark asks culture critic Lindsay Zoladz and comedian and director Richard Ayoade whether Ishtar is ripe for reappraisal.

And Ellen draws up a set of rules to help Hollywood studio bosses avoid box office bombs in 2022, running them past Film Stories founder Simon Brew and Hollywood super-producer Lynda Obst.

Also, controversial director Gaspar Noe shares his Viewing Notes.

Producer: Jane Long

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode celebrate one of the great doyennes of Hollywood in what would have been her centenary year.

Cultural historian Christopher Frayling joins Mark to revisit the rare career retrospective interview he conducted with Day in 1989.

And Ellen speaks to Queer cinema expert Emma Smart and singer Rufus Wainwright about the importance of both Doris Day and Judy Garland, who would also have turned 100 in 2022, to LGBTQIA+ communities.

Plus actor and writer Tracy-Ann Oberman shares her favourite Doris Day film in Viewing Notes.

Screenshot is Radio 4’s guide through the ever-expanding universe of the moving image. Every episode, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode journey through the main streets and back roads connecting film, television and streaming over the last hundred years.

Producer: Hester Cant

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the history of indigenous and native people on screen.

In 1922, silent film Nanook of the North was released. Written, directed and filmed by a white man, the docudrama claimed to show the daily life of an Inuit hunter and his family in the Canadian Arctic - but all wasn't quite as it seemed. A century on, Screenshot explores the representation of indigenous people on screen, and who gets to tell their stories, with film critic Jesse Wente who founded the Indigenous Screen Office.

Ellen also talks to director Leah Purcell about reimagining the Australian classic, The Drover's Wife, as an Indigenous, feminist Western.

And Mark speaks to the producers of Waru, Kerry Warkia and Kiel McNaughton, about their quest to bring Maori and Pasifika stories to a wider audience.



Producer: Marilyn Rust


Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore cinema's steamiest genre - the erotic thriller - 30 years on from the release of Basic Instinct.

Mark reappraises recent best director Oscar-winner Jane Campion's oft-overlooked 2003 erotic thriller In The Cut, with the help of the film's author and co-screenwriter Susanna Moore and the film critic Maria San Filippo.

And Ellen speaks to film historian Karina Longworth and intimacy coordinator Ita O'Brien about the highs and lows of the erotic thriller, and how we're dealing with sex on screen in the 21st century.

Also, Basic Instinct 2 star David Morrissey shares his Viewing Notes.

Screenshot is Radio 4’s guide through the ever-expanding universe of the moving image. Every episode, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode journey through the main streets and back roads connecting film, television and streaming over the last hundred years.

Producer: Jane Long

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the influence of David Simon and The Wire, as the Baltimore-set opus celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

Beginning his career as a police reporter for the much respected Baltimore Sun, David Simon eventually became disillusioned with changes being made at the paper and spent a year embedded with the Baltimore Police Department’s Homicide Unit. That resulted in the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which became the basis for the TV show Homicide: Life On The Street.

Simon followed that with another book, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, which was adapted for TV as The Corner, and then created The Wire, which changed television forever.

Simon has since been behind the shows Generation Kill, Treme, The Deuce and The Plot Against America. His latest project We Own This City sees him return to Baltimore, this time to tell the true story of the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force and the corruption surrounding it.

Ellen looks at the influence of David Simon’s work with a focus on unconventional casting - Simon repeatedly casts non-actors, and people with first hand experience of the subjects he explores. She speaks with casting director Pat Moran, who has worked alongside Simon on several projects. She also talks to Ronan Bennett and Gerry Jackson. Ronan is the creator and writer of Top Boy and Gerry is the series’ story consultant. Gerry is a fitness trainer but his knowledge of Hackney and connection to the local community helped Ronan to write Top Boy, and to find local talent to feature in the show, in an echo of The Wire.

And Mark goes back 20 years to speak to someone who was there when The Wire began. Actor Clarke Peters was on the show for all five seasons, playing fan favourite Detective Lester Freamon and delivering some of the show’s greatest lines. Mark also talks to Professor Liam Kennedy, editor of The Wire: Race, Class, and Genre - a series of essays exploring the show's portrayals of race, drug war policing, deindustrialisation, and the inadequacies of America’s civic, educational, and political institutions.

Also, Top Boy star Ashley Walters shares what he’s been watching.

Screenshot is Radio 4’s guide through the ever-expanding universe of the moving image. Every episode, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode journey through the main streets and back roads connecting film, television and streaming over the last hundred years.

Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones explore Christianity on screen, from faith films to nunsploitation.

Mark speaks to priest Father Peter Malone and controversial director Paul Verhoeven about two very different cinematic depictions of the crucifixion - Pasolini's Gospel According to Matthew and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

And Ellen takes a look at nuns in the movies, from The Bells of St Mary's to The Devils, with the help of film critics Sister Rose Pacatte and Pamela Hutchinson.

Screenshot is Radio 4’s guide through the ever-expanding universe of the moving image. Every episode, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode journey through the main streets and back roads connecting film, television and streaming over the last hundred years.

Producer: Jane Long