Tori Amos plays live and tells presenter Tom Sutcliffe about going from rock bottom to renewal in her lockdown album conceived on the Cornish coast, Ocean to Ocean. The Courtauld Gallery in London, renowned in particular for its collection of Impressionist art, reopens after a major 3-year refurbishment.  Reviewers Waldemar Januszczak and Subhadra Das join Tom to assess the refreshed setting.  They’ll also be watching new series Dopesick, starring Michael Keaton and Rosario Dawson and directed by Barry Levinson, a drama about the impact of OxyContin on a small mining town in the Eastern US. And Heidi Stephens who liveblogs Strictly Come Dancing for The Guardian joins Front Row to talk about the joy of sharing with an online community and how to get it right – fast. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Sarah Johnson
Photo: Tori Amos
Photo credit: Desmond Murray

Tori Amos performs, The Courtauld Gallery reopening and Dopesick series reviewed, Heidi Stephens live blogs

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by journalist Kevin Le Gendre and critic Hanna Flint to review The Big Cigar, which tells the story of Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton; Elton John’s Fragile Beauty exhibition at the V&A; and IF, a family film about imaginary friends. Tom also announces the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Claire Bartleet

Review: Big Cigar on AppleTV, Elton John’s photos at V&A,  animated/live action film If

Fawlty Towers arrives on the West End stage nearly 50 years after it first appeared on TV. John Cleese talks about why the sitcom wasn’t initially regarded as a great success, his love and appreciation of comedy as an art form, and how a future project will see Basil running a hotel with his daughter. 100 years ago this month, the musician Beatrice Harrison was responsible for a landmark event in BBC history when she persuaded the corporation to broadcast live from her garden as she played her cello, accompanied by nightingales.  Writer and cellist Kate Kennedy who has recreated this event for a new Radio 3 documentary and Patricia Cleveland-Peck who has edited a book about Beatrice Harrison join Front Row to discuss the significance of this historic event. Jason Solomons joins us from the Cannes Film Festival to tell us what people there are getting excited about  and what's in store over the next ten days. Presenter:  Tom Sutcliffe
Producer:  Torquil MacLeod

John Cleese's Fawlty Towers on stage, Beatrice Harrison, Cannes

Bruce Robinson has written a stage adaptation of his cult 1987 film Withnail And I - a tragicomedy that evokes the end of an era as the 60s give way to 70s and dreams collide with reality in the lives of the two main characters.  The play has just opened at the Birmingham Rep, directed by Sean Foley. Both of them talk about the challenges of adapting and staging a much loved classic and the degree to which it needed to remain true to the original. Now You See Us - an exhibition spanning 400 years of women in art - opens at Tate Britain this week.  Art critic Charlotte Mullins and art historian and biographer Frances Spalding give their verdict on how the collection represents the pioneers from Angelica Kauffman to Laura Knight.

Withnail and I on stage, Women & Art at Tate Britain, Alan Murrin

A memoir about growing up gay in Scotland under the shadow of Thatcherism, Maggie & Me was published to wide acclaim in 2013. Damian Barr joins to discuss how he as adapted it with James Ley for a new National Theatre of Scotland touring production. As Roberto Rossellini's classic 1945 film Rome, Open City (Roma città aperta) is re-released by the BFI, writer Thea Lenarduzzi and film historian Ian Christie reassess its role in launching Italian neorealism and compare it with There's Still Tomorrow (C'è ancora domani), a new film by Paula Cortellesi that borrows many of neorealism's visual and thematic hallmarks. With news last week that fake artworks by Renoir and Monet were being sold online, Samira is joined by art specialist and A.I. expert Dr. Carina Popovici and writer and art crime expert Riah Pyror to discuss the problem and how A.I. is being used to solve it.

Damian Barr on Maggie & Me, Italian neorealist film, A.I. and Fake Art

La Chimera is a new film directed by Alice Rohrwacher and starring Josh O’Connor as a British archaeologist who gets caught up in a network of stolen Etruscan artefacts in 1980s Italy.  Bodkin is a new comedy thriller series from Netflix starring Will Forte about a trio of true crime podcasters who head to rural Ireland to solve a mystery.  and Great Expectations, the hotly anticipated debut novel from the New Yorker theatre critic Vinson Cunningham about a young man in America who gets swept up in a presidential campaign.  Jo Hamya and Boyd Hilton join Nick Ahad to review. And we take a look at Spotify's latest figures on how it pays the music industry with Will Page. Presenter: Nick Ahad
Producer: Corinna Jones

Tori Amos performs, The Courtauld Gallery reopening and Dopesick series reviewed, Heidi Stephens live blogs

Download our free app to listen on your phone