2,000 episodes

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

Front Row BBC Radio 4

    • Society & Culture
    • 4.4 • 110 Ratings

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

    Review: Film - Rosalie, TV - Becoming Karl Lagerfeld, Book - The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

    Review: Film - Rosalie, TV - Becoming Karl Lagerfeld, Book - The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

    Kevin Barry’s new novel is The Heart in Winter, a love story set in the American wild west in the 1890s.
    The film Rosalie is a period piece inspired by the true story of a French bearded lady who, together with her husband, ran a café in rural France in the late 19th century.
    And Disney’s Paris set drama series Becoming Karl Lagerfeld explores the late Chanel fashion designer’s life.
    Max Liu and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh join Tom Sutcliffe to review.
    Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
    Producer: Torquil MacLeod

    • 42 min
    Christos Tsiolkas, Victoria Canal, Baillie Gifford festival sponsorship

    Christos Tsiolkas, Victoria Canal, Baillie Gifford festival sponsorship

    Christos Tsiolkas, the Australian writer best known for The Slap, talks about The In-Between, his visceral yet tender new novel about two men finding love in their fifties.
    Victoria Canal performs her Ivor Novello award winning song Black Swan and talks about her life in music.
    And with several literary festivals severing their ties with Baillie Gifford, Martha Gill and Grace Blakeley discuss the growing story behind the sponsorship row along with Adrian Turpin, Director of the Wigtown Book Festival in Dumfries and Galloway
    Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
    Producer: Ciaran Bermingham

    • 42 min
    Queenie, Female pirates, dating dramas

    Queenie, Female pirates, dating dramas

    Presenter Samira Ahmed talks to Candice Carty-Williams who has adapted her award-winning novel Queenie for an eight-part series on Channel 4, starring Dionne Brown. It traces a year in the life of a young woman navigating a difficult course through her relationships with friends, family and casual partners, with the shadow of unresolved trauma always looming in the background.
    As two dramas, Strategic Love Play and Love In Gravitational Waves, explore the nature of that modern romantic encounter - the date, their respective playwrights, Miriam Battye and Testament, join Samira to discuss turning the tryst into theatre.
    Authors Briony Cameron and Francesca De Tores talk about the rise of female pirates in fiction.
    Presenter: Samira Ahmed
    Producer: Claire Bartleet

    • 42 min
    Richard Linklater, Ultimate 90s Bollywood Song, Esther Swift

    Richard Linklater, Ultimate 90s Bollywood Song, Esther Swift

    American director Richard Linklater, who made his name with Boyhood and the Before Sunset films, talks about his new comedy thriller Hit Man, which stars Glen Powell as quiet teacher who leads a secret double life helping this police catch people trying to hire a hit man. The movie opens on Netflix on Friday.
    Asian Network is celebrating 90s Bollywood, revealing the Ultimate 90s Bollywood Song as voted for by listeners from a shortlist of 50. It was counted down on air on Friday and is available to listen to on BBC Sounds now. We are speaking to presenter Haroon Rashid live from Birmingham on Zoom.
    Harpist Esther Swift plays live and talks about her first solo studio album Expectations of a Lifetime.
    Presenter: Samira Ahmed
    Producer: Corinna Jones

    • 42 min
    Review: The Beast, We Are Lady Parts, Beyond Fashion exhibition

    Review: The Beast, We Are Lady Parts, Beyond Fashion exhibition

    Samira Ahmed is joined by author Anita Sethi and critic Tim Robey to review time-skipping sci-fi epic The Beast, where human emotions are perceived as a threat; the second series of Nida Manzoor’s We Are Lady Parts, where the all-female Muslin punk band are recording their first album; they also give their verdict on the Beyond Fashion photography exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, which tracks how fashion photography has become an art form in its own right.
    Presenter: Samira Ahmed
    Producer: Paula McGrath

    • 42 min
    Adrian Dunbar on Samuel Beckett, Degas exhibitions, Chigozie Obioma

    Adrian Dunbar on Samuel Beckett, Degas exhibitions, Chigozie Obioma

    Adrian Dunbar is co-curator of the Beckett Unbound Festival that takes place in various venues across Liverpool this weekend and sees him directing Beckett's radio play All That Fall in a disused reservoir in total darkness. He explains why he thinks Samuel Beckett is an incomparable writer whose appeal never fades.
    As two new exhibitions about Edgar Degas open at different ends of the UK, Nick looks at the importance and impact of this French Impressionist artist with Pippa Stephenson-Sit, the curator of Discovering Degas on now at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow and with Anne Robbins, the curator of Discover Degas & Miss La La, which opens at the National Gallery in London on June 6th. Anne is now curator of paintings at the Musée d’Orsay.
    The Biafran war, 1967 - 1970, was the first major conflict in post-colonial Africa, and when images of starving Biafran children with distended bellies began to be seen in the West, the modern humanitarian aid industry was launched. Award-winning novelist Chigozie Obioma has turned to the Biafran War for his new novel, The Road To The Country, which takes the reader to the front lines of the ferocious military confrontation.
    Presenter: Nick Ahad
    Producer: Ekene Akalawu

    • 42 min

Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5
110 Ratings

110 Ratings

SuckeredByItunes ,

Great Arts Podcast

They cover a wide variety from theater to TV to art museums to books, sometimes the interviews are with creators/actors authors and sometimes with critics but there’s always something interesting.

USkaren ,

BBC Front Row

Great hosts and guests. The conversation is always intelligent without being pedantic or pretensions.

#never Viking ,

Leftist elitist from BBC

Ultra left wing political views interfere with reviews. Elitists just cannot help but offend a large swath of people. I will download different podcasts thank you.

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