Front Row 1bp4z

Critic Kate Maltby and Beatles author Ian Leslie Tom Sutcliffe to discuss two documentaries about John Lennon remaking his life in New York - Borrowed Time: Lennon's Last Decade and One to One: John & Yoko. They also discuss Tina Fey’s new series The Four Seasons, based on the 1981 film of the same name, which explores the relationships of three longstanding couples who holiday together. And we'll be reviewing a new musical version of The Great Gatsby, fresh in from Broadway. Plus writer Louise Dean, the founder of The Novelry, a creative writing school, talks about her organisation's new literary writing competition. Producer: Claire Bartleet Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Jeff Pope on his new series Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent man who was killed by police on a London tube in 2005, which launches tonight on Disney+. James VI of Scotland & I of England is the subject of a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. We’re ed by the historical writers Lucy Hughes Hallett and Steven Veerapen. And performance art in a new film The Extraordinary Miss Flower, a musical portrait of a mysterious woman, who left behind a suitcase of letters, from lovers and friends, starring the Icelandic artist, Emiliana Torrini . We’ll be speaking to the directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Maire Devine

In 1975, at the height of their fame, British band Slade made a feature film, Slade in Flame. The film was a critical and commercial failure at the time, but has built up a cult following over the years. Now it's being re-released in cinemas and on DVD. Frontman Noddy Holder and film director Richard Loncraine spoke to Samira Ahmed in studio. Samira talks with Irish actor Stephen Rae about his career working with Samuel Beckett, his hit film The Crying Game, and his current production of Krapp’s Last Tape

Mark Rosenblatt on Giant, his Olivier award-winning play starring John Lithgow as Roald Dahl. As Universal Studios announce plans for a major new theme park in Bedfordshire, what does this mean for the UK entertainment industry? Samira is ed by entertainment journalist Ella Baskerville and Gareth Smy from Framestore to discuss its signficance and the kinds of rides it's likely to contain. German director Natja Brunckhorst on her comedy film Two to One, about an East German heist set in the days leading up to German Reunification, starring Sandra Huller. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Oliver Jones

Journalist Siân Pattenden & critic Stephanie Merritt Tom to discuss Self Esteem's third album A Complicated Woman, which features collaborations with Nadine Shah and Moonchild Sanelly. Ahead of the release, Self Esteem AKA Rebecca Lucy Taylor showcased the album by staging a five-night theatrical presentation at London's Duke of York theatre. Tom and guests also talk about the Belgian film Julie Keeps Quiet, where a star player at a top tennis school deals with the aftermath of her coach being suspended. And they review the RSC's Stratford-upon-Avon contemporary production of Much Ado about Nothing which is set in the world of elite football. Plus, presenter Tom Service talks about the line up for the 2025 BBC Proms. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Claire Bartleet

As the journals of the American writer Joan Didion (based on conversations with her psychiatrist) are published, writer and journalist Rachel Cooke and Alan Taylor, editor of actor Alan Rickman's diaries, discuss the challenges, responsibilities and ethics of posthumously publishing the diaries of great writers, artists and actors. Acclaimed German pianist Pianist Igor Levit talks about his own challenge - that of performing Erik Satie's pioneering piece Vexations, in a performance at the Multitudes arts festival at London's Southbank Centre. The performance is directed by leading performance artist Marina Abramovic and is expected to last approximately 15 hours, as Levit repeats Satie's one-page score 840 times. And how should great women be memorialised? Cultural critic Stephen Bayley and author and activist Sara Sheridan discuss what a memorial to Queen Elizabeth II might look like, and why, in comparison to their male counterparts, so few women have grand memorials in our towns and cities. Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Mark Crossan

Jamaica's former poet laureate, Lorna Goodison, on setting Dante's Inferno on the island of her birth; Journalist Joanna Moorhead on Pope Francis' relationship with the arts; Poet and librettist Michael Symmons Roberts on writing a form-breaking book to re-examine French composer Olivier Messiaen's form-breaking masterwork - Quartet for the End of Time; and a visit to Shakespeare's first theatre. Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Mr. Turner director Mike Leigh, art historian Charlotte Mullins and senior curator at Tate Amy Concannon Tom Sutcliffe to celebrate the life and work of JMW Turner, as we approach the 250th anniversary of his birth. Also in this edition, David Hockney on Turner's skill as an artist, Alvaro Barrington talks about his continuing influence on artists today, and Tom goes to the conservation studio at Tate Britain to see what’s being done to protect Turner's bequest and look after his fragile and damaged works. Producer: Claire Bartleet Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Alex Garland's latest film Warfare, which is co-directed by US military veteran Ray Mendoza turns back the clock back nearly twenty years to reconstruct a real-life surveillance mission in Iraq. Film critic Tim Robey and journalist Zing Tsjeng give their verdict on the analysis of the theatre of war, which unfolds in real time. They've also been to see Shanghai Dolls at London's Kiln Theatre - which spans six decades of Chinese history, focusing on the life of an actress who was to personify the terrifying face of the cultural revolution, Madame Mao. Literary critic Boyd Tonkin reflects on the legacy of Nobel prize-winning Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa who has died at the age of 89. Samira and her guests have also been reading Katie Kitamura's new book Audition, about an actress who agrees to have dinner with a young man who seems fixated on her, and includes a 'sliding doors' alternative reality. And as the actress Cate Blanchett announces her intention to retire, Radio 4 listeners have a chance to hear her star in her first major radio drama The Fever, in which she plays a privileged woman who travels to a war-torn country and reflects on her comfortable life amidst the poverty of others. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Paula McGrath

American documentary photographer and President of the Magnum Foundation Susan Meiselas speaks about her fifty-year career, as she receives the Outstanding Contribution to Photography award at the Sony World Photography Awards 2025, and as her work goes on display at Somerset House in London. We hear how President Trump's economic tariffs are affecting specialist manufacturers of musical instruments here in the UK. And author and screenwriter Ewan Morrison, whose previous books have explored cults and pandemics, talks about his latest novel For Emma, a concept thriller set in the world of artificial intelligence and brain computer interfaces. Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Mark Crossan

US director Ryan Coogler on his supernatural horror film Sinners. Anne Sebba discusses her new book, The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, about the orchestra formed in 1943 among the female prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. And as a new report looking at so-called book banning in the United States is published, we talked to author Ellen Hopkins, American Libraries Association president, Cindy Hohl, and Neal McCluskey, director of libertarian thinktank The Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Simon Richardson

Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Harry Graham

Classics professor Edith Hall and writer Lawrence Norfolk Tom to review The Return, a retelling of the end of Homer’s Odyssey, where the hero Odysseus returns to his kingdom decades after the battle of Troy to find his wife Queen Penelope fending off suitors out to take his throne. The film stars Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche talk to Tom about being reunited on screen for the first time since The English Patient. Tom and guests also review Holy Cow, an award winning film about youth, agriculture, and the comté cheese-making competition, in the Jura region of south-east . Plus time-looping novel The Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, Book I is the first of a planned septology, which was originally self-published in Denmark. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Claire Bartleet

Singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman talks about the re-release of her eponymous debut album after 35 years, about how those songs of oppression and aspiration, written so long ago, speak to us today, and about going from almost unknown to world famous in one performance. We ask two directors of productions of The Crucible (by Scottish Ballet, and at Shakespeare's Globe) why there is an Arthur Miller moment in theatres this spring. And journalist Kate Mossman talks about her book about rock royalty, Men of a Certain Age, which includes interviews with Jon Bon Jovi, Roger Taylor and Gene Simmons. Presenter: Kate Molleson Producer: Mark Crossan

Kym Marsh on stepping into the iconic role of Beverly in theatre classic Abigail's Party as the play opens at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. Film critic Hannah Strong and George Pundek, co-host of the Pulp Kitchen film podcast, on why so many of the big film franchises are facing difficulties. Severance creator Dan Erickson on making a television hit with his debut project. Novelist Max Porter, who is chair of the judges for this year's International Booker Prize, on the books that have made the shortlist: On the Calculation of Volume One by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Theatre director Robert Icke's production of Oedipus won best revival and a best actress award for Lesley Manville at last night's Olivier Awards - but his new play Manhunt is now demanding his attention at the Royal Court Theatre in London. The drama focuses on the story of Raoul Moat who attacked his ex-girlfriend and killed her new boyfriend before a stand-off with armed police which ended in his suicide. Samira talks to Robert Icke and to Samuel Edward-Cook who plays Moat. The Edwardian era - from Queen Victoria's death to the start of the First World War - is the subject of a new exhibition at the King's Gallery in London. Samira is ed by its curator Kathryn Jones from the Royal Collection Trust and by the historian and Alwyn Turner, author of Little Englanders: Britain in the Edwardian Era. The Swinging Sixties bring to mind films like Michael Caine's Alfie and the social realist dramas like Up The Junction. But A Touch of Love, released in 1969 and now getting a fresh outing on DVD, offers up an unusual female perspective on the era of free love. Margaret Drabble adapted her own novel the Millstone for the film which starred Sandy Dennis - alongside a young Ian McKellen in his first screen role. We hear from its director Waris Hussein - who also directed the first episodes of Dr Who.

Nancy Durrant and Jason Solomons Tom to review: The new offering from Guy Ritchie, Mobland, with familiar themes of drug gangs and violence and starring Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, Tom Hardy, amongst others. Giuseppe Penone's Thoughts in the Roots exhibition which is in and outside the Serpentine gallery, expanding on the significance of trees as a recurring motif in his work. The Most Precious of Cargoes, a new animation film which depicts some of the horrors of the Holocaust. And Tom talks to Jorge M. Perez and Darlene Perez about their philanthropic gift to Tate Modern. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Corinna Jones

Tilda Swinton talks about her role in Joshua Oppenheimer's post-apocalyptic musical film The End, and about her intention to take a break from acting, Actor and artistic director of the new Welsh National Theatre Michael Sheen, and screenwriter Russell T Davies reveal plans for the company's first season. Plus we discuss the influence of schoolmaster Philip Burton on the legendary actor Richard Burton, as a new book, and a film starring Toby Jones, explore the impact of the teacher on Burton's life. Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Mark Crossan

Charlie Brooker talks about the return of his wildly popular tech and sci-fi dystopian drama Black Mirror. This new six-part series includes Paul Giamatti as a man using AI to reconnect to a lost love who has died, Emma Corrin as a digitally recreated 40s screen star and, for the first time, follow-up episodes of two of the show's most popular episodes: Bandersnatch and USS Callister. The Design Council is 80 and is celebrateing with a new book, Eight Decades of British Design. The Chief Executive of the Design Council, Minnie Moll, and Thomas Heatherwick, the designer famous for, among many projects, the cauldron for the Olympic flame at the games in London, reflect on the impact of design on our lives here in the past, now, and in the future. The Women of Llanrumney sounds as if it might be the new Gavin and Stacey, but this Llanrumney was a sugar plantation in Jamaica, the setting for Azuka Oforka's first play which examines the links of Wales with slavery, its brutality, the role of slave revolts in bringing about abolition and, looking at the lives of three women, two enslaved and one enslaver, discusses the nature of freedom. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May

Front Row looks at freedom of expression in the arts. From rows about cancel culture to allegations of censorship and the charge that the arts has become 'woke', we explore what is happening. Samira is ed by art curator, Ekow Eshun, novelist Philip Hensher, poet and author of Hounded, Jenny Lindsay and theatre critic Kate Maltby, who sits on the board of the campaign group Index On Censorship. We hear from David Austin, British Board of Film Classification Chief Exec, about how sex and violence are classified for modern audiences. And Shakespeares Globe Artistic Director Michelle Terry discusses her production of Richard III, which ignited a row over casting. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Timothy Prosser