Benedict Cumberbatch speaks to Kate Molleson about the new film adaptation of Max Porter's Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, an exploration of loss and berievement.On Tuesday night, the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2025 was announced. They join Kate to dicuss their work, and the significance of taking home the prize. 100 years ago, one of the best viola players of her generation – Rebecca Clarke – gave a sold-out concert at London’s Wigmore Hall. All of the music on the programme she had written herself. A new album of her works and a series of events will mark the centenery. Tenor Nicholas Phan and writer and broadcaster Leah Broad discuss.And composer and songwriter Anna Appleby reflects on the music of Catalan star Rosalia, whose fusion of pop and monumental classical sounds is making waves in the music industry.
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42:29
Sarah Snook, Riz Ahmed and return of Play for Today
Riz Ahmed is one of his generation’s great British actors. He starred alongside Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler, before landing roles in big budget films from Jason Bourne to Rogue One. For his latest role, Ahmed has teamed up with director David McKenzie to play a man who works as a broker between whistleblowers and the companies who want their secrets returned.
As Shiv in Succession, the scheming daughter of the Logan Roy dynasty, Sarah Snook was an integral part of one of the most critically acclaimed TV ensembles of recent years. But Snook has gone back to the small screen- in All Her Fault, Snook plays Marisa Irvine, a mother who faces her worst nightmare when her four year old son goes missing.
Between 1970 and 1984, BBC1’s experimental drama strand Play for Today created what is now regarded as classic British drama. It helped launch the careers of many celebrated writers, directors and actors including Helen Mirren, Alison Steadman, Ray Winstone and more. Play for Today has now been revived, with four new dramas being broadcast in the coming weeks by Channel 5. We hear from Paul Testar, the commissioner of the new Play for Today strand; Tom May who made Play for Today the subject of his PhD and Margaret Matheson, a producer of the strand in the 1970s. Presenter: Nick Ahad
Producer: Ekene Akalawu
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Zadie Smith and Brenda Blethyn live in studio
Zadie Smith talks about the art of the essay, as she publishes a non-fiction collection, Dead and Alive. Brenda Blethyn discusses her new film Dragonfly, for which she's just been nominated for Best Joint Performance at the British Independent Film Awards along with her co-star Andrea Riseborough. In the last of Front Row's interviews with the authors shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Samira talks to Andrew Miller about his novel The Land in Winter, set in the Big Freeze of I962-3. Film scholar Ian Christie discusses the work of the experimental British documentary filmmaker Peter Watkins, who has died at the age of 90. Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Harry Graham
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Review Show: Bugonia, Salman Rushdie stories, The Line of Beauty
Tahmima Anam and Tristram Fane Saunders join Tom Sutcliffe to review The Eleventh Hour, a collection of five short stories from Salman Rushdie in his first return to fiction since he was attacked in 2022. Director of Poor Things and The Favourite Yorgos Lanthimos brings more strangeness to cinema screens with Bugonia, a thriller with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. And Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning novel The Line of Beauty is adapted for the stage by Jack Holden. Plus they discuss censorship in Eastern Europe as the board of the Belgrade International Festival of Theatre blocks director Milo Rau from bringing his work about the Gisele Pelicot trial to the festival. Producer: Tim Bano
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Live from Derry: two of the stars of police drama Blue Lights
Live from Derry. As the climax of the current series approaches, actors Dearbháile McKinney and Martin McCann, two of the cast of hit police series Blue Lights, talk about their roles. Writer John Morton talks to us about his play Denouement, a darkly comic tale set in the run-up to apocalyptic events in 2048 and which is receiving its world premiere at the Belfast International Arts Festival. And as Europe's largest Halloween Festival opens in Derry, writer Jan Carson and Kate Byrne, who teaches literature at Ulster University, discuss why writing about the supernatural is proving so popular with readers today and give their recommendations for the best horror writing past and present. Presenter: Kirsty Wark
Producer: Caitlin Sneddon
Brasil