Saturday Review
490 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 4 years ago - ★★★★★ - 67 ratingsPresenter Tom Sutcliffe and guests offer sharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
The Amen Corner and The White Queen
June 15, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBThe Amen Corner starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste has been lifting the roof off the National Theatre according to early audiences, thanks partly to the participation of the London Community Gospel Choir. An early James Baldwin play, Rufus Norris' production looks at the lives of men and women trapped in poverty and lack of opportunity, and extracts powerful drama from it. Joss Whedon had a week off at the end of shooting The Avengers - rather than have a break, he made another film with a gro...
Behind the Candelabra, Chagall at Tate Liverpool
June 08, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBSteven Soderbergh's film Behind the Candelabra tells the story of flamboyant piano star Liberace and his five-year relationship with a young lover, Scott Thorson: Michael Douglas plays Liberace and Matt Damon Thorson. It failed to find a distributor in the US until HBO backed it but was then selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Is there substance under the sequins? Chagall: Modern Master at Tate Liverpool is a major new exhibition which takes an early decade in the artist's lif...
The Mary Rose Museum; David Mamet's Race; more vampires in Byzantium
May 31, 2013 18:01 - 41 minutes - 38 MBTom Sutcliffe and guests, Ellah Allfrey, Misha Glenny and Kevin Jackson, discuss the cultural highlights of the week including the £27m Mary Rose Museum opening in Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard and David Mamet's Race In the UK premiere of David Mamet's play, "Race," starring Jasper Britton and Clarke Peters - known to television audiences from "The Wire" - Mamet sets out to write a play which explores racial tension. Mamet himself says, "Race, like sex, is a subject on which it is near imp...
All That Is by James Salter, and the Iraq War
May 25, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBThe acclaimed US novelist James Salter is often described as "the writer's writer". He's now written his first novel in 30 years, at the age of 87: All That Is. Will his exquisite prose work for readers as well as writers? Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar has just won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama in America. A play about ambition, culture and faith set in New York, its topicality is undeniable. Now it opens at the Bush Theatre in London with Hari Dhillon and Kirsty Bushell. Michael Landy has ...
The Great Gatsby and Propaganda at the British Library
May 18, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBBaz Luhrmann's long-awaited The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan hits the 3D screens promising a great party. F Scott Fitzgerald's book has had a troubled history in film... will Luhrmann be the one to make it work? Propaganda: Power and Persuasion at the British Library is a major and thought-provoking new exhibition that brings together wartime material alongside public health messages, banknotes and social media. Does it make a convincing argument about the definiti...
Pinter's The Hothouse and The Reluctant Fundamentalist
May 11, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBJohn Simm and Simon Russell Beale star in a new production of Harold Pinter's The Hothouse at the Trafalgar Studios in London. When Pinter first wrote the play in the fifties, he put it in a drawer and pronounced it useless. Was he wrong? Mira Nair's film The Reluctant Fundamentalist, based on Mohsin Hamid's Booker-nominated novel, stars Riz Ahmed as Changez, who finds his loyalty questioned and torn post 9/11. Terry Eagleton is one of the best-known literary theorists in the world. His ne...
I'm So Excited! and Lionel Shriver's Big Brother
May 04, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBPedro Almodovar's new film I'm So Excited! is a sky-high romp with The Pointer Sisters on the soundtrack but its plane stuck in mid-air is also a metaphor for Spain caught in economic crisis. Richard Eyre's production of The Pajama Game comes to Chichester with Joanna Riding and Hadley Fraser; a triumph on Broadway in 1954, the film version with Doris Day wasn't a critical success. Can a musical based on industrial relations in a nightwear factory prove zingy and uplifting? Lionel Shriver ...
Adrian Lester as Othello, and The Look of Love with Steve Coogan
April 27, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBAdrian Lester and Rory Kinnear star in the long-awaited production of Othello at the National Theatre, directed by Nicholas Hytner. Do the talent and charisma of its leads and a striking setting in a modern-day military conflict add up to the great theatrical event the audience is hoping for? Paul Raymond was a strip club and soft porn tycoon who became the richest man in Britain but he couldn't save his daughter Debbie from a drug-fuelled lifestyle and early death. Steve Coogan plays Raymo...
John le Carré's A Delicate Truth, and Matt Damon in Promised Land
April 20, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBJohn le Carré's new novel A Delicate Truth centres on the aftermath of a counter-terror operation codenamed Wildlife which takes place in Gibraltar. It raises difficult moral and emotional territory for all involved and is described as one of le Carré's most personal novels for many years. Promised Land is set in rural America and centres on whether a community will say yes to fracking when a big corporation arrives to try to buy up their land. Matt Damon and Frances McDormand star; Gus van...
The Rijksmuseum and Once on the London stage
April 13, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBThe Rijksmuseum, the Dutch national museum of art and history, has re-opened after ten years of rebuilding, renovation and restoration. The building houses the country's collections of fine and decorative arts. In the film A Place Beyond the Pines a motorcycle stunt rider (Ryan Gosling) turns to robbing banks as a way to provide for his lover (Eva Mendes) and their newborn child, a decision that puts him on a collision course with an ambitious rookie cop (Bradley Cooper) who is navigating a...
Julian Barnes's new novel Levels of Life and A Late Quartet with Christopher Walken
April 06, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBThe film A Late Quartet features a beloved cellist of a world-renowned string quartet who receives a life changing diagnosis. The quartet's future now hangs in the balance as suppressed emotions, competing egos, and uncontrollable passions threaten to derail years of friendship and collaboration. Levels of Life, Julian Barnes's new novella, blends history, fiction and memoir around love, grief and ballooning. It opens in the nineteenth century with balloonists, photographers, and the actre...
Judi Dench in Peter and Alice and Danny Boyle's film Trance
March 30, 2013 19:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBLife and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum arrives at the British Museum to huge advance ticket sales and great anticipation: a moving illumination of the lives that were stopped short in AD79. Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw become Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, in Skyfall writer John Logan's new play Peter and Alice, exploring the themes of lost childhood and becoming public property. Danny Boyle's film Trance is a rollercoaster heist movie starring James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson. It's go...
The Book Of Mormon, Craig Zobel's film Compliance and Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
March 23, 2013 19:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBThe Book of Mormon arrives on the London stage, much anticipated and as shocking as you might expect from the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It's reported to have delighted the Prime Minister already. How funny is it and does it work as a musical? Craig Zobel's film Compliance is based on real events and set in a fast food joint where the employees are convinced by someone pretending to be a police officer to strip search a colleague. Mohsin Hamid's much-acclaimed The Re...
Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy
March 16, 2013 19:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBLee Daniels' film The Paperboy has attracted praise and boos in equal measure - the latter when it was shown at Cannes. It's a steamy Southern thriller with powerful performances from Nicole Kidman and John Cusack. Kevin Maher's debut novel The Fields has already - inevitably - led to comparisons with Roddy Doyle. It's a darkly funny account of growing up in 80s Dublin and attracting attention - some desirable, some not so. George Bellows is best known for his paintings of boxers but he al...
Helen Mirren in new stage play The Audience; Steven Soderbergh's new film Side Effects
March 09, 2013 19:59 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBThe dramatically unexpected arrival of David Bowie's album The Next Day has made grown men and women weep with excitement, following 10 years of recording silence. Is it the classic his fans would all like it to be? Helen Mirren plays the Queen again - this time on stage, following her Oscar-rewarded performance in Stephen Frears' film - in The Audience, directed by Stephen Daldry, which dramatises her weekly sessions with the Prime Minister of the day. Steven Soderbergh's film Side Effec...
Joe Wright's Trelawny of the Wells; JM Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus; Richard Gere in Arbitrage
March 02, 2013 19:59 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBJoe Wright is best known as a film director, his work including Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina. But Trelawny of the Wells at the Donmar Warehouse marks his debut as a theatre director.Richard Gere was Golden Globe-nominated for his role as businessman Robert Miller in Nicholas Jarecki's film Arbitrage, a tense morality tale set in the world of high finance.A boy arrives in a strange country and can find no room to sleep... JM Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus has obvious par...
Cloud Atlas, Lichtenstein at Tate Modern and A Chorus Line
February 23, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBTom Sutcliffe and guests artist Grayson Perry, playwright Laura Wade and writer Susan Jeffreys review the cultural highlights of the week.The latest film of directors the Wachowski siblings is Cloud Atlas, based on the best-selling novel by David Mitchell. It explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future.The 1975 multi award winning musical A Chorus Line has a new West End production. It tells the story of sev...
A Life of Galileo at Stratford; Maggie O'Farrell's latest novel
February 16, 2013 19:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBA Life of Galileo is Mark Ravenhill's adaptation for the RSC of Brecht's play which has just opened at the Swan at Stratford, directed by Roxana Silbert. The news of the Pope's resignation has given the play an extraordinary timeliness. Maggie O'Farrell won the Costa Novel Award for The Hand that First Held Mine. Her latest novel, Instructions for a Heatwave, is set in the intense temperatures of summer 1976. The Riordan family, of Irish origin, find themselves torn apart when their father ...
Wreck-It Ralph, and Ice Age art at the British Museum
February 09, 2013 19:58 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBWreck-It Ralph is the latest Disney offering, arriving in time for children at half-term. Its hero is a wouldbegood bad guy trapped in a destructive role in a video game, voiced by John C Reilly. It's got plenty of retro game nostalgia and jokes that children and adults will enjoy but does it have the longevity of the classic Disney movies? Ice Age Art at the British Museum aims to show that in surviving figurative art from over 20,000 years ago we can see the arrival of the modern mind. Re...
Denzel Washington in Flight; Poliakoff's Dancing on the Edge
February 02, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBDenzel Washington has been Oscar-nominated for his role as an extraordinarily talented but addicted pilot in Robert Zemeckis' Flight. It features a terrifying crash sequence in which he flies a passenger plane upside down. Stephen Poliakoff returns with a major new drama on BBC2, Dancing On The Edge, following the rise of a charismatic black jazz band in the early 1930s. They win royal approval but still face rising prejudice. Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Goodman and Jacqueline Bisset star. Port w...
Spielberg's Lincoln; Zero Dark Thirty; and Manet
January 26, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBZero Dark Thirty ran into controversy even before it was released with its depiction of the use of torture in the run-up to finding Osama Bin Laden. Director Kathryn Bigelow has maintained that depiction is not endorsement; it's written by Marc Boal and has a cast including Oscar-nominated Jessica Chastain. Michael (Lord) Grade, Deborah Bull and Dreda Say Mitchell will tell presenter Tom Sutcliffe what they make of it. They'll also be considering another film about an extraordinary moment i...
Django Unchained and new play No Quarter
January 19, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBDjango Unchained, Quentin Tarantino's Oscar-nominated, Spaghetti Western-inspired take on slavery and the antebellum Southern states starring Jamie Foxx and Samuel L Jackson, has aroused praise and controversy in almost equal measure. No Quarter is the latest work by the young playwright Polly Stenham, known for her acute dissections of family life. This one examines the differing senses of responsibility within one family and stars Tom Sturridge and Maureen Beattie. Murder in the Library i...
The view from The Shard; Les Miserables; Utopia on C4
January 12, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBAs The View from The Shard is about to open to the public, reviewers Philip Hensher, Louise Doughty and Pat Kane ask why we feel the need to build - and go - high. Les Miserables moves from the stage to the big screen in Tom Hooper's new film, famously asking of its stellar cast including Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway that they sing live on set - has the decision paid off? In the Old Vic tunnels under Waterloo Station, the actress Fiona Shaw and dancer Daniel Hay-Gordon perfo...
05/01/2013
January 05, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MB2012 saw some extraordinary television comedy highs, especially in returning series. Some looked at the state of the nation: The Thick of It, Getting On and Twenty Twelve. Some, like Peep Show and Fresh Meat, simply made people laugh. Saturday Review celebrates the best of the comedy year just gone, highlighting performances by Peter Capaldi, Jessica Hynes and Joanna Scanlan. And what's next for comedy? Is there still room for the family sitcom? New, celebrated comedy from Sky has included H...
Life of Pi, Dance of Death and Restless are all reviewed
December 22, 2012 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBLife of Pi, Yann Martel's 2002 Booker winner, was reputed to be unfilmable. But now Ang Lee has attempted to prove everyone wrong with an extraordinary 3D and CGI display that brings not just a boy and a tiger to life, but a whole ocean. How effective is it in telling the story? There are two television offerings: The Girl is a film starring Toby Jones and Sienna Miller as Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren which will go out on BBC 2 on Boxing Day. It focuses on their relationship during the...
The Hobbit; Quentin Blake exhibition; pantomime dames
December 15, 2012 20:05 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBSarfraz Manzoor and his guests, writers Aminatta Forna and David Benedict and actor Kerry Shale, review the week's cultural highlights. The latest Peter Jackson film is the first in a three part adaptation of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. Set in Middle Earth 60 years before "The Lord of the Rings", the story follows Bilbo Baggins (Martin Friedman) as he sets out on an epic quest to reclaim stolen dwarf treasure from the dragon Smaug. On the way he clashes swords with Goblins and Orcs, deadly W...
08/12/2012
December 08, 2012 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBMartin McDonagh's latest film Seven Psychopaths is his follow-up to the hit In Bruges. It's just as blood-soaked, but it's left Belgium behind for the more traditional movie settings of LA and the American desert, as screenwriter Marty, played by Colin Farrell, struggles to write a script for his film that has only a name: Seven Psychopaths. Do a star-studded cast and some fabulous lines add up to another great film? A highly-anticipated all-women production by Phyllida Lloyd of Shakespeare...
01/12/2012
December 01, 2012 20:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBSharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events with Tom Sutcliffe and guests Patrick Gale, John Mullan and Bidisha. They'll be talking about the new dark caravaning comedy film Sightseers written by and starring Alice Lowe and Steve Oram and directed by Ben Wheatley, who made his name with Kill List. Does Alexander Pushkin's Boris Godunov, Michael Boyd's last production for the RSC as artistic director, bear comparison with Shakespeare? There's a new TV documentary behind the sc...
24/11/2012
November 24, 2012 20:05 - 42 minutes - 38.7 MBTom Sutcliffe and guests Lionel Shriver, Alex Preston and Jim White discuss the week's cultural highlights including Pinero's farce The Magistrate. This production marks the first time that American actor John Lithgow has appeared at the National Theatre - he is best known to English audiences for his role in the US sitcom Third Rock From The Sun. David Ayer's cop flick "End of Watch" is a fast-paced action thriller, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena with the aim of presenting Los A...
17/11/2012
November 20, 2012 15:10 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBTom Sutcliffe and guests Boyd Tonkin, Kevin Jackson and Monique Roffey discuss the cultural highlights of the week including The Effect by Lucy Prebble which opens at London's National Theatre with Billie Piper in the leading role. Lucy Prebble is the award winning writer of Enron,which explored financial malpractice in one of America's largest corporations. In "The Effect" Prebble takes on more major themes: how society treats the mentally ill, what we understand about the brain and what ar...
10/11/2012
November 12, 2012 10:16 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBTom Sutcliffe and guests - the novelist Tracy Chevalier, critic Sarfraz Manzoor and director of the Serpentine Gallery Julia Peyton-Jones - discuss the cultural highlights of the week, including Alan Bennett's new play "People" starring Frances de la Tour and Linda Bassett which opens at the National Theatre this week. The play explores the theme of heritage Britain and the price we put on privacy - through the prism of analysing available options for elderly sisters occupying a grand statel...
03/11/2012
November 05, 2012 10:48 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBTom Sutcliffe and guests Ekow Eshun, Andreas Whittam Smith and Linda Grant offer sharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events. The much hyped Silver Lion winning film "The Master", directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams comes under scrutiny. Set in post World War 2 America, it explores a familiar narrative trope, the relationship between master and pupil, but in a very unfamiliar and deeply cinematic way, and through t...
27/10/2012
October 29, 2012 10:15 - 41 minutes - 38 MBTom Sutcliffe and guests writers Maev Kennedy and David Aaronovitch and author Dreda Say Mitchell review the week's cultural highlights. James Bond with Daniel Craig is back and in the new film Skyfall, directed by Sam Mendes, 007 becomes M's only ally as MI6 comes under attack, and a mysterious new villain emerges with a diabolical plan. Bond's latest mission has gone horribly awry, resulting in the exposure of several undercover agents. The villain must be stopped at any cost. Secret Sta...
20/10/2012
October 20, 2012 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests playwright Laura Wade, broadcaster John Tusa and anthropologist Kit Davis review the week's cultural highlights Benh Zeitklin's film Beasts of the Southern Wild stars Quvenzhane Wallis as Hushpuppy - a young girl living an almost feral existence in the swamplands of southern Louisiana. Adrian Lester stars as 19th century actor Ira Aldridge in Lolita Chakrabarti's play Red Velvet at the Tricycle Theatre in London. Aldridge causes a sensation when he is brought i...
13/10/2012
October 13, 2012 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBTom Sutcliffe and guests - critic John Carey and writers Paul Morley and Susan Jeffreys - discuss the film Ruby Sparks; the National Theatre of Scotland's documentary drama Enquirer; yet another TV incarnation of Sherlock, this time set in Manhattan; a new novel, The Daughters of Mars, from Australian Living Treasure Thomas Kenneally; and the work of Richard Hamilton at the National Gallery. Producer: Sarah Johnson.
06/10/2012
October 06, 2012 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests Deborah Moggach, James Runcie and Deborah Bull review the week's cultural highlights. Stephen Chbosky's film The Perks of Being a Wallflower is adapted from Chbosky's best-selling novel and stars Logan Lerman as Charlie - a shy, bookish boy re-entering school after suffering a nervous breakdown. His anxieties and loneliness are assuaged by a sympathetic English teacher (Paul Rudd) and outsiders Patrick (Ezra Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson). Harry - the narrator ...
29/09/2012
September 29, 2012 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests stage designer Es Devlin, novelist Kamila Shamsie and academic and critic John Mullan review the week's cultural highlights Alan Ayckbourn's play A Chorus of Disapproval is being revived by Trevor Nunn at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. It stars Rob Brydon as Dafydd ap Llewellyn, director of an amateur operatic company attempting to stage The Beggar's Opera. Ashley Jensen is his downtrodden wife Hannah who becomes rather interested in newcomer Guy (Nigel Ha...
22/09/2012
September 22, 2012 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.7 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests cultural historian Christopher Frayling, writer Sarfraz Manzoor and historian Kathryn Hughes review the week's cultural highlights Brad Pitt stars as enforcer/hitman Jackie Cogan in Andrew Dominik's film Killing Them Softly - based on George V Higgins' 1974 novel Cogan's Trade. Cogan is called in to set things right after an illegal poker game is robbed. Set against the background of the runup to the 2008 presidential election, the film draws parallels between t...
15/09/2012
September 15, 2012 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests novelist Alex Preston and writers Miranda Sawyer and Kevin Jackson review the week's cultural highlights including Jonathan Pryce as King Lear. Jonathan Pryce is cast in the title role in Michael Attenborough's production of King Lear at the Almeida Theatre in London. Phoebe Fox plays his youngest daughter, Cordelia, who doesn't give her father the response he was expecting when he starts carving up his kingdom. Lawrence Norfolk's novel John Saturnall's Feast i...
08/09/2012
September 08, 2012 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBA review of the week's cultural highlights with Tom Sutcliffe.
01/09/2012
September 01, 2012 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.7 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests writers Susan Jeffreys, Giles Fraser and Jim White review the week's cultural highlights. Tim Pigott-Smith plays Prospero in Adrian Noble's production of The Tempest which has just opened at the Theatre Royal in Bath. This staging of Shakespeare's final play is based on the production which Noble directed at the Old Globe in San Diego last year. Jennifer Egan's 2010 novel A Visit from the Goon Squad won her the Pulitzer Prize. Her follow up - Black Box - had th...
25/08/2012
August 25, 2012 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBBidisha and her guests actor Kerry Shale and writers Natalie Haynes and Paul Morley review the week's cultural highlights including Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan. Serena Frome is the narrator of Ian McEwan's new novel. A Cambridge graduate recruited by MI5 in the early 70s, her first assignment beyond lowly paper-pushing involves the covert funding of anti-Communist writers. Her target is Tom Haley - an English graduate and aspiring writer working at Sussex University - but her interest in him ...
18/08/2012
August 18, 2012 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBBidisha and guests Dreda Say Mitchell, Maeve Kennedy and Cahal Dallat review the week's cultural events including BBC Two's new drama serial Parades End starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall and Alan Ayckbourn's new comedy Surprises which opens at Chichester Festival Theatre this week. Ford Maddox Ford's key modernist novel Parades End, published as a series of four books between 1924 and 1928, is adapted for BBC television by Britain's foremost playwright, Sir Tom Stoppard, the fi...
11/08/2012
August 11, 2012 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests Billy Kay, Hannah McGill and Kathryn Hughes review the cultural highlights of the week from the Edinburgh Festival including Pixar's new animated story, Brave, an American story with a very Scottish flavour. Pixar's first film to be set entirely in the British Isles it is also the first to boast a female lead. Kelly McDonald plays fiery red head Scottish Princess Merida. She is joined by other Scottish stars, Billy Connolly as King Fergus, Robbie Coltraine as Lor...
04/08/2012
August 04, 2012 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests novelists Adam Mars Jones and Lisa Appignanesi and writer Ekow Eshun review the week's cultural highlights including Seth MacFarlane's film Ted. Mark Haddon's best-selling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has been adapted for the stage by Simon Stephens. The production at the National Theatre is directed by Marianne Elliot and stars Luke Treadaway as Christopher Boone - a 15 year old "mathematician with behavioural difficulties" (his own d...
28/07/2012
July 28, 2012 19:00 - 40 minutes - 37.3 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests novelist Sarah Hall, playwright Laura Wade and writer David Aaronovitch review the week's cultural highlights including the Olympic opening ceremony. The London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony - entitled Isles of Wonder - was watched by an audience of millions around the world. From bucolic idyll to a parachuting Queen, our panel assesses how good a job Danny Boyle did of directing it. Mark Rylance returns to Globe Theatre in London for the first time since he st...
21/07/2012
July 21, 2012 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests writer Kamila Shamsie, historian Dominic Sandbrook and film-maker Carol Morley review the week's cultural highlights including The Dark Knight Rises The Dark Knight Rises is the final film in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. Christian Bale reprises his role as the caped crusader, coming out of seclusion after seven years to save Gotham from another existential threat. Dutch author Herman Koch's novel The Dinner has already become a best-seller across Europe....
14/07/2012
July 16, 2012 09:14 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBSarfraz Manzoor and his guests writers Louise Doughty and Natalie Haynes and actor Kerry Shale review the week's cultural highlights including Magic Mike. Steven Soderbergh's latest film is set in the world of male strippers. It follows Magic Mike, a seasoned performer who mentors a novice and schools him in the fine arts of partying, picking up women and making easy money. There's a new adaptation of the classic play A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. It centres on a seemingly typical house...
07/07/2012
July 07, 2012 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests writers Susan Jeffreys and Alex Preston and historian Kathryn Hughes review the week's cultural highlights. Samantha Spiro stars as Katherina and Simon Paisley Day is Petruchio in Toby Frow's exuberant production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Globe Theatre in London. If This Is Home is Stuart Evers' first novel and centres around Mark - a young man desperate to get out of the small Cheshire town he grew up in. He moves to the US and adopts a completely new ...
30/06/2012
June 30, 2012 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests novelist Liz Jensen, poet Paul Farley and academic and critic Maria Delgado review the week's cultural highlights including Killer Joe. William Friedkin's film Killer Joe is set in the Texas badlands. Chris (Emile Hirsch) needs some money fast so that he can pay off some local drug dealers - the only way he can see is to have his mother killed and then collect the insurance. So he enlists the services of local policeman and freelance murderer Joe Cooper (Matthew...