Main content

The County & Little Fires Everywhere; The Archers; Víkingur Ólafsson; poetry to console

Little Fires Everywhere and The County reviewed. Plus, The Archers and Coronavirus, poetry to console, and Víkingur Ólafsson plays Debussy

For Front Row’s Friday review, the author Patrice Lawrence and film critic Hannah McGill consider two new options to stream. Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng’s bestselling novel set in 1997 suburban America and raising questions around class and race, has been made into a drama on Amazon Prime, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. The Icelandic director GrĂ­mur HĂĄkonarson won acclaim for his film Rams. In his latest film The County, he tells the story of a woman who singlehandedly takes on corruption in her local farmers’ cooperative. The film is available on Curzon ±«Óătv Cinema.

As new episodes of The Archers return to Radio 4, we talk to James Cartwright who plays PC Harrison Burns about ways the world’s longest running soap is responding to the challenges of Coronavirus on and off air.

President Macron has announced a series of measures to help the culture sector in France recover from the effects of Covid-19. French author and cultural commentator Agnes Poirier explains how they will work and whether any lessons can be learned for sustaining the cultural landscape in Britain.

Emilia Clarke has a new online project in which she asks leading actors to perform poems to help us with the psychological difficulties of the pandemic. The poems are chosen from William Sieghart’s Poetry Pharmacy anthologies which prescribe poems ‘for the heart, mind and soul’, and have been performed so far by Helena Bonham Carter, Idris Elba, Stephen Fry and Andrew Scott. William Sieghart joins us to discuss poetry's pwer to soothe.

And Front Row’s artist in residence pianist VĂ­kingur Ólafsson plays La Damoiselle élue by Claude Debussy, live from Reykjavik’s Harper concert hall.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang
Producer Edwina Pitman

Available now

42 minutes

The County

The County
The County is available to stream via
Image: Curzon Artificial Eye

Little Fires Everywhere

Little Fires Everywhere
Little Fires Everywhere is available to stream via .Ìę
Image: Amazon

Vikingur Olafsson

Vikingur Olafsson
Vikingur Olafsson is Front Row's Lockdown Artist in Residence.Ìę
You can take a look at Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel .Ìę

Broadcast

  • Fri 22 May 2020 19:00

±«Óătv Arts Digital

The best of British culture live and on demand.

Inspire

Inspire

A season discovering where artists find inspiration and helping listeners get creative.

Podcast