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Does the reach of the USA and its cultural influence mean "we're all American now?" Anne McElvoy and her guests discuss the similarities and differences across the Anglosphere and think about the changing dynamics on the international stage. They are: Freddy Gray, Deputy Editor of the Spectator Magazine and host of the Americano podcast. Dr Katie McGettigan, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and co-editor of the Journal of American Studies. Amanda Taub writes The Interpreter, an explanatory column and newsletter about world events for The New York Times. Kit Davis, an American living in London, an anthropologist and Emeritus Professor at SOAS. Rana Mitter ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School.Producer: Lisa Jenkinson
Fairview is a Pulitzer Prize-winning play just opened at the Young Vic in London. It starts out like a conventional US African American dramedy and then begins to mess with the audience's expectations. How will our reviewers feel about it? Chinese film So Long My Son has won awards at international film festivals. It tells the story of a family over 30 years of turbulent Chinese history Annette Hess' prize-winning novel The German House is the story of a Polish translator at the 1963 Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. Caught between societal and familial expectations and her unique ability to speak truth to power—as she fights to expose the dark truths of her nation’s past. If everything your family told you was a lie, how far would you go to uncover the truth? A new exhibition of work by British abstract painter John Walker at Ikon in Birmingham includes new paintings A Very Scandi Scandal has just started in the Walter Presents slot on Channel 4. It's a Swedish comedy heist with two extremely unlikely bank robbers Shahidha Bari's guests are Dea Birkett, Kit Davis and Robert Hanks. The producer is Oliver Jones Main image: Rhashan Stone & Nicola Hughes in Fairview (c) Marc Brenner
Pedro Almodovar's new film Pain and Glory has been hailed as his most personal to date The Doctor at London's Almeida Theatre is Robert Icke's latest production. Freely adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's Professor Bernhardi, it's a play about ethics, morals and the repercussions of decisions both personal and professional. And how does what we say we are affect other people's perceptions of us? Peter Pomerantsev's "This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality" is a book exploring the wreckage of liberal democracy and a search for the signs of its revival. Brassic is a new TV series on Sky, co-created by This Is England’s Joe Gilgun and Bafta-winning writer Danny Brocklehurst. It's about a group of working-class friends in Lancashire finding ways to win at life Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Adam Mars Jones, Dorian Lynskey and Kit Davis. The producer is Oliver Jones Podcast Extra recommendations Adam: Winter Journey by Roderick Williams and Fosse Verdon on BBCTV Kit: Stay Free podcast and There There by Tommy Orange Dorian: Succession Series 2 and This Had Oscar Buzz podcast Tom: Mrs Palfrey at The Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
Jordan Peele’s debut feature film, Get Out, won him an Oscar for best original screenplay. His new film Us is also a horror film, features a score by Michael Abels and stars Lupita Nyong'o as Adelaide Wilson whose childhood obsession with the Hands Across America commercial reverberates through the film. American tv drama Pose on BBC 2 features the largest transgender cast of any commercial, scripted TV show and trans writers Janet Mock and Our Lady J worked on the script alongside the show’s creators, Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals. Ryan Murphy’s previous TV credits include Glee, Nip/Tuck and American Horror Story. Pose is set in 1987–88 and looks at the juxtaposition of several segments of life and society in New York: the African-American and Latino ball culture world, the downtown social and literary scene, and the rise of the yuppie Trump milieu. Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He has written 14 books, including A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, What Is the What, The Circle and Heroes of the Frontier. His new novel The Parade tell the story of two foreign contracters who are sent to finish a highway in an unnamed country which is emerging from decades of war into a fragile peace. Jews, Money, Myth at the Jewish Museum in London is a major exhibition exploring the role of money in Jewish life. Art work included Rembrandt's first masterpiece Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver and new commissions by Jeremy Deller and Doug Fishbone. American choreographer Mark Morris's Pepperland premiered at Liverpool’s Sgt Pepper at 50 festival in 2017 and is a collaboration between Morris and composer Ethan Iverson inspired by the Beatles iconic album. It is described as an "exuberant new dance work, visually on the cusp of Carnaby Street and Woodstock, it teases out the album’s colourfully avant-garde heart and eccentric charm, and resounds with all the ingenuity, musicality and wit for which the Mark Morris Dance Group is known.” Ethan Iverson composes a score featuring six idiosyncratic, jazzy reinventions of the original Beatle songs, including A Day in the Life, When I’m Sixty-Four, Penny Lane (originally meant to be on album, With a Little Help From My Friends and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club, and is performed live by a seven-piece band. Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Kate Bassett, Kit Davis and Don Guttenplan . The producer is Hilary Dunn
The Coen Brothers take on the Western movie in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Made with money from Netflix, is it REALLY a cinema release? Hadestown is a musical that's stopping off at London's National Theatre on its way from Off-Broadway to Broadway. It sets the Greek myth of story of Orpheus and Eurydice in modern New Orleans (and the underworld of course!) and reimagines the sweeping ancient tale as a timeless allegory for today's world. Chris Kraus wrote the bestseller I Love Dick and now follows it with Social Practices, a particular mix of biography, autobiography, fiction, criticism, and conversations among friends. How does it hold together as a single book? There's an exhibition of work by French artist Fernand Leger just opened at Tate Liverpool charting his development throughout his life. BBC2's Death and Nightingales is an adaptation of Eugene McCabe’s novel set in Fermanagh in 1885, written by Alan (The Fall) Cubitt Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Kate Bassett, Kit Davis and Kevin Jackson. The producer is Oliver Jones Podcast Extra Kate recommends Gainsborough's Family Album at The National Portrait Gallery in London Kit recommends the podcasts Reply All and 99% Invisible Kevin is beguiled by The Other Side Of The Wind on Netflix Tom is entranced by repair videos on YouTube
With journalist Helen Lewis, blogger Chidera Eggerue and anthropologist Kit Davis.
With journalist Helen Lewis, blogger Chidera Eggerue and anthropologist Kit Davis.
With journalist Helen Lewis, anthropologist Kit Davis and author Chidera Eggerue.
With anthropologist Kit Davis, journalist Helen Lewis and blogger Chidera Eggerue.
With anthropologist Kit Davis, journalist Helen Lewis and blogger Chidera Eggerue.
Is a world without crime a utopia or a dystopia if the price is total constant surveillance by the state? British thriller Anon is set in a world where wanting to be anonymous makes you the subject of society's suspicions. It stars Clive Owen as a detective investigating gruesome murders. Russian theatre director Lev Dodin's production of Vasily Grossman's novel Life and Fate comes to the UK for a very limited run Benedict Cumberbatch stars in David Nicholl's adaptation of the Patrick Melrose stories for Sky Atlantic. Jesmyn Ward's novel Sing Unburied Sing was one of Barack Obama's best books of 2017 and has also won America's National Book Award. It examines the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power - and limitations - of family bonds. A new exhibition looking at the life of the co-creator of the indomitable Gaul Asterix is opening at at London's Jewish Museum Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Sathnam Sanghera, Lisa Appignanesi and Kit Davis. The producer is Oliver Jones.
As the BBC screens its new arts series, Civilisations, one of the presenters, David Olusoga, joins presenter Philip Dodd, anthropologist Kit Davis and the historian Kenan Malik to consider our different notions of world history from the dawn of human civilisation to the present day. David Olusoga is a historian, writer and broadcaster who has presented several TV documentaries including A House Through Time; The World's War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire and the BAFTA award-winning Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners. His most recent book is Black and British: A Forgotten History.Dr Kit Davis is a lecturer in social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies who has written about travels across Europe and about Rwanda. She is a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review. Kenan Malik's books include From Fatwa to Jihad and The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics. Kenan is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster who presented Nightwaves on BBC Radio 3 and has written and presented radio and TV documentaries including Disunited Kingdom, Are Muslims Hated?, Islam, and Mullahs and the Media.Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival.Producer: Fiona McLean
Lauren's guests are Zoe Strimpel, Kit Davis, Agnes Poirier and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett.
Mudbound, is a searing look at prejudice set in the Jim Crow deep south of the United States shortly after WW2 Network is a new production at The National Theatre in London. It's an adaptation of the 1976 Oscar-winning film about a TV anchorman who announces that he's "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" which appalls then delights and ultimately infuriates his network bosses. It stars Bryan "Breaking Bad" Cranston as the newsreader who wigs out. Javier Cercas's novel The Impostor tells the extraordinary tale of a Spanish man who falsely claimed to have been a survivor of Mauthausen concentration camp. Can we trust that anything in the story he tells of his life is true? She's Got To Have It was Spike Lee's 1986 breakout film which he has now adapted into a 10 part TV series for Netflix North: fashioning Identity, is an exhibition at Somerset House exploring contemporary artistic and stylistic representations of the north of England. Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Emma Jane Unsworth, Kit Davis and Jim White. The producer is Oliver Jones.
"The hackles on the back of my neck stand up and the orange warning signs come on."You know the feeling. It's the emotional equivalent of seeing something out of the corner of your eye. So fleeting you're not sure it's real. She's lying, it says. Or maybe, don't call him back. Or perhaps just, something's not right.So do you trust it, this feeling, or brush it aside? And if you do trust it, what do you call it? Instinct or intuition? Sixth sense? Your bulls**t detector?Whatever name you prefer, there's no doubt that - historically speaking - it gets a mixed press. At best perhaps, it's the preserve of animals. At worst, it's downright witchy. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Because after all, where does it come from, this information? Some kind of dialup to the spirit realm? Or could there be a scientific explanation?Lauren Laverne and guests businesswoman Hilary Devey, neuroscientist Sophie Scott, anthropologist Kit Davis and former detective Mo Dowdy explore the benefits and frustrations of trusting your instincts.
Tim Minchin's latest musical Groundhog Day is his follow-up to the best-selling triumph of Matilda. Based on the hit film, will this also be a hit? Pedro Almodovar's 20th film, Julieta, is based on 3 short stories by Alice Munro. It was intended as his English language debut to star Meryl Streep. HBO's new TV-noir series The Night Of... tells the story of a Pakistani-American who - after a night of drug-fuelled sex - awakes to discover a corpse and is accused of the murder. Peter Ho Davies' novel The Fortunes tells 4 tales of Chinese-Americans through the 20th and 21st centuries Kaleidoscope: It's Me To The World, is the newest exhibition at Modern Art Oxford. Celebrating 50 years of contemporary art, performance and experimental visual culture Tom Sutcliffe's guests are David Hepworth, Kit Davis and Susan Jeffreys. The producer is Oliver Jones.
John Wilson talks to the soul musician Michael Kiwanuka, whose new album Love and Hate is inspired by the feeling of being separated from the world around him. Film critic Tim Robey and historian Jeffrey Richards consider the depiction of war on film from The Battle of the Somme to Restrepo, reflected in a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. Richard Hawley pays tribute to the pioneering rock guitarist Scotty Moore, from Elvis Presley's original band, whose death was announced today. All The Way is a feature-length political drama starring Bryan Cranston as Lyndon B Johnson in his early days as US President. Kit Davis reviews.
In the year that John Osborne's Look Back In Anger turns 60 Philip Dodd considers the eruption of rage in the recent politics of the US and India with Jonah Goldberg, Kit Davis, Pankaj Mishra and Sunil Khilnani.Pause for a moment and you realise it's impossible to ignore the Black Lives Matter protests or the urgent polemics of the writer and activist Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose passionately angry new book about race in the US, The Beautiful Struggle, comes out this week. It's difficult to turn a blind eye to the rearguard action that's being fought by Indian writers and intellectuals such as Arundhati Roy, targeted by Hindu nationalists determined to seize control of the political agenda on the Subcontinent.Who is angry with whom and why; and what about the populist anger that seems to be propelling Donald Trump towards the Republican presidential nomination and the White House. Join Philip Dodd and his guests as they search for the answers.Sunil Khilnani is the author of Incarnations: India in 50 Lives. He is currently presenting a series based on the book on BBC Radio 4. Pankaj Mishra is the author of several books including From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia. The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates is out now.
As Radio 3 broadcasts Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun as the Sunday Drama hear theatre directors Kwame Kwei-Armah, Yael Farber and Dawn Walton and historians Kit Davis and Althea Legal Miller on her life, work and its resonances today.
With two plays by Lorraine Hansberry being staged in the UK in 2016, Philip Dodd looks at her writing and its resonance today. When A Raisin in the Sun opened in 1959 it was the first play written by a black woman to be performed on Broadway. It is now touring the UK and being broadcast at the end of January on BBC Radio 3. Les Blancs - written 11 years later - is set in an African country on the brink of civil war and is staged at the National Theatre in Spring. The new production of Raisin in the Sun is being directed by Dawn Walton and Yael Farber is in charge of the National's account of Les Blancs - both directors will be joined by the playwright, Kwame Kwei Armah to discuss Hansberry. Kwame Kwei-Armah, who runs Baltimore's Centre Stage, put on what he called the Raisin Cycle in 2013 which included Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park and his own Beneatha's Place, both responses to Hansberry. Philip's other guests are the historian Dr Althea Legal- Miller and the anthropologist, Kit Davis. Les Blancs directed by Yael Farber opens at the National Theatre on March 24th. A Raisin in the Sun directed by Dawn Walton artistic director of Eclipse Theatre company opens at the Sheffield Crucible Studio Theatre on Jan 28th and tours to New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich; Nuffield Theatre, Southampton; Liverpool Playhouse; Watford Palace Theatre; The Albany, Deptford ; The Belgrade, Coventry. A BBC Radio 3 production of A Raisin in the Sun is being broadcast on Sunday January 31st.Producer: Zahid Warley
Saoirse Ronan in the film adaptation of Colm Toibin's novel Brooklyn has been touted by some critics as Oscar material; do our reviewers agree? Bob Dylan Bootlegs Vol 12 date from his most fecund period 1965-66. How much light does a collection of outakes and alternative versions throw upon his creative processes? Simon Russell Beale plays an 18th century cross-dressing satirist, impressionist and comedian in Mr Foote's Other Leg. It's now transferred to the West End Jonathan Coe's new novel Number 11 is his 11th book, published on 11th November. A new exhibition at London's Jewish Museum looks at the significance of blood in religion through manuscripts, prints, Jewish ritual and ceremonial objects, art, film, literature and cultural ephemera. Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Kit Davis, Tom Holland and Kerry Shale. The producer is Oliver Jones.
When an exhibition of the fashion creations of Alexander McQueen opened in New York, visitors queued for up to 5 hours to get in. It's now at London's Victoria and Albert Museum; will it be such a crowd-puller Suite Francaise - Irene Nemerovski's wartime novel (discovered more than six decades after her death) was a best seller. Can it repeat its success as a film? X+Y is a film about a young maths prodigy who is on the autistic spectrum. It deals with his participation in the International Mathematical Olympiad and growing up emotionally Juliette Binoche plays the lead in Antigone at London's Barbican Theatre. Directed by Ivo Von Hove, it's caused a lot of advance excitement. Tom McCarthy's new novel Satin Island is a meditation on contemporary society that some reviewers have accused of ditching traditionally novelistic techniques like plot and character. Is it all the better for it? Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Helen Lewis, Dominic Sandbrook and Kit Davis. The producer is Oliver Jones.
Matthew Sweet talks to director Steve McQueen about his new film '12 Years A Slave' and assesses this year's Oscar nominations, among them Gravity starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and The Wolf of Wall Street starring Leonardo Di Caprio and directed by Martin Scorcese. Plus the poet Fred D'Aguiar, anthropologist Kit Davis and the historian Madge Dresser discuss slave narratives.
Actor Rory Kinnear, currently playing Iago at the National Theatre, discusses the challenges of writing his first play. Samira Ahmed talks to the Australian Art exhibition curator at The RA and to Edmund Capon, former director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, whose television series The Art of Australia starts next month. Kit Davis assesses a landmark of American cinema, Michael Roemer's 1964 film Nothing But A Man. And Roger Highfield and Eliane Glaser discuss the idea of the scientist as hero and curator of wonder.
Matthew Sweet is on stage at the Theatre Royal Stratford East for a post-performance discussion of The Octoroon, by Dion Boucicault, which can be heard on Sunday 5 May 2013 on Drama on 3. To discuss the enduring appeal and legacy of the play, Matthew Sweet is joined by playwright Mark Ravenhill, who adapted the play for Radio 3; the cultural commentator Kit Davis; the Victorian theatre expert Anne Varty; and two of the cast members, Amaka Okafor and Golden Globe nominee Toby Jones. As the play's attitudes reflect the time in which it is set, this edition contains some language now regarded as racist.
The Olympics ceremony master Danny Boyle joins Rana Mitter to discuss the British film industry and what he thinks is the role of creativity in boosting the economy. As we approach the 200th anniversary of Dr David Livingstone's birth, Rana discusses the man and reassesses his legacy in today's Africa, with John MacKenzie and Kit Davis. Ruth Ozeki talks about her new novel "A Tale for the Time Being". And Rana along with Dr Olga Dmitrieva visits a new exhibition on early relations between the Tudors and early Stewarts with the courts of the Russian Tsars.
Django Unchained, the newest Quentin Tarantino film causing controversy, is reviewed by Philip Dodd with cultural commentator Kit Davis and film critic Tim Robey. Author Lucy Hughes-Hallett joins Philip to discuss the life of Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio, the subject of her new book The Pike. We explore the complex code of English manners with Henry Hitchings, whose new book tells their history, and Chinese writer Xiaolu Guo. And Philip interviews Sharon Olds, winner of this year's T S Eliot prize for Poetry.
Matthew Sweet talks to the singer, actor and civil rights campaigner Harry Belafonte. He tells Matthew how he and Sidney Poitier were like Apollo astronauts, sharing a pioneering role that's hard for anyone else to understand. And as British race relations films Sapphire and Flame in the Streets are re-released Matthew is joined by film historian Stephen Bourne, anthropologist Kit Davis and actress Adjoa Andoh to discuss the films.