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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Mark Lawson

Meera Syal

Claire Bartleet

Tony Garnett

Front Row: I'm So Excited; Tony Garnett

I'm So Excited; Tony Garnett

30/04/2013

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, I'm So Excited; Tony Garnett

TV producer Tony Garnett, Almodóvar's film I'm So Excited, Meera Syal's Cultural Exchange.

Mark Lawson talks to TV-film producer Tony Garnett, the verdict on Pedro Almodóvar's film I'm So Excited, and Meera Syal selects To Kill a Mockingbird for the Cultural Exchange.

With Mark Lawson

Pedro Almodovar's film I'm So Excited features Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, and returns to the comedic style of his early works such as Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown. When technical problems develop on board a plane, the pilots and flight attendants strive to keep morale high. Adam Mars-Jones reviews.

Film and TV producer Tony Garnett's work includes Kes, Cathy Come Home and This Life, and the British Film Institute is marking his 50 year career with a retrospective season. In a rare interview, he discusses how personal tragedies affected his work, the battles that went into making films tackling controversial issues - including back-street abortions - and why he wouldn't work in television now.

More from the Cultural Exchange project, in which 75 leading creative minds share their passion for a book, film, poem, piece of music or other work of art: tonight writer and performer Meera Syal selects To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.

Amanda Knox's autobiography, Waiting To Be Heard, is being published in America today, but its UK release has been indefinitely postponed, on account of the British legal system. This is not the first time that a book has been unavailable in the UK but available in other countries. Professor of English Literature John Sutherland and lawyer Susan Aslan consider the issues this raises.

Producer Claire Bartleet.

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