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Ian McMillan

Kay Mellor

Boyd Hilton

Renee Mussai

Janet Suzman

John Wilson

Elaine Lester

Front Row: Ian McMillan, Black Chronicles, Janet Suzman, TV drama endings

Ian McMillan, Black Chronicles, Janet Suzman, TV drama endings

18/05/2016

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Ian McMillan, Black Chronicles, Janet Suzman, TV drama endings

John Wilson talks to poet Ian McMillan. And TV drama endings - too many loose ends?

John Wilson talks to poet Ian McMillan about his new collection To Fold the Evening Star. Writer Kay Mellor and critic Boyd Hilton debate TV drama endings - too many loose ends?

Poet Ian McMillan has described his home town Barnsley as 'the filter I see everything through' and this is clear from his new book To Fold the Evening Star which gathers work from eight key collections as well as new and previously unpublished work. He talks to John Wilson about being a Yorkshire poet, politics and poetry, and getting older. 

As the first series of Undercover and Marcella end this week with questions left unanswered for a potential second series, we discuss how and when channels decide whether a TV drama should return for more series. Writer Kay Mellor and critic Boyd Hilton give us their insights.

Black Chronicles: Photographic Portraits 1862-1948 is a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London which presents a snapshot of black lives and experiences in 19th and 20th century Britain. Curator Renée Mussai discusses the context of the exhibition which focuses on the period before the arrival of the Empire Windrush which brought the first large group of Caribbean migrants to Great Britain.

In the final instalment of our series Shakespeare's people, Janet Suzman chooses Portia from the Merchant of Venice. You can catch up with all our Shakespeare's People on the Front Row website.

Presenter: John Wilson
Producer: Elaine Lester.

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