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Boyd Hilton

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Ben Wardle

Jerome Weatherald

Front Row: Versailles, Louisa Young, Museum of the Year contender, TV drama music

Versailles, Louisa Young, Museum of the Year contender, TV drama music

01/06/2016

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Versailles, Louisa Young, Museum of the Year contender, TV drama music

TV drama series Versailles reviewed, and Louisa Young on her new novel Devotion.

Louis XIV drama series Versailles reviewed, Louisa Young on her novel Devotion, Martin Roth of the V&A, shortlisted for Museum of the Year, and Americana music in hit TV dramas.

Versailles is the new high-budget, 10-part BBC2 drama series which is already creating controversy ahead of its first broadcast. Boyd Hilton reviews the period costume drama set in the court of Louis XIV with its themes of sex, murder and conspiracy.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is one of five museums and galleries in the UK to make the shortlist for Museum of the Year. In the first of our reports from the shortlisted venues, the Museum's director Martin Roth explains how to choose a record-breaking exhibition like the Alexander McQueen and why the V&A is planning to expand into the Olympic Park, Dundee and China. 

A Jewish Italian family ends up among Mussolini's most ardent supporters in Louisa Young's new novel Devotion, the latest in her series begun by the WWI novel My Dear I Wanted To Tell You and The Heroes' Welcome. She charts the political awakening of the next generation as another war looms, and tells Kirsty Lang why she found the Italian experience so compelling. 

The credits to the forthcoming TV drama series New Blood feature a raw Deep South bluesy soundtrack, a trick learned from some of the most talked-about series in recent years, from The Sopranos to Breaking Bad and True Detective. Ben Wardle considers the appeal of Americana music to today's TV directors. 

Presenter Kirsty Lang
Producer Jerome Weatherald.

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