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Front Row: Emergency services on screen; plus Sally Hawkins, Josette Bushell-Mingo, and Damian Barr

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02/08/2017

Emergency services on screen; plus Sally Hawkins, Josette Bushell-Mingo, and Damian Barr

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Emergency services on screen; plus Sally Hawkins, Josette Bushell-Mingo, and Damian Barr

Emergency services on screen; plus Sally Hawkins, Josette Bushell-Mingo, and Damian Barr.

How fly-on-the-wall programme makers document the work of the emergency services; plus actress Sally Hawkins, singer Josette Bushell-Mingo, and Damian Barr's Queen Icons choice.

As public services come under increasing pressure from government cuts the demand for documentaries about them is reflected in the number of programmes on TV. Last week, ITV's Inside London Fire Brigade featured previously unheard accounts of fire fighters from inside Grenfell Tower. In the same week, Channel 4's 24 hours in A&E returned for its 13th series, alongside 999 What's Your Emergency which is in its fourth; earlier in July, the second series of Hospital was screened on BBC Two. TV executives Simon Dickson and Ed Coulthard discuss why programmes about public services are so popular and what is involved in turning hours of documentary material into compulsive viewing. 

Writer Damian Barr champions Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City novels for Front Row's Queer Icons series.

Sally Hawkins stars as Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis, in new biopic Maudie. The actress discusses Maud's remarkable life in a remote part of Nova Scotia living in very basic conditions while suffering from juvenile arthritis, her unlikely romance with local fisherman Everett Lewis played by Ethan Hawke in the film, and Maud's joyful spirit that comes through in her paintings. 

Josette Bushell-Mingo talks about her one-woman show 'Nina - a Story about Me and Nina Simone' in which she explores Nina Simone's musical and political influence not only on the young Josette but on the American civil rights movement of the 1960s and onwards. 

Presenter: John Wilson
Producer: Jack Soper.

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