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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music.

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Stig Abell

Orlando Bloom

Cariad Lloyd

Kim Sherwood

Jacqueline Springer

Richard Cork

Julian May

Front Row: Orlando Bloom, Grief as muse, Antony Gormley, Novello Award-winning rapper Dave.

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01/06/2018

Orlando Bloom, Grief as muse, Antony Gormley, Novello Award-winning rapper Dave.

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Orlando Bloom, Grief as muse, Antony Gormley, Novello Award-winning rapper Dave.

Orlando Bloom on his return to the stage as a cop and assassin in Killer Joe.

Orlando Bloom on playing a cop with a sideline - assassination, comedy inspired by grief, Antony Gormley's new show and rappers winning prizes - for their poetry or their politics?

Orlando Bloom swaps Middle-earth and the high seas for a Texas trailer park in his first West End production in over a decade, Killer Joe. He talks about playing Joe Cooper, a policeman turned assassin, employed by a family at their wits end to kill their mother for a cut of her life insurance money.

Is death, the 'last taboo', finally being broken down by the arts? We consider the recent glut of writing and performance about grief with Cariad Lloyd, whose podcast Griefcast, in which she talks to fellow comedians about losing someone, swept the board at the recent British Podcast Awards. Stig is also joined by writer Kim Sherwood whose debut novel Testament is about family secrets and mourning the death of a grandfather. 

It has been a winning week for rap as Kenrick Lamar, Stormzy and Dave are all awarded prestigious song-writing prizes. We ask whether it's about the music, or the message, the poetry or the politics? 

In Antony Gormley's new exhibition, Subject, at the recently redesigned Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, the artist continues his investigations into the relationships between the human body and space. Critic Richard Cork gives his response to the works, some of which are new, and others not previously exhibited in the UK.

Presenter: Stig Abell
Producer: Julian May.

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