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Front Row: The Looming Tower, Birdsong in the charts, 18-certificate films

24/04/2019

The Looming Tower, Birdsong in the charts, 18-certificate films

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, The Looming Tower, Birdsong in the charts, 18-certificate films

The road to 9/11 in a new TV drama, and Let Nature Sing - the single by a band of 25 birds

The road to 9/11 in a new TV drama; Let Nature Sing - the new single by a band of 25 birds; remembering Edward Kelsey, aka Joe Grundy; the drop in films with an 18 classification.

The Looming Tower – the new BBC Two series tells the story of the rising threat of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in the late 1990s and how rivalry between the FBI and CIA may have inadvertently set the path for 9/11. Sophie Raworth joins Kirsty to review.

Let Nature Sing. Front Row today features a musical first: a single by a band of 25 performers - all of whom are birds. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is hoping enough people will buy, download and share Let Nature Sing that birdsong will hit the charts. The line-up includes some of Britain‘s rarest birds – the bittern, crane, and turtle dove– as well as the most mellifluous – the nightingale, wren, and song thrush. Kirsty Lang talks to Adrian Thomas, who recorded the birds, and to folk singer Sam Lee and Bill Barclay, music director at Shakespeare’s Globe, about how and why they composed a piece using only the call and songs of the birds.

Following the announcement of the death of Edward Kelsey, the actor who played Joe Grundy in The Archers for 34 years, Timothy Bentinck - aka David Archer - remembers his friend and colleague. 

Plus, the marked decrease in the number of 18 certificate films released in the UK. So far this year, the British Board of Film Classification has awarded only two films an 18 certificate, primarily on the basis of sex or nudity - High Life, and the Silvio Berlusconi biopic Loro, released last week. Critics Mike Muncer, Hannah McGill, and Sophie Monks Kaufman discuss why there's been such a drop and the effect it may have on the industry.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang
Producer: Emma Wallace

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