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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Front Row

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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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Front Row: The Current War, How culture affects relationship expectations, Experimental novels, Cool culture

The Current War, How culture affects relationship expectations, Experimental novels, Cool culture

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, The Current War, How culture affects relationship expectations, Experimental novels, Cool culture

The Current War, culture and relationships, experimental novels, and cool culture

The Current War and its turbulent production; does culture affect relationships?; experimental novels; and Cool Culture: the best places to enjoy culture without melting.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon star in The Current War, as Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. It's the electrifying story about the race to supply people with electricity and power. The film has had a turbulent production, plagued with unfavourable reviews at 2017 Toronto Film festival premier and then caught up in the scandal surrounding the Harvey Weinstein allegations. Film Critic Tim Robey discusses the changes made to the film since its initial release and the impact of events behind the scenes. 

Love Island 2019 is in its final week, so we wondered  whether or not we can make assessments about the state of modern relationships by how they are presented on the screen? Cultural commentator Louis Wise and YouTube relationship expert Hannah Witton discuss this and ponder which programmes best hold up a mirror to reality, or actually start to shape it?

Lucy Ellmann’s new novel Ducks, Newburyport has been attracting headlines and admiration; but not just for its literary qualities. It's 1,000 pages long, most of which is  one sentence.  And there are other contemporary authors also playing with conventional storytelling form at the moment, including Bernardine Evaristo, Ali Smith, Nicola Barker, Eimear McBride and Mike McCormack.  McCormack’s novel Solar Bones, also a single sentence, won the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize, and Evaristo’s latest novel Girl, Woman, Other plays with voice, grammar and text on the page.  They talk to Front Row about the freedom of not following the rules.

And Cool Culture: as the temperature in much of the UK look set to soar, we wonder about the best places to enjoy culture without melting

Presenter: Stig Abell. Producer: Oliver Jones

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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The Current War, How culture affects relationship expectations, Experimental novels, Cool culture

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