Front Row

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Front Row: Stephen La Rivière, Nancy Kerr, Silas Marner

Stephen La Rivière, Nancy Kerr, Silas Marner

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Stephen La Rivière, Nancy Kerr, Silas Marner

Nebula-75 creator Stephen La Rivière, and singer Nancy Kerr.

Thunderbirds-style Nebula-75 creator Stephen La Rivière; folk musician and singer Nancy Kerr; Tessa Hadley on George Eliot’s novel Silas Marner; a campaign to save UK music venues.

Many TV programmes are on hold during lockdown, but one production house is creating a multi-character series set on board a spaceship travelling through the farthest reaches of unchartered space, filmed in Supermarionation and in Super-Isolation. Creator Stephen La Rivière discusses Nebula-75, starring Gerry Anderson-style puppets. The entire enterprise is being made by a team of three friends in their flat, using bits and pieces from around the flat as props. And it’s proved extremely popular. 

Folk musician and singer Nancy Kerr tells us about her lockdown online song project for May - A Leon Rosselson Song A Day – and performs for us, live from her home.

Did you know that BBC Sounds recently released a selection of free audiobooks of GCSE English Literature texts? The selection includes a wide range of works from The War of the Worlds to The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  As part of Radio 4’s education initiative we’re asking writers to record introductions to the books, and today award-winning novelist Tessa Hadley offers her guide to George Eliot’s novel Silas Marner, the apparently simple tale of a linen weaver in the English village of Raveloe, written in 1861.

Mark Davyd, founder of the Music Venue Trust, discusses the progress being made in its campaign to rescue 500 grassroots music venues across the UK that are in danger of going under due to the economic fallout from coronavirus.

Presenter Samira Ahmed
Producer Jerome Weatherald
Studio Manager John Boland

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