Mary visits Stonehenge, where she meets leading creative voices, including Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller. Mary explores which cultural forms are the winners and losers of the pandemic.
Mary talks to Emmy-nominated actor Brian Cox and Bernardine Evaristo, who last year shared the Booker Prize with Margaret Atwood, and discusses how awards shape what art is created.
This week, Mary is inhabiting the worlds of architecture and fashion to analyse how we live now, during a pandemic. With Eddie Izzard, Shahida Bari and Ayesha Hazarika, she discusses how our cities and our homes need to transform to accommodate our new ways of living, and how what we wear for these new ways has already drastically altered. Mary visits Lullingstone - a well-preserved Roman villa - with star architect Thomas Heatherwick, and compares how the Romans lived then with how we live now. She also meets designer and artist Es Devlin (set creator to Beyonce, Adele, Kanye West and The Rolling Stones) and finds out how we can still feel together even when we are living in the digital world so much more. Mary also fulfils a 40-year-long dream of reuniting the cast of renowned 1970s BBC drama I, Claudius, including Brian Blessed and Sian Phillips.
Playing her part in BBC Arts #MuseumPassion season, Mary examines what the future holds for museums post-lockdown, venturing out of her study to the British Museum. On her first visit since she was made a trustee, she gets to work taking some miniature medieval masterpieces, the Lewis Chessmen, out of their lockdown storage. She also surprises the first visitors on opening day as she takes on the role of museum guide. Novelist Ian Rankin shows off his favourite Edinburgh museum, the Writer’s Museum, and to round off, Mary debates with V&A East’s Gus Casely-Hayford and sociologist Tiffany Jenkins how best to respond to a world that has changed beyond recognition.
In a special programme to close the series, Mary is in the company of award-winning filmmaker and Turner Prize winning artist Steve McQueen. His films, including Hunger, Shame and the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, reveal a director who wants to tell powerful stories that have not been heard, focusing on those who rarely get a voice. In a long conversation that is both personal and political, Mary and Steve discuss his views on growing up in London, and his new BBC One anthology series Small Axe. Set from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, each film tells a different story involving racism and discrimination in London's West Indian community.
Mary Beard is back! Britain’s best known classicist is countering the pandemic with a rich feast of performance, conversation and debate. Hot on the heels of the US presidential inauguration, Mary talks to Armando Iannucci, writer of Veep and The Thick of It, and asks how comedians and satirists adjust to a new regime. When power changes hands, whether it’s Roman emperors, British prime ministers or even popes, the external illusion of a smooth transition often masks bitter rivalries and even danger. Mary is also joined by David Olusoga, who recently interviewed former President Obama, and others from across the pond to explore succession through the ages.
Do audiences matter, and what is their role? Mary talks to sports stars about how the loss of the crowd affects their performance, as well as attending her first Twitter listening party.
Why is there such a fuss about the difference between fact and fiction? With suggestions of 'truth warnings' for The Crown, and heated debate about colour-blind casting in Bridgerton, Mary talks to actor Jason Watkins about the difference between playing real and fictional characters. She also speaks to historian Michael Scott about new movie The Dig, and how archaeology itself is often a combination of fact and fiction. There is debate about the perils of straddling the fact/fiction divide in culture with James Graham, Simon Jenkins, and Shahidha Bari, and why this year’s awards season features so many movies based on real life events.
In a special programme to end this series, Mary is in conversation with British writer Jed Mercurio. He’s the mastermind behind hit show Line of Duty, returning for a new series in the spring, and has a rich back catalogue of attention-grabbing TV drama including Bodyguard, Cardiac Arrest and Bodies. How much does his early medical and military training inform his writing? And how much drama does it take to make real events into unmissable television?
Mary asks how controversial memory is; and about the connection between London's Trafalgar Square as a memorial to 19th century Empire, and as a democratised space where we gather to celebrate, protest, and remake our national identity. While many are thinking about how we'll memorialise the pandemic (a statue of Chris Whitty? Red hearts daubed on riverbank walls?), Mary will be asking what counts as a successful site of memory when she talks to David Adjaye, and visits his new memorial to Cherry Groce, an innocent woman who was shot by the Metropolitan Police in her Brixton home in 1985. Visual artist Cornelia Parker will be at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, with a preview of a new exhibition Breaking the Mould, remembering the work of female sculptors in Britain since the Second World War, and thinking about how we reconfigure our landscape as an act of remembrance. In discussion with Edmund de Waal, Elif Shafak and Lemn Sissay, she'll be asking how and what we choose to forget - how we edit our ideas of our past, and how sometimes others do the editing for us. And there will be one or two throwbacks to the ancient romans, who were expert at remembering and forgetting. This memorable start to the new series is rounded off with actor Jane Horrocks giving us a tour of her Memory Shop, a space she's created at the heart of the winding Georgian lanes of Brighton for this year's Festival, interrogating how different generations remember the same family events in strikingly different ways.
Mary Beard embraces finally being on the move - whilst acknowledging we are not going very far! What do we lose from arts and culture when we cannot travel? Mary meets James May to discuss grand tours old and new, and in London’s St Pancras station, she asks if it is architecture and art that give train station reunions their romantic edge. Private pilot and singer Gary Numan tells Mary why the ability to travel is so key to a musician’s creativity. And Mary is joined by historian David Olusoga, comedian and Channel 4’s Trip Hazard presenter Rosie Jones and writer William Dalrymple to debate if the traditional genres of travel literature and travel documentaries are slowly dying. Even without a pandemic or climate change, do we need to travel to understand other cultures?
Mary's exploration of culture continues as she asks: why do we have to act our age?
Mary is in conversation with critically acclaimed and internationally bestselling Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her latest book, Notes on Grief, conveys her startlingly powerful reaction to losing her father last year, the man she credits with instilling in her a powerful feminist instinct. Her writing is both tender and fierce, whether it’s her Women’s Prize-winning novel Half of a Yellow Sun or her influential essay We Should All Be Feminists, and she’s often named one of Africa’s best writers. In her first public appearance since the devastating news of her mother’s death, she talks to Mary about the power of literature to heal, how it feels to have Beyonce using her words in her songs and why Enid Blyton was her inspiration to write as she was growing up in Nigeria.
Mary Beard asks why we laugh and explores what laughter can tell us about ourselves, our relationships and the world we live in.
In this very special episode of Inside Culture, Mary Beard meets former US Secretary of State, First Lady, senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mary Beard asks why we are drawn to literature, theatre, TV and film that take us ‘back to school’. She meets authors Philip Pullman and Liz Pichon to discuss the enduring popularity of these stories.
Shahidha Bari takes the reins for this episode which celebrates the joy of books and asks whether the way we read is changing. In Leicester, Shahidha drops in on author Alex Wheatle and actress Sara Powell, who are in the process of turning one of Alex's novels into an audiobook. She also hears from impassioned authors about the enduring popularity of the printed page - writers whose lives were shaped by their local library and the world of books it contained.
Mary Beard investigates the ongoing history of creative connection and cultural exchange between Britain and Australia and asks what that relationship looks like today. Mary visits The Box in Plymouth, where the National Museum of Australia’s groundbreaking exhibition Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters has just been installed. She will speak to the exhibition’s curator, Margo Neale, about how Songlines takes visitors on a journey across the Australian desert, telling the foundation stories of the country’s indigenous people through the work of their artists. In London, Mary catches up with musician and comedian Tim Minchin as he embarks upon a new UK tour. Mary also meets creatives and leaders who have lived and worked both in Britain and down under, including the 27th Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, actor Cate Blanchett and journalist Stan Grant. Playing out the episode with a track from her new album is ex-Neighbours actress and musician Natalie Imbruglia.
Mary Beard explores how thousands of years of stories and images stereotyping women have shaped our thinking and what this means for women who are in positions of power today. She is joined in her quest by a group of women who have smashed their glass ceilings and operated at the highest levels of political power, including the former prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, Baronesses Valerie Amos and Sayeeda Warsi, and presidential candidate and former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mary also meets former MP and novelist Edwina Currie at the Pankhurst Centre in Manchester to discuss how art has treated women who either had or sought power throughout history – from Roman empresses to Elizabeth I and from suffragettes to Spitting Image. In Newcastle, playwright Caroline Bird provides a sneak peak of Red Ellen, her new play about pioneering MP Ellen Wilkinson. And in London, Mary steps onto the stage with actor Adjoa Andoh to discuss the portrayal of power – includi
Whether it’s in fashion and music or on our TV and cinema screens, the 90s are well and truly back. Shahidha Bari takes a look at the reasons why. She meets up with Ian Broudie of The Lightning Seeds and his son Riley, who has joined his dad in the band. They discuss 90s nostalgia, playing old and new hits to a Gen Z audience and the continuing popularity of their Euro 96 anthem Three Lions. In Belfast, costume designer Cathy Prior reveals the inspiration behind the outfits she created for the hit series Derry Girls and provides an insight into her creative process – from combing through old copies of Smash Hits to curating 90s playlists. To take stock of the 90s and ask what our nostalgia for this decade really means, Shahidha chats to Shaparak Khorsandi, Katy Hessel and Jon Savage. As well as reminiscing about Britpop, girl power and life before ubiquitous smartphones, they discuss the role that art and culture play in shaping the spirit of an age.
Mary Beard is joined by the Oscar-winning actor and screenwriter Emma Thompson to talk tears. Together, they dissect some of Emma’s most famous on-screen weeps and explore the role that crying plays both in art and in real life. Mary also receives a lesson from Emma in how to turn on the waterworks herself. In Cardiff, artist Casper White reveals how two apparently different portrayals of crying – sacred paintings and selfies on TikTok - have come together to inspire his latest set of portraits, while classical musician and composer Alexis Ffrench plays a track from his new album, which explores feelings of grief. To make sense of all this sadness, Mary will discuss the history and cultural importance of crying with historian Thomas Dixon and comedian and podcaster Cariad Lloyd.
Shahidha Bari teams up with artists, poets, comics and musicians to investigate the role that the arts can play in exploring and processing the most challenging crisis of our times: the threat to our planet from catastrophic climate change. Shahidha meets Antony Gormley at his Norfolk studio to find out how his work has engaged with the climate crisis and to discuss how the global art industry can lower its carbon footprint. She also visits poet and performer Kae Tempest to talk about the importance of resilience and the ways in which music and poetry can help us to process life’s pressures. From Toronto, The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman shares a special performance of a track from her recent album, which explores the emotional fallout from the damage we’ve inflicted on the natural world. Finally, to debate what happens when art meets science, Shahidha gets together with writer and curator Ekow Eshun and comedian and environmental economist Matt Winning.
In the final episode of the series, Mary Beard brings her trademark wit and probing curiosity to an interview with a very special guest - British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, whose experiences of migration and exile have informed many of her books - including her latest, The Island of Missing Trees. Mary asks the Booker-nominated writer about her life and career, and together they reflect on the art and culture of the moment - exploring themes from belonging and identity to equality and freedom of speech. They also share their thoughts about polarisation on social media and staying sane in an age of division.
