Throng

Sunday, 16 May 2010, 10:15PM - 11:15PM on ITV1

Nearing the end of The South Bank Show Revisited season, Melvyn Bragg meets up with the great New Zealand born soprano, Dame Kiri te Kanawa, in New York. Once again, she was appearing at The Metropolitan Opera.

Drawing mainly on a South Bank Show made about her in 1991, Kiri te Kanawa reflects on her early life as an adopted orphan, the place of Maori culture in her life and the enormous sacrifices her parents, in particular, her mother, made in order to support her. She talks of the pressures of life at the top, of her previous disillusionment with the world of opera and of her one-time desire to be "Tina Turner" rather than an operatic diva.

Sunday, 9 May 2010, 10:15PM - 11:15PM on ITV1

Melvyn Bragg meets Judi Dench at the Rose Theatre in Kingston where she was recently performing in Midsummer Night’s Dream, re-uniting her with long time friend and collaborator, Sir Peter Hall, who is directing the production.

Since the 1995 South Bank Show, Judi Dench has gone on to become a huge international film star, recognised globally for her role as M in the James Bond franchise and has been Oscar nominated six times, and winning the award for her role in Shakespeare in Love.

The South Bank Show Revisited tracks this career change, tracing a path which began in the theatre but has branched out to take on television and film leading to her widely regarded status as a “national treasure” ��" a label she hates.

Sunday, 2 May 2010, 10:15PM - 11:15PM on ITV1

The South Bank Show Revisited looks at the return of David Hockney to his native Yorkshire as he embarks on an ambitious new project which will see him take over the Royal Academy in 2012.

This film sees Melvyn Bragg explore why David Hockney has turned his back on America and retreated to the seaside town of Bridlington for his new projects. He talks about the giant landscapes (some up to 40ft long) he is painting for his 2012 exhibition and the techniques and difficulties of preparing such large pieces.

Sunday, 25 April 2010, 10:15PM - 11:15PM on ITV1

Stephen Sondheim is interviewed at home in Manhattan, for The South Bank Show Revisited on the eve of his 80th birthday.

This insightful interview with Melvyn Bragg is a combination of being gently reflective, whilst demonstrating clearly that Stephen Sondheim is a master of his craft. He talks movingly about his childhood, his parents’ divorce and Oscar Hammerstein, one of the world’s great lyricists, becoming "like a surrogate father". Sondheim says he would have taken up whatever Hammerstein's profession was - it just happened to be the theatre. When Sondheim was a child, he was taken by Hammerstein to the opening of Carousel and says that, from that moment, he knew he wanted to write songs.

Sunday, 18 April 2010, 10:15PM on ITV1

Ian McKellen‘s latest interview for The South Bank Show Revisited season, will be his fourth visit to The South Bank Show, and brings up to date the actor’s life and career, which the Arts series has followed for twenty-nine years.

His first interview on The South Bank Show with Melvyn Bragg was in 1981, and saw Ian McKellen as a very earnest and stern young man who talks seriously about the craft of his acting and his passion for the theatre - and his then distaste for film. It was filmed after his successful run in Amadeus on Broadway. This was followed with a diary film of a year in the life of Ian McKellen, as he spent a year working at the National Theatre.

Sunday, 11 April 2010, 10:15PM

The South Bank Show has profiled McEwan three times, following his career from the short stories of the 70’s (First Love, Last Rites), to his first novels of the 80’s (The Comfort of Strangers), to his science influenced novels of the last decade (Enduring Love, Saturday).

Now with 4 million book sales, several major film adaptations and a Booker prize under his belt, Ian McEwan talks to Melvyn Bragg about how his work has evolved over the past 30 years and whether the early writing featured in The South Bank Show profiles still informs his current work.

Other films in The South Bank Show Revisited season include: Ian McKellen, Stephen Sondheim, David Hockney, Judi Dench, Kiri Te Kanawa, Simon Rattle and a film on Arts film making to include interviews with Ken Russell, Tony Palmer, James Ivory and others.

The South Bank Show Revisited – a final season to cherish.

Sunday, 25 October 2009, 10:15PM - 11:15PM

Melvyn Bragg talks to Nick Hornby about his latest novel, Juliet, Naked and the release of the film, An Education, for which he wrote the screenplay.

The South Bank Show explores how Nick Hornby’s career as a writer has been influenced by, and reflected in film since his first book, Fever Pitch, was published in 1992 - an autobiographical story detailing his fanatical support for Arsenal Football Club. Since then, he has written five best-selling novels, several of which adapted into feature films including High Fidelity and About a Boy.

Sunday, 18 October 2009, 10:15PM - 11:15PM

The South Bank Show looks at the work and world of Lee Hall, and how his works sprang from the culture of coal and his roots in the North East of England.

Melvyn Bragg meets Lee Hall at the Woodhorn Colliery Museum at Ashington in Northumberland; where they discuss his works, including the sense of loss that pervades both Billy Elliot and Pitman Painters – the longing for the certainties of the culture that accompanied coal – the bands, the banners, the painting and the writing. Lee talks about growing up in East Newcastle and his early work with the Tyneside Youth Theatre and Live community theatre group who are currently performing Pitmen Painters at the Royal National Theatre in London and on tour – before taking it to Broadway.

Sunday, 11 October 2009, 10:15PM - 11:15PM

The Disney.Pixar South Bank Show is a celebration of the creative talents of the hand drawn animation and groundbreaking computer animation techniques that the two studios have brought to film-making.

Pioneered by Disney at the beginning of the last century and continued by Pixar at the beginning of the present one, the South Bank Show discovers the secrets behind the animation process of the Disney Animation Studios in Burbank and the Pixar Studios in San Francisco - from story board to silver screen, and shows how they are currently leading the way in the genre.

With great archive footage from such classic films as Bambi to Wall.E, the much loved characters capture the hearts and imaginations of millions, and their creators show how with extraordinary attention to detail, passion and unique care they imbue such life into them.

Sunday, 4 October 2009, 10:15PM - 11:15PM

Award-winning artist Alison Jackson has made a film for The South Bank Show, looking in to our obsession with celebrity through the works of Andy Warhol.

Alison explores how Andy Warhol understood the power of celebrity imagery better than anyone else before or since. He founded the original gossip magazine, Interview and introduced the concept of “15 minutes of fame”. But was Warhol celebrating celebrity or was there an underlying irony to his output? What would he make of today’s celebrity-driven society and the increasingly commercialised art world that has shifted from aesthetics to money?

Sunday, 20 September 2009, 10:15PM - 11:15PM

Melvyn Bragg in discussion with one of the biggest selling bands in the world, the British multi award winning quartet, Coldplay.

Now, more than ten years into their career, the South Bank Show accompanies the global stars for six months, taking in their wins at this year’s Grammys in the Los Angeles, touring Japan, the Brit Awards and the Warchild concert in London; and spending time with them whilst they work on their next album in their north London studios, with Brian Eno.

Sunday, 20 September 2009, 10:15PM - 11:15PM

Melvyn Bragg in discussion with one of the biggest selling bands in the world, the British multi award winning quartet, Coldplay.

Now, more than ten years into their career, the South Bank Show accompanies the global stars for six months, taking in their wins at this year’s Grammys in the Los Angeles, touring Japan, the Brit Awards and the Warchild concert in London; and spending time with them whilst they work on their next album in their north London studios, with Brian Eno.

The South Bank Show returns for its final season, with film maker Tony Palmer’s sixteenth South Bank Show which examines The Wagner Family – a passionate and incendiary film that makes the usual family soap opera feel tame. The film uses as its back drop the Wagner’s glorious but poisoned legacy the Bayreuth Festival – the highest profile music festival in the world.

This South Bank Show uncovers the private workings of a family, the nearest equivalent the Germans have to Royalty, who have survived World Wars, Nazi occupation and its own internecine lies; to become one of the most intriguing, dominant and ultimately dangerous cultural families in Europe.

Melvyn Bragg’s specialist Factual And Arts Department are now making their final nine films for the South Bank Show which will prove, as ever, a diverse and eclectic season.

The final South Bank Show Awards will be transmitted in January 2010, celebrating the talent and achievements across the spectrum of the arts.

The programmes include:

Sunday, 10 May 2009, 10:15PM - 11:15PM

Two of Africa’s leading writers talk in depth to Melvyn Bragg in an extraordinary double edition of The South Bank Show; to transmit on two consecutive Sundays, the 10th and 17th May 2009. A fascinating insight into literary Africa, the film looks at the works of the multi award winning novelist Chinua Achebe, who wrote Things Fall Apart which is considered to be the greatest African novel of the 20th century; and Africa’s latest and hottest literary property Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

From different generations, Achebe and Adichie’s lives and paths seem to have crossed in many ways and have many similarities. Both are from Igboland in Nigeria and, in a chance in a million, Adichie was then brought up in Achebe’s old house in the university town of Nsukka.