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The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.
1978
1978
1979
1980
1981
In March 1981 Melvyn Bragg travelled to Hull to interview the poet, librarian and jazz critic Philip Larkin.
1985
Cleese was silently scripting A Fish Called Wanda at the time this interview was filmed. It is not mentioned in this program. What is mentioned is Cleese's spectrum of work from sketch comedy to industrial training films to therapeutical books. Video clips include sequences from Cleese's classics: At Last the 1948 Show, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Fawlty Towers.
The South Bank Show’s Velvet Underground documentary contains interviews with Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Moe Tucker, Nico, Andy Warhol and lots of early Velvet performance footage.
1982
Cameras follow Peter Gabriel during the recording of his fourth solo album.
1984
Behind the scenes look at the making of Paul McCartney's 1984 movie Give My Regards To Broad Street.
As part of The South Bank Show series, director David Hinton and interviewer Melvyn Bragg accompany Francis Bacon for a day during his second retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London, in 1985. The conversation reveals the artist’s influences, theories and obsessions.
1987
This documentary on The Smiths was filmed just days before the band went their separate ways in 1987. Contains interviews of Morrissey, Marr, Joyce and Rourke, as well as Linder, Shaun Duggan, Jo O'Keefe, John Peel, Nick Kent, Sandie Shaw and Viv Nicholson.
A lecture about television given at the British Film Institute.
1988
A special 3 minute parody episode made for Comic Relief. Melvin interviews painter John Burnett.
1990
1989
1983
1991
Interviews with Douglas Adams Some parts of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency are filmed as link items, including the Electric Monk.
1994
1993
British director Ken Loach first came to fame in the Sixties with plays such as UP THE JUNCTION and CATHY COME HOME and films including KES. To coincide with his latest film, RAINING STONES, Loach, unashamedly political in his outlook, talks to Melvyn Bragg.
1986
1992
Dudley talks candidly about his life and work alongside contributions from Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Blake Edwards, Bo Derek, Sir Georg Solti and others.
1995
Documentary about the origins, the history and the making of CORONATION STREET, including interviews with cast and crew and footage from behind the scenes of the production.
This report brings you back in 1996, when Sting records "Mercury falling". You will see Sting in his home of lake house, talking about the writting process, see him recording the varied tracks of the album and heard them as working versions... a superb moment...
1996
1997
1999
1998
2001
2005
2003
2002
2008
2018
In a new series of his arts show, Bragg features five inspiring women, starting with comedienne Tracey Ullman. The documentary looks at Ullman's role as one of the most important women in the history of British comedy.
2004
2007
2006
Bill Bryson revisits the haunts of his childhood
2020
2006
2021
2008
This show follows Mike Skinner, the man behind The Streets, as he records his fourth album in Prague, Everything is Borrowed. Skinner's one man band has successfully portrayed a picture of urban life for today's youth in the UK. He came to prominence in 2001 with his influential debut album Original Pirate Material, which was recorded in his bedroom. He still records this way, but in Prague he's filmed with a symphony orchestra, displaying a relaxed attitude to working with classical musicians. With contributions from Pete Doherty, and critics Chris Salmon and Alexis Petridis.
2014
2016
2017
Bragg meets award-winning writer and director Amma Asante on the set of her latest film, Where Hands Touch, to find out more about the inspirational filmmaker.
2019
Alan Bennett rarely does television interviews. He claims that if you want to find out about him, “it’s all in the work”. But in this exclusive ‘South Bank Show’ one of Britain’s best loved playwrights and diarist agrees to talk candidly about his life, work and what inspires him. Filmed with specially shot monologues and pieces to camera.
Original Air Date—14 March 2004 In the mid-1960s, John Lennon bought a portable jukebox and stocked it with 40 of his favorite 45-rpm records. This documentary showcases those songs and uses them to explore Lennon's musical tastes and influences. Featured are interviews with many of the artists whose songs were in Lennon's jukebox.
Beverley Knight has sold over a million albums in the UK in a career spanning two decades and is widely considered to be one of the UK's most successful singers. Since her initial success in the 90s, Beverley has recently branched into musical theatre, with roles in productions such as Cats. and The Bodyguard, she has scored major hits with singles Made It Back, Greatest Day and Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda. Melvyn joins her working on new material with Guy Chambers and the upcoming hip-hop musical Sylvia at The Old Vic. This South Bank Show explores her experiences of racism growing up in Wolverhampton as the child of Windrush parents and her first steps in the music industry, inspired partly by a chance childhood meeting with 80s soul star Jaki Graham.
Sonia Friedman is a multi-award winning theatre producer who, in the past 20 years, has been unrivaled in her success of bringing new work to the West End with productions such as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, The Ferryman, and Jerusalem to name but a few. Born in London into an extraordinarily creative family, Sonia began working in the theatre in her teens. By her early 20s, she was already producing national tours and by the middle of the 90s she had broken into the West End. Melvyn follows Sonia from her sell-out production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London to Broadway. They examine the shows that worked - and ones that didn't - as well as the risks of bringing new work to the West End.
Gail Rebuck has been the most powerful woman in British publishing for three decades, holding the posts of Chief Executive and Chair of Random House UK for 22 years. A trailblazer for women in British publishing, she was not yet 30 when she was invited to become a founding director of Century Publishing. Noted not just for her commercial flair, she has also nurtured the careers of many authors as well as helping Random House UK (now Penguin Random House UK) to prosper in the new digital economy. Melvyn charts Gail's life and achievements while also considering the various revolutions which have taken place in the publishing world during her career, not least for women in the industry. The show also includes contributions from Nigella Lawson and Robert Harris.
Melvyn Bragg talks to Eric Sykes about his remarkable career, which started in the 1940s when he began writing for Frankie Howerd in the hit radio show Variety Band Box, and how he evolved from being a top comedy writer to one of Britain's best loved performers who continues to appear on stage, TV and cinema.
Eric Clapton last spoke to The South Bank Show exactly twenty years ago, near the end of a long spiral of addiction and alcoholism, just before going in to rehab. Now, 20 years later – and still one of the great guitarists of our time - we pick up the story again with the 62-year-old Clapton talking exclusively to Melvyn Bragg. They discuss conquering his demons, the drugs, the drink, the death of his son, his troubled family background, the intensity of his relationships with other great guitarists and with women, and his influences and his most moving songs. Clapton speaks openly about the music - the one constant in a life of emotional turmoil - and how he has finally found peace. It would be difficult to find a rock star that has experienced more ecstatic highs or despairing lows than Eric Clapton. As one of the greatest rock musicians this country has ever produced, his career has spanned over 40 years from being the fresh faced guitarist of the Yardbirds, to the spaced out solo artist of the 70s, to the reformed, prolific performer of today. Far more than a rock star Clapton is an icon and a living legend. His guitar playing has seen him hailed as ‘God’ and his tracks such as Layla, Sunshine Of Your Love, Wonderful Tonight and Tears In Heaven have become anthems for generations of music fans. The South Bank Show is illustrated with previously unseen performance footage and rare, revealing archive. This is Clapton at his most candid ever.
This episode of The South Bank Show provides a unique insight into Damien Hirst not as the enfant terrible of an art world but as an art collector and businessman. Known for creating one of the most famous icons of modern art, a 14ft tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde, which shocked the public, he also produces decorative spot and spin paintings. His prolific output and entrepreneurialism have made him one of the world's most expensive living artists, with an estimated fortune of £100 million. One of Hirst's motivations for his growing art collection is Toddington, a dilapidated Gothic Manor house in Gloucestershire, which he purchased in 2005 for £3 million and will one day house his entire collection. Here, he shows Melvyn Bragg around Toddington, outlining his plans for its future. They discuss his art collection, his artistic heroes and the relationship between money and art.
The iconic Dusty Springfield remains the 'white lady of soul' and in this compelling South Bank Show, her moving and dramatic story is told in its entirety for the first time. An array of intimate friends, lovers and show business talents go on record to describe the intense highs and lows of Dusty's swinging life, before her untimely death in 1999. Born Mary O'Brien in London as war began in 1939, in the 60's as Dusty Springfield, she came to represent renewed British optimism and modernity, epitomising swinging London. A plain convent educated girl, Dusty's transformation of herself into a blonde glamour icon was a remarkable act of will. A lesbian with a great deal to lose and a great deal to hide, Dusty hid for many years behind the mask of the Girl Singer. The unique qualities of her voice attracted the creme de la creme of songwriters and producers; she had close relationships with Burt Bacharach, Carole King, and Gamble and Huff, the men who created the sound of Philadelphia Soul. Dusty made herself an expert on black American soul music after she fell in love with Motown. Her career waned in the seventies and she fled to America, where she floundered in variety shows. She moved to Los Angeles where she struggled with drink, drugs and self harming. She later returned to Britain to critical acclaim when she re-invented herself in partnership with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe better known as the Pet Shop Boys. Dusty's life is nothing if not dramatic, although this can never obscure her remarkable gifts as a musician and performer, which have continued to be rediscovered by new generations. A soul searching South Bank Show, on arguably Britain's greatest ever Pop Diva, Dusty Springfield.
Melvyn Bragg interviews George Michael regarding Michael's return to touring on the "25 Live" tour, as well as George Michael performs in the studio rehearsing songs for the tour.
Bragg meets Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard to discuss his life and work, including his six-volume Min Kamp series of autobiographical novels.
Bragg meets Sally Wainwright, one of the UK's most revered TV writers who has won BAFTA awards for her dramas Last Tango in Halifax and Happy Valley.
Bragg meets Benjamin Clementine to discuss his roller-coaster ride from busking in Paris to becoming a world-renowned singer-songwriter.
Bragg talks to double Oscar nominee Jude Law and director Ivo van Hove about their production of Obsession at London's Barbican.
Melvyn Bragg
Self - Presenter
2009
Arts documentary series presented by Melvyn Bragg. A look through the register of those students of the comedic arts who learnt their trade among the Footlights at Cambridge University. Stephen Fry, Griff Rhys Jones, John Fortune, Clive James and David Mitchell top the bill as pontificators on the influence of Fotlights on mainstream and alternative comedy. Plus a plethora of comic clips featuring alumini of the ultimate school of comedy.
William Goldman's career began as a novelist, but he soon turned to screenplays, including those for iconic films such as `Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' and `All the President's Men'. But in the 1980s he fell out of favour and turned to writing his memoirs, which feature sometimes affectionate, sometimes damning looks at the film industry.
2015
2000
In 2001, American author Bill Bryson headed home to Des Moines, Iowa, to reflect on his early life in the Midwest for The South Bank Show.
2023
An intimate portrait of David Hockney, featuring interviews with the artist — one of Britain's most beloved painters — in London and Normandy, and exclusive new footage of a master at work.
The celebrated British artist discusses his life and work in his Normandy studio, revealing his influences, inspirations and plans to keep on painting.
Using over 50 years of archive footage, Hockney's life and career is explored.
Filmed in his London studio, Hockney sits down to discuss his remarkable life and career, illustrated by a wide range of his vibrant and joyous artworks.
2022
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