This Cultural Life

Theatre and opera director Katie Mitchell talks to John Wilson about her career and formative influences. She is renowned for her experimental storytelling on stage, her feminist perspective, and for contemporary reframing of classic plays, she has directed more than 100 productions over more than 30 years. She has worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre, where - as associate director - she staged bold new versions of work by a wide range of writers including Aeschylus, Virginia Woolf, Chekhov and Sarah Kane. For many theatre goers, she is one of Britain’s most important and innovative living directors.
Producer: Edwina Pitman

American photographer Annie Leibovitz talks to John Wilson about her career and cultural influences. For over 50 years she has captured rock stars, actors and politicians in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine, Vanity Fair and in museums & galleries around the world. She is renowned for elaborately designed shoots, sometimes involving multiple celebrity sitters, and creating images that have a cinematic or painterly quality. Her best known photographs include John Lennon just hours before he was murdered, a naked and heavily pregnant Demi Moore – and Queen Elizabeth the second in the state rooms of Buckingham Palace.
Producer: Edwina Pitman
Archive used:
The Rolling Stones at the LA Forum, 1975, BBC Radio 1
Report on the shooting of John Lennon: NBC News, 8 December 1980
Report on the Vigil for John Lennon in Central Park New York: WABC-TV, Channel 7 Eyewitness News, 14 December 1980
Annie Leibovitz photographs Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace:
2 clips from Monarchy: The Royal Family at Work: The State Visit; co-produced by BBC & RDF Media, 26 November 2007, BBC1

Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro talks to John Wilson about his cultural influences. From his 1992 debut Cronos to his recent big budget spectacular retelling of Frankenstein, del Toro’s 12 feature films mix fantasy, horror and Gothic romance to create modern fairy tales about innocence, brutality and redemption. His movies have won eight Academy Awards including three for Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006, and four Oscars for The Shape Of Water in 2017, plus seven BAFTAs and three Golden Globes.
Producer: Edwina Pitman
Archive used:
Clip from Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, 2006
Clip from Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro, 2025
Clip from Frankenstein, James Whale, 1931
Clip from I Confess, Alfred Hitchcock, 1953

Comedian and writer Ricky Gervais talks to John Wilson about his formative creative influences and inspirations. Ricky Gervais made his name as the co-creator and
star of The Office, the mock documentary series which became a landmark in British television comedy, and was shown all round the world. Further success followed with the comedy drama series Extras, Life’s Too Short and Afterlife, and awards including two Emmys, four Golden Globes and seven BAFTAs. Ricky Gervais has written and performed numerous solo stand-up shows around the world, the latest of which, Mortality, was filmed for Netflix and has just earned him a tenth Golden Globe nomination.
Gervais tells John Wilson about his early comic influences including Laurel and Hardy, Fawlty Towers and Derek and Clive, the foul-mouthed drunken alter egos created by comedy duo Peter Cook and Dudley Moore on three, largely improvised, spoken-word albums recorded in the 1970s. He also talks about his own approach to writing comedy and the huge inspiration that the 1984 mock rock documentary This Is Spinal Tap was on the creation of The Office.
Producer: Edwina Pitman
Archive used:
Laurel and Hardy theme, Dance of the Cuckoos
The Office, Series 1, Downsize, BBC2, 2001
Fawlty Towers, Series 1, A Touch of Class, BBC2, 1975
Golden Globes, opening monologue, 2020
This Is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner, 1984

Jennifer Lawrence's breakthrough role in the 2010 drama Winter’s Bone secured her first Academy Award nomination when she was just 20, and she won the Best Actress category two years later for Silver Linings Playbook. Since then, she has become one of the most prolific, critically acclaimed and highest paid actors in Hollywood as the star of The Hunger Games series and three X-Men movies. Other leading roles include American Hustle, Joy and, most recently, the psychological drama Die My Love.
Jennifer talks to John Wilson about her childhood on her parents' farm in Kentucky. After being scouted by a modelling agency, she left school as a teenager and moved to New York to start working as a model and actor. She recalls how the film Taxi Driver, starring a young Jodie Foster, made a big impression on her as an aspiring actress and how Jodie Foster later became a role model when she directed Jennifer on the set of The Beaver. She also counts Gena Rowlands' performance in A Woman Under The Influence, written and directed by John Cassavetes, as an important inspiration, as well as working with directors David O Russell and Lynne Ramsay. 
Producer: Edwina Pitman
Archive and film clips used:
Uncle Buck, John Hughes, 1989
No Hard Feelings, Gene Stupnitsky, 2023
Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese, 1976
Winter's Bone, Debra Granik, 2010
The Hunger Games, Gary Ross, 2012
American Hustle, David O Russell, 2013
Veep, Armando Iannucci, 2012
A Woman Under The Influence, John Cassavetes, 1974
Die My Love, Lynne Ramsay, 2025