Inside Culture - Episode Guide

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.

Mary inhabits the worlds of architecture and fashion to analyse how we live now, during a pandemic, and fulfils a 40-year-long dream of reuniting the cast of renowned 1970s BBC drama I, Claudius.

Mary examines what the future holds for museums post-lockdown, venturing out of her study to the British Museum to take on the role of museum guide.

Mary talks to award-winning filmmaker and Turner Prize winning artist Steve McQueen, discussing his views on growing up in London and his new BBC One anthology series Small Axe.

Hot on the heels of the US presidential inauguration, Mary talks to Armando Iannucci and David Olusoga, asking how comedians and satirists adjust to new regimes.

Mary is examining our rapidly changing language: what is it and why do we fight about it? She meets deaf musician Dame Evelyn Glennie, who discusses how her life has been affected by the pandemic.

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? Mary talks to actor Jason Watkins about the difference between playing real and fictional characters.

Mary Beard talks to cultural creatives who make other worlds for our exploration and delight, including Booker Prize winner Marlon James and the Lyceum's artistic director, David Greig.

In a special programme to end this series, Mary is in conversation with British writer Jed Mercurio, the mastermind behind hit show Line of Duty.

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 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 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 – including her performance as Lady Danbury in Bridgerton and her groundbreaking production of Richard II, featuring only women of colour.

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 - the 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.