The Culture Show Uncut - 2008/2009 - Episode 7

This week The Charlatans take the busking challenge in Manchester. And The Culture Show has an exclusive preview of the third in Simon Toefield's 'cat' trilogy. The first two are a Youtube sensation, notching up eight or nine million hits. Also tonight, Lauren Laverne gets an exclusive TV interview with David Simon, creator, executive producer and lead writer of HBO's cult TV series The Wire. David has been hailed as America's great tragedian. Lauren conducts a cop style interrogation about why Simon insists of breaking all the rules of television writing. To mark the 500th anniversary of work beginning on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon is in Rome to marvel at and decode Michelangelo's ultimate Renaissance work of art. Andrew tells the story of Michelangelo's four year long struggle to complete this vast fresco cycle, the battles the artist had with his patron Pope Julius II, and tries to explain the layers of meaning behind the swooping, heavenly, iconic figures. Mark Kermode reviews the week's biggest film releases including the predicted smash of the summer the new Disney Pixar animation Wall E, Nic Roeg's Puffball and City of Men, the follow up to City of God. Comedian Chris Addison, star and writer, of new series Lab Rats joins Mark and Lauren in the studio to talk about his new series, starting on July 10th - "a big, stupid, cartoony new studio sitcom about a bunch of idiots trying to run a lab", according to Chris's website. Plus, music comes from Clare and the Reasons, whose debut album The Movie include retro -tinged songs full of humour, is wining critical acclaim. This is their first appearance on British television.