Front Row - 06/05/2009

A new Star Trek film 'prequel' charts the early days of James T Kirk and a young Spock. Critic Matt Thorne assesses whether it successfully breathes new life into the franchise. As ITV announces that the Flagship arts programme The South Bank Show will come to an end in 2010, presenter Melvyn Bragg talks to Mark Lawson about the show he has hosted for over 30 years. A new production of J B Priestley's Time and the Conways is showing at the National Theatre in London. The play focuses on family life just after the First World War, projecting the characters forward into their future and back again. Director Rupert Gould joins playwright David Edgar (who manipulates time in his play about Afghanistan, Black Tulips) and Jamie Lloyd (director of Richard Greenberg's timeshift play Three Days of Rain) to discuss the art of time travel in the theatre. The actor Samantha Morton has directed her first film, The Unloved, for the Channel 4 season Britain's Forgotten Children. Based on her own experiences of being raised in care homes, Morton has teamed up with writer Tony Grisoni to follow a young girl, Lucy, to give a child's-eye view of living in care.