Red Riding, The Thoughtful Dresser by Linda Grant, and The Class

Available for over a year

Guests: Theatre designer Es Devlin Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Ekow Eshun Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre Jude Kelly The Class Many French directors have set films in schoolrooms. Some lambast the tyranny of teachers; others have looked back in nostalgia. But Laurent Cantet’s new film ditches both traditions for a close-up view of the realities of trying to teach the imperfect subjunctive to a room full of recalcitrant Parisian teenagers. So did it deserve to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes? Discuss. The Class is on release now, certificate 15. Picasso: Challenging the Past We tend to think of Picasso as an artist who broke artistic rules and conventions with abandon. But a new exhibition at the National Gallery argues that he was steeped in the great tradition of Western art - and driven by constant, noisy dialogue with its ghosts. Picasso: Challenging the Past continues at the National Gallery in London until 7 June. The Thoughtful Dresser The writer Linda Grant has written novels about shopping and communism, and about hairdressing and Zionism. In her new book she argues that the idea that caring about clothes is shallow is shallow itself. And she sets out to prove that “even in the valley of the shadow of death the human heart can long for a hat.” The Thoughtful Dresser by Linda Grant is published by Virago. London Fashion Week The panel test out Linda Grant’s arguments about why clothes matter by visiting this year’s staging of new work by British designers. They discuss how these events work as theatre – and how watching parades of expensive clobber feels in the midst of a recession. Red Riding It has never been grimmer up north. David Peace’s Red Riding novels mix corrupt cops, political paranoia and multiple murders to paint Yorkshire in the 1970s and 1980s not so much as Life on Mars as Life in Hell. But how does this nightmare vision, driven by Peace’s incantatory prose, work on television? The Red Riding Trilogy begins on Channel 4 with 1974 at 9pm on 5 March, followed by 1980 and 1983 on subsequent Thursdays.