Episodes
Episode 1
September 24, 2020
Mary Beard 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.
Episode 2
October 2, 2020
Mary enters the glitzy world of awards and prizes. There are hundreds: not just for books and movies, but poetry, museums and gardens. How do they influence what art is created and what culture we consume? And has the pandemic helped us see beyond the glamour and red carpets and reassess what prizes are for? Mary talks to Emmy-nominated actor Brian Cox and Bernardine Evaristo, who last year shared the Booker Prize with Margaret Atwood.
Episode 3
October 8, 2020
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.
Episode 4
October 15, 2020
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.
Episode 5
October 22, 2020
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.
