imagine... - Season 38

Alan Yentob meets Marian Keyes to explore her incredible journey from hard-partying waitress to internationally best-selling author and everything she has learned about life, love and storytelling.

Exploring the life and work of the Ivor Novello award-winning singer-songwriter, who welcomes Alan Yentob into his home in Spain and opens up about his personal life. After almost two decades away from music and performance, and much personal tragedy, he is now once again writing. Here for the first time on television he performs intimate versions of two new songs in his home studio, alongside contemporary performances of It Must Be Love, My Song and (Something Inside) So Strong.

imagine... profiles arguably Britain's most groundbreaking dance pioneer. Resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet and director of his own hugely adventurous dance company, Wayne McGregor's dance achievements know no bounds both at home and internationally. Alan Yentob follows Wayne as he serves as director at the Venice Dance Biennale, creating a new production with his own company of dancers, and rehearses and opens The Dante Project, a new full-length ballet at the Royal Opera House in London. Wayne was brought up on John Travolta and rave music before encountering the work of Diaghilev and Merce Cunningham, so look out for a little ABBA along the way.

The film explores McGregor's ascent from his childhood in 1970s Stockport, from disco fan to champion of contemporary dance. Ever questioning the possibilities of dance, he is also a child of the computer age and fascinated by the potential of technology when it lies at the crossroads of human potential.

Miriam Margolyes is one of Britain's best loved and most provocative actresses. Across her eclectic career, she has played scene-stealing turns in Blackadder, voiced some of our most well-known adverts and found fame internationally as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films.

Following the release of her best-selling autobiography, This Much Is True, Miriam opens up to Alan Yentob, with disarming frankness, about her career highs and her most vulnerable moments. Offering further insight into Miriam's career are some of the actors who know her best, including Richard E Grant, Charles Dance, Dame Eileen Atkins, Patricia Hodge, Tony Robinson and Dame Vanessa Redgrave.

Miriam's one-person show, Dickens' Women, won her great critical acclaim, and she received a Bafta for her performance in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence. Yet, at age 80, she feels she has still not achieved enough.

Twenty-something virtuoso multi-instrumentalist, singer and arranger Jacob Collier has managed to outdo the Beatles by winning Grammy Awards for each of his first four albums. Alan Yentob meets Jacob and musicians he has collaborated with, including Stormzy, Chris Martin and film composer Hans Zimmer.

He also talks to music legends Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock, who believe Jacob Collier is one of the most talented musicians on the planet today.

Alan Yentob follows one of Britain's best loved writers, Malorie Blackman, former Children's Laureate and the first children's writer to win the prestigious Pen Pinter Prize. Bold, provocative and challenging, Malorie Blackman's books have plunged children's literature into previously uncharted waters: her tragic reverse-racism novel Noughts and Crosses challenged assumptions and declared her a writer like no other.

As she prepares to publish her long-awaited autobiography, Malorie discusses the key moments in her life that made her a writer.

Alan Yentob follows acclaimed artist Sonia Boyce as she prepares to make history as the first black woman to represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale. Why does that matter? Because this historic, sprawling exhibition is widely seen as the most prestigious and influential showcase of contemporary art in the world. The pressure is on for Sonia to pull off the biggest exhibition of her career.

Her Venice Pavilion is inspired by a passion project she has been obsessed with for over 20 years. Called the ‘Devotional Collection', it's a massive archive of memorabilia relating to the contributions of black women in the British music industry, and Sonia is bringing many of her collected names to Venice.

This insightful and timely film charts the two months leading up to the Biennale's opening week, and also explores Sonia's 40-year evolution as an artist. Beginning with the large-scale pastel depictions of herself that announced the arrival of a major new talent back in the 1980s, and looking at her experiments with interactive sculptures made of hair in the 1990s, the film ends with what fascinates Sonia Boyce today: performance art created through improvisation, play and experimental
singing.

Sonia finds herself part of a wider conversation at this year's Biennale. Her close friend and former Brixton neighbour Zineb Sedira is the first artist of Algerian heritage to represent France, and her former pupil Alberta Whittle is making history as the first black woman to represent Scotland. For the first time in its history, women artists dominate the Biennale. Could this be a moment of fundamental change not only for Sonia Boyce, but for contemporary art history?

Alan Yentob meets Douglas Stuart at a critical point in his career as he emerges from the starlight of his triumphant debut novel, and winner of the Booker Prize, Shuggie Bain. imagine... walks the streets of Glasgow's East End and the East Village in New York as Douglas Stuart tries to unite two very different sides of his life through his writing.

Shuggie Bain centres around an alcoholic single mother and her queer son as they navigate life on a Glasgow sink estate. It is distilled through Stuart's own troubled upbringing in poverty and addiction in 1980s Glasgow. imagine…takes him back to the old haunts in the novel: Sighthill, the Barras Market and the Grand Ole Opry.

We meet the two art teachers who, according to Stuart, saved his life. Just like his character Shuggie, he had lost his own mother to alcohol addiction. Douglas Stuart was on the cusp of homelessness, struggling to stay on at school, but in just a few years he went from a Glasgow bedsit to the Royal College of Art, and then landed in the epicentre of New York fashion, working for Calvin Klein.

Alan Yentob retraces Stuart's remarkable journey in New York, where he was now able to be open about his sexuality, having faced isolation and homophobia growing up. However, despite his astonishing success in the fashion world, he had not processed the memories of his childhood. In 2009, he started writing the early drafts of Shuggie Bain as he travelled on the subway into work.

This year sees the publication of Young Mungo, his second, highly anticipated novel, a love story about two teenage boys coming to terms with their queer identity in the sectarian Glasgow of the author's youth.

Contributors include Alan Cumming, Val McDermid and Lulu, plus readings from local Glaswegians.