HARDtalk

HARDtalk
The Hardtalk programme titles
Created by	BBC News
Presented by	Tim Sebastian (1997–2005) Stephen Sackur (2006–)
Theme music composer	David Lowe
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Production
Production locations	Studio A, Broadcasting House, London
Original release
Network	BBC News BBC World News BBC Two
Release	1997 – present

Hardtalk (styled as HARDtalk) is a flagship BBC television programme, consisting of in-depth half-hour one-on-one interviews.

It is broadcast four days a week (Monday to Thursday) on BBC World News and the BBC News channel. Launched in 1997, much of its worldwide fame is due to its global reach via BBC World. Until early 2005, the host was Tim Sebastian, whose famous, and sometimes controversial, style of tough questioning brought a huge world audience to the show. It is normally broadcast late at night on the BBC News Channel. Until the mid-2000s, it was broadcast at around 11:30 pm, but in more recent times it has been broadcast an hour later at 12:30 am.

Since 2006, the show has been presented by Stephen Sackur, who was previously the BBC's correspondent in Washington and Brussels and who is an experienced interviewer who has grilled U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He is occasionally replaced by several other well-known BBC presenters such as Zeinab Badawi, Carrie Gracie and Sarah Montague. Other occasional presenters have included Jon Sopel, David Jessel, Lyse Doucet, Nisha Pillai, Noel Thompson and Katya Adler.

Guests have included the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, South African President Thabo Mbeki, popular musician Boy George and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Heads of state interviewed in 2012 included Burmese President Thein Sein, who long led Burma's military junta ("the interview made headlines around the world"); and President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, who "rarely gives interviews" and whom Sackur subsequently described as having a "bunker mentality" and as "living in a parallel universe, a place where embarrassment does not exist". In 2010 Sackur interviewed President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who "rarely grant[ed] extended interviews to the western media".

Variants

Hardtalk Extra, a variant of Hardtalk, first aired in 2004 and was devoted to the world of arts and culture, with a particular focus on authors. The programme was usually presented by Gavin Esler or Mishal Husain. Guests included writers Paulo Coelho, Anita Desai, V. S. Naipaul, and Salman Rushdie, actress Angelina Jolie, and the actor Christopher Reeve.

Extra Time is another programme from the Hardtalk team, presented by Rob Bonnet and broadcast on both BBC World News and the BBC News channel, featuring people from the world of sport; it was revived for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

There are two South-Asian versions of the above: Hardtalk India and Hardtalk Pakistan.

Hardtalk began airing from Broadcasting House in October 2012.

External links

• HARDtalk at BBC Online