Helen Mirren discusses taking on the role of notorious Russian empress Catherine the Great, Russia’s longest-ruling female leader for a new TV miniseries. She talks about the preparation for the role, her habit of binge-watching TV and why she admires Madonna.

Joker, the new film exploring the origins of DC comic book villain The Joker, Batman’s nemesis, is proving controversial before it’s even opened. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips, the movie has already been deemed ‘problematic’ by some. Critics Isabel Stevens and Mark Eccleston discuss whether a backstory for a villainous character excuses or explains them.

Mary Shelley takes centre stage in a new production of Frankenstein where the action of the Gothic masterpiece unfolds around its creator. Playwright Rona Munro explains why she wanted to foreground the 18-year-old Shelley who was totally in control of her creative powers.

Presenter: Nikki Bedi

Stig Abell talks to John Godber, one of the most-performed playwrights in the English language and somebody who has been interpreting the city of Hull in his plays for over thirty years, from Bouncers to Up and Under. His latest work This Isn’t Right tells the story of Holly Parker who is rediscovering Hull after three years at University in London. When a young woman disappears her already over-protective Dad goes into over-drive.

Earlier this year the poet and performer Zena Edwards wore a grass coat to Tate Modern to mark the launch of a movement drawing attention to climate change - Culture Declares An Emergency. For Contains Strong Language she’s performing a newly commissioned piece called Rallying Cry. She'll perform and talk to Stig Abell about putting the joy into the poetry of protest.

We'll hear a world premiere performance of a Jodie Langford poem specially commissioned by BBC Humberside. She's a rising star of the spoken word scene and one of 12 poets chosen by BBC local radio stations to “challenge the outdated clichés and celebrate all that is regionally distinctive about the North”.

And playwright Mark Ravenhill on translating Bertholt Brecht's The Mother with original score by Hanns Eisler which will be recorded at the festival for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Maxine Peake plays Pelagea Vlassova, the woman who acts to protect her son from prison and becomes an accidental revolutionary.

Presenter Stig Abell

Front Row begins a series of unique book groups with each of the authors shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019. Today novelist Lucy Ellmann, whose epic 1000 page novel Ducks, Newburyport is told in a stream of consciousness. Ellmann is joined by a group of Front Row listeners who get to quiz her on her book.

Waldemar Januszczak discusses the work of painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, whose oil portraits depicting black figures are on show at the Corvi-Mora gallery in London and who will be the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Britain next year.

Derek Paravicini, a blind autistic savant pianist with an extraordinary ability to play by ear and improvise, performs for us ahead of his concert at the Tetbury Music Festival in Gloucestershire. We also hear from his teacher Adam Ockelford.

Presenter: John Wilson

Brittany Howard is the frontwoman for the phenomenally successful American blues rock band Alabama Shakes. She joins us to discuss her first solo album, Jaime, which is dedicated to her sister who died at a young age. Brittany talks about the inspirations behind the album: from her sister’s memory to an appalling racist attack that happened to her family when she was only a few weeks old.

Malory Towers, Enid Blyton's series of novels about the boarding school her own daughter attended, was published 70 years ago, but how accurate is its portrayal of boarding school life? Novelists William Boyd and Robin Stevens - both of whom went to boarding school and have written stories set in them - talk to Stig Abell about the way boarding schools have been presented in literature and in film.

On Bear Ridge is a new play set in the Welsh mountains near Swansea, where an old butcher and his wife struggle to survive after some kind of catastrophe has affected the wider world. Its a co-production between National Theatre Wales and the Royal Court. Stig talks to writer Ed Thomas, whose previous work includes the hit Welsh TV police series Hinterland.

Presenter: Stig Abell

Antony Gormley’s new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London features a series of new artworks which are monumental in size, scale and weight, from a 5000kg suspended piece of iron to a gallery flooded with 33,000 litres of seawater, weighing 56 tons. Idoya Beitia, the Royal Academy’s Head of Exhibitions Management, discusses the greatest logistical challenge the gallery’s ever faced.

From Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee, Nip/Tuck and Pose, now comes The Politician. Karen Krizanovich reviews the Netflix drama, set in a super-rich California, which follows Payton Hobart in his ambition to become US President, but first he must win his High School election where all the candidates will do anything to win. The show stars Dear Evan Hansen’s Ben Platt alongside Gwyneth Paltrow and Bette Midler.

Actor and writer Dolly Wells discusses directing her first feature film Good Posture, and working with her long-time collaborator and best friend Emily Mortimer, with whom she also made the hit HBO TV series Doll & Em.

Presenter John Wilson

Writer Peter Bowker discusses his epic new drama World On Fire, which follows the first year of World War II told through the intertwining fates of ordinary people drawn from Britain, Poland, France, Germany and the United States as they grapple with the effect of the war on their everyday lives. The BBC One Sunday night series stars Sean Bean, Helen Hunt and Lesley Manville.

It was another great night for the British television industry at last night's Emmy Awards. The streaming giants Netflix and Amazon have pushed the industry to produce ever more brilliant dramas and comedies. But as Apple, Disney and NBC prepare to join the market what are the unintended consequences on the industry here? Radio Times TV critic David Butcher examines the changing television landscape.

Today is the autumn equinox, the point of the year when the hours of daylight and darkness are the same before the days get shorter. BBC Radio 4 is marking the occasion with broadcasts of poetry with a seasonal theme throughout the day, and poet Amina Atiq performs her specially-commissioned poem for Front Row.

Each month, poet and Daily Telegraph critic Tristram Fane-Saunders endeavours to read every volume of verse published in Britain. He chooses some of his favourite new poetry releases for Front Row: Nobody by Alice Oswald, Frolic and Detour by Paul Muldoon and Kei Miller’s new collection In Nearby Bushes.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

The Farewell, a film about an American family who return to China to visit their dying grandmother, has been a surprise box office hit in the US and is winning critical acclaim. John talks to the writer and director Lulu Wang, who based it on her own family story.

Jessie Burton, author of the best-selling novel The Miniaturist, discusses her latest book The Confession – an exploration of childhood abandonment and the search for a missing mother.

And Kevin Le Gendre discusses the music of Dave, the rapper who last night won this year's Mercury Prize.

Presenter: John Wilson

We look at rotters in fiction: do women have equal status with men when it comes to being bad in books? Rotters have populated the novel since Robert Lovelace first appeared in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa nearly two centuries ago. But what exactly is a rotter, how do rotters differ from cads and, when women are rotters, are they given equal treatment by both their writers and their readers? John Mullan, Professor of Literature at UCL and critic Alex Clark discuss the rotter's progress.

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

It is 200 years, to the very day, since John Keats wrote To Autumn, distilling the sights, sounds, even smell of the season and capturing its essence in three carefully crafted stanzas that are among the best-loved in the language. We hear a reading and Alison Brackenbury explains how the poem works and her response to it as a poet.

The Science Museum and BBC Radio 4 have been collaborating on an exploration of the relationship between art and science over 250 years. The result is The Art of Innovation: From Enlightenment to Dark Matter, which is an exhibition, a book and a 20-part radio series. Dr Tilly Blyth, Principal Curator, and one of the programme presenters tells Stig about Joseph Wright’s famous painting of a scientific lecture; how Turner captured impact of the emerging age of steam and how artists tackle depicting science that can’t be seen.

Presenter: Stig Abell

Saxophonist Soweto Kinch has curated this year’s Koestler Arts exhibition, Another Me, featuring 150 artworks by inmates from a number of prisons and secure units across the UK. Kinch discusses the works, and performs a piece from his forthcoming album The Black Peril.

As plans are unveiled for Galway’s year as 2020 European Capital of Culture, John talks to film producer Arthur Lappin and creative director Helen Marriage.

Sam Fender’s album is set to be number one this week. The 25-year-old from North Shields won the BRITs Critics’ Choice Award last year, and talks to John Wilson about combining lyrics about domestic violence, male suicide and white privilege with an hypnotic electric guitar rock aesthetic drawing on his musical hero Bruce Springsteen.

Presenter: John Wilson

A solid gold toilet reputedly worth £4.7 million has been stolen from Blenheim Palace. It's part of the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's new exhibition Victory is Not an Option which remains open and combines a retrospective of his work along with some new pieces made especially for the Palace. Art critic Jacky Klein reviews and reports on the latest from the theft.

Brad Pitt stars in the film Ad Astra as an astronaut on a mission to Neptune in order to save the planet from destruction. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews this epic space odyssey.

It's believed that John Milton's personal, annotated copy of an early Shakespeare folio has been discovered. The folio includes sophisticated marginalia that could shed light on the development of Milton as a poet and academics say it could be one of the most important literary discoveries of modern times. Cambridge University fellow Dr Jason Scott-Warren explains his astonishing find.

As the Rugby World Cup heads to Japan, we get a personal introduction to current Japanese culture from Junko Takekawa, from the Japan Foundation, and Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, academic and curator of the recent Manga exhibition at the British Museum.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang