Front Row

Oliver Hermanus's new film about a gay teenage conscript and his brutal experience of being in the South African army during Apartheid is called Moffie, a common Afrikaans anti-gay slur. He tells us how a fear of homosexuality fuelled the problem of toxic masculinity that is still so prevalent in the country, and why he used such a provocative title for his film.

This week is Lesbian Visibility Week and we’ll be considering how far LGBTQ+ campaigning progress has extended to the visibility of lesbians and lesbian relationships across books, film and TV, with Erica Gillingham, bookseller at London’s Gay’s The Word bookshop and Emma Smart, programmer for the BFI’s Flare Festival of queer cinema.

Tonight is World Book Night, the annual celebration of books and writing that aims to encourage more adults to read for pleasure. Sharon D. Clarke, best known to TV audiences as Grace O'Brien in Doctor Who, will be joining Samira to read an excerpt from one of World Book Night’s specially chosen titles, Bedtime Stories for Stressed Out Adults. Digital copies of the book are available free via a link on the Front Row website.

As the recent Thursday evening tradition of ClapForCarers continues shortly after we come off air, composer Anna Meredith discusses Handsfree, her instrument-free, 'body-percussion' piece which involves extensive clapping, which has been performed many times around the world and was included as part of the 2012 Proms Season.

Main image: Kai Luke Brummer (Left) and Ryan de Villiers in the film Moffie

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Arts Minister Caroline Dinenage on the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis. We put questions to her from arts organisations around the country.

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birthday. To celebrate, actor Paapa Essiedu performs the iconic “To Be or Not To Be” soliloquy from Hamlet for us live from his home. Paapa played Hamlet in Simon Godwin’s highly acclaimed 2016 production at the RSC, which transplanted the action from Denmark to West Africa. It will be available to watch on iPlayer from tomorrow as part of the BBC’s Culture in Quarantine series.

How can personal tragedy inspire comedy? Alice Fraser and Darren Harriott discuss talking about the death of a parent on stage – why do it, how do they make it work, and what has been the audience’s reaction.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Organist Anna Lapwood, who is Director of Music at Pembroke College Cambridge, performs a Bach chorale prelude, live on the new organ she has installed in her living room. She talks about her virtual Bach-a-thon, for which musicians post videos of themselves playing Bach, and her new role as conductor of the NHS Chorus-19 - a virtual choir of over 700 NHS staff across the UK.

Front Row announces the shortlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020, and critics Alex Clark and Sarah Shaffi comment on the six novels that made it through from the longlist of 16.

Gareth Evans, co-creator of the new Sky drama series Gangs of London, discusses how video games and his background in martial arts films influenced the look and feel of his story of a city being torn apart by the turbulent power struggles of the international gangs that control it.

And the curlew. There are eight species of curlew. Or there were. Neither the Eskimo and the Slender-Billed curlew has been seen for decades. Out of the remaining six species, three are at risk of extinction. To draw attention to their plight, 21April has been designated World Curlew Day. These beautiful waders, with their elegant curved bills and haunting song, have long inspired musician and poets. The poet Jeremy Hooker lived in an area of rural Wales mid Wales. Every year the curlews came and he tried to capture them and their calls in language. We hear his poem, Curlew.

Presenter: John Wilson

Leading baritone Roderick Williams was halfway through an ENO run of Anthony Minghella’s production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly at the London Coliseum when it was closed due to the coronavirus. Now at home under lockdown, he joins us to for a special live performance of The Toreador’s Song from Bizet's Carmen in a rather different setting – on Skype from his kitchen.

Scots Makar Jackie Kay on a new international poetry project, WRITE where we are NOW, which is inviting poets across the world to respond to the Coronavirus pandemic. It was launched today by Carol Ann Duffy and the Manchester Writing School.

After Season Two divided critics, Mik Scarlet reviews Season Three of smash hit spy-action thriller Killing Eve. The story sees two fiercely intelligent women, equally obsessed with each other, go head to head in an epic game of cat and mouse.

C Pam Zhang's debut novel How Much of These Hills is Gold is about the gold rush in the American West. It focuses on the missing stories of American history - of the thousands of Chinese Americans who came to build the railroads and to work in its mines. C Pam Zhang joins us from her home in San Francisco.

We pay tribute to the French chanteur Christophe, who has died, by playing his first single from 1965, Aline.

Producer : Dymphna Flynn

Adam Macqueen talks to Kirsty about his debut novel, Beneath the Streets, a counterfactual thriller set in London in the 1970s which imagines what might have happened had Liberal politician Jeremy Thorpe successfully arranged the murder of his ex-lover Norman Scott. The story, the historic version of which was recently dramatized by Russell T. Davies for television, features a cast of real-life characters including Prime Minister Harold Wilson, his senior adviser Lady Falkender, gay Labour peer Tom Driberg and the investigative journalist Paul Foot.

Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson is Front Row’s Artist in Residence during the lockdown, performing live for us each week on the concert grand in the empty Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik. Tonight he plays an enigmatic piece by the French 18th Century composer Rameau, called La Cupis.

Bryony Shanahan is joint artistic director of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. Dave Moutrey is Chief Executive at the venue HOME and

Last night the National Theatre streamed its popular production of Treasure Island and it is available, free, until next Thursday. When the show opened in the Olivier auditorium audiences were amazed by the set - it's a ship, a pub, a cave and a strange, pulsating island. And a pirate's corpse. It's impressive still on television. Kirsty talked to the designer, Lizzie Clachan on the set during a rehearsal just before the show opened, and we revisit this tonight.

The Front Row Masterclass series continues. Amanda Litherland, presenter of 4 Extra’s Podcast Radio Hour and novelist and nature writer Melissa Harrison (who has just launched her own nature podcast The Stubborn Light Of Things) join Kirsty to talk about how to make your own podcast.

The great American actor Brian Dennehy has died. His was a wide ranging career in films, on television and in the theatre. He was hailed for his performance as Willy Loman in the 50th anniversary production of Death of a Salesman, for which he won both a Tony and a Laurence Olivier Award. He spoke about his approach to this role in a programme called Playing the Salesman, and we hear some of his thoughts.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Comedian Angela Barnes is the new host of Radio 4’s stalwart show The News Quiz. Fresh from recording the first episode of the new series, we ask how they’re keeping it funny when the only story is a deadly virus, and what it’s been like making the show under lockdown when there’s no audience to laugh at your jokes.

When the coronavirus pandemic struck, Women’s Prize-winning novelist and games writer Naomi Alderman was in the middle of a new writing project. The subject? A piece of speculative fiction about a global pandemic. Alderman joins us to talk about the dilemmas a novelist faces when unpublished work is overtaken by real events.

John Mullan on the delights of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's first published novel, that juxtaposes pain and pleasure to powerful effect.

And how the physical qualities of viruses are re-created by two very different artists: Luke Jerram – the latest in his Glass Microbiology series of glass sculptures is a replica of Covid 19 - and the political cartoonist Martin Rowson. They talk to Front Row about the terrible beauty of viruses and the human attributes we project onto them.

Image: Covid-19 glass sculpture by Luke Jerram

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Sir Patrick Stewart has been releasing daily readings of Shakespeare's Sonnets on Twitter, recorded in different parts of his Californian home. He tells Kirsty why he's doing "A Sonnet a Day" during the lockdown and what he's discovered about Shakespeare in the process.

Mik Scarlet reviews Devs, BBC 2’s new thriller miniseries created by Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later). Devs is about a computer engineer, played by Sonoya Mizuno, investigating the tech company she blames for the disappearance of her boyfriend.

Shahnaz Ahsan on her debut novel, Hashim and Family: a story inspired by her grandparents' generation - about Bangladeshi migration to Britain, belonging, identity, race and family history.

Image: Sir Patrick Stewart

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Comedian Russell Howard on his new lockdown TV show, Home Time. Video conferenced from his childhood bedroom, he gives his entertaining take on life in quarantine, with remote music performances and interviews with comedians and key workers.

The 2020 International Prize for Arabic Fiction has been announced today. The winner is Algerian novelist Abdelouahab Aissaoui for The Spartan Court which is set in the early 19th century when Algeria was invaded and captured by the French. Aissaoui is the first Algerian to win the prize, designed to increase the international reach of Arabic fiction.

Scottish folk singer-songwriter Siobhan Miller is the three times MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards Singer of the Year and has also won a Radio 2 Folk Award. She discusses her fourth album, All Is Not Forgotten, and performs live.

While we’re stuck at home John Mullan is making the case for us raising our spirits by reading, or re-reading, Austen novels. Tonight he makes the case for Northanger Abbey.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Roy Hudd was a comedian, actor and music-hall veteran whose career spanned seven decades. He sadly passed away in March. Starting out as a redcoat at Butlins in the 1950s, Roy became one the UK's best-loved entertainers. His show The News Huddlines ran for 26 years on Radio 2.

When Samira spoke to Roy in 2015, he was approaching his 80th birthday, and was about to play Dame for the first time in panto, in Dick Whittington at Wilton's Music Hall.

He discussed a lifetime of entertaining audiences, his close relationship with Dennis Potter, who left Hudd a role in his will, and his grandmother, who raised him, and to whom he owed his passion for variety and music hall.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Masculinity, music, violence, guilt and redemption: one of the all-time great Hollywood directors Martin Scorsese in conversation about his latest film, The Irishman, and the themes that have fascinated and inspired him through his movie-making career.

Main image: Martin Scorsese