Front Row

Irish comedian Ardal O’Hanlon is best-known for roles in Father Ted, My Hero and currently Death in Paradise, but he started out as a stand-up comic in 80s Dublin. As he embarks on a nationwide solo tour, Samira talks to Ardal about the role of politics in his life and work and breaking free from being typecast.

Novelist Tessa Hadley is praised for her psychological insight, her nuance, and her precision. In her new book Late in the Day she turns her sharp eye to the impact of the unexpected death of one man on his family and close friends.

The Umbrella Academy, the new Netflix series about a family of superheroes, stars Ellen Page and Mary J Blige and is written by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance. Michael Leader from Film4 Online reviews.

And to mark Valentine's Day we discuss favourite romantic works of art.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

French-Moroccan novelist Leila Slimani caused a sensation in France with her novel Lullaby about a nanny who murders the two children in her care, which won the Prix Goncourt and became a bestseller in the UK. As her first novel, Adèle, is published in the UK for the first time, she discusses the book's contentious storyline about a married woman with an addiction to having sex with strangers.

Diane Arbus is viewed by many as one of the most influential female photographers of her generation. Curator Jeff Rosenheim discusses Diane Arbus: In the Beginning at the Hayward Gallery in London, which charts the formative first half of her career where she discovered the majority of her subjects in New York City, depicting children, strippers and carnival performers.

Attack the Block director Joe Cornish discusses The Kid Who Would Be King, his Arthurian fantasy set in a modern-day secondary school.

Tim Robey reports from the Berlin International Film Festival as it draws towards its close.

Presenter Kirsty Lang

Main image: Leila Slimani

It was in Manchester in 2013 that Anna Jordan won the Bruntwood Prize, the UK’s biggest national competition for new plays. She’s now back in the city with her new adaptation of a stage classic – Mother Courage. Bertolt Brecht set his play in 17th century Europe during the Thirty Years’ War but Jordan has moved the story into the future. It’s 2080, and Europe no longer exists, the countries have been replaced by a grid system with individuals struggling to survive between the warring factions.

Six-time Grammy-winning composer and trumpeter Terence Blanchard has written the music for all of Spike Lee’s films since Jungle Fever in 1991, and this year he was nominated for a Bafta and an Oscar for his original score for Lee’s latest, BlacKkKlansman. The composer discusses his approach to his film music, and the challenge of writing the soundtrack for When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee’s 2006 documentary about the devastation of Blanchard’s home town of New Orleans.

The success of Get Out at last year’s film awards gave many horror fans a sense that the genre was finally getting the attention it deserved when it came to the big prizes. But that hope has been dashed as once again, horror has failed to be included in any of the high profile categories in awards such as the Oscars and the BAFTAs. Actor and writer Jacob Trussell, horror film and music producer Mariam Draeger, and critic Gavia Baker Whitelaw discuss why horror should be getting more prizes at the big film awards.

Comedian Sara Pascoe talks about her latest stand-up show Lads, Lads, Lads and its evolution from being about her relationship break-up to being happy a single woman. Also what's it like sharing such personal experiences in front of thousands of people? And how has the situation changed for women in comedy since she started out?

There are Baftas and Oscars for Best Hair & Make Up and an Olivier Award for Best Costume Design. But hitherto there's been no award for the people whose job is maybe most crucial to any theatre, film or television production: casting directors. So the Casting Directors’ Guild decided to create their own and on Tuesday the inaugural UK Casting Awards will throw some glitter on these Cinderellas. Three of the country's top casting directors, Julia Horan (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), Lucinda Syson (Wonder Woman) and Victor Jenkins (Troy: Fall of a City) explain what they actually do, how they find new talent, and whether or not casting directors are a progressive force, opening the gates, or guarding them.

Country music star Kacey Musgraves came out on top in four categories at Sunday's Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. But with even the Grammy’s misspelling her name during the ceremony, we thought we ought to find out: who is Kacey Musgraves?

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Main image: Sara Pascoe

This weekend sees the announcement of the winners of this year's Baftas - the British Academy Film Awards - and Stig talks to two of the stars in London for the event.

Director Spike Lee attracted a great deal of attention with his first feature She's Gotta Have It in 1986, yet despite his later films including Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X and Summer of Sam, he was never nominated in the director category for either the Oscars or the Baftas. But this year he is in the running at both events for his latest film BlacKkKlansman, the true story of a black police officer infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan. Spike Lee discusses the film which is Bafta-nominated for Best Director, Best Film, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Oscar-winner Thelma Schoonmaker has been editing the films of Martin Scorsese for over five decades including Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Departed and The Wolf of Wall Street. This Sunday she will receive the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' highest accolade, the BAFTA Fellowship. She looks back at her career and their extraordinary partnership.

And we remember the stage and screen actor Albert Finney, whose death was announced today. Finney's notable roles included the films Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Tom Jones, and he won a Bafta for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in the TV film The Gathering Storm. The film's director Richard Loncraine looks back at Albert Finney's career.

Presenter Stig Abell

Broadway star Chita Rivera, who created the iconic roles of Anita in West Side Story and Velma in Chicago, talks to Samira about her seven decades on stage, as she prepares to perform again in London.

The Woman in the Window is the bestselling psychological thriller that sparked a bidding war between publishers resulting in a two million dollar book deal and its publication in January 2018. Now its author Dan Mallory, who writes under the pen name AJ Finn, has been accused of lying and deception which helped secure his own senior position in the publishing industry as an editor. Books journalist Sarah Shaffi unpicks what this means for the man, his book and the publishing industry more broadly.

Until last November Jeff Koons was the most expensive living artist sold at auction, with his Balloon Dog (Orange) fetching over $58m in 2013. As he opens his new retrospective at the Ashmolean in Oxford, the controversial artist discusses the technical challenges of creating his complex works, and his love of the Old Masters.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Main image: Samira Ahmed and Chita Rivera

Front Row considers the artistic significance of walls and borders.

John Lanchester, whose latest novel The Wall is about a massive fictional defensive structure, discusses the way walls feature in literature and art with poet and art critic Sue Hubbard, from cave paintings to artworks like Andy Goldsworthy’s 750 feet long drystone wall.

Artist Luke Jerram takes us on a tour around his home city of Bristol discovering unusual wall art such as the Magic Wall, where children leave toys between the stones, and early works by Banksy.

Mexican artist Tanya Aguiniga, who travelled each day to school in the US, has set up an art project on the US/ Mexico border. She is joined by Suzanne Lyle, Head of Visual Arts for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, to discuss the influence of borders on art.

Presenter: John Wilson

The Cutty Sark was launched 150 years ago this year. The acme of sailing technology, now she floats not in the sea but in the air in Greenwich. People walk around on, in and under her. So the ship has become a monumental public art-work. The sculptor Michael Speller, who has made public works for Greenwich, tours the Cutty Sark with Kirsty Lang and the ship's curator, Hannah Stockton. They start beneath the keel, Michael considering the the shape and heft of the hull, then venture into the hold, where the iron ribs to which the huge planks are attached, are akin to the armature of a sculpture, and finish up on deck, where Michael is struck by the delicate filigree of the rigging and the powerful shapes described by the masts and yards.

Regina King is sweeping up awards for her performance in If Beale Street Could Talk, Barry Jenkins’ adaption of James Baldwin’s novel set in 1970s Harlem. She talks to Kirsty about police violence in America, how the awards season resembles a political campaign and why she used her Golden Globes speech to issue a challenge to the industry.

Demolition of the former Royal Mail sorting office in Bristol began last week, as part of the regeneration of the city’s Temple Quarter district. Vanessa Kisuule is Poet-in-residence on the project and has written a poem, ‘Brick me’, to capture the history of the site which has been derelict for more than 20 years. It at once celebrates the erasure of an eyesore, and is an elegy for the loss of a familiar landmark.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

American comedian Tiffany Haddish joins the voice cast of the Lego Movie sequel as the shape-shifting Queen Whatever Wa'Nabi. She tells Front Row how comedy saved her from a troubled childhood and the foster care system, and how she went on to host Saturday Night Live and feature on the cover of Time 100.

Alice Clark-Platts’ latest thriller The Flower Girls was the subject of fierce bidding war. The story of two sisters, Laurel and Primrose, the novel has resonances with the Bulger and Madeleine McCann cases. A former human rights lawyer, Alice Clark-Platts grapples with notions of whether a person can ever be rehabilitated and why the past is often impossible to bury in future relationships.

This year sees the 25th anniversary of the National Lottery. In that time it has awarded almost £40bn to good causes across more than 535,000 individual projects. Ros Kerslake, CEO of the newly-named National Lottery Heritage Fund who award their own share of the money, discusses her new plans to distribute over £1bn to the UK’s heritage over the next five years.

Presenter: John Wilson

Main image: The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

Painter, sculptor, architect and engineer- Leonardo da Vinci is regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. To mark the 500th anniversary of his death, 144 of his drawings from the Royal Collection are to be exhibited in 12 galleries and museums nationwide. Senior curator Natasha Howes, and Mark Roughley, medical illustrator and Art in Science lecturer at Liverpool School of Art and Design discuss the Renaissance master's anatomical work on show at Manchester Art Gallery.

Green Book - a film about an Italian-American bouncer turned chauffeur for an African-American concert pianist, driving through the Deep South in Jim Crow America, arrives in the UK garlanded with awards and Oscar and Bafta nominations. Al Bailey, Co-founder and Director of Programming at Manchester International Film Festival, reviews.

As Sian Edwards prepares to conduct Opera North’s latest production of Janáček’s Katya Kabanova, she discusses the appeal of the Czech composer’s music, and what she plans to bring to his dark tale of a woman in search of love but trapped by convention.

Earlier this month, the Department for Education announced plans for a new model music curriculum with the aim of stopping the decline in the number of pupils studying music at GCSE and A Level. The plan has faced criticism including thirty academics with backgrounds in music and education signing an open letter to the DfE. The Right Honourable Nick Gibb, Minister for School Standards, and Dr Jonathan Savage from Manchester Metropolitan University, and former Chair of Expert Subject Advisory Group for Music 2013, join Gaylene to discuss if the proposed new curriculum is the right answer to the right question.