Front Row

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Leila Latif and Dorian Lynskey to review Kneecap, a debut film from Rich Peppiatt about a trio of Irish language rappers from West Belfast, Ootlin, a memoir from author and poet Jenni Fagan recounting her traumatic childhood in care and Bad Monkey, a television comedy cop drama set in Florida starring Vince Vaughn.

George Orwell’s biographer D J Taylor considers the importance, or not, of the author’s archive being sold off.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Sherwood writer James Graham argues that TV has a problem with working class representation, both in front of and behind the screen, as he delivers this year's MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival. Sherwood Series 2 starts on BBC1 on Sunday.

Alexander McCall Smith, best-selling author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, on his new stand alone novel set in Edinburgh, The Winds from Further West.

Kirsty looks at the growing interest in the Scottish artist Wilhemina Barns Graham. She is joined by Scottish art expert Alice Strang and film-maker Mark Cousins, whose documentary about the modernist pioneer, A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things, is at the Edinburgh Film Festival before nationwide release.

A new children's book is also published this week: Wilhemina Barns-Graham, written by Kate Temple and illustrated by Annabel Wright.

Presenter: Kirsty Wark

Fran Healy, lead singer of indie-rock band Travis, on why their tenth album LA Times is the most personal since their breakthrough album, The Man Who, and why Los Angeles is a good place to be an artist.

As Equity calls for better guidelines for how the video games industry treats actors and performers, Rebecca Yeo, a member of the union's Video Game Working Party discusses what's needed.

Brian Watkins the playwright of Weather Girl, a one-woman show about an overheating California and one of the big hits at this year's Edinburgh Festival, and Ricky Roxburgh, screenwriter for new film Ozi: Voice of the Forest in which a young orangutan tries to save her forest home from destruction discuss the art of telling stories about climate change and environmental degradation for stage and screen.

Castlefield Gallery in Manchester celebrates its 40th anniversary this year as a contemporary arts space but in 2012 it branched out into finding spaces for artists across the North West. Make CIC was established in 2012 as an arts social enterprise in Merseyside which provides spaces for artists and makers across the region. Castlefield Director and Artistic Director, Helen Wewiora, and Make CIC's Chief Operating Officer, Kirsten Little, discuss the work involved in creating and maintaining spaces for artists.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Samira Ahmed talks to Pat Barker about the final part of her Troy trilogy, The Voyage Home.

Alain Delon has died at the age of 88 - President Macron called him a French monument. Film critic Ginette Vincendeau assesses his impact on French film.

At the Proms two orchestras are set to play works by Beethoven and Mozart from memory - conductor Nicholas Collon from the Aurora Orchestra explains how musicians manage without a score.

And Orlando Weeks - formerly the frontman of Mercury Prize-nominated band The Maccabees - plays live in the studio and talks about the art he now creates, alongside music.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Kirsty Wark reviews highlights from the Edinburgh Festival, joined by critics Ian Rankin, Chitra Ramaswamy and Dominic Maxwell.

They discuss two adaptations of Amy Liptrot's bestselling memoir about addiction, The Outrun. The film version opens the Edinburgh Film Festival tonight and stars Saoirse Ronan in the lead. The stage play The Outrun is a Royal Lyceum Theatre production for the Edinburgh International Festival.

Gwyneth Paltrow's skiing incident and subsequent trial has been turned into two different musicals - I Wish You Well, starring Diana Vickers as the Hollywood star, and Gwyneth Goes Skiing.

Dominic Maxwell, The Times theatre and comedy critic, gives his verdict on the funniest comedians at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.

And they discuss Rebels and Patriots, a play about young soldiers in the IDF, a British Israeli Palestinian co-production.

Presenter: Kirsty Wark

David Morrissey stars as a hapless father in the new BBC comedy Daddy Issues - alongside Sex Education's Aimee Lou Wood as his pregnant daughter. Samira Ahmed asks him about playing for laughs - as well as reprising his role in James Graham's Sherwood, which is about to return to BBC1, featuring local gangs in Nottinghamshire and a proposed new coal mine, an unwelcome reminder of past rivalries.

Arts venues are increasingly offering relaxed performances and screenings. Some aim to increase access to neurodiverse audiences, while others want to dismantle the rigid etiquette that might put off newcomers. Lilliam Crawford - an autistic writer and co-host of the Autism Through Cinema podcast - and culture writer Emily Bootle discuss the appeal and the of relaxed performances and how they can change everyone’s experience of the arts.

Alien: Romulus is the latest Alien movie - filmed 45 years after the original directed by Ridley Scott. So what has director Fede Alvarez brought to this latest Alien offering?

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

This programme has been edited since broadcast.

Kirsty Wark launches Front Row's regular Scottish editions with a live show from the Edinburgh Festival.

Kirsty's guests are the comedians Rose Matafeo and Nish Kumar, Miriam Margolyes performs Dickens, and the Scottish band Teenage Fanclub play a song from their latest album. Plus Charlene Boyd performs a number from her hit show about the American country singer June Carter Cash.

Presenter: Kirsty Wark

This year’s WorldCon - the World Science Fiction Convention - took place in Glasgow and pop culture critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw reports on the international gathering where the winners of the Hugo Awards 2024 were announced last night.

Emily Tesh on winning the Best Novel prize at this year’s Hugo Awards with her debut novel, Some Desperate Glory.

Young playwright Kelly Jones discusses her Edinburgh Fringe debut play My Mother's Funeral: The Show, a play-within-a-play about a young playwright whose mother has just died and who has to turn her death into a play in order to afford to pay for her mum's funeral.

And a look at whether the latest crop of TV dating shows are really breaking the mould with Scott Bryan and Olivia Petter.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Critics Susannah Clapp and Tim Robey join Tom to review a new RSC production at Stratford of one Shakespeare’s less performed plays Pericles, the pregnancy comedy film Babes directed by Pamela Adlon and Michael Longley’s retrospective collection of poems, The Ash Keys.

Ex-Wife, a 1929 novel by Ursula Parrott, about the failure of a young couple’s marriage and the subsequent promiscuous partying of the wife in New York, was a huge bestseller when it came out. For many years it was out of print but has now been re-issued. Novelist and screenwriter Monica Heisey and American literature professor Sarah Churchwell judge whether it is one of the hidden gems of the jazz age.

Moin Hussain discusses his debut feature film, Sky Peals – a meditation on alienation and loneliness set in a motorway service station.

Doom Scroll: Andrew Tate and The Dark Side of the Internet is a new Sky Documentary which explores how social media is driving online hate towards women and minorities and causing real world harms. We discuss it with the film's director Liz Mermin and author Laura Bates, who wrote the 2020 book, The Men Who Hate Women.

And, Freya McClements of the Irish Times tell us why Gracehill in Northern Ireland has been added to UNESCO's World Heritage List.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed