Front Row

American director Richard Linklater, who made his name with Boyhood and the Before Sunset films, talks about his new comedy thriller Hit Man, which stars Glen Powell as quiet teacher who leads a secret double life helping this police catch people trying to hire a hit man. The movie opens on Netflix on Friday.

Asian Network is celebrating 90s Bollywood, revealing the Ultimate 90s Bollywood Song as voted for by listeners from a shortlist of 50. It was counted down on air on Friday and is available to listen to on BBC Sounds now. We are speaking to presenter Haroon Rashid live from Birmingham on Zoom.

Harpist Esther Swift plays live and talks about her first solo studio album Expectations of a Lifetime.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Samira Ahmed is joined by author Anita Sethi and critic Tim Robey to review time-skipping sci-fi epic The Beast, where human emotions are perceived as a threat; the second series of Nida Manzoor’s We Are Lady Parts, where the all-female Muslin punk band are recording their first album; they also give their verdict on the Beyond Fashion photography exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, which tracks how fashion photography has become an art form in its own right.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Adrian Dunbar is co-curator of the Beckett Unbound Festival that takes place in various venues across Liverpool this weekend and sees him directing Beckett's radio play All That Fall in a disused reservoir in total darkness. He explains why he thinks Samuel Beckett is an incomparable writer whose appeal never fades.

As two new exhibitions about Edgar Degas open at different ends of the UK, Nick looks at the importance and impact of this French Impressionist artist with Pippa Stephenson-Sit, the curator of Discovering Degas on now at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow and with Anne Robbins, the curator of Discover Degas & Miss La La, which opens at the National Gallery in London on June 6th. Anne is now curator of paintings at the Musée d’Orsay.

The Biafran war, 1967 - 1970, was the first major conflict in post-colonial Africa, and when images of starving Biafran children with distended bellies began to be seen in the West, the modern humanitarian aid industry was launched. Award-winning novelist Chigozie Obioma has turned to the Biafran War for his new novel, The Road To The Country, which takes the reader to the front lines of the ferocious military confrontation.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Hollywood star Benedict Cumberbatch talks about his new series Eric, where he plays a troubled puppeteer in 80s New York whose life and marriage unravel when his young son disappears and the only help he has to find him is from a giant imaginary monster who follows him everywhere. Created by British screenwriter Abi Morgan, the show opens on Netflix on Thursday.

Bernard Butler's first solo album in 25 years - Good Grief - is released on 31st May. He plays his latest single and reflects on a career that has involved highly successful collaborations with an eclectic range of artists including Duffy, Jessie Buckley, Tricky and The Libertines.

100 years after his death, Franz Kafka’s papers are on display at a new exhibition at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The curator Carolin Duttlinger discusses Kafka’s ongoing significance with the novelist Joanna Kavenna.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

In a special edition of Front Row recorded at this year's Hay Festival, school children and young people put questions to four giants of Young Adult Fiction.

Anthony Horowitz has written books for both adults and younger readers, but here discusses his iconic creation Alex Rider. Manon Steffan Ros won last year's Carnegie Medal, the first translated book to read the prize having originally been written in Welsh. Alex Wheatle is the author of the hugely popular Crongton Knights series, having written his first novel Brixton Rock in prison. And Frances Hardinge is the only children's author other than Phillip Pullman to win the Costa Prize Book of the Year with the Lie Tree, as well as being the other behind other much loved YA novels including Fly By Night.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Samira Ahmed is joined by the Guardian’s music editor Ben Beaumont-Thomas plus cultural sociologist and music researcher Dr. Monique Charles to review espionage thriller and cross-culture satire The Sympathizer, a 7-part series based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel. They also discuss the winners of the Ivor Novello Awards, and Samira talks to Michelle Terry about playing Richard III at the Globe theatre.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Line of Duty star Vicky McClure on her new TV thriller Insomnia, in which she plays a lawyer losing her grip on the daily juggle of family life and work as old traumas start to make their presence felt.

The German writer Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofman on winning the International Booker Prize with the novel Kairos which marries a love story with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

As a new exhibition - Lowry and the Sea – opens this weekend at the Maltings’ Granary Gallery in Berwick-Upon-Tweed, art historian and Lowry specialist Jonathan Horwich, and contemporary seascape painter Jo Bemis discuss this little-known side of L. S. Lowry's work and the challenge of capturing the everchanging sea on canvas.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Colm Tóibín's not a fan of follow-ups so why has he written a sequel to his bestseller Brooklyn, which was made into a film starring Saoirse Ronan? He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about not overwriting sex - and how Domhnall Gleeson's screen performance as a "quiet Irishman" in Brooklyn inspired him.

Miranda Rutter and Rob Harbron's new folk album, Bird Tunes, is inspired by birdsong they hear in woods in the Cotswolds. They perform a track on fiddle and concertina and talk about how manipulating the sounds made by blackbirds, wrens and cuckoos helped to inspire musical phrases in different keys.

Photographer John Deakin is now often overlooked, but he chronicled the artistic underbelly of mid-century Soho with iconic pictures, including those used by Francis Bacon. Iain Sinclair, whose new book Pariah/Genius revives Deakin, retraces his footsteps around town.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the latest film from the writer director George Miller, 45 years after the first Mad Max film with Mel Gibson aired. He joins us to talk about where the vision for the film came from and how it's evolved, and about working with stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth.

The visual artist, filmmaker, and novelist, Miranda July, discusses her second novel “All Fours” where a middle-aged woman’s detour from a planned road trip across America becomes a wry and provocative odyssey of self-exploration.

Orchestral Qawaali Project is the brainchild of composer Rushil Ranjan and multi-instrumentalist and singer Abi Sampa. Fusing devotional south Asian qawwali singing with the western classical tradition, it has grown from a lockdown project that went viral to a performance at the Royal Albert Hall later this month involving 135 performers on stage. We hear a taster of their work live in the studio.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by journalist Kevin Le Gendre and critic Hanna Flint to review The Big Cigar, which tells the story of Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton; Elton John’s Fragile Beauty exhibition at the V&A and IF, a family film about imaginary friends. Tom also announces the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe