Front Row

Julie Hesmondhalgh, who played Hayley Cropper on Coronation Street, on writing a survival guide for new actors- An Actor’s Alphabet.

What happens when football is taken from the pitch and put on the canvas? Nick Ahad is joined by the curators of three football-inspired exhibitions: Art of the Terraces at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, plus The Art of the Football Scarf and It's The Hope That Keeps Us Here at OOF Gallery in Tottenham Hotspur's stadium.

Chornoblydorf, a new opera that looks at a post-apocalyptic world, opens this year's Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Co-composer Illia Razumeiko joins Front Row to talk about the optimism behind this dark production.

The Bruntwood Playwriting Prize winner, Nathan Queeley-Dennis, on getting the top prize with his debut play, Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz, about a young Black man on a journey of self-discovery with the help of his barber and Beyoncé's lyrics.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Image: Square Gogh by Ross Muir, on display in the exhibition Art of the Terraces at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool

With Samira Ahmed.

To mark the centenary of the first BBC radio broadcast, Samira Ahmed discusses the art of radio and radio’s influence on art with the novelist and radio enthusiast Tom McCarthy and with Benbrick, sound designer and co-producer of the Peabody award-winning Have You Heard George’s Podcast?

From early on the BBC made programmes especially for children. Samira Ahmed speaks to Joy Whitby, a pioneer of children’s programmes – she started Play School and Jackanory – and hears how her approach to these owed much to her early days creating sound effects as a radio studio manager.

How should writers respond to the climate crisis? As the COP 27 climate conference continues in Egypt, Samira is joined live from Cairo by the novelist Ahdaf Soueif and in the studio by the playwright Greg Mosse, whose debut novel The Coming Darkness has been described as climate fiction.

Producer: Ian Youngs

The Crown: as series five is with us, we review the next ten part instalment of Netflix's royal drama as it slips into more recent territory - the turmoil of the nineties. Plus jailed Iranian film director Jafar Panahi’s new metafiction No Bears, in which he plays himself, forced to direct online from a village near Iran’s Turkish border. With Kate Maltby and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh.

Jez Butterworth: the playwright and screenwriter on his new show Mammals starring James Corden, airing on Amazon Prime.

The Goldsmiths Prize: live from the ceremony, we hear from the winner of this year’s £10,000 reward for fiction that, “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.”

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Filmmaker Ryan Coogler discusses returning to Black Panther after the death of Chadwick Boseman and how that experience has inspired the making of the sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

In the wake of this year’s annual Museums Association conference which asked its members to “to reimagine our future if we are going to survive”, Front Row brings together Rowan Brown, CEO of Museums Northumberland and Cllr Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Chair of the Local Government Association’s Culture, Tourism and Sport Board to discuss how museums are responding to the challenge of the cost of living crisis and rising energy prices.

In 1992 Craig Easton photographed Mandy and Mick Williams and their children for the first time for a series he called Thatcher's Children. In 2016, he was able to reconnect with the family and has continued to photograph them since then. As he prepares to publish the photographs in a new book, Craig talks about taking pictures for posterity.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Main image: Nick Ahad and Ryan Coogler

Jennifer Lawrence and director Lila Neugebauer discuss their new film Causeway.

Grammy award-winning mandolin player Chris Thile plays live in the studio from his latest album Laysongs, on the eve of his UK tour.

A new book, Chokepoint Capitalism, looks at how big tech companies and large corporations control large parts of creative markets. The authors, Rebecca Giblin, a professor at Melbourne Law School and Cory Doctorow, writer and activist, join Front Row to discuss what that means for both consumers and creators.

Presenter: Luke Jones

Image: Jennifer Lawrence in Causeway

Arts Council England have announced the most dramatic shift in funding for decades, diverting investment from London towards other parts of the country. The Chair of Arts Council England, Sir Nicholas Serota, Stuart Murphy of English National Opera, which is set to relocate out of London, and arts journalist Sarah Crompton discuss the details.

Director Tas Brooker discusses her new film When We Speak, a documentary about female whistleblowers, including Rose McGowan and Katherine Gun, whose evidence lifted the lid on abuse and corruption.

To mark the start of the COP 27 climate conference in Egypt, Samira explores the art of the infographic and the appeal of data visualisation with Professor Ed Hawkins, creator of the viral Show Your Stripes temperature change graphic and information designer Stefanie Posavec.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Image: Show Your Stripes infographic representing the global average temperature for each year since 1850 to 2021 (data source: UK Met Office)

Joan Bakewell and Hanna Flint give their verdicts on Hugo Blick's new TV Western on BBC2 starring Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer, 'The English'. They've also watched new film 'Living' starring Bill Nighy and Aimee Lou Wood with a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, based on an Akira Kurosawa film, 'Ikiru', about a man at the end of his life.

Royal Opera House Opera Director Oliver Mears discusses his new production of Benjamin Britten’s 'The Rape of Lucretia' and the challenges he’s faced staging a work that deals with sexual violence.

Image: 2022 The English (c) Drama Republic/BBC/Amazon Studios Photographer: Diego Lopez Calvin

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Playwright, poet and Children’s Laureate for Wales Connor Allen talks about his grime-theatre mash-up The Making of a Monster, a semi-autobiographical production about a young man struggling to find his place in the world.

Harpist Catrin Finch and Irish violinist Aoife Ni Bhriain perform live in the Front Row studio and discuss their appearance at the Other Voices Festival in Cardigan, which will celebrate connections between Ireland and Wales.

Poet Zoë Skoulding talks about her latest collection, A Marginal Sea, written in Ynys Mon, Anglesey, on the edge of Wales.

Bilingual rapper, Sage Todz, on turning O Hyd - Still Here - a song from the '80s rallying people to the cause of the Welsh language, into one rallying them in support of the Welsh national football team, which is still here, in the World Cup competition.

Presenter: Huw Stephens

Author Nick Hornby on the similarities of Dickens and Prince, as he publishes his new book on the “genius” of the Victorian novelist and the sex-funk pop musician.

On the eve of World Ballet Day, we talk to Pacific Northwest Ballet Principal Dancer, Cecilia Iliesiu, about the new project she has co-founded – Global Ballet Teachers - to make the teaching of ballet more accessible to ballet teachers worldwide. We also hear from Vivian Boateng, a ballet teacher based in Accra, Ghana, who has been taking part in the Global Ballet Teachers project.

Derek Owusu has written a book about his mother, who came to Britain from Ghana. But rather than a prose memoir he has imagined the journey of her life as a long poem titled Losing the Plot. Anthony Anaxagorou also writes about his family, life here and in Cyprus, where they came from, in his new collection Heritage Aesthetics. Rather than interviewing the two writers separately Front Row asked each to read the other's. Derek Owusu and Anthony Anaxagorou join Front Row to discuss their work.

Photo credit for Nick Hornby: Parisa Taghizadeh

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe