Front Row

Artist Alison Lapper and co-curator Emma Rutherford discuss a new exhibition Without Hands: The Art of Sarah Biffin, which takes a fresh look at the work of the pioneering Victorian painter.

Actor and writer Ric Renton talks about his new play One Off at Theatre Live in Newcastle. Inspired by the time he spent in prison as a young man, it addresses a crisis in the prison system.

As a new exhibition about Plastic opens at the V&A Dundee, critic Anna Burnside takes a look at the 20th Century’s most intriguing and controversial materials.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Image Credit: Sarah Biffin (1784-1850) Self-portrait , 1821 © Philip Mould & Company

Reviewers Karen Krizanovich and David Benedict give their verdicts on Tammy Faye, A New Musical at the Almeida Theatre in London, starring Katie Brayben, and from the combined creative forces of Elton John, Jake Shears, James Graham, and Rupert Goold. Plus they review Paul Newman, The Extraordinary Life Of An Ordinary Man - a memoir of the film star created from recently rediscovered transcripts of conversations Newman had in the 1980s.

The Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, reads his poem to mark 100 years of the BBC.

And the American artist Daniel Arsham is known for sculptures which look like archaeological remains or as he describes them “future relics.” As an outdoor exhibition of his work opens at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Luke Jones finds out what inspires his work.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Art critic Laura Robertson reviews this year's Turner Prize show at Tate Liverpool.

Presenter Nick Ahad pays a visit to the immersive exhibition, Turn It Up: The Power of Music at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester.

Laura Robertson brings us up to date on the latest arts news, from the delayed funding announcement by Arts Council England, to Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof gallery's response to rising energy costs.

Plus Nick Ahad speaks to the pioneering dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson about his new collection, Selected Poems.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Image: The Musical Playground in Turn It Up The Power of Music exhibition © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum Group

Eliza Carthy is celebrating 30 years as a professional musician with a new album, Queen of the Whirl. She talks about this, the legacy of her musical family – as the daughter of Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy – the way traditional music develops, and her own song-writing, and performs live in the Front Row studio.

Double Palme d'Or winning Swedish director Ruben Östlund tells Samira about his first English language film, Triangle of Sadness - a satire on the fashion industry, influencer culture, and the world of the super-rich.

Plus the threat to brutalist architecture. Last year the Dorman Long Tower in Redcar was demolished, and now the Kirkgate Shopping centre in Bradford is condemned too. Brutalist architecture provokes both love as well as hate, but around the country its buildings are in peril. Author John Grindrod and Duncan Wilson from Historic England discuss how much is being lost, and if it matters.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Photo: Eliza Carthy. Credit: Elodie Kowalski

Taylor Swift and the Arctic Monkeys both released their debut albums in 2006. Their latest studio albums, Swift’s tenth, Midnights, and Arctic Monkeys seventh, The Car, have just been released. Laura Barton reviews them and compares their unexpected similarities.

As new exhibition The Horror Show! opens at Somerset House, horror in art and film is discussed by the exhibition's co-curator Jane Pollard and BFI film programmer Michael Blyth.

May Sumbwanyambe on his new play Enough of Him which explores the 18th century story of Joseph Knight, an African man enslaved by plantation owner Sir John Wedderburn and brought to Scotland to serve in his Perthshire mansion.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

For the poet Ezra Pound it was ‘year zero for Modernism’ but what were people in Britain really reading, watching, listening to and looking at in 1922?

To mark the BBC’s centenary, Front Row reviews the popular culture of 1922: from the West End musical comedy The Cabaret Girl by Jerome Kern and PG Wodehouse to May Sinclair’s novel The Life and Death of Harriett Frean, via the silent film epic Robin Hood with Douglas Fairbanks and a fond farewell to Gainsborough’s portrait of The Blue Boy at The National Gallery, all set to a soundtrack of jazz, music hall and early radio.

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by academic Charlotte Jones (Queen Mary, University of London), the writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet and the music critic Kevin Le Gendre.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Image: Enid Bennett, Douglas Fairbanks and Sam De Grasse in Robin Hood, 1922

Director Martin McDonagh talks about his new film The Banshees of Inisherin.

The former Young People's Laureate for London, Selina Nwulu, discusses her latest collection of poems.

John McDiarmid reports from The Royal National Mòd, Scotland’s festival of Gaelic culture.

Theatre producer Nica Burns talks about her brand new theatre building @sohoplace which is about to open in London’s West End.

Film director Edward Berger discusses his German anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front.

Jenny Beavan has designed costumes for some of Hollywood’s most celebrated and loved films, including Mad Max: Fury Road, Gosford Park, and A Room with a View. The film that led to her winning her third Oscar, Cruella, has also led her to question the position of costume and wardrobe workers in the film industry. She joins Front Row, along with Charlotte Bence, a negotiator for Equity, the trade union for the performing arts and entertainment industries.

Presenter: Kate Molleson

Photo Credit: Tim Soar and AHMM

The live ceremony for the 2022 Booker Prize for Fiction, hosted by Samira Ahmed. The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced by the chair of judges Neil MacGregor in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen Consort, who will award the trophy. The author Elif Shafak reflects on the recent violent attack on Sir Salman Rushdie, whose novel Midnight's Children was chosen as the Booker of Bookers. And the singer songwriter Dua Lipa gives her thoughts on the power of books.

Photographer credit: John Williams

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Emily is a new film starring Emma Mackey (of Sex Education fame) as the author of Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë. Emily is as wild as the windswept moorland she lives in; her relationships with her sisters, Anne and Charlotte, her dissolute brother, Branwell, and her lover, the curate Weightman, are as raw as the relentless rain, and as tender as the flashes of sunshine. But writer and Director Frances O’Connor’s debut film is very much an imagined life. So, what will reviewers Samantha Ellis, author of a biography of Emily’s sister, Anne, and the archaeologist Mike Pitts make of it?

Samantha and Mike will also review Hieroglyphs: unlocking ancient Egypt. The new exhibition at the British Museum brings together more than 240 objects, some shown for the first time, and some very famous -the Rosetta Stone, Queen Nedjmet’s Book of the Dead - to tell the story of the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Exhibitions about ancient Egypt tend to focus on the dead – mummies, Tutankhamun – this one is about how the Egyptians lived, wrote, and spoke.

Lord Vaizey, former Conservative Culture Minister from 2010- 2016 has been appointed Chair of the Parthenon Project advisory panel. He joins Front Row to discuss the campaign to return the “Elgin Marbles” to Greece.

Concluding Front Row's interviews with all of this year's Booker Prize shortlisted novelists is Shehan Karunatilaka. He discusses his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almedia, a dark satire set against the backdrop of a civil war-ravaged Sri Lanka.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Main Image: Temple lintel of King Amenenhat III, Hawara, Egypt, 12th Dynasty, 1855 - 08 BC. © The Trustees of the British Museum.