Front Row

Michael Winterbottom discusses writing and directing a SKY TV drama, This England, starring Kenneth Branagh as Boris Johnson during his tumultuous first months as Prime Minister and the first wave of the COVID pandemic.

GALWAD, an ambitious, multiplatform arts project set in Wales, imagines what it would be like if we could receive messages from people living in 2052. Audiences can follow the story as it unfolds across the week, both online and on social media, and watch a broadcast of the whole event on Sky Arts. The lead producer Claire Doherty and lead writer Owen Sheers, explain why they wanted to push the boundaries of storytelling.

The literary critic John Mullan and the novelist Katherine Rundell discuss the life and work of Hilary Mantel.

Critics Boyd Hilton and Sarah Crompton review Blonde, Andrew Dominik’s film adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ novel about Marilyn Monroe. They also discuss Inside Man, a new drama from Sherlock creator Steven Moffat, starring David Tennant and Stanley Tucci.

Anna Bailey is the last of the authors shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. They’ll be talking about their story Long Way to Come for a Sip of Water, about a man’s road journey across the vast expanses of Texas, which will be broadcast on Radio 4 tomorrow at 1530.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Beth Orton performs two songs from her new album, Weather Alive, and discusses creative partnerships as well as life after being dropped by her record label.

American author Jodi Picoult has turned Markus Zusak’s best-selling novel The Book Thief into a musical, which has just had its world premiere at the Bolton Octagon. She discusses adapting a novel for the stage and explains why she feels the UK is a more fertile landscape for launching musicals.

Jordan Erica Webber, arts and culture broadcaster and video games expert, reviews Hallyu! The Korean Wave, the V&A’s new exhibition exploring the South Korean art, music, TV, cinema and fashion that’s spreading its influence around the world: from Gangnam Style to Squid Game, Parasite to Nam June Paik.

Samira speaks to Vanessa Onwuemezi, who's the latest of the authors shortlisted for this year's BBC National Short Story Award for her story, Green Afternoon.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Main Image Credit: Eliot Lee Hazel

Ralph Vaughan Williams is one of our country's greatest ever composers.

Born 150 years ago in 1872, he is known for creating a sense of Englishness in twentieth century music by drawing on his love of folk song, Tudor church music and landscape, in pieces like the perennially popular The Lark Ascending and Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

Samira Ahmed explores his musical language and revels in live performance with her guests, the solo violinist Jennifer Pike , baritone Roderick Williams, Paul Sartin of the folk band Bellowhead, Kate Kennedy from Oxford University, and composer, writer and pianist Neil Brand.

This programme was recorded before the sad news of Paul Sartin's death.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Bestselling author Louise Doughty discusses her new BBC One drama Crossfire, a thriller about a terrorist attack in a luxury holiday resort, starring Keeley Hawes. She talks about writing for the screen for the first time, after her novels Apple Tree Yard and Platform 7 were adapted for television.

Singer songwriter Miki Berenyi, who is best known as part of the 1980s/90s indie rock band Lush, talks about her memoir Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved me from Success. Her book covers her jaw-dropping childhood and the highs and lows of being a woman in the music business, touring America and the dark side of Britpop.

The novelist and short story writer Jenn Ashworth is the latest of the authors shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2022. She joins Front Row to talk about Flat 19, inspired by a work by Doris Lessing, exploring the daily pressures on a woman who finds a surprising way to escape them.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Journalist and author Hadley Freeman, and Art UK editor and art historian Lydia Figes, review Ticket to Paradise starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and the Winslow Homer exhibition at the National Gallery.

And head judge Elizabeth Day joins Front Row for the announcement of the shortlist for the 2022 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University. The first two shortlisted authors will be talking about what inspired their stories.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Genre-defying South African cellist Abel Selaocoe speaks to Samira and performs a piece from his new album Where Is Home (Hae Ke Kae), which will be launched at a performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. He is about to become Artist In Residence at London's Southbank Centre. His inventive and virtuosic compositions and performance style fuse Baroque repertoire with traditional African music, combining classical cello with body percussion and voice.

A rich crop of recent books shows that art is being viewed from a new perspective. Michael Bird, author of This Is Tomorrow: Twentieth Century Britain And Its Artists, and Frances Spalding, who has written The Real And The Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars, join Front Row to talk about not the history of art, but art as history.

The calls of curlews are memorable, mysterious, and musical. They have appeared in music and poetry over the ages, and they continue to fascinate artists. Simmerdim: Curlew Sounds is an unusual new album - two CDs, one of music inspired by curlews, the other a series of soundscapes capturing their calls, recorded in places where these threatened birds are still to be found. The musician Merlyn Driver, whose idea Simmerdim was, explains his compulsion to make the records.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Sir Richard Eyre is one of the UK’s most distinguished and celebrated directors - equally at home in theatre, film, and television. At the age of 79, he has just made his debut as a playwright with his new play, The Snail House, which has just opened at Hampstead Theatre. He talks to Samira about his late literary blooming and what needs to happen for theatre audiences to return to their pre-pandemic levels.

The name Sylvia Anderson was recently invoked by Dr. Lisa Cameron MP, during a debate on gender equality in the media in Westminster Hall. The late Sylvia Anderson was a pioneer in the male dominated world of television, co-creating Thunderbirds in the 1960s with her then husband Gerry. But her family say her name has often been omitted from credits and merchandise in the years since then. Samira speaks to Sylvia’s daughter Dee Anderson and Dame Heather Rabbatts, Chair of Time’s Up UK, who are campaigning for her legacy to be restored and to Barbara Broccoli, producer of the James Bond films, who remembers Sylvia as her mentor.

The French film director Jean-Luc Godard, who spearheaded the revolutionary French New Wave of cinema, has died at the age of 91. The French President, Emmanuel Macron, has described him as “a national treasure, a man who had the vision of a genius." French film critic Agnes Poirier guides us through Godard’s long career, beginning with the classic, À bout de souffle (Breathless), and his influence on directors from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino.

Producer: Kirsty McQuire

Eileen Cooper is a painter and printmaker who’s been quietly creating boldly coloured figurative images and ceramics since the 1970s. This year finally sees the first major review of her work which, in magic realist style, encompasses huge themes: sexuality, motherhood, life and death. The show is called Parallel Lines: Eileen Cooper And Leicester’s Art Collection, and places Cooper’s work next to that of LS Lowry, Pablo Picasso, and Paula Rego, among others. Eileen Cooper talks about her life, work and role as Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools – the first woman to hold the prestigious post.

The Grand Opera House in Belfast is celebrating the return of Northern Ireland Opera to its stage, following a £12 million restoration of the historic building. The company has chosen La Traviata for its homecoming performance, with Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg in the lead role. The BBC’s Kathy Clugston went to the Grand Opera House to find out about their production of one of the world’s most popular operas.

As Ireland introduces its ground-breaking new Basic Income For The Arts pilot, we speak to Angela Dorgan, Chair of the National Campaign For The Arts in Ireland, which has long campaigned for a basic income scheme.

And poet Roger McGough joins us to shares his new poem written in tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

The trumpeter and musician Alison Balsom has performed with some of the world’s greatest orchestras. She talks about her latest album, Quiet City.

Jack Hilton was a plasterer from Rochdale whose groundbreaking writing was praised by both WH Auden and George Orwell. His work fell out of print after the Second World War and he has been largely forgotten. Jack Chadwick, who is running a campaign to revive his works, explains why his works need to be revived.

Cabaret performer Rhys Hollis, also known as Rhys’s Pieces, and opera singer Andrea Baker discuss their video piece OMOS showcasing Black Queer Scottish performance at Edinburgh’s Royal Scottish Academy.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe