Front Row

American singer songwriter Loudon Wainwright III performs live in the studio and talks about his decades-long career, his current UK tour and his latest album titled Lifetime Achievement.

Tonight the six books on this year’s Booker Prize for Fiction shortlist will be announced. The literary critic Max Liu joins us to comment. One of these six shortlisted authors will be chosen as the overall winner on 17 October when the ceremony will be broadcast live on Front Row.

English Literature has dropped out of the top ten A-level subjects in England for the first time. What does it reveal about the status of the subject and its importance in the creative industries? Samira hears from Vicky Bolton, head of English at Wales High school in Sheffield; Sam Cairns, co-director of The Cultural Learning Alliance; and Geoff Barton, a former English teacher and head teacher, now the general secretary of the teaching union, the Association of School and College Leaders.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Image: Loudon Wainwright III

David Cronenberg’s new film Crimes of the Future is a science fiction body parts horror movie starring Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart and Léa Seydoux. In a time when pain no longer exists a couple are using organ removal surgery as performance art. Leila Latif reviews and gives a run down on the films being shown at this year’s Venice Film Festival, including The Whale and Banshees of Inisherin.

Tom Chaplin came to fame as the lead singer of Keane. With the release of his third solo album Midpoint, he talks to Tom Sutcliffe and performs two songs - Gravitational, and Overshoot - live in the studio.

We hear from one of the thirteen writers on the Booker Prize longlist, Sri Lankan Shehan Karunatilaka, who’s waiting to hear if he’ll also be on the shortlist announced tomorrow. His 2010 debut novel, Chinaman, was garlanded with awards, including the Commonwealth Prize. Will his second book, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, also be a winner?

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power is a prequel and in keeping with the epic scale of Tolkein’s books and their film versions it doesn’t begin a two years before The Hobbit but two thousand. Sci-fi novelist Temi Oh and film critic Tim Robey review the Amazon Prime series. They also consider the merits of another millennia spanning work, George Miller’s film Three Thousand Years of Longing. It’s a radical departure for the director of the Mad Max films; an adaptation of a short story by A. S. Byatt staring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, who plays a djinn – a genie. So, it should be good…but is it?

Samira Ahmed talks to Nick Drnaso, whose Sabrina was the first graphic novel to be selected for the Booker Prize longlist. In his new one, Acting Class, ten strangers come together in the class run by the mysterious John Smith, who is possibly a charlatan. His students, all very different, share one uniting need, for change.

The lights went out on the final performances of this year’s Edinburgh Festivals on Monday. It’s being said that there were fewer people attending fewer shows and that prices, especially of accommodation, were prohibitive. And then the binnies went on strike and the elegant streets of Scotland’s capital were strewn with rubbish. So, Pauline McClean, BBC Scotland’s Arts Correspondent wonders, were the festivals successful? Does there need to be some change?

And, marking Mikhail Gorbachev’s death, a poem from The Poetry of Perestroika, a pioneering anthology made possible by his reforms.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Image: taken from Acting Class by Nick Drnaso, published by Granta

Joyce Carol Oates’s latest novel, Babysitter, is the story of a woman caught in an abusive relationship with her lover, set against the background of the hunt for a serial killer in 70s Detroit. Its dark themes are not untypical of the subject matter of much of Oates’s long list of successful books which have won her great critical acclaim over the years. Tom Sutcliffe talks to her about her work and her distinctive literary style.

Following the first leg of a sold-out European tour, Riopy – the self-taught Franco-British pianist/composer with nearly half a billion streams to his name and an album which has been at the top of the US Billboard charts for nearly two years – is with us to discuss the release of his album [extended] Bliss.

Jungle, the older, grittier sibling of drum and bass, has made a comeback on the club and festival circuit this summer. Reporter and DJ Milly Chowles went to meet Nia Archives, the young musician breathing new life into this 30 year old genre of electronic music. Milly traces the roots of jungle that run through Nia’s music to Milly’s own hometown of Bristol, with the help of DJ Dazee and producer Borai.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Bestselling crime novelist Ann Cleeves joins Samira Ahmed to discuss the return of her no-nonsense Northumberland crime-fighter, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, in the Rising Tide.

What gets books on the shelves of some of our biggest chain retailers? Tonight Front Row lifts the lid on the behind-the-scenes payments that influence what you get to see and buy.

Composer James B.Wilson gives an insight into his writing process, ahead of the premiere of a new piece he's written for the last night of the Proms.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Producer: Nicki Paxman

Image: Novelist Ann Cleeves Photographer credit: Marie Fitzgerald

The BBC Proms is celebrating what would’ve been Aretha Franklin’s 80th birthday, and leading the tribute is American singer-songwriter Sheléa. She's a protegee of Quincy Jones who also found a mentor in Stevie Wonder, and names Natalie Cole and Whitney Houston as some of her inspirations. Sheléa shares Aretha Franklin’s influences of gospel, jazz and soul, and her skills to play the piano and turn her voice to a variety of styles. She performs live in the studio and demonstrates the power of Aretha’s voice as well as her own.

For our Thursday review Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Olivia Laing have been watching Official Competition, a comedy film starring Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez which takes aim at the film industry and its stars, and Red Rose, a BBC3 teen horror drama set in Bolton looking at the power of smartphones to shape young lives.

Torn is a new BBC Radio 4 series exploring ten key moments in the history of fashion, from the allure of mauve to the rebellion of mini-skirts. Presenter Gus Casely-Hayford, curator, historian and the inaugural director of V&A East, joins Shahidha for a whistlestop tour of fashion’s cultural hits and environmental misses over five centuries.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

When Gregory Doran was appointed Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2012, his stated ambition was for the company to stage the entire canon of plays in the First Folio, the first printed collection of Shakespeare’s plays. Ten years on and having just completed his plan, with the premiere of a new production of All's Well That Ends Well, he joins Nick Ahad to reflect on the changing nature of his relationship with the Bard.

Nick visits Birmingham to see the rehearsals for WASWASA – Whispers in Prayer, an art installation and performance by artist Mohammed Ali which explores the act of Islamic prayer in a secular society.

Taiwan has a new cultural landmark, the Taipei Performing Arts Centre. Arts critic Debra Craine was in the Taiwanese capital for the opening of the state of the art building, designed by Dutch architects Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten. Debra joins Nick Ahad to discuss why the Taipei city government commissioned the £185 million complex for theatre, dance and opera.

Presenter Nick Ahad

Image: Gregory Doran in rehearsals, 2021 Photographer credit: Ellie Kurttz/ RSC

Anne-Marie Duff talks to Samira about her new Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters, where she plays one of five sisters who is trapped in a coercive marriage, from which her sisters plot to free her by any means necessary.

Is the Horniman Museum’s decision to return their Benin Bronzes to Nigeria a watershed moment for UK museums? We speak to Errol Francis, artistic director of Culture&, Dan Hicks, author of The Brutish Museums, and Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, who is leading an All-Party Parliamentary Group examining issues around African repatriation and reparations.

J Willgoose Esq. from the band Public Service Broadcasting reveals how they are creating a special performance called This New Noise to mark the centenary of BBC Radio at the BBC Proms.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Jacob Collier has won a Grammy Award for each of his first four albums. In fact, he has five Grammys altogether. He’s back home in London after his recent UK tour and has just brought out a new single, Never Gonna Be Alone. Jacob and his musical collaborators Lizzy McAlpine and Victoria Canal perform the song live in the Front Row studio.

Following the attack on Sir Salman Rushdie at the weekend, the writer, human rights activist and PEN International president, Burhan Sönmez, considers the threats faced by writers across the world, from individuals on social media to imprisonment and torture by the state.

15th August 2022 is the 75th anniversary of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan. We speak to director Abdul Shayek and writer Ishy Din about their play, Silence, which is adapted from Kavita Puri’s book Partition Voices: Untold British Stories, about how they dramatise the real-life stories of those who witnessed this brutal moment in history.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Photo: Lizzy McAlpine and Jacob Collier / Credit: Mogli Maureal

Live from Edinburgh, with a review of Alan Cumming's one man show, Burn, which sets out to update the biscuit-tin image of Robert Burns. Plus Counting & Cracking - the epic, multilingual life journey of four generations, from Sri Lanka to Australia. To review the Edinburgh International Festival performances, Kate Molleson is joined by Arusa Qureshi, writer and editor of Fest Magazine, and Alan Bissett, playwright, novelist and performer.

Plus we speak to Scottish film director Charlotte Wells about her critically acclaimed new film Aftersun, as she returns to her home town to open this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Presenter: Kate Molleson

Photo: Burn - Alan Cumming; picture credit - Gian Andrea di Stefano