Front Row

Comedy writer Sara Gibbs and actor and writer JJ Green discuss the portrayal of autistic characters on TV and film and call for change.

Half a century ago director Mike Bradwell rented a run-down house in Coltman Street, Hull, gathered a few actor-musicians and started work. Hull Truck Theatre was born. It went on to become one of the most successful and influential companies in the country and is now housed in a beautiful purpose-built theatre. Bradwell had strong views about theatre: plays should be about the kind of people you might meet in Hull, not dead kings. He wasn't keen on jokes, and even less on scripts. So it's a bit of an irony that to celebrate their 50 years Hull Truck has commissioned the playwright Richard Bean, who can't resist a gag - he wrote One Man Two Guvnors - and whose work is carefully wrought and written. Bean, who is from Hull, talks about his new play 71 Coltman Street which recreates the genesis of Hull Truck Theatre.

Sheila Heti, acclaimed author of Motherhood, talks about the ideas behind her new novel Pure Colour, an experimental story following a woman’s life through college, a love affair, and coming to terms with her father’s death – whilst God considers creating a second draft of the world.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Main image: Joanna Holden in 71 Coltman Street

Cassa Pancho and Billy Trevitt on the future of British dance, the "father of Impressionism" Pissarro and Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton on new play The Forest.

Presnter: Kirsty Lang

Main image: The Ballet Black company

Michael Morpurgo’s book Private Peaceful has been made into a film, a solo stage show and a radio drama. As a new ensemble version opens at Nottingham Playhouse, before touring the country, the author and adapter Simon Reade talks to Nick Ahad about the power of this story of two brothers, caught up in the trauma of the First World War.

We talk to the newly announced winner of the Barbellion Prize, dedicated to the furtherance of ill and disabled voices in writing: Lynn Buckle’s on her novel, What Willow Says, a meditation on nature and deafness.

Soprano Barbara Hannigan first sang the role of Elle, the jilted lover in Poulenc’s one woman opera La Voix Humaine, in 2015. Now she’s simultaneously singing and conducting the opera, based on Jean Cocteau’s original monologue, with the London Symphony Orchestra at The Barbican.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Image: Daniel Rainford in Private Peaceful Credit: Manuel Harlan

Japanese film Drive My Car has been nominated for four Oscars, including Best Director for Ryusuke Hamaguchi. With his next film Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy released in the UK on Friday, critic Briony Hanson joins Samira Ahmed to review both films.

It’s a truism that Shakespeare is as relevant today as ever. But some of his plays are regarded as problematic and recently the celebrated actress Juliet Stevenson requested that a couple of them “should be buried”. Is she right? And which plays speak most powerfully to us? Juliet Stevenson and directors Abigail Graham - whose production of The Merchant of Venice is about to open at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse - and Justin Audibert join Samira.

The BBC Concert Orchestra has begun a three year residency in Great Yarmouth, with the aim of ‘raising aspiration and improving wellbeing.’ For Front Row, BBC Radio Norfolk’s Andrew Turner reports on what the town already has to offer and how the cultural scene might benefit from the residency.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Image: Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura in the film Drive My Car, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi Credit: Modern Films

Monochrome is having a moment at this year’s awards season in films such as Belfast, The Tragedy of Macbeth and C’mon C’mon. To discuss the comeback of black and white and its enduring appeal, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Edu Grau, Director of Photography for Passing and Ellen Kuras, who won the Cinematography Award at Sundance for her debut feature film, Swoon, shot in black and white in 1992. She’s since become the first woman to receive the American Society of Cinematographers’ Lifetime Achievement Award and is about to embark on Lee, a biopic of the black and white photographer, Lee Miller.

As the 2022 Oscar nominees are announced, we talk to Maggie Gyllenhaal who is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay with The Lost Daughter, the actor’s directorial debut, as well as Andrew Garfield, who bagged a best actor nomination for musical tick, tick... BOOM! Husband and wife animation team Les Mills and Joanna Quinn, writer and director respectively about their Best Animated Film-nominated Affairs of the Art also join us. Film critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Leila Latif provide analysis.

And we discuss a new experimental drama for Radio 4, An Artificially Intelligent Guide to Love, which sees writer Hannah Silva collaborate with a machine-learning algorithm to create an audio guide to romance.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Photo: Ruth Negga as Clare Bellew and Tessa Thompson as Irene "Reenie” Redfield in the film Passing

Fresh from a special concert in their home city of Leeds to mark Independent Venue Week, James Smith, lead singer of Yard Act talks to Samira about the group’s success with the release of their debut album. Their character-driven debut album, The Overload - designed to provoke "an open discussion about capitalism" - went straight into the charts at number two.

Novelist Esi Edugyan, author of Washington Black and Half Blood Blues, talks to Samira about her latest collection of essays, Out of the Sun, in which she delves into the history of Western Art and the truths about Black lives that it fails to reveal, and the ways contemporary Black artists are reclaiming and reimagining those lives.

Jason Katims has written and developed several hit US television series including Friday Night Lights and Parenthood. His latest creation is As We See It, which focuses on the lives of three young people with autism.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Image: Yard Act Photo credit: Phoebe Fox

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a new film starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield as televangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker charting their controversial rise and fall in the 1970s and 80s. They by Kay Dick is a rediscovered dystopian novel first published in 1977. Critics Suzi Feay and Michael Carlson give their verdicts on both.

It's 25 years since the TV news satire Brass Eye first came to our screens with episodes such as one featuring fake drug Cake becoming the stuff of TV legend. Director Michael Cumming joins Samira.

And the Bafta film nominations are announced today. Critic Hanna Flint joins us.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Erin Doherty shot to fame playing Princess Anne in The Crown and joins Tom to discuss her latest role as social media obsessed stalker Becky in BBC drama Chloe.

The writer Andrei Kurkov talks about literature, TV, music and cultural festivals across Ukraine.

Documentary and true crime podcasts are more popular than ever, but does audio offer new ways of telling stories? Narrative expert and former head of BBC Drama Commissioning John Yorke, and Alexi Mostrous, host of Tortoise Media’s hit podcast Sweet Bobby, consider the particular craft of longform audio storytelling.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Ahead of the release of their fourth studio album, Give Me the Future, Dan Smith and Charlie Barnes of the alt-pop four piece Bastille perform live in the studio and discuss the creation of this sci-fi-influenced concept album, their most collaborative yet.

A new initiative sponsored by The Booksellers Association and bookselling website Bookshop.org aims to encourage individuals from under represented backgrounds into the bookselling business, with seed funding available for successful applicants to open their own bricks and mortar bookshop. Historically seen as a more of a labour of love than a viable business or career plan, we explore the current state of the independent bookselling sector in the wake of the pandemic and the ever present pressures of the internet on local high streets.

And we have the first interview with the Costa Book Awards Book of the Year winner.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed