Front Row

Orlando starring Emma Corrin at the Garrick Theatre in London and Guillermo del Toro’s animated film Pinocchio are reviewed by Shon Faye, author of The Transgender Issue, and Observer theatre critic Susannah Clapp. The story of double agent and defector Kim Philby has been told many times. A Spy Among Friends, a new six-episode series on ITVX, focuses on Nicholas Elliott, Philby’s lifelong friend. Damian Lewis, who plays Elliott, and writer Alexander Cary talk to Tom Sutcliffe about telling the story of political and personal betrayal anew. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Harry ParkerPicture of Emma Corrin as Orlando credit Marc Brenner

The winner of this year's Turner Prize will be announced at St George’s Hall in Liverpool. Art critic Louisa Buck reflects on this year’s Turner Prize and responds to the news of the winner of this prestigious award for contemporary art. Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell tells Samira about the band reforming, their new album - Razorwhat? The Best Of Razorlight, and a new documentary, Fall To Pieces, which charts the meteoric rise, break-up and make-up of the band. And poet Kim Moore was recently announced as the winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2022, for her second collection, All The Men I Never Married. It was described as 'phenomenal' by the judges. She talks about putting the complexities of past relationships and encounters into poetry.

Film director Antoine Fuqua discusses his new film, Emancipation, which stars Will Smith. He discusses basing his film on the true story of an enslaved man in 1860s Louisiana. Earlier this year, Front Row revealed how non-disclosure agreements were being misused in film and TV casting, with actors being kept in the dark about the roles they were auditioning for. The actor’s union Equity has come up with new guidance on NDAs. Carolyn Atkinson explains what this means for auditions. April De Angelis discusses her new play Kerry Jackson, which is at the National Theatre in London. Starring Faye Ripley in the title role of café owner Kerry, it explores class and gentrification.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Eliane Glaser

Jazz pianist Fergus McCreadie performs live from his latest album Forest Floor, which recently won the Scottish Album of the Year award and a Mercury Prize nomination. Performance poet Leyla Josephine discusses her debut poetry collection In Public / In Private. Patricia Allerston, chief curator of the Scottish National Gallery, on the transformation of the museum and creation of a new exhibition space. Plus Kate goes behind the scenes to meet conservators who are restoring the works of art, Lesley Stevenson and Keith Morrison. Anna Burnside reports on the significance of this Autumn's closure of the Modern Two Gallery in Edinburgh, part of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Presenter: Kate Molleson Producer: Carol Purcell

Veronica Ryan OBE is shortlisted for the Turner Prize. She talks to Front Row about her Windrush Commission sculptures in Hackney that have won the hearts of both the community and critics, how she uses materials from old fruit trays to volcanic ash, and how her work contains multitudes of meaning.Nii Ayikwei Parkes, writer, commentator and performance poet and Lisa Verrico, music critic for the Sunday Times review White Noise, an extraordinary film written and directed by Noah Baumbach and based on the novel by Don DeLillo, and the much-anticipated album by Stormzy, This is What I Mean. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Sarah Johnson Photo of Veronica Ryan credit Holly Falconer

Maxine Peake discusses playing Betty Boothroyd, former Speaker of the House of Commons in Betty! A Sort of Musical, which is about to open at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. Turner Prize nominated artist Heather Phillipson, best known for her sculpture of a giant cherry topped ice cream on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, discusses her exhibition 'RUPTURE NO 1: blowtorching the bitten peach', using recycled materials, video, sculpture, music and poetry, currently on display at Tate Liverpool.Laura Robertson visits Signal Film and Media in Barrow in Furness to hear about how the charity has benefited from the latest Arts Council funding announcement and to find out what they have planned for the future. The artist Tom Phillips has died at the age of 85. In a Front Row interview from 2012, he discusses his long running artistic projects as a painter, printmaker and collagist.Presenter: Shahidha Bari Producer: Olivia SkinnerImage: Maxine Peake as Betty Boothroyd, former Speaker of the House of Commons in

Clint Dyer discusses directing Othello starring Giles Terera at the National Theatre, the first Black director to do so. He talks about how he is approaching the racism and misogyny in the play, and the history of previous productions.In the second of Front Row’s interviews with the artists nominated for this year’s Turner Prize, Ingrid Pollard discusses her work, Carbon Slowly Turning, and how she explores themes of nationhood, race, history and identity through portraiture and landscape.And as the Wellcome Collection decides to close an exhibition described as sexist, racist and ableist, Front Row discusses whether museums should display historical objects that may offend gallery visitors. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Eliane Glaser Image: Giles Terera as Othello and Rosy McEwan as Desdemona. Image credit: Myah Jeffers

Author Katherine Rundell talks to Tom Sutcliffe about her book Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, which has won this year’s The Baillie Gifford. In the first in a series of interviews with the artists shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize, Sin Wai Kin discusses how they use performance to challenge misogyny and racism. The acclaimed dance company Ballet Black, known for giving a platform to Black and Asian dancers and choreographers, turns 20 this year. Michael McKenzie visits rehearsals to hear how they are marking the anniversary.And as the Horniman Museum in London hands back their collection of Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, Professor Abba Tijani, the Director General of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments, discusses what receiving the artworks means for Nigeria. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Emma Wallace Image credit: Sin Wai Kin by Holly Falconer

The much-celebrated singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading on her 50-year career, her book of lyrics, The Weakness in Me, and new album Live at Asylum Chapel.Arts journalist Nancy Durrant, and art historian and writer Chloe Austin review Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s new show at the Tate Britain, and the film She Said, starring Carey Mulligan, which details the New York Times investigation into Harvey Weinstein.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Ellie Bury

Lara Feigel and Tom Shakespeare review Netflix’s new adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, starring Emma Corrin.The English National Opera stages an operatic reimagining of It’s a Wonderful Life, the classic 1946 Christmas film, by the composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer. Jake joins Samira.The casting of Ukrainian actors who have arrived here escaping the conflict, with actors Kateryna Hryhorenko and Yurii Radionov, and casting directors Olga Lyubarova and Rachel Sheridan.And the death has been announced of Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson. We hear an extract from his memorable interview on Front Row following what he thought was a terminal diagnosis. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Sarah Johnson

Director Matthew Warchus discusses his new film Matilda the Musical. Based on the Tony and Olivier award winning stage play, it brings Roald Dahl’s much loved children’s story to the screen. Scottish-Indian protest musician Kapil Seshasayee performs live and talks to Samira about his new album Laal.And art critics Louisa Buck and Bendor Grovenor discuss the impact of the recent climate protests in museums and galleries. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Kirsty McQuire

Luca Guadagnino won the Silver Lion for Best Director at this year's Venice Film Festival for his latest film, Bones and All, starring Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell. He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about confronting the taboo of cannibalism on screen and reuniting with Chalamet after Call Me By Your Name.Mark Bills, the Director of Gainsborough’s House, joins Tom to discuss the reopening of the painter's home in Suffolk.Ronald Blythe, the man who’s been described as the greatest living writer on the English countryside, celebrates his 100th birthday this month. His friend and fellow writer Richard Mabey and the academic and author Alexandra Harris discuss his work and a new collection of his columns on Suffolk life, Next to Nature.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian MayIMAGE: Taylor Russell (left) as Maren and Timothée Chalamet (right) as Lee in Bones and All, directed by Luca Guadagnino, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. CREDIT: Yannis Drakoulidis / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

With Samira Ahmed.Guests Katy Hessel and Lillian Crawford review Florence Pugh's drama The Wonder, based on an Emma Donoghue novel, and the Royal Academy's Making Modernism exhibition, which explores the lives of a group of female artists active in Germany in the early twentieth century.The theatre company Frantic Assembly is running a nationwide programme to find the actors of the future, hopefully from unexpected places. Luke Jones talks to Frantic Assembly’s artistic director Scott Graham about their plan to get a wider range of young people into theatre and to some of the aspiring actors taking part in this year’s programme. As the fallout of the Arts Council announcements continues, Lillian Crawford and composer Gavin Higgins consider why opera is still being branded elitist and what can be done about it.Producer: Ellie BuryPhoto credit: Florence Pugh as Lib Wright in The Wonder. Cr. Aidan Monaghan

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 Producer: Ekene AkalawuImage: Square Gogh by Ross Muir, on display in the

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 Producer: Sarah Johnson

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 Producer: Ekene AkalawuMain image:

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 Producer: Olivia SkinnerImage: 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 Producer: Ellie BuryImage: Show Your Stripes infographic representing the global average temperature for each year since 1850 to 2021 (data source: UK Met Office) Credit: Creato

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 CalvinPresenter: Shahidha Bari Producer: Sarah Johnson