Front Row

Alex Kingston, best known for her TV roles in Dr Who and ER, discusses her new role in Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy Of The People on stage at the Nottingham Playhouse. Kingston plays Dr Stockman, who is punished by the authorities for saying the unsayable as she attempts to make a stand against corruption.Criminal is Netflix's new crime drama, with each episode focused on one suspect and all filmed in and around the interrogation room. There are four series of three episodes filmed in Britain, Germany, France and Spain, each with a local cast and filmed in their own language. The UK series stars Katherine Kelly and Lee Ingleby, with David Tennant and Hayley Atwell as guest stars. Crime writer Mark Billingham reviews.Sales of new pianos have declined significantly in the UK, down to just 16% of the amount sold in the 1980s. Jeremy Sallis visits a fourth-generation piano showroom and workshop in London to find out more.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald

Downton Abbey hits the big screen this week as the Crawleys host the none other than King George V himself in a new film edition of the hit television show. Critic Sarah Crompton considers if it’s a success.Comedian Alexei Sayle discusses the return of his Radio 4 comedy series Alexei Sayle’s Imaginary Sandwich Bar, a mixture of stand-up, memoir and philosophy.The 16th Istanbul Biennial, subtitled this year ‘The Seventh Continent’, is about to open its doors to the public. Critic Louisa Buck has been visiting the city and reports on some of the 220 artworks by 56 artists and artist collectives, and the importance of the subtitle – a name given by the scientific community to the massive accumulation of waste floating in our oceans. Jo Lloyd tells Stig Abell about her story, The Invisible, that has reached the National Short Story Award shortlist. It's set in rural Wales in the 18th century where Martha can see a wealthy family living in a mansion nearby. But no one else can. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Ju

Lucy Prebble’s play A Very Expensive Poison opened last week at the Old Vic in London. It tells the story of the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 with a treatment ranging from the high theatricality of song, dance and puppetry to simple direct address to the audience - and has a love story at its core. Lucy Prebble joins Front Row to talk about putting truth on stage.Mark Strong and Daniel Mays star in new Sky One drama Temple, set in a disused underground station being used as a covert hospital to treat criminals and CEOs of massive companies who need to keep their health a secret. David Butcher of the Radio Times reviews.Lynda Clarke has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with Ghillie’s Mum. The writer discusses her story which is about a shape shifting mother whose animal forms delight her son but horrify the wider world . The story is broadcast on Radio 4 at 1530 on Friday 13 September and the winner of the BBC NSSA is announced on Front Row on 1 October.Lope de Vega wro

John Wilson presents Front Row from the BBC Proms, with the American mezzo soprano Jamie Barton, about to perform as the soloist at the Last Night of the Proms, singing Verdi, Bizet, Saint-Saens and paying tribute to Judy Garland with Over the Rainbow. Composer Daniel Kidane talks about his new piece, commissioned to open the Last Night of the Proms this Saturday, which is called Woke. How will Brexit impact Classical Music? John is joined by the Association of British Orchestras director Mark Pemberton, opera impresario Wasfi Kani from Grange Park Opera and Claire Fox, The Brexit Party MEP who is on the Culture Committee of the European Parliament. They discuss whether classical musicians will be particularly affected by Brexit, deal or no deal. Violinist Daniel Pioro performs Biber's Passacaglia in G minor live. Presenter: John Wilson Producers: Rebecca Armstrong and Tim Prosser

Ten years ago when the first British Ceramics Biennial took place, things didn't look good for pots or Stoke-on-Trent, known as 'the potteries' of the UK. The 240-year-old Spode factory had shut, ceramics had a dusty image and the pot-making artist Grayson Perry said the art world had more of a problem with his being a potter than with him wearing a frock. In Front Row this evening Kirsty will hear how things have changed. Now the old Spode works hosts artists studios and a boutique hotel and this year is at the heart of multiple exhibitions featuring the work of 300 artists - both established and emerging, from home and abroad.US author Nell Zink's new novel Doxology features two generations of an American family coming of age, one before 9/11, one after. She tells Kirsty about her decision to broaden the scope of her writing to tell a story of modern America and the stark differences between Baby Boomers and 'Generation Z'. Tamsin Grey is one of the five authors shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story

For Sama is a prize-winning documentary by female Syrian filmmaker Waad al-Kateab, recording life in Aleppo for her young daughter who was born shortly after the conflict began there. Film critic Hannah McGill reviews and reports on the winning films at this year's Venice Film Festival. Lucy Caldwell has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with The Children. Her story is about the Victorian social reformer Caroline Norton, who successfully campaigned for women to have the automatic right to have custody of their children in divorce proceedings; and in her story Lucy Caldwell draws parallels with child migrants today who are separated from their mothers. We speak to the author.British playwright Peter Nichols - A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg, Privates On Parade, Passion Play - has died at the age of 92. Michael Billington joins us to discuss his importance The Israeli short story writer Etgar Keret discusses his new collection Fly Already, 22 stories – several featuring the surreal and the

A celebration of the short story as chair of judges Nikki Bedi joins Front Row to reveal the 2019 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University and we hear from the first shortlisted author.Steve Knightley, half of the popular duo Show of Hands, has teamed up with historian Michael Wood to celebrate one of England’s great musical traditions - songs of social protest. In the year of the Peterloo anniversary, they explore songs from the Peasants' Revolt right up to the present day. Steve performs live.And do you know how to listen to jazz, to understand and enjoy it? Stig Abell doesn't - so he joins trumpeter Andy Davies at Ronnie Scott's in London for enlightenment. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Sarah Johnson

Margaret Atwood's long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid's Tale - The Testaments - is due to be published next Tuesday, but following the release of a number of copies by Amazon, reviewers have managed to obtain early copies. M J Hyland reviews Atwood's sequel which takes place 15 years after the original tale of Gilead. In 1958 Alvin Ailey, aware that there were few opportunities for African-American dancers and choreographers, founded a company to tell the stories of black people through movement. Since then the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has become one of the most popular modern ensembles in the world. The company's artistic director, Robert Battle, talks to Kirsty Lang about its history, ambition and that constant difficulty – how to get boys to dance. Conductor, composer and pianist Ryan Wigglesworth is playing all three roles in this year's BBC Proms. He discusses the challenge, and considers how his early experience as a chorister influenced his future compositions.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer

Proceedings in the House of Commons yesterday drew an unusual degree of public attention, with set pieces from Boris Johnson (interrupted by the defection of one of his MPs, crossing the floor to join the Liberal Democrats), the Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg lying supine, humour from Kenneth Clarke and a range of colourful interventions from Mr Speaker, it represents one of the most colourful and dramatic days in the Commons in recent memory. Newsnight Culture Correspondent Stephen Smith and Lyn Gardner of The Stage newspaper join Samira to bring an artistically critical eye to the parliamentary theatrics. The Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism, Rebecca Pow, has put temporary export bars on five works of art up for sale this summer, including paintings by Turner and Monet, and a Victorian crab sculpture. We speak to the Minister about why they don’t want these works sold abroad and ask what the Conservatives are doing to protect the arts amid the Brexit high drama in the House of Commons this week.

William Feaver discusses the first part of his comprehensive biography of the great British figurative painter Lucian Freud, who died in 2011. Feaver first got to know the mercurial artist in 1973 and had regular conversations and meetings with him over the decades. The former Observer art critic's two detailed biographies – Youth and Fame - are the result of 20 years’ work.Earlier today the shortlist for the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction was announced. Critics Arifa Akbar and Toby Lichtig give their verdict on the chosen few.Arts Council England recently published a report about if and how the arts and cultural offer within a place can attract and retain individuals and businesses and help to shape its identity. We speak to Laura Dyer, Deputy Chief Executive, Places & Engagement at Arts Council England about what the arts actually contribute to a place. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Oliver Jones

BBC One’s big autumn thriller serial is The Capture. Telling the story of former soldier Shaun Emery, whose conviction for an unlawful killing during active duty is overturned because of flawed video evidence. The drama delves into the increasing reality of misinformation and fake news. Scriptwriter Ben Chanan talks to Samira about the manipulation of video evidence in our criminal justice system. Venice Film Festival is well underway where the films coming to our screens in the autumn compete for the coveted Golden Lion Prize. Critic Jason Solomon fills us in on the highlights including Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of the Joker, the new Polanski film and Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver’s depiction of a divorce in Marriage Story. A Freedom of Information request placed by the Daily Mail has revealed that in 2016 the Royal Mint was considering honouring children’s author Enid Blyton with a commemorative 50 pence coin, but that officials withdrew the author from consideration because "she [Blyton] is known t

Sir Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children has twice been named the Best of Booker. Now his new novel Quichotte, a modern take on Cervantes' classic that is both a satire of modern politics and a consideration of familial love, has been Booker longlisted. Rushdie discusses writing about the new politics, family, and keeping up with popular culture.Director Joanna Hogg discusses her new film The Souvenir, in which a young film student in the early '80s becomes romantically involved with a complicated and untrustworthy man. Honor Swinton Byrne plays the student, with her real-life mother Tilda Swinton playing the matriarch of the well-to-do family.Presenter Stig Abell Producer Jerome Weatherald

Timothy Spall and Vanessa Redgrave star in Mrs Lowry and Son, a new film about the Pendlebury painter LS Lowry and his mother. Critic Sarah Crompton reviews.Singer and electric guitarist Anna Calvi has written the music for the latest series of the gangster TV drama Peaky Blinders. Along with the director Anthony Byrne she talks about how they created the soundtrack. Anna also discusses her latest album Hunter and performs a track from it live in the studio.The poet Stephen Sexton’s first collection takes its title from a pastoral poem by Sir Walter Raleigh, written in 1600. But If All the World and Love Were Young is a very contemporary pastoral as the idyllic landscape it celebrates is that of the Super Mario Nintendo video game. It is, too, a moving elegy to the poet’s mother. Stephen Sexton tells Front Row how the real world of his childhood and that of Mario the Italian plumber, complete with dinosaurs and mushrooms, come together in his poems. Presenter: Tom Shakespeare Producer: Hannah Robins

Playwright James Graham, author of Brexit: the Uncivil War and The Coalition, talks about making drama out of a constitutional crisis and how soon is too soon to begin fictionalising current political events. Jeff Pope’s writing credits include a number of high-profile factual TV dramas for ITV including Pierrepoint and See No Evil: The Moors Murders, as well as Philomena and Stan & Ollie for the big screen. The writer and producer discusses his new ITV drama series A Confession, starring Martin Freeman, about the murder of 22-year-old Sian O’Callaghan in Swindon in 2011.James and Jeff also discuss the ups and downs of television drama trailers.Fifty years after British troops arrived on the streets of Belfast and Londonderry in an attempt to quell disorder which seemed to be taking Northern Ireland towards civil war, writers Sinead Gleeson and Glenn Patterson discuss the way in which The Troubles have been presented across the arts, especially in literature and on film

Colson Whitehead won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2016 novel The Underground Railroad, about slaves escaping from the southern states and seeking sanctuary in the north. The author discusses his new novel The Nickel Boys, which follows the misfortunes of a young black boy, Elwood Curtis, who finds himself being sent to the brutal Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school where the threat of severe - and sometimes fatal - punishment beatings is a constant fear for all the pupils. Prior to Thursday’s Prom featuring the sacred music of Duke Ellington, Samira talks to two of the performers in the concert, singer Carleen Anderson and conductor Peter Edwards, about Ellington’s blend of big-band, gospel and orchestral music in this evening of dance, song and jazz with a Christian theme. Carnival Row is a new fantasy from Amazon Prime which debuts on Friday. Ekow Eshun reviews the series described "as a complex and dark world where Game of Thrones meets Ripper Street." Starring Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne, a

A Front Row for Bank Holiday Monday: Kirsty Lang interviews the writer Edna O'Brien about her new novel, her first novel and her career in between, spanning almost sixty years, 25 works of fiction, as well as biographies and plays. Radio 4 is now broadcasting an adaptation of The Country Girls trilogy. Edna O'Brien's stories of Kate and Baba as they leave rural Ireland for Dublin then London, find work, meet men, and have sex caused scandal when they were published in the 1960s. Her books were banned (six times) and publicly burned in her hometown. Now these are considered among the most significant novels of the last century, important for their exploration of the experience of women and for furthering the cause of their liberation. Times change and now, O'Brien tells Kirsty Lang, she has received, from the president, Ireland's highest cultural accolade. Edna O'Brien is in her late eighties yet research for her new novel, Girl, took her to difficult, dangerous territory in Nigeria. Reading a report a

Screenwriter Andrew Davies talks to Samira Ahmed about his latest period drama, Sanditon, based on an unfinished novel by Jane Austen. They discuss what attracted him to the seaside tale, how lead character Charlotte Heywood is a very different kind of Austen heroine, and why he felt it was important to raise the issue of racial prejudice in Regency Britain.Writer and reviewer Vic James looks at Netflix’s reboot of the 1982 Jim Henson puppet film The Dark Crystal which is accompanied by an exhibition of sets, puppets and props at the BFI on London's South Bank. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a ten-part prequel to the original film charting the political awakening of a race of elf-like creatures who begin to question the regime of their oppressive rulers.It's 550 years since Europe’s most trenchant political writer Niccolo Machiavelli was born. In The Prince he laid bare the machinations of the Florentine Republic. Novelist Sarah Dunant, whose last novel In The Name of the Family features Machiavelli

The Bafta winning writer Danny Brocklehurst tells Front Row about the new Sky One comedy drama Brassic. It focuses on Vinnie O’Neill whose incompetent criminal crew is involved in everything from illegal boxing matches to an underground fetish club and stealing a Shetland pony. How did he shape some of lead actor Joe Gilgun’s teenage experiences into a six-part series?Photographer Craig Easton discusses his new exhibition, Fisherwomen, which opens this week at the Hull Maritime Museum. From Shetland to Great Yarmouth, he has focused on the unsung workforce in fishing – the women - in the past and the present, including a series of new portraits he’s taken of women working in the industry today.Today is GCSE results day. For the students who’ve got the results they need, the next stop is A levels. There has been a 13% decline this summer in entries for all types of English A level. Teachers groups have suggested the decline in numbers is due to the teaching of the subject being turned into a “joyless slog”

Composer Erich Korngold was best known for his swashbuckling film scores like The Adventures of Robin Hood and Captain Blood. A child prodigy, he was already a well-established writer of concert music and operas in his native Austria before he went to Hollywood in the 1930s and continued to compose after he left the movie industry. The conductor John Wilson assembled a special orchestra, the Sinfonia of London, to perform some of his later works, including a symphony, for a new recording entitled simply Korngold. Samira talks to the conductor, as well as to Korngold’s biographer Brendan Carroll.What makes brilliant interior design and can we all do it? As the BBC launches Interior Design Masters, a new show where budding interior designers compete to win a big commission, we investigate the art and history of interior design, with head judge on the show, Michelle Ogundehin, and Sonia Solicari, director of The Geffrye Museum of the Home.This week sees the 80th anniversary of the much-loved film The Wizard of O

Antonio Banderas on playing Pedro Almodóvar in Pain and Glory - Almodóvar's film based on his own life. Tom Shakespeare talks to Antonio about how the actor's heart attack affected the performance, the differences between acting in Hollywood and European cinema and how the film is the best depiction of back pain he's seen.Witches have always been a popular subject in fiction but recent months have seen a particular flowering. Why? And how do authors choose whether to set their work in the past or the present? Front Row asks Philippa Gregory whose latest book Tidelands is about a 17th century wise woman and V.V. James, whose novel Sanctuary, set in a version of present-day USA, contains witchcraft.Last weekend in Hong Kong, 1.7 million protestors marched against the Beijing government, brandishing their brollies to protect themselves from the downpour. The umbrella itself has become a symbol of protest since the Umbrella Movement first emerged in 2014 - but the cultural significance of the umbrella within Ch