Front Row

David Attenborough's new documentary series Seven Worlds, One Planet has been four years in the making, we speak to Bertie Gregory, a wildlife cameraman who was at the heart of the show.The new retrospective of the work of the pioneering artist Bridget Riley at the Hayward Gallery in London features over 200 works spanning her 70-year career. Louisa Buck reviews the exhibition that features Riley’s famous black-and-white works of the 1960s to her more recent works as she continues to play with abstraction and perception.The Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection 2019 has been awarded to Fiona Benson for her collection Vertigo & Ghost. She explains why Zeus and his relations with mortals and nymphs is at the heart of the poems.Drill artist Rico Racks has been banned from using drug slang in his music after being convicted for supplying class A drugs. The list of words include “trapping” meaning “dealing” and “connect” - a drugs contact. Journalist and youth worker Ciaran Thapar reports.Presenter : Samira Ahmed Producer : Dymphna Flynn

There is much concern about the loss of biodiversity. But what of the linguistic and cultural ecosystem? It is thought that half of the world's 7,000 languages might not survive into the next century. Stig Abell talks to Chris McCabe, editor of Poems from the Edge of Extinction, an anthology of poems from around the world in languages under threat , and to Laura Tohe, poet laureate of the Navajo Nation. What might be lost? What can be done?Scooby Doo turned 50 this autumn. To mark the half century of a show which continues to follow the mysterious adventures of the eponymous Great Dane and his teenage friends - Fred, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy – Stig is joined for a discussion on the cartoon’s longstanding appeal by Professor Kevin Sandler, who is currently writing a book on Scooby Doo, and cultural critic Gavia Baker Whitelaw.The composer Judith Weir is just coming to the end of her time as Associate Composer for the BBC Singers. Her new piece for them is blue hills beyond blue hills, a setting of poems by Alan Spence marking the cycle of the year. She talks to Front Row about the piece, the vocal flexibility of the singers and her role as Master of the Queen’s Music.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May

Gavin Hood, director of Tsotsi and Eye in the Sky, discusses his new film Official Secrets, which stars Keira Knightley as the GCHQ whistleblower who was taken to court by the British government for leaking a top secret email to the press in the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003.Next week The Louvre Museum in Paris opens a major exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his death. Nearly 120 works will be displayed, with many on loan from collections around the world. However, there is much speculation over whether the world’s most expensive painting, Salvator Mundi, sold for $450m in 2017, will be on show. The painting of Christ, attributed to da Vinci in the last decade, hasn’t been on public display since its sale. Ben Lewis, author of The Last Leonardo, joins John Wilson to discuss.Moving to Mars, the latest exhibition at the Design Museum in London, explores how sending humans to the planet is not just a new frontier for science but also for design. Architect Tara Gbolade reviews the variety of exhibits which include a multisensory experience of the Red Planet and a full-scale prototype habitat.For their latest touring production, Graeae Theatre - the company that puts D/deaf and disabled actors centre stage - has asked Winsome Pinnock to reimagine her play One Under, first staged in 2005. It explores the aftermath of a young man dying under a tube train. Cyrus, the driver, becomes convinced he is his son. John Wilson talks to Winsome Pinnock and the director, Amit Sharma, about the drama.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson

Having won several album of the year awards for his recording of works by J.S Bach, Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson performs and talks about reinventing Bach for a new generation.This year the highest accolade in British architecture, the Stirling Prize, has been awarded for the first time to a social housing development. Social housing as places of crime and deprivation have been commonplace in popular culture for decades, often at odds with the experience of people living there. Cultural commentator and film historian Matthew Sweet and architect Jo McCafferty look at how these spaces have been portrayed in a more positive light on screen.For most of the 20th century, The Iraq Museum was home to an enormous collection of artefacts from the ancient civilisations of the region. Following the US-led invasion in 2003, it’s estimated that around 15,000 objects were taken during mass looting, with many finding their way onto the black market. Hannah Khalil discusses her new play A Museum In Baghdad, which is set simultaneously in 1926 and 2006 – following British archaeologist and diplomat Gertrude Bell struggling to create the museum and her latter day counterpart Ghalia Hussein trying to restore its former glory. Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald

Aisling Bea, writer and star of the recent hit Channel 4 comedy This Way Up, on her new Netflix drama Living with Yourself, in which she plays the wife of a man who undergoes a mysterious treatment only to discover that he has been cloned and replaced by a better version of himself.With the surprise announcement last night that the Booker Prize was being awarded to two authors – Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo – chair of the judges Peter Florence and the prize’s literary director Gaby Wood reveal what went on behind the scenes and how and why the judges came to their rule-breaking decision. And Kirsty talks to Zawe Ashton, who is currently starring on Broadway alongside Tom Hiddleston in Harold Pinter's play, Betrayal. She's also written a play which is opening on both sides of the Atlantic at once, for all the women who thought they were Mad. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser

Ahead of the announcement of the 2019 Booker Prize winner tonight, it's the final Front Row Booker Prize Book Group with shortlisted author Margaret Atwood, in which she meets a group of readers to discuss The Testaments, her long awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. Last year, Los Angeles artist Mark Bradford sold a single work for $12m, the highest-ever auction price achieved by a living African-American artist. He represented the United States at the Venice Biennale two years ago, and now has a new exhibition of his large works in London. In front of his 14-metre-long canvas Cerebus, the artist discusses his art, which addresses issues of institutionalised racism, marginalised communities, police violence and inequality.A new film opening this weekend, The Peanut Butter Falcon, has been a bit of a sleeper hit in the USA. It stars Shia LeBeouf and Zack Gottsagen - an actor with Down Syndrome - and reinterprets Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn story for today.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Oliver Jones

Sienna Miller discusses her latest role as a mother whose daughter goes missing, in her new film American Woman, directed by Jake Scott. Our latest Front Row Booker Prize Book Group puts its questions to shortlisted author Elif Shafak about her novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World which tells the story of Leila, a woman whose body has died, but whose mind has a precious ten minutes to reflect on the joy, pain and injustice of her life as a prostitute in Istanbul.Giri/Haji, which translates as Duty/Shame in English, is a new drama produced by the BBC and Netflix, about a Tokyo detective who travels to London in search of his presumed deceased brother. The script for the series is written in both Japanese and English. Kate Taylor-Jones reviews.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald

Mary Beard meets the acclaimed Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood. As her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale – The Testaments – is published, in a wide-ranging encounter Mary talks to her about how Gilead has changed almost 35 years on from the original book; how the cloak which features in the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale has become a symbol of protest around the world; about her responses to the current political climate; about the accusation that she is a ‘bad feminist’; and about the hype surrounding the release of this new book.

The Swedish Academy today announced the winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Winners, not winner, because, embroiled in a scandal over allegations of sexual assault by the husband of one of its members, the Academy delayed last year’s prize until today. The 2019 winner is Austrian writer Peter Handke, a controversial figure, one of whose early plays was called Offending the Audience, and 2018's winner Olga Tokarczuk is a leading Polish novelist who won the Man Booker International Prize last year for her book Flights. Front Row has the only UK interview with Olga Tokarczuk today and the critic Arifa Akbar considers the work of the winners and the implications of these awards. Goldie, real name Clifford Price, is a musician, actor and artist whose career lifted off with the '90s Drum and Bass boom. The frenetic, high-tempo sound which has played a key role in the evolution of dance music is celebrated on a new 60-track collection compiled by Goldie – a former graffiti artist who became the celebrity poster boy of ‘DnB’ at the height of its popularity and was awarded an MBE in 2016. He talks to Front Row about the revolutionary but often misunderstood genre.Es Devlin has created ambitious sets and sculptures for theatre, opera and large-scale rock concerts, from U2 to Beyoncé. Her latest commission is Memory Palace, an 18-metre-wide white chronological sloping landscape of buildings and places, in which she charts pivotal shifts in human perspectives over 70,000 years. The artist and designer discusses her work which is at Sir John Soane’s former country home, Pitzhanger Manor.Presenter John Wilson Producer Simon Richardson

The latest Front Row Booker Prize Book Group features Salman Rushdie answering listeners’ questions about his shortlisted novel Quichotte, a satire on current politics, the opioid crisis and the influence of popular culture that’s also been praised for its touching study of family relationships. Playwright Katori Hall, whose previous plays include Tina: The Tina Turner Musical and The Mountaintop, on a new production of her 2010 play Our Lady of Kibeho at Theatre Royal Stratford East. In 1981 at Kibeho College in Rwanda, a young girl claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary who warned her of the unimaginable: Rwanda becoming hell on Earth. She was ignored by her friends and scolded by her school but then another student saw the vision, and another, and the impossible appeared to be true. Hailed as one of 'the 50 best theatre shows of the 21st century' (The Guardian) and 'the most important play of the year' (The Wall Street Journal, 2014), this vibrantly theatrical meditation on faith, doubt and miracles is inspired by the extraordinary events in Rwanda that captured the world’s attention.Last year computer games accounted for more than half of the UK’s entertainment market for the first time, with sales approaching £4 billion, more than music and films combined. However a recent investigation has shown that despite massive growth, several multinational companies have been avoiding millions of pounds in UK corporation tax through an initiative intended to support the sector in the UK, with some critics fearing that it is being exploited. Gaming journalist Jordan Erica Webber discusses this and other gaming industry news.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May