Front Row

The actor Stephen Graham originally made his mark as the racist skinhead Combo in Shane Meadows’s 2006 film This Is England. The actor and director have teamed up again for a new 4-part Channel 4 drama The Virtues, in which he plays a troubled alcoholic trying to get over the trauma of his childhood. The actor discusses making the show, as well as his recent role as undercover cop John Corbett in Line of Duty. The Unicorn is a theatre devoted to children. Its latest production is Dido, based on Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell. Stig Abell investigates how you make a seventeenth-century opera fun for eleven-year-olds, talking to the director, conductor, a singer and two teachers. But what of the target audience? Two young lads tell him what they thought of it. Simon Armitage has been announced as the new Poet Laureate. As he begins his decade long post, he reveals his ambitions for the role and also discusses his new book of poems Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, which brings together his commissioned work including war poetry and poems responding to Henry Moore's sculptures and the life of Branwell Bronte.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Hannah Robins

Television dramatist Sally Wainwright has written award-winning crime series such as Happy Valley, heart-warming love stories such as Last Tango in Halifax. The last time she turned her attention to the 19th century, it was to portray the Brontës in To Walk Invisible. Now she’s returned to the Victorian age, this time looking at the life of lesbian landowner Anne Lister. Historical novelist, Philippa Gregory reviews. The idea of the canon in contemporary and modern art is currently being fiercely debated in galleries and museums with many of these institutions now attempting to broaden the canon by including previously overlooked female artists and artists of colour, and challenging the idea of a universal canon by trying to reflect their localities in their collections. Caroline Douglas, Director of the Contemporary Art Society, and Helen Legg, Director of Tate Liverpool discuss the rebalancing of modern and contemporary art collections.In the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing, the name of one of the victims, 29-year-old Coronation Street superfan, Martyn Hett, began trending on twitter with the hashtag BeMoreMartyn. The hashtag has now evolved into the title of a verbatim play created from interviews with eight of Martyn’s friends. Theatre critic Lyn Gardner, and Mike Lee, the co-writer of the play, join Front Row to talk about making theatre from such a traumatic event. Recent days have seen English football clubs enjoy dramatic success in Europe, but it’s Welsh football that is the subject of celebration in a new exhibition at Tŷ Pawb, the arts centre in Wrexham. Curator James Harper discusses how contemporary artists have found inspiration in the beautiful game.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Mark Billingham, Val McDermid and Doug Johnstone are well-known for their detective stories, which they write alone. But they come together as members of the band Fun Lovin' Crime Writers. They perform live and talk to Stig Abell about their day jobs, the joys of collaborating as a popular beat combo and the connections between these. They stay on as cultural commentators to give their opinions of Robert De Niro's powerful new role - in an ad for bagels, the temporary ban on the export of the copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover that the judge annotated and brought with him to court when he presided at the famous obscenity trial in 1960, and, closer to home, the list of the 100 best crime novels published since 1945 - of which only 28 are by women. The impact Artificial Intelligence will have on our lives is the subject of the Barbican’s major new exhibition AI: More than Human, which also seeks to challenge our preconceptions. Tech expert Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino reviews.Medusa is an ancient myth that certainly speaks to our times, abused by a powerful male, she is somehow blamed for this and exacts revenge. The Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has chosen this tale for his first work for the Royal Ballet and has set his dance to songs by Purcell and modern electronic music. He explains to Stig Abell why he is melding the ancient, modern and Baroque.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May

Keanu Reeves returns to cinemas in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, reprising his role as the super-assassin. He takes pride in performing most of the action scenes and discusses working with the director Chad Stahelski, himself a former stuntman. Paul Gambaccini remembers the singer-turned-movie-star Doris Day whose death at the age of 97 was announced today. Research recently published in the British Medical Journal reports that regular sexual activity between couples is on the decline. The authors cite 'diversionary stimuli' such as smartphones and Netflix as distractions that could be impeding intimacy. Culture writers Louis Wise and Karen Krizanovich explore whether art can function as an effective aphrodisiac. Presenter Shahidha Bari Producer Jerome Weatherald

On the night of 18th April, 2015 a 90-foot fishing boat packed with migrants sent out a distress signal. It collided with a vessel responding to that call and sank between Libya and the Italian island of Lampedusa. Between 770 and 1,100 people drowned. Now the wreck has been raised and installed at the Arsenale, the historical naval yards in Venice - as an art work. Tim Marlow, director of exhibitions at the Royal Academy, considers the controversy surrounding this, and discusses with John Wilson other works that have drawn his attention at the Biennale. Elizabeth Macneal’s debut novel The Doll Factory, the subject of a bidding war between publishers, is the story of a young woman who finds herself part of the circle around the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The author was also inspired by her fascination with the Victorian taste for collecting. She talks to Front Row about creating a character in charge of her own destiny, about the book’s success - and about her other career, being a potter. At the Venice Biennale, the British artist and author Edmund de Waal introduces us to his two-part project, Psalm, which opened this week at different venues. At the 16th-century Ateneo Veneto he has created a Library of Exile made of porcelain which holds almost 2000 books by exiled writers, from Ovid to the present day. To the north of the island, at the Jewish Museum, he’s installed a series of porcelain, marble and gold works that reflect the literary and musical heritage of the 500-year-old Ghetto.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May

Mark Haddon is the author of the phenomenally successful The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. He talks about his first novel in seven years, The Porpoise, in which he takes on the epic tale of Pericles.At this year’s Venice Biennale, the contentious American artist, Jimmie Durham, will be given the prestigious Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement. Art critic Ariella Budick discusses the controversy surrounding the artist whose biography is subject to as much speculation as his art.New discoveries in the tomb of Saexa, an Anglo-Saxon prince, have led archaeologists to dub him the Tutankhamun of Essex. Among the artefacts buried with him are a copper flagon from Syria, beautiful blue glass beakers and a lyre, inlaid with garnets. Sophie Jackson of the Museum of London Archaeology considers what they reveal of the cultural life and taste of people living here in the 580s. Shakespeare’s Globe’s Artistic Director Michelle Terry discusses their new productions of Henry IV parts 1 & 2 and Henry V. She talks about her role as actor-manager and about working with an diverse ensemble cast who collectively bring the show together.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Sarah Johnson

When Guy Chambers teamed up with Robbie Williams in 1997, they created one of the most successful songwriting partnerships in British pop history. Now Guy has released his debut solo album called Go Gentle into the Light, performing hits such as Angels and Millennium on the piano. Writer Nina Stibbe has been announced as the winner of the 2019 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction for her novel, Reasons to be Cheerful. She discusses the art of comic writing.Even a small amount of creativity can help you cope with modern life - so says new research by BBC Arts and University College London. The BBC Arts Great British Creativity Test surveyed almost 50,000 people to explore links between arts activities and wellbeing. Dr Daisy Fancourt, UCL Senior Research Fellow shares the key findings.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Edwina Pitman

Director Amma Asante on her new film Where Hands Touch, which follows Leyna, an Afro-German girl, living under the increasingly dangerous and racist Nazi regime during World War II. Asante discusses her approach, used in this film and in A United Kingdom and Belle, of shining a light on little known histories often involving black characters to tell us something about the world today. Years and Years is BBC One's new drama series created by Russell T Davies. Set in an imagined near future, it stars Emma Thompson as an outspoken celebrity turned political figure whose controversial opinions divide the nation. Katie Popperwell reviews. Aretha Franklin's legendary 1972 album Amazing Grace saw the singer returning to her soul routes after commercial success. The record went on to be the biggest seller of Franklin's 50 year career. Far less well known is the accompanying concert film directed by Sydney Pollack which captured the recording in raw detail, but was subsequently shelved. Forty-seven years later as the film is finally released in cinemas, record producer Joe Boyd tells the story of its long gestation. Deirdre Falvey, arts journalist for the Irish Times, on the ongoing uproar at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin which has seen over 400 theatre professionals in Ireland sign an open letter to the Minister for Culture, Josepha Madigan, expressing their "deep concern and dissatisfaction" with Ireland's national theatre under its current directors.Presenter : Samira Ahmed Producer : Dymphna Flynn

Among the designs of the leading British-Ghanaian architect Sir David Adjaye OBE are the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, which opened in 2016 in a ceremony led by the then US President Barack Obama, and the planned UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre next to the Palace of Westminster in London.David Adjaye is in Venice ahead of the opening of his Ghana Pavilion for this year's Biennale, and in a rare interview the architect discusses the role of architecture and the importance of anthropology and ethnography in his designs.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald

The Malian singer Rokia Traoré is celebrated for her extraordinary voice, her collaborations with musicians and writers such as Damon Albarn and Toni Morrison, and her efforts to give opportunities to other artists in Mali. These qualities and interests are reflected in her choices as Guest Director of this year’s Brighton Festival. She talks about the work she and others will be performing.In Germany, the far-right party AfD - Alternative fur Deutschland – are using the nineteenth century painting Slave Market by Jean-Leon Gerome in their posters for the upcoming European elections. The French artist is seen as a leading proponent of Orientalism, and this work depicts a nude fair-skinned enslaved woman paraded for sale and examined by Middle Eastern or North African men. One has his fingers in her mouth, as if she were a horse whose teeth he is checking. BBC Correspondent Damien McGuiness and art critic Fisun Guner discuss the use of this provocative work in a political campaign.Granta, the literary magazine was launched in 1979 by a group of Cambridge University students and went on to become an influential force in the literary world, publishing heavyweights like Angela Carter, Raymond Carver and Philip Roth. Its "Under 40" list of emerging writers was influential and at its height it enjoyed a readership of 135,000. As the magazine turns 40 co-founder and former editor Bill Buford considers its history and place in today's literary world. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Kate Bullivant