Front Row

Best known for his series of crime novels starring private detective Charlie Parker, John Connolly's new novel, He, is a fictional reimagining of the life of one of the greatest screen comedians the world has ever known, Stan Laurel, and his enduring partnership with Oliver Hardy, the man he knew as Babe.Actor Ed Skrein has stepped own from the role of Major Ben Daimo in the film Hellboy because he is British and the character Japanese American. Samira Ahmed probes the significance of this, the first time an actor has made such a move, with Rebecca Ford, an Asian American journalist who has been covering the story in Los Angeles for The Hollywood Reporter. Tanika Gupta talks to Samira about her new play Lions and Tigers, which opens tonight at Shakespeare's Globe. The play is based on Tanika Gupta's great-uncle Dinesh Gupta, and his violent resistance against British Rule in 1930s Calcutta. The playwright explains how family recollections of Dinesh and his letters from prison helped inspire the drama.Based on David Harrower's Oliver-Award winning play Blackbird, the film Una is the cinematic debut of acclaimed theatre director Benedict Andrews, starring Rooney Mara as a woman who confronts the older neighbour who sexually abused her when she thirteen. Kate Maltby reviews. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May.

More often associated with comic films, actor Bill Nighy turns his hand to gothic horror in his latest movie The Limehouse Golem. Based on the Peter Ackroyd novel, Nighy plays Inspector Kildare, a compassionate detective, drafted in to investigate a series of grisly murders in Victorian London. He talks to Samira about the safety of comedy and how he hates a challenge.As Londoners were treated to three different productions of Hamlet this summer, we explore why audiences can never seem to get enough of The Prince of Denmark. Samira is joined by Dame Janet Suzman, who has both acted in and directed the play; Kosha Engler who is currently playing Gertrude and Ophelia in a 3 person abridged version with her husband Benet and her father-in-law Gyles Brandreth; and psychotherapist Mark Vernon.American photographer Steve McCurry's most famous image is Afghan Girl, a photo taken in 1984 for the cover of National Geographic Magazine. The multi award-winning photographer has been travelling regularly in Afghanistan since the 1979 Russian invasion and tells Samira about his latest book; Afghanistan, a collection of pictures taken over a four decade career. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Edwina Pitman.

Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood discusses his passion for painting, drawing and sculpture. In the year that marks his seventieth birthday, he tells Stig Abell how his relationship with art began.Veteran director James Ivory claimed this week he was struggling to get investors for his film Richard II, because financiers feared that no money could be made from films based on Shakespeare's plays. We ask film-maker Anne Beresford and Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance literature, if there is a problem adapting the Bard for the big screen. After a social-media purge and a lot of speculation, Taylor Swift has released the first single from her new album, Reputation. Kate Mossman gives her verdict on What You Made Me Do, a song that credits Right Said Fred for an interpolation of the melody from their 1991 hit I'm Too Sexy. Danish writer Peter Hoeg found fame with his second novel, Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow. He talks about his new novel, The Susan Effect, which, like his most famous book, focuses on a woman who risks everything to get to the truth. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Kate Bullivant.

Making TV comedy about of illness, with Peep Show writer Sam Bain, whose new series Ill Behaviour features a cancer sufferer refusing conventional treatment, and Alison Vernon Smith, producer of Bad Salsa, Radio 4's comedy drama about women who take up salsa dancing after their cancer treatment. Thomas Meehan was behind successful musicals including Annie, The Producers, and Hairspray but he's not the name you're likely to know because he wrote the book: the narrative glue that holds a musical together. Theatre critic Matt Wolf assesses his legacy and discusses his partnership with Mel Brooks. Ned Beauman on his latest novel Madness Is Better Than Defeat. Beauman is the author of four novels including Boxer, Beetle. He has been longlisted for the Man Booker prize, won a Somerset Maugham award, and in 2013 was named one of Granta's best British novelists under 40. This latest novel is inspired by the making of the films Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo, though its setting is the earlier Hollywood golden age of the 1930s. As Oscar-winning film-maker Michael Moore takes on Donald Trump in a new one man show Terms of My Surrender, Matt Wolf evaluates his attempt to "convert the unconverted" and whether the the stage is the best place to do it.Main Image: Ill Behaviour: Nadia (Lizzy Caplan), Charlie (Tom Riley), Joel (Chris Geere), Tess (Jessican Regan) Image Credit: BBC / Fudge Park Productions / Jon Hall.

Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow's new film is set during the five days of unrest that took place in Detroit in 1967. The drama is based on first hand recollections, police records and eye-witness accounts of the race-riots. Bigelow talks to Front Row about why these 50-year-old events feel as contemporary and urgent as ever. 75 years ago the English painter, war artist, designer, book illustrator and wood engraver Eric William Ravilious was killed aged 39 when the aircraft he was in was lost off the coast of Iceland. Many of his works are seen as capturing a sense of Englishness that existed between the wars. He also designed many popular pieces for Wedgwood including a commemorative mug for the abortive Coronation of Edward VIII and the Alphabet Mug of 1937. Art critic Richard Cork explains the significance of his work and the artist design movement he was part of.Famous for the wrong book. It's 170 years since Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre was published, 160 years since Flaubert published Madam Bovary and 50 since Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude but are they their writer's best book? Critics Kevin Jackson and Alex Clark show off their literary knowledge of the famous writers whose "other" books we may have never heard of - and certainly not read - but possibly should have done. The BBC has just opened a service broadcasting to the 75 million people of West Africa who speak Pidgin. Stig Abell talks to one of the reporters, Helen Oyibo, about the language and its literature, and hears Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, 'Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day' translated into Pidgin by Oyibo especially for Front Row.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May.

Peter Kosminsky talks to Stig about his new drama The State, which follows four British men and women who travel to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State. Kosminsky made his reputation with difficult drama documentaries and the storylines in The State are all based on documented events. As writer and director, he discusses the challenges of humanising these characters, and the decision to focus on portraying life inside IS.Did Vermeer really use a camera obscura to help him paint? Artist Jane Jelley explains how she recreated 17th century painting techniques to find out the truth behind the Dutch Master's luminous paintings.And in his new stage role Ben Whishaw plays Luke, your average Silicon Valley aerospace billionaire...until God tells him to 'go where there is violence', and he sets out to change the world. With Ben Whishaw and the director Ian Rickson, Stig delves into the ideas and issues in their new play, Against.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Ella-mai Robey.

In front of a live audience in the BBC's Big Blue Tent at the Edinburgh Festival, comedian Lucy Porter and comedy tutor Jojo Sutherland give John Wilson a lesson in stand-up - but can you really teach people to be funny?A one-woman show with 10 characters - Nilija Sun discusses her play Pike St, about the residents in the Lower East Side of Manhattan as they prepare for an imminent hurricane.Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed explains what his show Words and Music is really about - plus a performance from Soweto Gospel Choir from South Africa.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins.

Val McDermid presents a special edition from the Edinburgh International Books Festival.American author Paul Auster talks about his Man Booker longlisted novel 4 3 2 1, which offers four different versions of the central character's life. Denise Mina on her first true crime novel, The Long Drop, about one of Scotland's most notorious criminals, Peter Manuel. Glasgow Student Slam Poetry Champion Catherine Wilson performs a poem written specially for Front Row. Mike Heron from The Incredible String Band discusses the joint memoir he's written with the Scottish novelist Andrew Greig, You Know What You Could Be. Folk singer Sam Lee performs The Incredible String Band song, The Circle is Unbroken. Presenter: Val McDermid Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who has devoted much of his long and distinguished career to the revival of early music, discusses his latest project Monteverdi 450, an international tour of Claudio Monteverdi's three surviving operas in celebration of his 450th anniversary.Apphia Campbell's one-woman show, Woke, interweaves the story of two women, 42 years apart, who become involved in the struggle for civil rights. One, notorious Black Panther Assata Shakur, the other Ambrosia, a present day university student caught up in Black Lives Matter in Ferguson. Two critics - Gayle Anderson, comedy reviewer for the Herald, and Chiara Margiotta, deputy editor of Ed Fest Magazine - discuss their experiences of this year's Edinburgh Festivals.Inspired by recent neurobiological research and interviews with people living with dementia, Theatre Re's The Nature of Forgetting is a part-mime, part-theatre show which focuses on Tom, a 55-year-old man, embroiled in the tangled threads of his disappearing memories. Guillaume Pigé, artistic director of Theatre Re, talks about the music, movement and energy that he uses to tell the story.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Edwina Pitman.

Shappi Khorsandi is the first guest in a week of programmes from the Edinburgh Festival. On stage in front of a live audience in the BBC's Big Blue Tent, she discusses her new show Mistress and Misfit, about Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson's mistress, Lady Emma Hamilton.In Nassim, Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour sets out to teach the audience his native language Farsi in a show which features a different performer from the Festival each day. So how does he prepare when the deal is that performers have not even seen the script before stepping out in front of an audience?The former National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke, discusses her new poetry collection Zoology. As the Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe celebrate their 70th birthday this year, the International Festival's director Fergus Lenehan is joined by 90-year-old Dr Pamela Epps, who has attended every festival in the city since 1947.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald.