Front Row

Journalist and author Hadley Freeman, and Art UK editor and art historian Lydia Figes, review Ticket to Paradise starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and the Winslow Homer exhibition at the National Gallery.And head judge Elizabeth Day joins Front Row for the announcement of the shortlist for the 2022 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University. The first two shortlisted authors will be talking about what inspired their stories.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Eliane Glaser

Genre-defying South African cellist Abel Selaocoe speaks to Samira and performs a piece from his new album Where Is Home (Hae Ke Kae), which will be launched at a performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. He is about to become Artist In Residence at London's Southbank Centre. His inventive and virtuosic compositions and performance style fuse Baroque repertoire with traditional African music, combining classical cello with body percussion and voice.A rich crop of recent books shows that art is being viewed from a new perspective. Michael Bird, author of This Is Tomorrow: Twentieth Century Britain And Its Artists, and Frances Spalding, who has written The Real And The Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars, join Front Row to talk about not the history of art, but art as history. The calls of curlews are memorable, mysterious, and musical. They have appeared in music and poetry over the ages, and they continue to fascinate artists. Simmerdim: Curlew Sounds is an unusual new album - two CDs, one of music inspired by curlews, the other a series of soundscapes capturing their calls, recorded in places where these threatened birds are still to be found. The musician Merlyn Driver, whose idea Simmerdim was, explains his compulsion to make the records. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Sarah Johnson

Sir Richard Eyre is one of the UK’s most distinguished and celebrated directors - equally at home in theatre, film, and television. At the age of 79, he has just made his debut as a playwright with his new play, The Snail House, which has just opened at Hampstead Theatre. He talks to Samira about his late literary blooming and what needs to happen for theatre audiences to return to their pre-pandemic levels. The name Sylvia Anderson was recently invoked by Dr. Lisa Cameron MP, during a debate on gender equality in the media in Westminster Hall. The late Sylvia Anderson was a pioneer in the male dominated world of television, co-creating Thunderbirds in the 1960s with her then husband Gerry. But her family say her name has often been omitted from credits and merchandise in the years since then. Samira speaks to Sylvia’s daughter Dee Anderson and Dame Heather Rabbatts, Chair of Time’s Up UK, who are campaigning for her legacy to be restored and to Barbara Broccoli, producer of the James Bond films, who remembers Sylvia as her mentor.The French film director Jean-Luc Godard, who spearheaded the revolutionary French New Wave of cinema, has died at the age of 91. The French President, Emmanuel Macron, has described him as “a national treasure, a man who had the vision of a genius." French film critic Agnes Poirier guides us through Godard’s long career, beginning with the classic, À bout de souffle (Breathless), and his influence on directors from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino.Producer: Kirsty McQuire

Eileen Cooper is a painter and printmaker who’s been quietly creating boldly coloured figurative images and ceramics since the 1970s. This year finally sees the first major review of her work which, in magic realist style, encompasses huge themes: sexuality, motherhood, life and death. The show is called Parallel Lines: Eileen Cooper And Leicester’s Art Collection, and places Cooper’s work next to that of LS Lowry, Pablo Picasso, and Paula Rego, among others. Eileen Cooper talks about her life, work and role as Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools – the first woman to hold the prestigious post. The Grand Opera House in Belfast is celebrating the return of Northern Ireland Opera to its stage, following a £12 million restoration of the historic building. The company has chosen La Traviata for its homecoming performance, with Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg in the lead role. The BBC’s Kathy Clugston went to the Grand Opera House to find out about their production of one of the world’s most popular operas. As Ireland introduces its ground-breaking new Basic Income For The Arts pilot, we speak to Angela Dorgan, Chair of the National Campaign For The Arts in Ireland, which has long campaigned for a basic income scheme.And poet Roger McGough joins us to shares his new poem written in tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.Presenter: Shahidha Bari Producer: Paul Waters

The trumpeter and musician Alison Balsom has performed with some of the world’s greatest orchestras. She talks about her latest album, Quiet City.Jack Hilton was a plasterer from Rochdale whose groundbreaking writing was praised by both WH Auden and George Orwell. His work fell out of print after the Second World War and he has been largely forgotten. Jack Chadwick, who is running a campaign to revive his works, explains why his works need to be revived. Cabaret performer Rhys Hollis, also known as Rhys’s Pieces, and opera singer Andrea Baker discuss their video piece OMOS showcasing Black Queer Scottish performance at Edinburgh’s Royal Scottish Academy. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Eliane Glaser

American singer songwriter Loudon Wainwright III performs live in the studio and talks about his decades-long career, his current UK tour and his latest album titled Lifetime Achievement.Tonight the six books on this year’s Booker Prize for Fiction shortlist will be announced. The literary critic Max Liu joins us to comment. One of these six shortlisted authors will be chosen as the overall winner on 17 October when the ceremony will be broadcast live on Front Row.English Literature has dropped out of the top ten A-level subjects in England for the first time. What does it reveal about the status of the subject and its importance in the creative industries? Samira hears from Vicky Bolton, head of English at Wales High school in Sheffield; Sam Cairns, co-director of The Cultural Learning Alliance; and Geoff Barton, a former English teacher and head teacher, now the general secretary of the teaching union, the Association of School and College Leaders. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Paul WatersImage: Loudon Wainwright III Photographer credit: Shervin Lainez

David Cronenberg’s new film Crimes of the Future is a science fiction body parts horror movie starring Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart and Léa Seydoux. In a time when pain no longer exists a couple are using organ removal surgery as performance art. Leila Latif reviews and gives a run down on the films being shown at this year’s Venice Film Festival, including The Whale and Banshees of Inisherin.Tom Chaplin came to fame as the lead singer of Keane. With the release of his third solo album Midpoint, he talks to Tom Sutcliffe and performs two songs - Gravitational, and Overshoot - live in the studio.We hear from one of the thirteen writers on the Booker Prize longlist, Sri Lankan Shehan Karunatilaka, who’s waiting to hear if he’ll also be on the shortlist announced tomorrow. His 2010 debut novel, Chinaman, was garlanded with awards, including the Commonwealth Prize. Will his second book, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, also be a winner? Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Nicki Paxman

Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power is a prequel and in keeping with the epic scale of Tolkein’s books and their film versions it doesn’t begin a two years before The Hobbit but two thousand. Sci-fi novelist Temi Oh and film critic Tim Robey review the Amazon Prime series. They also consider the merits of another millennia spanning work, George Miller’s film Three Thousand Years of Longing. It’s a radical departure for the director of the Mad Max films; an adaptation of a short story by A. S. Byatt staring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, who plays a djinn – a genie. So, it should be good…but is it?Samira Ahmed talks to Nick Drnaso, whose Sabrina was the first graphic novel to be selected for the Booker Prize longlist. In his new one, Acting Class, ten strangers come together in the class run by the mysterious John Smith, who is possibly a charlatan. His students, all very different, share one uniting need, for change.The lights went out on the final performances of this year’s Edinburgh Festivals on Monday. It’s being said that there were fewer people attending fewer shows and that prices, especially of accommodation, were prohibitive. And then the binnies went on strike and the elegant streets of Scotland’s capital were strewn with rubbish. So, Pauline McClean, BBC Scotland’s Arts Correspondent wonders, were the festivals successful? Does there need to be some change? And, marking Mikhail Gorbachev’s death, a poem from The Poetry of Perestroika, a pioneering anthology made possible by his reforms. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producers: Yasmin Allen and Julian May Production Co-ordinator: Lizzie HarrisImage: taken from Acting Class by Nick Drnaso, published by Granta

Joyce Carol Oates’s latest novel, Babysitter, is the story of a woman caught in an abusive relationship with her lover, set against the background of the hunt for a serial killer in 70s Detroit. Its dark themes are not untypical of the subject matter of much of Oates’s long list of successful books which have won her great critical acclaim over the years. Tom Sutcliffe talks to her about her work and her distinctive literary style.Following the first leg of a sold-out European tour, Riopy – the self-taught Franco-British pianist/composer with nearly half a billion streams to his name and an album which has been at the top of the US Billboard charts for nearly two years – is with us to discuss the release of his album [extended] Bliss.Jungle, the older, grittier sibling of drum and bass, has made a comeback on the club and festival circuit this summer. Reporter and DJ Milly Chowles went to meet Nia Archives, the young musician breathing new life into this 30 year old genre of electronic music. Milly traces the roots of jungle that run through Nia’s music to Milly’s own hometown of Bristol, with the help of DJ Dazee and producer Borai.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Harry Parker

Bestselling crime novelist Ann Cleeves joins Samira Ahmed to discuss the return of her no-nonsense Northumberland crime-fighter, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, in the Rising Tide.What gets books on the shelves of some of our biggest chain retailers? Tonight Front Row lifts the lid on the behind-the-scenes payments that influence what you get to see and buy.Composer James B.Wilson gives an insight into his writing process, ahead of the premiere of a new piece he's written for the last night of the Proms.Presenter: Samira AhmedProducer: Nicki PaxmanImage: Novelist Ann Cleeves Photographer credit: Marie Fitzgerald