Front Row

Eurovision decided to ban Russian participation this year on the grounds that it might bring the contest into disrepute, following the invasion of Ukraine. Dean Vuletic, author of Postwar Europe and The Eurovision Song Contest, spoke to Tom Sutcliffe, ahead of tonight's first semi-final in Turin.The hashtag #BookTok has been viewed on TikTok 52.6 billion times and the platform's viral videos made by booklovers have reshaped the young adult bestseller lists. Joining Tom to discuss the social media trends and how they’re influencing the mainstream industry are the co-founder of @CultofBooks Kouthar Hagi AKA Coco and Dan Conway, incoming CEO of the Publishers Association.Last month the distinguished art critic Waldemar Januszczak visited Ukraine to see what was happening to the country’s art collections, as the war continues. He joins Front Row to discuss his new documentary, My Ukrainian Journey.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Sarah JohnsonPhoto: Kalush Orchestra, Ukraine's entrant for the Eurovision Song Contest 2022

Clio Barnard talks to Samira Ahmed about directing the television adaptation of Sarah Perry’s bestselling novel The Essex Serpent. It stars Claire Danes as Cora Seaborne, a naturalist who moves to Essex to investigate reports of a giant serpent living in the marshes. Cora thinks it might be a living fossil. She meets Will Ransome, the local vicar, played by Tom Hiddleston, is surprised by his openness to scientific ideas, and they form a bond. But a young girl dies and the locals believe Cora is drawing the serpent to them. Trinidadian author Lisa Allen-Agostini’s first novel for adults, The Bread The Devil Knead, has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. A dark story domestic violence but laced with humour Lisa talks about writing it in her native Trinidadian dialect.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May

Singer songwriter PJ Harvey tells us about Orlam, her narrative poem set in a magic realist version of the West Country - a rural, and at times gothic, coming-of-age story and the first full-length book written in the Dorset dialect for many decades.Radical Landscapes is the name of a new exhibition exploring human connections with the landscape, at Tate Liverpool. The Terror-Infamy is a drama on BBC2 depicting the internment camps in the US where those of Japanese heritage were kept after Pearl Harbour - and a strange spirit is abroad. Writers and critics Tahmima Anam and Laura Robertson join Front Row to review both.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Kirsty McQuirePJ Harvey picture credit: Steve Gullick

This year’s Brighton Festival has two guest directors for the first time in its history. One of them, Tristan Sharps, artistic director of Brighton based theatre company dreamthinkspeak, joins Elle to discuss the literary inspiration behind his immersive production, Unchain Me, and his collaboration with fellow guest director, Syrian architect Marwa Al-Sabouni. Deesha Philyaw’s debut collection of short stories - The Secret Lives of Church Ladies - arrives in the UK garlanded with prizes including the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Deesha joins Front Row to discuss turning the lives of the black women she grew up with into art. Philippa Goymer explores the various attractions of County Durham that it hopes will earn it the title of City of Culture.Photo: Deesha Philyaw Photo credit: Vanessa German

Nathaniel Price discusses his drama First Touch, opening at the Nottingham Playhouse, about an aspiring young footballer growing up in Nottingham in the 1970s. Inspired by real life events, it explores the ways predatory abusers exploit positions of power within a community, in this case how the actions of a paedophile football coach almost go undiscovered because of the control he exercises in the football careers of his victims.In the wake of the campaign, Stop AI stealing the show, launched by Equity in response to the rise of the use of Artificial Intelligence in the entertainment industry, Front Row asked Paul Fleming, General Secretary of Equity, Dr David Leslie, Director of Ethics and Responsible Innovation at the Alan Turing Institute, and Dr Mathilde Pavis, senior law lecturer at Exeter University, to discuss the questions raised by the use of AI to enhance, extend, and replace human actors.BAFTA nominated film composer Alex Heffes has scored films including The Hope Gap, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and Touching the Void. Now he’s releasing a solo piano recording, Sudden Light, reinterpreting his cinematic orchestral scores after an accident that almost put an end to his piano-playing.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Simon Richardson

Huw Stephens, familiar to listeners to Radio Cymru and Radio Wales presents a multilingual, multicultural Bank Holiday edition of Front Row from Cardiff. Caryl Lewis is a mighty presence in Welsh literature, author of more than 25 books. Her novel Martha, Jac a Sianco is a modern classic, taught at A Level. She wrote the screenplay for the film – and won 6 Welsh Baftas. She wrote for the television series Y Gwyll - Hinterland in English - inventing Cymru Noir, so noir it was shown on Danish television. She was also the main writer of Hidden, screened in 60 countries. Until now all her work has been in Welsh but she wrote her new novel, Drift, in English. Nefyn lives on the Welsh coast, near a military base. She gathers what the tide carries in and her world changes when she finds Hamza, a Syrian cartographer, washed up. Caryl tells Huw about her modern and ancient story, and why she chose to write it in English.In 2009 the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger declared Cornish extinct. But musician Gwenno Saunders was alive then, and she grew up speaking it. Most of the songs on her new album, Tresor, are in Cornish - the others in Welsh. Gwenno explains why, and performs two songs, one in each language.Choreographers Anthony and Kel Matsena were born in Zimbabwe, in a culture where everyone dances. They moved to Swansea as boys and were nurtured by the people there, and Wales as a whole. They take a break from rehearsing their new work, Shades of Blue, which will premier at Sadler's Wells, to talk about this and Codi, a piece for the National Dance Company Wales that is inspired by Welsh mining communities, and about Brothers in Dance, a BBC documentary film charting their journey.Presenter: Huw Stephens Producers: Nicki Paxman and Julian May

Observer theatre critic Susannah Clapp and broadcaster and Editor of the Wales Art Review Gary Raymond review The Corn is Green at the National Theatre and Tate Britain's Walter Sickert exhibition. And Samira talks to actor actor Cherylee Houston, best known as Coronation Street’s Izzy Armstrong, who is also co-founder of the The TripleC organisation, which has just won BAFTA’s TV Special Craft award, talks about working to improve access and inclusion for disabled artists in the screen industries. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Harry Parker

Dr Matthias Wivel, co-curator of the Raphael exhibition at the National Gallery, discusses the life and death of the Renaissance painter and how he shaped the history of western art. The shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction is announced today. Literary critic Alex Clark talks about the six books in contention for the prize, and we’ll be hearing from each of the authors before the winner is announced on June 15th. Belarusian born poet Valzhyna Mort’s third collection, Music for the Dead and Resurrected, was ten years in the making and has only just been published in her home country. She joins Tom to discuss how she blends music and metaphor to confront state sponsored violence and censorship.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Sarah JohnsonImage: Raphael's The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and Child Saint (‘The Terranuova Madonna’), about 1505 Copyright: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie Photo: Jörg P. Anders

Emerging playwright Tim Foley is in the distinctive position of having won a prize for every play of his that has been staged. He joins Front Row to discuss his third play, Electric Rosary – a sci-fi exploration of religion and science in the company of a group of nuns and a robot - which has just opened at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.Based on the graphic novel by Alice Oseman, Heartstopper is the new Netflix LGBTQ+ drama set in a British high school about teen friendship and young romance. Jack Remmington is in the studio to review.Music critic and author Jessica Duchen picks out some of the highlights in the Proms 2022 season and gives us her thoughts on the programme.Viola player Lawrence Power performs live.

The Burnt City is the biggest production to date from the pioneering immersive theatre company Punchdrunk. As the company takes up residence in the former Royal Arsenal buildings of Woolwich, their first permanent space, they draw on the Greek tragedies of Agamemnon and Hecuba to reinterpret the Trojan war as a dystopian future noir. The French comedy drama, Call My Agent, was one of the breakout hits of lockdown. It has spawned a Turkish version, an Indian version, and now an English version called Ten Percent. John Morton, the creator of BBC mockumentaries Twenty Twelve and W1A, joins Front Row to discuss the challenge of recreating the Parisian series in London.Fresh from a sold-out UK tour this month, singer songwriter Jack Savoretti is live in the studio to perform his new single Dancing Through The Rain. The track is the second to be taken from his forthcoming release Europiana Encore, a special extended edition of his 2021 chart topping album, Europiana.Presenter: Shahidha Bari Producer: Jerome Weatherald Photo: Performers Yilin Kong and Steven James Apicello in Punchdrunk's production The Burnt City Photographer credit: Julian Abrams