Front Row

Grime has been on an epic journey from subculture to explosive phenomenon. John speaks to presenter DJ Target, writer of Grime Kids, and to music journalist Dan Hancox, writer of Inner City Pressure. They discuss Grime as music of protest and how it evolves in a rapidly shifting landscape. Agnès Varda on her life as a legendary film-maker of the Nouvelle Vague, and her work as an artist as her fir...

Torchwood and Broadchurch star Eve Myles returns to our screens in the Welsh-noir series Keeping Faith. The drama centres around a working mother, Faith Howells, as she deals with the personal and professional fallout of her husband's mysterious disappearance. Originally broadcast in Welsh on S4C, an English language version is now being shown on BBC One after breaking viewing records on BBC Wales...

Theatre criticism has been in the dock recently after a reviewer was publicly reproached for mentioning an actor's weight. Critics Sarah Crompton and Quentin Letts debate whether reviewers should feel free to assess an actor's body as well as their performance. Olly Alexander from Years and Years discusses the band's new album, Palo Santo, which combines a sci-fi setting with a visceral account of...

Holly Hunter talks about her four-decade career in Hollywood, including her Oscar winning performance in The Piano, her role as a TV journalist in Broadcast News, and returning to voice Elastigirl in the blockbuster animation, Incredibles 2. The National Theatre of Wales is marking the 70th anniversary of the NHS with a season of new plays performed across Wales. Samira talks to Peter Cox, writer...

The acclaimed composer and conductor, Oliver Knussen, has died aged 66. He began composing at just six years-old and as well as continuing to write music, went on to conduct around the world and in 1994 he was made a CBE. He was perhaps best known for the operatic adaptation of the children's classic Where the Wild Things Are. Mark Anthony Turnage and Roger Wright pay tribute. A reimagining of the...

Live from Dublin, Seamus Heaney's wife and daughter, Marie and Catherine Heaney, talk to the writer Sinéad Gleeson about 100 Poems, a selection of the poet's work chosen by his family. The book runs the gamut of Heaney's writing life, yet is a personal collection, with poems of love for his wife, children and grandchildren, his parents and relatives. A favourite of Seamus Heaney's poems is The Rai...

Rob Brydon, Daniel Mays and Adeel Akhtar were among the actors spending long hours in swimming pools last summer rehearsing for, and shooting, the new British film Swimming With Men, based on a true story about a group of male synchronised swimmers competing in the world championships. Stig Abell reports from the set at Basildon swimming pool, which was masquerading as Milan, the venue for the fin...

Actor Emily Mortimer on a new film adaption of Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop, about a widow who decides to open a bookshop selling subversive literature in a small seaside town in 1950s England. She also tells Samira about her role in the upcoming Mary Poppins sequel. The 50th year of the Man Booker Prize is celebrated this weekend with a festival at London's South Bank. Literary Director Gab...

When Haifaa Al Mansour released Wadja in 2012 she became Saudi Arabia's first female director of a feature film. She has now directed her first English-language film - a biopic about Mary Shelley. Al Mansour talks why she wanted to make a film set in 19th-century England about the teenage creator of Frankenstein and how much film-making has changed in Saudi Arabia since her debut film six years ag...

Maxine Peake discusses her new stage play, Queens of the Coal Age, which dramatizes the incident in 1993 when, armed with wet wipes and nicotine gum, Anne Scargill led a group of women to occupy Parkside Colliery in protest against pit closures. The acclaimed dancer and choreographer, Gillian Lynne, has died aged 92. Best known for Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, she worked on more than 60 show...

Winner of five Tony Awards, Fun Home is a ground-breaking new musical about a lesbian girl coming out, based on Alison Bechdel's autobiographical graphic novel. Briony Hanson reviews the UK premiere at London's Young Vic theatre. Remarkably, Fun Home is the first Broadway musical with a lesbian protagonist. But are queer women underrepresented in drama in general? Briony is joined by theatre direc...

A Japanese-themed edition of Front Row as the Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose scores include Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and The Last Emperor, talks to Stig about being inspired by nature, and how he came back from treatment for throat cancer to write the music for The Revenant. The editor of The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, Jay Rubin, tells how he curated the selection a...

Bartlett Sher's adaption of The King and I won four Tony Awards during its run on Broadway and is transferring to London this month. The American director was highly praised for his updating of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which is set in 19th century Siam but has been criticised for sexism and orientalism. Bartlett Sher discusses taking on this classic musical for a modern-day audience. W...

Michael Jackson as a visual icon is the subject of a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery which brings together artists inspired by the global star. Art critic Ekow Eshun joins Todd Gray - Michael Jackson's personal photographer at the time of Off The Wall and Thriller - to discuss the star's relationship with his own image. An American podcast, which explores the way humans use music,...

Forty years after forming, two of the original members of the iconic New Romantic band Duran Duran, Roger and John Taylor, talk about their time in the music industry and reveal what inspires them to keep making music together. The annual Bradford Literature Festival is a relatively new addition to Britain's literary landscape, but its junior status hasn't stopped it getting coups such as this yea...

Australian writer Tim Winton discusses The Shepherd's Hut, his first novel in five years. Set in the parched landscape of his native Western Australia, the young protagonist Jaxie attempts to flee from his abusive father on a journey that takes him to some dark and challenging places. England: Poems from a School is a anthology of poems that has just been published. They were written by school chi...

James Corden, who is bringing his Late Late Show to London, talks to John Wilson about the challenges of presenting a live daily topical show, how he'd like to act again on stage, and what Alan Bennett thought of Gavin and Stacey. As part of Radio 4's Four Seasons, Raymond Antrobus reads his poem to mark the summer solstice and discusses his new collection inspired by his experience of living with...

The American photographer and former model Lee Miller had a leading role in championing Surrealism in Britain in the 1930s, which is the focus of a new exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield. The show's curator Lauren Barnes, and Lee Miller's son Antony Penrose, consider her fascination for Surrealism and the artists involved, including Man Ray, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. Singer Kate Nash discusse...

Caitlin Moran talks about writing her second novel, a characteristically candid and comic account of a young woman's misadventures in 1990s London at the height of Britpop. How to Be Famous, the follow up to Moran's 2014 debut How to Build a Girl, centres around an instance of revenge porn and its protagonist Dolly's novel means of fighting back. Superstars Beyoncé and Jay-Z, now billed collective...

Snatches is a series of eight monologues celebrating the lives of women over the past 100 years, to be broadcast on BBC Four. The director, Vicky Featherstone, tells Kirsty Lang about her ambition for the project and we hear from writer Theresa Ikoko in whose episode a woman celebrates her 100th birthday as, outside her window, a revolution ignites. Stuart Robertson, Director of the Charles Rennie...

The V&A's latest exhibition includes 13 artworks by the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, but far more of her colourful skirts, blouses and pieces of jewellery because Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up concentrates on Kahlo's greatest creation - the artist herself. Design critic Corinne Julius considers what it reveals about the famous modern Latin American artist and our attitude to her. When we thi...

Ocean's 8 is the latest in the Ocean's heist movie franchise - but this time with an all-female gang starring Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett. Does the twist work? Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews. As the World Cup kicks off the team strips are attracting as much attention as the scores: the new Nigeria home kit sold out minutes after its release. Simon Doonan, fashion commentator and soccer obsessiv...

After discovering that he was almost exactly 150 years younger than Charles Dickens, comedian Eddie Izzard set himself the task of reading all of Dickens' works aloud. The first to be turned into an audiobook is Great Expectations. The stand-up discusses his love of Dickens and the unique challenges that come with reading the author's work. Guitarist and singer Wilko Johnson is about to release Bl...

Timothy Spall discusses his new film Stanley, A Man of Variety, in which he plays every character on screen. It follows Stanley, the only inmate in a failing insane asylum, as he wrestles with the voices in his head which take the form of classic comedy stars such as George Formby and Noël Coward. 30 years ago today, a concert to celebrate the 70th birthday of Nelson Mandela was staged at London's...

Pieter-Dirk Uys, a leading satirist in South Africa, has spent his career poking fun at politicians. In a new show, The Echo of a Noise, he looks back at his life. As audience members, how does our relationship with the arts change as we age and in what way is that represented by the industry? Journalist and presenter Joan Bakewell and former Chairman of the Arts Council Christopher Frayling discu...