Front Row

The Salisbury Poisonings, a new BBC One three-part drama, focuses on the 2018 Novichok poisonings, the public health response, and the heroism of the community. Writer Declan Lawn describes how his years as an investigative reporter for Panorama primed him to create this drama based on real events, and the resonance of the story with the government's response to the pandemic.Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, Front Row’s Lockdown Artist in Residence, has been entertaining us each week with a live performance from the empty Harpa concert hall in Reykjavík. For his eleventh and final performance Víkingur plays Debussy’s The Snow is Dancing from the Children’s Corner. The historian Tom Holland and film critic Hanna Flint give their verdicts on Pilgrims, the latest novel by Matthew Kneale, recounting the journey of a disparate bunch who set off for Rome in 1289. His earlier book English Passengers won the Whitbread Book of the Year. They also watch Banana Split, a high school movie with a difference, starring and co-written by Hannah Marks. It foregrounds the friendship of two teenage girls who’ve gone out with the same boy.We announce the winner of the 2020 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.Presenter Tom Sutcliffe Producer Jerome Weatherald Studio Manager Duncan Hannant

It’s as the clever but put-upon Will Mackenzie in The Inbetweeners or the elder son Adam in Friday Night Dinner that Simon Bird has come to public attention but now the star of these successful sitcoms has stepped behind the cameras to direct his first feature film. Simon joins Front Row to discuss Days of the Bagnold Summer.The death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minnesota Police has led to worldwide protests and calls for the end of systemic racism. What part can white artists and writers play to illuminate a subject that so many white people find difficult to understand and address? Playwright and performer Professor Eliza Bent, and writer and author Professor Jess Row discuss the subject of Whiteness and how it obscures racism.Musicians have been deeply affected by the loss of concerts, shows, and tours but an overlooked area has been Artist-In-Residencies programmes which many of our national music institutions offer to musicians for their career development. Ruth Patterson, lead singer of Newcastle-based folk-rock band Holy Moly & The Crackers, was an Artist-In-Residence at Sage Gateshead this year to enable her to develop as a solo performer. She joins Front Row to discuss her debut single as a singer-songwriter, performing as a musician in wheelchair, and she’ll be singing live on the show.As the lockdown eases for some next week, those heading into Manchester city centre will see posters featuring a new poem by Tony Walsh, aka Longfella, called The Sum of Us. Tony came to public attention with the poem, This Is The Place, that he performed in the city in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing. He joins Front Row to talk about the new work and perform an extract from it.Presenter: Katie Popperwell Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Robert Lindsay on his first acting job fifty years ago at the Nortcott Theatre in Devon, in a play which has contemporary resonance: Don Taylor's historical drama The Roses of Eyam, about the village that voluntarily put itself into lockdown during the Great Plague that swept Britain in the mid 17th Century. Director General Tony Hall discusses the BBC’s renewed commitment to the arts with its Culture in Quarantine initiative, and the serious situation currently facing the arts in the this country.How to write a new musical? In the second of a series going behind the scenes in the creation of a musical about the climate crisis called House Fire, Edwina Pitman talks to writer / director Poppy Burton Morgan and composer Ben Toth. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May

Spike Lee’s new film Da 5 Bloods follows four African-American Vietnam veterans who served together in battle, who return to the country and reunite to locate their fallen squad leader. The writer and director discusses the Netflix film and how resonant many of its issues are particularly now, in the week of its release.Dr Daisy Fancourt is leading the UK’s biggest study looking at the impact the coronavirus crisis has had on our mental health. In recent weeks the team has been looking at the effect of participating in arts and crafts on our wellbeing during this turbulent time. She explains the findings. Hope Mirrlees' Paris – A Poem is a modernist masterpiece that is little known today. It was published in 1920, two years before TS Eliot’s The Waste Land - which might well have been influenced by it. A century later Paris - A Poem has been published again. Neil Gaiman, a big fan, and Sandeep Parma, who is working on a biography of Mirrlees, reveal the importance of this lost poem, illustrated by extracts read by Charlotte Rampling and Lambert Wilson.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Dymphna Flynn Studio Manager: John Boland

Michaela Coel, the double-BAFTA winning actor/writer/director of the TV series Chewing Gum, discusses her new show I May Destroy You, a 12-parter telling a story about one young woman’s date rape and her attempt to piece together what happened to her. Yesterday in Bristol the statue of Edward Colston, who made his fortune from slavery, was noosed, pulled from its plinth, dragged and rolled through the streets of Bristol and dumped in the harbour. We hear a personal account from local artist and journalist Jasmine Ketibuah-Foley who was there. Jasmine reflects on the event and its meaning and writer Ekow Eshun, who is chair of the committee that commissions the art that goes on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, further considers the cultural significance of the toppling of the statue, and what should now happen to the remains.Today the shortlist for the UK and Ireland’s only awards to shine a light on funny writing by women - The Comedy Women in Print Prize – has been announced. It’s the award’s second year and the shortlisted stories demonstrate the unique way humour can tackle hard-hitting subjects such as mental health, addiction and gender discrimination. Kirsty is joined by one of the panel of judges, comedian Lolly Adefope.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Simon Richardson Studio Manager Matilda MacariMain image: Michaela Coel as Arabella in BBC1's I May Destroy You series Image credit: BBC/Various Artist Ltd and FALKNA Productions /Natalie Seery

Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson continues his weekly live performances from the empty Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, as Front Row’s Lockdown Artist in Residence. Tonight Víkingur plays his own transcription of J.S Bach’s cantata Widerstehe doch der Sünde, BWV 54. David Greig talks about his new play Adventures With The Painted People - a first century romcom between a Pict and a Roman - which was to have opened Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s summer season, and has now been adapted for Radio 3, as part of the BBC's Culture in Quarantine project.For our Friday review, we watch El Presidente- a new Amazon Prime comedy drama about the FIFA corruption scandal, scripted by Birdman writer Armando Bó. And Lily King’s novel Writers and Lovers comes with accolades from Elizabeth Strout and Tessa Hadley. What will critics Carl Anka and Alex Clark make of its consideration of grief, love, writing... and waitressing?Following the death of George Floyd there’s been a dramatic increase in sales of books which help explain structural racism. Knights Of - a small publisher specialising in titles tackling prejudice - was facing financial crisis due to the Coronavirus, but now a crowdfunding appeal to help publishers like them has smashed its £100 000 target. Knights Of’s co-founder, Aimee Felone, on publishing during the pandemic and the Inclusive Indies fundraising campaign.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser

Director Andrew Patterson joins us to talk about new movie The Vast of Night, the story of a small New Mexico town disturbed by lights in the sky and unidentified radio signals which is a loving homage to the sci-fi TV of the 1950s. The low budget, high concept film, which is Patterson’s directorial debut, is available on Amazon Prime.Writers Timberlake Wertenbaker and Winsome Pinnock talk about how white and black writers engage with race, and the importance and responsibility of white writers to talk about race and racism. Mark Damazer is the newly announced Chair of the Booker Prize Foundation which oversees the management of the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize, for fiction in translation. After the Booker judges’ controversial decision in 2019 to split the main award between two authors, Bernadine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, he joins us to talk about the Foundation’s plans for the year ahead.It’s the 31st anniversary today of the massacre of thousands of protestors in Tiananmen Square. Writers, musicians and writers, such as Bei Dao, Duo Duo and singer Cui Jian, were involved in the movement for Democracy in China, and Front Row briefly reflects on their role. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May Studio Manager: Tim Heffer

Michael Sheen and David Tennant play themselves in Staged, a new BBC One series of six 15-minute Zoom dramas, in which they play two furloughed actors in lockdown. Comedian and writer Viv Groskop reviews. The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, has released a new online portal to facilitate conversations about race and racism in America. Beverly Morgan-Welch, Director of External Affairs at the Museum, discusses the project, Talking About Race.The poets Alemu Tebeje and Chris Beckett, the editors and translators of Songs We Learn from Trees, discuss the very first anthology of Ethiopian poetry to be published in English. With poems written in Amharic over the past two centuries it reveals a rich and various and witty tradition - of boasts, war cries, poems about wealth, famine, religion, politics and love. Main image: David Tennant in Staged Image credit: BBC/GCB Films/Infinity Hill Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald Studio Manager Tim Heffer

As public protests continue nationally and internationally, award-winning American artist Carrie Mae Weems - whose work explores race, identity, and power - joins Front Row to discuss the role of art in response to tragedies such as the death of George Floyd.Liz Lochhead, the former Makar, or National Poet of Scotland, performs a new poem written during the lockdown, called The Spaces Between. How will museums reflect the current crisis in the future? What will they have on display and in their archives to record the way we’re living now? We find out what the Wellcome Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum are collecting. And we conclude our series of specially commissioned introductions to some of the books on the GCSE English literature syllabus with novelist and games writer Naomi Alderman, whose feminist sci fi novel The Power won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in 2017. So it’s appropriate that tonight she’ll be talking about about HG Wells’ trailblazing science fiction classic The War of the Worlds.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Simon Richardson

Sitting In Limbo is a new BBC drama telling the story of one man’s entanglement with the Windrush scandal where legal migrants, some of whom had lived here for decades, were denied legal rights, threatened with deportation and some were wrongly deported. The drama tells the story of Anthony Bryan who came to the UK from Jamaica with his mother at the age of 8. Gaylene Gould reviews.Joanna Briscoe made her name with Mothers and Other Lovers and Sleep With Me which was adapted by Andrew Davies for ITV. Her new novel is Seduction and is the story of an artist who is hounded by her estranged mother, has a difficult relationship with her own teenage daughter and goes into therapy – falling madly in love with her female therapist. The death of the artist Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, known as Christo has been announced. Working with his wife Jeanne-Claude, the pair were known for their monumental public works which involved wrapping architectural creation such as the Reichstag - the German Parliament in Berlin, the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, and New York’s Central Park. Critic Louisa Buck discusses his work.The Uncertain Kingdom project is an anthology of twenty new short films by twenty directors reflecting contemporary Britain. Kirsty talks to producer Georgia Goggin and director David Proud, whose film Verisimilitude is about a disabled actress who advises an obnoxious star on how to perform with a disability for his latest role. Main image: Patrick Robinson in Sitting in Limbo Image credit: BBC/Left Bank PicturesPresenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Hannah Robins