Front Row

The French musician Christine and the Queens discusses bringing ideas about gender fluidity to the mainstream with a confident new persona, eighties influences, and her second album, named simply Chris, and released in both English and French versions. Writer Anil Gupta and director Iqbal Khan discuss turning Molière’s 17th century French comedy Tartuffe - which turned its fire on the hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic hierarchy of the day - into a 21st century Brummie farce with a British Pakistani Muslim family in thrall to a local 'holy man'.Sarah Hall has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with her story Sudden Traveller. The writer discusses her piece about a young woman who’s preparing for her mother’s funeral. The story is broadcast on Radio 4 at 1530 tomorrow and the winner of the BBC NSSA will be announced on Front Row on 2 October.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Emma Wallace

Killing Eve is the next thing to come from the pen of Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It is a thriller, steeped in her stylistic black humour, about a psychopath, played by Jodie Comer, who's pursued by Sandra Oh as an unassuming detective. Audiences in America have loved it, and it's has been nominated for two Emmy Awards, but what will the UK audience make of it? Arts journalist Sophie Wilkinson joins Shahidha to give her verdict.The BBC National Short Story Award is in its 13th year and has a new partner, Cambridge University, along with First Story. Chair of Judges Stig Abell, alongside judge and previous winner KJ Orr, reveal this year's five shortlisted authors in line for the £15,000 prize, ahead of the announcement of the winner in a special edition of Front Row on 2 October. And the first of the shortlisted authors joins Shahidha in the studio.To coincide with the release of his new album, grime star Ghetts is exhibiting a series of artworks to complement each of the record's tracks. Having been at the heart of the grime movement since the very beginning, Ghetts discusses how it has changed as well as how the relationship with his young daughter has been such an inspiration.Presenter: Shahidha Bari Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Touching The Void. Memoir, documentary, now theatre performance - at the Bristol Old Vic. Written by David Greig , it's an adaptation of Joe Simpson's bestselling 1988 mountaineering memoir and the subsequent 2003 docu-drama detailing Simpson's disastrous 1985 attempt to make a first ascent of a mountain in the Andes. Theatre director Tom Morris talks to Kirsty about the challenges of transferring the story to the stage. And as the Bristol Old Vic prepares to re-open after a major refurbishment, he describes how the new design aims to mark the theatre's history and slave trade past and welcome in new audiences.Crazy Rich Asians is a box office hit in the US about a young Chinese-American woman who goes to a wedding in Singapore and encounters the fabulously wealthy Chinese family of her boyfriend. Its star Constance Wu talks to Kirsty about the issues it raises on the difference between Asian and American culture and the tricky question of stereotyping.Crazy Rich Asians is based on a best-selling book Kevin Kwan of the same name satirizing Singapore's super-rich. Depictions of the wealthy in novels is nothing new as literary critic Toby Lichtig explains as he gives is a potted history of rich-lit.As this year's Leeds International Piano Competition reaches the finals without a British finalist, concert pianist Murray McLachlan, Chair of the European Piano Teachers Association (UK) and Artistic Director of Chetham's International Summer School and Festival for Pianists, discusses whether British piano teaching is making the grade.

Hollywood legend Sir Michael Caine returns to the big screen in King of Thieves, the second cinematic adaptation of the infamous Hatton Garden burglary in 2015. The south London born actor looks back at his varied career, which he has seen him act alongside Sean Connery, Sylvester Stallone and even the Muppets and also become synonymous darker criminal roles, in films such as Get Carter, Harry Brown and the Italian Job.When Israel Public Radio recently broadcast part of Wagnar's Gotterdammerung or the Twilight of the Gods, it caused a furore leading the station issued an apology. This is because since 1938 there has been an understanding that, because for his anti-Semitism, Wagner's music is neither performed nor broadcast in Israel. Stig talks to Jonathan Livni, founder of Wagner in Israel, who is in favour of lifting the ban, and Yael Cherniavsky, the conductor and soprano, who used to run the offending radio network, who disagrees. Scotland's first design museum, the £80 million Victorian & Albert Dundee, opens this weekend on the city's waterfront. It will have a permanent collection which promises to tell the story of Scotland's design heritage. Art critic Moira Jeffrey has visited Dundee and lets us know if the museum lives up to its grand design.

The Irish writer Sally Rooney's second novel Normal People, the story of a relationship between two young people from very different backgrounds, has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and is winning ecstatic reviews. She talks about structure, being true to her characters, and the pleasure and pressure of praise.TV critic David Butcher, reviews Trust, a new drama investigating the true story of the kidnap of the grandson of one of America's wealthiest families, the Getty's. Donald Sutherland stars as oil magnate, John Paul Getty, who after the death of his son looks to his grandson to take over the family business. But after a perceived shame he brings to the family name Sutherland's Getty turns him away, leading to his grandson's eventual kidnap on the streets of Rome.London Fashion Week starts on Friday and Front Row takes a close look at how the catwalk uses music to its advantage, and the close and enduring relationship between music and fashion. John Wilson talks to Jeremy Healy, who puts music on the runway for John Galliano at Maison Margiela, and to Katie Baron, author of the book Fashion and Music.The publication in an Australian newspaper of a cartoon of Serena Williams in the final of the US Open has drawn criticism and protests that it's racist. Leading international caricaturist Tayo Fatunla considers the line cartoonists tread between caricature and offence.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May.

Nick Payne, the writer of new BBC One series Wanderlust starring Toni Collette and Steven Mackintosh, discusses adapting his play on modern sexual relationships into a sexually upfront series for mainstream TV.In 2015 the Grand Hall of Battersea Arts Centre in London was devastated by fire. It was rebuilt and last week reopened - with the show that was in the space when it was destroyed. The architect Steve Tompkins and artistic director David Jubb show Samira (who used to dance there in her youth) around, and explain how the fire was an opportunity as well as a disaster. As she embarks on a national tour, saxophonist YolanDa Brown discusses her love of reggae, jazz and soul, and performs live.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald.

BONUS EDITION: As part of the Inspire season, Front Row commissioned three artists to create works especially for the programme. Poet Alison Brackenbury was challenged to write a villanelle based on her great uncle, crime-writer Vaseem Khan would pen the first page of his new volume, and rapper and beatboxer Testament would produce a brand new track. This special edition of the Front Row podcast looks back over the five week challenge and reveals the final works.Presenters: Kirsty Lang, Morgan Quaintance, John Wilson and Stig Abell. Producer: Ben Mitchell

As Front Row's Inspire season draws to a close, three artists unveil the artworks they were commissioned to create, and discuss the inspiration behind them.Alison Brackenbury has written a poem based on her Great-Uncle; crime-writer Vaseem Khan, author of the Baby Ganesh Detective Agency novels, reads the first page of his new volume; and rapper and beatboxer Testament performs his new composition.And for the Front Row presenters' challenge, Stig Abell has written his first sonnet, Samira Ahmed has been taught to draw a comic-book character, and John Wilson has painted his first watercolour. Tonight it's Kirsty Lang's turn at the potter's wheel.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Award winning Doctor Foster writer, Mike Bartlett, discusses his new show Press alongside one of its stars, the Peaky Blinders actor Charlotte Riley. The programme centres around two competing papers, a broadsheet and a tabloid, both struggling to find their place in a changing world of print journalism.Award-winning poet, novelist, playwright, rapper and recording artist Kate Tempest on her new poetry collection Running Upon The Wires - an intimate look at the end of a relationship, the beginning of another, and what happens in between when the heart is pulled both ways at once.As part of our inspire season Front Row presenters have been taking up the creative challenge of having a go and tackling a new art. Today John Wilson joins the Wapping Group of Artists alongside the river banks of Walton-on-Thames to try his hand at a water colour.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.

To celebrate her 50th birthday, the composer Roxanna Panufnik discusses her new album Celestial Bird which showcases the variety of her work, from religious choral music to an adaptation of a poem by the Indian polymath Rabindranath Tagore, as well as two major new commissions, one of which - Songs of Darkness, Dreams of Light - will have its world premiere at the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday.Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, discusses his new illustrated book which is a response to seeing the photo of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on the beach in Turkey in September 2015.As part of Front Row's Inspire season we'll be concentrating on dreams, and how they have provided inspiration for writers and artists over the centuries. The writer Matthew Sweet considers the influence of dreams on films and literature, neuro-scientist Prof Anil Seth gives us a clinical approach, and the artist Liliane Tomasko discusses the power of dreams and how she depicts them in her work.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May.