Front Row

This year Sir Lenny Henry marks his 60th birthday with a special television programme with Sir Trevor McDonald. As well as performing some new sketches, he talks about bunking off school to appear in the TV talent show New Faces and how he fell in love with Shakespeare. He joins Stig to discuss a career that has spanned over four decades. In the US TV drama series Instinct, Alan Cumming stars as Dr Dylan Reinhart, writer, academic and former CIA operative, drawn into a murder investigation when a serial killer copies one of his books. We review the show, which is based on the novel Murder Games by James Patterson, claiming the first gay male lead in a police procedural television show.For centuries in the western world, religion was the great driving force for artists, musicians and writers. Janina Ramirez, Laura-Jane Foley and A N Wilson discuss the nature of divine inspiration and whether it still holds sway in an increasingly secular society.Presenter Stig Abell Producer Harry Parker.

How people with dwarfism have been represented in art and culture, from Ancient Egypt to Velasquez to Game of Thrones. Kirsty is joined by Tom Shakespeare, Professor of Disability Research at East Anglia University and Richard Butchins, who has made the BBC Four film Dwarfs in Art: A New Perspective. Scottish artist Barbara Rae has travelled to the Arctic in the footsteps of the Victorian explorer John Rae. She discusses the resulting artworks currently on show in Edinburgh and the challenges of working in the extreme cold.As another film about Winnie-the-Pooh is released, this time starring Ewan McGregor as Christopher Robin, film critic Kate Muir and children's author Meg Rosoff discuss our fascination with the world of A.A Milne.Producer: Timothy Prosser Presenter: Kirsty Lang.

Aretha Franklin, the "Queen of Soul" known for hits like Respect, Natural Woman and Say a Little Prayer, has died in Detroit at the age of 76. Broadcaster Paul Gambaccini and music critic Kevin Le Gendre assess her life and work. Actor David Suchet, discusses taking on the role of a 90 year-old furniture dealer in a revival of Arthur Miller's The Price at the Theatre Royal, Bath. It's 50 years since Miller's play was first staged in Broadway, but it also almost 50 years since David Suchet began his career on the British stage. The actor, who became a household name for his role as Hercule Poirot, explains why he starts with his character's voice and why he often plays outsiders. Singer and composer Laura Mvula talks about her new choral work, Love Like a Lion, commissioned for the BBC proms and performed by the BBC Singers, on which she has collaborated with the novelist and poet Ben Okri. Laura and Ben talk about their working relationship and Laura explains what it is like straddling the worlds of soul, pop, and classical music.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hilary Dunn.

Queen guitarist Brian May fell in love with 3D photography as a child and has since gone on to establish his own publishing company devoted to sharing stereoscopic work from the Victorian era to the present day. May's latest publication is a book by Professor Roger Taylor about the Scottish photography pioneer George Washington Wilson. May and Taylor discuss why Wilson's 3D photographs of Scottish landscapes and street scenes remain as captivating today as they were during the 3D boom of the 1850s and 60s.As the NHS celebrates its 70th anniversary, three doctors are performing their own stand up shows on the Festival fringe. Adam Kay, Dr Kevin Jones and Kwame Asante talk to Kirsty about using their working lives as material.Star of The Mash Report and Austentatious, Rachel Parris tells us what makes a winning comedy song.And Scottish musician Mairi Campbell shares a lesser-known version of Auld Lang Syne.Presenter : Kirsty Lang Producer : Simon Richardson.

The drag girl band Denim was Cambridge University's first drag troupe when they formed in 2010. Now, they're back in Edinburgh and for Front Row perform a song from their Reunion Tour and discuss how their drag comes with a political and uplifting message.Author Maggie O'Farrell talks about the art of writing life stories as her own memoir I Am, I Am, I Am tops the bestseller charts, structured around 17 moments in her life when death came terrifyingly close.Two new plays, Angry Alan and User Not Found, focus on online identities - with Angry Alan already winning a Fringe First prize. Writer Penelope Skinner and creator Terry O'Donovan talk to Kirsty about dramatizing online experiences and legacies.Presenter : Kirsty Lang Producer : Jerome Weatherald.

Rosie Jones, a stand-up comedian whose material plays on her experience of living with Cerebral Palsy, discusses defying expectations - both onstage and off. Her one woman show is Fifteen Minutes.Janeane Garofalo is an American actress, comedian, and writer. She began her career as a stand-up comedian and became a cast member on The Ben Stiller Show, The Larry Sanders Show, and Saturday Night Live, and has appeared in more than 50 films. She discusses her Edinburgh show, Put A Pin in That.Jenni Fagan reads from her latest collection of poetry, There's a Witch in the Word Machine ahead of her appearance at the Edinburgh International Books Festival. Plus, we get under the skin of the Festival Fringe with two talent scouts, asking is Edinburgh still the place to make your name as a comedian?Presenter : Viv Groskop Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

The identity of the 'dark lady' of the Shakespeare's sonnets has mystified academics for years. As the Globe stage a new play about Emilia Bassano, one of the main candidates, Shakespearean academics Germaine Greer and Will Tosh consider how likely it is that Emilia is the dark lady and what we know about the real Emilia Bassano- a writer herself. Denzel Washington discusses starring in his first ever sequel, The Equalizer 2. He returns as the mysterious and elusive Robert McCall, who delivers vigilante style justice for those people who can't do so for themselves, using any means necessary.As part of our Inspire season, poet Imtiaz Dharker explains why walking through the city streets in the early hours gives her inspiration.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hilary Dunn.

Disenchantment, Netflix's new animated series set in a fantastical medieval world from The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening is released this week. TV critic Andrew Collins and comedy writer Natasha Hodgson discuss whether the fantasy series has brought some Simpsons' magic to Netflix. Alan Garner's debut novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, is regarded as one of the great 20th century works of children's literature. It was inspired by the Cheshire landscape he grew up in, like many of his other novels like The Owl Service. His new memoir, Where Shall We Run To?, is a series of recollections of his wartime childhood but it's far from nostalgic. The Oscars have just announced the introduction of a new award category for outstanding achievement in popular film, making superhero films like Black Panther more likely to win an Oscar. Film critic Anna Smith comes into talk about the repercussions.Plus author and creative expert Dave Birss gives us his tips and tricks on how to improve our creativity.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Kate Bullivant.

Sharks have long held a prominent place in mythology, the imagination and even religion for centuries. As The Meg, a thriller about a 75-foot-long prehistoric shark, hits cinema screens nature writer Philip Hoare and film critic Isabel Stevens discuss the ways in which sharks have been represented in the arts. How much is the cultural representation of these 400 million year old mysterious creatures of the deep a reflection of our own human fantasies and anxieties?This year the distinguished composer Thea Musgrave celebrated her 90th birthday. The event is being marked with a series of special performances including Turbulent Landscapes, her sequence of movements inspired by the land and seascapes of JMW Turner, at the Edinburgh Festival. She talks to Front Row about her career: her work, her teachers, her inspirations and why she puts drama at the heart of her work.Award winning mentalist and illusionist Derren Brown reveals what it is that inspires his work on stage and screen and the art he creates in his spare time as both a painter and street photographer.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins.

The mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly is an opera star, singing the big roles at La Scala, The Met, Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera House. Her latest project is much more modest yet very ambitious; 'Come to Me in My Dreams' is a CD of songs and poems, mostly English - Shakespeare, Blake, Housman - set by composers all of whom studied or taught at the Royal School of Music. She talks to Morgan Quaintance about the attraction of simply singing, how she found the material - which includes two settings by Benjamin Britten never before recorded - and what connects these works that span a dozen centuries. Dame Sarah and accompanist Joseph Middleton perform a song from the album for Front Row ahead of a Prom performance on Monday.As part of Front Row's Inspire season we set three artists, the poet Alison Brackenbury, crime writer Vaseem Khan and rapper and playwright Testament, a challenge: to seek out inspiration, act on it and over the next six weeks create an original piece each, which they will perform live in the programme on 7th September. The three artists talk about their hopes and ideas.'The Producers', Mel Brooks' classic comedy musical film and Broadway show, whose hit song and dance number 'Springtime for Hitler' features Nazis doing the can-can is 50 years old. Critics Angie Errigo and Matt Wolf consider its virtues, foibles and if, given the political state of the world now, such a film could be made today.Presenter: Morgan Quaintance Producer: Julian May.