Front Row

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 discuss the different ways in which older people consume the arts and the issues that it raises.Gaël Faye grew up in Burundi, the son of a Rwandan mother and a French father, and witnessed the horrors of the Rwandan civil war and genocide. He has now reflected upon that in his debut novel, Small Country, told from the perspective of 10-year-old Gabriel who desperately tries to cling onto his childhood despite what's happening around him. Gaël tells John how his experiences have shaped his work as a writer and musician.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Rupert Everett discusses his life-long passion for Oscar Wilde as he directs, writes and stars in his film The Happy Prince. Framed around Wilde's short story of the same name, the bio-pic focuses on Wilde at the end of his life, from his release from prison to his death in poverty in Paris three years later. Abir Mukherjee's creation of detective Sam Wyndham, a British officer who finds himself in Calcutta in the 1920s, and his sidekick 'Surrender-Not' Bannerjee, won him a £10,000 publishing deal. He discusses the third book in the series, Smoke and Ashes, set against the backdrop of non-violent protest and increasing demands for Indian independence. Twenty years ago this week Sex and the City launched in America on the HBO channel. To mark the anniversary, TV critic Emma Bullimore pours herself a Cosmopolitan and looks back at her favourite show... Mary Wilson, who died yesterday at the age of 102, was in the public eye as the wife of the former Prime Minister Harold Wilson. She was lampooned in Mrs Wilson's Diary in Private Eye as a suburban down-to-earth middle class housewife. She was, though, something much rarer - a very popular poet. From the archive we hear her talking about her writing, the public response, and one of her poems.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Front Row announces the winner of the £30,000 Women's Prize for Fiction, 2018, and talks to her about her winning novel. Sunderland indie rocker and songwriter Nadine Shah performs live in the studio and talks to John about the importance of musicians taking a political stance.Critic Rhianna Dhillon reviews the latest outing of the Jurassic Park franchise which sees the return of Chris Pratt and Dallas Bryce Howard.A forest has been planted in Norway with a specific purpose, to supply paper for a library of books to be printed in 100 years' time. One writer every year - starting in 2014 with Margaret Atwood - is contributing a text to be held in trust, unread until the year 2114, when the Future Library will be published. Elif Shafak has just submitted her piece, handing over her manuscript in a ceremony in the young forest. Katie Paterson, the artist whose idea this is, explains her vision. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May.

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition opens on 12th June. It has been held every year without interruption since 1769 providing a platform for emerging and established artists. This year it is co-ordinated by Grayson Perry with the theme "Art Made Now". Art historian Jacky Klein joins Stig to review the exhibition.Shebeen is a new play set amongst the Caribbean community in 1950s Nottingham. Inspired by the Windrush generation and written by local playwright Mufaro Makubika, the drama deals with an immigrant Jamaican couple and the forbidden parties they throw at their shebeen - an illegal bar set up in their home. Writer Mufaro Makubika and director Matthew Xia discuss its relevance now. The offbeat comedy Flowers, about the dysfunctional family of a children's writer, starring Olivia Coleman and Julian Barratt, returns to Channel 4 for a second season. The Anglo-Japanese writer Will Sharpe, who also directed and acts in it, is in the studio to discuss its dark humour.We review Vampyr, the action role-playing video game with a moral dilemma at its heart which is released today. Jonathan Reid is a vampiric doctor whose thirst for blood compels him to kill innocent people, but how does that sit with his Hippocratic Oath? Games reviewer Jordan Erica Webber joins Stig to play the game and offers her verdict.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Harry Parker.

Playwright David Edgar is 70 this year. He was 20 in 1968 coming of age, in Bob Dylan's words, when 'there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air'. In a revolutionary move for him David Edgar is taking to the stage himself in the latest of his many theatre pieces. In his one man show, Trying it On, Edgar reflects on the political eruptions of his lifetime and his engagement with them. Why did some revolutionaries embrace Thatcherism? What has his generation achieved? Viv Albertine, author of two bestselling autobiographies, and former member of The Slits, joins literary historian Rebecca Stott, whose ground breaking memoir The Days of Rain won the Costa Biography prize this year, to discuss women's non fiction writing. Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One at Tate Britain marks 100 years since the end of the war, and reflects on how artists responded to the physical and psychological effects of the fighting. Co-curators Emma Chambers and Rachel Smyth consider how art changed from the middle of the war in 1916 to the 1920s and early '30s.TV Critic Emma Bullimore on the British Soap Awards which took place on Saturday. Is there a greater appetite for dark themes?

Orlando Bloom swaps Middle-earth and the high seas for a Texas trailer park in his first West End production in over a decade, Killer Joe. He talks about playing Joe Cooper, a policeman turned assassin, employed by a family at their wits end to kill their mother for a cut of her life insurance money.Is death, the 'last taboo', finally being broken down by the arts? We consider the recent glut of writing and performance about grief with Cariad Lloyd, whose podcast Griefcast, in which she talks to fellow comedians about losing someone, swept the board at the recent British Podcast Awards. Stig is also joined by writer Kim Sherwood whose debut novel Testament is about family secrets and mourning the death of a grandfather. It has been a winning week for rap as Kenrick Lamar, Stormzy and Dave are all awarded prestigious song-writing prizes. We ask whether it's about the music, or the message, the poetry or the politics? In Antony Gormley's new exhibition, Subject, at the recently redesigned Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, the artist continues his investigations into the relationships between the human body and space. Critic Richard Cork gives his response to the works, some of which are new, and others not previously exhibited in the UK.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May.

The £23m Weston Tower and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries at Westminster Abbey will be opening to the public next month. Architecture critic and historian Tom Dyckhoff gives his response to these two new additions to the abbey church, the site of all royal coronations since William the Conqueror in 1066.Why are so many British writers setting their stories in the countryside at the moment? From the second series of the BBC comedy drama This Country, to plays including Barney Norris's Nightfall, Joe White's Mayfly and Simon Longman's Gundog, and novels such as Jon McGregor's Reservoir 13 and Ali Smith's Autumn, writers are turning to a new vision of 'the pastoral' for inspiration. Writer Barney Norris joins novelist Sarah Hall - who was born and raised in the Lake District - to consider whether writing about the countryside has become part of the zeitgeist again and why.Gillian Allnutt's career as a poet stretches over four decades. In 2016 she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. The poet discusses and reads from her new collection, Wake.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen star in the rom-com Book Club which makes its older cast the heart of the story. But does it make good use of such stellar talent? Angie Errigo reviews. Singer-song writer Angélique Kidjo performs live from her new album Remain In Light, which re-imagines track-by-track the original post-punk band Talking Heads' landmark album. She talks about making the album and why she wants to take Rock back to Africa.As Roseanne, the top rated American sitcom, is dramatically axed following offensive tweets sent by it's star Roseanne Barr, John discusses the fallout with Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever. Indian novelist Anuradha Roy discusses her new novel All the Lives We Never Lived, about one woman's escape from a stultifying marriage set against India's fight for independence and a world war. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins.

French director François Ozon discusses his latest film L'Amant Double, a psychological thriller in which a young woman falls in love with her secretive psychiatrist.Patrick Heron, the British artist and critic is celebrated in a new retrospective exhibition at Tate St Ives. Heron played a major role in the development of British post-war abstract art exploring the Cornish light and colour in the landscape surrounding his home. Curator Andrew Wilson and artist Susanna Heron, Patrick's daughter, join Samira. The acclaim for Rachel Kushner's novel The Flamethrowers brought her to a wide audience. Now she has written The Mars Room, the fictional account of a woman in a US prison with a double life sentence - plus 6 years. She describes getting access to the Californian prison system and the extraordinary stories she uncovered there.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Caroline Donne.

At the age of ninety jazz singer Dame Cleo Laine looks back at her extraordinary career. She talks to Stig Abell about her lasting musical and romantic partnership with saxophonist and composer Sir John Dankworth, her friendship with Ella Fitzgerald and collaboration with Ray Charles.Stig visits Cleo at her countryside home, where in 1970 she and husband John Dankworth created The Stables concert hall in their back garden and meets Cleo's daughter, the singer Jacqui Dankworth.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Timothy Prosser.