Front Row

Aviva Studios, a reportedly £240 million pound arts complex, has opened in Manchester with Free Your Mind, an immersive stage version of The Matrix from Oscar winning director Danny Boyle. Joining presenter Nick Ahad to discuss the arrival of the UK’s biggest new cultural venue - and its inaugural production- are playwright and critic Charlotte Keatley and architecture writer and lecturer Paul Dobraszczyk.The Chemical Brothers- AKA Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons- reflect on their 30 year journey from a Manchester house share to superstar DJ status, as they release their book Paused in Cosmic Reflection and embark on a UK tour.The 22nd October 1963 saw the opening night of the first production by the National Theatre. Peter O’Toole played Hamlet, directed by Laurence Olivier. Front Row hears from Rufus Norris, the current artistic director, about the role of the National Theatre 60 years on.Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Film critic Ryan Gilbey and music and club culture writer Kate Hutchinson deliver their verdict on Hackney Diamonds - the first new Rolling Stones album for 18 years – and Garth Davis’ film Foe, which is based on a sci-fi novel by Iain Reid and stars Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal. Lessons in Chemistry was 2022’s hit novel about a thwarted chemist who becomes an early TV cook. It’s now been turned into a series for Apple TV, starring Brie Larson, complete with authentic 1950s food. Chef and cookbook author Courtney McBroom, who was the show’s food consultant, gives us an insight into what this involved.Doctors - the long running BBC TV drama - is ending after more than 23 years. The last episode will be broadcast in December 2024. The show follows the lives of medics and their patients in a GP surgery in the fictional town of Letherbridge. Tonight on Front Row we speak to one of the shows former writers, Joy Wilkinson, who cut her teeth in TV drama writing on the show. She says it was a friendly, creative environment and a great training ground for many writers and actors. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Corinna Jones

Musical theatre legend Bonnie Langford performs Stephen Sondheim's I'm Still Here from the musical Follies, in tribute to the late composer and lyricist. The actress, singer and dancer reflects on her career from West End child star to appearing in Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, the starry revue show running at London's Gielgud Theatre.Documentary filmmaker Maysoon Pachachi makes her feature film debut with Our River…Our Sky, set in Baghdad during the winter of 2006, three years after the US-led invasion. Maysoon’s film reflects on how those who remained tried to get on with their lives in a city riven by sectarian violence.“Nuns are always box office, aren’t they?” said film director Michael Powell and he was right. His 1947 classic Black Narcissus, about missionary nuns in the Himalayas, is being screened around the country; The Sound of Music ran at Chichester Festival Theatre over the summer and midwife nuns will soon return to our screens in Call the Midwife. Critic David Benedict and Samira Ahmed discuss the attraction and importance of nuns in art. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Paula McGrath

Two adaptations of Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco open this month, one in Belfast and a Welsh language adaptation in Cardiff. The adaptors Patrick J O’Reilly and Manon Steffan Ros both join Kathy Clugston to discuss how this 1950s play about the rise of Fascism speaks to audiences now. Singer Cara Dillon is known globally for her interpretations of traditional Irish songs. As she performs at the Belfast International Arts Festival, she explains why she’s taking a new direction with her upcoming album, the first time she’s released an album of original songs. In the first of Front Row’s interviews with the authors shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, Paul Lynch talks about Prophet Song, his dystopian novel which imagines a future in which Ireland is in the grips of an oppressive regime. And as Glasgow Museums say that they are unable to locate a sculpture by the French artist Auguste Rodin, arts correspondent Jan Patience explains that it may not be the only major work of art that’s gone missing. Presenter: Kathy Clugston Producer: Olivia Skinner

Madonna is still in the spotlight 45 years after bursting onto the pop scene in the 1980s, inspiring fashion, dance and youth culture, as well as being the world’s best-selling female artist of all time. Author of the biography Madonna: A Rebel Life, Mary Gabriel explores what’s behind her enduring influence and music critic Pete Paphides assesses last night’s Celebration tour performance, rescheduled after her recent serious health scare. The latest film from director Martin Scorcese focuses on the Osage Nation community, who back in the 1920s had become rich overnight when oil was discovered beneath their land in Oklahoma. Based on a true story, Killers of the Flower Moon sees an improbable romance develop between Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest and Lily Gladstone’s indigenous Mollie, as members of her Osage tribe are murdered under mysterious circumstances, killings which are investigated by what was to become the FBI. Published in 2015, Adam Sisman wrote what is considered to be the definitive biography of John le Carré. What he left out about the author befits a Cold War spy novel: he was secretive, self-mythologizing and even deceptive. Sisman’s new book, The Secret life of John le Carré, reveals for the first time the frustrating process of writing a biography about the writer who hid his infidelities and inconsistencies.The Forward Prizes are among UK and Ireland’s most coveted poetry awards. These include best poetry collection, first collection, single poem - written and, new for this year, best single poem – performed. Tonight in Leeds the judges will announce the winners as Front Row is on-air - and we should know who has won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Written, and be able broadcast the poet reading it.

Samira Ahmed is joined by critics Anne Joseph and Nancy Durrant to review some of this week’s cultural highlights. They discuss the new series of the classic TV comedy Frasier, which is returning to our screens after nearly two decades, and a new exhibition, Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style.Martin Hayes has gone from playing the fiddle in his father’s ceilidh band in County Clare to performing for President Obama at the White House. Martin brings his band, The Common Ground Ensemble to perform in the Front Row studio. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Corinna Jones

Actor Richard Armitage – who starred in North and South and the Hobbit - joins Nick to discuss writing his debut novel, the bio-tech thriller Geneva, which is about to be published in hardback but was originally commissioned as an audio book. Autumn 2023 has seen Opera North launching its first sustainable ‘Green Season’. This includes the world premiere of an ambitious new production, Masque of Might which repurposes the music of composer Henry Purcell in a spectacle of song and dance. We hear from its director Sir David Pountney and soprano Anna Dennis.The Leicester Indie band EasyLife is about to play its last gigs under that name - because the owners of the airline easyJet said their name was too similar to that of the budget airline. EasyGroup confirmed they'd received an agreement from the band saying they would cease using the name after playing at Leicester's 02 Academy and London's Koko. It's not yet known what their new name will be. The Turner prize winning artist Lubaina Himid was once told “black people don’t make art”. Part of the 1980s movement of Black and Asian British artists, it was decades before her contribution to the arts was recognised with a CBE. She’s now curated an exhibition called A Fine Toothed Comb that looks at the hidden communities of Manchester though her own work and that of other women artists. She steers Nick Ahad around the show and talks about belonging, removing statues and the joys of opera

Nigel Kennedy remains the best selling violinist of all time with a repertoire that spans jazz, classical, rock, klezmer and more. Ahead of his four night residency at Ronnie Scott’s in London this week, Nigel Kennedy and cellist Beata Urbanek-Kalinowska join us in the Front Row studio to perform two reworkings of pieces by Ryuichi Sakamoto and the Polish film score composer, Krzysztof Komeda. Author Christine Coulson discusses her novel ‘One Woman Show’ written entirely through the medium of art gallery labels – and why we should be looking for longer at the paintings themselves. She’s joined by Dr Catherine McCormack, an independent curator and lecturer at Sotheby’s Art Institute, who reveals more about how labels have changed over the years and provide valuable context for visitors to galleries and museums. New figures compiled exclusively for Front Row reveal that 65,000 items are currently missing from museums around the world and listed on the Art Loss Register. Carolyn Atkinson goes on the trail of one of those missing artworks, a painting stolen during a brazen art heist in 1989, that has just been returned to a Glasgow museum.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

Kathryn Tickell and The Darkening’s new album, Cloud Horizons, fuses synthesizers with a bone flute, a sistrum – very old Egyptian instrument - and lyrics based on an inscription in Latin carved on a stone in Northumberland nearly 2 millennia ago. Kathryn talks to Samira about this ancient Northumbrian futurism and plays her smallpipes, live. We remember the film director Terrence Davis, perhaps best known for the film Distant Voices, who has died aged 77. Samira spoke to him for Front Row last year, about his Netflix drama Benediction, which followed the life of the war poet Siegfried Sassoon.Samira talks to Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, essayist and editor. Her latest offering Roman Stories marks a return to shorter fiction, presenting snapshots of a city and its unnamed residents in flux. Today the Heritage Fund announces nine ‘Heritage Places’ across the UK- the first of twenty to receive a share of £200 million in National Lottery funding over the next 10 years to support local heritage. We hear from Eilish McGuinness, Heritage Fund Chief Executive about how the money will be spent and from Eirwen Hopkins, founder of the heritage group Rich History in Neath Port Talbot, one of the nine places to receive the cash injection.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinner

The winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature is Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who is best known for his innovative plays. Playwright Simon Stephens, who has translated his work, talks about the impact of his plays which are widely performed across Europe but little known in the UK. Front Row reviews Golda, which stars Helen Mirren as Israeli prime minster Golda Meir, and an exhibition of work by the artist Philip Guston at the Tate Modern in London. Poet Aviva Dautch and art critic Ben Lukes give their verdict.Musician Tim Ridout discusses recording Elgar’s famous cello concerto on the viola, a performance for which he won the concerto category at this year’s Gramophone Award. The theme of this year’s National Poetry Day is refuge and to mark it Front Row hears a poem on the theme, A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Harry Parker