Front Row

Academy Award-winning director Taika Waititi on his screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Klara and the Sun, in which 'artificial friends' have been created to provide companionship for lonely teenagers in a near-future dystopian world.
Theatre critic Susannah Clapp discusses Caryl Churchill's 15 minute play Triumph and what these short performances can do for the theatre experience.
Of the 123 people who have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, 14 of them have been published by the small American publishing house New Directions. Its Vice President and Senior Editor Declan Spring shares the secret of their success.
Tony award-winning actor Jonathan Groff is starring in a new production of As You Like it at the RSC in Stratford. He tells Samira about immersing himself in Shakespeare for the frist time.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Andrea Kidd

Critic David Benedict and journalist Muriel Zagha discuss Kristin Scott Thomas in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, adapted by award winning playwright Conor McPherson.
They also discuss survival thriller Whalefall, in which a diver is swallowed by a whale.
Plus they'll be giving their verdict on Elif Shafak's novel In One Brief Moment All Eternity, which tells the story of Madame Bovary author Gustave Flaubert through fictional and real women.
Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Claire Bartleet

Comedian Leo Reich, who has been named as one of the "best British talent" by The Times, and who has previously appeared in Lena Dunham's Netflix romcom Too Much, talks to us about creating his own sitcom - It Gets Worse - about a group of dysfunctional BFFs - for Channel 4.
It emerged this weekend that almost 100,000 items have gone missing (and are either lost or stolen) from museums in Scotland in recent years. How are museums misplacing so many artefacts in their collections, and what can be done to retrieve them? We are joined by a collections management expert and a representative of The Art Loss Register to discuss how widespread this problem is.
And a man marries an AI bride in the new production Darren Jackson's Wedding, by Big Telly Theatre Company, at the Belfast International Arts Festival. The show - staged partly in a church, partly at the Lyric Theatre, is a comic exploration of our relationship with technology and the importance of community, and follows the company's previous hit show Granny Jackson's Dead, a show set around an Irish family wake, which explored mourning and the growth of grief technology.
Presenter: Kirsty Wark
Producer: Mark Crossan

Bad Sisters actress Anne-Marie Duff talks to Samira about her latest role as Julie in Helen Edmundson’s play in Some Woman on stage at the National Theatre in London.
In the next of our interviews with this year's Booker Prize shortlisted authors, visionary novelist and father of "New Weird" fiction M John Harrison discusses his disorientating dystopia, The End of Everything.
And in the year of the Bayreuth opera festival's 150th anniversary, Samira discusses its history and significance with Genevieve Robyn Arkle, BBC / AHRC new generation thinker and lecturer in music history at King’s College London and Mark Berry, professor music and intellectual history at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Producer: Eliane Glaser

We speak backstage with Christine Baranski and Richard E Grant on appearing in Noel Coward's Hay Fever in London's West End.
Writer Douglas Stuart on John of John, nominated for this year's Booker Prize.
We find out the big names and important movies to look out for, that are part of this year's London Film Festival.
And controversy for the winner of this year's Caine Prize for African Writing, whose author has been accused of using AI.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed