Artsnight - Season 2

Writer and broadcaster Andrew Marr takes over editorial control of the arts series. He wants to champion some great Renaissance dramatists whose stories have been neglected because they worked at the same time as William Shakespeare. Andrew believes our obsession with the Bard of Avon has fatally distorted our view of the Tudor and Jacobean period.

Andrew talks to director Sir Trevor Nunn, who is about to direct a production of Ben Jonson's great satire Volpone, while the Artistic Director of the RSC Greg Doran talks about the master of blood and guts drama - John Ford. Andrew also explores the dramatic life and death of Christopher Marlowe, as well as seeing how these forgotten Renaissance playwrights created roles for women just as good as Lady Macbeth.

Model, actress and digital entrepreneur Lily Cole takes over editorial control of this episode in a new arts series.

The critic Cyril Connolly isn't much read these days, but he is still famous for one infamous phrase - 'There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall'.

Was Connolly wrong - can children in fact be a great spur to creativity? Or can children, with their all-consuming demands, inhibit an artistic life?

Lily is eight months pregnant and wants to explore this topic by talking to people with views on both sides of the argument.

The programme will look at the life and work of Barbara Hepworth, who juggled bringing up four children with her artistic career. Lionel Shriver delivers an essay on the joys of childlessness, while Lily meets Hollie McNish, a poet with a young child whose work is a riposte to the idea of the 'pram in the hall'.

The programme will also explore artist Gavin Turk and his wife Deborah Curtis's project The House of Fairy Tales, which has been delighting young people for almost a decade.

Journalist Lynn Barber takes over editorial control of the new arts series, and indulges her passion for American pop culture.

She meets trash icon John Waters - a film director, comedian and satirist who has been called, to his great satisfaction, the 'Pope of Trash'. His new show features pubic crabs, a magazine promising nude photos of WH Auden and Lassie with a facelift.

Lynn also enters the unpredictable world of the American multimedia artist Doug Aitken. In summer 2015, he takes over London's Barbican to create a modern-day version of a 60s 'happening', involving big name artists like Jeremy Deller and Martin Creed. What will Lynn make of it all?

Broadcaster and journalist Samira Ahmed takes editorial control.

Samira is fascinated by photography and considers the impact a single photographic image can have, even in a modern age when nearly every person has a camera on them at all times and photos are in endless supply.

Photographers featured in the programme include Giles Duley, who lost three of his limbs while documenting a warzone in Afghanistan, and Richard Billingham, who has made a film with Benefit Street's White Dee about his parents, who he has extensively photographed. Samira explores the career of Vanley Burke, who has been documenting the black British experience since the 1960s, while Martin Parr creates a specially commissioned work for the programme.

Half a century ago CP Snow announced there were two cultures in the west - science and the arts. Entrepreneur and digital champion Martha Lane Fox is a passionate believer that science and arts can work together - and are already doing so. She talks to visionary architect Charles Jencks, who has created a garden that celebrates the latest discoveries in cosmology, meets experimental novelist David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, explores the extraordinary creative possibilities of virtual reality, and tracks down her hero IT pioneer and art lover Dame Stephanie Shirley.

For his edition of Artsnight, actor Richard Wilson, star not only of One Foot in the Grave but also Waiting for Godot, shares his love for a playwright recently described as 'probably the most influential artistic figure of our time' - Samuel Beckett.

How does this highly experimental, avant-garde playwright speak to us today? Summer 2015 will see a peak of Beckett-mania with two festivals dedicated to this extraordinary writer. Richard Wilson explores some of Beckett's key works, including Godot and Krapp's Last Tape, which he performed last year to rave reviews.

He travels to Enniskillen, where his hero went to school, for the 2015 International Beckett Festival, and hears from fellow actors Ian McKellen, Juliet Stevenson and Hugo Weaving, as well as acclaimed director Robert Wilson. Lisa Dwan, who has made Beckett's notoriously difficult play Not I her signature piece, celebrates the playwright's love of the female voice.

One year on from the referendum that split the Scottish nation, Irvine Welsh returns home to Edinburgh to survey what effect it had on the arts in Scotland. Now living in America, Irvine has a very different perspective on Scotland to his halcyon days of Trainspotting. On his travels round his home town, he meets with performance poets Kevin Williamson and Michael Pedersen, partners in Neu Reekie and Mercury Award winners Young Fathers. He visits the studio of artist Kevin Harman, a visual artist pushing the bounds of contemporary art, and looks at the place of politics and art through the collaborative theatre piece Two Minute Manifestos.

Has the debate around independence been a shot in the arm for Scottish art?

When we are embarrassed our bodies react immediately. It produces a powerful emotional and physical response that can leave us lost for words, virtually paralysed. In this episode of Artsnight, choreographer Hofesh Shechter explores how embarrassment can be rich territory for artistic exploration. He meets performance artist Bryony Kimmings, who reveals the most embarrassing details of her private life in her work. Psychotherapist Philippa Perry explores the psychological roots of embarrassment, and we meet brilliant stand-up comedians who have turned embarrassing their audience and themselves into an art form.

In this special edition of Artsnight, former prize winner Ben Okri explores the transformative effect of the prize on the career of its recipients. When he won the Booker almost twenty-five years ago, his life changed completely. In this programme, he tells the story of his remarkable journey. Along the way, Artsnight profiles the six books on the 2015 shortlist, meeting authors such as Chigozie Obioma, Marlon James, Hanya Yanagihara and Sunjeev Sahota, all of whom are vying to repeat Ben's feat and win this year's prize.

For his edition of Artsnight, BBC arts editor Will Gompertz investigates the thriving art market. He meets collectors, philanthropists and multi-millionaires pursuing their passion for art, and asks whether record-breaking sales are a good thing or damaging creativity. Arguing for better regulations in the art market, he finds out why you can buy an Old Master for a fraction of the price of contemporary art. He talks to Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk about his vision for a new type of museum and meets the 89-year-old grandmother of contemporary art - Delfina Entrecanales - who for 40 years has quietly nurtured a generation of British artists, including more than a dozen Turner Prize nominees.

For her latest edition of Artsnight, Fleet Street legend Lynn Barber considers the idea of taking risks in art. The Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate is hosting an exhibition on that very theme, including works by Ai Wei Wei and Yoko Ono. In Margate, Lynn meets Peter Kennard, who has been called Britain's most important political artist. His hard-hitting anti-nuclear campaigning posters from the 1970s capture the terrifying physical risk of war, as well as the personal risk as an artist in challenging the establishment. Also in the exhibition is the doyenne of performance art, Marina Abramovic, who has had a loaded gun held to her head and an arrow to her heart, all in the name of art. In a rare and extended interview, Lynn asks her about an illustrious career which has always encompassed physical and creative risk in pursuit of her art.

In this episode of Artsnight, George the Poet explores the meaning of black culture in four spoken word chapters. Racheal Ofori opens up some black female stereotypes, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Dennis Bovell look back at the beginnings of dub poetry, Professor Paul Gilroy explains some of the history of black diasporas, and Akala likens rap to the works of Shakespeare. George the Poet asks - what is black culture?

Josie Rourke, artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, curates this celebrity-packed edition of Artsnight, looking at the changing idea of the hero in contemporary culture. She hears from screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director James Marsh about why film-makers are looking to real life for the heroes of their stories. Actor Tom Hiddleston tells Josie about the challenges of becoming the American country singer Hank Williams for a forthcoming biopic, while Erin Brockovich explains how her life was transformed by Julia Robert's Oscar-winning portrayal of her. And Josie talks to Suffragette screen writer Abi Morgan about creating strong female leading roles.

Clara Amfo is one of BBC Radio 1's rising stars. She meets extremely famous people as part of her day job, and for her edition of Artsnight she wants to look at how the fame industry works. She talks to 50 Cent about living life under a microscope, as well as looking at how 'superfans' use social media to get close to their heroes. She also chats to John Niven, author of the scabrous music industry expose Kill Your Friends, which is now a movie.

The acclaimed artist Edmund de Waal takes over the controls of this episode of Artsnight. Edmund looks at the theme of memory and art.

He profiles the Aurora Orchestra, who are famous for performing classical works from memory, and looks at a Tate Liverpool exhibition which encourages people to memorise works of art.

Edmund also uncovers a memory that history has tried to forget - the story of the Nazis' obsession with porcelain.

Conservative MP Kwasi Kwarteng is the guest curator of this episode of Artsnight.

The author of the book Ghosts of Empire, Kwasi looks at how the British Empire impacted on art, architecture and literature.

He meets one of Australia's greatest living novelists - Peter Carey - to discuss the writer's obsession with early colonial life, as well as exploring Tate Britain's Artist and Empire exhibition. And comedian Shazia Mirza discusses why fabric and clothing is so vital to the story of the Indian sub-continent.

Scissor Sisters' front-woman and DJ Ana Matronic is a lifelong robot fanatic. For her episode of Artsnight, she explores how robots are taking over mainstream arts and culture - co-presenting the episode with a real robot. She finds out how robots are flexing their creative muscles - having her portrait done in a life-drawing class of sketching robots created by French artist Patrick Tresset, and talking to the electro-acoustic musician Squarepusher about his recent collaboration with a robot band.

Chris Dercon meets famous photographer Juergen Teller.

Nina Conti explores how masks can allow us to step outside of our psychological skins and become someone else.

Maria explores why after over a century of campaigning, women still aren't equal in society.

Andrew Graham-Dixon asks people off the streets what they think of his abstract works.

Lynn Barber meets two American comedians who have found success in the UK, Rob Delaney and Ruby Wax.

Both performers have been open about the demons in their personallives. Rob talks to Lynn about his battle with alcoholism and clinical depression, while Ruby discusses the role mindfulness has played in her own mental health, her shows and now in her campaigns.

Henry Marsh a neurosurgeon meets Karl Ove Knausgaard one of the most important authors writing today.

Punk rock celebrate its 40th anniversary this year with series of events across some of the most affluential and major cultural institutions in Britain. Thurston Moore, a former guitarist with Sonic Youth had a passionate interest in British punk. Moore explores how the music medium has changed his life. He meets with Pete Shelley, Chrissie Hynde, Julien Temple and one of his all-time favourite bands, X-Ray Spex.

Ryan Gander believes that there is too much of a "fear factor" surrounding the idea of art. Ryan suggests that everyday life can be a deeply creative act. In this episode, he explores an artistic colony, encounters a couple who have made a house into an aesthetic.