Sam Lee, whose folk album Ground of Its Own was nominated for the 2012 Mercury music prize, takes us to Kent to meet one of his musical inspirations, Freda Black, an 85-year-old Romany singer. Sam is on a quest to record ancient folk songs sung by generations of Travellers including Freda, to capture the tradition in its purest form

A key work of The Rest is Noise festival at London’s Southbank in 2013 is Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company. Jazz pianist and composer Julian Joseph, at the festival to speak about the fascination of jazz and black music for composers such as Stravinsky, talks to Imogen Tilden about the Russian composer’s visionary classical work

Singer Laura Mvula speaks to Paul Lester about her childhood music influences and how her degree in composition at Birmingham Conservatoire helped her songwriting. Now Laura is working with Rumer’s producer Steve Brown, with her debut album Sing To The Moon released in March 2013

TV reviewer Andrew Collins bemoans the passing of ITV1′s Inspector Morse sequel Lewis; is bowled over by Fox’s Louie, brainchild of US comedian Louis CK; examines hit comedy 30 Rock on Comedy Central; highlights British comedy Common Ground on Sky Atlantic, soaks up the Dallas-style drama of Nashville on More4; and notices the highly-male cast led by cowboy Dennis Quaid in Vegas on Sky Atlantic

James Richardson chews over the press coverage of this week’s football news, including Cristiano Ronaldo’s winning performance for Real Madrid at Barcelona; Diego Maradona’s return to Napoli; and David Beckham’s first game for PSG, as well as his full debut against Joey Barton’s Marseille

Edward Thomas’s biographer Matthew Hollis gives Sarah Crown a tour of landmarks of Steep, Hampshire, where the first world war poet lived and worked. Hollis discusses Thomas’s life and writing in the tiny village and explains how the area shaped the poet’s work. He also explores the influence on Thomas of American poet Robert Frost

French photographer Lise Sarfati talks to Sean O’Hagan about her latest exhibition, She, featuring images taken between 2005 and 2009 of four American women – two sisters, their mother and her sister. The photographs work with each other, she says, to form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts

Athletics starter Alan Bell fired the starter gun for this summer’s 100-metre race that featured Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake and Justin Gatlin. But as Alan – the Youth Sport Trust’s international development co-ordinator – reveals here, he already knows Olympic champion Bolt well.

Here, Alan discusses disqualifying the Jamaican runner at the 2011 World Athletics championships in South Korea and seeing Bolt setting a 100 metres world record of 9.58 seconds at the 2009 World Athletics championships in Berlin.

The former QPR captain and Twitter fan visits the National Portrait Gallery in London on a day off from playing Premier League football to view the Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition.

Rioters speak for the first time about why they took part in the summer 2011 disturbances, the most serious bout of civil unrest in Britain in a generation.

Guardian reporter Paul Lewis presents the findings of a Guardian and London School of Economics study that reveals how the riots in England were sparked by poverty, injustice and a visceral hatred of the police.

This film was shown on Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs programme, in December 2011.

Shot and co-produced by CR.