Our age is confused about sexual consent; what should it look, sound and feel like?

Novelist and winner of The Women's Prize for Fiction, Eimear McBride, finds out what artists and performers can tell us about our intimate interactions and conversations, and asks whether we can learn something from them that might help our own relationships.

Eimear meets the cast of Dracula who are working with an Intimacy Director to ensure the sexual contact (in this new interpretation of the play) is authentic and ethical; she finds out how comedy, and drag can help us address the greyest areas of 'consent' with the comedian Natalie Palamides, and takes a fresh look at the way some of the old masters in our galleries depict sexuality. She also challenges the art historian Sara Riccardi to find outstanding 'consensual' depictions of sex in modern art. Sara takes Eimear to see the Arts Council Collection, and shows her works by David Hockney. the Norwegian artist AK Dolven, Clive Hodgson and Jock McFadyen.

Music: composed by Scanner
Producer: Faith Lawrence

Interviewees include:
Ross McGregor, Beatrice Vincent, Conor Moss, and Christopher Tester from Arrows and Traps Theatre Company
Yarit Dor from Theatrical Intimacy
Letizia Treves and Bart Cornelis from The National Gallery
Sara Riccardi from Art Across
Natalie Palamides as 'Nate'

Artworks:
AK Dolven's 'The Kiss';
http://www.artscouncilcollection.org.uk/explore/artist/dolven-k

Jan Steen's 'An Interior with a Man offering an Oyster to a Woman'
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-steen-an-interior-with-a-man-offering-an-oyster-to-a-woman

Guido Reni's 'The Rape of Europa'
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/guido-reni-the-rape-of-europa Show less