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I have spent much of the past two weeks getting the hang of a lot of new and unfamiliar kit, from microphones to portable lights, webcams and any number of apparently identical, though crucially different, white cables.

It’s all because Front Row Late, the regular arts programme I present on 成人论坛 Two, will not be coming from our regular studios in New Broadcasting House in London and Pacific Quay in Glasgow. Culture In Quarantine means that from this Thursday it is coming instead from my study at home.

We have quickly become very used to this kind of ‘domestic broadcasting’ on radio and television, complete with interruptions by frustrated toddlers, and - in the case of television - the chance of a quick glimpse of the presenter’s home decorations, bizarre ornaments and choice of books. (I’m bracing myself for a good few queries about the very prominent copy of the speeches of the ancient Athenian orator Lysias, standing out on my own shelves). But our aim is to go beyond a line-up of recorded Zoom chats and to get something a little bit closer to studio quality. Hence all that kit: the extra lighting and reflectors, and the extra cameras ( well another phone to go with my laptop) to give more varied angles, not just glaring full-on mug shots.

If we are at all successful (and I do think we get better as we get more practice!), I will no doubt receive a pat on the back for being a plucky ivory-tower academic who single-handedly mastered filming technology, becoming a camera-person, sound-technician, floor-manager, make-up artist (sic) and presenter rolled into one. The truth is that there is nothing ‘single-handed’ about this process at all. I am only managing to do this because of the support of a group of 成人论坛 television experts, each of them working from their own homes, who have been patiently teaching me some of the skills of the job – like how exactly to angle the camera, how to transfer back to the production team all those vast video files I have been creating, or even simply which end of which cable fits into which hole on my laptop. And that is before they have sat down for hours to edit into a finished product the raw footage of my discussions with other contributors, in their makeshift domestic studios, with all the inevitable technical wobbles.

So why go to these lengths?

Well, as Jonty Claypole explained in his blog a couple of weeks ago, it is part and parcel of the 成人论坛’s commitment to arts and culture during these very dark days. Apologies if that sounds a bit pious. But how can it not be important to offer people access to exhibitions and performances that, at the moment, they cannot otherwise see.

In the first programme of our new series, we explore the Titian exhibition at the National Gallery, Titian: Love, Desire, Death, which we managed to film on the very last afternoon before it shut. How can it not be important to offer creative talents an opportunity to share what they have created with an on-screen audience, even if they cannot share it face to face? And don’t let’s forget the sheer comfort, enjoyment and solace of literature, music and art, especially at times like this. I challenge anyone not to be simultaneously moved and cheered by Emma Thompson’s reading of a poem by John Donne, also in our first episode - or by Derek Jacobi’s performance later in the series.

But there is more to it than that. What we miss when the Titian exhibition at the National Gallery closes is not only the pleasure of seeing an extraordinary set of paintings brought together for the first time in centuries. We also miss the important debates and arguments that exhibitions, like plays, books or music, necessarily provoke. And that is why I shall be talking to Shahidha Bari about how far we find the violence of Titian’s paintings disturbing, and what follows from that; why Thompson sets Donne in the context of wider thoughts about mortality; and why Emilia Clarke’s performance of a Kipling poem in a few weeks' time prompts us to ask if, how and why Kipling’s poetry can still work for us in our twenty-first century crises, despite its ‘baggage’ of imperialism. The point of the arts is not just to soothe, though they can be very good at soothing. It is also to help us think harder. And that is why they are so essential at times like this, when we need all the intellectual resources we can possibly muster to make sense of the crisis we are it, and to frame the very different world that is bound to follow.

That comes over very strongly I hope in Margaret Atwood’s contribution to our first programme. Atwood and her sister Ruth have choreographed a very surprising version of Edgar Allan Poe’s horror story set in the midst of a pandemic, Masque Of The Red Death - using puppets constructed out of things they happened to have around the house (an empty bottle and some hand sanitiser take starring roles). It’s as funny and engaging as it sounds. But, in our discussion, Atwood also raises some pressing questions about the role of horror stories in our cultural imagination, asking what pleasure we can take in tales of plague, and what we can learn from Poe’s Gothic fiction - as well as casting her sharp eye to life after pandemic.

In what I hope will be a trademark of the whole series - including also appearances from artist Antony Gormley, musician Nitin Sawhney, writers Val McDermid and Jackie Kay, Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, Mya-Rose Craig and many more - this is hi-fibre pleasure, with a purpose. We can’t live without it.

Watch Front Row Late on 成人论坛 Two and 成人论坛 iPlayer, Thursdays at 11.30pm.