Front Row

How much should we separate art from the artist’s behaviour? With new sexual abuse allegations concerning Michael Jackson in the forthcoming documentary Leaving Neverland and R Kelly being charged with 10 counts of sexual abuse – writers Anna Leszkiewicz, Ekow Eshun and Dreda Say Mitchell consider the extent to which we should boycott or continue to appreciate an individual’s work in the light of questions over their behaviour.On the eve of his world tour, multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer, and Grammy award-winner Jacob Collier talks about working with an orchestra after his rise to fame as a solo performer. He also plays a composition from his latest record, Djesse Volume 1, live in the studio, the first of a quartet of albums to be released this year. Dorothea Tanning wanted to depict ‘unknown but knowable states’ in her work, flirting with ideas of surrealism and abstraction. Tanning was an American who emigrated with her husband Max Ernst to Paris in the 50s, where she moved away from painting to ma

The return of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s black comedy Fleabag: we preview the new series of BBC3's biggest success. The main character continues to battle with her family and her own self-destructive behaviour, but can Fleabag be as fresh and surprising as before? And because it'll be broadcast weekly, one episode at a time (after the news on BBC1) rather than being released as a box set for bingeing), we consider how viewers' watching habits are changing. American glam metal band Mötley Crüe sold more than 100 million albums in the 80s and the members led the ultimate debauched rock and roll lives. Now there's a Netflix biopic - The Dirt. We speak to bassist Nikki Sixx (who overdosed several times and once was even declared dead) and the band's manager Allen Kovac about their reputation and how they reflect on their time as "the world’s most notorious rock band".Each year the Oscars throw up some surprises and there were quite a few raised eyebrows when last night's Best Picture was announced. Did Green Book

Award-winning journalist Jonathan Freedland talks about his alter ego, thriller writer Sam Bourne, and his new book To Kill The Truth. With the strap line “read it before it becomes fiction," this fast paced action thriller sees America taken to the brink of a new Civil War as academic and holocaust survivors are found dead, libraries destroyed and Black Live Matter protestors clash openly with slavery deniers. Jonathan Freedland talks to Kirsty about the inspiration behind the novel, the differences in writing fiction compared to journalism and the challenge to both when faced with a “post truth” world.Roma won the BAFTA for Best Film and on Sunday may become the first foreign language film to win at the Oscars, but figures show foreign language films are in decline at the UK box office. Why are foreign films doing less well in cinemas than they were ten years ago? Kirsty is joined by Charles Gant from Screen International and Clare Binns from Picturehouse Cinemas. Phyllida Barlow’s exhibition of entirely ne

The Cuban American conductor Odaline de la Martinez talks about this year's London Festival of American Music in which she showcases the music of women and African American composers who are unjustly overlooked. She also tells Samira about the premiere of the third part of her own opera trilogy Imoinda: A story of Love and HateAnna Paquin stars as a disaster PR tasked with clearing up the scandals of high profile celebrities in new drama Flack. Anna Leszkiewicz reviews the show which is UKTV’s first original drama commission.The journalistic bravery of Marie Colvin and photographer Paul Conroy in Syria has recently been depicted on the big screen in the feature film A Private War and the documentary Under the Wire. But now that the witnesses to war can easily publish pictures from their phones in social media and on the news, has the role of the war photographer changed? Samira is joined by Paul and fellow photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind to discuss the role of modern war photography.Iain Lee looks at

Felicity Jones discusses her new film On the Basis of Sex, in which she plays Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the American Supreme Court Judge who rose to prominence as a lawyer in landmark cases against gender discrimination. Vue, one of the UK’s biggest cinema chains, has threatened to boycott the Baftas after the film Roma, which they describe as a ‘made for TV’ film, won four awards including Best Film. John is joined by Vue’s chief executive Tim Richards, who has written an open letter to Bafta,.As Steve Coogan’s awkwardly hilarious creation Alan Partridge returns for a new series called This Time With Alan Partridge, critic Julia Raeside delivers her verdict.Performance artist Marina Abramović presents her new mixed reality artwork, a wearable augmented experience involving VR headsets which produce an image of Marina in the room. John talks to Marina and her collaborator Todd Eckert about the future artistic possibilities of the VR technology. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser

The directorial debut of Oscar -winning actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor,is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Airing on Netflix, adapted from a bestselling novel of the same name Ejiofor also stars as the father. This true story follows the young boy William as he races to save his village from a devastating famine, with a wind turbine he was inspired to build after reading a library book.Come From Away is the hit Broadway musical which tells the remarkable story of the thousands of airline passengers diverted to a tiny Canadian town following 9/11 and stranded there for several days. Sam Marlowe reviews the UK premiere.Fashion historian Amber Butchart pays tribute to iconic fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. Known as “the king” by fashion insiders, Lagerfeld was the Creative Director of the fashion house Chanel for more than thirty years where his artistic flair combined with his business acumen led to sales reaching £7.7 billion in 2017. Two short story competitions - the National Short Story Award and 500 Words - are

9 to 5 is Dolly Parton’s stage musical based on the 1980 film, in which she starred, about three female office workers getting revenge on their misogynist boss. The songs were written by Dolly Parton and she narrates the story via television screens across the stage. Sarah Crompton reviews. Performance artist, comedian, musician and activist Bryony Kimmings talks about her new autobiographical show I’m a Phoenix, Bitch and explains why she chooses to create pieces about taboo and difficult subject matter including STIs, sex clinics, and cancer.Is there more sex than ever on TV, in books and on stage now? Has #MeToo, access to pornography online and a desire to appeal to younger audiences changed how, and how much, sex is represented in culture? Katy Guest considers books, Louis Wise looks at screen and Bryony Kimmings reports on the performing arts.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Edwina Pitman

Roma, the black and white Mexican film about a young domestic worker in Mexico City in the 1970s, won Best Film at the Baftas on Sunday and is up for the same at the Oscars. The film’s producer, Gabriela Rodriguez, talks about the background to director Alfonso Cuarón’s personal project which draws on his own childhood, and discusses their working relationship. The death has been announced of the acclaimed author Andrea Levy. Her fiction, including the Orange Prize-winning Small Island and the Man Booker-longlisted and recently televised The Long Song, chronicled the experience of generations from the Caribbean who lived through slavery and emigration. Her friend and fellow writer Louise Doughty pays tribute. The architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw’s buildings include the Eden Project, the International Terminal at Waterloo Station and the National Space Centre in Leicester. He is one of a group of architects including Terry Farrell, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster who became the leading architects of the la

Irish comedian Ardal O’Hanlon is best-known for roles in Father Ted, My Hero and currently Death in Paradise, but he started out as a stand-up comic in 80s Dublin. As he embarks on a nationwide solo tour, Samira talks to Ardal about the role of politics in his life and work and breaking free from being typecast.Novelist Tessa Hadley is praised for her psychological insight, her nuance, and her precision. In her new book Late in the Day she turns her sharp eye to the impact of the unexpected death of one man on his family and close friends. The Umbrella Academy, the new Netflix series about a family of superheroes, stars Ellen Page and Mary J Blige and is written by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance. Michael Leader from Film4 Online reviews.And to mark Valentine's Day we discuss favourite romantic works of art. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Timothy Prosser

French-Moroccan novelist Leila Slimani caused a sensation in France with her novel Lullaby about a nanny who murders the two children in her care, which won the Prix Goncourt and became a bestseller in the UK. As her first novel, Adèle, is published in the UK for the first time, she discusses the book's contentious storyline about a married woman with an addiction to having sex with strangers.Diane Arbus is viewed by many as one of the most influential female photographers of her generation. Curator Jeff Rosenheim discusses Diane Arbus: In the Beginning at the Hayward Gallery in London, which charts the formative first half of her career where she discovered the majority of her subjects in New York City, depicting children, strippers and carnival performers. Attack the Block director Joe Cornish discusses The Kid Who Would Be King, his Arthurian fantasy set in a modern-day secondary school.Tim Robey reports from the Berlin International Film Festival as it draws towards its close. Presenter Kirsty Lang Produ

It was in Manchester in 2013 that Anna Jordan won the Bruntwood Prize, the UK’s biggest national competition for new plays. She’s now back in the city with her new adaptation of a stage classic – Mother Courage. Bertolt Brecht set his play in 17th century Europe during the Thirty Years’ War but Jordan has moved the story into the future. It’s 2080, and Europe no longer exists, the countries have been replaced by a grid system with individuals struggling to survive between the warring factions.Six-time Grammy-winning composer and trumpeter Terence Blanchard has written the music for all of Spike Lee’s films since Jungle Fever in 1991, and this year he was nominated for a Bafta and an Oscar for his original score for Lee’s latest, BlacKkKlansman. The composer discusses his approach to his film music, and the challenge of writing the soundtrack for When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee’s 2006 documentary about the devastation of Blanchard’s home town of New Orleans.The success of Get Out at last year’s film awards

Comedian Sara Pascoe talks about her latest stand-up show Lads, Lads, Lads and its evolution from being about her relationship break-up to being happy a single woman. Also what's it like sharing such personal experiences in front of thousands of people? And how has the situation changed for women in comedy since she started out?There are Baftas and Oscars for Best Hair & Make Up and an Olivier Award for Best Costume Design. But hitherto there's been no award for the people whose job is maybe most crucial to any theatre, film or television production: casting directors. So the Casting Directors’ Guild decided to create their own and on Tuesday the inaugural UK Casting Awards will throw some glitter on these Cinderellas. Three of the country's top casting directors, Julia Horan (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), Lucinda Syson (Wonder Woman) and Victor Jenkins (Troy: Fall of a City) explain what they actually do, how they find new talent, and whether or not casting directors are a progressive force, openi

This weekend sees the announcement of the winners of this year's Baftas - the British Academy Film Awards - and Stig talks to two of the stars in London for the event. Director Spike Lee attracted a great deal of attention with his first feature She's Gotta Have It in 1986, yet despite his later films including Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X and Summer of Sam, he was never nominated in the director category for either the Oscars or the Baftas. But this year he is in the running at both events for his latest film BlacKkKlansman, the true story of a black police officer infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan. Spike Lee discusses the film which is Bafta-nominated for Best Director, Best Film, and Best Adapted Screenplay.Oscar-winner Thelma Schoonmaker has been editing the films of Martin Scorsese for over five decades including Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Departed and The Wolf of Wall Street. This Sunday she will receive the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' highest accolade, the BAFTA Fell

Broadway star Chita Rivera, who created the iconic roles of Anita in West Side Story and Velma in Chicago, talks to Samira about her seven decades on stage, as she prepares to perform again in London. The Woman in the Window is the bestselling psychological thriller that sparked a bidding war between publishers resulting in a two million dollar book deal and its publication in January 2018. Now its author Dan Mallory, who writes under the pen name AJ Finn, has been accused of lying and deception which helped secure his own senior position in the publishing industry as an editor. Books journalist Sarah Shaffi unpicks what this means for the man, his book and the publishing industry more broadly.Until last November Jeff Koons was the most expensive living artist sold at auction, with his Balloon Dog (Orange) fetching over $58m in 2013. As he opens his new retrospective at the Ashmolean in Oxford, the controversial artist discusses the technical challenges of creating his complex works, and his love of the Old M

Front Row considers the artistic significance of walls and borders. John Lanchester, whose latest novel The Wall is about a massive fictional defensive structure, discusses the way walls feature in literature and art with poet and art critic Sue Hubbard, from cave paintings to artworks like Andy Goldsworthy’s 750 feet long drystone wall.Artist Luke Jerram takes us on a tour around his home city of Bristol discovering unusual wall art such as the Magic Wall, where children leave toys between the stones, and early works by Banksy. Mexican artist Tanya Aguiniga, who travelled each day to school in the US, has set up an art project on the US/ Mexico border. She is joined by Suzanne Lyle, Head of Visual Arts for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, to discuss the influence of borders on art.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser

The Cutty Sark was launched 150 years ago this year. The acme of sailing technology, now she floats not in the sea but in the air in Greenwich. People walk around on, in and under her. So the ship has become a monumental public art-work. The sculptor Michael Speller, who has made public works for Greenwich, tours the Cutty Sark with Kirsty Lang and the ship's curator, Hannah Stockton. They start beneath the keel, Michael considering the the shape and heft of the hull, then venture into the hold, where the iron ribs to which the huge planks are attached, are akin to the armature of a sculpture, and finish up on deck, where Michael is struck by the delicate filigree of the rigging and the powerful shapes described by the masts and yards. Regina King is sweeping up awards for her performance in If Beale Street Could Talk, Barry Jenkins’ adaption of James Baldwin’s novel set in 1970s Harlem. She talks to Kirsty about police violence in America, how the awards season resembles a political campaign and why

American comedian Tiffany Haddish joins the voice cast of the Lego Movie sequel as the shape-shifting Queen Whatever Wa'Nabi. She tells Front Row how comedy saved her from a troubled childhood and the foster care system, and how she went on to host Saturday Night Live and feature on the cover of Time 100.Alice Clark-Platts’ latest thriller The Flower Girls was the subject of fierce bidding war. The story of two sisters, Laurel and Primrose, the novel has resonances with the Bulger and Madeleine McCann cases. A former human rights lawyer, Alice Clark-Platts grapples with notions of whether a person can ever be rehabilitated and why the past is often impossible to bury in future relationships.This year sees the 25th anniversary of the National Lottery. In that time it has awarded almost £40bn to good causes across more than 535,000 individual projects. Ros Kerslake, CEO of the newly-named National Lottery Heritage Fund who award their own share of the money, discusses her new plans to distribute over £1bn to

Painter, sculptor, architect and engineer- Leonardo da Vinci is regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. To mark the 500th anniversary of his death, 144 of his drawings from the Royal Collection are to be exhibited in 12 galleries and museums nationwide. Senior curator Natasha Howes, and Mark Roughley, medical illustrator and Art in Science lecturer at Liverpool School of Art and Design discuss the Renaissance master's anatomical work on show at Manchester Art Gallery.Green Book - a film about an Italian-American bouncer turned chauffeur for an African-American concert pianist, driving through the Deep South in Jim Crow America, arrives in the UK garlanded with awards and Oscar and Bafta nominations. Al Bailey, Co-founder and Director of Programming at Manchester International Film Festival, reviews.As Sian Edwards prepares to conduct Opera North’s latest production of Janáček’s Katya Kabanova, she discusses the appeal of the Czech composer’s music, and what she plans to bring to his dark tale o

Moon and Me is the new CBeebies programme by Andrew Davenport, creator of the award-winning shows Teletubbies and In the Night Garden. He discusses how his story of a doll, Pepi Nana, and the baby in the moon who travels to her doll house to tell stories and have adventures, was inspired by tales of toys that come to life when nobody is looking.Why are some musicians and writers labelled 'the voice of a generation'? Kate Mossman from The New Statesman and books journalist Sarah Shaffi discuss what characteristics earn artists this label, if it’s a blessing or a curse, and who they think represent generations today or in the past.As English National Opera chief Stuart Murphy says opera has a problem with diversity and announces a strategy for nurturing BAME talent, Opera Now editor Ashutosh Khandekar and composer Shirley Thompson discuss the issue of representation in opera.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Jerome WeatheraldMain image: Moon and Me Photo credit: BBC

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