Front Row

Journalist and novelist Jonathan Freedland remembers the Israeli author Amos Oz who died today.Tim Robey, Susannah Clapp and Laura Barton - film, theatre and music critics - look ahead to the notable arts events of the upcoming year.The legendary comic book creator and Marvel figurehead, Stan Lee, died earlier this year. Today, on what would have been his 96th birthday, we pay tribute to his life and work. Comic book artist Dave Gibbons, film critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw and comic book writer Kieron Gillen discuss.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Harry ParkerMain image: Amos Oz. Credit: Jason Kempin / Getty Images.

Front Row marks the deaths of three great choreographers.

Internationally-acclaimed land artist Chris Drury's latest project is a dry stone chamber at the end of a remote peninsular overlooking Morecambe Bay in Lancashire. As the tide recedes, Stig brings us some 'slow radio' as he crosses the causeway and heads for Sunderland Point to meet the artist, as well as Andrew Mason, the Master Craftsman and noted dry stonewaller, as they work on the construction of the Horizon Line Chamber. When it is finished, visitors will be able to go inside the building which will feature a camera obscura projection of the vast open landscape and big sky of Morecambe Bay.Presenter Stig Abell Producer Jerome Weatherald

It's estimated that almost three million people in the UK now belong to a choir. Kirsty Lang explores why this might be, and looks at the evidence that singing is really good for us.The Sixteen is a professional choir which celebrates its 40th anniversary next year. It's founder, Harry Christophers, and one of the sopranos, Charlotte Mobbs, talk to Kirsty about starting the choir, changing attitudes towards choral singing, their 2019 plans and their outreach programme, working in communities where arts provision is low.Ten years ago, musician Martin Trotman was approached by the Birmingham NHS Trust to set up a community choir for those with mental health issues. One choir has grown into four choirs, which welcome all members of the community with the aim of promoting mental and physical wellbeing through music and song. Martin discusses why choral singing is so beneficial, and two members of the Birmingham Wellbeing Choir talk to Kirsty about how it's helped them.M J Paranzino is a musician and vocal coach w

Andrew Davies is renowned for turning literary classics into prime-time television drama, from Pride and Prejudice and Bleak House to War and Peace. He talks to Samira about his new BBC One series, a reworking of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, explaining the appeal of the 19th Century epic novel and why the stage musical version of the book didn’t influence his adaption at all. In the Bible, Matthew wrote about the Three Wise Men, Luke about the shepherds and the angels, and ever since, Christmas has provided inspiration for writers. John Milton wrote On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, Jane Austen has a Christmas scene in Persuasion, Ernest Hemingway wrote about Paris at Christmas and Helen Fielding, in Bridget Jones’s Diary, has Bridget attending a terrible yuletide family gathering. Writer Matthew Sweet, critic Arifa Akbar and Professor Stephen Regan, who has traced the history of Christmas in English literature, discuss the different ways writers have treated Christmas in their work. Sheffield-based poet

Ben Elton, creator of the iconic Elizabethan sitcom Blackadder II, talks about his fascination with Shakespeare, as Upstart Crow returns to BBC Two for a Shakespeare/Dickens mashup, A Crow Christmas Carol. He's also written the screenplay for All is True, a Shakespeare biopic starring Kenneth Branagh. Vanessa Kisuule reads her poem Describing Snow in the Aftermath, part of Radio 4's poetry day marking the winter solstice. As artist Olafur Eliasson installs melting ice blocks outside Tate Modern in order to highlight the dangers of climate change, Stig asks whether political art is becoming more of a call to action. With critics Jacky Klein, Jonathan Jones and artist Bob and Roberta Smith. And why has misery won out over cheer on Christmas TV in recent years? David Butcher investigates. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Timothy Prosser

Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the phenomenally successful stage musical Hamilton, is starring in Mary Poppins Returns, a sequel to Disney’s 1964 classic. He talks to John about following in the cockney footsteps of Dick Van Dyke, and how he referenced the original Mary Poppins in Hamilton. As Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stage musical Hamilton marks one year on the London stage this week, we look at whether it has created an increased appetite for hip hop musicals. Taking part are the Musical Director of ZooNation DJ Walde, who co-created the musicals Sylvia, Some Like It Hip Hop, and Into The Hoods; Professor of Musical Theatre, Millie Taylor; and Poppy Burton-Morgan, writer and director of the musical In The Willows.Richard Sherman, now ninety, wrote the music for the original Mary Poppins with his brother Robert. In 2007 he came on Front Row to talk about composing for Walt Disney and performed Walt’s favourite song, Feed the Birds.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Kate Bullivant

Eileen Atkins, grande dame of the stage, looks back over her career. The actress famous for her roles in The Crown and Gosford Park, talks about playing Childie in the original stage production of The Killing of Sister George, and co-creating Upstairs Downstairs, as well as some of the famous acting roles she has turned down.Penny Marshall, the first woman to direct a film that took more than 100m dollars at the box office, has died. She was, too, the second female director to have a film Oscar-nominated for best picture. Marshall starred as Laverne in the long-running hit comedy Laverne and Shirley, directing several episodes before moving on to make commercially and critically successful feature films. Leslie Felperin, who grew up watching Laverne and Shirley, assesses the career of this pioneering director.BBC One’s This Is My Song is a television series which invites members of the public in to a recording studio to work with famous music producers and create a track for a very personal reason. Samira sp

Actor and director John Malkovich discusses foreign accents and facial hair with Kirsty as he explains what drew him to taking on the role of famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in The ABC Murders, the latest BBC One dramatization of Agatha Christie's novels by writer Sarah Phelps.As Christmas approaches with films like It's a Wonderful Life back in cinemas and Love Actually on the TV schedules film critic Hannah McGill and Thomas Dixon, author of Weeping Britannia, discuss what makes a good weepie and why do we like to cry at films? Part of Front Row's ongoing series on the relationship between the arts and mental health.True crime podcasts have captivated listeners around the world, with the first series of Serial about the murder of a high school student acting establishing what is now a significant part of the podcast landscape. Crime novelist Mark Billingham discusses the rise and rise of the genre from Atlanta Monster to Death in Ice Valley and most recently the Australian hit The Teacher's Pet.Pres

As the Archers prepares for its Canterbury Tales Christmas special, Carole Boyd - who plays the doyenne of Ambridge theatricals Lynda Snell - is joined by Oxford Professor of Medieval Literature Laura Ashe to discuss Chaucer’s tales of courtly love and boisterous sex.The new BBC and Netflix animated version of Watership Down will be broadcast on BBC ONE at 7pm on December 22 and 23. Critic Mark Ecclestone gives his view on how it compares with the book by Richard Adams, and whether the new version will traumatise children, as the first film version did in the seventies.Recently rappers in Russia have found their concerts cancelled by venues and local authorities and some musicians have been arrested. Over the weekend President Putin admitted he couldn't get rid of rap, but that he wanted to control it, saying, "If it's impossible to stop something, you have to take charge of it." But what is his objection and what does he intend to do? Alexander Kan, the BBC Russian Service's arts and culture correspondent,

Rita Ora on her six year journey to release her second album Phoenix, following a legal dispute with her record label. The musician, who has also acted in the Fifty Shades film trilogy and been a judge on television talent shows The Voice and The X-Factor, talks to John Wilson about finally being able to release music, song writing and her Albanian heritage.This year’s Bad Sex In Fiction award was won by James Frey and also had an all-male shortlist. So what defines good and bad writing of sex in literature, and why do men seem to be worse at it than women? Novelist Matt Thorne and Rowan Pelling, founding editor of the Erotic Review now of The Amorist, discuss.Unbelievably, Die Hard is 30 years old this year. Stand-up poet Kate Fox considers why this thriller starring Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman is such a classic.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson

Not Going Out is the UK’s longest-running sitcom on TV and will this year bring a live edition to our screens for Christmas. The show’s star and creator Lee Mack talks about its surprising longevity, the changing face of British comedy, and his childhood dream of being a jockey.From real life to the big screen and now the casino stage, Channing Tatum’s outstandingly popular Magic Mike is now in London’s West End. Though in the light of the #MeToo movement, the show is compared by female comedian Sophie Linder-Lee, who reveals that there is a message behind the performance, and how demanding a show it is to control.Jeremy Noel-Tod has gathered poems from all over the world and created a new 400-page anthology. But these poems don’t rhyme and they are not metrical. They are not arranged in stanzas, nor even lines. Noel-Tod is the editor of The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem and together with the writer Michèle Roberts who has composed some, explains what a prose poem is, how it came about, and the allure of thi

Two new films with comic book superheroes at the centre - Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and Aquaman - have just been released. Aquaman is DC’s follow-up to their hugely successful 2017 film Wonder Woman, while Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is an animated superhero film which imagines Spidermen (and women) from alternative universes who team up. Critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw has seen both and gives her verdict on which will come out on top in the battle for the box-office.Mike Bartlett, Olivier Award-winning playwright whose work includes Love, Love, Love and King Charles III, and on television, crime drama The Town and Doctor Foster, returns to The Old Fire Station in Oxford where his very first play (co-authored) was produced when he was 18. His latest work, Snowflake, written especially for this theatre at Christmas, is a story of a father and his daughter estranged partly because of their differing views on leaving the EU.Whilst snowflakes might be 'triggered' by the term snowflake - a pejorative te

Mortal Engines is a new sci-fi fantasy film co-written and produced by Peter Jackson, based on the first in a series of young adult steampunk novels by Philip Reeve. In a post-apocalyptic future, mobile cities on huge caterpillar tracks roam the landscape, consuming smaller towns for their resources. Starring Hera Hilmar as Hester Shaw, the film is the directorial debut of long-time Jackson collaborator Christian Rivers. Katie Popperwell reviews.In a year when housing has risen up the political agenda, Richard Gregory, artistic director of Quarantine theatre company, and performance artist Grace Surman discuss Tenancy, part of a Manchester-led international project which explores the changing nature of cities by artists taking over a residential home for a year.The work of the Chinese photographer Ren Hang found admirers worldwide and was championed by Ai Weiwei, though the Chinese authorities were less enamoured. Almost two years after his death at the age of 29 and with the first show of his work in the UK

Tamara Lawrance stars in new BBC One drama The Long Song, an adaption of the Andrea Levy novel set on a sugar plantation during the final days of slavery in 19th century Jamaica. The actress talks about the drama as well as her career so far, which in the three years since leaving drama school has seen her play Viola in Twelfth Night at the National Theatre, Cordelia opposite Ian McKellen's Lear in Chichester and Prince Harry’s republican girlfriend in BBC One’s Charles III. Meet Vermeer is a new initiative between The Hague's Mauritshuis gallery and Google Arts and Culture which brings together all 36 authenticated works of 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in an augmented reality experience viewable via the Google Arts and Culture app on a smartphone. Art critic Estelle Lovatt reviews the virtual museum and chooses some of her favourite art apps.Matty Healy, frontman for The 1975 discusses the band’s third album A Brief Enquiry into Online Relationships which looks at addiction, depression and soc

As Bruce Springsteen nears the end of his 236-show run in New York, Kate Mossman reviews Springsteen on Broadway, the new Netflix film of his stage show based on his autobiography Born to Run, in which he looks back on his life and performs songs on acoustic guitar and piano.From James Bond nemesis Blofeld to Scar from the Lion King – facial disfigurements have long been commonplace for cinematic villains. A new campaign by the charity Changing Faces and the BFI, I Am Not Your Villain, wants to end the use of “scars, burns or marks as shorthand for villainy”. Kirsty talks to Changing Faces CEO Becky Hewitt and film podcaster Mike Muncer.Sarah Shaffi selects the most beautiful books to buy as presents this Christmas. In the age of streaming music and films, do books make better gifts? And theatre critic Lyn Gardner discusses the difficult financial situation facing the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, which has announced the closure of its repertory theatre company. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser

Screenwriter Jimmy McGovern talks about his new BBC One drama Care, starring Sheridan Smith, Alison Steadman and Sinead Keenan, which looks at the personal challenges of caring for a parent with dementia and the struggle to find good and affordable care.Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera talks to us from her home in Havana and explains why she is continuing to protest over Decree 349, a new law that will require artists to obtain a government licence, despite Bruguera being arrested twice this week by the authorities. BBC Correspondent in Havana, Will Grant, explains the context and implications of the new law. How can the arts help people with insomnia? We speak to two artists making work to fall asleep to – Richard Talbot of band Marconi Union, who worked with a sound therapist to write the soporific track Weightless, and Phoebe Smith, Sleep Storyteller-in-Residence for the sleep app Calm.Presenter John Wilson Producer Edwina Pitman

Maggi Hambling discusses her new exhibition The Quick and the Dead at Jerwood Gallery in Hastings, which centres on paintings and drawings made over the past decade, in which she has portrayed four fellow artists - Sebastian Horsley, Sarah Lucas, Julian Simmons and Juergen Teller - whose lives have intersected at various points, and who have created their own reciprocal artistic interpretations.Nearly 40 years ago, three white Jewish teenagers called Adam Horovitz, Adam Yauch and Michael Diamond became Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D when they stopped playing hardcore punk and took up rap. The hip hop group Beastie Boys went on to gain 3 Grammy awards and sell 50 million records worldwide. Stig talks to Mike D and Ad Rock about their new book - which is as much dedicated to MCA, who died in 2012, as it is to documenting the band’s history.With actor Ellie Kendrick making her professional debut as a playwright with Hole at the Royal Court in London this week, she and theatre critic David Benedict consider the long tra

Twelve flights. Twelve travellers. Twelve stories. David Szalay talks about his new book, Turbulence, which features lives in turmoil, each in some way touching the next. David Szalay was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016 – and Turbulence is an original Radio 4 commission. The 55th annual Golden Horse awards, dubbed the "Chinese Oscars", saw An Elephant Sitting Still win best picture. Created by novelist-turned-director Hu Bo, who adapted it from his own book, it tells the story of four people in a society plagued by cruelty and violence. As the film is released in the UK, critic Simran Hans gives her verdict and Asian film expert, Andrew Heskins, discusses the wider landscape of cinema in China and the way the industry is changing.This weekend UNESCO added the reggae music of Jamaica to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, a programme that looks to protect and promote traditions or living expressions of cultural identity. To discuss the programme and the decision to include reggae on this ye

For his final role as an actor, Robert Redford plays a charming bank robber in The Old Man and the Gun, harking back to his early roles in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. Tim Robey reviews. Booker prize winning narrator of Anna Burns’s Milkman reads 19th century novels as she cannot bear the 20th century. What do other fictional characters read and what does it reveal about them, their authors and the period in which the books were written. John Bown, Professor of Literature at York university joins to discuss fiction within fictionPoet Fred D'Aguiar's new collection, Translations from Memory, starts with Gilgamesh, the earliest poem and ends with with a response Kamau Brathwaite, the poet from Barbados, who is still alive. It includes responses to philosophers - Spinoza, Hume, Kant - to writers - Lorca, Akhmatova, Seferis - to scientists such as Marie Curie, to political leaders - Nelson Mandela - to religion - Islam - and great movements such as the Reformation. He talks to Samira Ahmed