Front Row

Strictly Come Dancing Head Judge Shirley Ballas describes her approach as fun, firm, feisty but fair. As one of the couples comes ever closer to raising this year’s glitter-ball trophy she talks about her own background in dance, dismisses the “curse” of Strictly and explains why she thinks the show has such appeal to young, old and everyone in between.Sarah Jenkins, who recently won the BBC Proms Inspire competition for young composers, talks about her new piece, inspired by the winter solstice. And the Sun Stood Still is being premiered by the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Southbank Centre on 5 December and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. The current criticisms aimed at National Theatre Wales, that neither their productions nor their casts are Welsh enough, echo the criticisms that the National Theatre of Scotland faced a few years ago. Joyce McMillan, theatre critic for The Scotsman, and Dr Emma Schofield, associate editor of Wales Art Review discuss what it means to be a national theatre.Presenter: Stig A

Hot on the heels of Disney's successful remake of The Jungle Book, Netflix release a live action/motion capture retelling of Kipling stories, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, directed by Andy Serkis and starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Benedict Cumberbatch. Novelist Katherine Rundell reviews. Samira talks to Dana Gioia, who as Poet Laureate of California recently went on a poetry reading odyssey, visiting all 58 counties in the state. He's also spent the last year choosing the poems for The Best American Poetry 2018 anthology. Earlier this month Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that "arts on prescription" is an indispensable tool in tackling loneliness, mental health and other long-term conditions. To discuss arts and healthcare, Samira is joined by Wellcome Research Fellow Daisy Fancourt, Gavin Clayton, head of the Arts and Minds charity and GP Dr Simon Opher. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Timothy Prosser

Naomi Alderman’s debut novel, Disobedience, has been adapted into a film starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. The women are reunited as Ronit, now living in New York, returns to her Orthodox Jewish community in London after her father’s death, reigniting a forbidden passion with her childhood friend Esti. Briony Hanson, Head of Film for the British Film Institute, reviews. Scottish artist Rachel Maclean discusses her new exhibition, The Lion and The Unicorn, at the National Gallery in London. Scottish identity lies at the heart of much of her work, which includes ornate films and stills, the satirical artist playing multiple roles, and extensive use of make-up, prosthetics, and CGI. The Brazilian writer Julián Fuks talks to Kirsty about his award-winning novel, Resistance. Based very much on his own family story, it deals with his parents’ flight from the military Argentine dictatorship in the 1970s, their adoption of a son before having two further children, and examines identity, family bonds and the d

The 2018 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award today celebrated its 30th anniversary, and at the awards ceremony the prize was shared between two books for the first time. The two winning authors - Paul D Gibson for The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee, and Tom Gregory for A Boy in the Water - join the prize's co-founder Graham Sharpe and fellow judge Alyson Rudd to discuss the winning books and reflect on the current state of sports writing.Jim Carrey’s career has been one of the most varied of his generation, spanning over three decades and nearly all genres. He returns to our small screens with comedy series Kidding, which follows Jeff Pickles, an iconic children's entertainer who has been performing for 30 years, as his personal life falls apart. Critic Boyd Hilton reviews both the show and Jim Carrey’s career.With Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks turning 50 this week, music journalist Laura Barton explains why this seminal album continues to evade definition.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald

Fifty Shades of Grey and The Fall actor, Jamie Dornan, stars in new BBC Two drama Death and Nightingales. Based on Eugene McCabe's modern Irish classic novel of the same name, it’s a story of love across the religious and class divide, set in the beautiful countryside of Fermanagh in 1885.Theatre Royal Plymouth announced today they have commissioned the UK’s largest bronze sculpture, to be installed in front of the theatre in spring 2019. The artist Joseph Hillier discusses his the work, named Messenger, which he’s created using 3D scans from the body of an actor performing in Othello at Plymouth in 2014. With the announcement of the deaths of film directors Bernardo Bertolucci and Nicolas Roeg, Kirsty speaks to film producer Jeremy Thomas, who collaborated with both men; and critic Hannah McGill assesses their work. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Dymphna Flynn

Golden Globe Award winner Ruth Wilson stars in the new BBC drama Mrs Wilson in a uniquely challenging role: she is playing her own grandmother, Alison Wilson. The drama follow Alison's investigation into the mysterious multiple lives of her husband Alec, which only come to light after his sudden death. TV critic Alison Graham gives her verdict. As veganism gains more popularity in the UK, we consider how it is applied to the art world; both in terms of how animals are represented and how animal products are used in creating work. We speak to novelist cultural academic Alex Lockwood from the University of Sunderland and Aisha Eveleigh who runs a vegan art festival Liberation Arts in Bristol. Plus Nigerian author Akwaeke Emezi on their debut novel, Freshwater, which is about a person inhabited by Igbo spirits. Emezi explains how the book explores ideas of identity using their own life experience and Nigerian mythology.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Hilary Dunn

We reveal this year's Costa Book Awards shortlists. Critics Alex Clark and Toby Lichtig discuss the books chosen in the five categories: novel, first novel, poetry, biography and children's fiction. Category winners will appear on the programme in January and Front Row will announce the overall prize-winner on 29 January 2019.Documentary maker Sean McAllister reveals what has happened in the week after his film, Northern Soul, was shown on BBC Two. He explains what has happened with Steve Arnott's Beats Bus after his crowdfunding page surpasses its target.Shoplifters, a warm-hearted Japanese film about a family of small-time crooks, won the top prize, the Palme d’Or, at this year’s Cannes Festival Film. As it is released into UK cinemas, cultural historian of Japan Dr Chris Harding gives his verdict on the film, its depiction of contemporary Tokyo and the controversy around its success.The Ben Uri Gallery and Museum has seen eleven members of its international advisory panel, including Sir Nicholas Serota –

Kurt Russell, whose credits include The Thing, Escape from New York and The Hateful Eight, discusses his new role as Santa Claus in the new Netflix family film The Christmas Chronicles. Russell looks back over his five-decade acting career, including the time he worked with Elvis and Walt Disney as a child actor.Poet Ruth Fainlight talks about her new collection Somewhere Else Entirely, her first book in eight years and the first since the death of Alan Sillitoe, her husband of 50 years. Several of the works in Fainlight’s collection serve as elegies to him, a meditation on mortality and memory in poetry and prose .Damien Hirst's latest artwork has been unveiled outside a hospital in Qatar - fourteen large bronze sculptures that graphically chart the journey from conception to birth. Layla Ibrahim Bacha, the Art Specialist for the Qatar Foundation who commissioned the controversial artworks, talks to John Wilson from Doha.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald

Marianne Faithfull released her first record in 1965 and now aged 71 she's releasing her 21st. Titled Negative Capability, the album is inspired by loss, ageing, and love. She discusses being misunderstood, her refusal to live in the past, and why this album is her most honest.Last night Holly Willoughby made her I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! presenting debut in what is the first series not to be hosted by both Ant and Dec since the show began in 2002. Convicted of drink-driving earlier this year, Ant stepped down from all presenting duties alongside his friend and long-time presenting partner Dec. TV writer Louis Wise reviews if Dec and Holly can re-capture that on screen magic.As part of our art and mental health series we talk with digital artist Kirsty Latoya. Diagnosed with depression at the age of 13 she turned to drawing to help express her thoughts and feelings. With her first collection, Reflections of Me, she combines both her passions of art and poetry in the hope to help others also strug

Jane Fonda, the two-time Academy Award-winning actress, film producer, political activist and fitness guru, looks back at her 60 year career with Kirsty Lang. The feminist classic film 9 to 5, about three female office workers who take on their chauvinist boss, is being rereleased in cinemas. Jane Fonda, who produced and stars in the film, explains how she came up with the idea, cast Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton in the other lead roles and why it's a comedy. We also speak to Lily Tomlin about her friendship with Jane Fonda. As well as working together on 9 to 5, the two actresses star in the Netflix sitcom Grace and Frankie, and have even co-presented a TED Talk about the importance of female friendships. Plus film critics Helen McGill and Jason Solomons look back at Fonda’s career. From Barbarella to The China Syndrome, from Klute to Monster-in-Law, we examine how this actress reinvented herself on screen and her cultural and political impact beyond cinema.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Kate Bullivant

In Sebastian Barry’s inaugural speech as Laureate for Irish Fiction earlier this year, he stated that Ireland was in a 'golden age of prose'. As Northern Irish writer Anna Burns scooped the Man Booker Prize for her novel Milkman last month, Front Row hears voices from the No Alibis bookstore in Belfast. We speak to former Irish Laureate and Booker Prize winner Anne Enright; Professor of Irish History and Literature, Roy Foster; award-winning, Belfast-born writer Lucy Caldwell; and writer, editor and journalist Sinead Gleeson. They discuss the renaissance in Irish writing, its roots in Irish storytelling and love of language, and how the border - now at the heart of the Brexit debate - is being written about by a new generation of writers, north and south.And Front Row exclusively announces the winner of this year's Hepworth Sculpture Prize, hearing live from the victor and from the Chief Curator of The Hepworth Wakefield, Andrew Bonacina. This year’s shortlist includes Mona Hatoum, Michael Dean, Phillip Lai,

Arts education has become the focus of a great deal of passion and concern recently, since the core, knowledge-based subjects took precedence over the creative subjects when the EBacc was introduced in England by the then Education Minister Michael Gove, announced in 2010.With the arts not being a requirement in the GCSE syllabus for the English Baccalaureate (the EBacc), leaders in the arts and the lucrative creative industries have been very vocal in their criticism of government policy.Stig Abell chairs a discussion on the subject from a state secondary school - Soar Valley College in Leicester - with leading figures in arts and education.On the panel are:Bob and Roberta Smith, contemporary artist and education advocate Deborah Annetts, Chief Executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians (the ISM)Trina Haldar, graduate in chemistry and engineering, and director and founder of Leicester-based Mashi Theatre Branwen Jeffreys, BBC’s Education EditorMark Lehain, founder (and former headteacher) of one of t

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the second in the Fantastic Beasts film franchise from JK Rowling which explores the Wizarding World before Harry Potter. Eddie Redmayne and Johnny Depp star, and Jude Law joins the cast as a young Dumbledore. James Walters, Head of the Department of Film at the University of Birmingham reviews. As CAPSID, a new exhibition which explores how viruses behave, opens in Manchester, Front Row brought together the artist behind it, John Walter, and scientist turned artist, Dr Lizzie Burns to discuss the appeal of making art inspired by the microbiological world.Fernand Léger is the subject of a new exhibition at Tate Liverpool. Leger's work moved between many of the great art movements of the 20th century - Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism - but retained his own distinctive style. Fernand Léger: New Times, New Pleasures is the first major exhibition dedicated to the artist in the UK in 30 years. Art Critic Laura Robertson explains his significance.Adapting 1902 novel He

Getting butterflies is something many performers admit to, and although some thrive off it, others are often more badly affected. Professor of Performance Science, Aaron Williamon and West End psychologist Dr Anna Colton discuss the power of stage fright and how to overcome it.This week Channel 4 airs a true crime drama about Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who in 1999 shot dead a burglar at his Norfolk farmhouse. His actions and subsequent murder trial sparked a national debate about householders' rights to protect their property. The drama, however, does not focus on the furore surrounding the case, instead the script is taken verbatim from police interviews with Tony Martin. Crime writer Dreda Say Mitchell gives her verdict. Joel and Ethan Coen discuss their latest feature The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a six-part anthology film made up of tales about the American frontier, starring a plethora of big names including Liam Neeson, Tom Waits and James Franco. Each of the stories, which were written over a 25 y

Helena Bonham Carter discusses how she drew on her own experience of depression for her new film 55 Steps which is based on the life of Eleanor Riese. Riese was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 25 and successfully sued a hospital in San Francisco for the right to refuse anti-psychotic medication. At the time of her court case in 1989 Riese was 44, and had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for several years. This interview is part of Front Row’s occasional series exploring the way in which mental health issues are represented across the arts.What ho! Ben Schott talks about taking on PG Wodehouse’s beloved characters Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves in his new novel, Jeeves and The King of Clubs. Schott argues that the pair becoming spies in pre-war London and taking part in car chases is all in the spirit of their creator.11-11: Memories Retold is the first full-length video game to come from Wallace and Gromit creators, Aardman Animations. Set in the final days of WWI it follows a young

To mark Armistice Day, Marin Alsop will be conducting Brahms's A German Requiem this weekend, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and in a break from tradition, she will be introducing the work from the podium. Marin discusses the reasons behind this move, and also reveals the various ways in which this requiem also broke from tradition.Russell Howard makes comedy out of political issues such as the tampon tax, junior doctors and the housing crisis, and is hugely successful with younger audiences who watch him on TV, social media and in his sell-out stand-up world tours. The comedian discusses his show, The Russell Howard Hour, how much he wants to politically engage his audience, and finding the funny in what can be bleak political times. A whinge – that’s the collective noun for a group of cartoonists, and this evening a whinge of some of the best-known, including Steve Bell of the Guardian, Matt of the Daily Telegraph and Banx of the FT, will gather to judge the Young Cartoonist of the Year C

On Folkestone beach, film-maker Danny Boyle discusses Pages of the Sea, his Armistice Day tribute to the servicemen and women who left these shores in the First World War, many never to return. Members of the public will be invited to visit a number of beaches around the country to pay their respects, and will be given a specially-commissioned poem The Wound in Time, by Carol Ann Duffy.Zadie Smith’s White Teeth gets a musical makeover, we review the new theatrical production put on in the same district of north London where the novel is set.Continuing Front Row's Arts and Mental Health series, John Wilson meets singer-songwriter, composer and poet Emily Maguire who discusses how music making and writing have helped her deal with bipolar disorder. She is about to embark on a nationwide tour playing music and reading from her new collection of poetry, Meditation Mind, which was inspired by her latest battle with bipolar, and is a testimony to how her Buddhist practice of meditation has helped her recovery.Niger

Steve McQueen discusses his return to the big screen with Widows, an adaptation of the Lynda La Plante thriller. Set this time in Chicago, the widows must learn to survive after their husbands die in a botched heist leaving debts that need to be repaid in a city rife with professional crime and political corruption.Romeo and Juliet is more relevant to our young people than ever according to the RSC deputy director Erica Whyman. She's directed a new production which involves local young people throughout the tour and swaps the gender of some key roles including Mercutio and Prince Escalus. She explains her approach to the text.Many theatre productions in recent months have featured roles reimagined for a different gender, including Marianne Elliott's revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Company at the Donmar Warehouse, Troilus and Cressida at the RSC and Theatr Clwyd's Lord of the Flies. Theatre critics Dominic Cavendish and Lyn Gardner discuss the merits and pitfalls of gender-swapping on stage.Presenter: J

As Boy George releases his first new album with Culture Club in almost 20 years – simply called Life - he talks about being a changed man and contrasts making music today with the band’s heyday in the 80s.Academy award winning director Peter Jackson has added colour to archival footage from WWI for the first time in his new film They Shall Not Grow Old. But how is this colourisation achieved and how does changing its colour affect the way we experience the film? BFI National Archive Curator Bryony Dixon and film historian Ian Christie discuss.John Cooper Clarke, the razor-sharp poet with the rapid-fire delivery, is one of the defining figures of the late 70s. Over the years he’s been variously referred to as The Bard of Salford, The Godfather of Punk Poetry and more recently, perhaps to his own surprise, as a National Treasure. Now 69, he joins Front Row to perform and talk about his first new collection for decades, The Luckiest Guy Alive.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson

Best-selling Irish novelist Cecelia Ahern discusses her new short story collection, Roar, which features 30 stories about 30 different women.India has unveiled the world's tallest statue, which cost £330 million to build. The 182m high structure in the western state of Gujarat is a bronze-clad tribute to independence leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Pratiksha Ghildial in the BBC’s Delhi bureau reports on reactions within India. Lecturer in Korean Studies, Dr Anna Yates-Lu, explains the origins of pansori, a traditional form of Korean opera, and why legendary pansori singer Ahn Sook-Sun, currently in the UK, is its leading exponent.Julia Roberts stars in the television adaptation of the hit drama podcast series, Homecoming. The series looks back at her work as a counsellor at a mysterious company assessing the mental health of returning soldiers as they rehabilitate into society. TV critic Sophie Wilkinson reviews.Presenter: Janina Ramirez Producer: Edwina Pitman