Front Row

We speak to director John Madden about his new political thriller Miss Sloane, where Jessica Chastain stars as a ruthless lobbyist taking on the might of the gun lobby. The film was released in the USA two days after Trump was elected and John discusses the effect this had on both on the American box office takings and on how the he now views the film.It is a controversy that has caused thousands of complaints to the BBC and debate in the House of Lords. Last week even saw Judi Dench became involved when she criticised young performers about it. Actors 'mumbling' their dialogue, especially on TV drama, has become a common complaint of modern audiences. The director of RADA Edward Kemp and voice coach Barbara Berkery comes in to tell us why actors are struggling to be heard by viewers - and what can be done to improve their diction. Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Ford discusses his first non-fiction book, Between Them, a two-part memoir of his parents, Edna and Parker Ford, who lived an itinerant life d

As a controversial play about a Windsor power struggle hits the small screen, we talk to writer Mike Bartlett and director Rupert Goold about adapting King Charles III for TV; complete with constitutional crisis, the Queen's funeral, Diana's ghost, blank verse and the late great Tim Piggott-Smith.Radio 4's Poet in Residence Daljit Nagra begins the first in series of appearances where he takes us through what currently interests and inspires him from the world of poetry.After the success of the David Bowie exhibition The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has mounted another rock based show, this time on the long and varied career of Pink Floyd. The curator Victoria Broakes shows Emma round exhibits that range from psychedelia to synthesisers via flying pigs.Presenter: Emma Dabiri Producer: Ella-mai Robey.

The latest Alien film is a prequel to the 1979 original. Rhianna Dhillon assesses how Alien: Covenant fits into the series and looks at Michael Fassbender's role as not one but two robots.A gong surrounded by ivory tusks was removed from display at Sandringham House last week amid ethical concerns. To discuss how museums should reflect changing views in contemporary society Emma Dabiri is joined by cultural commentator Tiffany Jenkins and curator and writer Priya Khanchandani. The elongated human sculptures from artist Alberto Giacometti are some of the most recognizable works of modern art. As Tate Modern opens the UK's first major retrospective of his work for 20 years, art critic William Feaver gives the low down on the somewhat mythical Swiss painter-sculptor.Jamestown is a new Sky 1 drama set in one of the first British settlements in America in the early 17th century. It begins as a group of women arrive from the UK, paid to travel to the colony to marry men they have never met. Writer Bill Gallagher re

Mervyn Morris is Jamaica's first Poet Laureate since the country gained independence in 1962. As his tenure draws to a close, the poet reflects on his time in the role, and discusses his new collection, Peelin Orange, which is drawn from his writing over 50 years. With the deciding round of the French presidential election this Sunday, cultural commentators Agnès Poirier and Andrew Hussey discuss the likely impact of a Macron or Le Pen win on the arts in France and whether culture is a political card to be played.With the release of a 'Black and Chrome' edition of the 2015 Oscar-winning movie Mad Max: Fury Road, BFI's Gaylene Gould considers film-makers' love affair with black & white.The Ferryman by William Stott of Oldham is on display for the first time today at Tate Britain having been acquired for the public. John Wilson looks at the painting with the curator Alison Smith who explains that it marks a pivotal moment in this country's art, the embrace of naturalism and progress towards impressionism -

Samantha Spiro has played the role of Barbara Windsor both on stage and on television and now returns to the role in a new BBC biopic of Dame Barbara. She talks about how she shares the role with three other actors and the contrast with the other roles she is playing such as Catherine the Great on Radio 4. Record producers Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, and Sam Cohen discuss working together on their album, Resistance Radio: The Man In The High Castle Album. Inspired by an Amazon TV series which imagines a world in which the allies lost WW2, they selected songs from the 50s and 60s, and recorded them with artists such as Beck and Norah Jones.Two weeks ago we revealed that Historic England had unearthed a lost treasure of the 1951 Festival of Britain in a hotel garden in Blackheath. John Wilson joined the daughter of the sculptor Peter Laszlo Peri at a studio in Surrey to see The Sunbathers painstakingly reassembled. Eighty five-year-old Ann MacIntyre had not seen her father's sculpture for over 60 years and

In 2002 the actor Woody Harrelson had a wild night in London which ended with a police pursuit and his arrest. In January he recreated that escapade in his film Lost in London, which was the first to be shown in cinemas live, as it was being shot. As it had a 30 strong cast, 24 locations, chases on foot and in cars, this was an invitation to chaos. One slight hiccup was that an unexploded bomb was discovered in the Thames a bridge that evening and a bridge, crucial to the action, was blocked. Harrelson talks to Samira Ahmed about his project now the film is having a more predictable release.Jude Law stars as the love sick and murderous drifter Gino in star director Ivo van Hove's stage adaptation of Visconti's classic film Obsession. They reduced this lush and expansive movie to just 6 characters, but with huge screens and a treadmill on the Barbican stage, and a roaring lorry engine suspended above it. They explain their radical approach to this classic.The Journey imagines what happened when Martin McGuines

Mindhorn is the new film about a faded TV star who reprises his role as an Isle of Man sleuth who has a robotic eye, and can see the truth. Julian Barratt (Mighy Boosh) and Simon Farnaby (Horrible Histories) co-wrote and co-star and talk to Kirsty about poking fun at actorly behaviour, and how the film parodies Bergerac and the Sixty Million Dollar Man. Tony Kushner on his epic play Angels in America, which he wrote and set during the Aids crisis in America in the 1980s, and which is being revived in a new production at the National Theatre, starring Andrew Garfield, Russell Tovey, Denise Gough and Nathan Lane. Madeline Miller, the Orange Prize winning author of The Song of Achilles, and the writer and broadcaster Natalie Haynes, whose new book The Children of Jocasta retells with the story of Antigone, discuss turning the tales of the Greek myths into novels and why the ancient legends still have a contemporary and universal appeal.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Dymphna Flynn.

The composer and artist Oliver Beer discusses his new acoustics project in which he explores the resonant frequencies of the empty spaces of buildings and everyday vessels.To mark her 70th birthday the composer Nicola LeFanu talks about her career in the world of contemporary classical music, from her childhood making music for the plays she wrote to the recent premiere at the Barbican of her latest large-scale work, The Crimson Bird. On 17 July 1717 George Frideric Handel premiered his Water Music for King George I, and to mark the 300th anniversary of this musical landmark Front Row has commissioned a new piece by Grace Evangeline Mason, the 2013 winner of the BBC Proms Inspire Young Composer Competition. Before beginning work on the piece she came in to meet John and discuss her early ideas.To celebrate May Day, poet Alison Brackenbury discusses the joy of spring in verse and reads a section of John Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar and her own poem May Day, 1972.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robin

The British actor Christian Bale started his film career as a child star but has gone on to become a hugely successful adult actor. With the release of his latest film The Promise - an epic set in First World War Turkey - film critic Angie Errigo looks at his choice of roles and assesses what it says about Bale as a serious actor. The clash of creative differences at Shakespeare's Globe has put the role of Artistic Director into the spotlight. But what exactly is that role and what are the pressures facing the people leading theatres? Daniel Evans, who has just started his first season at the helm of Chichester Festival Theatre, and Tamara Harvey, now in her second year at Theatr Clywd, discuss. On last night's Front Row John Wilson hosted a debate about the future of museums with with Hartwig Fischer, the new director of the British Museum, Tristram Hunt, who's just taken up his post as director of the V&A, Sarah Munro, director of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary art in Gateshead, and Stephen Deuchar,

In a live programme from the Nereid Gallery in the British Museum, John Wilson is joined by Hartwig Fischer, director of the British Museum, Tristram Hunt, director of the V&A, Sarah Munro, director of Baltic, and Stephen Deuchar, Director of the Art Fund. After the announcement of the Art Fund Museum of the Year shortlist, the panel will debate the current and future role for museums and galleries in Britain, with particular attention to how they are funded, and how to make them relevant to the people of Britain today.

Dame Judi Dench talks about her friend Sir John Gielgud, as the actor is honoured with an English Heritage blue plaque at his former London home. AM Holmes and Granta editor Sigrid Rausing discuss the new Granta list of the best young American novelists.Tim Robey pays tribute to the director Jonathan Demme, whose films include Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, and whose death was announced today.

Thomas Ades, hailed as Britain's greatest composer since Benjamin Britten, on the premiere of The Exterminating Angel, his opera which is based on Louis Bunuel's 1962 surrealist film and features live sheep on the Royal Opera House stage. What if a deer did porn? Is it legal to marry a stuffed owl exhibit? Why is it so difficult to find a baby called Gary? American poet Patricia Lockwood ponders all of these in Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, her new collection which also features the autobiographical poem Rape Joke, a viral hit on the internet. The poetry collection is published to coincide with her memoir Priestdaddy, which details growing up in a religious household with an ordained Catholic Priest as a father.The quirky superhero film Guardians of the Galaxy was the surprise hit of 2014. Cinema-goers loved the rag-tag group of lesser-known Marvel Comics characters, their bickering humour and the awesome mix tape that provided the soundtrack. Samira Ahmed talks to writer and director James Gunn abou

As a trio, Bananarama remain one of the UK's most successful all-female groups. After four hit albums, founder member Siobhan Fahey left in 1988, with remaining members Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward choosing to keep the group going for the next three decades. They join John Wilson to discuss why now was the right time to reform for a comeback tour.The Wellcome Book Prize celebrates the best new books that engage with an aspect of medicine, health or illness, and can be fiction or non-fiction. As the winner is announced on tonight's Front Row, Val McDermid, chair of judges, joins John Wilson from the ceremony.On the first day that he gets access to the London gallery for his new exhibition Incoming, Scottish artist David Mach shares his thoughts on the challenge of creating a new work in situ from scratch, using 20 tonnes of newspaper and a second-hand Jeep. His two-week preparations will be streamed live online.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald.

In her new film, Their Finest, Gemma Arterton plays a screenwriter during World War II whose job it is to write women's dialogue - referred to as "the slop" by her male colleagues - for morale boosting films for the home front. Gemma discusses the role and her own experiences of being a woman in the film industry.In January last year, curator Sarah Gavanta came on to Front Row to talk about her exhibition for Historic England called Out There: Our Post-War Public Art. It was an exploration of the boom in public art created by the likes of Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Elizabeth Frink between 1945 and 1985. But it was also a call to arms to trace the missing sculptures of the period. Sarah returns to the programme to tell us how one of those lost pieces, The Sunbathers by Peter Laszlo Peri, has been discovered in a hotel garden.The new Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! starring Bette Midler broke box office records last year, exceeding $9 million on the first day tickets went on sale. Theatre critic Mat

In 1978 Harold Pinter sent Joan Bakewell a copy of his new play Betrayal. Upon reading it she discovered that it was based with vivid accuracy on an affair they'd had years earlier and which had remained a secret. Shocked and bewildered she wrote her own play in response. Keeping In Touch has been hidden away ever since, but is now being broadcast on Radio 4, reworked. Joan Bakewell talks to Kirsty about the play, Betrayal and her changing relationship with both.Yesterday Emma Rice, the Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe in London, posted an open letter on the theatre's own website addressed to the future Artistic Director. The post is being advertised after Emma Rice announced her departure last October - a decision which was apparently sparked by her use of artificial lights and sound. The open letter is just the latest in an ongoing saga that's been evolving off-stage at the theatre so, with the Bard's birthday just days away, literary critic Matt Thorne helps us to untangle a drama that Shakespeare

The young American artist Awol Erizku was the man responsible for the photograph of Beyoncé as she announced she was pregnant with twins back in February. It became Instagram's most-liked image ever. As he prepares to open Make America Great Again, his first solo show in Europe, he discusses the political nature of his work and that famous photo.The Word-Hoard is an exhibition at Wordsworth House in Cumbria celebrating the natural world and the words we once used to describe it. It is curated by Robert Macfarlane, writer, walker, Cambridge don and author of the bestselling book Landmarks. He explains why it's important not to forget that clinkerbells, dagglers and ickles are all another way of naming icicles. ITV's latest drama Little Boy Blue focuses on the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool, in 2007. Mad about Everton, he was shot dead as he innocently walked home from football practice. The four-part series explores the family's ordeal, the community response and how Rhys's murderer was brought

Samira Ahmed talks to the violinist Kyung Wha Chung, who after five years recovering from a finger injury is now performing the complete Bach Partitas and Sonatas. Murray Lachlan Young, the first poet to receive a million pound contract from EMI, discusses his collection How Freakin' Zeitgeist Are You?Hisham Matar, who recently won the Pulitzer Prize, and Briony Hanson review the Egyptian film Clash, which is set entirely in a police truck in Cairo in 2013.Michael Pennington pays tribute to the late theatre director Michael Bogdanov, who founded the English Shakespeare Company.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Warren Beatty has written, directs and stars in Rules Don't Apply, his film about the billionaire film producer, businessman and aviator, Howard Hughes. Writers Karen Krizanovich and Michael Carlson review.Nigerian-born poet Inua Ellams discusses and performs from his new collection #Afterhours, in which he responds to other poets and their poetry.Writer Stella Duffy reviews the new Channel 4 drama Born to Kill, from the producers of Line of Duty, starring Romola Garai, Daniel Mays and young actors Jack Rowan and Lara Peake.Music writer and former A&R man Ben Wardle strokes his stubbly chin and ponders his long-lasting love affair with that classic music genre - pop.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Kirsty Lang talks to the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, who turns 80 this summer. The Old Vic's production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Joshua McGuire, will be broadcast live into cinemas across the UK on Thursday 20 April. Travesties, starring Tom Hollander and Freddie Fox, is on in the West End until the end of the month. Tom Stoppard talks about fleeing Czechoslovakia in 1939, his fascination with word play, and his secret role as a script doctor in Hollywood. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser.

As councils across the UK struggle to meet the pressure on their budgets, art organisations have had to take their share of cuts. So how are they bringing their creative minds to the issue? The mac birmingham, an arts centre with close links to the local community, has had a 70% cut to its council funding. Its chief executive and artistic director, Deborah Kermode, is joined by actor and mac alumni Adrian Lester to discuss the issue.Actress and writer Frog Stone discusses her new comedy Bucket, in which she stars alongside Miriam Margolyes. Exploring the relationship between a free spirited mother and her reserved daughter from a proudly female viewpoint, Frog Stone explains why she wanted to explore the minutiae of female relationships. Kim Stanley Robinson's latest novel, New York 2140, imagines the city 40 years after it has been completely flooded, when every street is a canal, every skyscraper an island. The bestselling sci-fi author, whose works include the Mars trilogy, discusses with Samira his fascin