Brain science and societal roles on healthy relationships.

With Kirsty Lang.As more and more of us are bingeing on box-sets and stream programmes via our laptops, Kirsty asks whether we're witnessing the death of the cliff-hanger and water-cooler TV, as predicted by Kevin Spacey in this year's MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. Spacey was the star of The House Of Cards, …

Mark Lawson turns Quizmaster to test the cultural knowledge of two teams in the Front Row Quiz of the Year. Singer and performer Jackie Clune and playwright Mark Ravenhill are led by writer and Booker judge Natalie Haynes. They are competing against actress and writer Helen Lederer and Citizen Khan creator and star Adil Ray, under the captaincy of …

With Mark Lawson. This year the shelf of great American authors unexpectedly lengthened when a novel called Stoner by John Williams, forgotten since its first appearance five decades ago, was republished to widespread acclaim. At the same time two neglected novels by Renata Adler received enthusiastic reviews when brought back into print after thir…

With Naomi Alderman. The last episode of cult TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer was broadcast in Britain ten years ago. At the time, Naomi believed that the show would lead to the creation of a host of other strong and complex female leads - who would inspire young women in the same way Buffy had inspired her. So where are all the "daughters of Bu…

In new interviews, Mark Lawson talks to the people who have had exceptional years in the world of arts, culture and entertainment in 2013, in the second of two special programmes. David Tennant talks about his roles in the two most highly anticipated television events of 2013 - the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special and the final episode of Broadc…

With Mark Lawson, who in the first of two special programmes, talks to Front Row's People of the Year : our choice of the artists who have made headlines in the world of arts, culture and entertainment in 2013. Tonight's selection is :David Suchet - for his portrayal of the detective Poirot who appeared for the last time this yearZawe Ashton - star…

With Kirsty Lang. As Mary Poppins looks forward to its 50th birthday, and a film about the making of the movie, Saving Mr Banks, is tipped for Oscar success, Julie Andrews reflects on a career that has made her an icon for generations of children. She also discusses the emotional impact of no longer being able to sing, and reveals how she plans to …

With John Wilson. Ben Stiller directs and stars in the second screen adaptation of the 1939 short story by James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Stiller plays a timid magazine photo manager who lives life vicariously through his daydreams, but when a negative goes missing, his real life takes an adventurous turn. Film critic Gaylene Gould…

Mark Lawson reviews the new production of Coriolanus. Josie Rourke directs Shakespeare's tragedy of political manipulation and revenge, with Tom Hiddleston making his return to the Donmar Warehouse in London in the title role. Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.By BBC Radio 4

With Mark Lawson. Oscar contender American Hustle stars Christian Bale and Amy Adams as a pair of con artists who are forced to help the FBI in a huge sting operation, but things go awry when Bale's erstwhile wife, Jennifer Lawrence, gets involved. Critic Antonia Quirke delivers her verdict. It would be hard to miss Mark Gatiss' work over the cours…

With Mark Lawson. Ron Burgundy returns in Anchorman 2. Will Ferrell's hirsute newsreader and his crack team of reporters make it to the big-time as they bring their unique brand of newsgathering to New York city. Mishal Husain discusses whether this sequel to the cult comedy has stayed classy. Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest musical examines the life …

With Mark Lawson. Martin Freeman returns this week as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second film in Peter Jackson's trilogy. He talks to Mark about the physical difficulties of shooting scenes with Ian McKellen's towering Gandalf and how his commitment to the BBC's Sherlock almost cost him the role altogether. Bret Easton…

John Wilson is in Salford for the unveiling of this year's Front Row neon artwork. The artwork was established in 2011 to celebrate the presence of the BBC in the north and involves a cultural luminary supplying a word in their handwriting to be rendered in neon. The writer and comedian Victoria Wood is the guest artist for the 2013 artwork and joi…

With Mark Lawson Alan Bennett gives his reaction as his drama The History Boys is named the nation's favourite play by the English Touring Theatre's 21st Anniversary poll. A forthcoming two-part television drama, starring Jim Broadbent and Luke Evans, is going to show both sides of the 1963 Great Train Robbery. Firstly from the point of view of the…

With Mark Lawson. Front Row's annual Christmas Jukebox returns with music writers Rosie Swash and David Hepworth joining Mark to assess the various candidates in this year's festive single line-up, and advise on which are 2013's Christmas crackers. As a short story by Stieg Larsson is published for the first time, Mark talks to Larsson's friend Joh…

With Kirsty Lang Derren Brown's latest television show sees the illusionist attempt to teach a group of senior citizens how to steal a valuable painting from a gallery in broad daylight. Derren tells Kirsty why he chose to focus on an art theft, and also explains his reason for choosing senior citizens to pull it off. Metro Manila, a low-budget thr…

With Kirsty Lang. Lenny Henry pays tribute to Nelson Mandela and discusses the role that musicians and comedians played in the movement to free him. Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz talk about their retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Fraser is one of the UK's best-known disabled performers and Muz is one of New York's most famous burlesque artists. T…

With John Wilson. Daniel Radcliffe's latest project is playing the young Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings. Based on a true story, the film follows a 17-year-old Ginsberg as he starts at Columbia University in 1944. A murder draws him together with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs and leads to the birth of the Beat Generation. Writer and criti…

With Mark Lawson. Last night Jude Law took to the London stage as Henry V in Michael Grandage's final play in his current West End season. Law, who previously played Hamlet under Grandage's direction, performs a paired-down text in a simple stage setting. Rachel Cooke was at the first night last night and gives her response. As the Shadow Chancello…

Nebraska is the latest road movie from Alexander Payne, the director of oenophile comedy Sideways. In Nebraska, Bruce Dern plays an ageing father who takes a trip with his son across the mid-west to pick up a million-dollar prize. Critic Leslie Felperin delivers her verdict. Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday and Julie Andrews have all appeared on the…

With Mark Lawson. The RSC's stage adaptations of Hilary Mantel's bestselling novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are currently in rehearsal before their sell-out run in Stratford-upon-Avon. Hilary Mantel and Mike Poulton, who has adapted the novels, discuss the challenges of transposing such vast and densely populated books to the stage. Criti…

John Wilson gets a sneak preview of the latest Coronation Street set at its new home in Salford Quays. He talks to the series creator Tony Warren, Executive Producer Kieran Roberts, and Weatherfield local Audrey Roberts (Sue Nicholls). As their controversial new show "Come and See" opens at the Sackler Serpentine Gallery in London, visual artists J…

With John Wilson. Ian Rankin talks to John about the latest investigation by his much-loved detective, John Rebus - who has returned to the Edinburgh CID, but at a lower rank. The story is set amidst the current reform to the structure of the Scottish police - and Rebus finds himself in the middle of a culture clash between his fellow old-hands, an…

With Mark Lawson. The winner of the 25th William Hill Sports Book of the Year is announced live on Front Row from the ceremony in London. The books by the six authors shortlisted for the £25,000 prize cover genetics in sport, Lance Armstrong's doping, international football, rowing, Hitler's Berlin, corruption in cricket, and a racehorse doping gan…

With Mark Lawson. Front Row announces the shortlist for each category for this year's Costa Book Awards. Critics Sam Leith and Gaby Wood discuss the books nominated in the novel, first novel, poetry, biography and children's book categories and respond to the choices of books and writers. Comedian Russell Brand talks about the ideology behind his n…

With Mark Lawson. Saving Mr. Banks dramatises the real-life story behind the creation of Disney film Mary Poppins, starring Emma Thompson as Poppins author P.L. Travers and Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. Sarah Crompton reviews. The Politician's Wife screenwriter Paula Milne talks about the inspiration behind her drama Legacy, a new Cold War thriller for…

With Kirsty Lang. Morecambe and Wise are remembered and revived in a new stage production called Eric And Little Ern, which follows on from a TV biopic of the double-act, a one-man show about Eric Morecambe, and the award-winning The Play What I Wrote. The writers and stars of this latest homage, Ian Ashpitel and Jonty Stephens, discuss the reasons…

With Kirsty Lang. The artist Peter Blake's new exhibition Under Milk Wood is the culmination of a 25-year project, in which he's created a series of illustrations, portraits, watercolours, and photographs based on Dylan Thomas's 'play for voices'. Peter Blake looks back over his ambitious project and discusses his fascination for Thomas's celebrate…

With Mark Lawson. As the first part of her autobiography is published, actress Anjelica Huston discusses her unconventional childhood with her father, film director John Huston, and why he encouraged her to roll cigars and drink sherry as a child, and what a Samurai warrior was doing in her kitchen. Hull has been named as UK City of Culture 2017, b…

With Mark Lawson. Blue Is The Warmest Colour won the top prize, the Palme D'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, but was quickly mired in controversy when the actresses Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopolous complained about gruelling love scenes which took days to film. Subsequently, the director Abdellatif Kechiche said that the movie should not …

With Mark Lawson. The Hunger Games : Catching Fire is the second adaptation of Suzanne Collins' runaway bestselling trilogy of novels. Jennifer Lawrence is Katniss Everdeen in the post-apocalyptic state of Panem, where the Hunger Games are a televised fight to the death between teenagers. Rosie Swash gives her verdict. The realities of the modern p…

With Kirsty Lang. Borgen is the Danish political drama that became an unexpected hit for the BBC when the first series aired in 2012. Now back on our screens with the third and potentially final series, creator Adam Price discusses why it was so important for the central character of the Prime Minister to be female and why Danish television has tak…

With Mark Lawson Author Donna Tartt discusses her long-awaited third novel, The Goldfinch. Like her previous books, The Secret History and The Little Friend, The Goldfinch has taken Tartt a decade to write. The plot centres around the theft of a priceless painting, the goldfinch of the title, which is stolen from a museum after a horrific bombing i…

John Wilson talks to the fashion designer Paul Smith, on the eve of a major exhibition of his work and influences at the Design Museum, London. Natalie Haynes reviews The Counsellor, a film about drug dealers on the US / Mexico border, starring Cameron Diaz, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt and Penelope Cruz, with an original screenplay by Cormac McCa…

With Mark Lawson, The composer Sir John Tavener died today. Famous for his choral pieces The Lamb and Song for Athene - which was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales - and for The Protecting Veil, for cello and orchestra. Nicholas Kenyon discusses his life and work. Plus a recent Front Row interview with Tavener himself. Curtain: Poirot…

With Mark Lawson. Bryan Adams - best known as a musician and singer songwriter - also works as a professional photographer. For the past five years, Adams has been taking photographs of British war veterans who have suffered life changing injuries. The series of photographs has been published in a new book "Wounded: The Legacy of War". Bryan Adams …

With John Wilson. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch survived Auschwitz by playing the cello in the Auschwitz Women's Orchestra. After the war she joined the English Chamber Orchestra and her son is the renowned cellist Raphael Wallfisch. On Sunday they both take part in a concert in Vienna marking the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch'…

With Kirsty Lang Kirsty talks to actors Matthew Macfadyen and Stephen Mangan as they play the roles of Jeeves and Wooster in a new stage version of one of P G Wodehouse's much-loved books. The architect Frank Gehry, whose Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles feature the undulating metallic curves for which he has …

With Mark Lawson. Zadie Smith discusses her new story The Embassy of Cambodia which is 69 pages long, and focuses on Fatou, a young African immigrant in Willesden, north-west London, who flees hardship in her own country only to face a different set of challenges in her new life. Lady Gaga's third album Artpop is released in the UK next week. Gaga'…

With Mark Lawson. Seduced and Abandoned is a new documentary made by the actor Alec Baldwin and the writer/director James Toback. The film was shot in Cannes and depicts the difficulties faced by filmmakers trying to find funding for their projects, with contributions from Ryan Gosling and Diane Kruger. Ryan Gilbey reviews this movie about the movi…

With Mark Lawson, including an interview with critic and writer Hermione Lee about her new biography of Penelope Fitzgerald, who published her first novel at the age of 60, and won the Booker Prize with her book Offshore at the age of 63. With the news of a massive find of Nazi looted art in a Munich flat this weekend, Mark speaks to art critic Bil…

With Kirsty Lang. The British rapper Tinie Tempah became a global sensation in 2010 with his debut album, winning the 2011 Brit Award for Best British Breakthrough Act. As he releases his second album, Demonstration, Tinie reflects on his fear of selling out, his support for the royal family and why he mentions Prince Harry, Jeremy Clarkson and Ste…

With John Wilson. David Beckham talks about being a photographic muse - and of what's it's been like, living his life in front of a camera-lens. Singer-songwriter Graham Nash found fame with The Hollies and then with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. He's just published his memoirs and reflects on his upbringing in Salford and how his childhood was a…

With Mark Lawson. Joan Collins on her new memoir, picking the wrong husbands, not giving away her age, and why she wasn't the first choice for the now iconic role of Alexis Colby in Dynasty. The first major UK exhibition of 17th Century artist Giovanni Castiglione is opening this week at Buckingham Palace. Castiglione led a turbulent and violent li…

With Mark Lawson, Susan Stroman, the American theatre director and choreographer whose productions include the multi-award winning The Producers, talks about her new musical, The Scottsboro Boys. With music and lyrics by Kander and Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago), The Scottsboro Boys is based on the true story of a group of black teenagers in Alabama wrongl…

With Mark Lawson. Sandra Bullock, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2010, is now tipped for Oscar success again for her role in Gravity, in which she plays a medical engineer lost in space. She considers the demands of the part, which involves relatively little dialogue and the illusion of weightlessness. Few musicians experience the su…

With Kirsty Lang Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir Eat, Pray, Love spent nearly 200 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list and was made into a film starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem. Elizabeth talks to Kirsty about returning to fiction for her new book The Signature of All Things, a story which spans the 18th and 19th centuries and sees its h…

With Kirsty Lang. From Here To Eternity is given the musical treatment by Sir Tim Rice, the lyricist who gave us Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, with Pop Idol contestant Darius Campbell in the role of Sergeant Milt Warden, memorably played by Burt Lancaster in the film adaptation. Critic Jason Solomons delivers his verdict. Earth, Wind And Fire, …

With Mark Lawson. Dame Judi Dench discusses her role in the new film Philomena, in which she plays a 70-year-old Irish woman who is looking to trace her son, taken away from her when she was a teenager. She discusses portraying and meeting the real Philomena Lee, and working with Steve Coogan, who co-scripted and co-stars in the film as Martin Sixs…