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 di ...…

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 ...…

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 cr ...…

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 Osca ...…

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 fiction ...…

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 ...…

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 Laur ...…

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 th ...…

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 ...…

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 commiss ...…

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. ...…

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 ...…

As the auction house Christie's sell their first painting made using artificial intelligence by the French art collective Obvious, we ask if robots are going to take over the arts and what the use of AI means for our understanding of creativity. Samira Ahmed is joined by visual artist Anna Ridley and Google Art & Culture’s Artist In Residence M ...…

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 ...…

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 o ...…

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, expl ...…

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 Boo ...…

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 Englis ...…

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 ...…

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 N ...…

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 ...…

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 tradi ...…

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 ...…

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 rele ...…

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 ...…

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 P ...…

Published in 2005, The Book Thief was an international bestseller that went on to become a successful Hollywood film. Now more than a decade later its author, Markus Zusak, is back with a new story, Bridge of Clay, about how five brothers deal with the disappearance of their father.American playwright Sarah DeLappe discusses her award-winning d ...…

Actor, comedian and opera fan Chris Addison discusses his role in La Traviata: Behind the Curtain, a new series of talks exploring the historical and social context of Verdi’s opera La Traviata for this year’s Glyndebourne Tour. He’s joined by musicologist Flora Willson, who explains why this 19th century work is the most-performed opera in the ...…

A six part adaptation of John le Carré’s 1983 spy thriller The Little Drummer Girl has begun BBC One. Florence Pugh and Alexander Skarsgård discuss their roles playing young actress Charlie who is sucked into the shadowy world of espionage amid rising tensions in the Middle East, and Becker, the Israeli intelligence officer who recruits her.As ...…

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke explains how he composed his first feature film soundtrack for Suspiria, Luca Guadagnino’s remake of the 1977 Dario Argento horror film.If you've listened to an audiobook, can you say you've read the book? According to the Publishers Association UK, spending on audiobooks has more than doubled in the past five year ...…

Bohemian Rhapsody, the new biopic of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, is finally in cinemas after eight years in the making. During production, two leading actors quit the project before Rami Malek took on the role of Freddie Mercury, Kate Mossman considers if film is worth the wait.As he approaches his 80th birthday this week, the conductor and ...…

Mike Leigh discusses his latest film Peterloo, an historical epic that depicts the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St Peter's Field in Manchester turned into one of the most notorious episodes in British history. The massacre saw British government forces charge into a crowd of over 60,000 that had gathe ...…

Author Luke Jennings on his Killing Eve novels, which inspired the recent television series. Jennings reveals what motivated him to create the ruthless assassin, Villanelle, and Eve, the agent hunting her, and the somewhat bizarre relationship the two of them seem to have. Revulsion is one of the strongest human reactions and if art is designed ...…

Eric Idle is of course a member of the comedy phenomenon Monty Python. His autobiography, or as he fashions it sortabiography, is called Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, after the song he wrote for the end of the troupe’s controversial 1979 film, Life of Brian. He’ll be talking about his role in Python, his career, his friendships with t ...…

Gerard Butler talks to John Wilson about starring alongside Gary Oldman in his latest action film, Hunter Killer. Set deep under the Arctic Ocean, Butler plays an American submarine captain on the hunt for another US vessel in distress when he discovers a secret Russian coup that could lead to another world war. Bigger budgets, bigger explosion ...…

Willy Loman is very much the heart and soul of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer-prizewinning play, Death of a Salesman. However as a new production opens at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, two actors Maureen Beattie and Marion Bailey - who have played the role of Linda Loman- join Stig to discuss what they found when they played the salesman’s wife.C ...…

#MeToo one year on – what impact has the hashtag popularised by Hollywood actresses had on the arts and on women around the world? We speak to Jude Kelly, Founder & Director of the Women Of the World Foundation, film critic Larushka Ivan Zadeh, Helen Lewis, Associate Editor Of The New Statesman, and to Naomi Pohl, Assistant General Secretary Of ...…

The 2011 Norwegian terrorist attack at Utøya island summer camp has been made into a film by Paul Greengrass. The director, whose previous work includes the Jason Bourne thrillers, Bloody Sunday and Captain Phillips, explains his approach to making such an emotional and politically charged picture, which shows both the attack itself and the per ...…

Desiree Akhavan has not only co-written Channel 4's new comedy drama The Bisexual, but directs and stars in it as well. The series centres on Leila, who after splitting from her long-term girlfriend, attempts to navigate the dating scene as she becomes involved with both men and women.Film critic Rhianna Dhillon reviews ensemble thriller Bad Ti ...…

When Stig Abell was in his mid-twenties he went through a period where he would wake up in the middle of the night uncontrollably anxious and found reading, especially the novels of PG Wodehouse, provided respite. In this special programme on World Mental Health Day, Stig goes on a journey to try and understand what it is about reading which ca ...…

An entire disused swimming pool has been built on the ground floor of the Whitechapel Gallery in London for the new exhibition from the Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset. The artists discuss how they have been inspired by the work of David Hockney and Ed Ruscha. Then film critic Mark Eccleston art critic Jacky Klein and artist and former Cana ...…

The actor and entertainer Bernard Cribbins, who will be 90 in December, discusses his new memoir Bernard Who?: 75 Years of Doing Just About Everything, in which he tells his own story, very much in his own way, about a busy career which includes Jackanory , Right Said Fred, Doctor Who, The Wombles, Shakespeare, Hitchcock’s Frenzy, The Railway C ...…

“It’s about time” is the tagline for the new Doctor Who series, referencing the programme’s time-travelling exploits, but also the arrival of the first female Doctor in the show's history. Jodie Whittaker will be the 13th Doctor and tells us how she's tackling a role with so much history, attention and anticipation around it.Haruki Murakami's n ...…

Alice Walker is famous for prose books such as The Color Purple and In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. But her first book was a collection of poems and she has published eight more. Alice talks about her latest, Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart, which ranges from poems of rage about injustice, poems of praise to great figures - BB King for ins ...…

In the week Rowan Atkinson returns to the big screen as the hapless spy in Johnny English Strikes Again, which sees him batter innocent bystanders and himself in a series of pratfalls, we look at the art of physical comedy. Jonathan Sayer of Mischief Theatre, classicist and stand-up Natalie Haynes and Dr Oliver Double of the University of Kent ...…

We announce the winner of the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award and the Young Writers' Award live from West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge and celebrate the power and possibilities of the short story.Judges Sarah Howe and Stig Abell discuss the merits of the entries from the shortlisted authors. In contention for the £15,000 prize are Kerry And ...…

Sarah Perry discusses Melmoth, her eagerly awaited novel after her award-winning The Essex Serpent. Her new novel is about an English translator who, hiding from her past in Prague, uncovers the legend of Melmoth – a woman in black who wanders the world bearing witness to humanity’s worst crimes.BBC1’s new Sunday night drama is a television ada ...…

After being appointed director of last year’s opening event for Hull’s year as City of Culture, award-winning and Hull-born filmmaker Sean McAllister decided to make a documentary looking at the impact of the City of Culture on Hullensians by following the work of one man to set up a hip-hop project for disadvantaged kids. He discusses the resu ...…

In Theatr Clywd’s new production of William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies, the group of schoolboys stranded on a remote island have all been reimagined as girls. Critic Gary Raymond reviews.Forty playwrights and actors have accused National Theatre Wales of favouring English artists and companies over Welsh ones. In an open letter o ...…

Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie - The Goodies - join Samira to look back at their 1970s cult comedy series. As a complete box set of every episode is released, they reflect on their comedy writing that tackled police brutality, redefined comedy music and introduced television audiences to the little-known Lancastrian martial-art ...…