Front Row

David Mamet, the American playwright, director and novelist, talks to Stig about his new novel, Chicago, set amongst the gangster rivalry of the 1920s. He explains his fascination with that era in the city of his birth, discusses the writers who have inspired him and explains the importance of imagination, inspiration and dialogue in the storyteller's craft. Meghan Markle's final season in US dram...

Wes Anderson discusses his film Isle of Dogs, including working with stop-motion animation and drawing inspiration from Studio Ghibli director Miyazaki for the Japanese setting for the film. What makes a great sports theme tune? As the 2018 Formula 1 season kicks off with a specially composed anthem, we speak to its composer Brian Tyler and consider the essential components of an iconic sports the...

Steven Spielberg, director of films like The Post, The BFG and Bridge of Spies, returns to the science fiction genre with an action adventure set in a virtual-reality game world sometime in the future. Julia Hardy reviews the film and tells Samira whether it is a classic of the genre like Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Back to the Future. The York Realist is a play set in 1963 when John, up...

Anna Chancellor stars in the new TV adaptation of Agatha Christie's murder mystery Ordeal By Innocence this weekend, in which she plays Rachel Argyll, heiress, philanthropist and mother of five adopted children found murdered on Christmas Eve. Samira talks to the actress, who is well-known for her roles in Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Hour, Spooks and Mapp & Lucia. Harshdeep Kaur, the popu...

Artist Sonia Boyce's career has been punctuated by series of firsts - the first black woman to have her work collected by the Tate, the first black woman to be elected a Royal Academician. As her first retrospective opens, Sonia discusses her art and why she removed a painting from the walls of Manchester Art Gallery. On the 100th anniversary of Debussy's death two interpreters of his music discus...

Macbeth is on at the National Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House, and there will be at least 15 more Macbeths at theatres and festivals around the country this year. Rufus Norris, director of the National's production, and Kit Monkman, who has made the latest film version, discuss why Shakespeare's play has such urgent appeal today. The British Council has been in the...

Director Steven Soderbergh on his latest film, Unsane, which stars Claire Foy as a woman admitted to a mental health facility against her will. The film was shot entirely on three iphones. Is this the future of film? America's Cool Modernism: O'Keeffe to Hopper, a big exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford focuses on American artists in the early 20th century - including Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward...

Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon and Patti Smith are just a few of the artists who trusted an inexperienced recording engineer, Jimmy Iovine, at the controls of their albums in the '70s. Iovine discusses a new documentary series The Defiant Ones, in which he looks back at 40 years in the record business: from those early beginnings, teaming up with hip hop artist Dr Dre, creating the Beats audio bra...

As Andrew Lloyd Webber turns 70, Kirsty Lang talks to the composer about how he transformed musical theatre with hits like Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. When Sunset Boulevard joined School of Rock, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway last year, Andrew Lloyd Webber became the only person to equal the record set in 1953 by his musical hero...

Sir Tom Jones and Jennifer Hudson discuss mentoring the competitors in the TV talent show The Voice, how they coach their protégés and where the value of knockout singing competitions lies. Kirsty visits rehearsals at the studios of the television show and talks to the two judges. As The Square, a satire on modern art galleries hits cinemas, we consider the portrayal of the art gallery in film wit...

Lara Croft remains one of the most famous gaming characters ever. Now as the film franchise of the games gets a reboot staring Alicia Vikander, film critic Kate Muir and gamer Julia Hardy discuss whether Lara Croft is a feminist icon or an object of male fantasy and what she reveals about the portrayal of women in gaming and film. Debut novelist Lisa Halliday won the prestigious American Whiting A...

Mary Magdalene was Jesus Christ's most loyal friend, who stayed with him through the ordeal of his crucifixion, and was the first witness to his resurrection. But she was also denigrated by the church as a prostitute. Now her story is told in a new film with Rooney Mara as Mary and Joaquin Phoenix as Christ. Michèle Roberts, who wrote the novel The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene, reviews. With it...

Paddy Considine discusses Journeyman, the new film he's written, directed and stars in. The film is centred on the life of a boxer who, after a damaging championship bout, discovers that he has far bigger fights on his hands. Four British mosques have just been given listed status or been upgraded in recognition of their historic, cultural and architectural importance. Architect Shahed Saleem, who...

Eleanor Bron will be 80 on Wednesday. She is still working - she will be in Scottish Opera's production of Ariadne auf Naxos this year. Talking to Samira Ahmed she looks back over her long career, from the satire boom with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, through working with The Beatles in Help and roles in classical theatre such as in The Duchess of Malfi. The Great Wave at the National Theatre expl...

Sir Ian McKellen looks back at his acting life in anticipation of a film out later this year, McKellen: Playing the Part. Madeleine L'Engle's classic children's book A Wrinkle in Time has been made into a film starring Oprah Winfrey. The book itself was written in 1962 after being turned down by no less than 26 publishers. Professor Diane Roberts and Dr Vic James discuss the way in which the book...

Reluctant superhero Jessica Jones is back for a second series. She despatched her nemesis at the end of season one but season two finds her looking to find the answers for her special powers. Cultural critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw reviews. The longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction has just been published. On International Women's Day Alex Clark looks at the surprise inclusions and exclusions an...

David Attenborough talks about the art of his friend the painter John Craxton as a new exhibition Charmed Lives in Greece opens at the British Museum. Deborah Alma has edited #MeToo, an anthology of poetry by women, rallying against sexual assault and harassment. She is joined by poet and human rights lawyer Mona Arshi to discuss poetry as activism. Woody Allen's film Wonder Wheel is released this...

Radio 4 celebrates the 40th anniversary of the iconic science fiction satire by Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a new series this week. Comedy producer and friend of the originator John Lloyd stars as the voice of the book. He and radio producer Dirk Maggs talk about the return of the ground breaking show, which fans call H2G2. Tate Modern's first solo exhibition of Pablo...

You Were Never Really Here stars Joaquin Pheonix as a contract killer who uncovers a conspiracy while trying to save a kidnapped teen from a prostitution ring. The film is directed by Lynne Ramsay who made We Need to Talk About Kevin. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews. What's the key to delivering a perfect performance as an award ceremony host? TV critic Emma Bullimore and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh review Ji...

Jess Thom is a founding member of Touretteshero, a theatre company that celebrates the inherent creativity and humour in Tourette's. She is taking on Samuel Beckett's Not I, a rapidly delivered monologue spoken by a character called Mouth. Jess explains why the text captures her own experience of living with Tourette's and her mission to make theatre more accessible. "Gaslighting" is a term that s...

Half a century after Kenneth Clark's ground-breaking television series on the history of art, Civilisation, the BBC has returned to the same subject - a history of visual culture - but pluralised the name and the number of presenters in the new series. Former television critic of the Financial Times Chris Dunkley and writer and classicist Natalie Haynes review. Wendy Cope is one of the country's b...

Sharon Horgan, the comedy actress and writer behind Pulling, Motherhood and Catastrophe features in her first major Hollywood film, Game Night. She tells Kirsty about the difference between working on American movies and British television and why series like Catastrophe aren't , in fact, sitcoms. Syrian musician Maya Youssef brings her qanun into the studio and performs from her album Syrian Drea...

A Fantastic Woman is a Chilean film about a transgender woman whose partner dies and she has to cope with his transphobic family. The film has been shortlisted for best Foreign Language film at the Oscars. Rebecca Root, trans actress and activist, reviews. British film director Lewis Gilbert has died aged 97. Critic Jason Solomons assesses his long career with films including Reach for the Sky, Al...

We hear about the second series of the American Crime Story television franchise which began in 2016 with The People Versus OJ Simpson. John Wilson is joined in the studio by novelist turned screenwriter Tom Rob Smith. He has written the next instalment - The Assassination of Gianni Versace - which dramatises the events surrounding the murder of the Italian fashion designer outside his Miami home...

Jennifer Lawrence stars in new film Red Sparrow as a prima ballerina turned Russian spy trained to seduce her targets. The film is based on a successful novel by former CIA operative Jason Matthews and helmed by Frances Lawrence who also directed Lawrence in the Hunger Games film series. Film critic Anna Smith reviews. David Edgar's adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, starring Phil Daniels, is cu...