Front Row

We exclusively reveal and analyse the 2019 Costa Book Prize shortlist. Critics Alex Clark and Sarah Shaffi 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 28 January 2020 Rian Johnson is the director of new film Knives Out -...

Rapper Wretch 32 discusses his new memoir, Rapthology. Part autobiography, part guide to creativity and part cultural history, Rapthology unpacks the songs that have shaped him over the last 30 years, from gospel music to dancehall anthems, offering a portrait of his life through his best-known works. Two cinema chains have pulled the film Blue Story, about a violent street rivalry in south London...

Coldplay's new album Everyday Life is released today after a performance at sunrise in Jordan this morning. Also out is Leonard Cohen's posthumous album Thanks for the Dance, completed by his son Adam. Kieran Yates reviews. The controversial comedian Roy Chubby Brown is at the centre of a row in Middlesbrough, as Mayor Andy Preston has sanctioned the booking of the entertainer and the Head of the...

The story of the slave abolitionist Harriet Tubman has finally made it to the big screen where she is played by Cynthia Erivo. Gaylene Gould reviews. After France’s President Macron was reportedly “shaken by the accuracy” of new French film Les Misérables, depicting life today in the deprived outer suburbs of Paris, French critic Agnès Poirier joins us to discuss modern attitudes toward social rea...

Idina Menzel, famous for singing Let It Go from the film Frozen, provides the voice once more of Elsa, now Queen of Arendelle and still with magical powers, in the sequel Frozen 2. The singer discusses the early concept for her character in what became the biggest-grossing animated film of all time, and how Elsa has grown up in the years since the original. The new Frozen 2 film has been long awai...

RJ Palacio’s first novel Wonder has been published in 45 languages, sold 5 million copies worldwide and been made into a film starring Julia Roberts. We speak to RJ about her new graphic novel White Bird which tells the back story of the classroom bully from Wonder, Julian, whose Jewish grandmother fled from the Nazis. A row involving Taylor Swift and her former record label has been resolved - fo...

Dear Evan Hansen is the Tony award winning musical about a socially anxious teenager who, via a web of lies, gets caught up in social media adulation following a classmate’s suicide. As the musical opens in London’s West End amidst much anticipation, co-creator Steven Levenson talks about turning such a sensitive story into a life affirming show. We speak to former child soldier, Sudanese hip-hop...

As Northern Ballet reaches its half century, the company's Artistic Director David Nixon discusses his love of telling stories through Dance. Ever fancied sleeping in an artwork? Soon you’ll be able to do exactly that at the Art B&B – a new hotel in Blackpool which has commissioned 30 artists to turns its rooms into works of art. Michael Trainor, Creative Director of the Art B&B explains t...

With Italy set to declare a state of national emergency in Venice after the Unesco world heritage site was engulfed by a 6ft 'acqua alta', flooding its historic basilica and many other sites of great historic interest, art critic Jonathan Jones discusses the cultural significance of the imminent threat from flood and fire and what is being done to protect the city’s invaluable architectural and ar...

This edition of Front Row has a regal air. As the third series of The Crown airs next week, with Olivia Coleman taking over the role of Queen Elizabeth from Claire Foy, Stig Abell talks to Tobias Menzies about the challenges of playing Prince Phillip, previously Matt Smith's part. Covering the years 1964 – 1977, in this series the Royals have all four of their children and are more settled in thei...

Portrait painter Lorna May Wadsworth has forged a remarkable career with subjects including David Tennant, Michael Sheen, David Blunkett and Baroness Thatcher. As a major retrospective of her work - Gaze - opens at the Graves Gallery in her home town of Sheffield, Lorna May Wadsworth talks about the importance to her of the “female gaze." Marriage Story is the new film from director Noah Baumbach,...

HG Wells’ classic novel The War of the Worlds has been adapted many times including the infamous occasion on which Orson Welles’ radio version convinced some American citizens that Martians really were invading the Earth . Now a new BBC TV version is coming, with a female narrator and subtexts about empire and climate change. Writer Peter Harness talks to Front Row about the choices he’s made for...

Emilio Estevez discusses his forthcoming film The Public which he has written, directed and stars in, along with Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater, set in Cincinnati Public Library in the middle of winter. 100 Novels That Shaped Our World have just been chosen by a panel including Front Row presenter Stig Abell. The list is part of a BBC Arts season celebrating 300 years since the publication of R...

Emilia Clarke talks about her new film Last Christmas, inspired by the music of George Michael and destined to be one of the major movies of the season. It's written by and also stars Emma Thompson. Emilia plays a young woman who accepts a job as a department store elf during the holidays. She also discusses starring in Game of Thrones and overcoming a stroke whilst filming. Theatre critic and aut...

Alison Balsom, Britain's leading trumpet soloist, talks about her new album Royal Fireworks, a collection of Baroque pieces by Bach, Telemann, Handel and Purcell, played on the "natural" trumpet, a baroque instrument without any valves, which means that each note is made by the shape of the lips. The inaugural Drake YolanDa British Producer and Songwriter Prize has been won by the jazz musician Fe...

With a reported budget of $160m, Martin Scorsese returns to the familiar territory of The Mob and organised crime in America in his new Netflix film The Irishman. The three-and-a-half-hour-long drama spans 50 years and reunites Scorsese with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci for the first time in 24 years, alongside Harvey Keitel and Al Pacino. Briony Hanson has been to see if for Front Row and can tel...

New Amazon Original docudrama The Report sees an idealistic Washington staffer played by Adam Driver tasked by his senator boss to lead an investigation of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, which was created in the aftermath of 9/11. His relentless pursuit of the truth leads to explosive findings that uncover the lengths to which the nation’s top intelligence agency went to destroy ev...

Patti Smith, legendary musician and poet, looks back at a troubled year, 2016, in a new memoir, Year of the Monkey. Director Tom Harper discusses his new film The Aeronauts set in 1862, starring Eddie Redmayne as a pioneering meteorologist and Felicity Jones as a balloon pilot, who attempt to advance knowledge of the weather and fly higher than anyone in history. As a horror film The Shining is a...

Screenwriter Jack Thorne discusses his new HBO/BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, said to be the BBC's most expensive drama yet. Ken Loach’s new film Sorry We Missed You concerns a parcel delivery driver and his carer wife as they try to make ends meet, and the effect of that struggle on their family. Scottee reviews this portrayal of the gig economy on working lives. The 19th...

In their new film, The Good Liar, Ian McKellen plays Roy Courtnay, a con artist who when he meets Betty McLeish, a well-to-widow played by Helen Mirren, can't believe his luck. Sir Ian talks to John Wilson about this role, which involves playing someone who is himself acting. Guilt, a new 4-part BBC Two drama set in Edinburgh, stars Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives as two very different brothers who fi...

Recorded in front of an audience at the Barbican Theatre in Plymouth, Sarah Gosling introduces and showcases the artists and performers making a name for themselves in Devon, in collaboration with BBC Music Introducing. Grace Lightman is an electropop singer whose debut album Silver Eater is about an alien stranded on earth. BBC Music Introducing artist Grace performs her lead track Repair Repair...

David Baddiel has had a varied career. He's been a (Wembley Arena-filling) stand-up comedian, a chart-topping performer (3 times with the same song Three Lions), a TV chat show presenter, a prize-winning children's author, creator of highly-acclaimed shows about his family, prolific twitter presence and now he's a playwright with his first production God's Dice opening at London's Soho Theatre. Ap...

Harry Hill's Clubnite is a new cabaret TV show from the comedian featuring his choice of comic entertainers. Harry talks to Stig about what he looks for in comedians, what makes him laugh and the nature of surrealism. The greatly renowned theatre director Peter Brook is 94 and has just written a book, Playing by Ear, reflecting on sound and music. He talks to Front Row about the flow of a Shakespe...

Multi BAFTA-winning writer Jack Thorne returns to our TV screens tonight with the latest in his trilogy exploring life in modern Britain. "The Accident" on Channel 4, starring Sarah Lancashire, is set in a small Welsh town in the aftermath of a industrial disaster. We talk to the writer about anger, blame and justice as the community faces up to some difficult truths. 2020 looks to be a vintage ye...

Bruce Springsteen is about to release a film of his latest album, Western Stars. In the hayloft of his 100-year-old barn in New Jersey, he performs the album alongside a full orchestra, featuring brass, banjo, accordion and steel guitar. Kate Mossman, features editor of The New Statesman, reviews the film which coincides with the singer's 70th birthday. The death was announced last week of the Ame...