Front Row: Archive 2013

With John Wilson.

Film director and former Python Terry Gilliam discusses the re-mastering of his classic film Time Bandits, for a new DVD release, as his new film The Zero Theorem heads for the Venice Film Festival.

Jennifer Aniston stars as a stripper turned pretend suburban wife and mother in the film We're The Millers. She becomes involved in the plans of a small-time drug dealer, played by Jason Sudekis, who enlists a fake family to help him smuggle marijuana across the Mexican border. Mark Eccleston reviews.

The Scottish band Franz Ferdinand, who won the Mercury Music Prize in 2004, are back with a new album, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, their first release for four years. Alex Kapranos and Bob Hardy discuss creating a live sound on a studio album and how a line on a vintage postcard discovered in a London market led to the opening lyric of the title track.

As an exhibition of pastel portraits by Bob Dylan opens at the National Portrait Gallery in London, music journalist Kate Mossman discusses Dylan's art and the portraits in his lyrics.

Producer Ellie Bury.

With Mark Lawson.

Fran Healy, lead singer of the band Travis, discusses their first new album for six years, and reflects on a career which includes the hits Why Does it Always Rain on Me, Driftwood and Sing.

At the recent Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, Mark talked to three writers about how new technology makes it more difficult for characters to disappear without trace, or to hide or change their identities. With Lottie Moggach, Colette McBeth and Michael Robotham.

Simon Bird, one of the stars of The Inbetweeners, and Jonny Sweet discuss their TV comedy series Chickens, which they co-wrote with Joe Thomas. It focuses on three young men who have avoided active service in the First World War.

Producer Timothy Prosser.

With Mark Lawson.

Mark meets Vince Gilligan, the creator of hit American TV series Breaking Bad, about a chemistry teacher who becomes a drugs overload after being diagnosed with cancer.

Meg Rosoff reviews the film What Maisie Knew. Based on the 1897 novel by Henry James, the film is set in modern day New York and stars Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan as parents going through an acrimonious custody battle, in which their young daughter Maisie has become a pawn.

Nadifa Mohamed, the award winning author of Black Mamba Boy, discusses her second novel The Orchard of Lost Souls. Set in her birthplace of Somalia, the novel tells the stories of two women and a young girl who are living through the destruction of the 1988 civil war. Mohamed talks about the difficulties of writing the book, her relationship with Somalia and the experience of moving to London.

A London theatre has had to cancel some performances of one of its productions as a cast member is indisposed and there are no understudies. Actor Michael Simkins discusses the balancing act between cancelling a performance, carrying on with the show despite illness or injury and calling in an understudy at the last minute.

Producer: Olivia Skinner.

John Wilson meets Naughty Boy, the British-born Pakistani songwriter, musician and producer, who has worked with Emeli Sande and Britney Spears and is now releasing his debut album Hotel Cabana.

Zoe Williams reviews the film Lovelace, starring Amanda Seyfried as Deep Throat actress Linda Lovelace.

An extract from John's 2002 interview with the American crime writer Elmore Leonard, whose death was announced today.

And Harry Nilsson's biographer Alyn Shipton discusses the life and career of the singer whose hits included Everybody's Talking, Without You, and Coconut.

Producer Timothy Prosser.

With Mark Lawson

Sir Tom Stoppard has written Darkside, a new radio play starring Bill Nighy and Rufus Sewell, to mark the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon. In discussing the play Stoppard talks about thought experiments, moral philosophers, and Mamma Mia.

Elysium is a science fiction thriller set in a future where privileged elite live on the space station Elysium while the rest of the population remains on a damaged earth. Directed by Neill Blomkamp, who is best known for his politically charged 2009 film District 9, the sci-fi blockbuster stars Jodie Foster as the ruler of Elysium and Matt Damon as the man trying to break across the divide. Naomi Alderman reviews.

Charlaine Harris is best known for her Sookie Stackhouse series which inspired the True Blood TV drama. Harris discusses her distinct Southern gothic style, books which fell short of her aspirations and how fans reacted angrily to the conclusion of her famous vampire series.

Producer Claire Bartleet.

John Wilson brings the Cultural Exchange project to a close, with Armando Iannucci, Laura Mvula, Germaine Greer, Paul Weller, Terence Stamp, the Archbishop of Canterbury and others choosing their favourite artwork.

John looks back at the 75 selections made over the past four months, and identifies trends and surprises.

Visit the Cultural Exchange website for all 75 interviews and archive clips featuring Jack Nicholson, Bette Davis, Nina Simone and more.

Also on the Cultural Exchange website: John Wilson and Mark Lawson make their choices.

Producer Timothy Prosser.

With Mark Lawson.

Reginald D. Hunter discusses race, sex and anatomy in his latest Edinburgh show In the Midst of Crackers. He reflects on fourteen years of coming to the festival and explains why he thinks the world has become a more stupid place in that time.

Novelist David Peace is best known for the Red Riding Quartet and The Damned United, a fictional portrait of Brian Clough's spell at Leeds United. His new novel, Red or Dead, focuses on the legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly.

Cabaret performers Sarah-Louise Young and Michael Roulston bring a taste of Hollywood royalty to the BBC tent with an extract from their homage to Julie Andrews, Julie Madly Deeply.

Politics has been a common theme among a variety of genres at the Fringe this year. Kevin Toolis, creator of dramatic monologue The Confessions of Gordon Brown, Dugald Bruce-Lockhart, starring as David Cameron in The Three Lions and Gráinne Maguire, comedian and creator of One Hour All Night Election Show, discuss different approaches to tackling politics on stage.

Producer Ellie Bury.

With John Wilson.

Edinburgh born artist Peter Doig moved in Trinidad in 2002, and his new exhibition No Foreign Lands concentrates on the work he has painted since he has lived there. Showing at Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh it is the first major exhibition of his work to be shown in the country of his birth. Art critic Moira Jeffrey reviews.

Crime-writer Chris Brookmyre's new novel Flesh Wounds is the third in a series to follow private investigator Jasmine Sharp and Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod amongst the Glasgow criminal underworld. Brookmyre talks to John about writing from female perspective, how Glasgow has changed and why his name and titles are getting shorter.

Based on a Stephen King novel and produced by Steven Spielberg, Under The Dome is a hit American TV series about a small town which suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the world by a mysterious force field. Critic and writer Andrew Collins delivers his verdict.

In for the Cultural Exchange is actor and musician Riz Ahmed, best known for his starring roles in The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Four Lions. His choice is the first video game to be picked for the Cultural Exchange, Street Fighter II, which was released in arcades in 1991.

Producer Kate Bullivant.

With Mark Lawson

David Walliams writes, and stars in Big School as the Deputy Head of Chemistry in a comprehensive school who's smitten by the new French teacher, Catherine Tate, but finds a love rival in the shape of PE master Philip Glenister. Critic and ex-teacher Natalie Haynes delivers her verdict.

Award winning poet John Agard received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry earlier this year. Agard, who was born in Guyana and moved to Britain in 1977, talks about what the award means to him. He also discusses how his dual heritage and cricket were sources of inspiration for his latest collection Travel Light Travel Dark.

Jerry Lewis' film about a clown who entertains children in a concentration camp, The Day the Clown Cried, has never been shown to the public after the comedian decided he was too embarrassed for it to be screened. Yesterday, footage from a behind-the-scenes documentary emerged online over 40 years after it was made, allowing us a glimpse of a film we never thought we'd see. Critic Adam Smith considers other films that suffered the same fate.

Plus in tonight's Cultural Exchange, C J Sansom - author of the historical crime series Shardlake - picks the first incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, William Hartnell.

With John Wilson.

The Clash were the noisy sound of rebellion in the late 1970s, a band who refused to perform on Top of the Pops, sold their double album for the price of a single LP, and won an international audience and critical acclaim.

Three decades after their acrimonious split, band members Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Nicky 'Topper' Headon re-unite to reflect on their career and their legacy, as they prepare to release a box set of all their music.

And from the Front Row archives, we hear from the band's charismatic front-man Joe Strummer, recorded in 1999, three years before his death at the age of 50: 'musicians don't know what they're doing in a creative way, it's more like blundering around - and certainly we had no idea what sort of impact we were going to make with our blunderings'.

Editor John Goudie.