Front Row: Archive 2013

With John Wilson.

John travels to Amsterdam to visit the Rijksmuseum, re-opening after a decade of renovations. The 19th century building - home to Rembrandt's masterpiece The Nightwatch - not only has a new Asian Pavilion and restored galleries, but also the display of its collection has been transformed: visitors can now see the 8,000 exhibits chronologically, following the story of 800 years of Dutch art and history.

Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical) and Selena Gomez (Wizards Of Waverley Place) are set to shed their clean-cut tween appeal as they star in the film Spring Breakers, alongside James Franco. Four college girls experience the darker side of hedonism after robbing a bank to fund their vacation. Critic Leslie Felperin reviews.

The lead singer of Wire, Colin Newman, discusses the influence of his post-punk band on groups like Blur, Franz Ferdinand and REM, and why they are resurrecting old ideas for their new album Change Becomes Us

Producer Rebecca Nicholson.

With Mark Lawson.

Richard Bean's play One Man, Two Guvnors, a re-working of A Servant of Two Masters, has proved one of the biggest theatrical hits of recent years. His earlier play Smack Family Robinson - a dark comedy about the family of a well-to-do drug dealer - now receives a new production starring Keith Allen and Denise Welch. Richard Bean reflects on drugs, gags, and being labelled a right wing playwright.

Actress Olga Kurylenko, who reached a global audience in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace, discusses her latest role in Oblivion, a dystopian thriller which also stars Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman. The Ukrainian-born actress, who moved to France when a teenager to work as a model, talks about her journey from small town Ukraine to Hollywood.

A new Nordic crime drama starts on BBC Four this weekend. Arne Dahl, from Sweden, follows a team of detectives in pursuit of a serial killer, and follows the popular Scandinavian dramas The Killing, Borgen and Wallander. Arne Dahl is the pseudonym of writer Jan Arnald, on whose books the series is based. Jeff Park, who has read the books, discusses whether they work on screen.

Producer: Olivia Skinner.

With Mark Lawson.

Julian Barnes won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 for his novel The Sense of an Ending, following the award the same year of the David Cohen Prize for lifetime achievement, which celebrated his work including Flaubert's Parrot and A History of the World in 10 and a Half Chapters. However, during this period of public recognition and spotlight, Barnes was privately grieving after the death of his wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh, from cancer in 2008.

His new book Levels of Life travels from a history of hot air ballooning, via a short story about the French actress Sarah Bernhardt to his memoir of becoming a widower. In this special interview Julian Barnes explains why despite being fiercely private, he was drawn to write about his experience of grief and reflects on why his work has always defied easy classification.

Producer Ellie Bury.

With Mark Lawson.

The film A Late Quartet stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken as members of a world renowned string ensemble, struggling to deal with illness, ego and lust on the cusp of their 25th anniversary. Composer Michael Berkeley reviews.

Front Row announces the ten contenders for the £100,000 Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year 2013. Judges Stephen Deuchar and Bettany Hughes discuss the shortlist, and how they compare large scale building projects with public outreach programmes and imaginative curatorial ideas.

Greg Bellow reflects on his father, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Saul Bellow, and the experience of finding moments of family life appearing in his father's fiction. He also considers the divisions between the public perceptions of Saul Bellow as a literary heavyweight, and his own feelings about him as a father.

Tom Hanks, star of Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Sleepless in Seattle, is making his Broadway theatre debut in Lucky Guy, a play by Nora Ephron. Tara Gadomski reflects on how audiences are reacting to the sight of this Hollywood star on stage.

Producer Nicki Paxman.

Kirsty Lang reports on how British culture is hoping to find new markets and audiences in China.

Cultural exports heading east range from musicals such as Mamma Mia!, which aims to fill newly-built theatres, to films, where producers have to negotiate a system of quotas for foreign movies, and success is not always predictable.

Kirsty also speaks to singer Mary-Jess Leaverland, whose singing career was launched after she won a Chinese TV talent show, and to architect Chris Wilkinson, from the practice Wilkinson Eyre, one of the British teams winning commissions in China.

Producer Penny Murphy.

A rare interview with writer Anne Tyler, who talks to Mark Lawson in her home in Baltimore. She reflects on her approach to writing novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Digging to America and The Accidental Tourist. She discusses her interests and influences, and her 20th novel, which she's currently writing.

Producer Penny Murphy.

With Mark Lawson.

Film-maker Penny Woolcock reflects on how she took to the streets of Birmingham with members of rival gangs, in an attempt to resolve long-standing and often violent divisions between them. Her documentary, One Mile Away, follows on from her film 1 Day, a fictional account of criminal gangs in the same location.

Singer-songwriter Michael Bolton has sold more than 50 million records and won multiple Grammy awards in a career spanning 25 years. More recently he's reached a new younger audience with his spoof music video Captain Jack Sparrow, made in collaboration with comedians from Saturday Night Live. He explains how he was persuaded to parody himself and why it paid off.

Tomorrow night's Front Row is a rare interview with the acclaimed novelist Anne Tyler. Mark looks ahead to the interview, and Anne Tyler discusses a final sentence which won praise from one of America's most revered writers.

With Mark Lawson.

The art of storytelling, from earliest writings to today's TV soaps, is the subject of a new book Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey Into Story by John Yorke. Yorke has been Head of Channel 4 Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production, overseeing programmes including Skins, Shameless, EastEnders, Spooks, Casualty and Omagh, as well as The Archers on Radio 4. He discusses what lies behind our fascination and hunger for stories, and what makes a story work.

As the latest theatre award shortlists make the news, actor Michael Simkins reveals what it's like for performers who are not nominated for awards when their co-stars are.

Novelist Glenn Patterson discusses Good Vibrations, his bio-pic of Ulster's punk pioneer Terri Hooley, the record shop owner who discovered The Undertones.

Two new TV programmes - The Great British Sewing Bee and The Intern - take familiar formats and apply a twist. Viv Groskop gives her verdict.

Producer Stephen Hughes.

With Mark Lawson.

Playwright John Logan is also known as the writer of award-winning films like Gladiator, Skyfall and Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. This week he returns to the London stage with Peter And Alice, based on a real-life meeting between the people who inspired two classics of children's fiction, Alice In Wonderland and Peter Pan - Alice Liddell Hargreaves and Peter Llewellyn Davies, played by Judi Dench and Ben Wishaw.

Kristin Scott Thomas stars in Francois Ozon's latest film, In the House. It's a comedy about a school student and his literature teacher. The boy displays a rare spark of creative-writing talent and his stories hook the teacher and his wife with devastating results, blurring the lines between fact and fiction. Rachel Cooke reviews.

Suggs, the lead singer of Madness, is about to embark on a UK tour in which he looks back over his life, from his birth in Hastings to the disappearance of his father and his time with the band. Suggs, aka Graham McPherson, discusses the show and the continuing success of Madness who first formed in 1976.

Producer Ellie Bury.

With John Wilson.

Danny Boyle - director of Trainspotting, 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire - this week releases his first film since his Olympic opening ceremony last year. In Trance, starring James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel, an art auctioneer who has become mixed up with a group of criminals, joins up with a hypnotherapist to recover a lost painting. Mark Eccleston reviews.

Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day is a new eight part series filmed over on one day across the NHS. The programme aims to highlight the increasing demands that the service faces and how these have changed since its inception 70 years ago. Executive producer Amy Flanagan and director Shona Thompson discuss the challenges involved in the production.

Choreographer Gillian Lynne is to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's Laurence Olivier Awards. Her long career includes dancing for George VI, choreographing Yentl and Man of La Mancha, along with two of Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest successes - Cats and Phantom of the Opera. She argues that reality TV casting shows are harming musical theatre, and reveals why, at the age of 87, she is still working with no plans to retire.

As 12 In A Box, starring Miranda Hart, arrives in cinemas seven years after it was made, Andrew Collins considers the other films that have been delayed due to unforeseen circumstances.

Producer Dymphna Flynn.